Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Sydney Smith warned ordinary Americans that encouraging the hawks in Washington would cost them more than blood.
In 1820, Sydney Smith interrupted his review of a recent book on the US economy to reflect on the price of military adventure. America had clashed with Britain in the War of 1812, and some in Washington were eager to renew hostilities against their old colonial master. Smith urged ‘brother Jonathan’ (the ordinary American, counterpart to John Bull) to think hard about what it would mean.
On the annual Remembrance Day of ancient Athens, Pericles rose to remind the people of the City that grief alone was not the best way to honour the fallen.
In the winter of 431 BC, their annual Remembrance Day had a special resonance for Athenians: war had broken out with Sparta, a city felt to stand for crushing State control, even as Corinth stood for licentious ruin. Rising to deliver the keynote address, Pericles asked Athenians not just to grieve for the dead, but to cherish a City founded on liberty and self-control as a living monument to heroes.
Lord George Gordon marched at the head of 50,000 protestors to the House of Commons, to demand that George III’s England did not become like Louis XVI’s France.
The ‘Gordon Riots’ of 1780 were a protest against the Papists Act (1778), which eased the ban on Roman Catholics in Government. Fearing the Pope would meddle in English politics as he apparently meddled all over Europe, Lord George Gordon MP led an unruly mob to the Commons with a petition for repeal. In Barnaby Rudge, Charles Dickens dramatised what unfolded on the stairs up to the Visitor’s Gallery.
‘Rain stopped play’ but it did not stop the ladies of Surrey and Hampshire from finishing their epic struggle at the Newington ground.
The first recorded game of cricket between two all-women teams took place back in 1745, but we must fast-forward to 1811 for the first county match, pitting Surrey against Hampshire on neutral ground in Middlesex. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the players and a fashionably boisterous crowd, even ‘rain stopped play’ could not dampen the occasion and a good time was had by all.
With King John dead and the threat of invasion fading, Philip Faulconbridge reflects that the danger within is always greater than the danger without.
At the end of William Shakespeare’s play The Life and Death of King John, written in about 1594-96, the King has just died an untimely death; with him has died the threat of a French invasion, and John’s heir Henry has returned home to England to assume the crown. Henry’s cousin Philip Faulconbridge heaves a sigh of relief, and draws an optimistic moral from all that has gone before.
Mr Gradgrind and a Government expert on education make sure that the children of Coketown have the right opinions about everything.
Mr Gradgrind is ready to hand Coketown’s model school over to zealous Mr M’Choakumchild, fresh from teacher-training. Present on this auspicious occasion is a gentleman from the Government, who believes that the purpose of education is to mass-produce identical batches of priggish little human vials filled to the brim with State-approved Facts, and empty of everything else.