de on political books and from some of
his essays I have culled the following:

Man's tool-using power is simply a symbol of man's unique
reasoning gifts. Its connotations may be extended to mean the
entire intellect.

The savage using his language with joy like a child, gives us the
wealth of beautiful mythology about all natural objects.

It is wonderful to think that Julius Caesar's imperial system was
handed right down to the nineteenth century, until one not unlike
Caesar himself set his foot upon its neck in 1806. But long before
it fell the Holy Roman Empire had really ceased, in Voltaire's
words, to be holy, or Roman, or an empire.

Froude holds up to admiration the "serene calmness" of Tacitus,
and says he took no side. But I ask anyone who has read the
sarcastic remarks about Domitian and the Emperors in the
"Agricola" whether he thinks Tacitus took no side in writing
history.

Nothing can alter the fact that Mohammedanism has done a vast
amount of good. Compare Carlyle's appreciation of Mahomet with
Gibbon's acrimonious insinuations.

Much that is strange in human history is explained if we remember
that aristocracies in the West were political, while in the East
they were religious.

Hildebrand, who boldly declared that the Church compared to the
State was as the sun to the moon--the State only shining by light
borrowed from the greater orb--was now on the papal throne. His
giant intellect and tremendous personality had overawed Henry IV
into ignominious capitulation at Canossa. With Europe at his feet
Hildebrand cannot but have desired to assert his authority over
the island-State across the Channel. William the Conqueror and
Hildebrand were rarely-matched antagonists--the one determined to
set bounds to the Pope's scheme of world-domination; the Pope
equally determined to bend the stubborn Norman to his will. It
was the Conqueror who won.

The conception of the Norman Conquest has shifted from the
grotesque over-estimate of Thierry to the under-estimate of
Freeman and Maitland. To the moderns the Conquest is now little
more than a change of dynasty. A juster estimate would be that
the very change of dynasty gave the Conquest its vital
importance.... The effects were really immense. The Conquest
substitut