History Books

CHAPTER 1. DEPARTURE AND PROVISIONING EN ROUTE. 1699. THE AUTHOR'S DEPARTURE FROM THE DOWNS. I sailed from the Downs early on Saturday, January 14, 1699, with a fair wind, in His Majesty's Ship the Roebuck; carrying but 12 guns in this voyage and 50 men and boys with 20 months' provision. We had several of the King's ships in company, bound for Spithead and Plymouth, and by noon we... more...

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: Sixty years have elapsed since the establishment of this Government, and the Congress of the United States again assembles to legislate for an empire of freemen. The predictions of evil prophets, who formerly pretended to foretell the downfall of our institutions, are now remembered only to be derided, and the United States of America at this... more...

Had the subscribers of this zealous league been content only to demand a toleration of the new opinions, however incompatible their pretensions might have been with the policy of the church of Rome, they would have had the praise of opposing tyrannical laws, enacted to support an establishment prejudicial to civil society: but it is plain that they carried their views much further; and their practice... 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.  SCOTLAND AND THE ROMANS. If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland as it was when the Romans under Agricola (81 A.D.) crossed the Border, we should recognise little but the familiar hills and mountains.  The rivers, in the plains, overflowed their present banks; dense forests of oak and pine, haunted by great red deer, elks, and boars, covered land that has long... more...

INTRODUCTION No one who is interested in the growth of human ideas or the origins of human society can afford to neglect Maine's Ancient Law. Published some fifty-six years ago it immediately took rank as a classic, and its epoch-making influence may not unfitly be compared to that exercised by Darwin's Origin of Species. The revolution effected by the latter in the study of biology was... more...

Having at different times collected what information I could obtain relating to the Province of New-Brunswick, I intended whenever I had a sufficient fund of correct materials, to publish them in such a shape as to diffuse a general knowledge of the Country, its productions, sources of wealth, &c. For this reason I had kept the different Counties, as well as the several subjects of which I intended... more...

You who take the trouble to read these reminiscences of the Santa FeTrail may be curious to know how much of them are literally true. The writer of this preface was intimately acquainted with the author of this book, and knows that he has not yielded to temptation to draw upon his imagination for the incidents related herein, but has adhered strictly to the truth. Truth is, sometimes, "stranger... more...

CHAPTER I. TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS. I. From the chronological point of view.—II. The silence preserved about that work by all writers till the fifteenth century.—III. The age of the MSS. containing the Annals. I. The Annals and the History of Tacitus are like two houses in ruins: dismantled of their original proportions they perpetuate the splendour of Roman historiography, as... more...

CHAPTER I. THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES. During the past three centuries the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's waste spaces has been not only the most striking feature in the world's history, but also the event of all others most far-reaching in its effects and its importance. The tongue which Bacon feared to use in his writings, lest they should remain... more...