"Historian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... characterization serves our historian on great occasions as well as small ones. Of an intriguing nobleman like the Duke of Norfolk, he is as prompt to speak as of the harp itself: "He was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and counterplot incessantly; who are always running their heads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... historian, M.H. Martin, sees in this trial a proof of the general demoralization of the whole French nation. "L'impression qui en resulte pour nous est l'impossibilite que la reine ait ete coupable. Mais plus les imputations dirigees contre elle etaient vraisemblables, plus la creance ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there, but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen, Chaillot and its palace became the property of the President ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... old-fashioned Scotch, was always used for a coarse earthenware jar or vessel. In the Life of the late Patrick Tytler, the amiable and gifted historian of Scotland, there occurs an amusing exemplification of the utter confusion of ideas caused by the use of Scottish phraseology. The family, when they went to London, had taken with them an old Scottish servant who had no notion of ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... The historian almost refuses to chronicle the startling fact that 37,000 men were kept out of the fight, most of whom had not fired a shot, and all of whom were eager to go in. The whole of the First Corps and three-fourths of the ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... freedom, law, and sense, 'Gainst all the rights of Nature's general plan, 'Gainst all which constitutes an Englishman, That the relation would mere fiction seem, The mock creation of a poet's dream; And the poor bards would, in this sceptic age, Appear as false as their historian's page. Ambitious Folly seized the seat of Wit, Christians were forced by bigots to submit; 650 Pride without sense, without religion Zeal, Made daring inroads on the Commonweal; Stern Persecution raised her iron rod, And call'd the pride of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... altogether. Progress means, in some sense, change for the better. But, strictly, history as such deals with fact; and is not concerned with questions of better or worse—in a word, with value. Hence, it must always be somewhat arbitrary on the part of an historian to identify change in a given direction with a gain or increase in value. Nevertheless, the anthropologist may do so, if he be prepared to take the risk. He sees that human life has on the whole grown more complex. He cannot be sure that it will continue to grow more complex. Much less has he a right ...
— Progress and History • Various
... as "the gulf between the worlds," "the new world," and "the known universe" have one meaning to a science-fictioneer, and another to a historian. Semantics, anyone? ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of 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 pursuit? What struggle to escape? What ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family (so says Vasari), a word as to its date is necessary. The historian tells us it was painted by Titian at the age of eighteen. Clearly some tradition existed which told of the youthfulness of the painter, but may we assume that Giorgione was only eighteen at the time? ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander for things he did wrong at this period ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... tediousness of a twice-told tale; the Episode Of the Stolen Scarab need not be repeated at this point, though it must be admitted that Mr. Peters' version of it differed considerably from the calm, dispassionate description the author, in his capacity of official historian, has given earlier ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... never yet fairly occurred. But the Old Squire always fully intended to go; he was genuinely interested in the early history of our State and, indeed, remarkably well posted as to it. Francis Parkman, the historian, had once come to the farm for a day or two, on purpose to inquire as to certain points connected with the massacre ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... deficient in the qualifications of a historian; and about all that is valuable in his writings is the mass of facts he gives, from which he was not competent to make the proper deductions. The material he gathered is valuable; but the thirty years he spent ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... history is written will depend altogether on whatever purpose the writers have in view, and what they hope to achieve thereby. It will altogether depend upon the sincerity or lack thereof, upon the broad or narrow horizon of the historian. That which passes as history in our schools, or governmentally fabricated books on history, is a forgery, a misrepresentation of events. Like the old drama centering upon the impossible figure of the hero, with a gesticulating ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... charmed with it. It entertains me more almost than any book I ever read. I was told there was little in it that had not already got abroad, or was not known by any other channels. If that is true, I own I am so scanty an historian as to have been ignorant of many of the facts but sure, at least, the circumstances productive of, or concomitant on several of them, set them in very new lights. The deductions and stating of arguments are uncommonly fine. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... know enough about the bush by-and-by. I am a bad historian," he continued, stretching out his legs and yawning horribly, "a worse biographer. I never can find words to relate facts. But I will try what I can do; mind, don't laugh at ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... away, and made haste down his Black Sea of Ontario, to his Golden Horn at Tadousac, from thence, on the 10th of Sept., 1616, returning to his native country to find his partner, the Prince of Conde, in disgrace and in confinement, for what the historian knows not. The Prince had possibly been playing Hudson, for we find that the Marshal de Themines was prevailed upon to accept the office, on condition of sharing the emoluments. But he too became involved in "controversy ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... looked out towards the mountains and the plains," writes the Spanish historian Herrera, "the boughs of trees and the very grass, which grew high in the savannas, appeared to their excited imagination to be armed with Indians. And when they turned their eyes towards the sea, they fancied that it was covered with ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... But the historian of Cheshire records the fact that owing to the respectability of the name, it was unlawfully assumed by divers "losels and lewd fellows of the baser sort," and my father, with a fine show of earnestness, used to declare that he was certain ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Chamberlain, but this is not the case. With all these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that I should feel convinced of sin while playing chess (which I hate) with the great Dr Skinner of Roughborough—the historian of Athens and editor of Demosthenes. Dr Skinner, moreover, was one of those who pride themselves on being able to set people at their ease at once, and I had been sitting on the edge of my chair all the evening. But I have always been very easily overawed ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... evening I went, as was usual, with Brigham and Dr. Willard Richardson, the Church historian, to attend a Council at Heber C Kimball's camp. After the meeting was over and we were going back to our ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... are all just as surprised as I was. That is why I say we must get it put into writing. You didn't know that you were interfering with royal prerogative. No more did I: we had forgotten to look up