M atilda, wife of the great William, the Conqueror, was an exceedingly handsome woman, and as she had received the best education that was possible in her times, she was as celebrated for her learning as for her beauty. She was, besides, generous and religious, and had all the qualities necessary for the position she was called upon to fill. She was famed for her fancy-work, which was looked upon as one of the most important and desirable occupations for ladies of rank; and any woman who could spin, weave and embroider was considered quite a treasure. Matilda had three cousins who were such skilful needlewomen, that they were sought in marriage by the greatest princes of Europe. Their work has not been preserved, but Matilda's still remains and is called the Bayeux Tapestry. It is the most wonderful achievement in needlework ever accomplished by any woman. But we shall...
by FRANK O. LOWDEN Governor of Illinois Boston, Mass. February 12, 1919 [Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] Springfield, Ill. Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers 1919 15793—1M Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois delivered the following address before the Middlesex Club at the Hotel Somerset in Boston, Mass., Wednesday evening February 12, 1919: Principles rather than policies appealed to Abraham Lincoln. All great questions seemed to him to involve some moral quality. It was his habit, therefore, to resolve them into their simple fundamentals. It thus happens that many of his words are as apt and forceful to-day as when they were first spoken by him. Your Club has recognized this fact and has made “Lincoln, the American,” the theme of the evening. In harmony with this thought, I shall try to put before you some of the things for which Lincoln stood, which directly apply,...
To know George Washington, we must first of all understand the society in which he was born and brought up. As certain lilies draw their colors from the subtle qualities of the soil hidden beneath the water upon which they float, so are men profoundly affected by the obscure and insensible influences which surround their childhood and youth. The art of the chemist may discover perhaps the secret agent which tints the white flower with blue or pink, but very often the elements, which analysis detects, nature alone can combine. The analogy is not strained or fanciful when we apply it to a past society. We can separate, and classify, and label the various elements, but to combine them in such a way as to form a vivid picture is a work of surpassing difficulty. This is especially true of such a land as Virginia in the middle of the...
In the fourth century after Christ began that decay of the Roman Empire which had been the pride of the then civilized world. Warriors of Teutonic race invaded its splendid cities, destroyed without remorse the costliest and most beautiful of its antique treasures. Temples and images of the gods fell before barbarians whose only fear was lest they should die "upon the straw," while marble fountains and luxurious bath-houses were despoiled as signs of a most inglorious state of civilization. Theatres perished and, with them, the plays of Greek dramatists, who have found no true successors. Pictures and statues and buildings were defaced where they were not utterly destroyed. The Latin race survived, forlornly conscious of its vanished culture. The Teutons had hardly begun to impose upon the Empire the rude customs of their own race when Saracens, bent upon spreading the religion of Mahomet, bore down upon Italy, where...
The North American Indians, the earliest inhabitants of this country of whom we know anything definite, were great story-tellers; and their histories consist entirely of stories handed down from parents to children, or, more likely, from grandparents to grandchildren, for grandfathers and grandmothers are generally more willing to tell stories than fathers or mothers. And so these traditions, probably a good deal brightened by being passed along century after century, came down to the Indians who were first met by white people, and thus we have heard many of them. The stories told by the Indians inhabiting the country which is now the Middle States, all agree that their remote forefathers came from some region beyond the Mississippi River. Like the traditions of most nations, these go so very far back that they are vague and misty; but, as this gave the Indians a great opportunity for their imaginations, it...
H olland House stands upon rising ground, a little to the north of the high-road which leads from Kensington to Hammersmith. [1] It is interesting to all passers-by, as affording a correct idea of the baronial mansions peculiar to the age of James I.; and, from its vicinity to the metropolis, its examination is easy to thousands who rarely obtain opportunities of viewing the “old houses,” with which are associated the records and pictures of English hospitality as it existed in the olden time. Although modern dwellings of all shapes and sizes have grown up about it, the house retains so much of its primitive character—its green meadows, sloping lanes, and umbrageous woods, in which still sings the nightingale; with gables and chimneys bearing tokens of a date two centuries back—that few traverse the highway without a word of comment, and a sensation of pleasure, that neither time nor caprice...
