Ephraim Emerton eBooks
eBooks di Ephraim Emerton editi da Ozymandias Press
The Dark Ages. E-book. Formato EPUB Ephraim Emerton - Ozymandias Press, 2018 -
THE two peoples with whom we are to deal in this book are the Romans and the Germans, The Aryan branches of the Aryan or Indo-European race of men. There were eight principal branches of this race, five of which had their homes in Europe, and three in Asia. It is generally believed that at some very distant time, so far away that we have no record of it, these different branches all formed one people and lived somewhere in Western Asia, between the valley of the Euphrates and the valley of the Indus. Then, still before any written history, the race moved away from its home, and one part of it passed westward, probably by way of the opening between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, into Europe; another remained settled in the Tigris-Euphrates valley; while a third part went to the east and south, down the Indus, into the valley of the Ganges. This branch became the great Indian race, which used the Sanskrit language, and which has preserved in its literature some traces of its wanderings. The second group comprised the Medes and the Persians, who successively controlled the Euphrates country and whose descendants live there to this day. Of the five branches into which the European portion divided, the Kelts seem to have been in the advance and were probably pushed by the others towards the west until they came to live in the British Islands, in France, and Spain. Next behind them were the Germans, who filled in all the central part of Europe, from the Alps northward to the sea and spread out over the coasts of Scandinavia. Beyond the Germans, to the east, were the Slavs, a race which has never formed a united government for itself, but has mingled with other races, and forms to this day a large part of the population in Russia, Austria, Hungary, and the Danube provinces. Farther to the south came the Italians and the Greeks, whose homes you will have no difficulty in remembering. It is only about a hundred years since men began to think that all these races might be parts of one single family, and it is much less than that since we have become tolerably certain of it. The chief reason for believing in the unity of the Indo- European race, is that all the languages spoken by the various branches have so many root-words alike, that we can hardly believe that they are not derived from one common language. But however much alike they may once have been, they early became marked by very great differences. The Greeks and Italians had come into warm and fertile countries, where agriculture was easy and where a very long coast-line with many harbors tempted them to a seafaring life. The northern branches, on the other hand, had come to a country where everything was opposed to civilization, where dense forests or endless marshes covered the ground, where long and hard winters made even the maintenance of life a hard struggle, and where a rough and dangerous northern sea offered them no attractions on its farther shore to offset the peril of the voyage...
The Dark Ages. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Ephraim Emerton - Ozymandias Press, 2018 -
THE two peoples with whom we are to deal in this book are the Romans and the Germans, The Aryan branches of the Aryan or Indo-European race of men. There were eight principal branches of this race, five of which had their homes in Europe, and three in Asia. It is generally believed that at some very distant time, so far away that we have no record of it, these different branches all formed one people and lived somewhere in Western Asia, between the valley of the Euphrates and the valley of the Indus. Then, still before any written history, the race moved away from its home, and one part of it passed westward, probably by way of the opening between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, into Europe; another remained settled in the Tigris-Euphrates valley; while a third part went to the east and south, down the Indus, into the valley of the Ganges. This branch became the great Indian race, which used the Sanskrit language, and which has preserved in its literature some traces of its wanderings. The second group comprised the Medes and the Persians, who successively controlled the Euphrates country and whose descendants live there to this day. Of the five branches into which the European portion divided, the Kelts seem to have been in the advance and were probably pushed by the others towards the west until they came to live in the British Islands, in France, and Spain. Next behind them were the Germans, who filled in all the central part of Europe, from the Alps northward to the sea and spread out over the coasts of Scandinavia. Beyond the Germans, to the east, were the Slavs, a race which has never formed a united government for itself, but has mingled with other races, and forms to this day a large part of the population in Russia, Austria, Hungary, and the Danube provinces. Farther to the south came the Italians and the Greeks, whose homes you will have no difficulty in remembering. It is only about a hundred years since men began to think that all these races might be parts of one single family, and it is much less than that since we have become tolerably certain of it. The chief reason for believing in the unity of the Indo- European race, is that all the languages spoken by the various branches have so many root-words alike, that we can hardly believe that they are not derived from one common language. But however much alike they may once have been, they early became marked by very great differences. The Greeks and Italians had come into warm and fertile countries, where agriculture was easy and where a very long coast-line with many harbors tempted them to a seafaring life. The northern branches, on the other hand, had come to a country where everything was opposed to civilization, where dense forests or endless marshes covered the ground, where long and hard winters made even the maintenance of life a hard struggle, and where a rough and dangerous northern sea offered them no attractions on its farther shore to offset the peril of the voyage...
The Late Middle Ages. E-book. Formato EPUB Ephraim Emerton - Ozymandias Press, 2016 -
The period of which this volume treats differs fundamentally both from that which precedes and from that which follows it. In each of those periods we are able to fix our attention upon a certain well-defined set of institutions which completely control its activities. In the former, the strictly mediæval, we see Europe wholly under the sway of two vast ideas, feudalism and the Roman church system. In the latter, the purely modern period, Europe has almost wholly lost those ideas and has come out into the familiar political structure of a family of independent national states and into the freer air of religious toleration, if not yet of religious liberty. Between these two lies the period which is the subject of our present study. It is a chapter in human history of which no brief general description can be given. It is impossible to point to any peculiar institutions that govern its life. As we try to unfold the tangled thread of its history we seem to find only confusion and disorder. It reminds one in many ways of that other and even greater confusion that lies between the records of Rome and those of the Germanic Middle Ages. There we are conscious of a mighty civillization passing away and of another just vaguely taking shape in rude barbaric forms which, however, contain the germs of a new and more vigorous life. So here again we find two opposing currents in the stream of human history, and already at the beginning of our study it is clear which of them is destined to prevail. The vast, picturesque structure of the Middle Ages has done its service and is beginning to crumble. In every direction the resistless forces of the modern world are undermining its foundations or with bolder front are beating in open assault against its walls. To the careful student there is neither disorder nor confusion in the process. It is simply a natural development working out its results by the method of inevitable compensation. In the earlier transition – that from Rome to the Middle Ages – the shock of change is the greater because there is a change also in the race which is to be the bearer of the world's civilization. That whole transition may be summed up dramatically in the contrast of Roman and Teuton. Not only do institutions disappear, but the very race which created them disappears also as a historical unit. A new Europe is brought into the ken of history by a new race actually, in physical fact, emerging out of the darkness and taking its place in the great procession of historic peoples. In the present transition there is no such dramatic moment. The nations which make the modern world are the same that had brought mediæval culture to its height. They have simply been going through a process of education and are now just beginning to see the meaning of it. The new succeeds the old through the silent working of development. Not that this period is without its great conflicts. There is enough of the dramatic in the sharp contrast of ideas and in the clashing of ancient rights with newly asserted claims to make every chapter of this transition alive with vivid interest.