history. Now I've done it, and I daresay that as an historian Professor Teller will be able to inform you whether I am right?" And here with a flourish the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... of the most prominent features of American society. The comprehensive view of its growth and decline presented by Mr. Ludlow, a well-known English writer, has therefore a special value here. From him and from the Virginia historian Mr. Campbell we get two widely diverging views upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... write a history of the conquest of Mexico, for which he had collected materials in Spain; but hearing that Prescott, the well-known American historian, was at work on the same subject, he gave it up ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... regarding this great man, but we must now leave him to the active duties of a busy and useful life, surrounded by his family in the comforts of an English home and enjoying the true friendship of the philosopher, the historian, and the poet. Among the most intimate in this list was Sir Walter Scott—the friend of Mrs. Bailie, the foster mother of Sir Howard. Doubtless the name of Douglas was sufficient to awaken in the mind of the Scottish bard ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... wanting in the very essence of Christianity. Witness their conduct to the Indians when they thirsted for their territory. After the death (murder, we may well call it) of Alexander, the brother of the celebrated Philip, the latter prepared for war. "And now," says a reverend historian of the times, "war was begun by a fierce nation of Indians upon an honest, harmless Christian generation of English, who might very truly have said to the aggressors, as it was said of old unto the Ammonites, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... building up our Western civilisation is none other than Christianity; the ethics which have shaped and guided right conduct through all these centuries are Christian ethics. Think as we will about dogma, few will feel competent to contest Lecky's verdict, when the historian of Rationalism and of European Morals declares that Christianity "has been the main source of moral development in Europe"; we know what this religion has done, because its actual record is open to inspection. To quote Lecky again, "Christianity has produced more heroic actions and formed ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Alaric, the Goth. The empire was now in the last stages of decreptitude. Yet by fortunate chance it had an able soldier at the head of its armies, AEtius, the noblest son of declining Rome. "The graceful figure of AEtius," says a contemporary historian, "was not above the middle stature; but his manly limbs were admirably formed for strength, beauty, and agility; and he excelled in the martial exercises of managing a horse, drawing the bow, and darting the javelin. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... is, perhaps, the only event which may fitly be called a revolution of race. The volume, however, is a solid and sensible one. Dr. Vaughan is not a brilliant writer; but brilliancy is not always the best quality in an historian, for it as often leaves readers dazzled as taught. A decidedly matter-of-fact turn of mind prevents his being a theorist, so that he does not formulate characters and events in accordance with some fixed preconception. His learning seems sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... massive edifices. The most aristocratic pears, the "Saint Michael," the "Brown Bury," found their natural homes in these sheltered enclosures. The fine old mansion of Judge William Prescott looked out upon these gardens. Some of us can well remember the window of his son's, the historian's, study, the light from which used every evening to glimmer through the leaves of the pear-trees while "The Conquest of Mexico" was achieving itself under difficulties hardly less formidable than those encountered by Cortes. It was a charmed region ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "Dinners with Shakespeare," for instance, he illustrated with genial humour in half a dozen cartoons as many mannerisms of the dinner-table. The drawing which is reproduced opposite to page 56 portrays types that are familiar to all who know the small restaurants of Soho. The historian of the future, I sometimes think, who may wish to describe society in the early part of the twentieth century, will be fortunate if he contrives to illustrate his volume with a collection of contemporary drawings by Frank Reynolds. They will speak more eloquently than any narrative which he may ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... of a Deity cannot be extinguished, but they will revive and rush upon a man at least under some sharp affliction. Amazing judgments will make them question their own apprehensions." (Charnock's Works, vol. 1, p. 42 Lond. 1682). An ancient historian relates, concerning Caligula the Emperor of Rome, whose licentiousness knew no bounds, and who professed the utmost contempt for the gods of his country, that, when it thundered, he was accustomed from fear of the gods he derided, to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... surmises. I send the following extract, in answer to his query on the subject. It is a quotation from Grimm, in M. Michelet's Introduction to Universal History; and, as your readers must be all familiar with the language of the gifted historian, I will not make the attempt to convey his brilliant style ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... of Paracelsus did not gain for Browning a large audience, but it brought him friends and acquaintances who gave his life a delightful expansion in its social relations. John Forster, the critic, biographer and historian, then unknown to him, reviewed the poem in the Examiner with full recognition of its power and promise. Browning gratefully commemorated a lifelong friendship with Forster, nearly a score of years later, in the dedication of the 1863 ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... is not less exclusive than that of his compatriot, he is vastly superior as a historian to the older man in that, whereas Machiavelli deduced history a priori from theory, Guicciardini had a real desire to follow the inductive method of deriving his theory from an accurate mastery of the facts. With superb ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Authors Plays; and upon that Account, I have taken somewhat less time than was necessary for the translating such an extraordinary difficult Author; for this requires more than double the time of a Historian or the like, which was as much as I cou'd allow my self. I made choice of these three Plays as well for their Modesty as Regularity, for above all things I wou'd by no means give the least Encouragement to Lewdness or Obscenity, which grow too fast of themselves; ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... Schools; to them you have lately granted 41,000l.: thus are they supported, and how are they recruited? Montesquieu observes on the English constitution, that the model may be found in Tacitus, where the historian describes the policy of the Germans, and adds, "This beautiful system was taken from the woods;" so in speaking of the charter schools, it may be observed, that this beautiful system was taken from the gipsies. These schools are recruited in the same manner as the Janissaries ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 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 words repeated, and, if necessary, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... go back to ages by-gone, to divest ourselves of what we know and are and form a clear conception of generations that have been, of their experiences, objects, modes of life, thought and expression. It is a task better suited to the novelist than the historian, and even the former treads on dangerous ground in attempting it. One of the prime objects of the Columbian Historical Novels is to give the reader as clear an idea as possible of the common people, as well as of the rulers of the age. The