- A fire ( Place of the School of Medicine )
An impressionable porter saw smoke on his staircase. — In his zeal, he went to smash the windows of all the warnings in the neighborhood, and from all points of the horizon the firefighters rushed to the scene of the disaster, a little unsure of his exact situation. All the kids they met escorted them with long strides, while the city sergeants stopped the traffic, under the fallacious pretext of ensuring it. - A Merovingian Queen
A Merovingian Queen - A refuge ( Line of large boulevards )
It is certainly the most important step that has been taken towards social reform since the new era. — The refuge adds to human rights that of being crushed only when it wants to, when it is lacking of patience, or that his physiognomy is unfriendly to the peacekeeper responsible for interrupting the movement of devices to crush the members of the poor people. - A show ( Place Vendôme )
The downpour, so impatiently awaited during certain summers, sometimes multiplies in such a way that this cataclysm becomes the daily event. — Despite this regularity, the phenomenon varies so much the hours of its appearance, and occurs with such instantaneousness, that 'he succeeds each time in surprising and flooding a satisfactory number of walkers, who had thought they could profit from a fallacious clearing. - A Street Row in the East End
A Street Row in the East End - A Typical Street in Bethnal Green
A Typical Street in Bethnal Green - A Wedding ( La Madeleine )
The crowd is generally sympathetic to weddings. The hour at which they are accomplished generally coincides with that of the lunch of the milliners and other dressmakers of the district, which their lack of dowry maintains in the state of celibates without depriving them of the desire and the hope of going up in `rank`. They constitute the fund of spectators, and their special knowledge enables them to estimate with precision the probable resources of the new spouses and their entourage. - Ambulant Merchants ( Rue Montmartre )
Very sympathetic to the housewives of the district who support them against all odds, they are the masters of the road, and the heaviest vehicles are obliged to give way to them. — If an unfortunate coachman has the audacity to walk at the smallest trot , or the awkwardness of passing too close to a customer installed in the middle of the street, he is in the grip of a vocabulary which reveals the neighborhood of the halls. - An accident ( Rue de Rivoli )
The wooden pavement is sometimes slippery, - this is often the result of natural humidity; - more frequently still, this dangerous state of the roadways results from an insufficient watering which does not remove any of the refuse on which the horses skate. - These days, there are as many animals lying as standing, and without the spirit of brotherhood that leads our fellow citizens to help each other, the circulation would become decidedly impassable. - An East End Factory
An East End Factory - An East End Wharf
An East End Wharf - An electric tramway ( Rue Tronchet )
The horses had scarcely begun to get used to the steam trams, their smoke and their whistles, which it was thought fit to use electricity. — It was doubtless with good intention, since these new vehicles run noiselessly and smoke-free. Nevertheless they cause the Parisian cavalry an invincible terror. — The animals, who are only half stupid, are always wary of what they cannot explain, and the sight of this car that nothing apparently does not set in motion, and which stirs however, inspires them with a distrust which does not seem completely unintelligent to me. - an incident
An incident - An omnibus station ( Place de la Madeleine )
It is an open-air circle, without subscription, and with this advantage that women are admitted to it. It is undoubtedly for this reason that we see regulars there, who, although provided with numbers, never decide to take their place in the vehicles which succeed one another, however, without interruption. - Armed Parisians meeting the king
Armed Parisians meeting the king, 1383 From an illuminated manuscript in the National Library, Paris. - Assassination of Henry IV
Assassination of Henry IV, Rue de la Ferronnerie, may 14, 1610. - At the bookstore ( Boulevard des Italiens )
Here, it is the meeting place for gourmets of intelligence, who prefer to the satisfaction of vulgar gluttony the feast of the spirit. No indigestion to fear if the chance of the title has misled you; the heaviest products have never had more serious effects than bringing sleep, sometimes anticipated, but always calm and often deep. The great advantage of this kind of gift is for the donor that it is not forced to taste it; the danger is to give, without having read it, a book which demolishes the political, religious and social tendencies of the important personage to whom he offers it for the sole purpose of making himself a protector as devoted as it is persevering. - At The Café Aphrodite
At The Café Aphrodite - At the confectioner ( Boulevard de la Madeleine )
Foresighters did not wait until January 1 to send their gifts, but the latecomers who waited until the last moment pile up at the confectioner's and go jostle to get the obligatory bag. The unfortunate thing is that in these extreme times the supplies of renowned specialists are often exhausted, and that to meet "the requirements of the public", they sometimes find themselves in the need to replace their usual products poisonous sweets and adulterated chocolates from the nearest grocer.— " Tarde venientibus ossa, " said the poet on forgotten New Years. - Bank of England
