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Nearer, my God, to Thee!

Nearer to Thee!

E’en though it be a cross

That raiseth me.

Still all my song shall be,

Nearer, my God, to Thee!

Nearer to Thee!

“Nearer, my God, to Thee!”—Sara Flower Adams.

Sara Flower Adams, a noted English hymn-writer, was born at Great Harlow, Essex, February 22, 1805, and died August, 1848. She wrote many lyrics and hymns, the most popular of which is “Nearer, My God, to Thee!”

Never yet was a springtime

Late though lingered the snow,

That the sap stirred not at the whisper

Of the southwind, sweet and low;

Never yet was a springtime,

When the buds forgot to blow.

“Awakening,”—Margaret Elizabeth Sangster.

Margaret Elizabeth (Munson) Sangster, a celebrated American poet and prose-writer, was born in New Rochelle, N. Y., February 22, 1838, and died in 1912. Among her writings are: “May Stanhope and her Friend,” “Little Kingdom of Home,” “Good Manners for all Occasions,” “Radiant Motherhood,” “Easter Bells,” “Little Knight and Ladies,” “Lyrics of Love,” “Fairest Girlhood,” “Eleanor Lee,” “A Little Book of Homespun Verse,” “Women of the Bible,” “The Story Bible,” “From My Youth Up—an Autobiography,” “My Garden of Hearts,” and her famous poems, “Our Own” and “Are the Children at Home?”

To St. Paul’s Church Yard to my book-sellers ... choose ... “Hudibras,” both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.

“Diary,” Dec. 10, 1663,—Samuel Pepys.

Samuel Pepys, a famous English diarist, was born in London, February 23, 1633, and died there May 26, 1703. His fame rests on the remarkable “Diary” that bears his name.

Rocked in the cradle of the deep

I lay me down in peace to sleep;

Secure I rest upon the wave,

For Thou, O Lord! hast power to save.

I know Thou wilt not slight my call,

For Thou dost mark the sparrow’s fall,

And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,

Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

“Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” Stanza I,—Emma (Hart) Willard.

Emma (Hart) Willard, a noted American educator, historian, and poet, was born at New Berlin, Conn., February 23, 1787, and died at Troy, N. Y., April 15, 1870. She has written: “A History of the United States,” “Universal History in Perspective,” etc. She also wrote: “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” and much other verse.

By one great Heart, the Universe is stirred:

By Its strong pulse, stars climb the darkening blue;

It throbs in each fresh sunset’s changing hue,

And thrills through low sweet song of every bird.

“Life,”—Margaret Deland.

Margaret Wade Deland, a famous American author, was born at Allegheny, Pa., February 23, 1857. She has written: “John Ward, Preacher,” “The Old Garden and Other Verses,” “Old Chester Tales,” “Dr. Lavendar’s People,” “The Common Way,” “The Awakening of Helena Richie,” “An Encore,” “The Iron Woman,” “The Voice,” “Partners,” “The Hands of Esau,” “Around Old Chester,” “The Rising Tide,” etc.

While we read history we make history.

“The Call of Freedom,”—George William Curtis.

George William Curtis, a distinguished American author, was born in Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824, and died at Staten Island, August 31, 1892. His works include: “The Howadji in Syria,” “Nile Notes of a Howadji,” “Manners upon the Road,” “Lotus Eating,” “Prue and I,” “Potiphar Papers,” “Trumps,” etc.

If Goldsmith had to struggle socially against the disadvantages of poverty, intellectually it cannot be doubted that poverty very amply compensated him. His circumstances forced him to be an unwilling spectator of scenes, and the companion of men of whom affluence or his laziness would have kept him ignorant. His “Citizen of the World,” indeed, is an epitome of London life as it was exhibited to the observer of that age.

“Goldsmith and La Bruyère,” The Argosy, p. 265,—William Clark Russell.

William Clark Russell, a noted English-American novelist, was born in New York City, February 24, 1844, and died in 1911. Among his numerous sea stories and novels are: “The Wreck of the Grosvenor,” “A Sailor’s Sweetheart,” “My Watch Below,” “A Sea Queen,” “Jack’s Courtship,” “A Strange Voyage,” “The Frozen Pirate,” “The Death Ship,” “Marooned,” “The Romance of Jenny Harlowe,” “The Good Ship Mohock,” “Overdue,” “The Ship’s Adventure,” “Abandoned,” “Voyage at Anchor,” “Yarn of Old Harbor Town,” etc.

