Historical Books

CHAPTER I. THE TRUST. "I brought them here as to a sanctuary."SOUTHEY. Most of us have heard of the sad times in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Englishmen were at war with one another and quiet villages became battlefields. We hear a great deal about King and Parliament, great lords and able generals, Cavaliers and Roundheads, but this story is to help us to think how it must have... more...

THE LION'S BROOD. INTRODUCTION. Centuries come and go; but the plot of the drama is unchanged, and the same characters play the same parts. Only the actors cast for them are new. It is much worn,—this denarius,—and the lines are softened and blurred,—as of right they should be, when you think that more than two thousand years have passed since it felt the die. It is lying before me now on my... more...

DEAR SIR,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th, and to acquaint you that His Majesty acquiesces in your wish to be permitted to dedicate your new work to him. I remain, Dear Sir, your faithful Servant, (Signed,) H. TAYLOR. Lieut. RICHARDSON, &c, &c. &c.H. P. 92nd Regt. By the above letters, two material points are established. The first is that, although works of... more...

CHAPTER I BEN IS BORN IN LEXINGTON 1737—SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS If you have occasion to pass through or to visit Lexington, be sure to put up at the tavern about a mile below Lexington Common on a little knoll near the main road. In front of it stand two large elms, from one of which hangs the tavern sign. It is the best tavern in the place. You will find there good beds, good food, and a genial... more...

CHAPTER I. WATCHING FOR THE PREY. Go back into the third century after Christ, travel east into the famous Mediterranean Sea, survey the beautiful south-west coast of Asia Minor, and let your eyes rest on the city of Patara. Look at it well. Full of life then, dead and desolate now, the city has wonderful associations in sacred and legendary lore—it saw the great reformer of the Gentiles, and gave... more...

Preface. The thirteenth century was one of rapid and terrible incidents, tumultuous politics, and in religious matters of low and degrading superstition. Transubstantiation had just been formally adopted as a dogma of the Church, accompanied as it always is by sacramental confession, and quickly followed by the elevation of the host and the invention of the pix. Various Orders of monks were flocking... more...

Chapter I At the far end of Thorhaven towards the north was a little square house surrounded by a privet hedge. It had a green door under a sort of wooden canopy with two flat windows on either side, and seemed to stand there defying the rows and rows of terraces, avenues and meanish semi-detached villas which were creeping up to it. Behind lay the flat fields under a wide sky just as they had lain for... more...

THE WELSH PEOPLE Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on Heaven's floor, an eye... more...

MONSIEUR HENRI DE LAUNAY SETS OUT ON A JOURNEY If, on the first Tuesday in June, in the year 1608, anybody had asked me on what business I was riding towards Paris, and if I had answered, "To cut off the moustaches of a gentleman I have never seen, that I may toss them at the feet of a lady who has taunted me with that gentleman's superiorities,"—if I had made this reply, I should have... more...

"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that part of it which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages. But it is used with a... more...