379
John Bright asked the people of Birmingham to spread the word that a great nation, like any good citizen and neighbour, does not meddle officiously in the affairs of others.
In the 1850s, prevailing opinion in Europe was that peace and prosperity depended on the diplomacy and military interventions of a few exceptional ‘Great Powers’. John Bright MP, however, told his Birmingham constituents that nations had to observe the same humble morality as citizens do. No one likes domineering and meddlesome people, and history shows that there is always a reckoning eventually.
Picture: By Henri Jannin (1816-?), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 16 2021
380
Emperor Julian cast off his Christian upbringing to gain the favour of Rome’s pagan gods, but in the heat of battle they deserted him.
Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Iulianus (r. 361-363) earned his nickname ‘Julian the Apostate’ by trying to stamp out the Christian Church in which he had been brought up, while transferring its charitable activities to the State. He failed in both, and his military campaign in Persia was no more successful. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, believed his death illustrated Julian’s weakness of mind and character.
Picture: © Romeneverfell, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted August 14 2021
381
John Milton reminded Parliament that the Truth wasn’t what they and their fact-checkers in Stationers’ Hall made it.
In 1643, shortly after the Civil War with Charles I (r. 1625-1649) began, Parliament ordered a crackdown on what we would call fake news and disinformation, censoring and licensing political comment and telling the public only what Parliament thought it was good for us to know. John Milton, himself a Parliamentarian, felt obliged to publish an anguished protest at such cowardly behaviour.
Picture: By Charles West Cope (1811–1890), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 14 2021
382
Hannah Mullens describes her battle to reach out to wealthy Indian ladies with nothing to do, nothing to think about and nowhere to go.
From the 1850s, Calcutta-born Hannah Mullens (1826–1861) travelled all over India trying to bring literacy, self-respect and spiritual consolation into the dreary leisure of zenanas, the cloistered women’s quarters of well-to-do Indian families. The following account is taken from a letter she wrote from Nagercoil on India’s southernmost tip, then in the Kingdom of Travancore.
Picture: © T. L. Thompson, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted August 11 2021
383
When Ambassador Molesworth criticised the government of Christian V, the Danish king cried ‘off with his head!’.
Christian V, King of Denmark and Norway from 1670 to 1699, was a great admirer of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV of France, and sought to emulate the glory of Louis’s court, his ‘divine right of kings’ and his absolute power of government. Over here, though, Parliament had thrown out James II in 1688 for doing the same, and his replacement William III gathered that in England no one was beyond criticism.
Picture: By an anonymous artist, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 10 2021
384
Jack Pansay has just bought an engagement ring for the bewitching Kitty Mannering, yet to his annoyance it is the late Mrs Wessington he is thinking about.
Jack Pansay last saw Mrs Agnes Keith-Wessington here in Simla, perched in a rickshaw and weeping her eternal cuckoo cry: “Jack, darling! it’s all a mistake; do let’s be friends”; but for him their shipboard romance had long been over. Now she was dead, and April 1885 found him at Hamilton’s, buying Kitty Mannering an engagement ring, and trying to shake the feeling that someone has been calling his name.
Picture: © Vyacheslav Argenberg, WIkimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted August 7 2021