SPECIMEN PAGES OF TAYLOR'S "FIRST PRINCIPLES" SERIES. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ENGLISH HISTORY. Fcap. 8vo., 1s. cloth. "What does it matter to nine-tenths of mankind whether William married Blanche or Matilda-whether this king had three wives or six-whether that one was crowned at Westminster or Winchester? But it does cor.cern each and all of us to know why a devastating war raged between the king and his parliament: what principles were involved; and how it might have been avoided: to trace the growth of trial by jury through successive generations; to learn how one man's character influenced the whole realm for good or evil; to know that our deeds outlive us and bear fruit of which we little dream."-Author's Preface. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH HISTORY. Fcap. 8vo., 1s. cloth. "Mr. Taylor's experience has given him an insight into the tastes and powers of children, and has enabled him to write quite the best Elementary History of France which has yet come under our notice." SATURDAY REVIEW. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ROMAN HISTORY. Fcap. 8vo., 1s. cloth. "Intended to give clear ideas as to the leading facts of Roman History and to show the successive steps in the growth and decline of the Roman Empire and people." FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. Fcap. 8vo., 1s. cloth. The First Principles of English Grammar is also an admirable little book."-SATURDAY REVIEW. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EUCLID. Fcap. 8vo., 1s. 6d. cloth. "An excellent little work. ... Boys who are allowed to learn Euclid after Mr. Taylor's fashion will be a great deal better off than their predecessor.."-SATURDAY REVIEW. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MODERN HISTORY. From 1815 to 1881. Fcap. 8vo., 1s. cloth. LONDON RELFE BROTHERS, 6, CHARTERHOUSE BUILDINGS. Specimen Page-English History, Is. Landing of Julius Cæsar. 9 A FIRST LIST Comprising twenty leading names and events to be carefully committed to memory. The numbers correspond to the descriptive paragraphs which follow this list. 11. Henry VIII., Supreme Head of the Church 1. Landing of Julius Cæsar.-Fifty-five years before the birth of our Saviour, Julius Cæsar, a Roman general, afterwards Emperor of Rome, landed in this " 1854 1876 Specimen Page--French History, 1s. The Mississippi Company. 95 Law now lent the government in notes 1200 millions of francs towards paying the national debt; and a dividend of 12 per cent. being declared on the shares of the Mississippi Company, the madness of the public reached its height. The Royal bank was thronged with a surging crowd eager to exchange gold for notes. Fortunes were made-sometimes in an instant-by the sales of Mississippi shares: the servant of the morning was the master in the evening. One mana humpback― gained 150,000 francs by allowing his hump to be used as a writing-desk! Bank notes were issued from the bank as fast as they were demanded, until there were notes worth three thousand millions of francs in circulation; while all the gold and silver coin in France was not worth more than seven hundred millions. Now a bank-note is simply a promise to pay gold or silver for it whenever it is presented at the bank which issued it. You will, therefore, easily see that the moment people began to present their notes for payment in large numbers the bank must fail. This was actually the case, as the frenzy for bank-notes passed away. People saw the impossibility of the bank paying them all, and rushed to get money for their notes while there was money to get. The end soon came. On the 13th July, 1720, the bank ceased to pay coin for its notes, which became worthless; while the National debt, which was to have been done away with by this scheme, had been in The Licinian Laws. 23 severe debtors were divided into two classes; in one class the debtor was called an addictus, by which was meant that he could not pay his debt, and that his creditor might either use him as a slave or put him in prison at his (the creditor's) pleasure. In the other class, the debtor was called a nexus, which meant that the debtor gave his body as security for the debt, and everything he might gain by his labour went to his creditor till the debt was paid off. Now, in consequence of the poorer Plebeians being almost all in debt to the Patricians, the former suffered great injustice and cruelty at the hands of the latter, and hundreds were shut up in the dungeons of the Patricians because they were unable to pay their debts. This being the state of things at Rome, Caius Licinius and Lucius Sextus were elected Tribunes (par. 4), and at once determined to do something to relieve the distress among the Plebeians. For this purpose they proposed three laws, of the very greatest importance in Roman history,-these were: (1.) That the interest which had been paid by debtors should be taken from the debt, and the remainder paid off by three yearly instalments. (2.) That no one should be allowed to have more than 500 acres of the public land, Specimen Page-English Grammar, 1s. 66 First Principles of English Grammar. in Asia a people whom we call Aryans, and the language they used was the parent not only of our own English language, but also of Greek, Latin (and the various European languages derived from it), Saxon, Keltic, Sanskrit, and many others. So that all these languages descended from the Aryan language together form one family, called the Aryan family; they are of different ages, as brothers and sisters are. Sanskrit is the eldest, being the language in which some of the Indian sacred books were written; and it has been dead (that is, has ceased to be spoken, like Latin and Greek) for at least 2000 years. And yet it is in Sanskrit-that old, old languagethat we find the origin of the forms of the verb to be as the following table shows: For the forms be and was we must look to other |