Research Results For 'Nineteenth'

ABSOLUTISM

Absolutism or Absolute Monarchy is a system of government where the hereditary ruler, usually a king, has complete power to decide a country's internal and external policy without having to consult anyone. A good example of an absolute monarchy was Louis XIV of France. The French Revolution heralded the end of absolutism, and in the nineteenth century absolute monarchies everywhere gave place to constitutional monarchies or republics.
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AGRICULTURE

Agriculture is the art of cultivating the ground, more especially with the plough and in large areas or fields, in order to raise grain and other crops for man and beast; including the art of preparing the soil, sowing and planting seeds, removing the crops, and also the raising and feeding of cattle or other live stock. This art is the basis of all other arts, and in all countries coeval with the first dawn of civilization. At how remote a period it must have been successfully practised in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China we have no means of knowing, but archaeologists have found evidence of agriculture being practised around 7000 BC. Egypt was renowned as a corn country in the time of the Jewish patriarchs, who themselves were keepers of flocks and herds rather than tillers of the soil. Naturally very little is known of the methods and details of agriculture in early times, though field archaeologists at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire have been conducting experiments for some years.

Among the ancient Greeks the implements of agriculture were very few and simple. Hesiod, who wrote a poem on agriculture as early as the eighth century BC, mentions a plough consisting of three parts, the share-beam, the draught-pole, and the plough-tail, but antiquarians are not agreed as to its exact form. The ground received three ploughings, one in autumn, another in spring, and a third immediately before sowing the seed. Manures were applied, and the advantage of mixing soils, as sand with clay or clay with sand, was understood. Seed was sown by hand, and covered with a rake. Grain was reaped with a sickle, bound in sheaves, thrashed, then winnowed by wind, laid in chests, bins, or granaries, and taken out as wanted by the family, to be ground.

Agriculture was highly esteemed among the ancient Romans. Cato, the censor, who was celebrated as a statesman, orator, and general, derived his highest honours from having written a voluminous work on agriculture. In his Georgics Virgil has thought the subject of agriculture worthy of being treated in the most graceful and harmonious verse. The Romans used a great many different implements of agriculture. The plough is represented by Cato as of two kinds, one for strong, the other for light soils. Yarro mentions one with two mould-boards, with which, he says, 'when they plough, after sowing the seed, they are said to ridge'. Pliny mentions a plough with one mould-board, and others with a coulter, of which he says there were many kinds. Fallowing was a practice rarely deviated from by the Romans. In most cases a fallow and a year's crop succeeded each other. Manure was collected from nearly or quite as many sources as have been resorted to by the moderns. Irrigation on a large scale was applied both to arable and grass lands.

The Romans introduced their agricultural knowledge among the Britons, though it is known that the Britons were already practising agriculture, and during the most flourishing period of the Roman occupation large quantities of corn were exported from Britain to the Continent. During the time that the Angles and Saxons were extending their conquests over the country agriculture may have been neglected; but afterwards it was practised with some success among the Anglo-Saxon population, especially, as was generally the case during the middle ages, on lands belonging to the church. Swine formed at this time a most important portion of the live stock, finding plenty of oak and beech mast to eat.

The feudal system introduced by the Normans, though beneficial in some respects as tending to ensure the personal security of individuals, operated powerfully against progress in agricultural improvements. War and the chase, the two ancient and deadliest foes of husbandry, formed the most prominent occupations of the Norman princes and nobles. Thriving villages and smiling fields were converted into deer forests, vexatious imposts were laid on the farmers, and the serfs had no interest in the cultivation of the soil. But the monks of every monastery retained such of their lands as they could most conveniently take charge of, and these they cultivated with great care, under their own inspection, and frequently with their own hands. The various operations of husbandry, such as manuring, ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, thrashing, winnowing, etc, are incidentally mentioned by the writers of those days; but it is impossible to collect from them a definite account of the manner in which those operations were performed.

The first English treatise on husbandry and the best of the early works on the subject was published in the reign of Henry VIII in 1534, by Sir A Fitzherbert, judge of the Common Pleas. It is entitled the Book of Husbandry, and contains directions for draining, clearing, and inclosing a farm, for enriching the soil, and rendering it fit for tillage. Lime, marl, and fallowing are strongly recommended. The subject of agriculture attained some prominence during the reign of Elizabeth I. The principal writers of that period were Tusser, Googe, and Sir Hugh Platt. Tusser's Five Hundredth Points of Good Husbandry (first complete edition published in 1580) conveys much useful instruction in metre, but few works of this time contain much that is original or valuable.

