Merkaba Press imprint: 261 books

‘Ave, Roma Immortalis!’, ‘Hail, Immortal Rome!’ This cry, breaking from the lips of a race that had carried the imperial eagles from the northern shores of Europe to Asia and Africa, was no mere patriotic catchword. It was the expression of a belief that, though humanity must die and personal...

The story of the life of Elizabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, is one of the saddest in the history of royalty, and in some respects recalls the story of the life of Marie Antoinette. Both their lives were sorrowful, both ended tragically, the one at the hands of an assassin,...

THE family of du Plessis has no history. For generations it had lived in provincial obscurity on the borders of Poitou. In the fifteenth century François du Plessis, a younger member of the family, inherited the estate of Richelieu from his maternal uncle, Louis de Clérembault. His descendants were...

Greek literature opens with a problem of the first magnitude. Two splendid Epics have been preserved which are ascribed to "Homer", yet few would agree that Homer wrote them both. Many authorities have denied altogether that such a person ever existed; it seems certain that he could not...

In September, 1714, seven weeks after Queen Anne died, the first king of a new royal House landed in England. Sophia of Hanover, daughter of the Elizabeth Stuart who was once for a few months Queen of Bohemia, had been named by the Act of Settlement (1701) as successor to her cousin Anne. And...

In the summer of 477 A.D. a band of ambassadors, who claimed to speak the will of the decayed body which still called itself the Roman senate, appeared before the judgment-seat of the emperor Zeno, the ruler of Constantinople and the Eastern Empire. They came to announce to him that the army of the...

One of the noblest possessions of the Roman Empire was the province of ancient Gaul. Much blood and treasure had been expended in its conquest; infinite wisdom, moderation, and vigour had been displayed in the means taken to attach it to the dominion of the Caesars; and the passing of several centuries...

About the year of our Lord 997, Adelbert, Bishop of Prague, with two companions, set out on a missionary tour to the shores of the Baltic. The savage inhabitants killed him. Still Christianity gradually gained ground. As the ages rolled on, idolatry disappeared, and nominal Christianity took its place....

                            The best means of realising the extent of the Roman Empire in or about the year 64 is to glance at the map. It will be found to reach from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates, from the middle of England—approximately the river Trent—to the...

Bentham's mantle fell upon James Mill. Mill expounded in the tersest form the doctrines which in Bentham's hands spread into endless ramifications and lost themselves in minute details. Mill became the leader of Bentham's bodyguard; or, rather, the mediator between the prophet in his 'hermitage'...

The term 'Viking' is derived from the Old Norse vík, a bay, and means 'one who haunts a bay, creek or fjord.' In the 9th and 10th centuries it came to be used more especially of those warriors who left their homes in Scandinavia and made raids on the chief European countries. This is the narrow,...

FRENCH historians, anxious to vindicate in all things the priority of their nation, point out that in 1512, five years before Luther denounced the sale of indulgences, Lefevre, a lecturer on theology and letters at Paris, published a commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul in which he taught the doctrine...

Among the persons whose genius, heroism and force of character influenced events, and won commanding game, in the seventeenth century, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden is justly regarded of the first. The War of Thirty Years, a long and terrible struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism, largely influenced...

It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what is called our modern religion have come from countries which are not only simple, but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has a great realistic drama without having ever had either a great classical drama or a great romantic...