PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The nucleus of this collection was a privately printed volume for the use of the students in the sophomore course in English and History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The volume was edited by Professor DeWitt C. Croissant, visiting professor of English at the Institute from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. The present volume, which contains some changes and additions, is edited by Robert E. Rogers, assistant professor of English at the Institute, who is, therefore, responsible for its present form.


CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction [ix]
Matthew Arnold
The Function of Criticism [1]
Sir Michael Foster
The Growth of Science in the Nineteenth Century [22]
Thomas Huxley
Three Hypotheses Respecting the History of Nature [52]
On the Physical Basis of Life [69]
John Tyndall
Scope and Limit of Scientific Materialism [93]
John Henry, Cardinal Newman
Christianity and Physical Science [104]
Robert Louis Stevenson
Pulvis et Umbra [108]
John Ruskin
The Mystery of Life and its Arts [116]
Matthew Arnold
Marcus Aurelius [146]
Dover Beach [170]
Morality [171]
Self-Dependence [172]
Arthur Hugh Clough
All is Well [174]
To Spend Uncounted Years of Pain [174]
Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth [175]
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Garden of Proserpine [176]
Edward Fitzgerald
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam [180]
Robert Browning
Rabbi Ben Ezra [197]
An Epistle [204]
Caliban upon Setebos [214]
A Grammarian’s Funeral [224]
Why I am a Liberal [228]
Fears and Scruples [229]
Epilogue to “Asolando” [231]
Prospice [232]
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Wages [233]
The Higher Pantheism [233]
Flower in the Crannied Wall [234]
In Memoriam [235]
Crossing the Bar [239]
George Meredith
Lucifer in Starlight [240]
William E. Henley
Invictus [241]
Thomas Hardy
New Year’s Eve [242]
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Civilization [244]
Illusions [255]
Fate [268]
Walt Whitman
Song of the Open Road [300]
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry [313]
A Song of Joys [320]

INTRODUCTION

By Henry Greenleaf Pearson