Perennial Press: 340 books

The sketches of composers contained in this volume may seem arbitrary in the space allotted to them. The special attention given to certain names has been prompted as much by their association with great art-epochs as by the consideration of their absolute rank as composers.

While Vasco Nuñez de Balboa may be reckoned among the greatest of the minor explorers, yet less has been written of him, perhaps, than of any other in his class except Juan Ponce de Leon. Both names are familiar to every student of history, both are well known even to the casual reader; but both...

In the dim days of very long ago there was a country called Fensalir. It was a low-lying country of rich green meadows and fair cornfields. Beside the slow-flowing streams trees drooped their branches laden with wondrous fruit. Upon the endless meadows countless herds of cattle browsed. It was a rich...

Civilization, I apprehend, is nearly synonymous with order. However much we may differ touching such matters as the distribution of property, the domestic relations, the law of inheritance and the like, most of us, I should suppose, would agree that without order civilization, as we understand it,...

Few of the really important episodes of English history are so short, sudden, and dramatic as the great insurrection of June 1381, which still bears in most histories its old and not very accurate title of ' Wat Tyler's Rebellion'. Only a short month separates the first small riot in Essex, with which...

The Euthydemus, though apt to be regarded by us only as an elaborate jest, has also a very serious purpose. It may fairly claim to be the oldest treatise on logic; for that science originates in the misunderstandings which necessarily accompany the first efforts of speculation. Several of the fallacies...

The Parthians do not appear in history until a comparatively recent period. Their name occurs nowhere in the Old Testament Scriptures. They obtain no mention in the Zendavesta. The Assyrian Inscriptions are wholly silent concerning them. It is not until the time of Darius Hystaspis that we have trustworthy...

FOR three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the actions of Philip II. of Spain. Until our own times no attempt even had been made to write his life-history from an impartial point of view. He had been alternately deified and execrated, until through the mists of time and prejudice...

From the fifth to the tenth century the Roman Empire crumbles away. The two invasions from the north and the south are accomplished. The new German Empire which Charlemagne attempts to organize is dissolved. We behold everywhere the destruction of the past and the transition to a new social and intellectual...

The period at which this History commences,—the beginning of the sixteenth century,—when compared with the ages which had preceded it, since the fall of the Roman empire, was one of unprecedented brilliancy and activity. It was a period very fruitful in great men and great events, and, though...

The strict conception of the unity and omnipotence of the state in all matters pertaining to it, which was the central principle of the Italian constitutions, placed in the hands of the single president nominated for life a formidable power, which was felt doubtless by the enemies of the land, but...

AT 10.45 IN THE morning of June 28th, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the nephew and heir of the Emperor Francis Joseph, and his consort, Sophia, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated in the streets of Serajevo, the capital of Bosnia The Archduke had left Vienna on the 23rd June, to carry out,...

In this essay I do not aspire to recount the narrative of the empire, or to instruct trained historians. Nor do I propose to trace the history of the imperial idea, which Mr. Bryce has exhibited in a work which it would be impertinence in me to commend. My object is to examine the working of the imperial...

Once they had been human—now they shared a remarkable destiny on an incredible new planet....