"Historian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... human nature. It is right, too, that the poets, the ideal interpreters of life, should be dearer to us than those who stop short with mere deciphering of what is real and actual. The poet has his own sphere of the beautiful and the sublime. But it is no less true that the enduring weight of historian, moralist, political orator, or preacher depends on the amount of the wisdom of life that is hived in his pages. They may be admirable by virtue of other qualities, by learning, by grasp, by majesty of flight; ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... withdrawn position I passed it with difficulty. "Now," I exclaimed, "I shall behold with my own eyes the aboriginal style of burial in these sacred and almost inaccessible recesses, which that unsatisfactory historian, Ferdinand Colon, was too lazy to inspect with his own eyes, and which his father had never seen in all his hunting-matches. Indeed, I don't think his blood-hounds could climb the ascent to this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... Ch. i. of the Principles of Geology, Ed. i. 1830, vol. i. pp. 1-4. Professor Judd has also called my attention to another passage,—Principles, Ed. i. 1833, vol. iii. p. 33, when Lyell imagines an historian examining "two buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, immediately superimposed upon each other." The historian would discover that the inhabitants of the lower town were Greeks while those of the upper one were Italians. But he would be wrong ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the temple had been restored and the worship of Jehovah re-established. This was about 445 B. C. and Judea was still under Persian rule. From this date to the opening of New Testament history, a period of about four hundred years, there are no inspired records. Neither prophet nor inspired historian is found among the Jews and there is no further development of revealed religion. It was, however, a period of vast importance and the history of the chosen people may be traced from secular sources. For convenience the history of the period may be divided into four sections: (1) The Persian ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... before it "bitterly weeping." He told her to take his sword, which was rusty, and clean it. She went away, and left him; when she returned, a little time after, he was hanging from a beam, dead. He was a singular person. Edward Hall, the historian, knew him, and had heard him say, that "if the king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not live to bear it."[554] And yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What was it? Had the meaning of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross suddenly revealed itself? Had some inner ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... uncle's supporters, all busily engaged over poll-books and booth tallies, in preparation for the eventful day of battle. These, however, were immediately thrown aside to hasten round me and inquire all the details of my duel. Considine, happily for me, however, assumed all the dignity of an historian, and recounted the events of the morning so much to my honor and glory, that I, who only a little before felt crushed and bowed down by the misery of my late duel, began, amidst the warm congratulations and eulogiums about ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... looking round would have noticed a spacious writing-table in the window, a large and battered armchair beside the fire, a photograph of Lucy over the mantelpiece, oddly flanked by an engraving of Goethe and the head of the German historian Ranke, a folding cane chair which was generally used by Lucy whenever she visited the room, and the horsehair sofa, whereon Sandy was now sleeping amid a surrounding litter of books and papers which only just left ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... portions of the militia united with them. The British, ignorant of the force that might be presented, retired; but shortly returned, with several pieces of artillery, when a cannonading commenced, and the boys retreated in good order. An American historian says,—"The British entered the town after being much galled and harassed." The slight check which they thus received afforded an opportunity for the removal of some valuables, and many ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... it "Dar-al Maraphtan" which his latest Editor explains by "Dar-al-Morabittan" (abode of those who require being chained). Al-Makrizi (Khitat) ascribes the invention of "Spitals" to Hippocrates; another historian to an early Pharaoh "Manakiyush;" thus ignoring the Persian Kings, Saint Ephrem (or Ephraim), Syru, etc. In modern parlance "Maristan" is a madhouse where the maniacs are treated with all the horrors which were universal ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... cease to profit by the inventions of their predecessors. After Michelangelo, perhaps after Beethoven, is the decadence. Then suddenly there is talk of inspiration, or the lack of it. Mere imitators appear, and the historian who reviles them does not see that they have only practised, and refuted, his theory of art. They also have had the luck to be born later; but it has been bad luck, not good, for them, because to them their art has been all a matter ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... southwestern interest hitherto unworked, has had material assistance from Governor Thos. E. Campbell, himself a student of Arizona history, especially concerned in matters of development. There has been hearty cooperation on the part of the Historian of the Mormon Church, in Salt Lake City, and the immense resources of his office have been offered freely and have been drawn upon often for verification of data, especially covering the earlier periods. There should be personal mention ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... father was Necker, the eminent Swiss minister of finance under Louis XVI, whose triumph and exile were among the startling events of the opening stage of the Revolution; whilst her mother, also Swiss, had been the lover of the historian Gion and now presided over one of the most brilliant salons in Paris. Anne Marie Louise Germaine Necker was born at Paris on April 22, 1766. In 1787 she was married—unhappily—to Baron de Stael-Holstein, Swedish Ambassador at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dislodge the king from a heart that had never been occupied before, in which he seemed disposed to take refuge? Was there any necessity, then, for Madame to attach so great an importance to La Valliere, if she did not fear her? Yet Madame did not fear La Valliere in that direction in which an historian, who knows everything, sees into the future, or rather, the past. Madame was neither a prophetess nor a sibyl; nor could she, any more than another, read what was written in that terrible and fatal book of the future, which records in its most ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to the historian of Lord Nelson for the particulars of this great action. The French and Spaniards awaited the attack in a double line. Nelson hoisted the famous signal—"England expects every man to do his duty"; charged in two columns, and broke their array at the first onset. The battle, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a whole year the outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The position of the young king Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their King." The arrival of Louis the Germanic with his troops helped to swell the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... pioneer. For weeks they remained in their cabins hoping for some mitigation of the frost. When at last they were driven out by the fear of famine, the labor of establishing communications was enormous. They finally made roads by "wallowing through the snow," as an Illinois historian expresses it, and going patiently over the same track until the snow was trampled hard and rounded like a turnpike. These roads lasted far into the spring, when the snow had melted from the plains, and wound for ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... The national historian of Rome has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... to