N. D'Anvers

“ Thus, on September 29, 1513, was completed the first discovery of the great Pacific Ocean, of which Columbus had heard from the natives in his various voyages, though he had never been able to reach it, and which, first crossed by Magellan in 1521, has ever since been an inexhaustible field for the efforts of explorers, and is associated with the names of Cook, Anson, D’Entrecasteaux, Vancouver, Kotzebue, and many other great navigators of modern times.
The discoverer of the Pacific, like so many of the heroes of his day, did not live to reap the fruits of his work. ”

“ Next to its fine position on a very beautiful reach of the Thames, the chief glory of Richmond—a glory shared, however, by five other parishes, Petersham, Ham, Kingston, Putney, and Mortlake—is its noble park, known as the New or Great Park, to distinguish it from the one that was connected with the palace. It comprises two thousand acres of charming undulating scenery, grand oak woods and plantations of other trees alternating with fern-clad dells and dales, in the midst of which are the picturesque Pen Ponds, so called because they are near the enclosures for the deer. ”

“ It was in his design for the dome that Michael Angelo achieved his greatest architectural triumph, for without tampering at all with what had already been done by Bramante, he set upon the cylindrical drum that artist had intended to uphold a dome, which was to be a mere reproduction of that of the Pantheon, a magnificent structure of original design which dominates the capital, producing an absolutely unrivalled impression of combined strength, vastness, and symmetry, the eye being irresistibly led up from drum to dome and from dome to lantern. ”

“ First California, and then Arizona and New Mexico, became the property of the United States, while the intervening districts between the first state on the Pacific seaboard to become the property of the American republic and the Mississippi were gradually filled up by an ever-increasing tide of emigration from the East and from the South, from the North and from the West. Step by step, little by little, the red men receded before the march of the whites, making every now and then a deeply pathetic, but ever futile attempt to stem the advance of their insidious destroyers. ”

“ In these wonderful creations the artist realised the very spirit of antiquity, yet at the same time bequeathed to posterity a marvellously true series of presentments of the contemporary life of his time, full of significant incidents and effective contrasts, the various groups displaying a freedom of execution and force of expression such as Mantegna had never before achieved. For the first time realism and idealism were welded into one, and the past seemed actually to become the present, waking into new life not merely as an intellectual abstraction, but as a visible pageant of humanity. ”

“ We are few, and you are many, and may kill us all; but there will be much crying in your villages, for many of your young men will stay behind, and forget to return with your warriors from the mountains. Do you think that our great chief will let his soldiers die, and forget to cover their graves? Before the snows melt again, his warriors will sweep away your villages, as the fire does the prairie in the autumn. See! I have pulled down my white houses, and my people are ready; when the sun is ten paces higher, we shall be on the march. ”

“ For many centuries Epsom remained a secluded hamlet scarcely known to any one but the owners of the great houses in the neighbourhood, who delighted in its charming situation at the edge of the breezy Banstead Downs. The discovery early in the seventeenth century, however, of medicinal springs on the adjacent common inaugurated a complete change, and Epsom Spa soon became a formidable rival to Tunbridge Wells and Hampstead as a favourite resort of the beau monde of the capital, who flocked to it in crowds to drink its waters and amuse themselves. ”

“ From whatever point of view, the dome, with its graceful lantern surmounted by a cross, remains the central feature of a structure at unity with itself, consistent in every detail, the western towers and the great central portico with their appropriate classic pilasters and columns all being in complete and satisfying accord. ”

“ Eight leagues further on, the island now known as the Isle d’Orleans was reached, and here the natives, reassured by the sight of their two fellow-countrymen, flocked on deck, eager to hear of their adventures in the strange land beyond the sea. Delighted with their accounts of the kindness shown them in France, Donnacona, the chief or lord of Saguenay, embraced Cartier, and swore eternal friendship with him and his people, little dreaming that the advent of the French meant the death of his own race as a nation. ”

“ Other characteristics of Chartres Cathedral are the noble sculptures of the west front, that are not only among the finest but the least injured in France, those of the south and north porches that are scarcely inferior, the dignified towers surmounted by beautiful and graceful spires of different but harmonious designs, and the double tier of flying buttresses of the nave. ”