The first half of the seventeenth century produced no systematic work on agriculture, though several on different branches of the subject. About 1645 the field cultivation of red clover was introduced into England, the merit of this improvement being due to Sir Richard Weston, author of a Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders. The Dutch had devoted much attention to the improvement of winter roots, and also to the cultivation of clover and other artificial grasses, and the farmers and proprietors of England soon saw the advantages to be derived from their introduction. The cultivation of clover soon spread, and Sir Richard Weston seems also to have introduced turnips. Potatoes had been introduced during the latter part of the sixteenth century, but were not for long in general cultivation. A number of writers on agriculture appeared in England during the Commonwealth, the most important works on the subject being Blythe's Improver Improved and Hartlib's Legacy. The former writer speaks of a rotation, or rather alternation of crops, and well knew the use of lime, as also of other manures. In the eighteenth century the first name of importance in British agriculture is that of Jethro Tull, a gentleman of Berkshire, who began to drill wheat and other crops about the year 1701, and whose Horse-hoeing Husbandry was published in 1731.

Jethro Tull was a great advocate of the system of sowing crops in rows or drills with an interval between every two or three rows wide enough to allow of ploughing or hoeing to be carried on. After the time of Jethro Tull's publication no great alteration in British agriculture took place, until Robert Bakewell and others effected some important improvements in the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The raising and maintenance of live stock, especially of sheep, was a characteristic of English farming from a very early time, and for several centuries the country had almost a monopoly in the supply of wool. To Bakewell we owe the breed of Leicester sheep. By the end of the nineteenth century it was a common practice to alternate green crops with grain crops, instead of exhausting the land with a number of successive crops of corn. A well-known writer on agriculture at this period, and one who did a great deal of good in diffusing a knowledge of the subject, was Arthur Young.

Scotland was for a long time behind England in agricultural progress. Great progress was made during the eighteenth century, however, especially in the latter half of it, turnips being introduced as a field-crop, and new implements such as the swing-plough and the thrashing-machine coming into general use. The construction of good roads through the country also gave agriculture a great impulse. During the wars caused by the French revolution of 1795 to 1814 the high price of agricultural produce led to an extraordinary improvement in agriculture all over Britain. The establishment of the institution called the National Board of Agriculture was also of very great service to British husbandry at this period. Though a private association it was assisted by an annual parliamentary grant, and prizes were given by it for the encouragement of experiments and improvements in agriculture. It existed from 1793 to 1816.

Among other societies which have greatly furthered the progress of agriculture in Britain, the chief are the Royal Agricultural Society of England, established in 1838; the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, founded in 1783; and the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, instituted in 1841. The objects of these and similar societies were such as the following: to encourage the introduction of improvements in agriculture; to encourage the improvement of agricultural implements and farm buildings; the application of chemistry to agriculture; the destruction of insects injurious to vegetation; to promote the discovery and adoption of new varieties of grain, or other useful vegetables; to collect information regarding the management of woods, plantations, and fences; to improve the education of those supported by the cultivation of the soil; to improve the veterinary art; to improve the breeds of live stock, etc. Shows are held, at which prizes are distributed for live stock, implements, and farm produce.

Through the efforts of the above-mentioned and other societies, the investigations of scientific men, the general diffusion of knowledge among all classes, and the necessity of competing with producers in foreign countries, agriculture made vast strides in Britain during the nineteenth century. Among the chief improvements were deep ploughing and thorough draining By the introduction of new or improved implements the labour necessary to the carrying out of agricultural operations was greatly diminished, as by the steam thrashing-machine, the steam-plough, and the reaping-machine. The nineteenth century saw also the introduction of chemistry into agriculture in Britain. The organization of plants, the primary elements of which they are composed, the food on which they live, and the constituents of soils, were all investigated, and most important results obtained particularly with regard to manures and rotations. Artificial manures, in great variety to supply the elements wanted for plant growth, came into common use at the end of the nineteenth century, not only increasing the produce of lands previously cultivated, but extending the limits of cultivation itself. An improvement in all kinds of stock became more and more general, feeding was conducted on more scientific principles, and improved varieties of plants used as field crops were introduced at the same time. At the end of the nineteenth century was introduced the system of ensilage for preserving fodder in a green state. However, by the start of the 20th century writers were proclaiming that, chiefly owing to foreign competition, agriculture had become a very unprofitable industry in Britain.

