Historical figure

“ Though not deficient in courage, he was no war chief. The kindly qualities of human nature were in the ascendant. No one could see his regular and well- formed features, his kind and intelligent eye, his tall and symmetrical figure, showing the deliberative gentleman in every movement, and hear his mild and persuasive voice, with- out being impressed with the possibilities, too generally doubted and denied to the red man. ”

“ Despite efforts to write the history of peoples exclusively from the social point of view, history has been, and will continue to be, mainly a record of great names and great deeds of national heroes. ”

“ In the school of such a life, however, were reared and developed the characters of the men who rose to such eminence in the struggles of the Revolution, and who, as giants in intellect and virtue, must ever be a prominent group among the great historical characters of the world. ”

“ Our task will be to indicate roughly to what degrees and in what types of situation, it is legitimate to say that leadership does redetermine the historical trends by which it is confronted, and in what type of situations it is legitimate to say that it does not.
2. Another source of interest in the hero is to be found in the attitudes developed in the course of educating the young. The history of every nation is represented to its youth in terms of the exploits of great individuals—mythical or real. ”

“ There is no portion of our national history, or point of our national character, but would be brought into the sweep of such narratives, and receive illustration from them. Our warriors, statesmen, philosophers, divines, poets, beauties and heroines more admirable than beauty could make them, would all figure there. ”

“ But the feelings of nationality against imperial control by Church or State, the growth of the towns and commerce, the gradual development of representative government, the struggles against despotism—these are things he can understand and appreciate and in connection with which he can see the present emerging from the past. Nor should the great personalities of medieval and modern history be neglected, for they have historical interest and importance and serve to give greater interest and definiteness to movements of which they are a part. ”

“ Ask him how he values his memory of a thousand incidents of army life that are never recorded by a single line on the page of history, but which revealed comrade to comrade, knotted life to life, and gave opportunity for the expression of nobility by noble men. ”

“ It is the object of this series of histories to present a clear, distinct, and connected narrative of the lives of those great personages who have in various ages of the world made themselves celebrated as leaders among mankind, and, by the part they have taken in the public affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest influence on the history of the human race. ”

“ History, as it has often been written, is the genealogy of princes, the field-book of conquerors; and the fortunes of our fellow-men have been treated only so far as they have been affected by the influence of the great masters and destroyers of our race. ”

“ Not merely upon the field of battle, but also upon the consecrated soil of virtue—and upon the classic ground of truth, thousands of nameless heroes must fall and struggle to build up the footstool from which history surveys the one hero, whose name is embalmed, bleeding—conquering—and resplendent. ”

“ Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has been delegated to them. ”

“ There is nothing so difficult as repeating a certain collection of ideas under one and the same form. However, I may achieve my end, for I would lead the reader along the very paths trodden by the peasant, the prince, the founders of states, the conquerors and other great figures of our historical progress. ”

“ He is not only a great and commanding figure among the great statesmen and leaders of history, but he personifies, also, all the sadness and the pathos of the war, as well as its triumphs and its glories. ”

“ If the taste of the present generation had been that of all past ages, what could there have been in the gardens of our past kings, nobles, and historical characters to mark them as strongly and emphatically as they are now marked? They now, indeed, seem to belong to men and things gone by ”

“ He was not only a patriotic minstrel, but also a reliable eye-witness, who related historical events in all their details; contemporaries, it is well­ known, are much more interested in details than are historians when writing of past ages. ”

“ Momentary resemblances often mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her convictions ”

“ I declare to you that the reading of history makes my blood boil: century after century tells the same story, in sickening monotony illustrious name follows illustrious name on the slavish page, saint and hero, king and poet and knight, in an endless repetition, till one is forced to cry out in indignant remonstrance, to ask the historian whether he has forgotten that the English People ever existed. ”

“ Natural ability being presupposed, the qualities necessary for a historian are diligence, accuracy, love of truth, impartiality, the thorough digestion of his materials by careful selection and long meditating, and the compression of his narrative into the smallest compass consistent with the life of his story. ”

“ These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of the present age, and they the character of the men now living. ”

“ Aurelius de Emael, is written in German-text across his figure. Behind him is a weeping female figure; on the left is a group of dignitaries and soldiers. A landscape, in which the towers of a distant city appear, closes the scene. Underneath the left arm of the cross appears the legend, Vere Filius Dei erat iste, in Roman characters of the epoch, which ceased to be used after the time when the painting in oil commenced. ”

“ The final descendants of four or five generations of those living this absurd life were the émigrés of the great Revolution, all heroes, almost all clever, or at least appearing so, and in general people of wit, but without character. ”

“ The marvelous story of humanity is enacted again for our edification, instruction, and delight. We behold civilizations begin, struggle, triumph, and decay, giving place to higher and nobler as they pass away. Poet, lawgiver, and soldier sing their songs, make their codes, and fight their battles again, while we follow the never-dying effects of song, of law, and of battle. We sit down with 'princes, potentates, and powers,' watching them, as they think, governing the world.... Shut up in a little room we can witness the whole drama of man's history played on the vast stage of the world. ”

