History Books

HOW TROY WAS TAKEN. The far-famed Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And from her beauty and faithlessness came the most celebrated of ancient wars, with death and disaster to numbers of famous heroes and the final ruin of the ancient city of Troy. The story of these striking events has been told only in poetry. We propose to tell it again in sober prose.... more...

CHAPTER I Celtic Literature—Antiquity of our Annals—Moore—How we should estimate Tradition—The Materials for Irish History—List of the Lost Books—The Cuilmenn—The Saltair of Tara, &c.—The Saltair of Cashel—Important MSS. preserved in Trinity College—By the Royal Irish Academy—In Belgium.   he study of Celtic literature, which is daily becoming of increased importance to the... more...

THE BANISHED BRITON. 1819I n the afternoon of a warm and sultry day, towards the close of one of the warmest and most sultry summers which Upper Canada has ever known, an extraordinary trial took place at the court-house in the old town of Niagara. The time was more than threescore years ago, when York was a place of insignificant proportions; when Hamilton could barely be said to have an existence;... more...

HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN In my book, The Father of a Soldier, I have already stated the conditions under which this book of my son's was produced. He was wounded in the end of June, 1917, in the fierce struggle before Lens. He was at once removed to a base-hospital, and later on to a military hospital in London. There was grave danger of amputation of the right arm, but this was happily avoided.... more...

STATE OF PARTIES IN SCOTLAND (1689). Source.—Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Dissolution of the Last Parliament of Charles II. until the Sea-Battle off La Hogue, vol. i., p. 215, by Sir John Dalrymple, Bart. (London and Edinburgh: 1771.) Of those who had offered their services to William for the settlement of Scotland, three were eminent above the rest: the Duke of Hamilton, the... more...

A VENETIAN CRUISER. It was late in the year 1431. The port of Venice was filled with ships from all parts of the world, bringing to her their choicest stores, and their most costly merchandise, and receiving from her and from her Grecian possessions rich shiploads of wine and spices, and bales of finest cotton. It would have been a sight never to have been forgotten could we have gazed then on that... more...

I THE WORLD TRAGEDY We are living under the shadow of the greatest world tragedy in the history of mankind. Not even the overthrow of the old Roman empire was so colossal a disaster as this. Inevitably we are bewildered by it. Utterly unanticipated, at least in its world extent, for we had believed mankind too far advanced for such a chaos of brute force to recur, it overwhelms our vision. Man had been... more...

INTRODUCTION The number of books on the labor problem is indeed legion. The tragedy of the literature on any dynamic subject is that most of it is written by people who have time to do little else. Perhaps the best books on many subjects will never be written because those folk, who would be most competent to do the writing, through their vital connection with the problem at hand, never find the spare... more...

EDITOR'S PREFACE hen Mr. Plomer consented at my request to write a short history of English printing which should stop neither at the end of the fifteenth century, nor at the end of the sixteenth century, nor at 1640, but should come down, as best it could, to our own day, we were not without apprehensions that the task might prove one of some difficulty. How difficult it would be we had certainly... more...

LIFE AND MATTER AT WAR "Comprendre et ne pas s'indigner": this has been said to be the last word of philosophy. I believe none of it; and, had I to choose, I should much prefer, when in presence of crime, to give my indignation rein and not to understand. Happily, the choice has not to be made. On the contrary, there are forms of anger which, by a thorough comprehension of their objects,... more...