Letters of a Traveller

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D. Appleton, 1859 - 277 páginas

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Página 279 - Russia. Trans, from the French. Thick 12mo. Cloth, 1 25 Dew's Digest of Ancient and Modern History. Svo. Cloth, 2 00 Don Quixote de La Mancha.
Página 149 - Of the people of the country I ought to carry away a most favorable impression, if such an impression could be produced by unwearied endeavors, with apparently no motive but simple benevolence, to make our stay agreeable. The American minister, Mr. Dodge, is very attentive to the convenience of his countrymen, and a great favorite -with such of them as come to Madrid. He is on excellent terms also with the people of the country, and has done, what I think few of his predecessors have taken the trouble...
Página 257 - Men who would never have thought of buying a picture or a statue at home, are infected by the contagion of the place the moment they arrive. No talk of the money market here; no discussion of any public measure; no conversation respecting new enterprises, and the ebb and flow of trade; no price current, except of marble and canvas; all the talk is of art and artists. The rich man who, at home, is contented with mirrors and rosewood, is here initiated into a new set of ideas, gets a taste, and orders...
Página 279 - Captain Canot ; or, Twenty Years of a Slaver's Life, Edited by Brantz Mayer. 1 vol. 12mo. Illustrated. Cloth, 1 25 Chapman's Instructions to Young Marksmen on the Improved American Rifle, 16mo.
Página 175 - The only narcotic in which the Spaniards indulge to any extent is tobacco, in favor of which I have nothing to say; yet it should be remembered, in extenuation, that they are tempted to this habit by the want of something else to do; that they husband their cigarritos by smoking with great deliberation, making a little tobacco go a great way, and that they dilute its narcotic fumes with those of the paper in which it is folded. With regard to the use of wine, I can confirm all that has been said...

Acerca del autor (1859)

Like so many successful New Yorkers during the nineteenth century, William C. Bryant was born and reared in New England. There, in his native Massachusetts, among the beautiful highlands of the Berkshires, he learned early to be a close observer of nature and a careful student of English versification. A child prodigy, he began to make rhymes before his tenth birthday, and in 1808 he gained some fame as the author of The Embargo, or Sketches of the Time, a satire in verse in which he echoed the conservative political sentiments of his elders. Soon, however, he found his own voice and point of view, and the poetry that followed, unlike so much of the literature that was being produced in the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century, was considered by his contemporaries to be unmistakably American. During his own lifetime and since, his most famous poem has been "Thanatopsis" (from the Greek thanato and opsis, meaning "a meditation on death"), which was first published in the North American Review in 1817. Other poems, such as "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood" (1817), "A Forest Hymn" (1825), and "To the Fringed Gentian" (1832), printed during the next several decades, brought him recognition both at home and abroad as the leading poet in the United States. Always solemn and stately, his verse seemed cold to James Russell Lowell, who humorously spoke of Bryant's "iceolation." But others praised Bryant for his careful artisanship, his commitment to romantic aesthetics, his celebration of nature, and his liberal faith in the historical destiny of the United States. Matthew Arnold called "To a Waterfowl" (1818) one of the finest short lyrics in the English language, and "The Prairies" (1833) and "Earth" (1835) have been seen as noble literary expressions "of the Jacksonian version of the American Dream." By training a lawyer and by profession a journalist, Bryant was editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post from 1829 until his death in 1878. This position gave him enormous influence on national affairs, and his early support for the fledgling Republican party in the 1850s helped insure that party's success. When he was nearly 80 years old, he translated the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer into English blank verse. Bryant died in 1878.

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