author has ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... German historian of the English Constitution, begins his account of the early military system of our ancestors. He is, of course, merely stating a matter of common knowledge to all students of Teutonic institutions. What he says of the Anglo-Saxon is ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... significance. Here is summed up the whole of the revelation of God's Word. Here all the lines of Revelation meet. Almost two thousand years of inspiration come to a climax in this little end-book. Psalmist and prophet, historian and law-giver, Gospel and Epistle come to a final focus point in one simple intense message. The purpose of the book is intensely and only practical. Here is the message of the whole Bible to Christ's people for this present interval between the Ascension ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... Meanwhile, fresh crowds of overjoyed citizens were pressing forward. Ten thousand men, at least, were now waiting, with respectful anxiety, under the walls of the Quirinal Palace. The French Ambassador to Rome, Count Rossi, was a witness of these events. He became also their historian. He ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... enamoured of the idea of returning to Peru, becoming its Inca, and driving out the Spaniards, that he actually fitted out an expedition with that intent. How he fared and what ultimately became of him it may perhaps be the privilege of the present historian ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... historian she has no difficulty in exposing Swift's ignorance, and in establishing her claim that if there is any refining or ascertaining of the English language to be done, the antiquarian scholars must be consulted. But it is when she writes as a literary critic, defending ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... a translation made by Dryden at his Majesty's command. This circumstance is also mentioned by Burnet, who adds, in very coarse and abusive terms, that the success of his own remarks having destroyed the character of Varillas as an historian, the disappointed translator revenged himself by the severe character of the Buzzard, under which the future Bishop of Sarum is depicted in "The Hind and the Panther."[14] The credulity of Burnet, especially where his vanity was concerned ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... ineffectual 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 ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Dion Cassius, the historian, records one of the most remarkable instances of his clairvoyance or second sight. He states that Apollonius, in the midst of a discourse at Ephesus, suddenly paused, and then in a different voice, exclaimed, to the astonishment of all:—"Have courage, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... But now that we have come to recognize the great earth itself as a story-book, as a keeper of records buried one beneath the other, confused and half obliterated, yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian may fairly be allowed to speak ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... The historian speaks of peace, and the prosperity which naturally flowed from it in the uninterrupted pursuit of the ordinary occupations of life. This is indisputable. There was the increase of wealth, the enjoyment of security, the absence of fears, and the reign of law. Life and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... would be taken out of her mouth and be remembered no more." It was when the Christians of the Mearns had communion at "the table of the Lord Jesus," ministered by Knox, that they "banded themselves to the uttermost of their power to maintain the true preaching of the Evangel of Christ." The historian, Burton, describes the movement that resulted in the subscription of the National Covenant as the fruit of "a great religious revival," and the Reformation as "the great revival." And Kirkton says, "I verily believe there were more souls converted to ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... the best MSS. Others read "Xenophon," which Kruger maintains to be the true reading. He suggests that "Theopompus" may have crept into the text from a marginal note of a scholiast, "Theopompus" (the historian) "gives ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... permitted to revisit his cherished little shelf of books about which has grown the ample library of the University of Geneva, and view the various delineations of himself by artist, poet, and even serious historian, it would be delightful to witness his comical astonishment. Perhaps it is not to be laid to the fault of Lord Byron, who after visiting the old castle and its dungeon beguiled the hours of a rainy day at the inn at Ouchy with writing a poem concerning which he frankly confesses that he had not the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... question, has not omitted to notice Antiphon, it may be doubted whether he would accept this fact as conclusive. Another point in regard to Thucydides is introduced in a manner that prepares us for some startling disclosures: "As regards the historian's trustworthiness, it has been so universally lauded that it is high time to declare how far his statements are to be accepted as absolute truths." But expectation subsides when we are assured in the next sentence that "on contemporary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... style is wholly unlike that of the stately, but rather tiresome unchangeable canter of Macaulay's. Macaulay takes care of his style, but Froude is only interested in his theme. I do not suppose any one historian has yet climbed up to the pinnacle of perfect impartiality,—unless my darling Herodotus, who has the simplicity of a child, and no theories at all. But Macaulay's style tires me. He is so ferociously lucid that he confuses me, as with too ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Leonard Astier-Rehu resigned his post as Keeper of the Archives? Every one knows that he was dismissed, sent away with no more ceremony than a hackney-cabman, because of an imprudent phrase let slip by the historian of the House of Orleans, vol. v. p. 327: 'Then, as to-day, France, overwhelmed by the flood of demagogy, etc.' Who can see the end of a metaphor? His salary of five hundred pounds a year, his rooms in the Quai d'Orsay (with coals and gas) and, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... I was delivering the Indian goods, my colleagues in the territorial government had crossed the plains, and established the capital at a remote place in the northern mountains, which they called "Prescott," in honor of the Mexican historian. Just as was supposed, they quarreled all the way across the plains about who should be the first delegate to Congress from a Territory they had ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... describing it as the most ancient in Europe, and quoting the names of eminent men who had won the ribbon of the Order in times past. The Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, William the Silent, Galileo, Christopher Columbus, and the historian Gibbon appeared on the list. The Order was next bestowed on an Admiral, who held a command in the South Pacific, and ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... one or more of the nine parts of speech. In fact some of them have recklessly trespassed against all nine, and still they sit on their pedestals of fame for the admiration of the crowd. Macaulay mistreated the article. He wrote,—"That a historian should not record trifles is perfectly true." He should have ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... 