Thomas De Quincey

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ... THE SPANISH MILITAET NUN. Section 1.--An Extra Nuisance is introduced into Spain. On a night in the year 1592 (but which night is a secret liable to 365 answers), a Spanish "son of somebody" (t. ., hidalgo), in the fortified town of St Sebastian, received the disagreeable intelligence from a nurse, that his wife had just presented him with a daughter. No present that the poor misjudging lady could possibly have made him was so entirely useless towards any purpose of his. He had three daughters already; which happened to be more by 2-f-l, according to his reckoning, than any reasonable allowance of daughters. A supernumerary son might have been stowed away; but supernumerary daughters were the very nuisance of Spain. He did, therefore, what in such cases every proud and lazy Spanish gentleman endeavoured to do. And surely I need not interrupt myself by any parenthesis to inform the base British reader, who makes it his glory to work hard, that the peculiar point of honour for the Spanish gentleman lay precisely in these two qualities of pride and laziness: for, if he were not proud, or had anything to do, what could you look for but ruin to the old Spanish aristocracy? some of whom boasted that no member of their house (unless illegitimate, and a mere terrce filius) had done a day's work since the flood. In the ark they admitted that Xoah kept them tightly to work; because, in fact, there was work to do, that must be done by somebody. But once anchored upon Ararat, they insisted upon it most indignantly that no ancestor of the Spanish noblesse had ever worked, except through his slaves. And with a view to new leases of idleness, through new generations of slaves, it was (as many people think) that Spain went so heartily into the...

Books like Last Days of Immanuel Kant

Your next favorite book is out there