Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

← Page 1

1153

Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday is a peculiarly British celebration of Christian faith, close family and responsible freedom.

Mothering Sunday is a peculiarly British celebration. In contrast to state-sponsored days honouring women or mothers in other religions or countries, it is an ancient custom of the people that acknowledges the intimate connection between Christian faith, close-knit families founded on a mother’s love, and a free society.

Read

Picture: Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1154

Annunciation

Cynewulf reflects on the mystery of the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary.

‘Christ’ is an Anglo-Saxon poem in three parts by Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne, in the Kingdom of Northumbria). In this extract, the poet reflects on the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, to tell her that she is to become the earthly mother of the Son of God.

Read

Picture: Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1155

A Monument to Liberty

Samuel Smiles explains why the London and Birmingham Railway was an achievement superior to the Great Pyramid of Giza.

When the London and Birmingham Railway opened in 1838, it was an engineering marvel. But progress from the era of the Great Pyramids to Britain’s railways did not lie in engineering alone. It lay in the fact that the industrial revolution was an achievement not of servants gratifying a political elite, but of free men pursuing their own advantages.

Read

Picture: © Andy F, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1156

The Blessings of Nicholas Mogilevsky

Passengers sharing Bishop Nicholas’s Moscow-bound flight found his blessings faintly silly — but that was when the engines were still running.

St Nicholas Mogilevsky (1877-1955) was Bishop of Alma-Ata (Almaty) in Kazakhstan during the Soviet era. He endured repeated imprisonment and ill-use at the hands of the Nazis, the Communists and state-sponsored Church ‘modernisers’ with remarkable forbearance. This is just one of several tales from his own lifetime.

Read

Picture: By Staecker, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1157

The Grievances of the South

Victorian MP Richard Cobden believed British politicians supporting the slave-owning American South had been led a merry dance.

Richard Cobden MP had considerable sympathy with the Confederate States in the American Civil War of 1861-1865, as he regarded Washington as arrogantly meddlesome and corrupted by big business. But in 1863 he held up a report from the US Congress and told his Rochdale constituents that the South’s politicians had forfeited any right to an Englishman’s goodwill.

Read

Picture: From the US National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. (Note: this is Richard Cobden, not ‘Richard Corden’ as given by NARA.). Source.

1158

Dixie on Thames

Victorian MP Richard Cobden offered a startling analogy for the American Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery Republicans won the US general election in 1860, prompting eleven slave-owning southern States to declare independence. Some in Westminster sympathised, saying the national result did not reflect the majority of southern voters – but Richard Cobden was scornful.

Read

Picture: © Greg Willis, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.