discuss the merits of the eight letters unknown to Eusebius. They were probably all fabricated after the time of that historian; and critics have long since concurred in rejecting them as spurious. Until recently, those engaged in the Ignatian controversy were occupied chiefly with the examination of the claims of the documents mentioned by the bishop of Caesarea. Here, however, the strange variations in the copies tended ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... adjustment, know of our own experience how great the difficulties can be. We know that they are not difficulties peculiar to any continent or any Nation. Our own Revolutionary War left behind it, in the words of one American historian, "an eddy of lawlessness and disregard of human life." There were separatist movements of one kind or another in Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maine. There were insurrections, open or threatened, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. These difficulties we worked out for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... historian that there was an ameer of the land of Egypt, whose mind being one night unusually disturbed, he sent for one of his courtiers, a convivial companion, and said to him, "To-night my bosom, from what cause I know not, is uncommonly restless, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the function to the Right Honorable Nobody from Essex. And among thirty or forty other people was one John Stuart Mill, son of the eminent James Mill, historian and philosopher, also Head Examiner of the East India House. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had made out the list of people between them, choosing those whom they thought had sufficient phosphorus so they would enjoy meeting a great theological ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in England." The strife of the time indeed aided in directing the minds of men to natural inquiries. "To have been always tossing about some theological question," says the first historian of the Royal Society, Bishop Sprat, "would have been to have made that their private diversion, the excess of which they disliked in the public. To have been eternally musing on civil business and the distresses ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... as a historian of the Venetian school of art than as a Venetian painter of the late time) expressly states that Palma came young to Venice and learnt much from Titan: "C' egli apprese certa dolcezza di colorire che si avvicina alle opere prime dello ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... if not suspiciously sullied by credulity or deceit,—in which case, the nearest trustworthy historian, if not more than a hundred years from the specified ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... bleak table-land that the llama, with its kindred—the alpaca, vicuna, and huanucu—are found. The historian of the conquest calls them the sheep of Peru, but the llama is more allied in its characteristics to the camel of the desert. In outward form, except that it has no hump on its back; in the structure and cellular apparatus of the stomach, which enable it to abstain ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... The historian knoweth not all things, and how this schism arose is hidden from view. Very likely, indeed, it may have arisen out of the very foundation of the chapel itself, such buildings and land being usually ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Revolution are our common heritage. As the Greeks of old, divided among themselves, united to face a foreign foe, so did the American, North and South, unite beneath the banner of Washington and hurl down the gage of battle to Britain's mighty power, and no historian has yet presumed to say which was the better soldier. Washington belongs to no section. He was truly an American, pre-eminently a patriot. The nobility of his character was his very own; the dazzling splendor of his undying fame is the brightest jewel in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... scene, wherein S. Peter and S. Paul are restoring to life the nephew of the Emperor. In the nude figure of this boy he portrayed the painter Francesco Granacci, then a youth; and he also made portraits of the Chevalier, Messer Tommaso Soderini, Piero Guicciardini, father of Messer Francesco the historian, Piero del Pugliese, and the poet Luigi Pulci; likewise Antonio Pollaiuolo, and himself as a youth, as he then was, which he never did again throughout the whole of his life, so that it has not been possible to find a portrait of him at a more mature age. In the scene ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... straw. The honey, although rather strong-flavoured, was most acceptable. I acquired a taste for it myself and joined the nest-hunters, putting off the polygon till later. It was thus that I first saw Reaumur's Mason-bee, knowing nothing of her history and nothing of her historian. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Europe." Pepys, who also left his impressions of it, says: "The minster most admirable, as big I think and handsomer than Westminster, and a most large close about it and offices for the officers thereof, and a fine palace for the bishop." In later times Motley, the historian, thought it "too neat." Henry James calls it "a blonde beauty among churches," and even hints that it is a little banal. Another American critic, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, in a sympathetic study of the cathedral which appeared in "The Century Magazine," ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... balance of moral and intellectual influence in Europe. The species of misrepresentation which abounds most in modern historians. Hume, Gibbon, and Mitford. Neglect of the art of narration. Effect of historical reading compared to that produced by foreign travel. Character of the perfect historian. Instruction derived from the productions ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a Roman, whose criminal tampering with the dregs of the people, whose attempt at their head to revolutionize Rome, and whose defeat by Cicero the consul then in power, are pictured in a graphic manner by the historian Sallust. ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the Historian, though the most popular, are among the lowest of his endowments. That Schiller was not wanting in the nobler requisites of his art, might he proved from his reflections on this very incident, 'striking like a hand from the clouds into the calculated ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... let off at the ear; and not a feather to tickle the intellect." The Baron is prepared to admit that the lesson to be learned from this delightful Essay of CHARLES LAMB's is, that a pun once let off, has fizzled off, and cannot be repeated with its first effect. Now the honest historian of this, or of any pun, must reproduce in his narrative all the circumstances of time, place, and individuality that gave it its point; but the effect of the pun, the Baron ventures to think, it is impossible to convey in print to the reader, read he never so wisely, nor however vividly graphic ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... artists love to paint the contrast between the picture of Jesus on the mountain encompassed by glory and of the demoniac boy surrounded by the multitudes on the plain; yet it requires no canvas or artificial color to heighten the contrast presented by the historian in his simple story. Jesus long before had learned what it was to exchange the glories of heaven for the shadows and sufferings of earth and the compassion which drew him from the skies was never withheld, even at times when he naturally might have been absorbed in thoughts concerning his ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... connecting her letters together must be the political events in which he took part. Some of her letters, by throwing light on the sentiments and considerations which weighed with him at doubtful junctures, are not without value to the historian. It is not, however, the historian who has been chiefly considered in putting them together, but rather the general reader, who may find his notions of past politics vivified and refreshed by following