I T is with a prayerful heart and memories deep and reverent that I begin to write the story of my long and intimate friendship with Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas II, Empress of Russia, and of the tragedy of the Revolution, which brought on her and hers such undeserved misery, and on our unhappy country such a black night of oblivion. But first I feel that I should explain briefly who I am, for though my name has appeared rather prominently in most of the published accounts of the Revolution, few of the writers have taken the trouble to sift facts from fiction even in the comparatively unimportant matter of my genealogy. I have seen it stated that I was born in Germany, and that my marriage to a Russian officer was arranged to conceal my nationality. I have also read that I was a peasant woman brought from...
Chap. 1. Origins of my family. My father joins the bodyguard. The de Certain family. Life at Lariviere. Episode in infancy. Chap. 2. Outbreak of revolution. My father's attitude. He rejoins the army. I go to Mlle. Mongalvi. My life as a boarder. Chap. 3. My father is posted to Toulouse. He takes me with him. The convoy of aristocrats. Life at Toulouse. I am taken to Soreze. Chap. 4. Life at Soreze. Early hardships. Visit of representative of the people. Chap. 5. I join my family in Paris. My father is given command of the 17th division in Paris. He refuses to join with Sieyes and hands the command to Lefebvre. Chap. 6. My father is posted to Italy. How my career is begun. I become a Hussar. Chap. 7. My father leaves. Meeting with Bonaparte at Lyon. An adventure on the Rhone. The cost of a Republican banquet....
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY : Examples of their work, with some Criticisms and Appreciations. Super royal 4to, £3 3 s. net. THE BRIGHTON ROAD : Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. With 95 Illustrations by the Author and from old prints. Demy 8vo, 16 s. FROM PADDINGTON TO PENZANCE : The Record of a Summer Tramp. With 105 Illustrations by the Author. Demy 8vo, 16 s. A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK OF DRAWING FOR MODERN METHODS OF REPRODUCTION. Illustrated by the Author and others. Demy 8vo, 7 s. 6 d. THE MARCHES OF WALES : Notes and Impressions on the Welsh Borders, from the Severn Sea to the Sands o’ Dee. With 115 Illustrations by the Author and from old-time portraits. Demy 8vo, 16 s. REVOLTED WOMAN : Past, Present, and to Come. Illustrated by the Author and from old-time portraits. Demy 8vo,...
Introductory. — First view of New Zealand. — First sight of the natives, and first sensations experienced by a mere Pakeha. — A Maori chief's notions of trading in the old times. — A dissertation on "courage." — A few words on dress. — The chief's soliloquy. — The Maori cry of welcome. Ah! those good old times, when first I came to New Zealand, we shall never see their like again. Since then the world seems to have gone wrong somehow. A dull sort of world this now. The very sun does not seem to me to shine as bright as it used. Pigs and potatoes have degenerated; and everything seems "flat, stale, and unprofitable." But those were the times!—the "good old times"—before Governors were invented, and law, and justice, and all that. When every one did as he liked,—except when his neighbours would not let him, (the more...
The Editor of the 1836 edition had added to the Memoirs several chapters taken from or founded on other works of the time, so as to make a more complete history of the period. These materials have been mostly retained, but with the corrections which later publications have made necessary. A chapter has now been added to give a brief account of the part played by the chief historical personages during the Cent Jours, and another at the end to include the removal of the body of Napoleon from St. Helena to France. Two special improvements have, it is hoped, been made in this edition. Great care has been taken to get names, dates, and figures rightly given,—points much neglected in most translations, though in some few cases, such as Davoust, the ordinary but not strictly correct spelling has been followed to suit the general reader. The number of references...
