United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Zeeland, far more important than Overyssel, had a revenue of perhaps five hundred thousand dollars, rather a slender budget for an independent republic, wedged in as it was by the most powerful empires of the earth, and half drowned by the ocean, from which it had scarcely emerged. There was therefore no popular representation, and on the other hand no executive head.
Empires are built up or undermined by the ceaseless industry of obscure multitudes often slightly observed, or but dimly comprehended.
He is only one, though the principal one, of all the explorers of the buried records of the empires of the Tigris and Euphrates. And Babylonia and Assyria are not the only countries that history required us to explore. Greece and its neighboring states and islands have not even yet been fairly investigated. Much of Asia Minor is still a virgin field.
If we may believe Sebastian's friend, they reached a point as far south as Gibraltar in Europe. No more was there ice. The cold of Labrador changed to soft breezes from the sanded coast of Carolina and from the mild waters of the Gulf Stream. But of the fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, and the 'towns and castles' over which the Great Admiral was to have dominion, they saw no trace.
In contrast with these giant empires, the nation-states of Europe felt themselves out of scale, just as the Italian cities in the sixteenth century must have felt themselves out of scale in comparison with the new nation-states of Spain and France.
In the wicked old empires, as in some of their modern survivals to-day, viziers and prime ministers were mostly drawn from the servile classes. It is so in God's kingdom. They who make themselves God's slaves are by Him made kings and priests, and shall reign with Him on earth. If we are slaves, then are we sons and heirs of God through Jesus Christ. Remember the alternative.
Henry's projects stretched out beyond the lands under his rule. The death of Saladin encouraged the idea of a new crusade. Henry as crusader might propitiate the Pope. But such an expedition once started might have been diverted, as indeed happened a few years later, for an attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the union of both empires under the ambitious Hohenstaufen.
The most important of its provisions from our present standpoint was that by which, in the event of two of the three Empires disagreeing on Balkan questions, the casting vote rested with the third Power. This gave to Bismarck the same role of arbiter which he had played at the Berlin Congress.
The economists say that it is absurd, but, given the collective madness which has attacked some people, nothing is absurd beyond hoping in the rapid recovery of the most excited nations. If any country could be the scene of a communist experiment it was Russia. Imperial Russia represented the most vast continuative territory which a State ever occupied in all history's records of vast empires.
For two whole years he did nothing but write verse in every conceivable metre, and on every conceivable subject, from Wordsworthian sonnets on the singing of his tea-kettle to epic fragments on the Fall of Empires.
Word Of The Day