History Books

CANTO I CHILDHOOD I. THE GUYNEMERS In his book on Chivalry, the good Léon Gautier, beginning with the knight in his cradle and wishing to surround him immediately with a supernatural atmosphere, interprets in his own fashion the sleeping baby smiling at the angels. "According to a curious legend, the origin of which has not as yet been clearly discovered," he explains, "the child during... more...

Chapter I.Four different modes of life enumerated.There are four several methods by which the various communities into which the human race is divided obtain their subsistence from the productions of the earth, each of which leads to its own peculiar system of social organization, distinct in its leading characteristics from those of all the rest. Each tends to its own peculiar form of government,... more...

INTRODUCTION The author of this book, my brother, died in a French military hospital of the effects of exposure in the last fierce fighting that broke the Prussian power over Christendom; fighting for which he had volunteered after being invalided home. Any notes I can jot down about him must necessarily seem jerky and incongruous; for in such a relation memory is a medley of generalisation and detail,... more...

Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for; again fraud; again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men. Men who are separated from each other by thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of such men (on the one hand—Buddhists, whose law forbids the killing, not only of men, but of animals; on the other hand—Christians, professing the law of brotherhood and... more...

Chapter I. 1533-1536Greenwich.The hospital.Its inmates.Greenwich Observatory.Manner of taking time.Travelers, in ascending the Thames by the steamboat from Rotterdam, on their return from an excursion to the Rhine, have often their attention strongly attracted by what appears to be a splendid palace on the banks of the river at Greenwich. The edifice is not a palace, however, but a hospital, or,... more...

This is the story of the Virginia Company and only indirectly of the Virginia colony. Those who seek an account of the early years at Jamestown should turn to another number in this same series. Here the focus belongs to the adventurers in England whose hopes gave shape to the settlement at Jamestown, and whose determination brought the colony through the many disappointments of its first years. In... more...

CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD 1433-1440 On St. Andrew's Eve, in the year 1433, the good people of Dijon were abroad, eager to catch what glimpses they might of certain stately functions to be formally celebrated by the Duke of Burgundy. The mere presence of the sovereign in the capital of his duchy was in itself a gala event from its rarity. Various cities of the dominions agglomerated under his sway... more...

CHAPTER I AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR IMPLICATED IN STRIKE PLOTS—HIS RECALL—RAMIFICATIONS OF GERMAN CONSPIRACIES Public absorption in German propaganda was abating when attention became directed to it again from another quarter. An American war correspondent, James F. J. Archibald, a passenger on the liner Rotterdam from New York, who was suspected by the British authorities of being a bearer of dispatches... more...

GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. Signs of the Restoration.—Samuel Pepys in his Glory.—A Royal Company.—Pepys 'ready to Weep.'—The Playmate of Charles II.—George Villiers's Inheritance.—Two Gallant Young Noblemen.—The Brave Francis Villiers.—After the Battle of Worcester.—Disguising the King.—Villiers in Hiding.—He appears as a... more...

BOOK I.—CHAPTER I. Parentage of Cyrus the Younger. After the death of his father he is accused of plotting against his brother Artaxerxes, who imprisons him, but releases him on the intercession of his mother, and sends him back to his province, where he secretly collects forces, of which a large proportion are from Greece, to make war on his brother. 1. Of Darius and Parysatis were born two sons,... more...