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 a ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... having failed to obtain the support of the disinherited masses, had met with disaster, the revolutionary leaders, who saved themselves by fleeing abroad, indulged in remorseful reflections. The Polish historian Lelevel, who lived in Paris as a refugee, issued in 1832 a "Manifesto to the Israelitish Nation," calling upon the Jews to forget the insults inflicted upon them by present-day Poland for the sake of the sweet reminiscences ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... can't do that," was the deliberate reply, as the captain rose to relieve Dave at the tiller, "but you can all borry the book and read the historian's account of the battle between the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard. I git so excited when I read that, I hey ter go put my head in a pail o' water to cool it off! Fact! You know that's whar the cap'n ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... junk is the mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter. The king is a great character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal wives) writing the History of Apemama in an account-book; his description of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself, as 'about sweethearts, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not appear that music made any progress. Thus, they came chiefly to be remembered for that talent in which posterity had produced no equals. As poets they were once celebrated; but, eclipsed by the glory and splendour of the great historian of Troy, their poetical productions were forgotten; whilst, as musicians, unrivalled through many centuries, their skill was long remembered as the most excellent the world had ever known. The arts of sculpture and painting appear to have remained even more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of Odovacar's rule in Italy we know very little. Of course the foederati had their will, at any rate in some measure, with reference to the assignment of land in Italy, but no historian has told us anything as to the social disorganisation which such a redistribution of property must have produced. There are some indications that it was not thoroughly carried into effect, at any rate in the South of Italy, and that the settlements of the foederati ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... disposed to credulity, nor at all likely to accept fable, in its own simple and gross form, for truth. But he had not taught himself to forego the vain attempt to extract history out of fable; he could not relinquish that habit of "learned conjecture," so dear to the scholar, so fatal to the historian. In the earlier portion of his work, he constructs his narrative under the singular disadvantage of one who sees perpetually the weakness of his own superstructure, yet continues to build on; and thus, with much show ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Walter Scott, at the commencement of his Life of Napoleon, says that Bonaparte did not see his native City after 1793. Probably to avoid contradicting himself, the Scottish historian observes that Bonaparte was near Ajaccio on his return from Egypt. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Caesar he had found comparatively easy, and with no other aid than the grammar and lexicon he could, in the course of an hour or so, get out a fair translation of the passage to be mastered. But Sallust gave him no end of trouble. There was something in the involved obscure style of this old historian that puzzled him greatly, and he was constantly being humiliated by finding that when, after much labour, he had succeeded in making some sort of sense out of a sentence, Dr. Johnston would pronounce his translation altogether wrong, and proceed ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of life are always the same, and are not made one whit easier by all the myriads of men and women who have lived upon the globe. The standing want is never for more skill, but for newer, fresher power,—a more plentiful supply of arterial blood. The discoverer, or the historian, or the man of science, may begin where his predecessor left off, but the poet or any artist must go back for a fresh start. With him it is always the first day of creation, and he must begin at the stump ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... other hand, several priests accompanied Bolivar, and he always showed the greatest veneration for the Church and for its members. Speaking, then, of priests exploiting the fanaticism of the crowd, no sober-minded historian would ever intend an attack against the Church in general. Furthermore, we must not forget that most of the enemies of independence were Americans, and that some publicists refuse to speak of it as a war of independence but term ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... one of the boys, "it is a bumble-bee." This time I must be permitted to say the spelling of the word, because the boys in pronouncing it, give the sound of the b, and I, as a historian, ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... 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. An extraordinary ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... credentials equally upon its face. These portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the artist, whom you recognise as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rest, anyone 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 ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Historian Sees Fit to Introduce a Lady of Quality; and Further Narrates How Barnabas Tore ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... fingers' ends as suddenly quenched her antiquarian zeal, and reminded her of a frightful account she once read of a convent of nuns captured by some brutal potentate, who forced them to mend his highways by breaking stones upon them with very heavy hammers; and the historian mentioned, as a common occurrence, that, when any sister dislocated her shoulder, one of her comrades would set it, and the sufferer would then resume ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... business, and having rammed his own carpet-bag, brought it down without a word, and Clive found him environed in smoke when he came down to take his place in the little britzska. I wonder whether the window at the Hotel de Hollande saw him go? There are some curtains behind which no historian, however ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... name of antiquity. He ranks only with Napoleon Bonaparte in modern times. His genius was transcendent; and, like Napoleon, he had great traits which endear him to the world—generosity, magnanimity, and exceeding culture; orator, historian, and lawyer, as well as statesman and general. But he overturned the liberties of his country to gratify a mad ambition, and waded through a sea of blood to the mastership of the world. Augustus was a profound statesman, and a successful general; but he was ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... for the 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 ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... passage in one of our standard school-books, Green's Short History of the English People, the historian, alluding to the coarseness of the early Elizabethan drama, remarks that "there were no female actors, and the grossness which startles us in words which fall from a woman's lips took a different color when ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Lord Macaulay to Mr. Ellis, describing the division of the house on the second reading of the Reform Bill, given in Mr. Trevelyan's life of his uncle, the great historian says Horace Twiss's countenance at the liberal victory looked like that of a "damned soul." If, instead of a lost soul, he had said poor Horace looked like a lost seat, he would have been more accurate, if not as picturesque. Mr. Twiss sat for one ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... too, was an enthusiast in his quiet way. His was the enthusiasm of the student, and his work as historian and archaeologist absorbed, I must suppose, a great deal more of his interest and energy than was ever given to his cure of souls. He was rector of Tarn Regis, in Dorset, before I was born, and at the time of his death, to be present at which I was called away in the middle ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... lead him to the awful abyss of polygamy, and that no Bishop Colenso should deprive him of that unique incentive to righteousness—the doctrine of an everlasting burning hell. Moses was put on his legs again as a serious historian, and the subject of the resolution utterly lost to view. The Chairman then remarked that his impartial role forbade him to support either side, and the voting showed fourteen against one. They all sang the Doxology, and the Chairman pronounced ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Hamlet is to be found in the Latin pages of the Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, who died in the year 1208. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the French author, Francis de Belleforest, introduced the fable into a collection of novels, which were translated into English, and printed in a small quarto black ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... ecclesiastics who afterwards attained the episcopal dignity: and the former, if we may credit the Ecclesiastical History of Nicephorus, fared not much better at the hands of the Provincial Synod of Thessaly than did the "Tragedy of Douglas" at those of the Scottish Presbyteries. Hear what saith the historian: "This Heliodorus, bishop of Trica, had in his youth written certain love-stories called the "Ethiopics," which are highly popular even at the present day, though they are now better known by the title of 'Chariclea'"—(the name of the heroine)—"and it was by reason thereof that he lost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Kotoshikin—for the name is found in both forms), a renegade diak or secretary, which, after having lain for a long time in manuscript in the library of Upsala, in Sweden, was edited in 1840, by the Russian historian Soloviev. Kotoshikin terminated a life of strange vicissitudes by perishing at the hands of the public executioner ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... appropriees aux adaptations acquises, a meme que la temperature terrestre perd ses conditions premieres." ("Origine Paleontologique des arbres", Paris, 1888, page 28.) If, as is so often the case, the theory now seems to be a priori inevitable, the historian of science will not omit to record that the first germ sprang ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... MANUEL DE, a Portuguese poet and historian; entered the diplomatic service, and was for many years secretary to the Spanish embassy at Rome; was a voluminous writer of history and poetry, and did much to develop the literature of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... civil wars of Oxford.—Anthony Wood, the faithful historian of Oxford, gives an account of a quarrel between the partisans of St. Guinbald and the residents of Oxford, in the days of Alfred, on his refounding the university, A.D. 886. After his death the continual inroads of the Danes kept the Oxonians in perpetual alarm, and in the year 979 ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Leonardo's hand, though it has hitherto been generally accepted as genuine. Not only is the writing unlike his, but the spelling also is quite different. I would suggest that this passage is a description of the events of the battle drawn up for the Painter by order of the Signoria, perhaps by some historian commissioned by them, to serve as a scheme or programme of the work. The whole tenor of the style seems to me to argue in favour of this theory; and besides, it would be in no way surprising that such a document should have ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... savannas and forests. Cooper's descriptions are the school at which all literary landscapists should study: all the secrets of art are there. But Cooper is inferior to Walter Scott in his comic and minor characters, and in the construction of his plots. One is the historian of nature, the other of humanity." The article winds up with further praise of Scott, whom its author ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... [That historian states that the king (Charles I.) deprived several papists of their military commissions, and, among others, Sir George Hamilton, who, notwithstanding, served him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... language, to ascertain why even a WRITTEN language is mutable, to pick up this garment of thought and run its threads back through all their vagaries to their origin and points of divergence, is one of the grand tasks for the intellectual historian. He, indeed, must give us the history of ideas, of which all art, including language, is but the fructification. To say, therefore, that the alphabet of Se-quo-yah is better adapted for his language than our alphabet ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... two. The third has not yet been written. These novels of New York in the Revolutionary days are another striking example of the enthusiasm which Mr. Chambers puts into his work. To write an accurate and successful historical novel, one must be a historian as well as a romancer. Mr. Chambers is an authority on New York State history during the Colonial period. And, if the hours spent in poring over old maps and reading up old records and journals do not show, the result is always apparent. The facts are ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... generation of authors which has permanently stamped American literature. At 55 Beacon Street, down near the foot of the hill and facing the Common, still stands the handsome, swell-front, buff-brick house where Prescott, the historian, lived. On Mount Vernon Street (which runs parallel to Beacon, and which, with its dignified beauty, won the approval of that connoisseur of beautiful streets—Henry James) one can pick out successively the numbers ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... 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 ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... or other, thought and felt, or were, at his suggestion, fully prepared to think and feel. It is thus that song becomes the truest history of a people; they, properly speaking, have rarely any other historian than the poet. History, in its stateliness, does not deign to dwell upon their habits, their customs and manners, and, therefore, cannot unfold their usual modes of thinking and feeling; it only notices those more anomalous ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... good authority, for the facts which Juet suppressed concerning the third voyage is the historian Van Meteren: who obtained them, there is good reason for believing, directly from Hudson himself. In his "Historie der Niederlanden" (1614) Van Meteren wrote: "This Henry Hudson left the Texel the 6th of April, 1609, and having doubled the Cape of Norway the 5th of May, ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... the height of her power and consequently came to Rome along with her brother Agrippa. [Footnote: This Agrippa, known also as Herodes II, was an intimate friend of the Jewish historian Josephus and a companion of Titus at the siege of Jerusalem. It was before him, moreover, that the apostle Paul made his defence in A.D. 60.] The latter was accorded pretorial honors, while she dwelt in the Palace and cohabited with Titus. She expected ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... opportunity of recommending himself to those who could help him. He is so bent on natural knowledge that we have a sense of incongruity when we see him engaging in politics as if he had no other interest. He throws himself with such zest into the language of the moralist, the theologian, the historian, that we forget we have before us the author of a new departure in physical inquiry, and the unwearied compiler of tables of natural history. When he is a lawyer, he seems only a lawyer. If he had not been the author of the Instauratio, his life would not have looked very different ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... in Grove's Dictionary Dr. Philip Spitta, the well-known historian and critic, comments upon the conducting of this ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... An account has there been given of Eurytus and his daughter Iole, for whose sake Heracles sacked