Filtrer
LM Publishers
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The Incas : Story of their Astronomy and Civilization
Collection
- LM Publishers
- 25 Juin 2017
- 9782366594669
The Incas Civilization flourished in 15th century A.D. until its conquest by the Spanish in the 1530s. Their empire extended across western South America. It's described as the largest empire ever seen in the Americas and the largest in the world at that period...
"The proofs that the Incas had a real system of astronomy are scattered, partly in what remains of the monuments that were consecrated to the sun, and partly in the accounts of historians - accounts which, whether because their importance has not been suspected, or because of the difficulty of quoting them, most of them having been printed only once, others having remained in the state of manuscript, and very few of them having been translated, are but little known to men of science. Whatever the verity of the legends preserved in these accounts, we find a comparatively highly developed astronomical system among the Incas, of which the most interesting parts are here given from rare documents already published, and from American manuscripts and traditions. The work has not before been done so completely..." -
The Aesthetic Sense and Religious Sentiment in Animals
Louis Viardot & Al.
- LM Publishers
- 13 Octobre 2020
- 9782366599589
This book deals with the aesthetic sense and religious sentiment in animals. "The mind of animals is a very old subject of discussion. Descartes and his school regarded an animal as a mere piece of machinery, like a clock or a turnspit. For man alone they reserved intelligence, meaning by that, memory, feeling, will, and reason. The story of Malebranche is well known: As he was going into his convent at the Oratory with a friend, a little bitch ran up and fawned on him; he gave her a kick which sent the poor beast yelping off, and when his friend expressed surprise that so gentle, kindly, and Christian a person returned kicks for caresses, he exclaimed, "What! do you really suppose that that animal had any feeling?" Thus Malebranche not merely believed he had not wounded or grieved her; he even thought he had caused her no physical pain. This was denying clear proof, and pushing faith in his master's doctrine to absurdity. On the other hand, Montaigne, Leibnitz, La Fontaine, Bayle, Condillac, Madame de Sévigné, agreeing with all antiquity, from Pythagoras to Galen, assert that animals have all the organs of sensation and of feeling; that they possess will, desires, memory, ideas, combinations of ideas, and even the power of performing some moral acts, such as entertaining attachment like that a dog feels for his master, or a hen for her chicks; or, like "that very just equality which they practise in dividing food or other good things among their young," as Montaigne says; and that therefore the intelligence of animals, if not equal to man's, is at least like it, and that the differences between the oyster anchored to its rock and the homo sapiens of Linnæus are merely differences between more and less, degrees of succession that make up what is called the scale of being. It is the latter opinion that has been declared triumphant by the researches of natural history and those of comparative anatomy alike. On this point science has reached certainty, and every one, reading the story of "the two Rats, the Fox and the Egg," says now with La Fontaine: "After that tale, where's the pretenseThat animals are lacking sense?"
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Ancient History of East Central African Customs
James Macdonald
- LM Publishers
- 5 Août 2017
- 9782366594867
"The following account of a few of the customs common among the tribes of east central Africa, in the region of Lake Nyassa, has been gathered from many sources; most of the statements have been revised and corrected by missionaries and others who have, during the past years, been resident in the lake region..."
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This book deals with the antiquities of Mexico (with illustrations).
"The Mexican Republic extends from the fifteenth to the thirtieth degree of north latitude, and embraces an area of about 750,000 square miles. It is traversed by the continuation of the Cordillera of South America, here called the Sierra Madre, which trends north-westerly from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and varies in height from a moderate elevation in the southern States of Chiapas and Oaxaca to a mean height in the nineteenth degree of latitude of 9,000 feet, with the peaks of Orizaba and Popocatepetl - "the culminating point of North America" -rising to the elevations of 17,200 and 17,720 feet respectively. On the parallel of 21°, the Cordillera becomes very wide and divides itself into three ranges: one running eastwardly to Saltillo and Monterey; one traversing the States of Jalisco and Sinaloa, and subsiding in Northern Sonora; and a central ridge extending through the States of Durango and Chihuahua, and forming the water-shed of the northern table-land...
