Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
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By Paul Sandby (?1730-1809). Public domain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson traced a common thread running throughout English literature.
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By Pierre-Antoine Demachy (1723–1807). Public domain.
Charles Dickens set his historical novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859) in the French Revolution seventy years before, but it was far from the dead past to him.
By Antonio Gisbert (1834-1901), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
According to Kipling, the British Empire was the last resort of Englishmen who could not stand conditions at home.
By Cyprian Norwid (1821–1883). Public domain.
Salesman Richard Cobden wondered why his employers left a full warehouse in his hands without any kind of security.
© Ian Taylor, Geograph. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Travelling salesman Richard Cobden was still in his twenties when he bought a loss-making mill for a hundred times his annual salary.
© Following Hadrian. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Romans did bring some blessings to Britain, but none so great as the one they did not mean to bring.