George Payne Rainsford James: 59 books

About two centuries ago, in times with which we are all familiar, as they comprised a period of English history, the events of which have affected the social condition of the British people more than almost any which have preceded or followed that period--about two centuries ago, there stood upon the...

THE vast Sylva Lida, which in the days of Charlemagne stretched far along the banks of the Seine, and formed a woody screen round the infant city of Paris, has now dwindled to a few thousand acres in the neighbourhood of St. Germain en Laye. Not so in the time of Louis the Thirteenth. It was then...

Most cities are hateful; and, without any disposition to "babble about green fields," it must be owned that each is more or less detestable. Nevertheless, amongst them all, there is none to be compared as a whole to London;--none which comprehends within itself, from various causes, so much of the sublime...

It was as dark and sombre a morning, the sky was as gloomy, the earth as dry and parched, as earth, sky, and morning ever appear in the most northern climates. A dull grey expanse of leaden cloud shut out the blue heaven, a hard black frost pinched up the ground, the blades of grass stood stiff and...

There is no mistake more common among historians, no mistake more mischievous, than to take for granted, without deduction, all the statements of the satirists and splenetics of past-by ages as to the manners and customs of their own times, and of the people with whom they mingled. There are half a dozen,...

Very few words of preface are necessary to the following work. In regard to the character of Philip Augustus himself, I have not been guided by any desire of making him appear greater, or better, or wiser than he really was. Rigord his physician, William the Breton, his chaplain, who was present at...

I was born in the heart of Bearn, in the year 1619; and if the scenery amongst which we first open our eyes, and from which we receive our earliest impressions, could communicate its own peculiar character to our minds, I should certainly have possessed a thousand great and noble qualities, that might...

Pouvons-nous pas dire, qu'il n'y a rien en nous, pendant cette prison terrestre, purement, ni corporel ni spirituel? asks good old Montaigne, and certain it is that in many an act where we imagine the body alone takes part, the spirit has as great a share; and in many a thought where the mind seems to...

My father was a gentleman of small estate in Lincolnshire, whose family possessions, under a race of generous ancestors, had dwindled from splendid lordships to bare competence. His blood, which was derived from as noble a source as that of any in the land, had come down to him pure through a number...

The spot through which the travellers were riding, and which was a wide piece of forest ground, one might have supposed, from the nature of the scenery, to be as common to all lands as possible; but no such thing! and any one who gazed upon it required not to ask themselves in what part of the world...