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From Freedom to Bondage
Herbert Spencer, History Of Scientific Knowledge
- LM Publishers
- 5 Août 2017
- 9782366594881
This book based on the work of Herbert Spencer, is published in the collection "History of Scientific Knowledge"
"Speaking broadly, every man works that he may avoid suffering. Here, remembrance of the pangs of hunger prompts him; and there, he is prompted by the sight of the slave-driver's lash. His immediate dread may be the punishment which physical circumstances will inflict, or may be punishment inflicted by human agency. He must have a master; but the master may be Nature or may be a fellow-man. When he is under the impersonal coercion of Nature, we say that he is free; and when he is under the personal coercion of someone above him, we call him, according to the degree of his dependence, a slave, a serf, or a vassal. Of course I omit the small minority who inherit means: an incidental, and not a necessary, social element. I speak only of the vast majority, both cultured and uncultured, who maintain themselves by labor, bodily or mental, and must either exert themselves of their own unconstrained wills, prompted only by thoughts of naturally-resulting evils or benefits, or must exert themselves with constrained wills, prompted by thoughts of evils and benefits artificially resulting.
Men may work together in a society under either of these two forms of control: forms which, though in many cases mingled, are essentially contrasted..."
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History and Evolution of American Agriculture
History And Civilization Collection
- LM Publishers
- 5 Août 2017
- 9782366594898
This book deals with the evolution of American agriculture, the effect of machinery both upon production and rural population; and the last chapter attempt to show the development of a distinctly proletarian class upon the farms.
"Five periods mark the agricultural history of the United States since the advent of the white man. The first or Colonial period extends to the end of the Revolutionary War and records but slight technical advances in the art of agriculture...
The second period, from 1783 to 1830, saw a rapid spread of the agricultural population across the mountains into the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee Valleys and even beyond the Mississippi to the edge of the great plains. A public land policy was adopted by the Federal Government, cotton became the dominant agricultural product of the South and made slavery a paying and therefore a characteristically Southern institution, and the first efforts to apply science to agriculture were made. During this period, as in the first one, agriculture was practically self-sufficing, though in the South the specialization on cotton caused a considerable dependence on other regions for supplies that otherwise would have been produced at home.
In the third period, from 1830 to 1865, occurred an almost complete transformation of agriculture. The rapid rise of the factory system in the North, due to the use of steam and a flood of labor saving inventions with a consequent transfer of home industries into the shops, the invention of agricultural machinery such as the reaper, mower, thresher, etc., the extension of the railway system and the development of the prairie states caused an era of specialization which transferred agriculture into the commercial stage. Crops were now grown primarily for the market and incidentally for the use of the farmer and his family, a reversal of the former process...
The fourth period was the era of expansion into the Far West (1865-1887), and was remarkably stimulated by the Homestead Acts of 1862 and 1864, the disbanding of the Armies of the Civil War, the transformation of Southern farming due to the abolition of slavery, the invention of the twine binder and the roller process of milling flour, the extension of the railroads to the Pacific Coast, the greater extention of the interior railway systems, the development of the cattle ranches of the West after the extinction of the buffalo and the cooping up of the Indians on the reservations, and a new flood of immigration from European ports. Manufacture experienced an equal expansion at this time and more of the home industries were transferred from the farm to the factory and the shop.
The fifth period, which began in 1887, is now practically completed by the establishment of the Rural Credit or Land Bank system throughout the country. This period has been an era of agricultural reorganization..."
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History of Agriculture : Origin of the Plow and Wheel-Carriage
History And Civilization Collection, Edward B. Tylor, Louis Bourdeau
- LM Publishers
- 5 Août 2017
- 9782366594904
This book deals with the History of Agriculture and the Origin of the Plow and Wheel-Carriage. (With illustrations)
"Not only the beginning of agriculture, but the invention of the plow itself, is prehistoric. The plow was known to the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, and the very existence of these nations points to previous thousands of years of agricultural life, which alone could have produced such dense, settled, and civilized populations..."
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History of Antarctic Exploration
J.W. Gregory, J.F. James, A. Heilprin
- LM Publishers
- 16 Août 2017
- 9782366595031
This book presents the History of Antarctic Exploration. "The search for the supposed great southern continent roused interest in the South Polar area, even earlier than the commercial need for the Northeast or Northwest Passage directed the attention of the European nations to the Arctic seas. Long before Hudson had started the northern whale fishery, or Barents had discovered Spitzbergen, or Willoughby had set out on that 'new and strange navigation' which, according to Milton, was intended to save England from the commercial ruin threatened by foreign competition, Arabian, Dutch and Spanish sailors had searched for a continent in the great southern sea. In the year 1901, four expeditions are starting for the Antarctic: an English expedition under Commander R. F. Scott, E. N., in the 'Discovery'; a German expedition under Professor E. von Drygalski in the 'Gauss'; a Swedish expedition under Dr. Otto Nordenskjld in the 'Antarctic' and a Scotch expedition under Mr. W. S. Bruce. The four expeditions will work as far as possible on a common plan, but in different areas. The 'Discovery' will start from New Zealand and go thence into the Ross Sea, which will be its central field of work. The German expedition will go south from Kerguelen to the western end of Wilkes Land, geographically the least known part of the Antarctic; its route will depend on the geography of the area, but the idea is to work southwestward toward the Weddell Sea, south of the Atlantic. The Swedish and Scotch expeditions both go to the South Atlantic. The work of these expeditions will depend primarily on the geographical character of their fields of operation. The Antarctic area includes three main geographical divisions, (1) Wilkes and Victoria Lands; (2) the division south of the Pacific from Ross's Sea to Alexander Land; (3) the Graham Land with its associated archipelagoes and the Weddell Sea that separates it from the western end of Wilkes Land..."
