The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to misunderstand what has happened; and we turn, with a sort of relief, to stating what will happen—which is (apparently) much easier.
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In the history of ancient Rome there occurs one political assassination which stands out as an event of special significance, not only on account of the great celebrity of the victim, but also owing to the fact that it is the first occasion on record in which the conflicting economical interests of different classes in a republic were settled by a resort to arms, instead of being adjudicated on principles of equity and justice, or simply by public authority.
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It is the misfortune of humanity that its history is chiefly written by third-rate men. The first-rate man seldom has any impulse to record and philosophise; his impulse is to act; life, to him, is an adventure, not a syllogism or an autopsy. Thus the writing of history is left to college professors, moralists, theorists, dunder-heads.
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A speech delivered by William Pitt in the House of Lords on November 18, 1777.
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The political situation in France, after the overthrow of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons, was even more difficult and more precarious for the governing classes than it was in Germany. The French nation, proud in the consciousness of having occupied the first place in Europe for twenty years, chafed at the idea of living under a king whom foreign rulers and foreign armies had imposed on France, and who, in consequence, had to act in blind obedience to the dictates of these foreigners.
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Now let me ask you, what is this people about which so many men in England at this moment are writing and speaking and thinking with harshness? Two centuries ago multitudes of the people of this country found a refuge on the North American Continent, escaping from the tyranny of the Stuarts, and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his country, has said, “The history of the colonization of America is the history of the crimes of Europe.”
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The Roumanian is very obstinate in character, and does not let himself be easily persuaded. He does nothing without reflection, and often he reflects so long that the time for action has passed. This slowness has become proverbial, for the Saxon says, “God grant me the enlightenment which the Roumanian always gets too late.”
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From a book called “The Negro in Tennessee, 1790-1865” by Caleb Perry Patterson.
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In the letter of farewell which Charlotte Corday, from her prison cell as a doomed murderess, addressed to her father, she used the phrase (the French words are a well-known verse from a famous tragedy):
“’Tis not the scaffold, but the crime, that brings disgrace”;
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Every person who has read the Old Testament, knows that the Hebrews had among them extraordinary men really endowed with prophetic spirits. The Jews were forbidden to consult the oracles of the heathen nations round about them, but they were permitted to consult their own true prophets concerning that which was concealed from ordinary persons.
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Religious wars—that is to say, civil wars for religious causes—had desolated France for half a century, and tranquillity and apparent harmony had finally been restored only by the genius of one man—Henry the Fourth. He it was who issued the Edict of Nantes, conferring equal religious and political rights upon the professors of both religions, the Protestant and the Catholic.
(more…)The most spectacular and complex Roman villa known so far. It was built around 120 AD for the Roman emperor Hadrian, and much of the site is still unexcavated.
Slavery has been as we all know the huge, foul blot upon the fame of the American Republic.
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At 11 o’clock all further philosophizing was put a stop to; we were ordered to halt, and we were to receive our food from the field kitchen.
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Will of Joane Lady Hungerford, February 1, 1411. My body to be buried in the Chapel of St. Anne, in the Parish Church of Farleigh, Hungerford, next to the grave of my husband.
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The following advertisement was published in the Black River Watchman in 1843.
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The words “church” and “fortress” used to be synonymous in Transylvania, so the places of worship might accurately have been described as churches militant.
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Of all the other Asiatics, the Chinese have, perhaps the best title to modesty.
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This is what George Washington said in a letter to Major General John Sullivan dated 31 May 1779.
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Published in a newspaper in 1853.
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It was said by one of the wild revolutionists of France, in extenuation of his incessant demands for the execution of a larger number of the nobility, that the tree of liberty, to grow vigorously, should be watered with plenty of blood.
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One of the most remarkable careers and one of the most famous assassinations in the middle ages were the career and the assassination of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
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If the war has taught us anything, it has given us new respect for labor. There may once have been a time when great plantation owners despised workers in fields; but that time is past. Under the stress of new conditions, our richest captains of industry value the man who can raise cotton or make a shell or fix rivets in a ship.
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The rank which the courtezans enjoyed, even in the brightest ages of Greece, and particularly at Athens, is one of the greatest singularities in the manners of any people.
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Russian history abounds in instances of famous assassinations. Sometimes these murders were committed by the rulers of Russia, at other times these rulers themselves were the victims.
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Till about the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway, nothing but numerous jarls,—essentially kinglets, each presiding over a kind of republican or parliamentary little territory; generally striving each to be on some terms of human neighborhood with those about him, but,—in spite of “Fylke Things” (Folk Things, little parish parliaments), and small combinations of these, which had gradually formed themselves,—often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel with them.
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Arculf, the holy bishop, a native of Gaul, after visiting many remote countries, resided nine months at Jerusalem, and made daily visits to the surrounding districts.
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From a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln in Alton, Illinois, on October 15, 1858.
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The assassination of Julius Cæsar and of the first Roman Emperors led to greater demoralization of the people, and thereafter to anarchy, bloodshed, civil war, and ultimately to an atrocious despotism; but at an interval of twelve hundred and forty years after the death of Nero there occurred a political assassination, growing out of personal revenge, which freed a whole people from oppression and placed the murderer among the heroes of mankind and the liberators of nations.
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Will of Alice, widow of William Wyndsore, Knight, at Upmynster, on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, August 15th, 1400, 1 Henry IV.
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Among the Romans, a grave and austere people, who, during five hundred years, were unacquainted with the elegancies and the pleasures of life, and who, in the middle of furrows and fields of battle, were employed in tillage or in war, the manners of the women were a long time as solemn and severe as those of the men, and without the smallest mixture of corruption, or of weakness.
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From a memorial oration delivered by James Gillespie Blaine in the House of Representatives on February 27, 1882.
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I have frequently been a spectator of them, and once bore a part in a similar scene. But what added to the horror of it was that I had not the consolation of being able to oppose their savage attacks. Every circumstance of the adventure still dwells on my memory, and enables me to describe with greater perspicuity the brutal fierceness of the Indians when they have surprised or overpowered an enemy.
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Never, perhaps, was the old saying, “Republics are ungrateful,” more strikingly verified than in the case of the two brothers De Witt, who, after having rendered many great services to the Dutch Republic, were foully murdered by an infuriated mob in the streets of the Hague, August 20, 1672.
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One of the chief benefits of the study of the past is that it throws light on the problems of the present and helps us to forecast the future. This is why during the terrible struggle that has been going on, so many of us have turned to the records of history for help and direction. It is no less true of our Jewish history.
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After the downfall of Napoleon the monarchs of Europe had a very difficult task to perform. Not only were the domestic institutions of their states, which had been overthrown by the French conquest and in many cases altered by French decrees, to be regulated anew or reinstated on a firm footing, but the relations between governments and subjects were to be reorganized on a new basis, in conformity with the liberal principles which had spread from France and been adopted readily by the intelligent and educated classes in Germany.
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From a speech delivered by Vladimir Solovyov at a university dinner on February 8th, 1890.
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After the discoveries of Columbus, the Spanish mind seems to have been filled with the idea that the whole undiscovered world, wherever it might be, belonged to Spain, and that no other nation had any right whatever to discover anything on the other side of the Atlantic, or to make any use whatever of lands which had been discovered.
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This famous speech was delivered by Founding Father Patrick Henry in 1775.
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In the name, &c., We, Edward, eldest son of the King of England and France, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, the 7th June, 1376, in our apartment in the Palace of our Lord and Father the King at Westminster, being of good and sound memory, &c.
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In the days which we are considering there were all sorts of pirates, some of whom gained much reputation in one way and some in another, but there was one of them who had a disposition different from that of any of his fellows.
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As one of the most cruel and heart-rending tragedies of the middle ages, the love-story and the assassination of Iñez de Castro has lived in song and story for five hundred and fifty years, and still awakens echoes of pity and sorrow whenever read or heard.
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To the People of the United States of America,
Citizens and Patriots:
Our country is still in the midst of the greatest war in the history of mankind.
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Will of Sir Walter, Lord of Manney, Knight, London, St. Andrew’s Day, 1371.
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The old Roman delusions and customs were as extraordinary as those of any nation with which history has made us acquainted.
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