Tom Brown's School Days
Nothing need be said of the merits of this acknowledged on all hands to be one of the very best boy’s books ever written. "Tom Brown" does not reach the point of ideal excellence. He is not a faultless boy; but his boy-faults, by the way they are corrected, help him in getting on. The more of such reading can be furnished the better. There will never be too much of it.
Approx. 105,441 words.
ame to the Vale, over which it has looked these thousand years and more.
* "Pagani editiorem Iocum praeoccupaverant. Christiani ab inferiori loco aciem dirigebant. Erat quoque in eodem loco unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris propriis oculis vidimus). Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt. Quo in loco alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites occisi occubuerunt, et multa millia Paganae partis in eodem loco. Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex, et Sidroc ille senex comes, et Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern comes," etc. --Annales Rerum Gestarum AElfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio. Recensuit Franciscus Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.
Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the Giant's Stairs." They are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, with their short g