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History of New Guinea and its People
Alfred R. Wallace, John W. Lindt
- LM Publishers
- 16 Août 2017
- 9782366595048
This book presents the History of New Guinea and its ihabitants. "Immediately north of Australia, and separated from it at Torres Straits by less than a hundred miles of sea, is the largest island on the globe - New Guinea, a country of surpassing interest, whether as regards its natural productions or its human inhabitants, but which remains to this day less known than any accessible portion of the earth's surface... It was discovered in 1511, even earlier than Australia; and from that time Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English vessels have continually passed along its coasts. Most of our early navigators -Forrest, Dampier, and Cook - visited New Guinea, and have given us some account of its inhabitants..."
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This book presents the History of New Zealand : the "Land of the Long White Cloud". New Zealand is an Island country of the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The date of man's arrival in New Zealand is uncertain. All that can be safely asserted is that by the 14th century A.D. Polynesian canoe-men had reached its northern shores in successive voyages. By 1642 they had spread to South Island, for there Abel Jansen Tasman found them when, in the course of his circuitous voyage from Java in the "Heemskirk," he chanced upon the archipelago, coasted along much of its western side, though without venturing to land, and gave it the name it still bears. One hundred and thirty-seven years later, Cook, in the barque "Endeavour," gained a much fuller knowledge of the coasts, which he circumnavigated, visited again and again, and mapped out with fair accuracy. He annexed the country, but the British government disavowed the act. After him came other navigators, French, Spanish, Russian and American; and, as the 18th century neared its end, came sealers, whalers and trading-schooners in quest of flax and timber. English missionaries, headed by Samuel Marsden, landed in 1814, to make for many years but slow progress...
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History of the Principles of Taxation
History And Civilization Collection, David A. Wells
- LM Publishers
- 17 Août 2017
- 9782366595093
This book deals with the History of Taxation and the struggle against arbitrary system of taxation. What is the place of taxation in ancient civilizations and how has it evolved in our present countries (United States of America, England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, China, India...)?
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On the Evolution of the Family
Herbert Spencer, History Of Scientific Knowledge
- LM Publishers
- 17 Août 2017
- 9782366595116
This book based on the work of Herbert Spencer and published by the collection "History of Scientific Knowledge", deals with the evolution of the family and analyses the contrast between the principle of family life and the principle of social life.
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The Deluge in Human History
History And Civilization Collection, William J. Sollas, William R. Harper
- LM Publishers
- 17 Août 2017
- 9782366595123
This book deals with the stories of the deluge found in history and literatures. Deluge is the name given to a submersion of the world, related by various nations as having taken place in a primitive age, and in which nearly all living beings are said to have perished. The expression usually refers to Noah's flood, the history of which is recorded in the Bible. The Biblical narrative shows that so far as the human race was concerned the Deluge was universal; that it swept away all men living except Noah and his family, who were preserved in the ark; and that the present human race is descended from those who were thus preserved. But traditions of the Deluge are found among all the great divisions of the human family...
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The Development of Glass Industry in America since Columbus
Charles H. Henderson
- LM Publishers
- 17 Août 2017
- 9782366595130
This book deals with the history of Glass Industry Development in America since Columbus. "The progress of the glass industry in America has been far from constant. It has suffered severe and violent fluctuations, amounting almost to annihilation. Several times it has needed to be born again. But the sum total of these successes and vicissitudes has been the establishment of an industry which, while it is the oldest, is also at the present time one of the most promising and most highly developed of all our industries. To understand its rise and progress, one must be familiar with the elements which go to make it up. Four things are needed to make glass: crude materials; refractory substances for crucibles and furnaces; suitable fuel, and intelligent labor. To make glass commercially, a fifth factor is all important, and that is an accessible market. The history of the industry has consisted in the various possible interchanges between these elements. They are far from permanent..."
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"We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. In some persons this sense of being cut off from their rightful resources is extreme, and we then get the formidable neurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions, with life grown into one tissue of impossibilities, that the medical books describe. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can be explained by scientific psychology. It is the result of the inhibition exerted by one part of our ideas on other parts. Conscience makes cowards of us all... The existence of reservoirs of energy that habitually are not tapped is most familiar to us in the phenomenon of 'second wind.' Ordinarily we stop when we meet the first effective layer, so to call it, of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked 'enough', and desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction, on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before..." This book based on the work of James William, is published in the collection: "History of Scientific Knowledge."
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The Origin of Holidays and History of Games
Edward B. Tylor, Harlow Gale
- LM Publishers
- 14 Novembre 2017
- 9782366595314
This book published in "History and Civilization Collection", deals with the historical beginnings and development of holidays and Games. "As ballads are the essence of a people's history, so holidays are the free utterance of their character. Spontaneity is always valuable evidence, and holidays are in their beginnings purely spontaneous. They furnish psychically an excellent example of reflex action..."
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The Survival of African Music in America
Jeannette R. Murphy, Francis H. Jenks
- LM Publishers
- 14 Novembre 2017
- 9782366595321
"Several years from now, when every vestige of slavery has disappeared, and even its existence has become a fading memory, America, and probably Europe, will suddenly awake to the sad fact that we have irrevocably lost a veritable mine of wealth through our failure to appreciate and study from a musician's standpoint the beautiful African music, whose rich stores will then have gone forever from our grasp..." - Would America have been America without the Negro people (and the Negro Music)? - (W.E.B. DuBois)
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Theories of Primitive Marriage
Herbert Spencer, Lorimer Fison
- LM Publishers
- 14 Novembre 2017
- 9782366595338
This book deals with the history of primitive marriage as that developed by Ferguson McLennan through his work on primitive marriage. Arguing from the prevalence of the symbolical form of capture in the marriage ceremonies of primitive races, he developed an intelligible picture of the growth of the marriage relation and of systems of kinship according to natural laws. "In his ingenious and interesting work on "Primitive Marriage", the words "exogamy" and "endogamy" are used by Mr. McLennan to distinguish the two practices of taking to wife women belonging to other tribes, and taking to wife women belonging to the same tribe. As explained in his preface, his attention was drawn to these diverse customs by an inquiry into "the meaning and origin of the form of capture in marriage ceremonies;" an inquiry which led him to a general theory of early sexual relations..."
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What is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness... This treatise gathered essays on Love, writen by Great authors.
"We cannot fall in love with everybody alike. Some of us fall in love with one person, some with another. This instinctive and deep-seated differential feeling we may regard as the outcome of complementary features, mental, moral, or physical, in the two persons concerned; and experience shows us that, in nine cases out of ten, it is a reciprocal affection, that is to say, in other words, an affection roused in unison by varying qualities in the respective individuals..." -
Based on the work of William James on Pragmatism Method, this book deals with the question : What Pragmatism Means? "The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? - fated or free? - material or spiritual? - here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that one were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other's being right..."
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The study of islands, whether the attention of the visitor is directed to their structure or their inhabitants, yields a peculiar pleasure. They are quite definite and unique units. They reveal interesting relations with neighboring continents, of which they so often are merely separated fragments, and they afford texts for suggestive and fascinating speculations as to past geographical conditions. "Icelander has felt the stirring agencies which everywhere in national life are advancing ideals, improving methods of living and awakening commercial ambition. This is more marked now since, after long years of almost fruitless agitation, the home government - I mean the governmental functions exercised in the island itself is placed in the hands of Icelanders, and a practical sympathy with its needs has already established useful changes. It would seem dangerous to go too far in an effort to separate the island from Denmark, as a parental supervision implying support and protection is indispensable. The maintenance of banks, a more general utilization of a medium of exchange, increased facilities of obtaining manufactured articles, internal improvements, in the extension of roads, building of bridges, telegraph connections, have all sensibly contributed to awaken the Icelander, given him new satisfactions, stirred the desire for accumulation, and introduced to his attention new projects for the development of natural advantages, as, for example, the possible use of water power for electrical and manufacturing ends. There is a strong mentality in the Icelander that is not inappositely united with imaginative power, and combined with distinctively religious propensities; such a nature under the stimulus of education develops strong and helpful personalities and remarkable powers of acquisition. Scholarship is far from uncommon, and skill in composition is admired and displayed. A slight social segregation is perhaps becoming evident as competency, educational opportunities and self-indulgence separate an upper from the more peasant classes. Yet the traditional democratic instincts remain and will always assert themselves at any national crisis. At present, political agitation for some sort of hegemony should be discouraged, and every energy bent towards the processes of amelioration by which transit over and through the island will become facilitated, more of its interior occupied, flocks increased, manufactures laid down and comfort disseminated."
