L. Muhlbach - "Prince Eugene and His Times"

Sam Vaknin - "Issues in Ethics"

A. Herbert Gray - "Men, Women, and God"

F. W. Moorman - "Songs of the Ridings"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Our Old Home

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home




In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops and knights, we saw
an immense slab of stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine
Swynford, wife of John of Gaunt; also, here was the shrine of the little
Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have been crucified by
the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in
monuments; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the
Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is in
especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old
churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the
nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures,
and the ancestral memorials of great families, quite at their wicked and
plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exquisite and
marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and grapevines, and miracles of
stone-work twined about arches, as if the material had been as soft as
wax in the cunning sculptor's hands,--the leaves being represented with
all their veins, so that you would almost think it petrified Nature, for
which he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those
grotesque faces which always grin at you from the projections of monkish
architecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep
solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in
something ineffably absurd.

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and
all these magic sculptures, were polished to the utmost degree of lustre;
nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these
further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in working
out their conceptions to the extremest point. But, at present, the whole
interior of the Cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very
meanest hue imaginable, and for which somebody's soul has a bitter
reckoning to undergo.

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which the cloisters
perambulate is a small, mean brick building, with a locked door. Our
guide,--I forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black,
and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect,--our guide
unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom
appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and
faded oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather
gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of small
colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered
here, and has not been meddled with, further than by removing the
superincumbent earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded about the interior of
the Cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had
been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they
knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. Leaving the Minster, we now
went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore
seen, bordered with houses, the high peaked roofs of which were covered
with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Roman arch, which was once the
gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English
street ever since the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries
before. The arch is about four hundred yards from the Cathedral; and it
is to be noticed that there are Roman remains in all this neighborhood,
some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it; for, as in
ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil seems to have
swept over what was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which I
am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and
perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the original
depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a rude and
massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have been two
thousand years ago; and though Time has gnawed it externally, he has made
what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken summit with grass
and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers on the projections up and
down the sides.

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the Conqueror, in pretty
close proximity to the Cathedral; but the old gateway is obstructed by a
modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of
the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad
back of the hill, which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the
site of some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little
hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has
subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and
prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat, at the
base of the castle-wall, are clustered whole colonies of small houses,
some of brick, but the larger portion built of old stones which once made
part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the
Conqueror's castle was ever dreamed about. They are like toadstools that
spring up from the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add
wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable,
in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep,
which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank
of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other
flowering plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden.

After walking quite round the castle, I made an excursion through the
Roman gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of
various character. One or two were houses of gentility, with delightful
and shadowy lawns before them; many had those high, red-tiled roofs,
ascending into acutely pointed gables, which seem to belong to the same
epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns; and there were
pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense
and high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of
their thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images,
crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old
Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament.

We now went home to the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very
unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have
felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had
taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length I
found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between daylight and
dusk. A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great
central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements and
pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most
impressive view that I had had. The whole lower part of the structure
was seen with perfect distinctness; but at the very summit the mist was
so dense as to form an actual cloud, as well defined as ever I saw
resting on a mountain-top. Really and literally, here was a "cloud-capt
tower."

The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a richer beauty and
more imposing majesty than ever. The longer I looked, the better I loved
it. Its exterior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York
Minster; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in which
the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and
re-echo them into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and
angular in its general effect; but in this at Lincoln there is a
continual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware of a
change, and a disclosure of something new, yet working an harmonious
development of what you have heretofore seen. The west front is
unspeakably grand, and may be read over and over again forever, and still
show undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of marvellous writing
in black-letter,--so many sculptured ornaments there are, blossoming out
before your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since you looked
last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies beneath which carved
images used to be, and where they will show themselves again, if you gaze
long enough.--But I will not say another word about the Cathedral.

We spent the rest of the day within the sombre precincts of the Saracen's
Head, reading yesterday's "Times," "The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and "The
Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the weather was, the
street beneath our window was enlivened with a great bustle and turmoil
of people all the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they had
accomplished their week's toil, received their wages, and were making
their small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as
they knew how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, with the
rain-drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and pattering on
the bass-drum; a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of
custom; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional vent for
his commodity, in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups.
The whole breadth of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge
across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and humming with human
life.

Observing in the Guide-Book that a steamer runs on the river Witham
between Lincoln and Boston, I inquired of the waiter, and learned that
she was to start on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an
interesting trip, and a pleasant variation of our customary mode of
travel, we determined to make the voyage. The Witham flows through
Lincoln, crossing the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic
construction, a little below the Saracen's Head. It has more the
appearance of a canal than of a river, in its passage through the town,--
being bordered with hewn-stone mason-work on each side, and provided with
one or two locks. The steamer proved to be small, dirty, and altogether
inconvenient. The early morning had been bright; but the sky now lowered
upon us with a sulky English temper, and we had not long put off before
we felt an ugly wind from the German Ocean blowing right in our teeth.
There were a number of passengers on board, country-people, such as
travel by third-class on the railway; for, I suppose, nobody but
ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for the sake of what he
might happen upon in the way of river-scenery.