Oechalia. Homer also seems to have written on this subject, as that historian shows who relates that Creophylus of Samos once had Homer for his guest and for a reward received the attribution of the poem which they call the "Taking of Oechalia". Some, however, assert the opposite; that Creophylus wrote the poem, and that Homer ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... appeared in the schoolroom among the students. His full heart would not suffer him to be silent. He must speak, and they were readier to hearken to this servant and minister of Jesus Christ than to attend to Sallust, Virgil, Cicero, or any Latin or Greek historian, poet, or philosopher they had been engaged in reading. And they seldom hearkened long before they were all in tears, and every heart catched lire from the flame that burned in ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... from the moment that Bailly's essay, crowned in Prussia, was published, former impressions were quite changed. Every one was anxiously asserting that Bailly's appreciation of his subject might be read with pleasure and benefit, even after Fontenelle's. The eloge composed by the historian of Astronomy will not, certainly, make us forget that written by the first Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. The style is, perhaps, too stiff; perhaps it is also rather declamatory; but the biography, and the analysis of his works, are more complete, especially if we ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... of the Roman period in the fifth century A.D. to about the middle of the eighteenth century. In tracing the course of events through so long a period, a difficulty becomes prominent which everywhere besets the historian in less degree—a difficulty due to the conflict between the strictly chronological and the topical method of treatment. We must hold as closely as possible to the actual sequence of events, since, as already pointed out, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... description of the numerous "cases" in which my advice, if not my pocketbook, was freely drawn upon, but shall leave them, along with the description of the many antecedent fads of my beloved better half, to some historian of longer wind, and shall content myself with recounting the particular "case"—and attachments—which most nearly affected our ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... music was then "thought to be in greater perfection than among even the Italians themselves." There is a characteristic John Bull complacency about these statements which is hardly borne out by a study of the lives of the leading contemporary musicians. Even Mr Henry Davey, the applauding historian of English music, has to admit the evanescent character of the larger works which came from the composers of that "bankrupt century." Not one of these composers—not even Arne—is a real personality to us like Handel, or Bach, or Haydn, or Mozart. The great merit of English music was melody, which ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Observer," March 8, 1834, are to be found the following references to well-known young ladies of the day. Miss Silsbee is supposed to be the daughter of the Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, of Salem, Massachusetts senator in Congress. She afterwards married Jared Sparks, the well-known historian, president of ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... of Edinburgh University, historian and philologist, ethnologist, etc.; St. Agnes Road, St. Heliers, Jersey," laughingly ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... volcano, in which surmise he was destined to be proved partly in the right and partly in the wrong; whilst Vitruvius, the famous architect of the Emperor Augustus, "who found Rome of brick and left it of marble," as well as Tacitus the historian, shared the same opinion. About a century and a half before the first recorded eruption in 79, Mons Summanus figures prominently in Roman history as the scene of a curious incident during the Servile War, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was Alexander Davison, his tried friend in afterlife, as Southey suggests, or another Quebecer of note, in 1782, Matthew Lymburner, as Lt.-Col. John Sewell, on the faith of Hon. William Smith, the Historian of Canada, had stated to us, is of minor importance: one thing is certain, some thoughtful friend, in 1782, seems to have extricated the impulsive Horatio from the 'tangles of Neaera's hair' in the port of Quebec: the hand of fate had marked the future Captain of the Victory, not as the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... will find an accomplished, and possibly an impartial, historian. Its significance for these personal memoirs is due chiefly to the accidental fact that, whereas my mother was the social centre of the orthodox party and in that capacity gave solid aid to Hammerfeldt, the unorthodox ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... all other respects there is a most striking difference. Keller was a sturdy commoner and always retained a certain affinity with the soil; there is a wholesome vigor about him. Meyer is of patrician descent; His father, who died early, was a statesman and historian; his mother a highly gifted woman of fine culture. Thus the boy grew up in an atmosphere of refinement. Having finished the Gymnasium, he took up the study of law, but history and the humanities were of greater interest to him. Even in the child two traits were observed that later characterized ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... to my mind another noble author, who was not only a fine poet, orator, and historian, but one of the closest reasoners we have on the truth of that religion, of which forgiveness is a prominent principle: the great and the good Lord Lyttelton, whose fame will never die. His son, to whom he had transmitted genius ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... concerning the life of Tacitus, the historian, except that which he tells us in his own writings and those incidents which are related of him ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the powers at work are national wills rather than political forces as the projects of rulers and the diplomats. These powers, when fully aroused, are quite beyond the control of statesmen acting in their ordinary capacities, and their final issues no historian ought now to try to predict. History has been full of surprises because of the nature of the forces which create history, and these surprises seem to have been sometimes the greatest for those who were most intimately concerned in making history. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... that this was caused by his rebuking Corralat for his profanation of the sacred articles which he had pillaged from the churches, whereupon the priest was slain by the enraged heathen. The third, Fray Alonso de San Agustin, was attacked at the same time, according to the above historian, and left for dead, but managed to make his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... symbols. Theoretically you are right, but life practically does not permit of your views. Everything which you see and do is a symbol, and where are you to draw the line? The flag is one, but without doubt the battle is one too. I believe, in spite of the historian who is wise after the event, that the so-called decisive battles do not decide anything, and that it is the accidental events which have the permanent influence on the destiny of peoples. Neither Marathon nor Cannae kept the Greeks or Carthaginians ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... approached by certain scholars who, because of their lack of mythological knowledge, have rendered themselves ridiculous in attempting elucidations on a purely historical basis. An entirely mythological origin is not here pleaded for the Nibelungenlied, but it should surely be recognized, even by the historian who is without mythological training, that no story of any antiquity exists which does not contain a substantial substratum of mythical circumstance. So speedy is the crystallization of myth around the