Lectures and Essays

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still...

There is one more point which must be touched with tenderness but which cannot be honestly passed over in silence. It could nowhere be mentioned less invidiously than under the...

In those armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The musket was an unwieldy matchlock fired from a rest, and without a bayonet, so that in the infantry regiments it was...

Back, therefore, to England and two years more of garrison duty there. Quartered in the high-perched keep of Dover where "the winds rattle pretty loud" and cut off from the worl...

It will probably be at once conceded that the answer must be in the negative as regards the immediate future and the mass of mankind. The simple truths of religion are intelligi...

The abandonment of military duty by the Roman people had, among other things, made slavery more immoral than ever, because there was no longer any semblance of a division of lab...

Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of any encroachment of the labour movement on its rights. When did it command such means and appliances of pleasur...

Wolfe would fain have gone abroad (England affording no schools) to complete his military and general education; but the Duke of Cumberland's only notion of military education w...

"Pride and Prejudice," when first offered to Cadell, was declined by return of post. The fate of "Northanger Abbey" was still more ignominious: it was sold for ten pounds to a B...

In my lecture I have applied my principles, or tried to apply them, fairly to the mechanic as well as to the millionaire. I have deprecated, as immoral, a resort to strikes sole...

The judgment of a cause by battle is dreadful. Dreadful it must have seemed to all who were within sight or hearing of the field of Lutzen when that battle was over. But it is n...

Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the expectation of a Future State, has physical science anything to say against that expectation? Physical Science is nothing more tha...

I do not say that there has been none. I do not say that there is none now. Corporate selfishness of which Trade Unions after all are embodiments seldom keeps quite clear of cri...

In contrasting Falkland's line of conduct with that of the "Puritans," on the question of the Bishops' Bill and of the impeachment of Laud, Mr. Arnold indicates his impression t...

The whole of the iron for the tubes was prepared at Birkenhead, but so well prepared that, in the centre tube, consisting of no less than 10,309 pieces, in which nearly half a m...

All nations are inclined to ascribe their primitive institutions to some national founder, a Lycurgus, a Theseus, a Romulus. It is not necessary now to prove that Alfred did not...

Cicero, though he suffered from the imperious temper of Brutus, speaks of him as one of those, the sight of whom banished his fears and anxieties for the republic. That the most...

Might we not have done just as well without Puritanism? Might not some other way have been found of preserving the serious element in English character and saving English libert...

It is curious to see how completely at variance Milton's own sentiment is with that of his biographer and how little he foresaw what Mr. Pattison would say about him. In the _De...

Considering that, as we said before, this man was destined to preside over the most tremendous operations in the whole history of finance, it is especially instructive to see wh...

With regard to the public morality of the Romans, and to their conduct and influence as masters of the world, the language of historians seems to us to leave something to be des...

These papers have been reprinted for friends who sometimes ask for the back numbers of periodicals in which they appeared. The great public is sick of reprints, and with good re...

The next episode in Lincoln's life which may be regarded as a part of his training was the command of a company of militia in the "Black Hawk" war. Black Hawk was an Indian Chie...

As a contractor on a large scale, and especially as a contractor for foreign railroads, Mr. Brassey was led rapidly to develop the system of sub-contracting. His mode of dealing...

But with Croats and Walloons were mingled Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, outcasts of every land, bearing the devil's stamp on faces of every comp...

Science and criticism have raised the veil of the Mosaic cosmogony and revealed to us the physical origin of man. We see that, instead of being created out of the dust of the ea...

Some of our readers will remember that there was at one time a great panic in England about the unconstitutional influence of Prince Albert, and that, connected with Prince Albe...

It must be owned that the materials for the history of the English king are not very good. His biography by Bishop Asser, his counsellor and friend, which forms the principal au...

Now this wealthy, and, as we suppose, industrial and commercial city was the chief place, and in course of time became the mistress and protectress, of a plain large for that pa...

"Blinded by the language of his admirers, and too much elated to estimate correctly his own powers, he impatiently and of his own accord abandoned the proud position of the vict...

Mr. Crawford, it seems, was a martinet in spelling, and one day he was going to punish a whole class for failing to spell _defied_, when Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to...

In 1854 came the outbreak of public feeling against Prince Albert and Stockmar, as his friend and adviser, to which we have referred at the beginning of this article. The Prince...

Marcus Cato was the one man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidently dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphlets entitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of...

That science and criticism, acting--thanks to the liberty of opinion won by political effort--with a freedom never known before, have delivered us from a mass of dark and degrad...

Nature to a great extent fore-ordained the high destiny of the larger island, to at least an equal extent she fore-ordained the sad destiny of the smaller island. Irish history,...

IV. _The Lamp of Impersonality_.--Personality is lower than partiality. Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he pu...

In England, however, the agricultural element always has been and remains a full counterpoise to the manufacturing and commercial element. Agricultural England is not what Peric...

It has been almost forgotten that Keble held for ten years a (non- resident) Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. His lectures were unfortunately written, as the rule of the Chair...