Non Fiction Authors From England

"As the study of paved the way for those changes of thought which went to form the and remade Europe, so now the study of the languages and literature of ancient Egypt and Babylonia is likely to revolutionize our views of the Bible."

"Some of the greatest difficulties which beset the western mind in attempting to study the Bible are due to the fact that it is an eastern book. The biblical student has to learn to think orientally. Now a prolonged study of the Bible, especially if it is the only book much read, will produce an oriental cast of thought, as it did among our pious forefathers. For it is the unrivaled mediator between East and West. Yet such an unconscious is apt to be true to neither, because it recognizes neither, historically nor scientifically. The modern student will find it difficult to avoid misunderstanding unless he enters into the spirit of the East consciously and deliberately, sympathetically, but without losing his foothold on firm ground. To do this, he must familiarize himself with things oriental, ways of thought and speech, and the whole eastern man's outlook on life. To visit the in a modern city is a revelation to many. ... To make even a short tourist's trip in Palestine will present us with a fifth gospel. ... The unchanging East has sent back many a traveler with a new Bible."

"In Herodotus (I. 7) , the mythical founder of , appears as the son of , the mythical founder of Babylon. It is an interesting but not very profitable occupation to seek to interpret the statements of the Greek writers by comparison with the facts that may have suggested their stories. Their chief value is the eloquent testimony they bear to the lasting impression of greatness which left upon the imagination of the peoples of , from whom the Greeks drew their information. It is somewhat different with the statements of , who, though he wrote in Greek, was himself a Babylonian priest, and had access to ancient and authentic sources of history. Wherever his statements admit of verification they have been found to be reliable, subject to such modifications as are usually necessary in dealing with ancient historians. Unfortunately his writings are only known to us from the extracts which Eusebius and later writers made from more ancient authorities who had quoted from him."

"The ancient authors, who founded the Science of History, whose names remain household words amongst us still, such as Herodotus or Xenophon, have transmitted to modern times some far-off echoes of the fame of . Many scattered references in classical writers serve to show the impression that its wealth and power had made on the Greek imagination. Aeschylus and Aristophanes, Aristotle and others, will be recalled. After Alexander the Great had included it in his conquests, a closer acquaintance with its still marvellous remains and magnificent traditions enhanced its interest for many writers less generally known: Arrian, , Pausanias may be named."

"The value to a great Empire, such as that of , or of , of an accurate record of the available population, its resources and occupations, must always have been appreciated. We now know that from very early times (the third millenium B. C.) ample material existed for such a . Estates were carefully surveyed and the areas of the fields estimated from actual measurements, correct to the last finger-breadth. The boundaries, names of neighbours, of roads, canals, streets, or public buildings, adjoining, were exactly stated. The class of land, corn-field, vineyard, orchard, or pasture, the names of the tenants or serfs and the average yield were set down. Boundary stones engraved with the minutest details of the adjoining estate, and often bearing a short abstract of its recent history, were erected. So many of these monuments have already found their way to European Museums that it is perhaps not too much to say that were an accurate survey now made of Babylonia, with a notice of the landmarks and boundary stones still in situ, and probably easily to be recovered, we should be able to map out every town and village, road and canal, and most of the fields in that ancient centre of the world's history."

"Ages are not taken at their own valuation by posterity, and the achievements which they view with most complacency often appear to their successors negligible or even ridiculous. It was so in Greece. Aeschylus expected to be remembered not as a poet, but as a combatant at . speaks as if the greatness of Athens lay in its empire. Much of which it is proud is forgotten by its successors. Much of which it is proud is forgotten by its successors. Whole epochs which were well satisfied with themselves are found in the sequel to matter nothing to the world, and to have made no contribution to its progress. Two hundred years hence our own age may be regarded as one that possessed, for its time, considerable material civilization but very little else, a substantial body and a soul which died from fatty degeneration,"

"A man walking down from to passes the . If it is the evening, a dramatic performance is probably taking place inside. It may be a tragedy, or some form of comedy. If it is a musical comedy and he enters, he will see elaborate scenery and a play which may open with a prologue and which is partly composed of dialogue between the various characters, partly of songs in various sung by a chorus to the accompaniment of an orchestra. As the words in italics indicate, our imaginary passer-by will have seen, though he may not have suspected it, a symbol of the indelible mark which the Greeks have set on the aesthetic and intellectual life of Europe, and of the living presence of Greece in the twentieth century. An ancient Athenian might be startled at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the altar of Dionysus in the theatre of his home."

"has nearly four million square miles ; has 1,700 ; has 700. Yet this tiny country has given us an art which we, with it and all that the world has done since it for our models, have equalled perhaps, but not surpassed. It has given us the staple of our vocabulary in every domain of thought and knowledge. Politics, tyranny, democracy, anarchism, philosophy, physiology, geology, history—these are all Greek words. It has seized and up to the present day kept hold of our higher education. It has exercised an unfailing fascination, even on minds alien or hostile. Rome took her culture thence. Young Romans completed their education in the Greek schools. Roman orators learnt their trade from Greek rhetoricians. Roman proconsuls on their way to the East stopped to spend a few days talking to the successors of Plato and Aristotle in the and . Roman aristocrats imported Greek philosophers to live in their families."

"}} has put Egypt in an epigram. " A donkey-ride and a boating-trip interspersed with ruins " does, in fact, sum up in a single line the whole experience of the Nile traveller. Àpropops of these three things—the donkey, the boat, and the ruins—it may be said that a good and a comfortable Dahabeeyah add very considerably to the pleasure of the journey; and that the more one knows about the past history of the country, the more one enjoys the ruins."

"Till the publication of 's Guide to the Eastern Alps in 1868, and the appearance of Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill's joint volume in 1864,—the was scarcely known even by name to any but scientific travellers. A few geologists found their way now and then to ; a few artists, attracted in the first instance to as the birthplace of , carried their sketch-books up the ; but there it ended."

"Eager for conquest, and tempted by the rich pearls and tin mines for which the island was famous, but pretending only to punish the poor savages for having helped the Gauls, with whom he was at war, Julius Caesar came over from Italy with his ships and soldiers, plundered and killed in every direction round about , and made the first conquest of Britain. This happened just fifty-five years before Christ. Scarcely a hundred more had gone by when the came with fifty thousand men, and subdued it over again ( 43). It was during the reign of this emperor that , a patriot Briton, made the first effort to free his country from the Roman yoke. After nine years conflict he was taken prisoner ; but was afterwards released by the clemency of Claudius."

"In 1880 … Petrie set out on an expedition to Egypt long contemplated and prepared for, but delayed in the fruitless hope that his father might accompany him. So the survey of the pyramids, begun with an open mind but in the end intended to settle once for all controversy about prophetic feet and inches, was undertaken almost single-handed, the only helper being an old Egyptian who, as a child, had served , and later and . When Petrie, after two winters in Egypt and a year’s work on the plans, submitted his account to the in 1883 Francis Galton reported so favourably on it that £100 was granted for publication. Galton continued his encouragement in subsequent years, and , who, with and others, had just founded the , insisted that this new body should give the young man an opportunity to excavate. Thus his excavations commenced when he was thirty; they continued, with very rare exceptions, every year for over fifty years."

"Our knowledge of how men lived and thought in the Valley of the Nile five or six thousand years before the Christian era is ever on the increase. It keeps pace with the march of , and that march extends every year over a wider area. Each season beholds the exploration of new sites, and each explorer has some new thing to tell."

"Flinders Petrie had no school or university training. His mother was the only child of , a naval officer who served under Bligh of ', and later explored and surveyed much of the coast of Australia. This lady taught her son the rudiments of knowledge and imbued him at an early age with the love of collecting and studying Greek and Roman coins."

"The first consideration on reaching Egypt was where to be housed. In those days there was no luxurious close to the ; if any one needed to live there, they must either live in a tomb or in the Arab village. As an English engineer had left a tomb fitted with door and shutters I was glad to get such accommodation. When I say a tomb, it must be understood to be the upper chamber where the Egyptian fed his ancestors with offerings, not the actual sepulchre. And I had three rooms, which had belonged to separate tombs originally ; the thin walls of rock which the economical Egyptian left between his cuttings, had been broken away, and so I had a doorway in the middle into my living-room, a window on one side for my bedroom, and another window opposite for a store-room. I resided here for a great part of two years; and often when in draughty houses, or chilly tents, I have wished myself back in my tomb. No place is so equable in heat and cold, as a room cut out in solid rock ; it seems as good as a fire in cold weather, and deliciously cool in the heat."

"In 1893-1894 I went to to search for remains of the dynastic race, which presumably had entered Egypt at that point from the Red Sea. In the lowest part of the temple foundations we found parts of three colossal figures of the local god , each with surface carvings of animals, &c. They obviously belonged to a far earlier art than anything known in Egypt, and all later discoveries confirm their being placed as the earliest works of the , long before the establishment of the . One figure is at Cairo, and two are in the Asmolean Museum at Oxford."

"In few kinds of work are the results so directly dependent on the personality of the worker as they are in excavating. The old saying that a man finds what he looks for in a subject, is too true; or if he has not enough insight to ensure finding what he looks for, it is at least sadly true that he does not find anything that he does not look for. Whether it be , , , or that excavators have been seeking, they have seldom preserved or cared for anything but their own limited object. Of late years the notion of digging merely for profitable spoil, or to yield a new excitement to the jaded, has spread unpleasantly—at least in Egypt. A concession to dig is sought much like a grant of a monastery at the : the man who has influence or push, a title or a trade connection, claims to try his luck at the spoils of the land. Gold digging has at least no moral responsibility, beyond the ruin of the speculator; but spoiling the past has an acute moral wrong in it, which those who do it may be charitably supposed to be too ignorant or unintelligent to see or realise."

"He found archaeology in Egypt a treasure hunt; he left it a science."

"To the Egyptian the gods might be mortal; even , the sun-god, is said to have grown old and feeble, was slain, and , the great hunter of the heavens, killed and ate the gods. The mortality of gods has been dwelt on by ('), and the many instances of tombs of gods, and of the slaying of the deified man who was worshipped, all show that immortality was not a divine attribute. Nor was there any doubt that they might suffer while alive; one myth tells how Ra, as he walked on earth, was bitten by a magic serpent and suffered torments. The gods were also supposed to share in a life like that of man, not only in Egypt but in most ancient lands. Offerings of food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in Egypt laid upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour."

"From the ' diggers, I secured a lot of seventy-five Attic s in perfect condition, which served to show the accuracy of the mint in Athens, for most of the coins would have passed our own mint standard."

"The main idea that animated me in establishing this Hostel for the blinded soldiers was that the sightless men, after being discharged from hospital, might come into a little world where the things that blind men cannot do were forgotten and where every one was concerned with what blind men can do."

"The policy primarily won the confidence of the British through the personal ability, the honesty, and the noble idealism of the men who created it—, , and . It was nourished by prosperity and grew strong with age. ... novelists drew pictures of a starving people saved by the reforms of Cobden. ... There is a sadness in the study of the promises which Cobden made to the people. ... All nations, he said, would follow Great Britain's example if she adopted free trade. Each country would then produce things which her soil, climate and people could produce to greatest advantage. War would cease, because under this system of free exchange a nation could never afford to quarrel with neighbors upon whom she depended for certain necessaries. ... No nation has followed the example of Great Britain in adopting a free trade policy. There has been no perceptible diminution in the number of wars. America has refused to remain a purely agricultural country because Great Britain had the start of her in manufactures."

"It is far too soon to estimate the importance of the service rendered to his fellows by Arthur Pearson at . He took the men who in the heyday of their youth had lost their sight fighting for their country, inspired them with courage, filled them with hope, taught them how to overcome their handicap, and contrived to make their lives happy and useful. But he did far more than this. He revolutionised the attitude of mind of the sighted towards the blind. Before Arthur Pearson ceased to be able to see, the typical blind man tapped his way along the street with a stick, an object of pity, a solicitor of alms. Except for those lucky persons with assured unearned incomes, the blind man was regarded as hopelessly handicapped and unable, except in rare cases, to fight the battle of life for himself."

"A Learned Woman is thought to be a Comet, that bodes Mischief, when ever it appears. To offer to the World the liberal Education of Women is to deface the Image of God in Man, it will make Women so high, and men so low, like Fire in the House-tops it will set the whole world in a Flame. These things and worse than these, are commonly talked of, and verily believed by many, who think themselves wise Men: to contradict these is a bold attempt."

"Let not your Ladiships be offended that I do not (as some have wittily done) plead for Female Preeminence. To ask too much is the way to be denied all."

"... From the earliest days of her married life, Mrs. Heath had found all her pleasure to consist in making her home happy. To be sure, in her young days, change of scene, frequent visiting and parties were not deemed essentials to the health and happiness of the middle-class wife. The bringing up of children was not delegated to ignorant, careless nursemaids, but was the first duty and delight of mothers. Neither in her day were children looked upon as burdens, or a woman pitied because of the cares of her large family. Happiness was then found in these cares, and peace of mind in the performance of the blessed duties of maternity—duties laid upon woman by Providence and nature, and which she may not seek to abrogate without ill consequences to all her race."