nucleus of historical fact, and so tenacious is its hold, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... ranks as the naturalist-historian of Malay Archipelago, and is an undoubted authority on corals and the general fauna of tropical seas. But he is more than a naturalist—he is an ethnologist and a folklorist of high value. This work is a valuable, conscientious, and ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... can here supply the brevity of the historian, and report the whole of what the apostle said to Felix on these important points? It seems to me that I hear him enforcing those important truths he has left us in his works, and placing in the fullest luster those divine maxims interspersed in our Scriptures. "He reasoned ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... applied to Lake Tahoe is practically unknown, save to the curious investigator or historian. Other names given by Fremont have "stuck" to this day, amongst them being Humboldt, Walker, Owen, Kern and Carson rivers, Pyramid ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... known 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 ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... unquestionably by far the most valuable. Henceforth we are to travel along its broad route to the end; we shall see in it both the great and the small among public men halting onward in a way very different from that in which they march along the stately pages of the historian, and we shall find many side-lights, by no means colorless, thrown upon the persons and events of the procession. The persistence, fulness, and faithfulness with which it was kept throughout so busy a life are marvellous, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... where he first assisted the Enchelians in their war against the Illyrians. The latter were defeated, and, to obtain a peace from the Enchelians, they gave the crown to Cadmus; to which, on his death, his son Illyrus succeeded. The historian Christodorus, quoted by Pausanias, says that he built the city of Nygnis, in the country ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell; for that requires no illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips, Shakspeare has given them ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of Bunyan's Excellency of a Broken Heart. George Cokayn was a gospel minister in London, who became eventually connected with the Independent denomination. He was a learned man—brought up at the university—had preached before the House of Commons—was chaplain to that eminent statesman and historian, Whitelocke—was rector of St. Pancras, Soper Lane—remarkable for the consistency of his conduct and piety of his life—but as he dared not to violate his conscience, by conformity to ceremonies or creeds which he deemed antichristian, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... A few scattered into Macedonia, but the great bulk of the army and all that was left of the fleet surrendered. Nineteen legions and more than ten thousand cavalry thus came over to Octavius and took service under him. This was the real victory of Actium. In the words of the Italian historian Ferrero, "it was a victory gained without fighting, and Antony was defeated in this supreme struggle, not by the valor of his adversary or by his own defective strategy or tactics, but by the hopeless inconsistency ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... which may possess a real religious value. Other religious movements have centered about the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Many of these peculiar excitements have been political. The whole offers the psychologists a fascinating field and awaits its historian.[70] Yet the result is always the same. The critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... historian, who tells the story in Latin, "is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep. For verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally (that is word for word) translated out of one language into another without losing ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... 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 ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... even avarice, for a moment, yielded to admiration, when the file-leaders of Pizarro's columns beheld for the first time the great Roads of the Incas. The Peruvians have been eloquently vindicated from the charge of barbarism by a modern historian, native of the great continent which Columbus discovered. From the moment when Cortes had gained the crest of the sierra of Ahualco, his progress was comparatively easy. Broad and even roads or long and solid causeways ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... in "The Hunchback," "Dost thou like the picture, dearest?" As a natural historian, it is our task to hew to the line, and let the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... are able now to lay him again, and so dispose of him out of your Sight, that you shall be troubled no more with him, either here or hereafter, let them go to work with him their own Way; you know Things future do not belong to an Historian, so I leave him among you, wishing you may be able to give no worse an Account of him for the Time to come, than I have done ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... imperfection in the divine conduct, to the 'semi-barbarous Hebrews!'—a people by the way, whose first leader combined in himself a greater variety, and a higher order, of talent, than any other man in history. As military commander, poet, historian, judge, legislator, who is to be named in ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... appears in the experience of the soldier Captain Miles Standish, who, being sent to England for assistance—not military, but financial—(God save the mark!) succeeded in borrowing—how much do you suppose?—L150 sterling. Something in the way of help; and the historian adds, "tho at fifty per cent. interest." So much for a valiant soldier on a financial expedition. A later agent, Allerton, was able to borrow for the colony L200 at a reduced interest of thirty per cent. Plainly, the money-sharks ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... himself was not satisfied with this work, nor with the character of "Lionel Lincoln," whose lack of commanding interest makes "Job," his poor half-witted brother and son of "Abigail,"—a tenant of the old warehouse,—the real hero of the book. Of its author, Bancroft the historian wrote: "He has described the battle of Bunker's Hill better than it has ever been described in any other work." Another high authority says: "'Lionel Lincoln' certainly gives spirited battlepieces—notably the battle of Bunker's Hill, which ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... queen mother's instructions. So, before bringing on the first regular engagement, in which two armies of Frenchmen were to undertake each other's destruction, they had sent Michel de Castelnau, the well-known historian, on the fifteenth of December, to inquire of Catharine de' Medici whether they should give the Huguenots battle. But the queen was too timid, or too cunning, to assume the weighty responsibility which they would have lifted from their own shoulders. "Nurse," she jestingly ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... repugnant faith, so religious doubt drove Bayle into doubts of the metaphysics which supported this faith. Consequently he subjected metaphysics in its entire historical evolution to criticism. He became its historian in order to write the history of its death. Above all ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... of tempest is always mingled with a battle. Quid obscurum, quid divinum. Each historian traces, to some extent, the particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell. Whatever may be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed masses has an incalculable ebb. During the action the plans of the two leaders enter into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... [4] The historian of Columbus does not appear to have been at all conversant in zoology. What