All flowers, it would seem, were in their earliest form yellow; then some of them became white; after that a few of them grew to be red or purple; and finally, a comparatively small number acquired various shades of violet, mauve, lilac, or blue.

“The Colors of Flowers,”—Grant Allen.

Grant Allen (Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen), a celebrated English naturalist, essayist, and novelist, was born in Kingstone, Canada, February 24, 1848, and died October 24, 1899. His most noted works are “The Devil’s Die,” “Under Sealed Orders,” “Recalled to Life,” “The Woman Who Did,” “Strange Stories,” “The British Barbarians,” “Science in Arcady,” “Vignettes from Nature,” “Colin Clout’s Calendar,” “The Color Sense,” “Colors of Flowers,” “Flowers and Their Pedigrees,” “Force and Nature,” etc.

Bello è il rossore, ma è incommodo qualche volta.[3]

“Pamela,” I, 3,—Goldoni.

Carlo Goldoni, a noted Italian comedy-writer, was born in Venice, February 25, 1707, and died at Paris, January 6, 1793. He wrote: “The Good Father,” “The Singer,” “Pamela,” “Belisarius,” “The Venetian Gondolier,” “Rosamond,” and “The Coffee House.”

Let us reckon upon the future. A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers—which creates new products—which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people—shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.

“Eloge on James Watt.”—Arago.

Dominique François Arago, an eminent French astronomer and physicist, was born near Perpignan, February 26, 1786, and died in Paris, October 2, 1853. Among his publications are: “Popular Lectures on Astronomy,” “Meteorological Essays,” “Biographies of Scientific Men,” and his own “Autobiography.”

A queen devoid of beauty is not queen;

She needs the royalty of beauty’s mien.

“Eviradnus,” V,—Victor Hugo.

Victor Hugo, the great French novelist, was born at Besançon, February 26, 1802, and died at Paris, May 22, 1885. His most famous works are: “Odes and Ballads,” “New Odes,” “The Orientals,” “Various Odes and Poems,” “Twilight Songs,” “Inner Voices,” “Sunbeams and Shadows,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Songs of the Streets and Woods,” “The Four Winds of the Spirit,” “The Legend of the Ages,” “Notre Dame de Paris,” “The Last Day of a Condemned Man,” “Claude Gueux,” “Napoleon the Little,” “Les Misérables,” “The Man Who Laughs,” “Acts and Words,” “History of a Crime,” “The Toilers of the Sea,” etc. Also numerous plays, among them, “Amy Robsart,” “Cromwell,” “Hernani,” “Lucretia Borgia,” “Marie Tudor,” and “Esmeralda.”

These deeper questions cannot be treated in this short appendix to Descartes’ life. They are mentioned here merely to show how he was to modern thought what Socrates was to Greek philosophy. Far greater, too, was he than Socrates, in the range of his influence. In every department of his thinking—in his first philosophy, his theology, his physics, his psychology, his physiology—he sowed the dragon’s teeth from which sprang hosts of armed men, to join in an intellectual conflict, internecine, let us trust, to their many errors and prejudices, but fraught with new life and energy to the intellectual progress of Europe.

“Descartes,”—John Pentland Mahaffy.

John Pentland Mahaffy, a distinguished Irish classical scholar and historian, was born at Chapponnaire, Switzerland, February 26, 1839, and died in 1919. Among his publications are: “Social Life in Greece,” “Rambles and Studies in Greece,” “Greek Life and Thought,” “Greece Under Roman Sway,” “History of Classical Greek Literature,” “The Silver Age of the Greek World,” “The Empire of the Ptolemies,” etc.

Sail, on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

“The Building of the Ship,”—Longfellow.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the greatest of American poets, was born at Portland, Me., February 27, 1807, and died at Cambridge, Mass., March 24, 1882. His celebrated works include: “Voices of the Night,” “Hyperion,” “Poems on Slavery,” “Ballads and Other Poems,” “The Spanish Student,” “Poets and Poetry of Europe,” “Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie,” “The Seaside and the Fireside,” “The Golden Legend,” “A Volume of Poems,” “Song of Hiawatha,” “Poems,” “Courtship of Miles Standish,” “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” “A New England Tragedy,” “Excelsior,” “The Skeleton in Armor,” “The Building of a Ship,” etc.

A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall.

—Ernest Renan.

