"Historian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these that led the last of the Stuarts to his fatal belief that he could safely defy a Church that had so severed itself from the English religion in doing the work of the Crown. The pen of a great historian has told for all time the Trial of the Seven Bishops, and though their protest was drawn up at Lambeth I may not venture to tell it here. Of all the seven in fact Sancroft was probably the least inclined to resistance, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... An uncritical age had received this forgery for five or six centuries without question. Doubt had been cast on it by Nicholas of Cusa and Reginald Peacock, but Valla demolished it. He showed that no historian had spoken of it; that there was no time at which it could have occurred; that it is contradicted by other contemporary acts; that the barbarous style contains {49} expressions of Greek, Hebrew, and German origin; that the testimony of numismatics is ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... whether they had been for him or against him, made every friend of religion incline to his favor. The same interposition in behalf of the poet's family and descendants spoke directly to the heart of every poet, orator, historian, and philosopher throughout the country, and tended to make all the lovers of literature his friends. His magnanimity, also, in deciding that one single friend of his in a family should save that family, instead of ordaining, as a more short-sighted ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... who should kill Diagoras of Melos, and of two talents to him who should bring him alive to Athens. The reason given was that he had scoffed at the Eleusinian Mysteries and divulged what took place at them. The date of this decree is given by a historian as 415 B.C.; that this is correct is seen from a passage in Aristophanes's contemporary drama, The Birds. Furthermore, one of the disciples of Aristotle, the literary historian Aristoxenus, states that no trace of impiety was to be found in the works of the dithyrambic poet Diagoras, and that, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the utmost. A thin line of gold round her neck, and the gold star on her breast, were her only ornaments. Her smooth soft hair piled up into a grand crown made a clear line about her brow. Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change—only to give stability to one ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... full of organic particles capable of life and growth is now a matter of absolute certainty. It has long been a matter of speculation, but there is a great difference between a fact and a speculation. An eminent historian has recently deprecated the distinction which is conventionally drawn between science and knowledge, but, nevertheless, such a distinction is useful, and will continue to be drawn. A man's head may be filled with various things. His inclination may lead him, for example, to study archaic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... Wherever jealousy or envy are strongly aroused, admiration is impossible, and so it comes about that men find it easy to praise men in other noncompetitive fields or for qualities in which they are not competing. Thus an author may strongly admire an athlete or a novelist may praise the historian; a beautiful woman admires another for her learning, though with some reservation in her praise, and a successful business man admires the self-sacrificing scientist, albeit there is a little complacency ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... which antiquity believed, whether of reality or fable, on the subject of that magnificent warrior, who was the proudest boast of Europe and their chivalry, and with whose dreadful name the Saracens, according to a historian of their own country, were wont to rebuke their startled horses. "Do you think," said they, "that King Richard is on the track, that you stray so wildly from it?" The most curious register of the history of King Richard is an ancient romance, translated originally from the Norman; ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... river by a handful of frontiersmen. Mr. Otis takes the reader on that famous expedition from the arrival of Major Clarke's force at Corn Island, until Kaskaskia was captured. He relates that part of Simon Kenton's life history which is not usually touched upon either by the historian or the story teller. This is one of the most entertaining books for young people which has ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... dishonor the most noble matter by treating it in a common manner. A great and noble mind, on the contrary, will ennoble even a common matter, and it will do so by superadding to it something spiritual and discovering in it some aspect in which this matter has greatness. Thus, for example, a vulgar historian will relate to us the most insignificant actions of a hero with a scrupulousness as great as that bestowed on his sublimest exploit, and will dwell as lengthily on his pedigree, his costume, and his household as on his projects and his enterprises. He will relate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that stuck to it. Every one had heard of Mrs. Grote as "the origin of the word grotesque." Every one had laughed at the story of Reeve approaching Mrs. Grote, with his usual somewhat florid manner, asking in his literary dialect how her husband the historian was: "And how is the learned Grotius?" "Pretty well, thank you, Puffendorf! " One winced at the word, as though it were ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... people of Germany. In recent times, the literature of the two countries has almost grown into one. Lord Macaulay's History has not only been translated into German, but reprinted at Leipzig in the original; and it is said to have had a larger sale in Germany than the work of any German historian. Baron Humboldt and Baron Bunsen address their writings to the English as much as to the German public. The novels of Dickens and Thackeray are expected with the same impatience at Leipzig and Berlin as in London. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... contrary to the law of nature and of nature's God. It was to punish sins of the flesh that the Deluge was sent, which destroyed nearly the whole human race. "All flesh had corrupted its way," says the sacred historian. It was to punish unlawful indulgence of lust that Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed by fire from heaven; and the memory of these guilty cities is preserved in the very name of Sodomy. Onan, as ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... being published. Torrubia mentions a manuscript called Descubrimiento, conquista, pacificacion y poblacion de ias Islas Philipinas, which was dated 1607, and dedicated to "his Catholic Majesty, King Don Phelipe III, our sovereign." Morga combined the three functions of historian, politician, and soldier, and his character is many sided and complex. He is spoken of in high terms as an historian, and Rizal, as well as Blumentritt, exalts him above all other ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... Gibbon, historian and philosopher, was made of common clay (for authors are made of clay, like plain mortals), and he could not quite forgive Madame Necker for not being embarrassed on meeting her former lover, neither could he forgive Necker for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... judgments on Burnet, quoted by your correspondents (Vol. i., pp. 40. 120. 181. 341. 