- Benjamin Franklin
It is hard to measure the men of one period of history with those in another. Some writers, even American writers, impressed by the artificial splendours of the European courts and by the tawdry and destructive exploits of a Frederick the Great or a Great Catherine, display a snobbish shame of something homespun about these makers of America. They feel that Benjamin Franklin at the court of Louis XVI, with his long hair, his plain clothes, and his pawky manner, was sadly lacking in aristocratic distinction. But stripped to their personalities, Louis XVI was hardly gifted enough or noble-minded enough to be Franklin’s valet. - Julius Cæsar
It is the custom of historians to treat these struggles with extreme respect. In particular the figure of Julius Cæsar is set up as if it were a star of supreme brightness and importance in the history of mankind. Yet a dispassionate consideration of the known facts fails altogether to justify this demi-god theory of Cæsar. Not even that precipitate wrecker of splendid possibilities, Alexander the Great, has been so magnified and dressed up for the admiration of careless and uncritical readers. - Oldest known image of Columbus
Oldest known image of Columbus - Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Mirabeau
Mirabeau, the brilliant but unprincipled orator - Pestalozzi
The enthusiastic philanthropist and educational reformer, Pestalozzi - Joseph Choate
Joseph Hodges Choate - Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (From the Bust in the British Museum.) - Benjamin Franklin
American independence, the beginnings of which we have just been considering, was accomplished after a long struggle. Many brave men fought on the battle-field, and many who never shouldered a musket or drew a sword exerted a powerful influence for the good of the patriot cause. One of these men was Benjamin Franklin. He was born in Boston in 1706, the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen children. His father was a candle-maker and soap-boiler. Intending to make a clergyman of Benjamin, he sent him, at eight years of age, to a grammar-school, with the purpose of fitting him for college. The boy made rapid progress, but before the end of his first school-year his father took him out on account of the expense, and put him into a school where he would learn more practical subjects, such as writing and arithmetic. The last study proved very difficult for him. - Christopher Columbus
Columbus was a man of commanding presence. He was large, tall, and dignified in bearing, with a ruddy complexion and piercing blue-gray eyes. By the time he was thirty his hair had become white, and fell in[Pg 4] wavy locks about his shoulders. Although his life of hardship and poverty compelled him to be plain and simple in food and dress, he always had the air of a gentleman, and his manners were pleasing and courteous. But he had a strong will, which overcame difficulties that would have overwhelmed most men. - Josiah Wedgewood
Josiah Wedgewood More than once it has happened that the youngest of thirteen children has turned out a genius. It was so in the case of Sir Richard Arkwright, and it turned out to be so in the case of Josiah Wedgwood, the youngest of the thirteen children of Thomas Wedgwood, a Burslem potter, and of Mary Stringer, a kind-hearted but delicate, sensitive woman, the daughter of a nonconformist clergyman. The town of Burslem, in Staffordshire, where Wedgwood saw the light in 1730, was then anything but an attractive place. Drinking and cock-fighting were the common recreations; roads had scarcely any existence; the thatched hovels had dunghills before the doors, while the hollows from which the potter's clay was excavated were filled with stagnant water, and the atmosphere of the whole place was coarse and unwholesome, and a most unlikely nursery of genius. - Lord Armstrong
Armstrong, during the Crimean War, made an explosive apparatus for blowing up ships sunk at Sebastopol. This led him to turn his attention to improvements in ordnance. He invented a kind of breech-loading cannon, and soon had an order for several field-pieces after the same pattern. He began with guns throwing 6 lb. and 18 lb. shot and shells, and afterwards 32 lb. shells; and the results at the time were deemed almost incredible. He had both reduced the weight of the gun by one-half, reduced the charge of powder, and his gun sent the shell about three times farther. His success led to his offering to government all his past inventions, and any that he might in the future discover. A post was created for him, that of Chief Engineer of Rifled Ordnance for seven years provisionally. - Prince Albert as a young man
Prince Albert at the age of 20 From a miniature by Sir W Ross - Prince Albert as a child
Prince Albert at the age of four - Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus - Napoleon
- Dr Arnold
- Charles Sprague
- Charles Robert Leslie
- Bettina von Arnim
- Barry Cornwall
- Anna Jameson
- Alfred Tennyson
- Alexander Smith
- Thomas de Quincy
- Sir Walter Scott
- Robert Browning
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Nathaniel Hawthorn
- Matthew Arnold
- Mary Russell Mitford
- Leigh Hunt
- John Gibson Lockhart
- John G Whittier
- John G Saxe
- James Russell Lowell
- James Gates Percival
- Henry W Longfellow
Henry W Longfellow - Gerald Massey
- Edmund Burke
- Dumont d'Urville
The expedition next sent out under the command of Captain Dumont d'Urville was merely intended by the minister to supplement and consolidate the mass of scientific data collected by Captain Duperrey in his voyage from 1822 to 1824. As second in command to Duperrey, and the originator and organizer of the new exploring expedition, D'Urville had the very first claim to be appointed to its command. The portions of Oceania he proposed to visit were New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, the Loyalty Islands, New Britain, and New Guinea, all of which he considered urgently to demand the consideration alike of the geographer and the traveller. - Lincoln 1860
- Abraham Lincoln (1)
- Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln - Frederick the Great
- Daniel Dancer, a miser and hermit
- The Muscular Form Small - Princess Anne
The muscular form small - Princess Anne (Not sure which princess Anne but probably Anne, Princess Royal (1850-1918), daughter of King Edward VII ) - Dr Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Dr Johann Friedrich Blumenbach ,a celebrated German anatomist, physiologist, and anthropologist, filled the chairs of anatomy and medicine at Gottingen more than half a century. He first divided the human species into five races. This is a superlatively scientific and pure face. - Leon M Gambetta
Léon Gambetta, an eminent French statesman and founder of the French Republic. When he died from a pistol wound, in 1882 ,at 44 years of age, his brain was found to weigh 40.9 ounces, whereas boys of 7 to 14 years of age average a fraction less than 46 ounces. Dr. Flint, in his “Physiology,” gives the average male brain in New York at a little over 50 ounces. Here we find one of the most powerful of the statesmen of his time with a receding forehead and exceedingly small brain. - 10 Profiles of historical people
No.1 .CHARLEMAGNE,though unable to write his own name,promoted schools,arts,civilization,and was the most powerful and enterprising monarch of his day. No.2.JAMES BOSWELL,the celebrated biographer of Dr.Samuel Johnson.He resembled Johnson as a fly does an elephant,while his self-assurance and impudence have rarely been equalled. No.3.CINGHALESE,a gentleman from the mountains of Ceylon. No.4.JOHN LOCKE,a distinguished philosopher. No.5.TASMANIAN,an aboriginee of Tasmania.His head does not,while his face does,manifest his cruel and cannibal habits. No.6.LORD BYRON,a poet of marvellous genius. No.7.CASSIUS,a famous Roman general,described in Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar.” No.8.REV.ROWLAND HILL,an English clergyman. No.9.LAVATER,an eloquent Swiss preacher,poet,and physiognomist. No.10.PAUL I,Emperor of Russia,as his feeble face indicates,he was one of the weakest rulers in Europe. - Carolina of Austria
- Sir Richard Greenvill
Sir Richard Greenvill was Vice-Admiral under Lord Thomas Howard, son to the Duke of Norfolk, who was sent with a squadron of seven ships to America, to intercept the Spanish galleons laden with treasure from the West-Indies, Sir Richard, who happened to be separated from the rest of the squadron, unfortunately, fell in with the enemy's fleet of fifty-two sail, which he engaged and repulsed fifteen times. He continued fighting till he was covered with blood and wounds, and nothing remained of his ship but a battered hulk. He died on board the Spanish fleet three days after, expressing the highest satisfaction at the moment of death, at his having acted as a true sailor ought to have done. He was the grandfather of the famous Sir Bevil Greenvill. - Theodor Mommsen
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician and archaeologist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th century. His work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research. - John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg - Nathan Read
Born in Warren, Mass., July 2, 1759. Died near Belfast, Me., January 20, 1849. Graduated from Harvard College in 1781, Read was a tutor at Harvard for four years. In 1788 he began experimenting to discover some way of utilizing the steam engine for propelling boats and carriages. - Oliver Evans
Oliver Evans Born in 1755 or 1756, in Newport, Del. Died in Philadelphia, April 21, 1819. Little has been preserved respecting the early history of Oliver Evans, who has been aptly styled “The Watt of America.” His parents were farming people, and he had only an ordinary common-school education. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a wheelwright or wagonmaker, and continued his meager education by studying at night time by the light that he made by burning chips and shavings in the fireplace. - Richard Trevithick
Richard Trevithick Born in Illogan, in the west of Cornwall, England, April 13, 1771. Died in Dartford, Kent, April 22, 1833. In 1780 he built a double-acting high-pressure engine with a crank, for Cook’s Kitchen mine. This was known as the Puffer, from the noise that it made, and it soon came into general use in Cornwall and South Wales, a successful rival of the low-pressure steam vacuum engine of Watt. - Thomas Blanchard
Thomas Blanchard Born in Sutton, Mass., June 24, 1788. Died, April 16, 1864. Blanchard was a prolific inventor, having taken out no less than thirty or forty patents for as many different inventions. He did not reap great benefit from his labors, for many of his inventions scarcely paid the cost of getting them up, while others were appropriated without payment to him, or even giving him credit.