History Books

WASHINGTON The brilliant historian of the English people [*] has written of Washington, that "no nobler figure ever stood in the fore-front of a nation's life." In any book which undertakes to tell, no matter how slightly, the story of some of the heroic deeds of American history, that noble figure must always stand in the fore-front. But to sketch the life of Washington even in the barest... more...

PREFACE The tract on the Personality of King Henry VI (as I may perhaps be allowed to call it), which is here reprinted, has hitherto been almost inaccessible to ordinary students. It is not known to exist at all in manuscript. We depend ultimately for our knowledge of it upon a printed edition issued by Robert Coplande of London, of which the date is said to be 1510. Of this there may be two copies in... more...

Chapter I. Childhood and Youth. 1475-1564Navarre.Catharine de Foix.About four hundred years ago there was a small kingdom, spreading over the cliffs and ravines of the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, called Navarre. Its population, of about five hundred thousand, consisted of a very simple, frugal, and industrious people. Those who lived upon the shore washed by the stormy waves of the Bay of Biscay... more...

In this book I have had old stories written down, as I have heard them told by intelligent people, concerning chiefs who have have held dominion in the northern countries, and who spoke the Danish tongue; and also concerning some of their family branches, according to what has been told me. Some of this is found in ancient family registers, in which the pedigrees of kings and other personages of high... more...

CHAPTER I SHEPHERDS ON THE BORDER OF THE DESERT Ancient Arabia is the home of that branch of the white race known as the Semitic. Here on the fertile fringes of well-watered land surrounding the great central desert lived the Phœnicians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Canaanites who, before the Hebrews, inhabited Palestine. So little intermixing of races has there been that the Arabs of... more...

Chapter I. B.C. 280-249Hannibal.Rome and Carthage.Hannibal was a Carthaginian general. He acquired his great distinction as a warrior by his desperate contests with the Romans. Rome and Carthage grew up together on opposite sides of the Mediterranean Sea. For about a hundred years they waged against each other most dreadful wars. There were three of these wars. Rome was successful in the end, and... more...

The Novel or Romance of Waverley made its way to the public slowly, of course, at first, but afterwards with such accumulating popularity as to encourage the Author to a second attempt. He looked about for a name and a subject; and the manner in which the novels were composed cannot be better illustrated than by reciting the simple narrative on which Guy Mannering was originally founded; but to which,... more...

PREFACE The late convulsions in Greece and Turkey, and the consequent revival of all the mis-statements which, during the War, flowed from ignorance or malice, render the publication of this book particularly opportune. Mr. Abbott deals with his subject in all its aspects, and presents for the first time to the British public a complete and coherent view of the complicated circumstances that made... more...

CHAPTER I. Origin of the Sac and Fox Indians—Removal to Green Bay—Their subjugation of the Illini confederacy—Their attack upon St. Louis in 1779—Col. George Rogers Clark relieves the town—Governor Harrison's letter—Maj. Forsyth's account of the conquest of the Illini—Death of the Sac chief Pontiac—Sac and Fox village on Rock river—Description of the surrounding... more...

INTRODUCTION (Voyages of Discovery and Early Explorations.) Schoolboys have been taught from their earliest years that Columbus discovered America. Few events in prehistoric times seem more probable now than that Columbus was not the first to discover it. The importance of his achievement over that of others lay in his own faith in his success, in his definiteness of purpose, and in the fact that he... more...