"Eggs. Put into a stewpan two s of or milk, two of good gravy, with two ounces of , a little salt and pepper, Break into this six eggs, and when they begin to set throw in the {asparagus prepared thus:—Take two dozen heads of small asparagus, cut the green tops into pieces the size of large peas, throw them into boiling water with plenty of salt, when done, drain them on a sieve. Let them be stirred over the fire with the eggs for half a minute, then pour them on to their dish and garnish them with ."

"Sausages have from time immemorial found favor as a breakfast dish. But that any one should be able to eat those sold in shops after the revelations respecting them, and the great risk there is of getting diseased meat in so disguised a form, is indeed surprising. There is no difficulty whatever in making sausages at home, a will last a lifetime, and be so useful for a variety of purposes that no family should be without one."

"A good cook will never be embarrassed by having too much cold meat on hand, because she will be able by her skill so to vary the dishes that the appetites of those for whom she caters will never tire of it. Even a small piece of the loin of mutton may be served in half-a-dozen different ways, and be relished by those who are tired of the mutton-chop or the plainroast."

"Now the number of dishes used for breakfast is, in the majority of English dishes, very limited. Bacon and eggs are the staple, the former generally unsatisfactory, being over or under cooked, too salt or too new; it is besides expensive, a large portion of it running to fat. New-laid eggs, when they can be procured in town, are very costly, they properly, after twenty-four hours, can only be described as fresh. The mind is not, however, very enlightened on this subject, and the vendors of eggs are persuaded, or at any rate try to persuade the public, that eggs are new-laid until they are "an apology for pepper.'"

"It is well known that up to the time of Bentham the law of England, and more especially the most antiquated portions of it, or the "," was obsequiously venerated on all side, by judges, practising lawyers, legislators, and the general public, as the "perfection of human reason." If such a view seemed to shock common sense, when brought into glaring contrast with the actual anomalies, contradictions, barbarities, and irrational formalities which characterized every portion of the , the difficulty was got over by ascribing all that was reasonable and precise to the Law, and all that was necessarily repugnant even to the acclimatized temperament of legal practitioners, to false interpretations of it."

"... in Justinian's time, the Roman language of law, though debased—as is clearly shown by comparing the terms of any passage of Gaius' Institutes with the terms of the amending passage in Justinian's Institutes—was still equal to its purpose, and was intelligible throughout the bulk of the populations affected by the law. The intensely centralized administration and the current system of judicial procedure and appeals tended to keep the Latin tongue, if not everywhere a vulgar dialect, at all events a necessary accomplishment for all aspirants to office. At the same time the Greek language, which, in Constantinople and all the chief ports of Asia Minor, in Greece itself, in Syria, and in Alexandria, was the language of the market-place, the exchange, and, as it would seem, the polite coterie, afforded a secondary vehicle for the diffusion of Justinian's laws."

"One fallacy is that International Law has no existence whatever, and is a mere fiction of the political imagination. This assertion is usually made by those who, either for some particular argumentative purpose wish to prove it a fiction, or, by their own criminal acts, have already done that was in their power to render it such. It is no doubt perfectly true that the body of International Law is at present very imperfectly developed. Many of the rules which compose it are uncertain, ambiguous, or habitually interpreted in the most opposite senses. There are many doctrines which have the feeblest possible hold even upon the States which formally recognise them. There are other doctrines of the highest importance which, though very widely received and conformed to, are still frequently set at nought with utter impunity. But all this vacillation and uncertainty, taken by itself, gives the most incorrect picture of the practical cogency of the great mass of the Rules which compose the International Law of Europe."

"Obstinacy and vehemency in opinion are the surest proofs of stupidity."

"No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is vastly beneath the rank of man."

"Again, if the liberty of a man consists in the empire of his reason, the absence whereof would betray him to the bondage of his passions, then the liberty of a commonwealth consists in the empire of her laws, the absence whereof would betray her to the lust of tyrants. And these I conceive to be the principles upon which Aristotle and Livy (injuriously accused by Leviathan for not writing out of nature) have grounded their assertion, "that a commonwealth is an empire of laws and not of men.""

"At the latter end of 1849 Mrs. Gaskell, the author of ', wrote to , asking for an introduction to Tennyson, in connection with Samuel Bamford, the Lancashire weaver, and author of Life of a Radical. Mrs. Gaskell wished, I believe, to enlist the poet's interest on behalf of Bamford, who was now old, and greatly desirous of having a copy of Tennyson's poems for himself. With his usual kindness of heart, the author of ' writes at once to Forster that he will, as soon as maybe, instruct (his publisher) to forward the books—adding that he reckoned Bamford's admiration as the highest honour he had ever received."

