Cassel

“ To the east and south are beautiful curves of high hills, called mountains here; thickly wooded, so that they make solid spaces of color, dark green or purple or blue, according to the time calendar of colors of mountains at a distance. (They have their time-tables as fixed as railway trains, and much more to be depended on.) There is no town in Germany which can compare with Cassel as a home for people wishing to educate children cheaply and well, and not wishing to live in the fashions and ways and close air of cities. ”

“ It was cruel and inhuman to compel boys to work so hard at their books that they had no leisure for healthful recreation, and the necessary physical training and development of the body. If he himself, while at Cassel, had not had special opportunities for riding to and fro, and looking about him a little, he would never have got to know at all what the outside world was like. ”

“ Some time since, a mountebank came to Cassel, who, besides many other wonderful feats, pretended that he could swallow and digest stones. A Hessian officer walking before the chateau with an English gentleman, who then happened to be at Cassel, asked him, What he thought of the fine new colonade?—It is very fine indeed, replied the stranger; but if you wish it to be durable, you ought to take care [56] not to allow the mountebank to walk this way before breakfast.
Nothing in the country of Hesse is more worthy the admiration of travellers, than the Gothic temple and cascade at Wasenstein. ”

“ In the dominions of king Mihragè there is an island called Cassel. I had been told that in that island there was heard every night the sound of cymbals, which had given rise to the sailors’ opinion, that Degial [5] had chosen that spot for his residences. I felt a great desire to witness these wonders, and during my voyage I saw some fish, of one and two hundred cubits in length, which occasion much fear but do no harm; they are so timid, that they are frightened away by beating on a board. ”

“ Thus Cassel was already in flourishing circumstances in 1878, when he married Annette, daughter of Robert Thompson Maxwell, of Croft House, Croft, Darlington. On the day of his marriage he became a British subject by legal naturalization. A happy married life was cut short by the early death of Mrs. Cassel three years later. She was a convert to the Church of Rome; and, by her dying wish, Cassel himself was soon afterwards received into the Church of Rome, though the fact was not generally known till his own death. ”

“ Cassel has a communal college. Its industrial establishments include tanneries, oil-mills, salt refineries and breweries, and there is trade in cattle and butter.
The town, supposed to occupy the site of Castellum Menapiorum, was a Roman station, as numerous remains of the Gallo-Roman period attest, and an important centre of roads. It is frequently mentioned in the wars of the middle ages, and was the scene of important battles in 1071, when Robert, count of Flanders, vanquished his rival Arnulf; 1328, when Philip of Valois defeated the Flemish ”

“ Truly on sight one should never judge a man with his clothes on.
X. Howitzer in Action.
CHAPTER IV (p. 031) THE YPRES SALIENT (JUNE-JULY 1917)
It was about this time we moved to Cassel. Nothing very interesting in the journey till one comes to Arques and St. Omer (at one time Lord French's G.H.Q.) . The road from Arques to the station at the foot of Cassel Hill was always lined on each side by lorries, guns, pontoons and all manner of war material. A gloomy road, thick with mud for the most part, if not dust. ”

“ We slept the first night at Marburg, and on the second, about midnight, arrived at Cassel.
As the ground is quite covered with snow, the roads bad, and the posts long, we were obliged to take six horses for each chaise, which, after all, in some places moved no faster than a couple of hearses. The D—— bore this with wonderful serenity, contemplating the happy evasion he had made from the cabinets at Frankfort. A slave who had escaped from the mines could not have shown greater satisfaction. ”

“ Cassel (72) , capital of Hesse-Cassel, an interesting town, 120 m. from Frankfort-on-Main; it is the birthplace of Bunsen.
Cassell, John, the publisher, born in Manchester; a self-made man, who knew the value of knowledge and did much to extend it (1817-1865) .
Cassianus, Joannus, an Eastern ascetic; came to Constantinople, and became a pupil of Chrysostom, who ordained him; founded two monasteries in Marseilles; opposed the extreme views of Augustine in regard to grace and free-will, and human depravity; and not being able to go the length of Pelaganism, adopted semi-Pelagianism, q. ”

