The old sagas, or hero tales of the north, are full of stories of enchantment and strange marvels. We have told one of these tales in the record of King Rolf and Princess Torborg....
Of the many nations between which the small peninsula of Greece was divided, much the most interesting were those whose chief cities were Athens and Sparta. These are the states wi...
The doom of Rome was at hand. Its empire had extended almost inimitably to the east and west, had crossed the sea and deeply penetrated the desert to the south, but had failed in i...
The outbreak of the Civil War, the most momentous conflict of recent times, was marked by a wave of fervent enthusiasm in the States of the South which swept with the swiftness of...
After the quest of the Sangreal was ended, and all the knights who were left alive had come again to Camelot, there was great joy in the court, with feasts and merrymakings, that t...
Through the mist of the far past of English history there looms up before our vision a notable figure, that of Hereward the Wake, the "last of the Saxons," as he has been appropria...
We have now to tell of one of the most remarkable events in Grecian history, to describe how ten thousand Greeks, who found themselves in the heart of the great Persian empire, wit...
On a certain cold and wet evening, in the month of December of the year 379 B.C., seven men, dressed as rustics or hunters, and to all appearance unarmed, though each man had a dag...
Near the city of Toledo, the capital of Spain when that country was a kingdom of the Goths, was a great palace of the olden time, or, as some say, a vast cave, which had been deepe...
Striking is the story which the early centuries of modern Europe have to tell us. After the era of the busy building of empire in which the sturdy old Romans were the active agents...
Charlemagne, the great king, had built himself an empire only surpassed by that of ancient Rome. All France was his; all Italy was his; all Saxony and Hungary were his; all western...
The land of the Hellenes, or Greeks, was not confined to the small peninsula now known as Greece. Hellenic colonies spread far to the east and the west, to Italy and Sicily on the...
When morning came the knights made ready for their departure, amid the tears and lamentations of ladies, and with the deep sorrow of the king and queen. For there were a hundred an...
Long had the Goths been lords of Spain. Chief after chief had they chosen, king after king had they served; and, though it was young in time, Gothic Spain was growing old in years....
In all its history only one serious effort has been made to conquer the empire of Japan. It ended in such dire disaster to the invaders that no nation has ever repeated it. During...
Twice had a Tartar empire been established in China, that of the Kin dynasty in the north, and that of their successors, the Mongols, over the whole country. A third and more perma...
The story of Tristram's valorous deeds, and of the high honor in which he was held at Camelot, in good time came to Cornwall, where it filled King Mark's soul with revengeful fury,...
The history of the kingdoms of Europe has a double aspect, that of the arrogant rule of kings and nobles, and that of the enforced submission and occasional insurrection of the com...
The years ending in "'76" are remarkable in America as years of struggle against tyranny and strife for the right. We shall not soon forget the year 1776, when the famous rebellion...
Spain, like France, had its hero of legend. The great French hero was Roland, whose mighty deeds in the pass of Roncesvalles have been widely commemorated in song and story. In Spa...
In the last tale it was told how Birger Jarl subdued the Finns and brought then to give up their heathen practices and accept Christianity. But this refers only to the section of F...
In the northern section of the vast Mongolian plateau, that immense outreach of pasture-lands which forms the great abiding-place of the shepherd tribes of the earth, there long dw...
The remarkable success of Cortez and Pizarro in Mexico and Peru went far to convince the Spaniards that in America they had found a veritable land of magic, filled with wonders and...
Of men born for battle, to whose ears the roar of cannon and the clash of sabres are the only music, the smoke of conflict their native atmosphere, Suwarrow (Suvarof, to give him h...
We have now to deal with a personage whose story is largely legendary, particularly that of his death, a highly original termination to his career having arisen among the people, w...
From the long, straight ridge of the Pyrenees, stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, and dividing the land of France from that of Spain, there extend numerous sid...
The name Siberia calls up to our minds the vision of a stupendous prison, a vast open penitentiary larger than the whole United States, a continental place of captivity which for t...
Romulus was succeeded by a king named Numa Pompilius, of Sabine origin, who so loved peace that during his reign Rome had no wars and no enemies, so that the doors of the Temple of...
The wars of the White and the Red Roses were at an end, Lancaster had triumphed over York, Richard III., the last of the Plantagenets, had died on Bosworth field, and the Red Rose...
In the castle of Motte-Broon, near Rennes, France, there was born about the year 1314 "the ugliest child from Rennes to Dinan," as an uncomplimentary chronicle says. He was a flat-...