We bothered a good while about getting through a preliminary lock; nor,
when fairly under way, did we ever accomplish, I think, six miles an
hour. Constant delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up
passengers and freight,--not at regular landing-places, but anywhere
along the green banks. The scenery was identical with that of the
railway, because the latter runs along by the river-side through the
whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut
across some sinuosity; so that our only advantage lay in the drawling,
snail-like slothfulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough and
to spare for the objects along the shore. Unfortunately, there was
nothing, or next to nothing, to be seen,--the country being one unvaried
level over the whole thirty miles of our voyage,--not a hill in sight,
either near or far, except that solitary one on the summit of which we
had left Lincoln Cathedral. And the Cathedral was our landmark for four
hours or more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by any
intervening object.

It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if the rough and bitter
wind had not blown directly in our faces, and chilled us through, in
spite of the sunshine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain.
These English east-winds, which prevail from February till June, are
greater nuisances than the east-wind of our own Atlantic coast, although
they do not bring mist and storm, as with us, but some of the sunniest
weather that England sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and is
villanous.

The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an English character
that was abundantly worth our looking at. A green luxuriance of early
grass; old, high-roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and
ricks of hay and grain; ancient villages, with the square, gray tower of
a church seen afar over the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs;
here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, surrounding what was
perhaps an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode of some
rich yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval castle, that of
Tattershall, built, by a Cromwell, but whether of the Protector's family
I cannot tell. But the gentry do not appear to have settled
multitudinously in this tract of country; nor is it to be wondered at,
since a lover of the picturesque would as soon think of settling in
Holland. The river retains its canal-like aspect all along; and only in
the latter part of its course does it become more than wide enough for
the little steamer to turn itself round,--at broadest, not more than
twice that width.

The only memorable incident of our voyage happened when a mother-duck was
leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our
steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves
that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the imminence of the
catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness its
consummation, since I could not possibly avert it. The poor ducklings
had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to
escape; four of them, I believe, were washed aside and thrown off unhurt
from the steamer's prow; but the fifth must have gone under the whole
length of the keel, and never could have come up alive.

At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower of Saint Botolph's
Church (three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest tower
of Lincoln Cathedral) looming in the distance. At about half past four
we reached Boston (which name has been shortened, in the course of ages,
by the quick and slovenly English pronunciation, from Botolph's town),
and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It
was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough; and we were shown
into a small, stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale
tobacco-smoke,--tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us
that the room had not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly
grim waiter he was, apparently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans
of this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who people the
daughter-city in New England. Our parlor had the one recommendation of
looking into the market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the
tall spire and noble old church.

In my first ramble about the town, chance led me to the river-side, at
that quarter where the port is situated. Here were long buildings of an
old-fashioned aspect, seemingly warehouses, with windows in the high,
steep roofs. The Custom-House found ample accommodation within an
ordinary dwelling-house. Two or three large schooners were moored along
the river's brink, which had here a stone margin; another large and
handsome schooner was evidently just finished, rigged and equipped for
her first voyage; the rudiments of another were on the stocks, in a
shipyard bordering on the river. Still another, while I was looking on,
came up the stream, and lowered her mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An
old man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo; but the
Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of talking English that I could
not understand the reply. Farther down the river, I saw a brig,
approaching rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd impression
of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life;
and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of
our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this old English
town;--the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day, as if
the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of
growth. I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and Washington
Street, and the Great Elm, and the State House, and exulted lustily,--but
yet began to feel at home in this good old town, for its very name's
sake, as I never had before felt, in England.

The next morning we came out in the early sunshine (the sun must have
been shining nearly four hours, however, for it was after eight o'clock),
and strolled about the streets, like people who had a right to be there.
The market-place of Boston is an irregular square, into one end of which
the chancel of the church slightly projects. The gates of the churchyard
were open and free to all passengers, and the common footway of the
townspeople seems to lie to and fro across it. It is paved, according to
English custom, with flat tombstones; and there are also raised or altar
tombs, some of which have armorial hearings on them. One clergyman has
caused himself and his wife to be buried right in the middle of the
stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard; so that not an
individual of the thousands who pass along this public way can help
trampling over him or her. The scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in
the morning sun: people going about their business in the day's primal
freshness, which was just as fresh here as in younger villages; children
with milk-pails, loitering over the burial-stones; school-boys playing
leap-frog with the altar-tombs; the simple old town preparing itself for
the day, which would be like myriads of other days that had passed over
it, but yet would be worth living through. And down on the churchyard,
where were buried many generations whom it remembered in their time,
looked the stately tower of Saint Botolph; and it was good to see and
think of such an age-long giant, intermarrying the present epoch with a
distant past, and getting quite imbued with human nature by being so
immemorially connected with men's familiar knowledge and homely
interests. It is a noble tower; and the jackdaws evidently have pleasant
homes in their hereditary nests among its topmost windows, and live
delightful lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying
buttresses. I should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the sake of
living up there.

