Selections in Prose anù Verse FROM AUTHORS NEW-YORK: grad 32763736 gisen 7/11/00 mene PFEFACE. N ample account of the nature of this work will be A found in the Introduction ; but to give a brief and more general idea of the entertainment which it is proposed to set before the purchaser, it may be as well to state in this place, that the book, for the most part, is a collection of passages from such authors as retain, if not the highest, yet the most friendly and as it were domestic hold upon us during life, and sympathize with us through all portions of it. Hence the first extract is a Letter addressed to an Infant, the last the Elegy in the Churchyard,* and the intermediate ones have something of an analogous reference to the successive stages of existence. It is therefore intended to be read by intelligent persons of all times of life, the youthful associa tions in it being such as the oldest readers love to call to mind, and the oldest such as all would gladly meet * The last article of the Second Series. with in their decline. It has no politics in it, no polemics, nothing to offend the delicatest mind. The innocentest boy and the most cautious of his seniors might alike be glad to look over the other's shoulder, and find him in his corner perusing it. · This may be speaking in a boastful manner; but an Editor has a right to boast of his originals, especially when they are such as have comforted and delighted him throughout his own life, and are for that reason recommended by him to others. CONTENTS OF FIRST SERIES. * PAGR NATURE OF THE PRESENT WORK, AND A FEW REMARKS ON ITS READ- ERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 LETTER TO A NEW-BORN CHILD ..... . Catherine Talbot. 27 THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ............ Shenstone. 30 GROWN SCHOOLBOYS. A Letter to Geo. Montagu Horace Walpole. 42 ODE ON SOLITUDE. Written at twelve years of age. Pope. 45 SIR BERTRAND-A Fragment ......... Dr. Aikin. 47 ROBINSON CRUSOE. The Five Points in his History . . . De Foe. 53 Crusoe's Meditations and Mode of Life . . .. . . He finds the Print of a Man's Foot on the Shore .... Sees Savages in the Island, and obtains a Servant. . . 63 PETER WILKINS'S DISCOVERY OF THE FLYING Woman. Rob't Pultock. 73 GIL BLAS AND THE PARASITE : ........ Le Sage. 96 LUDOVICO IN THE HAUNTED CHAMBER. From the “Mysteries of Udolpho”. ............ Mrs. Radcliffe. 104 THE WARNING. From the Novel of “Nature and Art” Mrs. Inchbald. 128 JOHN BUNCLE . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Amory. 137 DELIGHTS OF BOOKS OF TRAVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Wandering Tartars and their Chief Zagatai, in the Thir- teenth Century. ..... William de Rubruquis. 154 Passage of the Desert of Lop..... Marco Polo. 162 Kubla Khan . . . . . . . . . . . “ Kubla Khan's Palace at Xanadu . . . . . " " 165 Kubla Khan's Person and State . . . . . ." “ 168 171 " |