Our great-grandfather was Adam Peddicord. He married Elizabeth Barnes, a daughter of James Barnes, the elder. Their son, Jasper Peddicord, our paternal grandfather, was born in 1762 in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, from whence he moved to Ohio in 1829. He died in Barnesville, Belmont County, Ohio, on September 23, 1844, aged 82. Barnesville was named after James Barnes, grandfather’s cousin. Caleb Peddicord, another cousin of Grandfather Peddicord, emigrated from Maryland to Kentucky in 1830. Two other cousins of our grandfather, William and John Peddicord, served in the war of 1812. Amelia Hobbs-Peddicord, our paternal grandmother, was the daughter of Thomas Hobbs. She was born in Maryland in 1767 and died March 23, 1841, in Barnesville, Ohio. Jared Hobbs, our maternal grandfather, was born in Howard County, Maryland, March 22, 1772, and died on his farm in 1866 at the advanced age of 94. Our maternal grandmother was Elenor Shipley-Hobbs,...
This Book of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences is issued by the Daughters of the American Revolution of Nebraska, and dedicated to the daring, courageous, and intrepid men and women—the advance guard of our progress—who, carrying the torch of civilization, had a vision of the possibilities which now have become realities. To those who answered the call of the unknown we owe the duty of preserving the record of their adventures upon the vast prairies of "Nebraska the Mother of States." "In her horizons, limitless and vast Her plains that storm the senses like the sea." Reminiscence, recollection, personal experience—simple, true stories—this is the foundation of History. Rapidly the pioneer story-tellers are passing beyond recall, and the real story of the beginning of our great commonwealth must be told now. The memories of those pioneers, of their deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion, of their ideals which are our inheritance, will inculcate patriotism...
There is a line of Browning's that should stand as epitaph for Theodore Roosevelt: "I WAS EVER A FIGHTER." That was the essence of the man, that the keynote of his career. He met everything in life with a challenge. If it was righteous, he fought for it; if it was evil, he hurled the full weight of his finality against it. He never capitulated, never sidestepped, never fought foul. He carried the fight to the enemy. His first fight was for health and bodily vigor. It began at the age of nine. Physically he was a weakling, his thin and ill-developed body racked with asthma. But it was only the physical power that was wanting, never the intellectual or the spiritual. He owed to his father, the first Theodore, the wise counsel that launched him on his determined contest against ill health. On the third floor of the house...
ONE who looks for the first time at a large map of Holland must be amazed to think that a country so made can exist. At first sight, it is impossible to say whether land or water predominates, and whether Holland belongs to the continent or to the sea. Its jagged and narrow coast-line, its deep bays and wide rivers, which seem to have lost the outer semblance of rivers and to be carrying fresh seas to the sea; and that sea itself, as if transformed to a river, penetrating far into the land, and breaking it up into archipelagoes; the lakes and vast marshes, the canals crossing each other everywhere,—all leave an impression that a country so broken up must disintegrate and disappear. It would be pronounced a fit home for only beavers and seals, and surely its inhabitants, although of a race so bold as to dwell there,...
The exploration of Northern Australia, which formed the object of my first journey in 1831, has, consistently with the views I have always entertained on the subject [* See London Geographical Journal, vol. vii. part 2, p. 282.], been found equally essential in 1846 to the full development of the geographical resources of New South Wales. The same direction indicated on Mr. Arrowsmith's map, published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1837, was, in 1846, considered, by a committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, the most desirable to pursue at a time when every plan likely to relieve the colony from distress found favour with the public. At no great distance lay India and China, and still nearer, the rich islands of the Indian Archipelago; all well-peopled countries, while the industrious and enterprising colonists of the South were unable to avail themselves of the exuberance of the...
On June 28, 1914, the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduchess were assassinated on Austrian territory at Serajevo by two Austrian subjects, both Bosniaks. On a former occasion one of these assassins had been in Serbia and the "Serbian authorities, considering him suspect and dangerous, had desired to expel him, but on applying to the Austrian authorities, found that the latter protected him, and said that he was an innocent and harmless individual." [1] After a "magisterial" investigation, the Austro-Hungarian Government formally fixed upon the Serbians the guilt both of assisting the assassins and of continually conspiring against the integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and on July 23, 1914, sent an ultimatum to Serbia of which the following were the chief terms [2] :— "The Royal Serbian Government shall publish on the front page of their 'Official Journal' of the 13-26 July the following declaration:— "'The Royal Government of Serbia...
WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1907 It is not too much to say that the event commemorated by the monument which we have come here to dedicate was one of those rare events which can in good faith be called of world importance. The coming hither of the Pilgrim three centuries ago, followed in far larger numbers by his sterner kinsmen, the Puritans, shaped the destinies of this continent, and therefore profoundly affected the destiny of the whole world. Men of other races, the Frenchman and the Spaniard, the Dutchman, the German, the Scotchman, the Irishman, and the Swede, made settlements within what is now the United States, during the colonial period of our history and before the Declaration of Independence; and since then there has been an ever-swelling immigration from Ireland and from the mainland of Europe; but it was the Englishman who settled in Virginia and the Englishman who...
The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he...
To understand Bolshevism it is not sufficient to know facts; it is necessary also to enter with sympathy or imagination into a new spirit. The chief thing that the Bolsheviks have done is to create a hope, or at any rate to make strong and widespread a hope which was formerly confined to a few. This aspect of the movement is as easy to grasp at a distance as it is in Russia—perhaps even easier, because in Russia present circumstances tend to obscure the view of the distant future. But the actual situation in Russia can only be understood superficially if we forget the hope which is the motive power of the whole. One might as well describe the Thebaid without mentioning that the hermits expected eternal bliss as the reward of their sacrifices here on earth. I cannot share the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of...
For seven years the colony which Champlain founded at the rock of Quebec lived without priests. [Footnote: For the general history of the period covered by the first four chapters of the present narrative, see 'The Founder of New France' in this Series.] Perhaps the lack was not seriously felt, for most of the twoscore inmates of the settlement were Huguenot traders. But out in the great land, in every direction from the rude dwellings that housed the pioneers of Canada, roamed savage tribes, living, said Champlain, 'like brute beasts.' It was Champlain's ardent desire to reclaim these beings of the wilderness. The salvation of one soul was to him 'of more value than the conquest of an empire.' Not far from his native town of Brouage there was a community of the Recollets, and, during one of his periodical sojourns in France, he invited them to send missionaries to...
Published by the same Author , And printed for T. Cadell , in the Strand. I. Observations on Reversionary Payments ; on Schemes for providing Annuities for Widows, and Persons in Old Age; on the Method of calculating the Values of Assurances on Lives; and on the National Debt. To which are added, Four Essays on different Subjects in the Doctrine of Life-Annuities and Political Arithmetic. Also, an Appendix, containing a complete Set of Tables; particularly four New Tables, shewing the Probabilities of Life in London , Norwich , and Northampton , and the Values of two joint Lives. The 3d Edition, with a Supplement, containing (besides several New Tables) additional Observations on the Probabilities of Human Life in different Situations; on the London Societies for the Benefit of Widows and of Old Age; and on the present State of Population in this Kingdom. Price 6s. II. A Review of...
Three or four years ago I enjoyed an opportunity, such as very rarely falls to the lot of strangers, of becoming acquainted with the inner life and customs of a part of the Italian peninsula comparatively little visited,—untrodden ground, in fact, to the majority of English tourists. An invitation from my uncle, an English merchant at Ancona, the principal seaport of the Roman States on the Adriatic, to spend a few months there with his family, was gladly accepted. My experiences of Italy as yet consisted only of a gay winter in Florence, and the Holy Week at Rome; and I was still young and enthusiastic enough to hail with delight any proposal which tended to increase my acquaintance with the country that had so much enchanted me. It was therefore with a light heart I found myself, one lovely autumnal morning, the fourth in a vettura , having been...
The name of Vermont recalls the gallant "Green Mountain Boys," who proved their sturdy patriotism not only in the Revolution, but before those stormy days broke over the land. In the colonial times the section was known as the "New Hampshire Grants," and was claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, but Vermont refused to acknowledge the authority of either, even after New York, in 1764, secured a decision in her favor from King George, and set vigorously to work to compel the settlers to pay a second time for their lands. The doughty pioneers would have none of it, and roughly handled the New York officers sent thither. In 1777 Vermont formally declared her independence and adopted a State constitution. Then, since the Revolution was on, Ethan Allen and the rest of the "Green Mountain Boys" turned in and helped whip the redcoats. That being done, Vermont again...