493.), I find no reference to the opinion of his contemporary, Bishop Nicolson. That writer takes a somewhat partial view of the character and merits of the historian, and canvasses, by anticipation, much of what has been urged against him by our more modern critics. But, as the weight of authorities already cited appears to militate against Burnet, I am induced to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... eminent historian, lived in Washington for many years during the latter part of his life. His house was always an attractive and hospitable one. I had many interesting conversations with him, mainly on historical subjects. Both of us carefully eschewed politics, for to the end of his ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... servitude. One employed by Mr. Cripps in the Seven Korles was represented by the Cooroowe people to have served the king of Kandy in the same capacity sixty years before; and amongst the papers left by Colonel Robertson (son to the historian of "Charles V."), who held a command in Ceylon in 1799, shortly after the capture of the island by the British, I have found a memorandum showing that a decoy was then attached to the elephant establishment at Matura, which the records proved to have served ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... branches of social science comes true, the sociologist must communicate to his elementary classes a sense of the relations between his view of social phenomena and the aspects of the same phenomena which the historian, the economist, the political ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... of the north; and both were baptized in the waters of Christianity. It was a charming period for all lovers of romance: it was the childhood of modern Europe. But I must warn you that it is in vain to search for the names of my emperors in chronological tables. They lived at a time when the historian was somewhat at a discount, and the minstrel wrote the only records, with his harp and voice, upon the memory of his hearers; save that here and there a solitary monk wore out his days in copying the treasures of antiquity, and used his imagination in embellishing the ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... quieter days, the patient, trustful attitude of this colony of Natal will impress the historian. The devotion of its people to their Sovereign and to their motherland should endear them to all good Englishmen, and win them general respect and sympathy; and full indemnity to all individual colonists who have suffered loss must stand as an Imperial ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... itself, in spite of the progress it has made, would find it difficult to discover a flaw. Well, what Victor Hugo has done for mediaeval Paris, M. Ernest Feydeau has attempted for the Thebes of the Pharaohs, and his restoration, as complete as it is possible for it to be, and which no historian had attempted, stands out before us as sharply as a plan in relief, and with all the perspective of a panorama. Thebes of the Hundred Gates, as Homer called it,—antiquity has told us nothing more about this ancestress of capitals; but M. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... warm partisan of the Medici. He was a cousin of Maria Salviati, Cosimo's mother. It was rumoured that he caused the historian Francesco Guicciardini's death by poison. We find him godfather ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... No historian worthy of the name has as yet undertaken to treat the Inquisition from this objective standpoint. In the seventeenth century, a scholarly priest, Jacques Marsollier, canon of the Uzes, published at Cologne (Paris), in 1693, a Histoire de l'Inquisition ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... reach his enemies, expected to suffer heavy losses in a frontal attack, for there seemed to be no way in which they could be outflanked. But Napoleon's lucky star once more came to his aid, in an unexpected way, which I do not believe has been related by any historian, although I can vouch for ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... of the poor lieutenant who bore their name. A word of kindness or acknowledgment, or a single glance of approbation, might have changed Esmond's opinion of the great man; and instead of a satire, which his pen cannot help writing, who knows but that the humble historian might have taken the other side of panegyric? We have but to change the point of view, and the greatest action looks mean; as we turn the perspective-glass, and a giant appears a pigmy. You may describe, but who can tell whether your ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... little book should take "NOTES," and be a medley of all that men are doing—that the Notes of the writer and the reader, whatever be the subject-matter of his studies, of the antiquary, and the artist, the man of science, the historian, the herald, and the genealogist, in short, Notes relating to all subjects but such as are, in popular discourse, termed either political or polemical, should meet in our columns in such juxta-position, as to give fair play to any ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... dirt-cult, collectively, as the Great Unwashed. Again, Dr. Johnson's biographies lovingly preserve the personal habits of most of the loftiest and sweetest poets that ever trod English soil; and think what a large percentage of those Muse-invokers, according to their historian, carried a fair quantity of that soil perennially on their hides. And speaking of the Diogenes of Fleet Street himself, we know, on good authority, that his antipathy to the Order of the Bath caused him ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... dramatist, historian, and novelist, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on May 2, 1779. He was trained for a commercial career in the Greenock Custom House, and in the office of a merchant in that seaport. Removing to London, Gait engaged in business ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... something of an historian, was able to illustrate this prophecy by reference to antiquity. When the life of the senses and understanding reached its height, as it did in the last stages of the Roman Empire, a reaction came. St. Francis of Assisi was succeeded by Alexander VI.; Luther soon followed ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... submission of Scotland in 1303, at the end of Wallace's heroic struggle, Edward I undertook to complete the union of that kingdom with England. "But the great difficulty," says a historian, "in dealing with the Scots was that they never knew when they were conquered; and just when Edward hoped that his scheme for union was carried out, they rose ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Red Lion Fields, the site of the Square, and Jonas Hanway, traveller and philanthropist, also a voluminous writer, but who will be best remembered as the first man in England to carry an umbrella, died here in 1786. Sharon Turner, historian, came here after his marriage in 1795, and Lord Chief Justice Raymond, who held his high office in the reign of the first and second Georges, lived in the Square. But a later association will, perhaps, be more interesting to most people: for about three years previously ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... military posts throughout this vast valley that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the French," says a historian. ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... might be said regarding this great man, but we must now leave him to the active duties of a busy and useful life, surrounded by his family in the comforts of an English home and enjoying the true friendship of the philosopher, the historian, and the poet. Among the most intimate in this list was Sir Walter Scott—the friend of Mrs. Bailie, the foster mother of Sir Howard. Doubtless the name of Douglas was sufficient to awaken in the mind ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... [Footnote 3: That learned historian Mr S—n, in the third number of his criticism on our author, takes great pains to explode this passage. "It is," says he, "difficult to guess what giants are here meant, unless the giant Despair in the Pilgrim's Progress, or the giant Greatness in the Royal Villain; for ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... started out to tell you about Muttra, which is a very ancient place. It is mentioned by Pliny, the Latin historian, Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, and other writers previous to the Christian era, and is associated with the earliest Aryan migrations. Here Krishna, the divine herdsman, was born. He spent his childhood tending cattle in the village of Gokul, where are the ruins of several ancient temples ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... A historian of our own time has said that England in the twelfth century was the paradise of scholars. Dr. Stubbs imagined a foreign student making a tour through the country and endeavouring to ascertain its ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, an historian conjectures, the victim's blood, a basin has been hollowed, but in our time it serves more tamely to seat those tourists who wish for an uninterrupted view of the Gurnard's Head. Not that any one objects to a blue print dress and a white apron in a ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... others whom I shall have to mention. The existence of a society intended to cultivate the freest discussion of all the great topics excited some suspicion when, about 1834, there was a talk of abolishing tests. It was then warmly defended by Thirlwall, the historian, who said that many of its members had become ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... this struggle the most memorable of those great conflicts by which ideas are rooted into society, these pen-pictures of the humblest events, the merest routine details of the life led in winning national unity and freedom, will be priceless. Not for the historian's sake alone, do I say, keep those letters, but for your sakes who receive them, and ours who write them. The next skirmish may stop our pulses forever, and our letters, full of love for you, will be our only legacy besides ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... able to understand the methods and to acquire the knowledge of the subjects he required in his official career. History was his favourite study; he never attempted, like some statesmen, to write; but if his knowledge of history was not as profound as that of a professed historian, he was afterwards to shew as a parliamentary debater that he had a truer perception of the importance of events than many great scholars who have devoted their lives to historical research, and he was never at a loss for an ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... not to be the case, we shall then be in a position to inquire whether modern discoveries afford us any really valuable light, and can assist us to form a somewhat more extended and accurate idea of the processes described by the sacred historian. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... interposition of heaven, to punish him for his impiety in daring to assume what was then considered the peculiar attribute and prerogative of supreme divinity. In fact, the rumor circulated, and one historian has recorded it as true, that Alladius was struck by the lightning which accompanied the storm, and thus killed at once by the terrible agency which he had presumed to counterfeit, before the inundation of the palace ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... truth or probability. We have names of Persian kings, which a Persian could not pronounce; we have facts related they apparently never knew; and we have customs ascribed to them, which contradict every distinguishing characteristic of an Eastern people. The story of Lysimachus and one Greek historian may indeed, with justice, be applied to many others. This prince, in the partition of Alexander's empire, became King of Thrace: he had been one of the most active of that conqueror's commanders; and was present ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... added; but the total revolution in the system will now lead the enquirer into the state of society rather than the management of gangs and penitentiaries. The despatches, which fill volumes of blue books, are rather transactions of penal philosophers than trustworthy guides to the historian of transportation; and the writer has not relied exclusively on these authorities, even when he has quoted them—a discretion amply justified by ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... If in one band Collected, stood the people all, who e'er Pour'd on Apulia's happy soil their blood, Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war When of the rings the measur'd booty made A pile so high, as Rome's historian writes Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt The grinding force of Guiscard's Norman steel, And those the rest, whose bones are gather'd yet At Ceperano, there where treachery Branded th' Apulian name, or where beyond Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... education to work. In 1843 the Rev. Edward Thomson, afterwards President of Ohio Wesleyan University, was appointed Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. He only stayed one year; and was succeeded by the Rev. Andrew Ten Brook, in after years Librarian and historian of the University. In 1842, Abram Sager, M.D., afterwards a member of the Medical Faculty, was made Professor of Zooelogy and Botany, while Silas H. Douglas, M.D., who was later to organize the Chemical Laboratory, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... roads leading from the Mediterranean to the northern sources of tin and amber, and the establishment of frontier outposts to protect the land boundaries of Italy; this represented a bold policy of inland expansion for that day. The modern historian sees in that step the momentous advance of history beyond the narrow limits of the Mediterranean basin, and its gradual inclusion of all the Atlantic countries of Europe, through whose maritime enterprise the historical horizon was stretched ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... not like to repeat this talk here. But it is an unfortunate fact that goodness and self-sacrificing piety do not always go with practical wisdom. The novelist, like the historian, must set down things as he finds them. A man who talks in consecrated phrases is yet in the poll-parrot state ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... important work the same learned historian discusses this question at great length. He analyses all the doubtful pedigrees and origins claimed by the leading clans. Regarding the Fitzgerald theory he says, "But the most remarkable of these spurious origins is that ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... Mohammedans have been received into the Jain Church. Neither is theistic. Both believe in some form of reincarnation, in karma and in the periodical appearance of beings possessed of superhuman knowledge and called indifferently Jinas or Buddhas. The historian may therefore be disposed to regard the two religions as not differing much more than the varieties of Protestant Dissenters to be found in Great Britain. But the theologian will perceive real differences. One of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... nothing of history. A present grievance, or what seems such, swallows up in their minds all other considerations; their little bottle of oil is to still the raging waves of the whole human ocean; their system, a thing that the historian has seen before, perhaps, in many ages, is to reconcile all diversities. Then they would persuade you that this class of men is wholly good, that wholly bad; or that there is no difference between good and ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... three whose names are well known to Bostonians, Lord Lyndhurst, Josiah Quincy, and Sidney Bartlett, were remarkable for retaining their faculties in their extreme age. That patriarch of our American literature, the illustrious historian of his country, is still with us, his birth ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... insipid, but positively distasteful. Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... England, and this upon the testimony of an Englishman! Now that British preachers and pamphleteers are agonizing over Mohammedan atrocities in Armenia, let us see what the latter thought of Christian domination in India. "If," says the Mussulman historian of those unhappy times, "if to so many military qualifications, they (English) knew how to join the art of government—if they exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude in relieving the people of God, as they do ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... these had never been to sea before. Among the hundred was a notary to draw up all papers of ownership (when it came to dividing Columbus's tenth part of the gold, precious stones, etc., that should be found); a historian, to keep an official record of all that should occur; a metallurgist, to examine ores; and an orientalist, learned in foreign tongues, who would interpret what the western peoples might say to the newcomers who claimed the heathen lands for Spain. ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... is to be found in the Latin pages of the Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, who died in the year 1208. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the French author, Francis de Belleforest, introduced the fable into a collection of novels, which were translated into English, and printed in a small quarto black letter volume, under ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... sinewy logic. The writer is plainly in earnest. If over confident, he has no petty vanity, and at least believes every word that he says. Certain limitations are at once obvious. Mill, as a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, had not had much time to spare for purely philosophic reading. He was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business, wishing to strike at the root of the superstitions to which his political opponents ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... one, meets the specifications of this prophecy; it points unmistakably to the United States of America. Again and again the thought, almost the exact words, of the sacred writer have been unconsciously employed by the orator and the historian in describing the rise and growth of this nation. The beast was seen "coming up out of the earth;" and according to the translators, the word here rendered "coming up" literally signifies "to grow or spring ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... his command was much jaded when at eight o'clock he came in sight of Morgan's outposts: notwithstanding this, however, he determined, as was fully expected by those who knew his disposition and mode of warfare, to attack the American lines forthwith. It must be left to the historian to tell how the battle raged with varying fortunes until Howard's gallant Marylanders taught the British regulars that the despised provincials had learned the trick of the bayonet, and decided the issue of the day. Up to this moment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... historian of Mathematics has a strong bias against Cardan, gives him credit for the discovery of the fictae radices, but on the other hand he attributes to Vieta Cardan's discovery of the method of changing a complete cubic equation into one wanting the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... The learned historian of Down and Connor gives an interesting account of the only Norman colony of any extent in the province of Ulster. I have already spoken of this. Notwithstanding the very small Norman admixture, in the main the Catholics of the North are the most pure-blooded Celts in Ireland. And ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... went to Flatbush. He there unfurled the flag of England in front of the house of the sheriff. Curiosity assembled a large concourse to witness what was transpiring. Scott addressed them at much length. "He jabbered away," writes a Dutch historian, "in English, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... author does himself the justice to believe that in writing this narrative,—the serious occupation of his exile,—he has had constantly present to his mind the exalted responsibility of the historian. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... before the public. I shall give authentic documents. If all persons who have approached Napoleon, at any time and in any place, would candidly record what they saw and heard, without passion, the future historian would be rich in materials. It is my wish that he who may undertake the difficult task of writing the history of Napoleon shall find in my notes information useful to the perfection of his work. There he will at least find truth. I have not the ambition to wish that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... states that there were authentic records of as many as 12 at a birth. Throughout the ages in which superstitious distortion of facts and unquestioning credulity was unchecked, all sorts of incredible accounts of prolificity are found. Martin Cromerus, a Polish historian, quoted by Pare, who has done some good work in statistical research on this subject, says a that Margaret, of a noble and ancient family near Cracovia, the wife of Count Virboslaus, brought forth 36 living children ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... The historian of the future will surely find in this sign proof of how widespread, during several epochs, was a certain notion of national regeneration, and it will not surprise him that this idea, which was launched in the aim to reform and regenerate the Constitution and the Spanish ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... of a domino title. So likewise the pictorial historian is merry over 'Dewlap alliances' in his description of the society of that period. He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau. Writers of pretension would seem to have an animus against individuals of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was bent upon making one more attempt to conquer Greece, and when the time arrived for commencing his preparations, he called a grand council of the generals, the nobles, and the potentates of the realm, to lay his plans before them. The historian who narrated these proceedings recorded the debate that ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... were unnavigable and frozen" (Pius II., Cosmographia in Asiae et Europae eleganti descriptione, etc., Parisiis, 1509, leaf 2). Probably it is the same occurrence which is mentioned by the Spanish historian Gomara (Historia general de las Indias, Saragoca, 1552-53), with the addition, that the Indians stranded at Luebeck in the time of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190). Gomara also states that he met with the exiled Swedish ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... topsy-turvy, and conjure the spirit out of much long-established facetiousness. Pictures of poets in garrets will soon not be understood; bathos will be at a premium! the bard will be known, not by the brownness of his beaver, but by the gold band that encircles it. The historian shall go about in black plush breeches; and the great inspired writers of the age "have a livery more guarded than their fellows." Authors shall soon be, indeed, even more easily known by their dress. How often, too, shall we see Mr. Murray or Mr. Colburn descending "with the nine" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... historian, who tells the story in Latin, "is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep. For verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally (that is word for word) translated out of one language into another without losing much of their ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and not an historian; so it is quite natural that he should have exaggerated everything with poetic licence. Moreover, the events he describes are so marvellous that many scholars have long doubted the very existence of Troy, and have considered the city to be a mere invention of the poet's fancy. I venture to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... during the last few years—in the most sensational crimes, in the most mysterious affairs, and, whether by chance or voluntarily, he had played a real part in them. He had not been content to take up the position of onlooker and historian only. ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... salvation, and might be corrected, or left to a natural dissolution, when the crisis had been passed and the demagogue overthrown. The instrument chosen by the senate was Marcus Livius Drusus,[682] the tribune who had threatened to interpose his veto on the franchise bill. There is no reason why the historian should not treat the political attitude of this rival of Gracchus as seriously as it seems to have been treated by Drusus's illustrious son, who reproduced, and perhaps borrowed from his father's career, the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... at once did three great worthies shine, Historian, poet, and a choice divine; Then let him rest in undisturbed dust, Until the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... confusion which reigns around them in their own ranks. Thus, for example, D'Aubigne says, "It were easy to demonstrate that the doctrine of the reformers did not take away from man the liberty of a moral agent, and reduce him to a passive machine." Now, how does the historian so easily demonstrate that the doctrine of necessity, as held by the reformers, does not deny the liberty of a moral agent? Why, by simply producing the old effete notion of the liberty of the will, as consisting in ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... universal favorite. Born in 1784 in Jamaica, the son of a wealthy land-owner, he was sent to England as a lad, educated there, and in 1815 he set out for a tour of the continent. In 1817, in Paris, he met and became intimate with Professor George Ticknor of Harvard University, the Spanish historian; and through this friendship Mr. Kenyon came to know many of the distinguished Americans of the day, including Emerson, Longfellow, and Willis. Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Landor were among Kenyon's most intimate circle; and there is a record of one of his ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... brilliant man of letters is left out in the cold. Yet it is the man of letters who chronicles the age, and who will do so, we may be sure, according to his own experience. As the King treats the essayist, the romancist or the historian, so will these recording scribes treat ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... ever before in the history of the country. It had simply made a new claim which the North could not allow. The abolitionists were few; the Northerners who said that slavery should not be extended were many.... I don't believe there is an American historian of standing who does not say that the propositions of the South, on which the North took issue in 1861, were these: (1) Slavery shall go into all territory hereafter acquired; (2) We will secede ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... and an imagination overawed and controlled. We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentick narrative, and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence as suppresses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion seems not only useless, but, in ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Athanasius wanted it put into the creed, but the bishops in general saw no need of this. A heresy so easily overcome could not be very dangerous. There were only half a dozen Arians left in the council, and too precise a definition might lead to dangers on the Sabellian side. At this point the historian Eusebius came forward. Though neither a great man nor a clear thinker, he was the most learned student of the East. He had been a confessor in the persecution, and now occupied an important see, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... after my resignation of the Cornell Presidency in 1885. "Tom Brown" at sea; sundry stories of his. Southwest of England. Visit to the historian Freeman at Wells. The Bishop and his palace. The Judge's dinner. The Squires in the Court of Quarter Sessions. A Gladstonian meeting; Freeman's speech; his defense of the last Abbot of Glastonbury. Bishop Bickersteth at Heavitree and Exeter. The caves at Torquay and their lessons. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... entirely different interpretation of letters, scenes and actions would have been made from that which Miss Anthony declared to be the true one, the author must confess that hereafter all biographies will be read by her with a certain amount of skepticism—a doubt whether the historian has drawn correct conclusions from apparent premises, and a disbelief that one individual can state accurately the motives which ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the letter ascribed to Verrazzano, was written by him, has ever been produced. The letter itself has never been exhibited, or referred to in any authentic document, or mentioned by any contemporary or later historian as being in existence, and although it falls within the era, of modern history, not a single fact which it professes to describe relating to the fitting out of the expedition, the voyage, or the discovery, is corroborated by other testimony, whereby its genuineness might ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... dependent on opinion and presumption, or judgment based upon probability, when experience and demonstration leave us in the lurch and we are, nevertheless, challenged to a decision by vital needs which brook no delay. The judge and the historian must convince themselves from the reports of witnesses concerning events which they have not themselves observed; and everyone is compelled by the interests of life, of duty, and of eternal salvation to form conclusions concerning things which lie beyond the limits of his ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... sculptor's art, more than on the historian's page, lives the most glorious memory of the classic past. A visit to the Vatican by torchlight endears even these poor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... we may not guess, since we may not pry into the secrets of a family, or know anything of the conferences which a husband may hold with his wife in regard to the management of the younger members of the household. As an authentic historian, I am bound to limit myself to the simple fact, and the fact is that Mrs. Plausaby stated to Albert her opinion that it would be a nice thing for him to go and see Cousin John's folks at Glenfleld. She made the suggestion with characteristic maladroitness, at a moment when ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... historian I must confess that none of these assertions were quite true. We marched neither steadily, nor shoulder to shoulder, nor blade by blade. We straggled all over the road, and kept step only when the sergeant ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... written in Latin in the early years of the 13th Century A.D. by the Danish historian Saxo, of whom little is known except ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... when the movements of armies are evidently made subservient, in divine Providence, to the progress of the Gospel; and the history of missions to the Oriental Churches would be imperfect without some notice of the Crimean war of 1854 and 1855. The historian of that war has shown, that it originated in the desire of Nicholas, Czar of Russia, to secure certain rights in the "holy places" at Jerusalem (in which he was opposed by the Roman Catholic government of France), ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... our royal palaces, have been described in print with tolerable accuracy, and some good accounts are to be met with of the pictures at Woburn, and Blenheim, and Althorpe, and many of the residences of the nobility which can boast their local historian. We are, however, in most cases obliged to content ourselves with the meagre information afforded by county topography, or such works as the Beauties of England, Neale's Country Seats, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... W. McCann, in his great volume "God or Gorilla," shows that H. G. Wells, the novelist alias historian(?), in his "Outline of History," uses 103 pages to show man's descent from an ape-like ancestry, and employs 96 expressions of doubt or uncertainty, such as "probably," "perhaps," "possibly," etc. He ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... and useful work, but spoiled by excessive adulation of the Emperor. Gibbon is of opinion that it was written with the object of conciliating Justinian, who had been dissatisfied with the too independent judgment of the "Histories." If this be the case, we can understand why the historian avenged himself in the "Secret History," which is a veritable chronique scandaleuse of the Byzantine Court from 549-562. Justinian and Theodora, Belisarius and his wife Antonina, are painted in the ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. The bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms. Even in our own time, the cumbersome records which we prepare for the future historian, in our Press, our law courts, our Government offices, and even in our fiction and poetry, suffer from the same one-sidedness. They hand down to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... 'Indeed! sir, really!' He assured my aunt that German ladies were most agreeable, cultivated persons, extremely domesticated, retiring; the encomiums of the Roman historian were as well deserved by them in the present day as they had been in the past; decidedly, on the whole, Peterborough would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the world in the annals of military achievement, the resourceful, courageous, beloved leader of a band of fighters from the Kansas prairies who were never defeated, never driven back, never daunted by circumstances. Great were the pen of that historian that could fittingly set forth all the deeds of daring and acts of humanity of every company under every brave captain, for they "all made history, and left ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... have done my duty as humble historian of the March family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it. Daisy and Demi had now arrived at years of discretion, for in this fast age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too, which is ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... San Francisco, over which the Rev. Olympia Brown presided. Mrs. Colby went out some time before the meeting and made the arrangements. Among the distinguished people who took part were Mrs. May Wright Sewall, founder of the International Council of Women, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, historian of woman suffrage and biographer of Susan B. Anthony; Mrs. Adelaide Johnson, the noted sculptor; the eminent Mrs. Elizabeth Lowe Watson of California; Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe of Tacoma, president of the National Council of Women Voters, and Mrs. Mary G. Bellamy, former member of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... greatness; but like that early rival, he, too, died in exile in France. Perhaps of all the managers of the grand masque the scholarly pedant, John Selden, had the greatest share of earthly satisfaction. Not the least fortunate of the party was the historian of "the pomp and glory, if not the vanity of the show," who having survived the Commonwealth and witnessed the Restoration, was permitted to retain his paternal estate, and in his last days could tell his numerous descendants how his old chum, Edward Hyde, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... (the first English general,) was usually styled Joannes Acutus, from the sharpness, it is said, of his needle or his sword. Fuller, the historian, says, he "turned his needle into a sword, and his thimble into a shield. He was the son of a tanner, and was bound apprentice to a tailor, and was pressed for a soldier." He served under Edward III., and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... force. A few scattered into Macedonia, but the great bulk of the army and all that was left of the fleet surrendered. Nineteen legions and more than ten thousand cavalry thus came over to Octavius and took service under him. This was the real victory of Actium. In the words of the Italian historian Ferrero, "it was a victory gained without fighting, and Antony was defeated in this supreme struggle, not by the valor of his adversary or by his own defective strategy or tactics, but by the hopeless inconsistency ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... to show that in assigning a more definite value to the terms in question—a proceeding in which we have the countenance of nearly every modern historian—we do not detach them from their original acceptation; at most we give them more constancy and precision than the colloquial language of the Greeks and Romans demanded.[12] The expressions Khasdim and Chaldaei were used in the Bible and by classic authors mainly to denote the inhabitants ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Zoo is now being exhibited "Three White-tailed Gnus,"—"The Latest Gnus." with the best possible intelligence,—"and a Black-capped Gibbon." This last is evidently a descendant of the great historian; though, if this exemplifies "the survival of the fittest," where are the others of the race? Then "Black-capped" sounds ominous, as if this particular Gibbon stood self-condemned, and was soon to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... Spanish rule. This was on account of the scholarship, the influence, the literary accomplishments, and the personal distinction of the man. Dr. Rizal was easily the foremost writer his race and country has produced. He was a poet, novelist, political essayist, and historian, and his execution was for the crime of loving his country, opposing the Spaniards, criticising and lampooning the priests. He is called the Tagalo Martyr, for he was of the tribe of Malay origin, the most numerous and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... into the hands of one who knows not only the plants themselves, but also their literary history; and it may be said that Shakespeare's flowers now for the first time find an historian."—Field. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... years by Gouverneur Morris,—the Duc de Montpensier, the Duke of Kent, John Singleton Copley, subsequently, so eminent as jurist and statesman, Kosciusko, Count Niemcewicz, the novelist, poet, dramatist, and historian, were but a few. All travellers of distinction brought letters to Hamilton, for, not excepting Washington, he was to Europeans the most prosilient of Americans. If there had been little decrease of hard work during these years, there ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... yourself. Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter. The king is a great character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal wives) writing the History of Apemama in an account-book; his description of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself, as 'about sweethearts, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imagine in me. If he is like the average American, he has really once had some nodding acquaintance with the facts, but history is apt to forsake you on the scene of it, and to come lagging back when it is too late. In this psychological experience you feel the need of help which the peripatetic historian supplies to the groups of perhaps rather oblivious than ignorant tourists of all nations in all languages, but preferably English. We Anglo-Saxons seem to be the most oblivious or most ignorant; but I would not slight our occasionally available culture any ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... but one common impulse. It can only serve to retard the common impulse, or destroy the unity of the public will. If it be hereditary and aristocratic, it supposes an aristocracy pre-existent in, and acknowledged by, the state. Where was this aristocracy in 1791? Where is it now? A modern historian says, "In the nobility, in the presence of social inequalities." But the Revolution was made against the nobility, and in order to level social hereditary inequalities. It was to ask of the Revolution itself to make a counter-revolution. Besides, these pretended divisions ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... ago, Mr. Manuel Elzaburu, President of the San Juan Provincial Atheneum, in a public speech, gave it as his opinion that the modern historian of Puerto Rico had yet to appear. This was said, not in disparagement of the island's only existing history, but rather as a confirmation of the general opinion that the book which does duty as such is incorrect ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... in accordance with a New York custom of great antiquity, made familiar to you, no doubt, by that grave historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, who gives several graphic accounts of such cloudy ruminations on the part of ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... of 'soldiership' brought to light by the last war. Nor can any other war furnish an individual example that will surpass him in fiery concentration. In battle he is the very soul of vehement action—the incarnate wrath of the storm. No historian can ever portray the man so truly as did the remarkable victory of Cedar Creek—a result solely of his extraordinary power. The marvelous will-force with which he could hurl himself in the front of battle, and infuse his own spirit of unconquerable daring into the ranks, is phenomenal, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... incident in a career which for twenty years had claimed and held their interest. People in these days are apt to imagine, because Defoe wrote the most fascinating of books for children, that he was himself simple, child-like, frank, open, and unsuspecting. He has been so described by more than one historian of literature. It was not so that he appeared to his contemporaries, and it is not so that he can appear to us when we know his life, unless we recognise that he took a child's delight in beating with ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... linguistic historian she has no difficulty in exposing Swift's ignorance, and in establishing her claim that if there is any refining or ascertaining of the English language to be done, the antiquarian scholars must be consulted. But it is when she writes as a literary critic, defending ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... any living faith. Milton undoubtedly believed most fully in the actual existence of all his chief personages, natural and supernatural, and was sure that, however he might have indulged his imagination in the invention of incidents, he had represented character with the fidelity of a conscientious historian. His religious views, moreover, are such as he could never have thought it right to publish if he had not been intimately convinced of their truth. He has strayed far from the creed of Puritanism. He is an Arian; his Son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent, inferior, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... the aforesaid cousin Walter may have been a better raconteur than historian; still, local tradition vigorously opposes any lessening of the number of the countess's years, pinning its faith rather on one Hayman, who says that she presented herself at the English court at the age of one hundred and forty years, to petition for her jointure, which ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be seen, together with every historian who has referred to the League,—treat of the Five Nations as always having been one people. A very different view, based principally on archaeology, has however been recently accepted by at least several of the leading authorities on the subject,—the view that the Iroquois ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... father of modern chemistry, and Hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have Principal Robertson, James Watt, the engineer, Adam Ferguson, the historian, Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting for subject. And of his own immediate contemporaries—the cycle of Walter Scott—he has left an almost complete gallery. Nor were his sitters less fortunate. If they brought fine heads to be painted, he painted them ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... is a feature of our dynasty; And no historian who has ever studied The traits peculiar to the family tree On which the Hohenzollern genus budded In all that noble list Has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... oblivion, he joins sound doctrine upon sincerity of style. "Nothing is lasting that is feigned," said Ben Jonson; "it will have another face ere long." Long after Lucian's day an artificial dignity, accorded specially to work of the historian, bound him by its conventions to an artificial style. He used, as Johnson said of Dr. Robertson, "too big words and too many of them." But that was said by Johnson in his latter days, with admission of like fault ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... fresh European infusion into its Anglo-Indian society; steam navigation and an overland communication between England and her Eastern empire were bringing into operation new elements of mutation, and the domestic historian of India (as Miss Roberts may be appropriately termed) felt a natural curiosity to observe the progress of these changes, and to compare the British India of 1830 with that of 1840. With a view of enlarging the sphere of her knowledge of the country, and of deriving every practicable ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... A modern historian(1) who uses little restraint when writing of Roderigo Borgia says of him that "he was a man of neither much energy nor determined will," and further that "the firmness and energy wanting to his character were, however, often replaced by the constancy ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Press. He left an interesting autobiographical fragment relating to the history of this time, but it is not likely to be printed for some years. As an historical document it is valuable, but must be used with caution by the future historian. A copy of it was for some time in my possession, but I was bound by a promise ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of