“ Cassel, in comparison with Hamburg resembles an Italian town. The Thuringian Forest separates north and south. The north is a coast-land, commerce its destination; the south inland: hence agriculture and industry are more suitable. The spirit of the South German is more directed to what is domestic: a fruitful soil rewards his labour, and alleviates it by the juice of the grape. The mouths of his rivers and his harbours allure the North German into foreign lands ”

“ CHAPTER XXXII. THE WARTBURG AND EISENACH.
I left Cassel with a heart far heavier than I had brought into it some weeks before. The poor fellow, whose remains I followed to the grave, was ever in my thoughts, and all our pleasant rambles and our familiar intercourse, were now shadowed over by the gloom of his sad destiny. So must it ever be. He who seeks the happiness of his life upon the world’s highways, must learn to carry, as best he may, the weary load of trouble that “flesh is heir to.” There must be storm for sunshine ”

“ There is as much as you please to amuse your curiosity, but no social resources. You are living only with people who have no interest in you or you in them, and however kind they are, it is impossible for either party to go to the trouble of discovering interest in the other when each knows that they are ready to part and never to meet again."
Cassel, May 22, 1840.—The weather to-day was as bad as yesterday, and the country not so pretty. Cassel is quite as small a town as Carlsruhe, and looks even less like a residential city. The suburbs especially are very poor. ”

“ During the American war we had employed these Hessians, Brunswickers, and the like, at a cost that excited general indignation. Besides paying seven pounds ten shillings and a penny for every man, the Duke of Brunswick, who furnished only four thousand and eighty-four men, had had an annual subsidy of fifteen thousand five hundred and nineteen pounds. The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who furnished twelve thousand men, had ten thousand two hundred and eighty-one pounds a year. ”

“ For the next two days, the 27th and 28th October, Cassels was in serious danger, for though to conceal his weakness he boldly attacked, he was soon attacked himself from the south by a very superior force of Infantry and guns, which made repeated attempts to break through, while the Turkish reinforcements from Mosul moved against his rear. ”

“ Here is a picture of John Cassell at this strenuous point in his life by Thomas Frost, on the occasion of the visit already mentioned. He found Cassell at La Belle Sauvage "in a sparsely furnished room on the first floor. A tall, sallow-complexioned man, with straight black hair and a pleasant expression of countenance. ”

“ But he won't!" "'Is it possible for me to see this man in his hiding-place?" asked Cassell. "For that matter, I hardly know," was the reply; "for though I have contributed some hundreds of dollars to aid in the transit of these men who have fled from bondage, I have never seen one of their secret places of refuge, but, as you are an Englishman, I think you may be able to see the man to aid whose escape I send these five dollars."
"We set out accordingly," wrote Cassell, "passing up and down many streets until we stood before a door. My friend knocked, and presently a coloured man appeared. ”

“ After staying some time in Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin, Herr Bronsart and his wife settled in Hanover, where he is Intendant of the theatre. Here she devoted herself entirely to composition. An opera by her, 'Die Göttin von Sais,' had been unsuccessful in Berlin, but her next dramatic work, a setting of Goethe's 'Jery und Bätely,' was played with great success in Weimar, Cassel, and many other places. In 1870 she wrote a 'Kaiser Wilhelm March,' which was played at Berlin at a state performance to celebrate the return of the troops. ”

“ Cassell was a living paradox. He surpassed probability, defied heredity, rose superior to environment. A poor boy without material resources, he came to deal in extensive enterprises and control what were, in his day, large capitals. Uneducated himself, he did more than most men of his time to promote the higher education of the English masses. The son of a publican, he was an ardent teetotaller and a powerful advocate of temperance reform. A mechanic by training, he devoted his life to purely intellectual labour. Hardly anything John Cassell did was what he might have been expected to do. ”

