1159
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.
Picture: Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted March 25 2017
1160
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.
Picture: © Andy F, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 25 2017
1161
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.
Picture: By Staecker, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted March 23 2017
1162
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.
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.
Posted March 23 2017
1163
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.
Picture: © Greg Willis, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 22 2017
1164
Nineteenth-century Britain had busy industrial cities and a prosperous middle class, but no MPs to represent them.
The Industrial Revolution changed the face of Britain. It depopulated the countryside, spawned crowded cities, and gave real economic power to an ever-growing middle class. At last, Parliament realised that it had to represent these people to Government, and the Great Reform Act was passed.
Picture: © Graham Horn, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 18 2017