history in the contemporary comments ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "Imagine yourself back, then, in 1700, before steam power was in use in England. Now you must not suppose that steam had never been heard of, for an ancient Alexandrian record dated 120 B. C. describes a steam turbine, steam fountain, and steam boiler; nevertheless, Hero, the historian who tells us of them, leaves us in doubt as to whether these wonders were actually worked out, or if they were, whether they were anything but miniature models. Still the fact that they are mentioned goes to prove that there were persons in the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Hungarian, 'who makes the gypsies speak Roth-Welsch, {250b} the dialect of thieves; a pretty historian, who couples together Thor ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... British historian,[A] in his account of the battle of the Thames, makes the following remarks upon the character and personal ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... the Jewish historian, tells us that among these exiles was a man named Manasseh, a grandson of the high priest, and that, indignant at being cast out, he fled to Samaria. Here he determined to set up a separate worship of Jehovah, and, having obtained permission from the king of Persia ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... potentates. Their power is bounded by no law; they are among the handful of fellow potentates who say what law shall be and how it shall be enforced. No stern, masterful men and women are they as some future moonstruck novelist or historian bent upon creating legendary lore may portray them. Voluptuaries are most of them, sunk in a surfeit of gorgeous living and riotous pleasure. Weak, without distinction of mind or heart, they have the money to hire brains to plan, plot, scheme, advocate, supervise and work for ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Mr. Buckingham Smith, for procuring copies of documents from the archives of Spain; to Mr. Bancroft, the historian of the United States, for the use of the Vicomte de Gourgues's copy of the journal describing the expedition of his ancestor against the Spaniards; and to Mr. Charles Russell Lowell, of the Boston Athenaeum, and Mr. John Langdon Sibley, Librarian of Harvard College, for obliging ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... as I thought over Garibaldi and the enthusiastic reception you gave him in England; for I really felt, if it had not been for Carlyle, I might have been a bit of a hero-worshipper myself The grand frescoes in caricature of the popular historian have, however, given me a hearty and wholesome disgust to the whole thing; not to say that, however enthusiastic a man may feel about his idol, he must be sorely ashamed of his fellow-worshippers. "Lie down with dogs, and you'll get up with fleas," says an ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... difficult, for those reared amid the elegancies and refinements of life in city and town, to appreciate the enjoyments of the gatherings and merry-makings of the great masses of the people who live in the rural districts of our country. The historian records the deeds of the great; he consigns to fame the favored few; but leaves unwritten the short and simple annals of the poor—the lives ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... bends beside the plashy spring: 130 She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn; She only left of all the harmless train, 135 The sad historian of the pensive plain. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... supplanted the novel, whose forced banality, conventionality, and tidy structure of plot simply griped him. Yet history, too, was only a peg for a man of talent to hang style and ideas on, for events could not fail to be coloured by the temperament and distorted by the bias of the historian. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... what do Generals and Statesmen owe their fame? They were celebrated for their deeds, but to the Poet and the Historian they owe their fame, and to the Poet and Historian we owe their glorious memories and the example ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... conversation between two official men in the Library of the House of Commons on the night of the 3rd June 1833, reported word for word. To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be invaluable. To you, ungrateful as you are, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... highly eulogistic; nor does history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, assail the consistency and uprightness of his character. So also, as regards the Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics, would venture a word against this eminent person's sincerity as a Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the years of experience crowded into those eight short months of our sojourn in that city is worthy the pen of our country's ablest historian, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... born. His father was the Baron Richard, famous among the noblemen of the time, while his mother, the Lady Bernoline, was illustrious for virtues. The young Bernard was a fair child, and his history, as seen from the perspective of his monkish historian, shows that even in his earliest youth he was predestined for saintship. Even before he could walk, the little child would join his hands in the attitude of supplication, and murmur words which might have been prayers. While still very young, he brought ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... had read of the exploits of the valiant Marahas, who, when one of their warriors flung his sandal into the air and uttered thrice the word: "Marha, Marha, Marha!" swept the Roman legions from the face of Pannonia; he had learnt from the Spanish historian all about Ferdinand VII., who chased the Moors from the Alhambra where they had held sway for hundreds of years; he had read of the Scythian Bertezena, who, starting in life as a simple smith had delivered his race from the grinding yoke of the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... show the touch of a conscientious artist with great intellectual ability. His vast erudition is constantly apparent. He is the satiric historian of his time, and he exhibits the follies and the humors of the age under a powerful lens. He is also the author of dainty lyrics, and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... The historian takes a view of the British stage as represented by the irregular drama, the regular having (ere the date of the events to which this narrative is restricted) disappeared from the vestiges ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chain which is not without its links. He is not old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.... I foresee the time when a painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject. The poet will sing it, the historian will record it; and with the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... crushed opposition in conversation, nor to have indulged in monologue, which is so apt to be the foible of famous and successful men who have a solemn sense of their own dignity and importance. What Lord Melbourne said of the great Whig historian, "that he wished he was as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay was of everything," could not be applied to Mr. Webster. He owed his freedom from such a weakness partly, no doubt, to his natural indolence, but still more to the fact that he was not only no pedant, but ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... way, ever since the Spanish War, the United States has been adjusting its policy to the world conditions of which that struggle first made the people aware. The period between 1898 and 1917 will doubtless be regarded by the historian a hundred years from now as a time of transition similar to that between 1815 and 1829. In that earlier period John Marshall and John Quincy Adams did much by their wisdom and judgment to preserve what was of value in ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... the use of a large antiquarian knowledge! what an instinct amid a hundred details, for the detail that carries physiognomy in it, that really tells! And again what