In front of the church, not more than twenty yards off, and with a low
brick wall between, flows the river Witham. On the hither bank a
fisherman was washing his boat; and another skiff, with her sail lazily
half twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream at this point is
about of such width, that, if the tall tower were to tumble over flat on
its face, its top-stone might perhaps reach to the middle of the channel.
On the farther shore there is a line of antique-looking houses, with
roofs of red tile, and windows opening out of them,--some of these
dwellings being so ancient, that the Reverend Mr. Cotton, subsequently
our first Boston minister, must have seen them with his own bodily eyes,
when he used to issue from the front-portal after service. Indeed, there
must be very many houses here, and even some streets, that bear much the
aspect that they did when the Puritan divine paced solemnly among them.

In our rambles about town, we went into a bookseller's shop to inquire if
he had any description of Boston for sale. He offered me (or, rather,
produced for inspection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto
history of the town, published by subscription, nearly forty years ago.
The bookseller showed himself a well-informed and affable man, and a
local antiquary, to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were a godsend.
He had met with several Americans, who, at various times, had come on
pilgrimages to this place, and he had been in correspondence with others.
Happening to have heard the name of one member of our party, he showed us
great courtesy and kindness, and invited us into his inner domicile,
where, as he modestly intimated, he kept a few articles which it might
interest us to see. So we went with him through the shop, up stairs,
into the private part of his establishment; and, really, it was one of
the rarest adventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this treasure of a
man, with his treasury of antiquities and curiosities, veiled behind the
unostentatious front of a bookseller's shop, in a very moderate line of
village business. The two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us
were so crowded with inestimable articles, that we were almost afraid to
stir for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating
value for unknown centuries.

The apartment was hung round with pictures and old engravings, many of
which were extremely rare. Premising that he was going to show us
something very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and returned
with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately embroidered with silk,
which so profusely covered the linen that the general effect was as if
the main texture were silken. It was stained and seemed very old, and
had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over with birds and flowers
in a most delicate style of needlework, and among other devices, more
than once repeated, was the cipher, M. S.,--being the initials of one of
the most unhappy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was
embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots, during her imprisonment
at Fotheringay Castle; and having evidently been a work of years, she had
doubtless shed many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and
abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds and flowers. As
a counterpart to this most precious relic, our friend produced some of
the handiwork of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Captain
Cook; it was a bag, cunningly made of some delicate vegetable stuff, and
ornamented with feathers. Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of
very antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket-holes with a
rich and delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This (as the possessor
of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his
hands) was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh; but that
great statesman must have been a person of very moderate girth in the
chest and waist; for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit
for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the
gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved
drinking-glasses, with a view of Saint Botolph's steeple on one of them,
and other Boston edifices, public or domestic, on the remaining two, very
admirably done. These crystal goblets had been a present, long ago, to
an old master of the Free School from his pupils; and it is very rarely,
I imagine, that a retired schoolmaster can exhibit such trophies of
gratitude and affection, won from the victims of his birch rod.

Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and wholly unexpectable
thing after another, as if he were a magician, and had only to fling a
private signal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand forth any
strange relic we might choose to ask for. He was especially rich in
drawings by the Old Masters, producing two or three, of exquisite
delicacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and others,
in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Giordano, Benvenuto Cellini, and hands
almost as famous; and besides what were shown us, there seemed to be an
endless supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a
crayon-portrait of Sterne, never engraved, representing him as a rather
young man, blooming, and not uncomely; it was the worldly face of a man
fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression
that we see in his only engraved portrait. The picture is an original,
and must needs be very valuable; and we wish it might be prefixed to some
new and worthier biography of a writer whose character the world has
always treated with singular harshness, considering how much it owes him.
There was likewise a crayon-portrait of Sterne's wife, looking so haughty
and unamiable, that the wonder is, not that he ultimately left her, but
how he ever contrived to live a week with such an awful woman.

After looking at these, and a great many more things than I can remember,
above stairs, we went down to a parlor, where this wonderful bookseller
opened an old cabinet, containing numberless drawers, and looking just
fit to be the repository of such knick-knacks as were stored up in it.
He appeared to possess more treasures than he himself knew off, or knew
where to find; but, rummaging here and there, he brought forth things new
and old: rose-nobles, Victoria crowns, gold angels, double sovereigns of
George IV., two-guinea pieces of George II.; a marriage-medal of the
first Napoleon, only forty-five of which were ever struck off, and of
which even the British Museum does not contain a specimen like this, in
gold; a brass medal, three or four inches in diameter, of a Roman
emperor; together with buckles, bracelets, amulets, and I know not what
besides. There was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen Mary's
bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illuminated missals, antique Latin
Bibles, and (what may seem of especial interest to the historian) a
Secret-Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for aught I know,
by her own hand. On examination, however, it proved to contain, not
secrets of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and
all such matters of housewifery, the toilet, and domestic quackery, among
which we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, "How to kill
a Fellow quickly"! We never doubted that bloody Queen Bess might often
have had occasion for such a recipe, but wondered at her frankness, and
at her attending to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical way.
The truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen had spelt amiss: the word
was "Fellon,"--a sort of whitlow,--not "Fellow."