“ As I have already said, passions, interests, present historic personages in a thousand forms when they are alive, transfiguring not only the persons themselves, but events the most diverse, the character of institutions, the conditions of nations. ”

“ From the deluge to the present time a few men of great genius as poets, historians, warriors, conquerors, and criminals claim general recognition from mankind. All others are relegated or consigned to the special history of a people, and thereby rescued from an otherwise oblivion. As individuals they perish. ”

“ Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathise in their fate. ”

“ An historic hero is more characteristic of the thoughts and sentiments of the people among whom he lived than of real history. From the picture handed down of him we can judge what views and longings stirred his age. And as those views and longings were the products of social conditions, the task of the modern historian who desires to understand the past is to study the basis of history and to reconstruct the personal forces through which history has worked. ”

“ Who better than the writer of the Essays could have painted a series of miniatures of the courts of Elizabeth and James?
When at last the political upheaval of this century compelled men to leave, whether in histories, or memoirs, or biographies, a record of what they had themselves experienced, the character attained to its full importance and excellence. ”

“ History, if properly studied, tends to show that after all the great man was the good man, and that those only deserve our reverence and our imitation, who brought a good heart as well as a strong head or an iron hand to the service of mankind. ”

“ Suppose a man should ask at what time this state supported the most illustrious reputation—in the present days, or in those of our ancestors? With one voice you would reply, "In the days of our ancestors." At what time did our citizens display the greatest merit—then or now? ”

“ It is the true function of history to discover and exhibit them wherever they may be. In our own history, at all events, I am convinced that we need a heightened sense of the causes which produced those qualities which have created the British Empire. The most picturesque hero is the English people itself, growing through manifold training into the full manhood which it still enjoys. ”

“ It is an excellent feature of the present day that we express our national spirit in commemoration of great men and of great events. Let us be careful in so doing to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. ”

“ The upshot of my remarks is that, in proportion as history is picturesque in this sense, it is not really history. For, history is concerned with the life of the community, and picturesqueness with the character of individuals. But there is, I think, a larger and truer picturesqueness, which may be found, not in details, but in principles. The great object of history is to trace the continuity of national life, and to discover and estimate the ideas on which that life is founded. Individuals are only valuable as they express those ideas and embody that life. ”

“ Chainmail.—No, sir. Weigh the evidence of specific facts; you will find more good than evil. Who was England’s greatest hero—the mirror of chivalry, the pattern of honour, the fountain of generosity, the model to all succeeding ages of military glory? ”

“ If society were transparent, the noble would everywhere be gladly received and accredited, and would not be asked for his day’s work, but would be felt as benefit, inasmuch as he was noble. That were his duty and stint,—to keep himself pure and purifying, the leaven of his nation. ”

“ The duty of the historian is, not to decide if the newspapers are as good as they ought to be, but to measure their influence on the present, and to recognize their importance as an ample and contemporary record of the past. ”

“ A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every memory written quite full with Annals, wherein joy and mourning, conquest and loss manifoldly alternate; and, with or without philosophy, the whole fortunes of one little inward Kingdom, and all its politics, foreign and domestic, stand ineffaceably recorded? ”

“ In our own heroes and history our nation has been exceptionally blessed. They have proved unfailing sources of pride and inspiration that have prompted us as a people to stanch character, high endeavor, noble achievements and unparalleled progress. ”

“ Even the infirmities and vices of the men who piled the first stones of great empires, are chronicled in history as facts deserving record. The portrait of an ancient hero is a treasure beyond value, even though the features be but conjectural. How much more precious would be a faithful portrait of his character, in which the features should be his salient traits—the expression, outline, and complexion of his nature! ”

“ There was a true and fine air of nobility in his lofty form and well-marked features—a character of matured thought and intellectual power in the expansive brow, and in the firm gaze of his large dark eyes, as yet undimmed by age—with evidence of decision and self-respect, and habitual composure in the finely formed mouth and chin. ”

“ The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere a mission than the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior ”

“ Persons of dignity, in church and state, are grouped on all sides. In the background is the ship in which the Emperor is about to embark. This composition is filled with portraits; among which, in the figure bearing the standard on the extreme right, we recognize that of the Painter himself. Collection D'Espinoy.
(Bryan Collection.)
B-180. Parable of the Laborer who received a Penny. (22X17.) David Teniers the Younger.
In which is introduced the portrait of Rubens in his medal chain, also the portraits of Rembrandt and other artists and two children of Teniers. ”

“ And what wondrous interest clusters about these great names—each in itself a mighty chapter in, and a conspicuous part of, this world's history; conquerors, emperors, soldiers, statesmen, divines, jurists, philosophers, inventors, poets, merchant-princes, explorers—leaders all in all the great activities. ”

“ Sometimes their career is quite distinct from that of the people, and to write it, as the national history, is as if one should number the accidents which befall a man's weapons and wardrobe, and call the list his biography. Nevertheless, a truly noble and wise nation necessarily has a noble and wise visible government, for its wisdom issues in that conclusively. ”