It is only since the nineteenth century that much progress was made in perfecting implements and machinery for cultivating the soil, sowing seed, drilling, rolling, hoeing, reaping, digging, etc. The first application of steam to ploughing dates from 1770, when Richard Edgeworth took out a patent for a steam ploughing machine, but it was 1852 before such application proved of any economic value. As early as 1829 a reaping-machine was invented by the Reverend Mr. Bell of Carmylie, Forfarshire, which, in an improved form, was still in use at the start of the twentieth century when numerous mowing and reaping-machines of ingenious construction were also introduced, many of which not only cut down the grain, but also bind it up into sheaves. At the start of the twentieth century steam was extensively used as a motive power in thrashing, in chaff-cutting, turnip-slicing, and even in churning. Only to be replaced after the invention of the combustion engine with petrol-power. Mechanisation led to the enlargement of fields, with small fields being amalgamated by the destruction of separating hedgerows to enable mechanical tractors and other farm vehicles to operate efficiently. The effect upon wildlife in Britain was devastating, and public concern started to grow.

The Second World War revolutionized agriculture in Britain, and led to the development of intensive farming techniques known as 'factory farming' and new anonymous breeds of livestock being developed which mature very quickly. During the later half of the twentieth century the public in Britain rebelled against the inhumanity of intensive animal husbandry, typified by 'battery hens' in which thousands of hens are kept in individual tiny cages within massive warehouses, unable to stretch let alone move around, and free-range or more traditional animal husbandry started to reappear in commercial agriculture.

The twentieth century also saw the wide scale introduction of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, many of which were harmful to the consumers and from a public backlash emerged a return to traditional farming, known as organic farming.
Research Agriculture

DRUNK AS A LORD

Drunk as a Lord is an old British saying, meaning very intoxicated. The phrase originates from the early nineteenth century, before the temperance movement took hold, when those that could afford to, e.g. Lords, would typically consume three or more bottles of port wine at dinner, with the result that most dinners ended with the guests under the table in a state of total inebriation.
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NATION

A nation is a body of people, organised into a single state. One of the most characteristic of the ideas of the Age of the Renaissance was that of the Nation and its sovereign independence - an idea still very active in our own days. The Middle Ages had been dominated by the Catholic ideal of world unity. The great institutions of those ages were international - for example, the Feudal System, and above all the Church and the Papacy. Latin, too, was an international language; and though the various peoples had their own languages, the continual use of Latin in both Church and State affairs helped educated men to regard themselves as members of one society, the society of Christendom. Above all, these peoples - English, French, Spanish, Italian, German - were all members of one Church. All belonged in some measure to the Christendom of which the heads were the Pope and the Emperor. Then, gradually, from the early days of the Renaissance, the newer idea of the 'Nation' took root, and this in time changed the unity of 'Christendom' into the disunion of 'Europe'.

Modern Europe is dominated by national feeling and is divided into independent national states; and these have no longer even the common bond of one Church. Europe has lost as well as gained by the disappearance of medieval Christendom. She has gained, because the old feudal divisions in most countries meant internal disunion, civil warfare, and baronial tyranny. But Europe has also lost, because the old ideal of a united Christendom has disappeared in the jealous rivalries of warring nations. From time to time attempts have been made to check these dangerous rivalries. But the problem of international peace and co-operation - of a 'society of nations' - is one which mankind is still trying to solve in a satisfactory manner. The nations which took the lead in Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were those that first achieved national unity, and the chief of these were France, Spain, and England. Italy, which had given so much to the world in art and letters, did not share in this political change. Great men lived in Italy - in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Milan - but all these cities were the capitals of small states. In short, Italy was not a nation; hence she became from 1494 the prey of powerful neighbours. As with Italy, so with Germany.