Joseph Ernest Renan, the renowned French Semitic-Orientalist; historian, philologist, and essayist, was born at Treguier, Brittany, February 27, 1823, and died at Paris, October 2, 1892. Among his numerous works may be mentioned: “General History of the Semitic Languages,” “The Life of Jesus,” “Marcus Aurelius,” “Studies in Religious History,” “Questions of the Day,” “Recollections of My Youth,” “New Studies in Religious History,” “Discourses and Conferences,” “Dialogue of the Dead,” “The Song of Songs,” and “Ecclesiastes.”

Samuel Pepys stands at the head of the world’s literature in his own department.... Pepys’ “Diary” has been frequently compared with Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” and with justice in so far as the charm of each arises from the inimitable naïveté of the author’s self-revelations. Boswell had a much greater character than his own to draw, but Pepys had to be his own Johnson. It is giving him no excessive praise to say that he makes himself as interesting as Johnson and Boswell together.... Another Milton is more likely to appear than another Pepys.

“The Age of Dryden,”—Richard Garnett.

Richard Garnett, a noted English librarian and author, was born at Litchfield, February 27, 1835, and died April 13, 1906. He wrote: “Primula,” “Io in Egypt,” “Idylls and Epigrams,” “The Queen and Other Poems,” “Collected Poems,” “The Twilight of the Gods,” “A Short History of Italian Literature,” “Essays in Librarianship and Bibliophily,” etc.

You hail from Dreamland, Dragon-fly?

A stranger hither? So am I

And (sooth to say) I wonder why

We either of us came!

“To a Dragon-fly,”—Agnes M. F. R. Darmesteter.

Agnes M. F. R. Darmesteter, a distinguished English poet, was born in Leamington, February 27, 1857. Her writings include: “A Handful of Honeysuckle,” “Lyrics,” “Retrospect,” “Arden,” a novel, “Emily Brontë,” “The New Arcadia and Other Poems,” “An Italian Garden, a Book of Songs,” “The End of the Middle Ages,” “Essays and Questions in History,” “Life of Renan,” “Collected Poems,” “The Fields of France,” “The Return to Nature,” “The French Ideal,” “Twentieth Century French Writers,” “Madame de Sévigne,” etc.

How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!

“Of Glory,” Chap. xvi.—Montaigne.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, the illustrious French moral philosopher, was born at Château Montaigne, Perigord, February 28, 1533, and died September 13, 1592. His remarkable “Essays” won for him world-wide fame.

In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition; the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird—all is there for itself. Only because we think that all things have a relation to us, do they appear justifiable or otherwise.

—Auerbach.

Berthold Auerbach, a renowned German novelist, was born at Nordstetten, Wurtemberg, February 28, 1812, and died at Cannes, France, February 8, 1882. He wrote: “The Educated Citizen, a Book for the Thinking Human Mind,” “Poet and Merchant,” “Spinoza,” “The Professor’s Lady,” “Little Barefoot,” “Joseph in the Snow,” “Edelweiss,” “New Life,” “The Head Forester,” “The Villa on the Rhine,” “Waldfried, a Family History,” “Black Forest Village Stories,” “After Thirty Years,” and his most noted work, “On the Heights.”

The first, and perhaps the final impression we receive from the work of Robert Browning is that of a great nature, an immense personality.

“Introduction to the Study of Browning,”—Arthur Symons.

Arthur Symons, a celebrated writer of prose and verse, was born in Wales, February 28, 1865. His publications include: “An Introduction to the Study of Browning,” “Days and Nights,” “Silhouettes,” “London Nights,” “Amoris Victima,” “Studies in Two Literatures,” “The Symbolist Movement in Literature,” “Images of Good and Evil,” “Collected Poems,” “Plays, Acting, and Music,” “Cities,” “Studies in Prose and Verse,” “Spiritual Adventures,” “A Book of Twenty Songs,” “The Fool of the World,” “Studies in Seven Arts,” “Cities of Italy,” “The Romantic Movement in English Poetry,” “Knave of Hearts,” “Figures of Several Centuries,” “Tragedies,” etc.

Take time enough: all other graces

Will soon fill up their proper places.

“Advice to Preach Slow,”—John Byrom.

John Byrom, a noted English poet, and writer of hymns, was born at Kersel Cell, near Manchester, February 29, 1692, and died in 1763. He wrote a famous poem “Colin and Phoebe.” A collection of his poems was published in 1773.