We naturally remembered Alexander Henry's Adventures here, as a sort of classic among books of American travel.... He is a travele...r who does not exaggerate, but writes for the information of his readers, for science, and for history. His story is told with as much good faith and directness as if it were a report to his brother traders, or the Directors of the Hudson's Bay Company, and is fitly dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the argument to a great poem on the primitive state of the country and its inhabitants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been em...ployed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements ... might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of huma...n knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We didn't come to dig in Egypt for medals. Much more is learned from studying bits of broken pottery than from all the sensational... finds. Our job is to increase the sum of human knowledge of the past, not to satisfy our own curiosity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the fac...e. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said "Box about: 'twill come to my father anon."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?... How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary fu' o' care? Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons thro' the flowering thorn: Thou minds me o' departed joys, Departed never to return.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fact alone that both, like Chatham before them, were great war ministers, links their names inseparably. Beyond that, they sha...red many qualities in common: unquenchable vitality, restless energy, personal magnetism, and an inspiring power of oratory. They were alike also in their defects: opportunism, total lack of consideration for others, and a degree of egotism that can only be termed infantile. Lloyd George, however, whom Lord Haldane once called "an illiterate with an unbalanced mind," lacked both the versatility and the intellectual power of Churchill. Where Sir Winston found relaxation in Macauley or Gibbon, Lloyd George in his prime amused himself with cheap detective fiction. The latter, cast in an inferior mold, lacked also the personal courage of his younger colleague and successor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »