History Books

The bishop of Valence, a prelate of the house of Savoy, and maternal uncle to the queen, was his chief minister, and employed every art to amass wealth for himself and his relations. Peter of Savoy, a brother of the same family, was invested in the honor of Richmond, and received the rich wardship of Earl Warrenne; Boniface of Savoy was promoted to the see of Canterbury: many young ladies were invited... more...

PREFACE I send out this little and fragmentary book with the consciousness that it calls for apology. I have had to write it hastily during a short period of leave. Yet it touches upon great subjects which deserve the reverence of leisurely writing. Ought I not, then, to have waited for the leisure of days after the war? I think not. Such days may never come. And, in any case, now is the time for the... more...

THE INVENTION OF A NEW RELIGION (1) (Note 1) The writer of this pamphlet could butskim over a wide subject. For full information seeVolume I. of Mr. J. Murdoch's recently-published"History of Japan," the only critical work on thatsubject existing in the English language. Voltaire and the other eighteenth-century philosophers, who held religions to be the invention of priests, have been... more...

Chapter I October 1786 to September 1787 The ships destined for Botany-Bay rendezvous at the Mother-Bank.--Leave that place, and proceed on the voyage.--The convicts on board one of the transports attempt an insurrection.--Are timely discovered, and the ring-leaders punished.--Arrived at Santa Cruz.--Transactions there.--Attempt of a convict to escape.--Description of Laguna, and the adjacent country.... more...

The colony had been established many years before any successful attempt had been made to penetrate into the interior of the country, by crossing the range of hills, known to the colonists as the Blue Mountains: these mountains were considered as the boundary of the settlements westward, the country beyond them being deemed inaccessible. The year 1813 proving extremely dry, the grass was nearly all... more...

CAPTAIN RICHARD INGLE, THE MARYLAND “PIRATE AND REBEL.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the American colonies, from Massachusetts to South Carolina, were at intervals subject to visitations of pirates, who were wont to appear suddenly upon the coasts, to pillage a settlement or attack trading vessels and as suddenly to take flight to their strongholds. Captain Kidd was long celebrated... more...

SOMETHING ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" "His life was a Romance of the most noble and beautiful kind." So says one who has known him from childhood, and into how many dull, hard and narrow lives has he not been the first to bring the element of Romance? He carried it about with him; it breathes through his writings, and this inevitable expression of it gives the saying of one of his... more...

INTRODUCTION The enclosure movement—the process by which the common-field system was broken down and replaced by a system of unrestricted private use—involved economic and social changes which make it one of the important subjects in English economic history. When it began, the arable fields of a community lay divided in a multitude of strips separated from each other only by borders of unplowed... more...

Chapter I. I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but... more...

To the Congress of the United States: Your assembling is clouded by a sense of public bereavement, caused by the recent and sudden death of Thomas A. Hendricks, Vice-President of the United States. His distinguished public services, his complete integrity and devotion to every duty, and his personal virtues will find honorable record in his country's history. Ample and repeated proofs of the... more...