Character and Conduct
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Character and Conduct’
Sir Hubert Parry was delighted to see teachers and pupils pushing each other to do better.
In an address to the students of the Royal College of Music in April 1918, Sir Hubert Parry said they were fortunate that when the College was founded in 1882, teachers were beginning to understand that the young respond better to respect and persuasion than to drill-ground severity.
Lord Salisbury seeks to calm the Viceroy of India’s nerves in the face of anti-Russian hysteria.
In 1877, military advisers urged Britain to ready themselves for war against the Russian Empire, citing St Petersburg’s diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, and warning that the Russians ‘could’ invade Turkey or even India. Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, wrote to the Viceroy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, urging calm.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson praises the English public for still loving freedom, despite their politicians.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) saw the English as a people much less biased and belligerent than their political masters. Liberty was safe, Emerson believed, while Englishmen still craved not influence abroad, but independence at home.
George Stephenson was only too pleased to save the Government from its scientific advisers.
When a line from London to Newcastle was first planned in the 1840s, Brunel recommended an atmospheric railway, which pulls carriages along with vacuum tubes laid between the rails instead of locomotives. The decision lay with the Government’s chief engineer, Robert Stephenson, but his father George made sure the idea got no further than Robert’s outer office.
Henry Mayhew, co-founder of ‘Punch’, tells two anecdotes about the Victorian cabbie.
‘London Characters’ was a tissue of light-hearted observations on everyday life in the capital written by Henry Mayhew, co-founder of the satirical magazine ‘Punch’. Mayhew made a career out of satisfying the middle classes’ curiosity about the working man, something the working man did not always appreciate.