The Holy Roman Empire was an empire only in name; in practice, Germany contained three or four hundred separate States. Both Germany and Italy retained, until even the nineteenth century, their internal divisions and discords. France, Spain, and England had achieved national unity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whereas Germany and Italy had to wait another three centuries - and some of our problems to-day are due to the fact that they are still comparatively new nations. The means by which national unity was brought about in France, Spain, and England was the monarchy. It was their kings who saved and made these countries - saved them from feudal anarchy and made them into nations. It was monarchs like Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, Louis XI and Francis I of France, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain who united their countries under a strong rule, and led them to a great destiny. A Holy Roman Emperor (Maximilian) contrasted the new monarchs with himself as follows: 'The Emperor is indeed a king of kings, for no one feels bound to obey him; and the King of Spain is a king of men, for, though resisted, he is still obeyed; but the King of France is a king of beasts, for him none dare gainsay.'
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THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES

The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England are a statement of the particular points of doctrine, thirty-nine in number, maintained by the English Church. They were first promulgated by a convocation held in London in 1562-63, and confirmed by royal authority and were founded on and superseding an older code issued in the reign of Edward VI. The five first articles contain a profession of faith in the Trinity; the incarnation of Jesus Christ, his descent to hell, and his resurrection; the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The three following relate to the canon of the Scripture. The eighth article declares a belief in the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds. The ninth and following articles contain the doctrine of original sin, of justification by faith alone, of predestination, etc. The nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first declare the church to be the assembly of the faithful; that it can decide nothing except by the Scriptures. The twenty-second rejects the doctrine of purgatory, indulgences, the adoration of images, and the invocation of saints. The twenty-third decides that only those lawfully called shall preach or administer the sacraments. The twenty-fourth requires the liturgy to be in English. The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth declare the sacraments effectual signs of grace (though administered by evil men), by which God excites and confirms our faith. They are two: baptism and the Lord's supper. Baptism, according to the twenty-seventh article, is a sign of regeneration, the seal of our adoption, by which faith is confirmed and grace increased. In the Lord's supper, according to article twenty-eighth, the bread is the communion of the body of Christ, the wine the communion of his blood, but only through faith (article twenty-ninth); and the communion must be administered in both kinds (article thirty). The twenty-eighth article condemns the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the elevation and adoration of the host; the thirty-first rejects the
crifice of the mass as blasphemous; the thirty-second permits the marriage of the clergy; the thirty-third maintains the efficacy of excommunication. The remaining articles relate to the supremacy of the king, the condemnation of Anabaptists, etc. They were ratified anew in 1604 and 1628. All candidates for ordination must subscribe these articles. This formulary is now accepted by the Episcopalian Churches of Scotland, Ireland, and America.
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ADAM'S PEARMAIN

Adam's Pearmain is a late dessert apple, probably from Norfolk, which was a Victorian favourite because of its rich aromatic flavour and crisp texture. It was widely grown in the nineteenth century, when fruiterers ' always paid good prices because it was attractive for windows'. The pear shaped fruits are of a medium size and can be stored until March. The vigorous trees have a spreading habit and pretty blossom.
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ENGLISH SETTER

The English Setter is a breed of hunting dog originating to the mid- nineteenth century when they were developed from spaniels and bred to locate game, and drop down to indicate its position. In 1874 the breed was first taken to the USA. The English Setter is a gentle and affectionate breed which makes a good family pet, although they need space to run around.
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the USA. He was born in 1809 at Hardin County, Kentucky and died in 1865 when he was assassinated at a theatre by John Wilkes Booth. Both in Kentucky and in Indiana, to which in 1816 the family removed, as well as in Illinois, whither they went in 1830, Abraham Lincoln had the privations and also the training of a backwoodsman's life.
In his youth he earned money to educate himself by splitting rails for a neighbour, and so earned the nickname 'rail-splitter'. About this time he also made a flat-boat voyage to New Orleans.

In the Black Hawk War of 1832 he served as captain and private. He tried keeping store and failed, studied law, was postmaster of New Salem in Illinois, and deputy surveyor of the county. As a politician he had better success, and after one defeat served in the Legislature from 1834 to 1842. Meanwhile he removed to Springfield and built up a law practice. From 1847 to 1849 he was a Whig Congressman, but was not notably prominent.

His importance dates from the Kansas-Nebraska controversy. In its progress he became the Republican State leader, and in 1858 he took part with Stephen A Douglas in a series of joint debates in canvassing for the US Senatorship. Abraham Lincoln was defeated, but the discussion had aroused great interest, and his utterances, e.g.: 'a house divided against itself cannot stand', brought him into national prominence. In February, 1860, he delivered a remarkable political speech at the Cooper Institute, New York.