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Evidences of Glacial Man in America
George Frederick Wright, Benjamin Franklin De Costa
- LM Publishers
- 12 Avril 2018
- 9782366595888
In that distant age when Nature was still toiling at the foundations of the Eastern Continent, portions of America had become dry land, and mountain-peaks in North Carolina were illuminated by rising and setting suns. It is, therefore, an anachronism to speak of America as the New World, especially when we remember the high antiquity of the fauna of North America. Still it is believed that the Eastern Continent was the original abode of man. But when, or under what circumstances, did America receive her first human inhabitant? Heretofore those who have discussed the question have assigned the event to a comparatively modern period, and have considered the probability of immigrations from Asia by Behring Strait; while others have suggested early transatlantic movements, or the peopling of America from a lost continent of the Pacific Ocean. The discovery of stone implements, however, in the glacial deposits of the Delaware Valley gives a fresh turn to the discussion, and carries the question back to remote periods. It is true that the great antiquity of man on this continent had been maintained previously, but the evidence was quite unlike what is now offered. Yet, whatever may be concluded ultimately respecting the antiquity of the Delaware flints, it is quite apparent that the red-man found in America at the period of its rediscovery by Cabot, Vespucci, and Columbus, was not the descendant of any glacial man. No line of connection can be made out. This continent does not appear to have any Kent's Hole like that at Torbay, affording a continuous history, beginning with the cave-bear and ending with "W. Hodges, of Ireland, 1688." The race that rose to wealth and power in Central America did not succeed any rude spear-maker. More and more is it becoming evident that the people of Central America sprang from a superior race inhabiting the borders of the Mediterranean. This is indicated by a certain similarity in manners, customs, architecture, and religion. Investigations, now in progress, promise to yield the approximate date of the period when the first conquerors of Mexico and Yucatan crossed the sea. The Spaniards learned that the people whom they conquered had themselves figured in the rôle of invaders, entering from a country called Tulan or Tulapan, and overrunning the then dominant race. It may yet be demonstrated that this took place about the third year of the Christian era. But who were these earlier inhabitants? These we believe were not the descendants of an indigenous race, any more than were the later tribes. There is nothing to show that they were ever connected in America with any glacial or pliocene man. They might, however, be referred to still more remote migrations from Europe, which may have taken place in connection with events that gave rise to the story of the lost continent of Atlantis, as related by Plato. The so-called aboriginal red-man is comparatively a modern, although the author of "Leaves of Grass" asks concerning "the friendly and flowing savage," is he "waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it?" However this may be, he is wandering over the graves of peoples who left no record of their exploits, either in the continent where they sprung into life or where they died. It is, indeed, a significant fact that the East furnishes no very plain tradition of any exodus which peopled America...
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Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate Life in America
Charles O. Marsh
- LM Publishers
- 12 Avril 2018
- 9782366595895
The origin of life and the order of succession in which its various forms have appeared upon the earth offer to science its most inviting and most difficult field of research. Although the primal origin of life is unknown, and may perhaps never be known, yet no one has a right to say how much of the mystery now surrounding it science cannot remove. It is certainly within the domain of science to determine when the earth was first fitted to receive life, and in what form the earliest life began. To trace that life in its manifold changes through past ages to the present is a more difficult task, but one from which modern science does not shrink. In this wide field, every earnest effort will meet some degree of success; every year will add new and important facts; and every generation will bring to light some law, in accordance with which ancient life has been changed into life as we see it around us today...
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This is the history of Kings of England, from William II (surnamed Rufus) to Henry II. "... At the time of the Conqueror's death, his eldest son Robert, upon some discontent with his father, being absent in France; William the second son, made use of this juncture, and without attending his father's funeral, hastened, to England; where, pursuant to the will of the deceased prince, the nobility, although more inclined to favour Robert, were prevailed with to admit him king; partly by his promises to abate the rigour of the late reign, and restore the laws and liberties which had been then abolished, but chiefly by the credit and solicitations of Lanfranc; for that prelate had formerly a share in his education, and always a great affection, for his person. At Winchester he took possession of his father's treasure: in obedience to whose command, as well as to ingratiate himself with the people, he distributed it among churches and religious houses, and applied it to the redeeming of prisoners, and other acts of popularity..."