1369
A cat’s affection is not easy to win, but the rewards make the effort worthwhile.
Théophile Gautier was a French artist, critic and writer whose friends included Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, and whose many admirers have included TS Eliot and Oscar Wilde. His ‘Ménagerie intime’ (1869) includes fond recollections of the many cats in his life.
Picture: © Von grzanka, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted May 17 2016
1370
Lady Jane Grey’s accession was almost instantly overturned.
King Edward VI died when he was just fifteen. On his deathbed, he named his cousin Lady Jane Grey as his successor, but his decision was annulled just days later.
Picture: From Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.. Source.
Posted May 13 2016
1371
True moral integrity comes from within.
Henry Crawford has decided it would be fun to break Fanny Price’s heart by making her fall in love with him. He thinks that Fanny, whose life is guided by strict principle, will jump at the chance to mould someone in her own image — thereby revealing how little he understands of principle, or of Fanny.
Picture: © Ashley Dace, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted May 13 2016
1372
For two centuries, human traffickers had stolen English men, women and children for the slave-markets of the Arab world.
In the Barbary states of Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli in north Africa, part of the Ottoman Empire, slavery was the norm, and – much as the comforting breadth of the Atlantic did for English slave-owners – the use of European Christians rather than their own brethren allowed Muslims to ease their conscience.
Picture: From Wikimedia Commons.. Source.
Posted May 11 2016
1374
God’s covenant of love is a fresh joy every time it appears.
William Wordsworth never lost his childhood delight in a rainbow: it was a kind of legacy from his youth to his maturity, from the time when (in his belief) the soul remembers the God who made it more clearly.
Picture: © Yvonne Solomon, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted May 10 2016