He was pressed for the Presidency by many Western Republicans in the Chicago Convention in May, though Seward was in the lead at the outset. Amid great excitement Abraham Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot, and elected, by 180 electoral votes, over Douglas, Breckenridge and Bell. This first victory of the Republicans decided the Secessionists, and when the new President delivered his conciliatory inaugural address the country was drifting toward civil war.

In the Cabinet Seward had the Department of State, Chase the Treasury, Cameron, and soon afterward Stanton, War, Welles the Navy, Caleb B. Smith the Interior, Edward Bates was Attorney-General, and Montgomery Blair Postmaster-General. Immediately on the fall of Port Sumter the President, on April the 15th, 1861, called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Rebellion. He soon issued a call for additional troops, instituted a blockade, and summoned Congress to meet in extra session on July the 4th.

As the 'War President' Abraham Lincoln is identified with a great part of the history of the struggle. Foreign complications, military and naval movements, domestic politics, as well as routine administrative duties, all claimed his attention; to the people and the armies he was endeared as 'Father Abraham' innumerable anecdotes are related bearing on his humour, strong common sense and sympathy.

On September the 22nd, 1862, profiting by the partial success of Antietam, he issued a preliminary proclamation fixing the coming January the 1st as the date for freeing slaves in insurgent States. The Emancipation Proclamation to that effect accordingly appeared at the opening of 1863. On the nineteenth of November 1863, he pronounced on the battlefield of Gettysburg his short but famous eulogy.

He was renominated by the Republicans on June the 8th, 1864, and elected over McClellan, receiving 212 electoral votes. 'Malice toward none, charity for all' was the burden of his second inaugural. He had visited Richmond after its fall, and was pondering the questions of reconstruction, when on the night of April the 14th he was shot in Ford's Theatre at the capital, and died the next morning.
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BEDE

The Venerable Bede (Beda or Baeda) was an Anglo-Saxon scholar. He was born in 672 or 673 in the neighbourhood of Monkwearmouth, county Durham and died in 735. He was educated at St Peter's monastery, Wearmouth; took deacon's orders in his nineteenth year at St Paul's monastery, Jarrow, and was ordained priest at thirty by John of Beverley, bishop of Hexham.

His life was spent in studious seclusion, the chief events in it being the production of homilies, hymns, lives of saints, commentaries, and works in history, chronology, grammar, etc. He was the most learned Englishman of his day, and in some sense the father of English history, his most important work being his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (or Ecclesiastical History of England), afterwards translated by King Alfred into Anglo-Saxon. Besides his familiarity with Latin, he knew Greek and had some acquaintance with Hebrew.

Most of his writings were on scriptural and ecclesiastical subjects, but he also wrote on chronology, physical science, grammar, etc, and had considerable ability in the writing of Latin verse. An interesting record of his closing days was preserved in a letter by his pupil Cuthbert. After his death his body was after a lapse of time removed from Jarrow church to Durham, but of the shrine which formerly inclosed them only the Latin inscription remains, ending with the verse 'Hac sunt in fossa Bedae venerabilis ossa.'
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GEORG GERVINUS

Georg Gottfried Gervinus was a German critic and historian. He was born in 1805 at Darmstadt and died in 1871. He quit commerce in 1825 to study at Heidelberg, was for some time a teacher, and qualified as a privat-docent. After a visit to Italy he published his Geschichte der Poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen (History of the Poetic National Literature of the Germans, 1835-42). In 1835 he was appointed extraordinary professor at Heidelberg, and the following year ordinary professor of history and literature at Gottingen; but in 1837, being one of the seven professors who protested against King Ernst August's breach of the constitution, he was banished from Hanover.

After another visit to Italy he returned to Heidelberg, where in 1844 he was appointed an honorary professor. He now began to take an active part in politics on the liberal side; became editor of the newly-founded Deutsche Zeitung, and was returned to the federal diet by the Hanse towns. Discontented with the tendency of affairs after 1848, he gave up politics and resumed his old studies. In 1849 he published the first part of his great work on. William Shakespeare, in 1853 his History of German Poetry, and in 1855 the first volume of his History of the Nineteenth Century, which, however, was never carried farther than the French revolution of 1830. Amongst his last writings was a critical essay on Handel and William Shakespeare.
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