Read short passages similar to those NL Clay collected in his anthologies, to gain a feeling for the language, history and culture of the English-speaking world.
In The Copybook
Read short passages similar to those NL Clay collected in his anthologies, to gain a feeling for the language, history and culture of the English-speaking world.
In The Copybook
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To prove that steam power was the future of railways, George Stephenson held a truly historic competition.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830, was the first passenger-carrying line to be operated exclusively by steam locomotives (horses were still sometimes used on the Stockton and Darlington). Initially, there was some hesitation among investors over safety and reliability, so the matter was put to the test near St Helens, at the Rainhill Trials.
Robert Pierrepont called heaven to witness that he would never pick a side in the Civil War.
Robert Pierrepont (1584-1623), 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, sided with Charles I in the Civil War after much debate. Soon afterwards, on July 16th, 1643, he was captured by the Parliamentarians at Gainsborough, and died in a botched rescue attempt. When the war was over, and Charles II had been restored to his throne, Lucy Hutchinson added a strange detail to the Earl’s sad story.
Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Ben Jonson’s collection of short poems Underwoods was published in 1640, soon after he died. He tells us that it takes its title from a habit of classical poets, who liked to call their miscellanies ‘Woods’. If Jonson’s earlier poems were his woods, he said, then these little additions were shrubs on the woodland floor. The following lines are a reflection on the value of a life.
Thomas Jefferson recalls the virtues (and a few faults) of the first US President.
In 1814, former US President Thomas Jefferson (who had served from 1801 to 1809) wrote a letter to Walter Jones (1776-1861), a lawyer whom Jefferson had appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia in 1802. In his letter, Jefferson reminisced about George Washington, supreme commander of the American revolutionary army and first President of the USA.
John Bright declared it was time stop fighting wars around the world for ‘British interests’.
On January 13th, 1878, John Bright MP assured his constituents in Birmingham that reports of an imminent Russian invasion of Europe were utter delusion. Some in the Commons said that sending troops to aid Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War (now a year old) was in the ‘British interest’, but Bright reminded them how the Crimean War in 1853-56 had achieved nothing but a million dead young men.
In the midst of the US Civil War, a simple melody briefly brought the warring factions together.
J. William Jones was a Baptist minister and former chaplain to the Confederate Army in the US Civil War. While in Chattanooga, Tennessee, attending the Southern Baptist Convention held there on 8th-14th May, 1896, Jones was asked to give a speech at a state school, during a ceremony honouring the Union flag. These were his closing remarks, as given in Confederate Veteran magazine that August.
Sir Guyon lies in an enchanted swoon, but he is not without help.
Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, has been commissioned to help an old man whose land is troubled by a wicked witch. The journey is fraught with dangers, and Sir Guyon has been cast into an endless swoon by Mammon, the money-god, for refusing to be his slave. As the knight slumbers, Spenser reflects on God’s care for the helpless.