the Saavina was cannot be conjectured from his slight notices, unless a basking shark. The other, no way allied to fish except by living in the water, is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... records consists of inscriptions. These are usually cut in stone, but sometimes we find them painted over the surface of a wall, stamped on coins, or impressed upon metal tablets. The historian also makes use of remains, such as statues, ornaments, weapons, tools, and utensils. Monuments of various sorts, including palaces, tombs, fortresses, bridges, temples, and churches, form a very important ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... history of the Sicilian people would be this ball after the nuptial-banquet if it could be illustrated in all the varieties of ancient and modern customs. Buonfiglio, the historian of Messina, has left us in his larger work an account of these customs two centuries and a half ago. The peasants, he says, have not abandoned the ancient custom of dancing in a crowd and in a circle to the sound of the lyre and flute, although these have been changed for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... writers who have been quoted by that aggurate and learned shentleman, we are informed, by profane history, of the pribbles and pranks of the old serpent, in the bortents and oragles of antiquity, as you will find in that most excellent historian Bolypius, and Titus Lifius; ay, and moreofer, in the Commentaries of Julius Caesar himself, who, as the ole world knows, was a most famous, and a most faliant, and a most wise, and a most prudent, and a most fortunate chieftain, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... pictured them, we cannot but regret that the same talents, the same overmastering interest in the eternal human problems, had not been employed in depicting men whom he had actually known. The other Elizabethan work that ranks with Raleigh's in its conception of the historian's office and in its literary excellence, deals with another country. It is the History of the Turks ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... constantly at his side. When the fever broke and consciousness returned, and the patient realized where he was and who were his nurses, the man's remorse and shame were something pitiable. Of him, as an impartial historian, it is difficult to write, since long association with Stannard had forcibly impressed his views as to Rallston's character. Perhaps we were as reluctant to hear of his subsequent behavior and to believe in his contrition ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... hands for his inspection. What diagnosis of her case the young man may have thought it best to conceal with a smile the historian is unable to state, but for himself he feels bound to say that fingers looking less stiff, and showing fewer evidences of even insensible pain, have seldom been submitted for medical inspection by even the fairest patient desiring a ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... would have been made at that period but for the impulse given to them by the most religious minds longing to promote, by all means in their power, the spread of what, to them, was the only true and saving faith. "I do not," says a candid historian [Faria y Sousa] of that age, "imagine that I shall persuade the world that our intent was only to be preachers; but on the other hand the world must not fancy that our intent was merely to be traders," There is much to blame in the conduct of ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... is with men. When years after his death the world agrees to call a man great, the verdict must be accepted. The historian may whiten or blacken, the critic may weigh and dissect, the form of the judgment may be altered, but the central fact remains, and with the man, whom the world in its vague way has pronounced great, history must reckon one way or the other, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... developed journalism, established the American Philosophical Society, the public library in Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania. He organized a postal system for the colonies, which was the basis of the present United States Post Office. Bancroft, the eminent historian, called him "the greatest diplomatist of his century." He perfected the Albany Plan of Union for the colonies. He is the only statesman who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and the Constitution. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... sharp conflict with that scientific view of history which was already gaining ground when "Heroes and Hero-Worship" was written, and which since then has become even more popular under the powerful influence of the modern doctrine of evolution. A scientific historian, like Buckle or Taine, seeks to explain all changes in thought, all movements in politics and society, in terms of general laws; his habit is, therefore, to subordinate, if not quite to eliminate, the individual; the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... to be able to give my readers the heroine's own simple account of her journey, as furnished me by the courtesy of Mr. Benson J. Lossing, author of the "Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812," to whom the aged lady in 1862 recounted it in a letter (given in a note in Mr. Lossing's book), the historian, on his visit to Chippewa in 1860, having failed to see her. She was then eighty-five years ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... 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 him with the originals ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... gaze upon your stern image, upon your three huge granite faces, and shall feel as hopeless as ever of piercing the mystery of your being. This secret fell into safe hands three centuries before ours. It is not in vain that the old Portuguese historian Don Diego de Cuta boasts that "the big square stone fastened over the arch of the pagoda with a distinct inscription, having been torn out and sent as a present to the King Dom Juan III, disappeared mysteriously in the course ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... months between May 1st and November 1st was the most crowded period in all my experience up to that time. Events of consequence tumbled over one another in startling succession. We actually lived on sensations. In exercising the historian's right to choose the order of setting down incidents I am puzzled as to which to give precedence. Shall I begin with the sensational bribery of the Massachusetts Legislature which occurred within this period, or with the episode that was the exciting climax of that interval ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... out, and how they have been afterwards annexed or absorbed in some wider generalisation. These facts might be stated without any reference to the history of the discoverers or of the society to which they belonged. They would indeed suggest very interesting topics to the general historian or 'sociologist.' He might be led to inquire under what conditions men came to inquire scientifically at all; why they ceased for centuries to care for science; why they took up special departments of investigation; and what was the effect of scientific discoveries ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... The historian of great events is always oppressed by the difficulty of tracing the silent, subtle influences, which in all communities precede and prepare the way for violent outbursts and uprisings. He may discover many causes and record them duly, but he will always be sensible that others have escaped ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... was darker and more gloomy than its wont. He had supped with his officers, Manlius and a nobleman of Fsul, whose name the historian has not recorded, who held the third rank in the rebel army, but their fare had been meagre and insipid, their wines the thin vintage of that hill country; a little attempt at festivity had been made, but it had failed altogether; ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert |
