THIS BOOK is not intended as an abstruse scientific work, but the statement of a new theory, and its comparison with the old ones for the instruction of the masses. It is well said, " every age has its predominant thought."

That of Greece was beauty, and she excelled in sculptured grace of statue and temple ; that of Rome was power and she conquered the world ; that of the sixteenth century was reform, and states and religions were torn into warring fections ; that of the eighteenth century w...

Alexander was the hero of the Greeks. He was King of Macedon, a country lying north of Greece proper. He headed an army of his countrymen, and made an excursion for conquest and glory into Asia. He made himself master of all that quarter of the globe, and reigned over it in Babylon, till he brought himself to an early grave by the excesses into which his boundless prosperity allured him.

His fame rests on his triumphant success in building up for himself so vast an empire, and the admiration ...

The favourable reception given to the first edition of the ensuing work, and the interest that was taken in the extraordinary and romantic career of the Knights Templars, induced me to publish a second edition greatly enlarged, and to introduce various collateral matters of an antiquarian and local character, interesting only to a comparatively small number of readers.

This enlarged edition having been exhausted, it occurred to me, in preparing a third edition for the press, that the work mig...

THE Mesopotamian civilization shares with the Egyptian civilization the honour of being one of the two earliest civilizations in the world, and although M. J. de Morgan’s excavations at Susa the ruined capital of ancient Elam, have brought to light the elements of an advanced civilization which perhaps even antedates that of Mesopotamia, it must be remembered that the Sumerians who, so far as our present knowledge goes, were the first to introduce the arts of life and all that they bring wi...

Although Smoking is generally associated with Tobacco only, yet there are other plants whose leaves are used for similar purposes & these will be referred to as we come to the different means of using them. Our first Woodcut of Tobacco is from STELLA—ROMA 1669. a work of great value as giving Pipes & the Hookah of Persia as well as Plants but we will start with some of the growths now most generally known of the “NICOTIANA” Family which is very widely spread over the face of the Earth &...

M. Lévy-Bruhl then explains that, whilst recognising the entire coherence of Comte’s collective labours, he proposes to confine his present study to the earlier and principal work, the Philosophy, which in M. Lévy-Bruhl’s opinion is the dominant and more fruitful composition.

This he regards as the representative work of the nineteenth century, as shown by the intellectual history of the period. He points to its influence on thought in England, in Europe, and in America. It will surpris...

The Prince (Italian: Il Principe) is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus (About Principalities). But the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. This was done with the permission of the Medici pope Clement VII, but "long before then, in fact since the first appearance of the Pr...

IN this little book I have undertaken to lay before the reader the fruits of the labor of twenty-five years. As soon as I could understand and appreciate the splendors of the Grand Masters of painting, I had begun to form a determination to discover the technical principles, methods, and material that enabled the Masters to produce their work.

Therefore, the search for the Masters' technic became for me an all-absorbing life work to the exclusion of all else. This life work was more or less a...

I HAVE made an attempt to put forth in some kind of orderly sequence a few of the chief guiding conceptions of chemistry; endeavouring, on the one hand,

TO avoid technical details, and, on the other hand, to illustrate these conceptions by describing many common facts. I have tried to keep the attention of the reader fixed on the great generalisations of chemistry; and I have done my best to shew that these generalisations find constant application in the occurrences of everyday life.

[AUTHOR]

The electrical problems of the present day lie largely in the economical transmission of power and in the radical improvement of the means and methods of illumination. To many workers and thinkers in the domain of electrical invention, the apparatus and devices that are familiar, appear cumbrous and wasteful, and subject to severe limitations.

They believe that the principles of current generation must be changed, the area of current supply be enlarged, and the appliances used by the consumer...