The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1
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By Julian Hawthorne 27 Feb, 2019
In a more complex state of society, a class of persons comes into being who are neither protagonists, nor slaves, but observers; and they meditate on events, and seek to fathom their meaning. If the observer be imaginative, the picturesque side of th ... Read more
In a more complex state of society, a class of persons comes into being who are neither protagonists, nor slaves, but observers; and they meditate on events, and seek to fathom their meaning. If the observer be imaginative, the picturesque side of things appeals to him; he dissolves the facts, and recreates them to suit his conceptions of beauty and harmony; and we have poetry and legend. Another type of mind will give us real histories, like those of Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus and Livy, which are still a model in their kind. These great writers took a broad point of view; they saw the end from the beginning of their narrative; they assigned to their facts their relative place and importance, and merged them in a pervading atmosphere of opinion, based upon the organic relation of cause and effect. Studying their works, we are enabled to discern the tendencies and developments of a race, and to note the effects of civilization, character, vice, virtue, and of that sum of them all which we term fate. Less
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  • 359.292 KB
  • 300
  • Public Domain Book
  • 2016-05-19
  • English
  • 1511852208
Julian Hawthorne was the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote poetry, novels, non-fiction, a series of crime novels based on the memoirs of New York's Inspector Byrnes, and edited several collections ...
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