Romantic Realities: A Series of Historic Pen-Pictures, Illustrating the Romantic and Heroic Sides of Human Life. in Seven Parts. 1. Lasting Happiness in Marriage. 2. Vagaries of the Affections. 3. The Romance of Superstition. 4. Romance of Fanaticism. 5.…

746 pp Engravings throughout. Includes a section on necromancy. CONTENTS: Part I. Lasting Happiness in Marriage: Augustus Hare and Maria Leycester; John Foster and His "Helpmeet"; Klopstock and His Meta; The Covenanter's Wife; Annette of the Iron Gate and Gutenberg; Romantic Side of Isaac T. Hopper's Life and Character; A Wife Who Wept Herself Blind--Royal Friendship; Devoted Affection of Lord and Lady Russell; Enthronement of a Dead Empress; Hugo Grotius and His Wife's Stratagem; Baron Rudolph's Devoted Wife; A Wife Saving Her Husband from the Guillotine; Richard Baxter and His Margaret; The Loves of Vindelgarde and Adalrich; Four Wives of William the Silent; Waterton's Brief Married Life. Part II. Vagaries of the Affections: John Calvin's Courtship and Marriage; A Marriage Without a Wooing; John Milton's Three Wives; Abernethy's Courtship and Marriage; Lawrence Sterne's Courtship and Married life; Unsentimental Marriages in Russia; The Dean of Saint Patrick and His Stella; George Herbert's Hasty Marriage; Samuel Johnson and His Homely Wife; Marriage in Turkestan; Spenser's Poetical Story of His Courtship and Marriage; Abelard and Heloise; Dante and His Beatrice; Petarch's Passion for Laura; A Maiden Refusing to Marry an Emperor; Theolinda's Courtship and Marriage; Mohammed and His Kadijah. Part III. The Romance of Superstition: Sorcery and Necromancy; A Necromancer's History--Cornelius Agrippa; The Romance of the Devil and Dr. Faustus; Cromwell's Alleged Compact with the Devil; Ghosts and Spectral Illusions; The Hobgoblin; Charms and Omens; The Bride of Thunder, a Mexican Superstition; Curious Mohammedan Superstitions; Superstitious Origin of the Christmas-Tree; Curious Superstition in Rhineland; Popular Superstition in Turkestan; Credulity of Russian Peasants; Modern Necromancy, or Spiritualism. Part IV. Romance of Fanaticism: Romantic Zeal of a Religious Fanatic; Charlotte Corday, the Political Fanatic; The Assassin of William the Silent; A Magnificent Wedding and a Pitiless Massacre; Judicial Murder of a Welsh Puritan; Hareth's Daughter, the Poisoner of Mohammed; Thanking God for Cruelty; Priestly Cruelties in Ireland; A Scotchman in the Spanish Inquisition; Desecration of a Tomb by Fanatical Monks; The Lords of the Mountain. Part V. The Romance of Modern Missions: Heroic Jesuit Missionaries; A Noble Act and a Heroic Sacrifice; A Missionary Tragedy; Heroic Madagascar Martyrs; Five Nobel Sacrifices on the Missionary Altar; Heroic Virtue in a Missionary Bishop; Singular Customs among the Mountaineers in India; Test of Devil Worship and Christian Faith; A Fanatical Missionary in India; A Brahminical Astronomer Confounded; Robbers and Assassins Approved by a Goddess; Livingstone and the Lion. Part VI. Heroic and Noble Women: Agnes Beaumont and Her Rejected Suitor; Rare Courage of Lady Fairfax; The Lady of Brampton Castle; A Royal Lion Bearded by a Woman; Isabella the Catholic; Abdallah's Farwell to Granada--His Mother's Stinging Rebuke; Heroic Women of Weinsberg; Stung by a Woman's Words; Marie Antoinette, the Queenly Victim of the French Revolution; A Nuptial Banquet Rudely Broken Up; A Broken-Hearted Mother; The Empress Josephine; Twenty-Four Year's Experience of a Benedictine Nun. Part VII. An Entertaining Olio: Wonderful Fidelity of Zamora for His Master; Heroic Young Princes; A Heroic Scotch Friar; Remarkable Predictions by Brave Persecuted Men; Grandly Heroic Death of a Spanish Knight; Knights Templars; Searching for Noah's Ark; Triumphal Procession at Brussels; A Famous Maske in the Olden Time.