“ Someone present remarked: "Cassell was only a carpenter, I think?" "Only a carpenter!" cried the old man. "Tell me, lad, who is there need be ashamed of being a carpenter, or a carpenters son?"
Cassell became, in April, 1837, a recognized agent of the newly formed National Temperance Society. In its interests he travelled all over England. To carry out the arduous programme of this ardent society a man wanted skill as a speaker, ingenuity as an organizer, but, above all, courage and tireless endurance. Cassell possessed all these qualities, and he succeeded. ”

“ Cassell lived to see many of the works brought to a successful termination, or reaching a circulation such as never entered into his mind when he commenced his publishing career, and to preside over an establishment in full working order employing nearly five hundred hands. ”

“ It was the custom of the partners and heads of departments to take lunch together in a room on the premises, apparently so that the discussion of the affairs of La Belle Sauvage should not stop during any moment from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. At one lunch after the publication of Cassell's "History of the Franco-German War," Petter had been denouncing war as un-Christian and declaiming with such vigour that nobody ventured to put in a word for Mars ”

“ In October, 1851, it was incorporated with the Weekly News and Chronicle, and Cassell turned aside to other enterprises. One of these was the Working Man's Friend, a paper he had started in 1850; the other was the production of cheap educational books. Cassell knew the life of the working man thoroughly—none better. He knew the material temptations that beset him, the intellectual desert in which he lived, and the perils of the loafing in ale-houses and at street corners which was his chief recreation. ”

“ Wherever you go you find people speaking well of John Cassell and his House." And he quoted by way of proof high eulogies he had heard from statesmen and officials in Canada and the United States. His belief was abundantly justified.
Prosperity and profits continued to grow until the Great War came to check them. ”

“ It was not without fitness that the House of Cassell should produce the authorized Life of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, for Shaftesbury was for many years a sympathetic observer of its operations. The book, in three large volumes, was written by Edwin Hodder, a Civil Servant who had done a good deal of literary work for Cassell's, including "Conquests of the Cross," a serial which told the story of missionary operations, and "Cities of the World." ”

“ Livesey's reminiscences give us a glimpse of the John Cassell of eighteen. Livesey first saw him listening to one of his lectures at Oak Street Chapel, Manchester. He well remembered Cassell " standing on the right, just below or on the steps of the platform, with fustian jacket and a white apron on." Thomas Whittaker adds features to the portrait. Cassell, he says, was " a marvellous man, young, bony, big, and exceedingly uncultivated. ... ”

“ It is not pretended that John Cassell's life, apart from his work as publisher, gave him a claim to a place in the Temple. He raised himself from extreme poverty to moderate wealth, but many others have done that. The factory lad at the time of his early death at the age of forty-eight was the head of a firm with five hundred employees; but there was nothing rare in that—other men had amassed greater wealth and created bigger businesses. ”

“ Cassell, to universal regret, on general as on commercial grounds, died in November, 1853, leaving the colony a less obstructed road to those restrictions which it has since seen fit to impose upon its own industry. "The Age", with remarkable ability and as remarkable success, has always advocated Protection. But at first, as my recollection goes, it was in that qualified way which is not necessarily against trading freedom, reasonably considered. ”

“ Of one individual, John Cassell, who has taken a leading part—perhaps the most important part—in these proceedings it is fit to mention the name because he was himself a working man, who rose by his industry from a most humble station, has constantly lived with the working classes, and has the most complete knowledge of their habits and their tastes from daily unreserved intercourse with them. ”

“ Cassell,—I write this for the purpose of introducing to you my excellent friend Mrs. Lees Brown. She is daughter of the late learned and honest Dr. Giffard, formerly Editor of the Standard newspaper, a man highly esteemed by all scholars and by the members of the great Conservative party, to which he belonged. His daughter is governess in our family, and we have the greatest esteem for her. Her brother is an eminent lawyer, and well known in the courts where he practises. ”