life to their flocks, preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian, too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... your servants. Mr. Monday is my man in fair or foul, and so, I flatter myself, will be Sir George Templemore; and as for Mr. Dodge, if he stay behind, why the Active Inquirer will miss a notable paragraph, for there shall be no historian to the expedition, but one of my own appointing. Mr. Saunders shall have the honour of cooking for you in the meanwhile, and I propose taking every ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... which says:—"What England forgets is the fact that when next Ireland fights she will not fight alone." This is not a warning, like the prophecy of Mr. Froude, it is a threat, for the Independent is not only a Nationalist, but an intensely anti-English paper. Another great historian, Mr. Lecky, thus expresses himself:—"The Parliament Mr. Gladstone proposes to set up would be in violent hostility to the richest and most industrious portion of the community. It is regarded with horror by nearly every ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... performed the duty of a sovereign that he took care to maintain a good police in his realm; which, in the tumultuous state of his government, was a great and difficult work." How well he performed it, we may learn even from the testimony of a contemporary Saxon historian, who says, "during his reign a man might have travelled in perfect security all over the kingdom, with his bosom full of gold; nor durst any kill another in revenge of the greatest offences, nor offer violence to the chastity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... pursued him day and night and gave him no rest, until he had started for Ethiopia with an immense host. He was forced, however, to return without having accomplished his object, after having miserably lost the greater part of his army by heat and the scarcity of provisions. An historian, who may almost be spoken of as contemporary, tells us that the wretched soldiers, after having subsisted on herbs as long as they could, came to deserts where there was no sign of vegetation, and in their despair resorted to an expedient almost too fearful to describe. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his official position, may claim to have known much of the motives and acts of his countrymen immediately before and during the war of 1861-'65, and he has sought to furnish material far the future historian, who, when the passions and prejudices of the day shall have given place to reason and sober thought, may, better than a contemporary, investigate the causes, conduct, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... freely; may Zeus confound Antimachus, the poet-historian, the son of Psacas! When Choregus at the Lenaea, alas! alas! he dismissed me dinnerless. May I see him devouring with his eyes a cuttle-fish, just served, well cooked, hot and properly salted; and the moment that he stretches ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... the Lord talked face to face in the Mount, out of the midst of the fire. To Jacob he spake in a vision of the night at Bethel. And a covenant of royalty with David he made in like manner. And the oath of God at such seasons was given. He sware to Noah. Though the first inspired historian does not mention the fact, it is recorded. "This is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee."[116] To Abraham he sware,—"For when God made promise to Abraham, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... one and another of my intimate friends; but they all mistook my facts for fancies, and good-naturedly complimented me on my story-telling powers—which was certainty not flattering to my qualifications as an historian. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... travelled. Surely, among these children of nature we may expect to find those virtuous tendencies, for which we have hitherto looked in vain. Alas! our search will still be fruitless! They are represented by the historian of America, whose account is more favourable than those of some other great authorities, as being a compound of pride, and indolence, and selfishness, and cunning, and cruelty[3]; full of a revenge which nothing could satiate, of a ferocity which nothing could ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... was attempted by Holmes. In 1878 he completed a biography of his intimate friend, the historian Motley, and in 1884 wrote a life of Emerson. These are not, however, among his best productions. Over the Teacups, similar to the Breakfast Table papers, appeared in 1890, and was his last ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... — N. recorder, notary, clerk; registrar, registrary[obs3], register; prothonotary[Law]; amanuensis, secretary, scribe, babu[obs3], remembrancer[obs3], bookkeeper, custos rotulorum[Lat], Master of the Rolls. annalist; historian, historiographer; chronicler, journalist; biographer &c. (narrator) 594; antiquary &c. (antiquity) 122; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... trick-players of all sorts, amused the company with their gambols; and such was the noise produced by trumpets, drums, and other martial instruments, by the vociferation of the performers and the applause of the spectators, that no single voice could be heard; and a contemporary historian compares it to the wild roar of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... after Brigham's sermon on blood-atonement, there had been a meeting in the Historian's office, presided over by Brigham. And here for the first time Joel Rae found he was no longer looked upon as one too radical. Somewhat dazedly, too, he realised at this close range the severely practical aspects of much that he had taught in theory. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... elaborately curled "front piece" had cost five dollars, and that it was sent into Portland twice a year to be dressed and frizzed; but it is extremely difficult to discover the precise facts in such cases, and a conscientious historian always prefers to warn a too credulous reader against imbibing as gospel truth something that might be the basest perversion of it. As to Mrs. Meserve's appearance, have you ever, in earlier years, sought the comforting society of the cook and hung over the kitchen table while she ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tells a similar story of him in his eighty-fifth year. He was then visited by the Astor overland expedition to the Columbia. "He had but recently returned from a hunting and trapping expedition," says the historian, "and had brought nearly sixty beaver skins as trophies of his skill. The old man was still erect in form, strong in limb, and unflinching in spirit; and as he stood on the river bank watching the departure of an expedition ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... will be so very necessary to adorn the history of a late reign; and that is another reason why I would forbear to make a recital of them here; because I have been told by wise men that as dedications have run for some years past, a good historian will not be apt to have recourse thither in ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... eighteen thousand souls. Such is the picture of these people, as drawn by the Abbe Reynal. By many, it is thought to represent a state of social happiness totally inconsistent with the frailties and passions of human nature, and that it is worthy rather of the poet than the historian. In describing a scene of rural felicity like this, it is not improbable that his narrative has partaken of the warmth of feeling for which he was remarkable; but it comes much nearer the truth than is generally imagined. Tradition is fresh and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens |
