“ During all Joan's life as a soldier and general, she exhibited a most touching humanity toward the conquered enemy. She would spring from her horse to sooth the wounds of a suffering English soldier, and it is recorded of her that she carried a dying enemy in her arms to a confessor, and remained with him till his soul took flight. The people adored her, the soldiers of her army idolized her, and the king realized that she was of too great value to him to permit her to go in peace to her old humble home. ”

“ The age of Columbus took him as he was—all full of human imperfections and frailties, but full also to overflowing with a great idea, and with a will, a perseverance, a constancy, and a faith so sublime, as fairly to conquer every obstacle, after a weary struggle of eighteen years, and to carry forward his arduous enterprise to triumphant success. That the great discoverer failed as a governor and administrator makes nothing against his merits as a discoverer. ”

“ She was twelve years old when the dauphin was proclaimed king by his few followers; and in all his flight from province to province, fleeing before the usurpers of his throne, no heart in all France suffered more keenly than the heart beating in the breast of this humble shepherd girl. The misfortunes of the dauphin, the woes of her country, took complete possession of her expanding mind. Her pure young soul yearned toward the Infinite in one ceaseless prayer; and when any soul is so lifted up above all thought of self, praying for the good of others, a response never fails to come. ”

“ The people, excited to a religious frenzy by their desperate straits and their faith in the old superstition, prayed more fervently with each day; and their prayers rose like great white eagles and settled upon the heart of that strange divine child, who was weeping over the fate of France while she watched her sheep on the plains of Domremy.
A humbly born girl was Joan of Arc, unable to read or write; women who could do more than that were rare in those days, so she was not despised on account of her ignorance, but highly respected for her industry and piety. ”

“ The hero and his army entered Stockholm in triumph; and such of the old nobles as were left, gathered in a council and offered him the crown which he had wrested from Denmark. He refused it, saying he had labored for his country, not himself, and bade the nobles choose from among themselves some older man. But the whole country cried out that they would submit to no man but him; he had freed them, he should rule them. So there was, what seldom has been in history, a free choice of a king by a united people; and Gustavus, son of Eric, became Gustavus I., King of Sweden. ”

“ Thus this youth, the great tribune of the human mind, whose invention was destined to destroy forever the prejudices of race, and to restore, in after-times, liberty and civil equality to all the plebeians of the world, began his life, as yet unrecognized, at the head of the patrician party of his country, in these struggles between the privileged castes and the people. Fortune seemed to delight in the contrast. But Gutenberg's wisdom, increasing with his age, was afterward destined to reunite the people and nobility, who looked on each other as enemies. ”

“ Remarkable as has seemed Joan's career up to this point, it was simple compared to the miracles which ensued. Modest as the simplest maiden in private life, gentle as a child in all matters pertaining to herself, utterly devoid of self-seeking interests, she was yet enabled to plan campaigns, direct attacks and lead armies with all the skill of any world-renowned general. In the dead of night, with a band of 200 men, she entered the beleaguered city of Orleans in the face of the English enemy. The inhabitants crowded about her, regarding her rightly with wonder and awe. ”

“ Although we are nearing the fifth centennial of her birth, the recital of her sufferings and death must still wring tears from every heart which is not made of stone. The feeling of jealousy which great success, of even the most worthy and noble souls, arouses in meaner natures, had already sprung up against Joan. This feeling increased as the days passed by and she added more and more to her glory by the conquest of Laon, Soissons, Compiègne, and Beauvais. Paris was next besieged, and here Joan was seriously wounded, an event which depressed the king and the army. ”

“ On both sides of the road which the retreating army had to traverse the Spaniards had placed in ambush a large force of arquebusiers. It was a weapon which Bayard held in detestation; for while skill and courage were required to wield a spear or sword, any skulking wretch could pull a trigger from behind a stone. From one of these hated weapons he received his death. As he was retreating slowly with his face toward the foe, a stone from a cross-arquebus struck him on the side. He instantly sank forward on his saddle-bow, exclaiming in a faint voice, "Great God! I am killed." ”

“ The tale of his cruelty and treacheries belongs rather to the history of Sweden than of Gustavus. Enough to say (p. 156) that, having by promises of peace and pardon got all the leading Swedes into his power, he had them murdered, and then he and his soldiers went on slaying the common people right and left in mere wanton savagery. All the surviving nobles were in his pay; the least suspicion of an uprising was crushed with an iron hand, the least murmur of discontent brought death. Never had Sweden seemed more helpless in the power of the Danes. ”

“ I wish to God America would at this critical juncture exert herself agreeable to the indignity offered her by a tyrannical ministry. She might rise on eagle's wings and mount up to glory, freedom, and immortal honor if she did but know and exert her strength. Fame is now hovering over her head. A vast continent must now sink to slavery, poverty, and bondage, or rise to unconquerable freedom, immense wealth, inexpressible felicity, and immortal fame. ”

“ It is easy enough for the writers of the nineteenth century to criticise the actors of the fifteenth; and learned scholars, sitting in luxurious easy-chairs in great libraries, can pass swift and severe judgment upon the acts and motives of Columbus. But let them go back four hundred years, and divest themselves of the bias which the science of to-day unconsciously inspires; let them quit the age of steam-engines, telegraphs, democratic governments, printing-presses, and Sunday-schools; let them orient themselves, and become Spaniards of 1492, instead of Americans of 1892 ”

“ He ennobled the art and the artists together; he authorized them to wear robes embroidered with gold and silver, which nobles only had a right to wear, and gave them for armorial bearings an eagle with his wings spread over a globe, a symbol of the flight of written thoughts, and of its conquest of the world.
But Gutenberg was no longer upon earth to enjoy the possession of that intellectual world, religious and political, of which he had only had a glimpse, like Moses, in the vision of his dream in the monastery of St. Arbogast. Despoiled by his partners of his property and of his fame ”

“ On May 20, 1506, worn out by disease, anxieties, and labors, the great discoverer launched forth on his last voyage of discovery, beyond the border of that unknown land whose boundaries are hid from mortal ken.
His place among the immortals is secure. By the power of the unconquerable mind with which nature had endowed him, he achieved a fame so imperishable that neither the arrows of malice, nor the shafts of envy, nor the keenest pens of critics, nor the assaults of iconoclasts can avail to destroy it. ”

“ The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, and the wars of Epaminondas were far more brilliant than the operations of the Peloponnesian War. Yet, to the scholar, a raid in Thucydides is more than a campaign in Xenophon. For neither is his style so pure as that of either of his rivals, nor is his enthusiasm the same. We feel him always a polished man of the world—never the rugged patriot, never the rapt seer. He seems, too, to lack impartiality. He lavishes praise upon Agesilaus, a second-rate man, while he is curt and ill-tempered concerning Epaminondas, the real genius of the age. ”

“ The English fought with the most stubborn courage, and the battle was only lost by their allowing the pretended flight of the Normans to draw them from their impregnable position on the crest of the hill, ringed with an unbroken shield wall. On its slope, right in front of the Norman army, waved the golden dragon of Wessex, as well as the king's own standard, a fighting man wrought upon it in gold. Here Harold stood with his mighty two-handed axe, and hewed down the Normans as they came. Before nightfall he fell, pierced through the eye with an arrow. ”

“ Never did a man win immortality more easily. As a discoverer and a navigator he should rank not only below Columbus, but also below Bartolemeo Diaz and Cabral among his own countrymen, as well as Vespucius and Magellan, who carried the Spanish flag, and the Cabots, who established England's claim to the most important portions of the New World. As a commander, an administrator, and ruler of newly discovered regions, however, he ranks easily above them all. He not only led the way to India, but laid securely the foundations of Portuguese empire in the East. ”

“ While Gallienus and Claudius governed the Roman empire, Zenobia was allowed to pursue her conquests, rule her dominions, and enjoy her triumphs almost without opposition; but at length the fierce and active Aurelian was raised to the purple, and he was indignant that a woman should thus brave with impunity the offended majesty of Rome. Having subdued all his competitors in the West, he turned his arms against the Queen of the East. ”

“ Like other fighters, he met treachery with treachery, cruelty with cruelty. He had never learned to love his enemies, nor to turn his cheek for the second blow. Show us the man invested with absolute power, in that or in any former age, who abused it less. Try him by the moral standards, not of our humane and enlightened age, but by those of his own. Compared with the deeds of darkness that were done by Bobadilla and Ovando, the governors who replaced him, the reign of Columbus appears, even at its worst, to have been mild and merciful. ”

“ Every day the ramparts gaped with cannon-shot; but every night, as if by miracle, they rose again. The defenders suffered from wounds, pestilence, and famine; but Bayard had put every man on oath to eat his horse, and then his boots, before he would surrender. Three weeks passed; and when at last the king arrived with forces to relieve the town, he found a few gaunt spectres still glaring defiance from the battered ramparts against a hundred cannon and more than forty thousand men. ”

“ Meantime Harold drove back the Welsh marauders of King Griffith out of Herefordshire, and added that post of danger to his earldom. The death in 1057 of the Ætheling Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, who had been brought back from Hungary as heir to the throne, opened up the path for Harold's ambition, and from this time men's eyes rested on him as their future king. And nature had equalled fortune in her kindness, for his handsome and stalwart figure and his gentle and conciliatory temper were kingly qualities that sat well upon his sagacity, his military skill, and his personal courage. ”

“ You have but to think of any young girl of your acquaintance, seventeen years old, and try to imagine her leading an army to battle, storming a fort, or planning a campaign, in order to realize in a measure the astounding qualities possessed by this wonderful being.
Not only did she do all this as wisely as the most astute general who ever lived, but she succeeded in liberating France from the hands of the English, where we have very good reason to think it might have otherwise remained to this day ”

“ Life to him came to mean sin, suffering, and sorrow in the world about him, and for himself work, work, incessant work, in the effort to do what one man could to lift or lighten the burden under which the whole earth groaned. Death came to him where he would have most wished it might, and took him directly from labor to reward. And throughout the coming ages the world will be the better because in the last half of the eighteenth century there lived, labored, and died in the midst of his labors one John Howard, the Philanthropist. ”

“ But Bayard, to his great vexation, found he was doomed to lie in idleness for several weeks.
According to the laws of war, the house was his, and all the inmates were his prisoners. And the fact was well for them. Outside the house existed such a scene of horror as, even in that age, was rare. Ten thousand men lay dead in the great square; the city was given up to pillage, and it is said that the conquerors gorged themselves that day with booty worth three million crowns. The troops were drunk with victory and rapine. No man's life, no woman's honor, was in safety for an instant. ”

“ The night advances, and with the coming day the enemy will be upon us. If we fall into the king's hands we must face torture, slavery, and death, and yet here we lie, as if it were a time for rest! What am I waiting for? Is it a general (p. 017) to lead me? and where is he? or till I am myself of riper age to command? Older I shall never be, if to-day I surrender to mine enemies." And so he rouses the officers of his murdered friend, Proxenos, and appeals to them all to be up and stirring, to organize their defence and appoint new leaders to direct them. ”