Bank of England, Royal Exchange, Mansion House (Cornhill, Lombard, Threadneedle Streets.) - Barge-Builders
Barge-Builders - Bicyclists ( Carrefour d'Ermenonville )
While at the Potinière we admire the velocemen and velocewomen in possession of all the secrets of art, we only meet here the laggards studying under the eye of professionals. It is assured that the ordinarily gifted people are, after ten lessons, in a condition to direct themselves properly. But just as some students take a long time to do their law far beyond the statutory years, so we find certain temperaments refractory to equilibrium which persist in capsizing at every turn of the wheel beyond all expectations. - Birthplace of Lamarck
Birthplace of Lamarck - Bismarck
Prussian affairs were then very much in the hands of a minister of the seventeenth-century type, Von Bismarck (count in 1865, prince in 1871), and he saw brilliant opportunities in this trouble. He became the champion of the German nationality in these duchies—it must be remembered that the King of Prussia had refused to undertake this rôle for democratic Germany in 1848—and he persuaded Austria to side with Prussia in a military intervention. Denmark had no chance against these Great Powers; she was easily beaten and obliged to relinquish the duchies. Then Bismarck picked a quarrel with Austria for the possession of these two small states. So he brought about a needless and fratricidal war of Germans for the greater glory of Prussia and the ascendancy of the Hohenzollern dynasty in Germany. German writers of a romantic turn of mind represent Bismarck as a great statesman planning the unity of Germany; but indeed he was doing nothing of the kind. - Boxmeer, North Brabant
Boxmeer, North Brabant - Breda, North Brabant
Breda, North Brabant - Breda, North Brabant
Breda, North Brabant - Caroche
Caroche, covered with leather, studded with gold-headed nails, percherons; period, end of sixteenth century. - Caucasian Types
But it is this study of skull shapes which has led many ethnologists to divide the Caucasian race, not, as it was divided by Huxley, into two, the northern blonds and the Mediterranean and North African dark whites or brunets, but into three. They split his blonds into two classes. They distinguish a northern European type, blond and dolichocephalic, the Nordic; a Mediterranean or Iberian race, Huxley’s dark whites, which is dark-haired and dolichocephalic, and between these two they descry this third race, their brachycephalic race, the Alpine race. The opposite school would treat the alleged Alpine race simply as a number of local brachycephalic varieties of Nordic or Iberian peoples. The Iberian peoples were the Neolithic people of the long barrows, and seem at first to have pervaded most of Europe and western Asia. - Charlemagne crowned
Charlemagne Crowned, a with the nimbus Painting on glass from the Cathedral of Strousbeg, XII and XIV centuries - Charles V
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Most of the figures that stand out in history, do so through some exceptional personal quality, good or bad, that makes them more significant than their fellows. But there was born at Ghent in Belgium in 1500 a man of commonplace abilities and melancholy temperament, the son of a mentally defective mother who had been married for reasons of state, who was, through no fault of his own, to become the focus of the accumulating stresses of Europe. The historian must give him a quite unmerited and accidental prominence side by side with such marked individualities as Alexander and Charlemagne and Frederick II. This was the Emperor Charles V. For a time he had an air of being the greatest monarch in Europe since Charlemagne. Both he and his illusory greatness were the results of the matrimonial statecraft of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I (born 1459, died 1519). - Death of Sainte-Geneviève
Sainte-Geneviève, the patron saint of the Parisians, also perpetuated with her legend on the walls of the Panthéon, originally her church but now dedicated to the Grands Hommes of the nation, was born at Nanterre, near Paris, in 422, and guarded in the fields the flocks of her parents, Sévère and Gérontia. - Distributing Bread
Water-color by George Rochegrosse. - Dordrecht (dated 1702)
Dordrecht (dated 1702) - Dordrecht, South Holland
Dordrecht, South Holland - Dordrecht, South Holland
Dordrecht, South Holland - Emperor William II
By one of those accidents in history that personify and precipitate catastrophes, the ruler of Germany, the emperor William II, embodied the new education of his people and the Hohenzollern tradition in the completest form. He came to the throne in 1888 at the age of twenty-nine; his father, Frederick III, had succeeded his grandfather, William I, in the March, to die in the June of that year. William II was the grandson of Queen Victoria on his mother’s side, but his temperament showed no traces of the liberal German tradition that distinguished the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family. His head was full of the frothy stuff of the new imperialism. He signalized his accession by an address to his army and navy; his address to his people followed three days later. A high note of contempt for democracy was sounded: “The soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities, have welded together the German Empire. My trust is placed in the army.” So the patient work of the German schoolmasters was disowned, and the Hohenzollern declared himself triumphant. - Fragment of roman aqueduct
Fragment of roman aqueduct - Francis I
Charles realized that his great empire was in very serious danger both from the west and from the east. On the west of him was his spirited rival, Francis I; to the east was the Turk in Hungary, in alliance with Francis and clamouring for certain arrears of tribute from the Austrian dominions. - Franeker, Friesland
Franeker, Friesland - Germany after the Peace Treaty, 1919
Germany after the Peace Treaty, 1919 - Gorinchem (Gorcum), South Holland
Gorinchem (Gorcum), South Holland - Great Flood in Monmouthshire
In one dated 1607 occurs the earliest instance I have met with of an attempt to illustrate the news of the day. It is entitled ‘Wofull Newes from Wales, or the lamentable loss of divers Villages and Parishes (by a strange and wonderful Floud) within the Countye of Monmouth in Wales: which happened in January last past, 1607, whereby a great number of his Majesties subjects inhabiting in these parts are utterly undone.’ - Great Storm, 1613
Storms, floods, and burnings were favourite themes with the early newswriters, and several illustrated tracts exist describing such calamities. They are more or less interspersed with pious exhortations, but the narrative is rarely allowed to flag, and every incident is minutely described. There is ‘Woeful newes from the West parts of England of the burning of Tiverton,’ 1612; and a small quarto pamphlet of 1613, printed in old English, affords another good example of this kind of news. It is entitled—it will be observed how fond the old newswriters were of alliterative titles—‘The Wonders of this windie winter, by terrible stormes and tempests, 16to be losse of lives and goods of many thousands of men, women, and children. The like by Sea and Land hath not been seene nor heard of in this age of the world. London. Printed by G. Eld for John Wright, and are to be sold at his Shop neere Christ-Church dore. 1613.’ On the title-page is a woodcut, a copy of which is annexed. - Groningen (1509)
Groningen (1509) - Haarlem, North Holland
Haarlem, North Holland - Haarlem, North Holland
Haarlem, North Holland - Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England, who had begun his career with a book written against heresy, and who had been rewarded by the Pope with the title of “Defender of the Faith,” being anxious to divorce his first wife in favour of an animated young lady named Anne Boleyn,and wishing also to turn against the Emperor in favour of Francis I and to loot the vast wealth of the church in England, joined the company of Protestant princes in 1530. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway had already gone over to the Protestant side. - Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall
Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, Crimean and Canning Monuments. Penitentiary, Vauxhall Bridge,Lambeth Suspension Bridge, Lambeth Place, and Bethlehem Hospital in the distance - Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius began his career as a very tough and gallant young Spaniard. He was clever and dexterous and inspired by a passion for pluck, hardihood, and rather showy glory. His love affairs were free and picturesque. In 1521 the French took the town of Pampeluna in Spain from the Emperor Charles V, and Ignatius was one of the defenders. His legs were smashed by a cannon-ball, and he was taken prisoner. One leg was badly set and had to be broken again, and these painful and complex operations nearly cost him his life. - In the Docks
In the Docks - King William Street
King William Street, Gracechurch Street (Bank and Royal Exchange in the distance.) - Lamarck
Although there has been and still may be a difference of opinion as to the value and permanency of Lamarck’s theoretical views, there has never been any lack of appreciation of his labors as a systematic zoölogist. He was undoubtedly the greatest zoölogist of his time. Lamarck is the one dominant personage who in the domain of zoölogy filled the interval between Linné and Cuvier, and in acuteness and sound judgment he at times surpassed Cuvier. His was the master mind of the period of systematic zoölogy, which began with Linné—the period which, in the history of zoölogy, preceded that of comparative anatomy and morphology. - Lamarck - Aged 35
Lamarck - Aged 35 - Lamarck when old
Portrait of Lamarck, when old and blind, in the costume of a member of the institute, engraved in 1824. - Leiden, Rhijnland (dated 1612)
Leiden, Rhijnland (dated 1612) - London Street, Limehouse
London Street, Limehouse - Louis XIV
On such terms of unrighteousness what we may call “Grand Monarchy” established itself in France. Louis XIV, styled the Grand Monarque, reigned for the unparalleled length of seventy-two years (1643-1715), and set a pattern for all the kings of Europe. At first he was guided by his Machiavellian minister, Cardinal Mazarin; after the death of the Cardinal he himself in his own proper person became the ideal “Prince.” He was, within his limitations, an exceptionally capable king; his ambition was stronger than his baser passions, and he guided his country towards bankruptcy through the complication of a spirited foreign policy, with an elaborate dignity that still extorts our admiration. - M. Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was an old journalist politician, a great denouncer of abuses, a great upsetter of governments, a doctor who had, while a municipal councillor, kept a free clinic, and a fierce, experienced duellist. None of his duels ended fatally, but he faced them with great intrepidity. He had passed from the medical school to republican journalism in the days of the Empire. In those days he was an extremist of the left. - Map of Europe, 1848-1871
Map of Europe, 1848-1871