History Books

CHAPTER 1. SITUATION.NAME.GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY, ITS MOUNTAINS, LAKES, AND RIVERS.AIR AND METEORS.MONSOONS, AND LAND AND SEA-BREEZES.MINERALS AND FOSSILS.VOLCANOES.EARTHQUAKES.SURFS AND TIDES. If antiquity holds up to us some models, in different arts and sciences, which have been found inimitable, the moderns, on the other hand, have carried their inventions and improvements, in a variety... more...

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD        *       *       *       *       * SETH CONCKLIN. In the long list of names who have suffered and died in the cause of freedom, not one, perhaps, could be found whose efforts to redeem a poor family of slaves were more Christlike than Seth Concklin's, whose noble and daring spirit has been so long completely shrouded in mystery.... more...

CHAPTER I. WE LEAVE ONTARIO. We left my father's house at Tintern on the 7th of October, 1884, having been married on the 1st, for Parkdale, where we spent a few days with my husband's friends. We started for our home on the 10th by the Canadian Pacific Railway to Owen Sound, thence by boat to Port Arthur, and then on to Winnipeg by rail, where we stopped one night, going on the next day to... more...

A WISE WARNING. Dædalus Bismarck (Political Parent of Wilhelm Icarus). "My son, observe the middle path to fly, And fear to sink too low, or rise too high. Here the sun melts, there vapours damp your force, Between the two extremes direct your course. "Nor on the bear, nor on boötes gaze, Nor on sword-arm'd orion's dangerous rays: But follow me, thy guide, with watchful sight, And,... more...

CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHY OF ITALY. Italy is a long, narrow peninsula in the southern part of Europe, between the 38th and 46th parallels of north latitude. It is 720 miles long from the Alps to its southern extremity, and 330 miles broad in its widest part, i.e. from the Little St. Bernard to the hills north of Trieste. It has an area of nearly 110,000 square miles, about that of the State of Nevada. The... more...

RESULTS OF YORKTOWN.Sympathy between British Whigs and the revolutionary party in America.The 20th of March, 1782, the day which witnessed the fall of Lord North's ministry, was a day of good omen for men of English race on both sides of the Atlantic. Within two years from this time, the treaty which established the independence of the United States was successfully negotiated at Paris; and at the... more...

Consecration of the Nuncio at Saint James's Palace; his public ReceptionThe Duke of SomersetDissolution of the Parliament; Military Offences illegally punishedProceedings of the High Commission; the UniversitiesProceedings against the University of CambridgeThe Earl of MulgraveState of OxfordMagdalene College, OxfordAnthony Farmer recommended by the King for PresidentElection of the PresidentThe... more...

CHAP. I. Of the Chronology of the First Ages of the Greeks. All Nations, before they began to keep exact accounts of Time, have been prone to raise their Antiquities; and this humour has been promoted, by the Contentions between Nations about their Originals. Herodotus tells us, that the Priests ofEgyptreckoned from the Reign ofMenesto that ofSethon, who putSennacheribto flight, three hundred forty and... more...

his literary trifle, “A Message to Garcia,” was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington's Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March “Philistine.” The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to... more...

The writing of historical biography is properly a work of partnership, to which public credit is awarded too often in an inverse proportion to the labours expended. One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide. They are followed by those scholars and specialists in... more...