"In the year of our Lord 1307," writes an ancient chronicler, "there dwelt a pious countryman in Unterwald beyond the Kernwald, whose name was Henry of Melchthal, a wise, prudent,...
The island elysium which Columbus had discovered, and of which he wrote and conversed in the most glowing terms, seemed like a fairy-land of promise to the people of Spain, and hun...
Far over the eastern half of Europe extends a vast and mighty plain, spreading thousands of miles to the north and south, to the east and west, in the north a land of forests, in t...
"To the Bastille! to the Bastille!" was the cry. Paris surged with an ungovernable mob. Month by month, week by week, day by day, since the meeting of the States-General,--called i...
During the past two and a half centuries the great empire of China has been under foreign rule, its emperors, its state officials, its generals and trusted battalions, being of Tar...
In the year 1268 the army of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis the famous conqueror, made its appearance before the stronghold of Sianyang, an important city of China on the souther...
On the evening of the 4th of July, 1778, a merry dance was taking place at the small settlement of Kaskaskia, in that far western region afterward known as Illinois. It must not be...
To-day we may make our way from New York to Philadelphia in a two-hour "Flyer," with palace-car accommodations. To-morrow, perhaps, the journey will be made in ninety minutes. Such...
Not until James II. became king of England was a determined effort made to take away the liberties of the American colonies. All New England, up to that time, had been virtually fr...
The most cruel tyrant the northern lands ever knew was Christian II. of Denmark, grandson of Christian I., whose utter defeat at Stockholm has been told. For twenty-seven years Swe...
At the end of 1816 the cause of liberty in Chili was at its lowest ebb. After four years of struggle the patriots had met with a crushing defeat in 1814, and had been scattered to...
William of Normandy, by the grace of God and his iron mace, had made himself king of England. An iron king he proved, savage, ruthless, the descendant of a few generations of pirat...
Historical tales have much to do with war and bloodshed, with rides and raids, with schemes and stratagems, with plunder and piracy, and with outrage and oppression. These are the...
The defeat of the Guadalete seemed for the time to have robbed the Goths of all their ancient courage. East and west, north and south, rode the Arab horsemen, and stronghold after...
Never were two happier lovers than Tristram and Isolde at Joyous Gard. Their days were spent in feasting and merriment, Isolde's heart overflowing with joy to be free from the jeal...
For more than two centuries the Ashikaga lorded it over Japan, as the Hojo had done before them, and the mikados were tools in their strong hands. Then arose a man who overthrew th...
In no other nation upon the earth and no other period of history has enjoyment taken so cruel and brutal a shape as in the Roman empire. The fierce people of the imperial city seem...
On the 24th of January, 1881, Edward O'Donovan, a daring traveller who had journeyed far through the wastes and wilds of Turkestan, found himself on a mountain summit not far remov...
There is not much of absorbing interest in early Japanese history. For a period of some twelve hundred years nearly all that we know of the mikados is that they "lived long and die...
The course of our work now brings us down to recent times. After the death of Philip II., in 1598, Spain had little history worth considering. Ruled by a succession of painfully we...
After many years had come and gone, and all at the court of Arthur the king had grown older and wiser, there came to pass a series of adventures more marvellous than had ever been...
Among the legendary tales of Greece, none of which are strictly, though several are perhaps partly, historical, none--after that of Troy--was more popular with the ancients than th...
We have told by what means the Spartans grew to be famous warriors. We have now to tell one of the ancient stories of how they used their warlike prowess to extend their dominions....
Never was the South in so desperate a plight as in the autumn months of that year of peril, 1780. The British had made themselves masters of Georgia, and South Carolina and North C...
Seventy years had passed since the battle of Morgarten, through which freedom came to the lands of the Swiss. Throughout that long period Austria had let the liberty-loving mountai...
In the harvest season of the cotton States of the South a vast, fleecy snow-fall seems to have come down in the silence of the night and covered acres innumerable with its virgin e...
The river Biobio, in Southern Chili, was for centuries the boundary between liberty and oppression in South America. South of it lay the land of the Araucanians, that brave and war...
The fact that such a realm as that of Japan existed remained unknown in Europe until about six centuries ago, when Marco Polo, in his famous record of travel and adventure, first s...
The French revolution of 1830 precipitated a similar one in Poland. The rule of Russia in that country had been one of outrage and oppression. In the words of the Poles, "personal...
When Pythagoras, the celebrated Greek philosopher, settled in the ancient Italian city of Crotona (between 550 and 520 B.C.) there was living in that town a youthful surgeon who wa...