outline, what absolute clarity of outline! For the historian of that puzzling age which centres in the "Eve of Saint Bartholomew," outward events themselves seem obscured by the vagueness of motive of the actors in them. But Merimee, disposing of them as an artist, not in love with half-lights, compels events and ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... speaking from a sublime stand-point and linking series of facts with processions of ideas. Sources of history, guides of philosophical retrospection, they may come some time to be; yet one cannot check a feeling of pity for the future historian who, in searching the "Pickwick Papers" for antiquities, finds himself bothered and confused by all the undisciplined ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Quebec, an incident occurred that was later on duplicated in Flanders. Owing to the inclement weather in Quebec, some of the officers in authority decided that the men should discard their kilts and don trousers. The officers and men of the regiment would not hear of it, and the historian of the regiment says that the kilt was retained winter and summer and that "in the course of six years the doctors learned that in the coldest of winters the men clad in the Highland garb were more healthy than those regiments that wore breeches and ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... gold for a flying enemy. When Abner, the most influential man of his opponents, offered to submit to him, David received him with kindness and made him a friend. And when Abner was treacherously killed by Joab, David publicly mourned for him, following the bier, and weeping at the grave. The historian says concerning this: "And all the people took notice of it and it pleased them: as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people. For all the people understood that day that it was not of the king to slay Abner the son of Ner." His policy was to conciliate and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... of these two new personages into this history and that mysterious affinity of names and sentiments, merit some attention on the part of both historian and reader. We will then enter into some details concerning Messieurs Malicorne and Manicamp. Malicorne, we know, had made the journey to Orleans in search of the brevet destined for Mademoiselle de Montalais, the arrival of which had produced ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fashion, and "round ships" took their place, it may be supposed that the captivity of Christian slaves diminished. In reality, however, the number of slaves employed on the galleys was small compared with those who worked on shore. If the Spanish historian be correct in his statement that at the close of the sixteenth century the Algerines possessed but thirty-six galleys and galleots, (the brigantines were not rowed by slaves,) with a total of twelve hundred ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... description: the inhabitants were, with a few exceptions, reduced to a state of absolute destitution; agriculture had practically ceased; commerce and industry were dead; brigandage was rampant; and, to use the expressive language of the historian, human misery had apparently reached its maximum possibility. Under such circumstances it was not at all difficult for Jack to secure a very large estate adjoining that of Senor Montijo upon exceptionally favourable terms; and although, like that of his friend, the estate consisted but of ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... sinister shapes and evil destinies, lurking between the armies in that mist, that the sentry faced that night cannot be told until the history of the war is written by a historian who can see the mind of the soldier. Not a shell fell all night, no German stirred; Dick Cheeser was relieved at "Stand to'' and his comrades stood to beside him, and soon it ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... history of England is that he says no member of the public has ever done so before. This is a thing to be supremely thankful for if true; but it is entirely untrue, for the very obvious fact that history has never been written by any one who is not a member of the public. Every historian is a member of the public. Let him imagine he is not, let him carry this imagination out to a logical conclusion, and he will have a good chance of landing in a prison for failing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... hostile to him. It is indeed certain that there existed at Rome horti Sallustiani, in which Augustus frequently resided, and which were afterwards in the possession of the Roman emperors; but it is doubtful as to whether they had been acquired and laid out by our historian, or by his nephew, a Roman eques, and particular favourite of Augustus. The statement that Sallust married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero, is still more doubtful, and probably altogether fictitious.[1] There is, however, a statement ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... way from Abbot Daniel, for in John de Plano Carpini Christian Europe has at last a real explorer, a real historian, a genuine man of science, in the service of the Church and ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... Gaul, the same work went on. In the cells and caves of Martin's community at Marmoutier the younger monks occupied their time in writing and sacred study, and the older monks in prayer.[1] Sulpicius Severus (c. 353-425), the ecclesiastical historian, preferred retirement, literary study, and the friendship and teaching of St. Martin to worldly pursuits. At the famous island community of Lerins, in South Gaul, were instructed some of the most celebrated scholars of the West, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... branches which are now seemingly hopelessly lost. Such searches require the expenditure of more time and money than the writer now (1892) has, and if never done by him, it is to be hoped that some family historian will come to the front with the ...
— The Stephens Family - A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens • Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
... O'Connell's hand from destroying himself when his reason almost left him after his wife's death. The memories of the days immediately following the passing of Angela are too painful to dwell upon. They are past. They are sacred in O'Connell's heart. They will be to the historian. Thanks to some kindly Irishmen who heard of O'Connell's plight he borrowed enough money to bury his dead wife and place ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... be deem'd, on our historian's part, Or too much negligence, or want of art, If he forgot the vast magnificence Of royal Theseus, and his large expense, He first enclosed for lists a level ground, 440 The whole circumference a mile around; The form was circular; and all ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... matter-of-fact mind was wholly unable to measure the proportions of the gigantic genius of the author of "Notre Dame," and hence she discharges at him a volley of denunciatory epithets, borrowed always from the severest classic style—"the champion of vice," "the chronicler of sin," "the historian of shame and misery." She could not believe that in all his writings it was possible to discover a single honourable, innocent, and wholesome thought. Sin was the Muse which he invoked; horror attended his footsteps; thousands of monsters served as his escort, and furnished ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... place Aristotle requires the same unity of action from the epic as from the dramatic poet; he repeats the preceding definitions, and says that the poet must not resemble the historian, who relates contemporary events, although they have no bearing on one another. Here we have still a more express demand of that connexion of cause and effect between the represented events, which before, in his explanation of the parts of a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... equipage. Let me beg you seriously to consider your circumstances and condition in life, and to remember that your situation will not justify any the least unnecessary expence. Simply to be poor, says my favourite Greek historian, was not held scandalous by