583
Kings of Norway educated in England drew on the experience of English clergy to establish Christianity in their own land.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Norway’s Christian kings had close ties to Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, to Novgorod and Kiev, the chief cities of Rus’, and above all to England. The authorities in Rome chafed at it, wanting Norway to look to Germany and France instead; but for over two hundred years the bond with England was too strong to break.
Picture: © Sergey Ashmarin, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted August 31 2020
584
Edmund Burke expressed his frustration at the arrogance of politicians who have no regard for our Constitutional heritage.
As France descended into chaos and bloodshed in the unhappy revolution of 1789, Edmund Burke urged his fellow MPs to examine their responsibilities. An English statesman is entrusted by the People with helping them to make their country better, and they want neither the statesman who is too timid to change anything, nor the statesman who is so arrogant as to smash everything up.
Picture: © Markrosenrosen, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted August 28 2020
585
Richard Price argued that the true patriot does not scold other countries for being worse than his own; he inspires his own country to be better than it is.
In 1789, Non-conformist minister Richard Price preached a sermon urging fellow Englishmen to welcome the stirring events in Paris on July 14th that year. Only John Bull’s patriotic prejudice, he said, prevented him from admitting that what was happening was a mirror of our own Glorious Revolution of 1689, and he enlarged on what a more generous love of country, a Christian duty, should look like.
Picture: By George Moutard Woodward (1760-1809), from the Bodleian Libraries via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 28 2020
586
French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited the USA in the 1830s, and found a degree of contentment that he rarely found in Europe.
Alexis De Tocqueville went to the USA in 1831, to see for himself how the former colony’s experiment in Constitutional liberty, now almost fifty years old, was working out. His own experience in Europe was that no government could hold back the destructive forces of democracy once they had been unleashed, but he found that in America some of those forces were kept under restraints stronger than any law.
Picture: Photo by Daderot, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 26 2020
587
Joseph Longford described how Japan had changed from the day he first joined the Japan Consular Service to the day he retired as Consul in Nagasaki.
From 1869 to 1902, Joseph Longford served in the Japan Consular Service, and retired after six years as Consul in Nagasaki to become the first Professor of Japanese at King’s College in London. During that time he witnessed the transformation of Japan from feudal backwater to bustling industrial society, but as the Great War moved into its second year he was glad that the nation’s fighting spirit was as strong as ever.
Picture: From the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 23 2020
588
In the Great War, the Japanese were among Britain’s allies, and the Japanese cherry was a symbol of the courage demanded by the times.
In 1915, Britain entered the second year of what later proved to have been the most appalling and wasteful war in human history. Joseph Longford, former Consul in Nagasaki and from 1903 the first Professor of Japanese at King’s College in London, contributed an essay to a series on ‘The Spirit of the Allied Nations’ in which he spoke of the Japanese cherry tree as a symbol of sacrifice.
Picture: © 掬茶, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted August 23 2020