"Easter was a more important holiday time at . On Good Friday, children took little baskets neatly trimmed with moss, and went "," and received at some places eggs, at some places , and at others , which they carried home to their mothers, who would feel proud that their children had been so much respected. On , companies of young men grotesquely dressed, led up by a fiddler, and with one or two in female attire, would go from house to house on the same errand of "peace-egging." At some places they would dance, at other they would recite quaint verses, and at the houses of the more sedate inhabitants, they would merely request a "peace-egg." Money or ale would in general be presented to them, which they afterwards divided and spent. Meantime, the holiday having fairly commenced, all work was abandoned, good eating, good drinking, and new clothing were the order of the day. Men thronged to the ale-houses, and there was much folly, intemperance, and quarreling, amidst the prevailing good humour."

"It is matter of history, that whilst the laurels were yet cool on the brows of our victorious soldiers on their second occupation of Paris, the elements of convulsion were at work amongst the masses of our labouring population; and that a series of disturbances commenced with the introduction of the , and continued, with short intervals, until the close of the year 1816. In London and riots ensued, and were continued for several days, whilst the bill was discussed; at , there were riots on account of the high price of bread; at there were similar disturbances to prevent the exportation of grain; at , by the unemployed, to destroy machinery; at , not suppressed without bloodshed ..."

"The condition of the working classes, physically, morally, and mentally, having of late begun to attract that degree of attention which it ought long ago to have done, I conceived that, at this particular crisis, some good might be rendered to the country — some advancement made towards the Truth — by an actual survey of the present condition of such labouring persons. I determined therefore, on taking a series of perambulations amongst them, for the purpose of noting down their real state and condition, and of making it known through the public press of the country."

"Sir (Ur Excavations, vol. , 1934) records that in the grave of the (c. 2700 ) he notices close to the coffin a quantity of small "" of thin cope sheeting, laid over wooden cores; with them there were plentiful traces of wood and also of some substance which looked like leather or skin; he suggests that they formed the remains of a drum."

"Of ancient stringed instruments there are, we may roughly say, two broad types; in one the strings are stretched across a sound-box and lie parallel to it—this we may call the ‘’ type, though including, for our present purpose, the various forms of and ; in the other the strings are attached to the upper board of the sound-box and rise vertically from it—this is the ‘harp’ type."

"That the was the predecessor and counterpart of the of the present day is a matter of common knowledge, but, when we come to unravel the origin of the name, we are landed at once into the region of wild conjecture. Some writers have wisely passed the subject over in silence; others have propounded solutions more plausible than probable."

"When completely dry the plant should be mounted on stiff white paper. The size depends on the purpose of the collection; paper 17 in. by 10 in. will be found useful and workable, and can be obtained from most printers. It is a bad system to fasten the specimens on with glue or gum, as it renders it impossible to shift the mount, and finer parts of the flowers are destroyed. The writer has found that very thin strips of parchment, cut with wider ends, laid across the stoutest parts of the plant and fastened to the paper with strong cement, form a most easy and effectual way of mounting with the least possible unsightliness."

"" Instinct," as said, " is a great matter "; but it is not the whole. believes so much in domination and antagonism that he seems not to believe in men and women—the first act of faith that God requires of the artist."

"I was one of the first in this country—I rather think I was quite the first—to hail in print the genius of Mr. Joyce, when, many years ago, he put forth a quiet little volume of short stories called " ." I saw in his bleak and bitter realism a reading of life."

"Whereas so many writers who are " different " seem to be merely straining away from the conventional in their originality, Mrs. Woolf transcends it easily: she has a running lyric strain that lifts the heart. The fairies showered gifts on Mr. Forster; sympathy, wit, knowledge, charm; but an impudent fairy came at the end and made him whimsical. Lovely as his work is, it remains at one remove from life."

"... , years before he died, was hidden from most of us in the mist of his own method."

"Gerald Gould was important in George Orwell’s life although they may never have met. As Chief Reader for the publisher Victor Gollancz in the early 1930’s Gould was involved in editing Orwell’s early books. On 17 December 1934 Orwell wrote a letter to about possible changes to '; and listed sixteen changes that Gould, and Harold Frederick Rubenstein, a solicitor, playwright, author and literary critic, had recommended. Orwell made some changes, compromised over others and stood firm on some points."

"The civilisation and social structure of our country, rightly or wrongly, take for granted that a few people shall have a lot of money and a lot of power, and great many people very little money and very little power. But the individuals, and particularly the labouring individuals, who create and compose our civilisation and society, are beginning to cease to take this state of things for granted."