the wise Athenians, but highly so to owe that poverty to ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights. A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight; among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked her bottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me—Uncle Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me, this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to Mumford, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... furnish the clearest existing descriptive account of the fundamental facts of rural life in the thirteenth century. Its publication marked an era in the recognition of the main features of manorial organization. Green, for instance, the historian of the English people, seems to have had no clear conception of many of those characteristics of ordinary rural life which Mr. Seebohm ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... universal, stretching from the highest purposes of Literature down to its smallest details. It underlies the labour of the philosopher, the investigator, the moralist, the poet, the novelist, the critic, the historian, and the compiler. It is visible in the publication of opinions, in the structure of sentences, and in the fidelity of citations. Men utter insincere thoughts, they express themselves in echoes and affectations, and they are ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... T. Buckle, writer and historian was now the most patient and scientific of the players. S. S. Boden, the most learned and profound, H. E. Bird the most rapid, ready and enthusiastic. The last-named, a favourite opponent of the English leaders, also encountered one by one the phalanx of great Foreign ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... all that thing—revelations of the horrors of papist life. It's to be printed by thousands and scattered over the world. After that Fritters, our home historian at Oxford, is to travel in your county and lecture to the cream of society on the beauty of British rule over the Irish. He is to affect the classes. The nun and the press are to affect the masses. Between them what becomes of the alliance? Am I not patient? ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... or Uyttenhove) and Ptolomoeus Luxius Tasteus were scholar friends of the Scottish poet and historian George Buchanan (1506-1582), who prefixes some Iambics 'Carolo Utenhovio F. S.' to his Hexameters 'Franciscanus et Fratres'. In some Elegiacs addressed to Tasteus and Tevius, in which he complains of his sufferings from gout and kindred maladies, he tells them that Groscollius (Professor of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... found new female friends to console her, the faithful historian is also bound to say, that she discovered some acquaintances of the other sex who seemed to give her consolation too. If ever this artless young creature met a young man, and had ten minutes' conversation ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the ring of Polycrates. It is remarkable as having spread into the legendary history of all countries, being still credited by the commonality. We shall have hereafter to note its existence as an old London tradition; but the version of the Greek historian is briefly thus:—Amasis, King of Egypt, conceived an extraordinary friendship for the Greek, Polycrates, and, observing that the latter was attended by unusual success in all his adventures, reflected that such unvarying felicity seldom lasted through life, and the end of such ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... horrors, to bloodshed, and the shudder of grisly phantoms there was, perhaps, something of the man of peace. It is only the unwarlike citizen who could delight in imagining a brigand nurtured from babyhood on human blood. He was, indeed, writing in the very period which the historian fixed upon as the happiest and most prosperous that the human race has ever enjoyed—those two or three benign generations when, under the Antonines, provincials combined with Romans in celebrating "the increasing splendours of the cities, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... opinion, which in less wide and noble spirits produces only antipathy—one must at least agree with him in his estimate of the importance of these "Lives of the Fathers," not only to the ecclesiologist, but to the psychologist and the historian. Their influence, subtle, often transformed and modified again and again, but still potent from its very subtleness, is being felt around us in many a puzzle—educational, social, political; and promises to be felt still more during the coming generation; ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the one Macready had is in Harriet's custody, another copy I have given to Elizabeth Sedgwick, and I now neither know nor care anything more about it. Once upon a time I wrote it, and that is quite enough to have had to do with it. Prescott, the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, is urgent with me to let him have it published in Boston; perhaps hereafter, if I should want a penny, and be able to turn an honest one ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... had one hundred and eight men to remain with him, among whom was Thomas Hariot, the celebrated mathematician and historian. With these colonists he landed upon Roanoke Island, and began to build and fortify a town upon the northern part of the island, which he named the "City of Raleigh." The island is twelve miles long and about four broad, and ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... fully the assistance given by persons and museums for the preparation of this book. However, I wish especially to thank Hugo T. Byttebier, engine historian, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Dipl. Ing. Hermann I. A. Dorner, diesel designer, Hanover, Germany; Harold E. Morehouse, and C. H. Wiegman, Lycoming Engines, Williamsport, Pennsylvania; Barry Tully, Goodyear Aircraft, Akron, Ohio; Richard S. Allen, aviation author, Round Lake, ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... bolder than the rest, now approached the church and with his spear broke some of the windows. The Abbe D'Abbon, an eye-witness and minute historian of the siege of Paris, states that the impious Dane was at once struck dead. The same fate befell one of his comrades, who mounted to the platform at the top of the church and in descending fell off and was killed. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... grammar school, where I studied for something more than half a year. This, it may be remarked, is all the regular schooling I ever had. Mr. John Samuel, who afterwards became a school inspector, was the head master. Dr. Theal, the historian (then Mr. Theal), was in charge of the second division, or, as it ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... have passed into oblivion, he joins sound doctrine upon sincerity of style. "Nothing is lasting that is feigned," said Ben Jonson; "it will have another face ere long." Long after Lucian's day an artificial dignity, accorded specially to work of the historian, bound him by its conventions to an artificial style. He used, as Johnson said of Dr. Robertson, "too big words and too many of them." But that was said by Johnson in his latter days, with admission of like fault in the convention to which he had once conformed: "If Robertson's style ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... George. Tennyson has tried to put the dilemmas of theological controversy into lyric poetry, and Psychology is now to be studied, not in metaphysical ethics, but in popular novels. The aim of the modern historian is to compile a Times newspaper of events which happened three or four, eight or ten centuries ago. The aim of the modern philosopher is to tabulate mountains of research, and to prune away with ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... to what is called clap-trap; and there are so many people in our narrative continually labouring under deception of one kind or another, that we need not add to it by attempting to mystify our readers; who, on the contrary, we shall take with us familiarly by the hand, and, like a faithful historian, lead them through the events in the order in which they occurred, and point out to them how they all lead to one common end. With this intention in view, we shall now follow the fortunes of Smallbones, whom we left floundering in ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... knew too much of affairs, and was too experienced a man of the world to be quite frank as a historian: we can hardly believe, as he would have us, that the diversion of the crusading host from its professed objects was unpremeditated; we can perceive that he composes his narrative so as to form an apology; his recital has been justly ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... speed to happier scenes thy way, When thou hast view'd, what yet remain, The ruins of Sir Eustace Grey, The sport of madness, misery's prey: But he will no historian need, His cares, his crimes, will he display, And show (as one from frenzy freed) The proud ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe
... difficult to be understood by a moderate capacity. Do not fear this should make her affect the character of Lady——, or Lady——, or Mrs.——: those women are ridiculous, not because they have learning but because they have it not. One thinks herself a complete historian, after reading Echard's Roman History; another a profound philosopher, having got by heart some of Pope's unintelligible essays; and a third an able divine, on the strength of Whitefield's sermons: thus you hear them ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... with the statement made by Proclus, that the pyramids of Egypt, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, had been in existence during 3600 years, terminated in a platform upon which the priests made their celestial observations. The last-named historian alleges, also (Biblioth. Hist. Lib. I.), that the Egyptians, who claimed to be the most ancient of men, professed to be acquainted with the situation of the earth, the risings and settings of stars, to have arranged the order ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... in some places like Sir Walter himself,' said Elizabeth; 'but now I will tell you of a person who lived in no days of romance, and has not had the advantage of a poetical historian to light him up in our imagination. I mean the great Prince of Conde. Now, though he is very unlike Shakespeare's Coriolanus, yet there is resemblance enough between them to make the comparison very amusing. There was ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "you are much better informed about the ancient routes through the Sahara than you have been willing to let me suppose, since you know of the existence of the two Tadekkas. But the one of which you have just spoken is the Tadekka of Ibn-Batoutah, located by this historian seventy days from Touat, and placed by Schirmer, very plausibly, in the unexplored territory of the Aouelimmiden. This is the Tadekka by which the Sonrhai caravans passed every year, travelling ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... thought of being questioned. He brought the speaker back to his place as historian, and he, nothing loth, told of the intended meeting on the mountain, and of the white ascension robes, in his ignorant, blatant fashion, laying bare the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Gait, poet, dramatist, historian, and novelist, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on May 2, 1779. He was trained for a commercial career in the Greenock Custom House, and in the office of a merchant in that seaport. Removing to London, Gait engaged in business and afterwards travelled extensively to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... to spread to the prose, though the sthetic effect might be beautiful in a masterpiece, it was apt to be embarrassing in weaker hands. sthetic prose appears in its most intense and most perfect form in Tacitus, the great historian of the Silver Age. As new tastes and fashions grew, the oldest and purest models were neglected, and, however strange it may sound, Cicero and Csar were antiquated long before the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... a few well-chosen words improved the shining hour, and pointed the moral of the great Entente with special reference to the warships around them. But being a truthful—or, shall we say, comparatively truthful—historian, I regret ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... king's order the Genoese moved forward; 'then,' says the historian, 'they made a great cry to abash the English; but they stood still and stirred not for all that. A second and a third time the Genoese uttered a fell cry—very loud and clear, and a little stept forward; but the English ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... with his mother and sisters at the court of Malcolm III. of Scotland, having been driven on the Scottish coast by a tempest. Malcolm, attracted by the virtue and beauty of Margaret, made her his bride, and for the thirty years she reigned in Scotland she was a model queen. The historian Dr. Skene says of her: "There is perhaps no more beautiful character recorded in history than that of {167} Margaret. For purity of motives, for an earnest desire to benefit the people among whom her lot was cast, for a deep sense of religion and great personal piety, for the unselfish performance ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... murdering her partners at a ball, this is the most bloodthirsty sentiment on record, and suggests but a limited enjoyment of a really beautiful service. Better the light-hearted unconcern of Mr. John Richard Green, the historian, who, albeit a clergyman of the Church of England, preferred going to the Church of Rome when Catholicism had an organ, and Protestantism, a harmonium. "The difference in truth between them doesn't seem to me to make up for ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... new vista, or fretted roof, or secret river, or unsounded lake, or crystal fountain, with as much rapture as Balboa, from "that peak in Darien," gazed on the Pacific; he is assured that he "has a poet," and an historian too. Stephen has linked his name to dome, or avenue, or river, and it is already immortal—in ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... upon the next, and so on to the fifteenth, so that they did all tumble to the bottom of the precipice. It was the good fortune of those poor women, however, that there were but three or four of them killed; but the fifteen elephants remained upon the place." The historian rather ungallantly adds, "When these bulky masses do once fall under THOSE VAST BURDENS they never rise again, though the way be ever ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... late excellent and laborious antiquary, Mr. George Chalmers, has rebuked the vaunt of the House of Douglas, or rather of Hume of Godscroft, their historian, but with less than his wonted accuracy. In the first volume of his Caledonia, he quotes the passage in Godscroft for the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... is instinct with a most remarkable pathos, nor are fine passages by any means to seek in the greater length and less poetical subject of The Civil Wars of York and Lancaster. The fault of this is that the too conscientious historian is constantly versifying what must be called mere expletive matter. This must always make any one who speaks with critical impartiality admit that much of Daniel is hard reading; but the soft places (to use the adjective in no ill sense) are frequent enough, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... they adorn. In Norman French, the Royal Assent has just been given to a Bill which doubles the electorate and admits over six million women to the franchise. All these things are dear to the antiquary, the historian, and (perhaps we should add) the pedant, as witnessing to the unbroken continuity of our constitutional forms, though the substance of our polity has been ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... hesitating at actual secession, wished and tried to control the power of the State so that at need it might help the South; and while professing loyalty, he did all he could to prove his disloyalty to the Union. The legislature, however, would not pass a bill to arm the State, thereby, says an historian, causing the South to sustain "a defeat more disastrous to its independence than any which thereafter befell its arms, down to the fall of Vicksburg." In response to Lincoln's call for troops, the governor refused to send any from Missouri. ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... Franklin was tried by the colleagues whom Congress sent him, from time to time, as clogs upon the great wheel which he was turning so skilfully. And this, too, Mr. Parton has set in full light, not by the special pleading of the apologist, but by the documentary researches of the historian. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... composition was that imprisonment of Paul in the Imperial City, in a part of which, at all events, we know that Luke was his companion. But, whilst that consideration may explain the point at which the book stops, it does not explain the way in which it stops. The historian lays down his pen, possibly because he had brought his narrative up to date. But a word of conclusion explaining that it was so would have been very natural, and its absence must have had some reason. It is also possible that the arrival ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... clan had its birth. The Bundelas became prominent in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, after the fall of the Chandels. "Orchha became the chief of the numerous Bundela principalities; but its founder drew upon himself everlasting infamy, by putting to death the wise Abul Fazl, the historian and friend of the magnanimous Akbar, and the encomiast and advocate of the Hindu race. From the period of Akbar the Bundelas bore a distinguished part in all the grand conflicts, to the very close of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... An historian of the Empire says: "The character of Hadrian was in the highest degree complex, and this presents to the student a series of apparently unreconciled contrasts which have proved so hard for many modern historians to resolve. A thorough soldier and yet the inaugurator of a peace ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... collection of butterflies, and in 1769 the trustees acquired, by purchase, a considerable collection of stuffed birds from Holland. The restrictions on visitors were, however, vexatious, people of all classes being hurried through the rooms at a tremendous speed—vide Hutton, the Birmingham historian, who visited it in 1784, and relates how he would fain have spent hours looking at things for which only minutes were allowed. From this period up to 1816 (at which date the valuable ornithological collection of Col. Montagu was purchased for the nation at a cost of L11,000) the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... however, of the effect of art on the mind of nations is one rather for the historian than for us; at all events it is one for the discussion of which we have no more time this evening. But I will ask your patience with me while I try to illustrate, in some further particulars, the dependence of the healthy state and power of art itself ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... likely to be the overthrow of republican liberty here than its establishment there. History has been written in vain for those who can doubt this. France had no sooner established a republican form of government than she manifested a desire to force its blessings on all the world. Her own historian informs us that, hearing of some petty acts of tyranny in a neighboring principality, "the National Convention declared that she would afford succor and fraternity to all nations who wished to recover ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... [Footnote 3: That learned historian Mr S—n, in the third number of his criticism on our author, takes great pains to explode this passage. "It is," says he, "difficult to guess what giants are here meant, unless the giant Despair ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... fight against this festering darkness. It was a condition of affairs clamouring for remedies, but there was an immense amount of indifference and prejudice to be overcome before any remedies were possible. Perhaps some day some industrious and lucid historian will disentangle all the muddle of impulses and antagonisms, the commercialism, utilitarianism, obstinate conservatism, humanitarian enthusiasm, out of which our present educational organisation arose. I have long since come to believe it necessary that all new social institutions ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... residences of this historian and poet, was about a mile from Paddington on the north side of the Edgware Road, near a place called Kilburn Priory; and the wooden cottage is still standing, although the land near it has been of late covered with newly-erected villas. It is occupied by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... asserted, the first readable one ever produced in the Russian language. During his boyhood he came much into contact with the poets Dmitrieff and Joukovski, who were intimate with his father, and his uncle, Vassili Pushkin, himself an author of no mean repute. The friendship of the historian Karamzine must have exercised a still ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... including Victoire herself, who was the most severe of them all, agreed she had justly deserved her reward. Maurice obtained his wish; and Victoire's temper never relapsed into its former bad habits—so powerful is the effect of a well-chosen motive!—Perhaps the historian may be blamed for dwelling on such trivial anecdotes; yet a lady, who was accustomed to the conversation of deep philosophers and polished courtiers, listened without disdain to these simple annals. Nothing appeared to her a trifle that could tend ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... in fact was only the Hellenism which had been long intimately blended with the Italian nationality. But in this very circumstance lies the difficulty, we may perhaps say the impossibility, of depicting Caesar to the life. As the artist can paint everything save only consummate beauty, so the historian, when once in a thousand years he encounters the perfect, can only be silent regarding it. For normality admits doubtless of being expressed, but it gives us only the negative notion of the absence of defect; the secret of nature, whereby in her most finished manifestations ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... thesis found a supporter in Italy, some years before any protestation was heard in Germany. Louis Hirt, the historian of art (1797) observed that ancient monuments represented all sorts of forms, from the most beautiful and sublime to the most ugly and most common. He therefore denied that ideal beauty was the principle of art, and for it substituted the characteristic, applicable equally to gods, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... England, instead of leaving things to be controlled by the king, so now they voted for representatives in Maryland or New York, instead of leaving things to be controlled by the governor. The spontaneousness of all this is quaintly and forcibly expressed by the great Tory historian Hutchinson, who tells us that in the year 1619 a house of burgesses broke out in Virginia! as if it had been the mumps, or original sin, or any of those things that ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... epistolary rebuff on another, the rebuff entirely fails if a single affected word is inserted. The most perfect example of a courteous snub with which I am acquainted was sent by a master of measured and ornamental prose. Gibbon, the historian, received a very lengthy and sarcastic letter from the famous Doctor Priestley, of Birmingham. Priestley blamed Gibbon for his covert mode of attacking Christianity, and observed that Servetus was more to be admired for his courage as a martyr than for his services as a scientific discoverer. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the South at the time when the Negroes as a new class in their different situation were endeavoring to readjust themselves under difficult circumstances, the observations of the traveler are of much value to the historian. He not only saw much to admire in the colonial seats of prominent southerners like Patrick Henry and John Randolph, but showed an appreciation of the simple life of the Negroes. Their new position as freemen taking a part in the government, the role of the carpetbagger, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... in advance to give earnest attention to the event which I shall now relate. I now become a historian, since I inscribe the painful remembrance of a striking act in the career of the Emperor; of an event which has been the subject of innumerable controversies, though it has been necessarily only a matter of surmise, since I alone knew all the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... shall, however, take the reader, before we part, through an arch, to an old yew, which has seen the persecution of the loyal English clergy; has witnessed their return, and many changes of ecclesiastical and national fortune. Under the branches of that solitary but mute historian of the pensive plain, let us now rest; it stands at the very extreme northern edge of that garden which we have just perambulated. It fronts the tower, the churchyard, and looks on to an old sun-dial, once a cross. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... Ballade of Dead Ladies Andrew Lang A Ballad of Dead Ladies Justin Huntly McCarthy If I Were King Justin Huntly McCarthy A Ballade of Suicide Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chiffons! William Samuel Johnson The Court Historian Walter Thornbury Miss Lou Walter de La Mare The Poet and the Wood-louse Helen Parry Eden Students Florence Wilkinson "One, Two, Three" Henry Cuyler Bunner The Chaperon Henry Cuyler Bunner "A Pitcher of Mignonette" Henry Cuyler Bunner Old King Cole Edwin Arlington Robinson The ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... The sufferings of primitive Christians were great; the persecutions which they endured were outrageous, cruel and inhuman in their character. Such is the universal verdict of ancient history. Of the persecution under Nero, Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, who was born in the year 56, just twenty-three years after Pentecost, writes, that Nero "laid upon the Christians the charge of that terrible conflagration at Rome of which he himself was the cause." He says, "A vast multitude ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... of France were many and bitter, but one man stands out prominent among them. Voltaire was a poet, much admired in his day, an industrious and talented historian, a writer on all sorts of subjects, a wit of dazzling brilliancy; but he was first, last, and always an enemy of the Catholic Church, and although not quite an atheist, an opponent of all forms of religion. For more than forty years he was the head of the party of the Philosophers. During ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... is evidenced by government seals which were cut by him, that for the Smithsonian Institute being worthy of mention as an example of his skill. He was a postmaster from President Jackson's time until his own death. He is the only one who may be said to have acted as Hussey's historian, and has left very much valuable information in the form of letters, legal papers, et cetera. In 1854 and '55 he published "A Brief Narrative of the Invention of Reaping Machines," "Hussey's Reaping Machine in England," and "A Review of the Pamphlet of W. N. ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... two expeditions were a number of natives carried as hostages to Rome, a long train of captives destined to be sold in the slave markets, and some promises of tribute which the Britons never fulfilled. Tacitus, the Roman historian, says Caesar "did not conquer Britain; he only showed it ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... this portion of our history had been very imperfectly written, and, as we are not a people of legend or tradition, it was not every citizen of our ancient town that could tell, within half a century, so much as the date of the witchcraft delusion. Recently, indeed, an historian has treated the subject in a manner that will keep his name alive, in the only desirable connection with the errors of our ancestry, by converting the hill of their disgrace into an honorable monument of his own antiquarian lore, and of that better wisdom, which draws the moral while it ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... training. His youth, however, was spent in the distressful later years of the Peloponnesian War, which ended in fearful gloom and disaster for his native city. Intimate, apparently, with the great historian Thucydides, whose unfinished work he seems to have edited, and subsequently to have continued in his own "Hellenica," he must have long foreseen the collapse of the Athenian empire, and then he and many other adventurous spirits found themselves ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... recorders of that fact liable to error in conveying it to us? In other words, might they so blunder in conveying that fact (as we know the unaided historian may, and often does) as to leave us in doubt whether it ever took place ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... conciliatory spirit; and that long before 1850 their fierce cries for vengeance had roused the very bitterest feelings in the South. In fact they had already made war inevitable. Draper, the Northern historian, admits that so early as 1844 "the contest between the abolitionists on one side and the slave-holders on the other hand had become a mortal duel." It may be argued, perhaps, that the abolitionists saw that the slave-power would never yield except to armed force, and that they therefore showed good ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... occurrence upon what may be, but is not yet, is to think. Nor will the reflective experience be different in kind if we substitute distance in time for separation in space. Imagine the war done with, and a future historian giving an account of it. The episode is, by assumption, past. But he cannot give a thoughtful account of the war save as he preserves the time sequence; the meaning of each occurrence, as he deals with ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... historian, with even the best intentions, to control events or compel the persons of his narrative to act wisely or to be successful. It is easy to see how things might have been better managed; a very little change here and there would have made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to say Andrew Lang; I say it every day; it is like an Amen in the Prayer-book; it occurs quite as frequently in periodical literature. He was my favourite essayist, during the last fifteen years of the last century. What is he now? An historian, a folk-lorist, an archaeologist, a controversialist. I believe he is an expert on portraits of Mary Stuart. You were going on to say G. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... that he devoted some years of his life to visiting strange places, and exploring the ruins of many temples and tombs. He had come across many variants of the story of the building of the Pyramids as told by the Arabian historian, Ibn Abd Alhokin, some of which he set down. These I did not stop to read, but went on to ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... literature. They have been and are Dickens, Balzac, Poe, Dostoievski and, now, Stendhal...." writes Baroja in the preface to the Nelson edition of La Dama Errante ("The Wandering Lady"). He follows particularly in the footprints of Balzac in that he is primarily a historian of morals, who has made a fairly consistent attempt to cover the world he lived in. With Dostoievski there is a kinship in the passionate hatred of cruelty and stupidity that crops out everywhere in his work. I have never found any trace of influence of the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... an invisible radiation from my words and manner will enable you to find me out, and will guide your treatment of me to-night. But if I in no unfriendly spirit—in a spirit, indeed, the reverse of unfriendly—venture to repeat before you what this great historian and analyst of democratic institutions said of America, I am persuaded that you will hear me out. He wrote some three and twenty years ago, and, perhaps, would not write the same to-day; but it will do nobody any harm to have his ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall |
