Various

“ To the Aegean civilization, whether transformed by contact with Rome, and again transformed by the influence of Christianity and the religious genius of the middle ages—or rediscovered during the classical Renaissance—Europe owes the characteristic qualities of its thought and of its expression in literature and art. From republican Rome it largely draws its conceptions of law and of administrative order. From the Roman empire it inherited a tradition of political unity which survived, in visible form, though but as a shadowy symbol, until the last Holy Roman emperor abdicated in 1806 ”

“ To any such principle, and therefore to the protocol in which it was embodied, Great Britain offered an uncompromising opposition. In vain Metternich urged upon Castlereagh that the protocol was but the logical conclusion drawn from premises to which he was already committed; for, if the alliance was to be effective in maintaining peace, it must interfere wherever and whenever peace should be threatened, and therefore to crush internal revolutions which could not but have an external result. ”

“ The first universal exhibition, opened under the auspices of the prince consort at London in 1851, was intended to advertise and consecrate the dawn of a new era of international peace and goodwill. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, once hailed as the “bright Koh-i-nur of the West,” remains the dismal monument of a hope so soon to be belied by the hard logic of events. ”

“ The fall of Constantinople marked the definite establishment on European soil of a power alien and hostile to all that was characteristic of European civilization. It was a power, moreover, which could live only by expanding; and for over two hundred years to come the dread of Ottoman aggression was a dominant factor in the politics of eastern Europe. The tide of Turkish advance could have been arrested by a union of Europe; but the appeals of Pope Nicholas V. fell unheeded upon a sceptical age, intent only on its dynastic and particularist ambitions. ”

“ Euripides made a splendid effort to maintain the place of tragedy in the spiritual life of Athens by modifying its interests in the sense which his own generation required. Could not the heroic persons still excite interest if they were made more real,—if, in them, the passions and sorrows of every-day life were portrayed with greater vividness and directness? And might not the less cultivated part of the audience at least enjoy a thrilling plot, especially if taken from the home-legends of Attica? Euripides became the virtual founder of the romantic drama. ”

“ We give thanks to thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through Jesus Christ thy servant ”

“ One cannot even speak with assurance of the diffusion of an Aryan civilization. It is at least not certain that the civilization that was spread by the migration of peoples speaking Aryan tongues originated amongst and remained for a time peculiar to such peoples. The utmost that can be said is that the Aryan languages must in their earliest forms have spread from some geographical centre. That centre, however, is no longer sought for in Asia, but in some part of Europe, so that we can no longer speak of any detachment of Aryan-speaking peoples entering Europe. ”

“ In drawing up the secret treaty of Skiernevice, which may be regarded as the chef-d’œuvre of Bismarckian diplomacy, the German chancellor’s chief aims evidently were to paralyse Russia by yoking her to Germany and Austria, to isolate France, and to realize his old scheme of holding the balance between Russia and Austria in the Balkan Peninsula. With a view to attaining the first two objects it was stipulated that if any one of the three powers were forced to make war on a fourth power, the two other contracting parties should observe a benevolent neutrality towards their ally. ”

“ But the true significance of the work of the congress of Paris lies in the impetus given by it to the development of an effective international law. The concert of Europe was consecrated anew by the solemn admission of the Ottoman empire to an equality of status with the European powers and the declaration of the collective obligations of Europe towards it. The congress, moreover, acted in some sort as the legislative body of Europe; it established the principle of the free navigation of the Danube and of the right of all nations to carry their commerce into the Black Sea ”

“ In one sense the history of Europe is the history of this civilization and of the forces by which it was produced, preserved and developed; for a separate history of Europe could never have been written but for the alien powers by which this civilization was for centuries confined within the geographical limits of the European continent. Moreover, within these geographical limits the tradition of the Roman empire, and above all the organization of the Catholic Church, gave to the European nations, and the states based upon them, a homogeneity which without them could not have survived. ”

“ As all the great paintings of Greece have disappeared, we are obliged to trust to the designs on vases for our knowledge of Greek drawing and composition. Euphronius is stiff and archaic in style, but his subjects are varied, his groupings original and striking, and his mastery of the line decided. In their way, the vases which he painted will hold their own in comparison with those of any nation; for simplicity, truthfulness and charm they can scarcely be matched. ”

“ Eumenes, although physically weak, was a shrewd and vigorous ruler and politician, who raised his little state from insignificance to a powerful monarchy. During his reign Pergamum became a flourishing city, where men of learning were always welcome, among them Crates of Mallus, the founder of the Pergamene school of criticism. Eumenes adorned the city with splendid buildings, amongst them the great altar with the frieze representing the Battle of the Giants; but the greatest monument of his liberality was the foundation of the library, which was second only to that of Alexandria. ”

“ The failure of the Moscow campaign led at once to a national rising in Prussia, and as soon as Austria had united her forces with those of Prussia and Russia, the overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813 was the result, and “the imperial yoke was shaken from the neck of the German people.” Napoleon’s wars had roused feelings of patriotism in Italy, Germany, Russia and Spain. It was at least realized by the nations of continental Europe, what had long been apparent to Englishmen, that a nation to be strong must be united. ”

“ In none of the obviously native work is there any more instinctive feeling for the greater qualities of sculpture than in the gems. Little is original, almost everything dependent on earlier masters. There is no absorption of the artist by his work which produces great work, great because the beholder thinks rather of the work produced than of the artist who produces it. For this reason such figures as the bronze chimaera or the bronze Athena in the Florence museum are presumably not Etruscan but Greek. ”

“ We may grant at once that the Medea of Euripides is not a faultless play; that the dialogue between the heroine and Aegeus is not happily conceived; that the murder of the children lacks an adequate dramatic motive; that there is something of a moral anti-climax in the arrangements of Medea, before the deed, for her personal safety. But the Medea remains a tragedy of first-rate power. It is admirable for the splendid force with which the character of the strange and strong-hearted woman, a barbarian friendless among Hellenes, is thrown out against the background of Hellenic life in Corinth. ”

“ The states had firmly established their “liberties,” the princes were now emancipated from imperial control, and it was evident that, unless by some means the house of Austria could re-establish its ascendancy, the eventual dissolution of the Empire must sooner or later follow. The peace of Westphalia thus marks for Europe, and in a special sense for Germany, the end of an important epoch. For Germany the changes introduced into its political life amounted to nothing less than a revolution, for there “the mainspring of the national life was broken.” ”

“ Yet here we see how truly Euripides was the precursor of that near future which, at Athens, saw the more complete divergence of society from the state.
In an age which is not yet ripe for reflection or for the subtle analysis of character, people are content to express in general types those primary facts of human nature which strike every one. Achilles will stand well enough for the young chivalrous warrior, Odysseus for the man of resource and endurance. ”

“ The conclusion of the war of American Independence enabled Great Britain to regain her influence in Europe, and when Russia and Austria combined to attack Turkey, and when France threatened to re-establish her influence in Holland, Pitt formed with the Prussian king and the stadtholder the famous Triple Alliance of 1788. During the ensuing four years the influence of that alliance made itself felt in an unmistakable way. All hope of the establishment of French influence in Holland was destroyed; Denmark was forced to relinquish an attack on Sweden, then at war with Russia ”

“ All those who denied the sublime to Euripides were either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity or shameless charlatans who, in their presumption, wished to make more of themselves than they were.” “A poet whom Socrates called his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Alexander admired, and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death, must certainly have been some one. If a modern man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his knees” (J.A. Symonds, Greek Poets, i. 230) . ”

“ The chorus, the masks, the narrow stage, the conventional costumes, the slender opportunities for change of scenery, were so many fixed obstacles to the free development of tragedy in the new direction. But no man of his time could have broken free from these traditions; in attempting to do so he must have wrecked either his fame or his art. It is not the fault of Euripides if in so much of his work we feel the want of harmony between matter and form. Art abhors compromise; and it was the misfortune of Attic tragedy in his generation that nothing but a compromise could save it. ”

“ Jesus. The bread and wine are indeed an offering to God of what is his own, pure because offered in purity of heart; but they are not interpreted of the sacrifice of Jesus’ body broken on the cross, or of his blood shed for the remission of sin. It is not, as in Paul, a meal commemorative of Christ’s death, nor connected with the Passover, as in the Synoptics. Least of all is it a sacramental eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Jesus, a perpetual renewal of kinship, physical and spiritual, with him. ”

“ Events in the Balkan Peninsula foreshadowed a great European war, and it seemed that in the event of Europe’s being divided into two hostile camps, Italy might have the honour and the advantage of regulating the balance of power. By maintaining good relations with all her neighbours and carefully avoiding all inconvenient entanglements, she might come forward at the critical moment and dictate her own terms to either of the contending parties, or offer her services to the highest bidder. This Machiavellian policy did not give the expected results. ”

“ Till the end of the century Europe was faced with two serious problems: Could she successfully cope with the Turks on her eastern frontier? And could she resist the continued aggressions of France on her western frontier? Consequently the years from 1678 to the end of the century were of vital importance to the European world. For during that period the French and Turks made unceasing efforts to extend their frontiers at the expense of Germany. ”

“ To Great Britain the treaty was only a pause in her expansion in Canada and in her advance to the establishment of her influence over all India. To France the treaty was equally a presage of future disasters in India and Canada. The retention of Silesia by Prussia was a pronouncement to all Europe that a new power had arisen which was destined in 1866 to oust Austria from her dominant position in Germany. The gains won by Sardinia, too, indicated that the real danger to Austria’s position in Italy would come from the house of Savoy. ”

“ ETHNOLOGY and ETHNOGRAPHY (from the Gr. ἔθνος, race, and λόγος, science, or γράφειν, to write) , sciences which in their narrowest sense deal respectively with man as a racial unit (mankind) , i.e. his development through the family and tribal stages into national life, and with the distribution over the earth of the races and nations thus formed. Though the etymology of the words permits in theory of this line of division between ethnology and ethnography, in practice they form an indivisible study of man’s progress from the point at which anthropology (q.v.) ”