Great literature is the creation of its age and its nation. It is inconceivable that Shakespeare's plays could have been written anywhere but in Engl… - Sidney Dark

... Wells has many affinities with Dickens. He does not possess Dickens's glorious humour. He has never been able to realise that even in mean streets life may have its thrills, but he belongs essentially, as Dickens belonged, to the English lower middle class. Wells is an articulate man of the people. And this is the fact that gives him his peculiar importance in the modern world.

was with at at the time of the in 1813. She went back to at the request of the , who assured her that the position of herself and her children was perfectly safe. The allied kings and statesmen waited on her. She was treated with the utmost deference, but it was she who grieved for in far more than , and before the began, Josephine, shriven and with her children kneeling by her side, died with the name of Bonaparte on her lips. Twenty thousand persons passed the catafalque where the Empress lay in state. Royal honours were hers at her funeral.

There is nothing in this wide world more romantic than a great river on the banks of which stands a great city, and of all the cities in Europe, London is luckiest in its river. The Seine at Paris, the Tiber at Rome, are insignificant compared to the wide sweep of the Thames at London.