CHARLES F. HORNE It is related that in 1661, on the day following the death of the great Cardinal Mazarin, the various officials of the State approached their young King, Louis XIV. "To whom shall we go now for orders, Your Majesty?" "To me," answered Louis, and from that date until his death in 1715 they had no other master. Whether we accept the tale as literal fact or only as the... more...

CHARLES F. HORNE Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Græco-Roman civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea, which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons... more...

THE GREAT EVENTS (THE PERIOD OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE) CHARLES F. HORNE So vast and wonderful a construction was the Roman world, so different from our own, that we are apt to imagine it as an arrangement far more deliberately planned, far more mechanically complete, than it appeared to its own inhabitants. From a cursory glance, we may carry away wholly mistaken conceptions of its thought and purpose.... more...

General Introduction THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS is the answer to a problem which has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from its present oblivion on the dusty shelves of scholars, and made welcome to the homes of the people? THE NATIONAL ALUMNI, an association of college men, having given this... more...

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS THE RECENT DAYS (1910-1914) CHARLES F. HORNE The awful, soul-searing tragedy of Europe's great war of 1914 came to most men unexpectedly. The real progress of the world during the five years preceding the war had been remarkable. All thinkers saw that the course of human civilization was being... more...

Some of Arnold's biographers have declared that he was a very vicious boy, and have chiefly illustrated this fact by painting him as a ruthless robber of birds'-nests. But a great many boys who began life by robbing birds'-nests have ended it much more creditably. The astonishing and interesting element in Benedict Arnold's career was what one might term the anomaly and incongruity... more...