Dufferin urged upon an unresponsive government in London moderate proposals for representative reform in India. In fact, writes Briton Martin Jnr., reform was carried out twenty years later; too late, in the light of history.
Lawrence Stone describes how, towards the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, a young nobleman laid violent and successful suit to the only daughter of a wealthy merchant and money-lender, whose will he is thought to have advantageously suppressed.
C.R. Boxer writes that, taken in conjunction, the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century form one of the watersheds of history, comparable to the twentieth-century conquest of space.
During the minority of Louis XV, France was ruled by his predecessor’s nephew, a good-natured and quick-witted prince, but indolent, indifferent and self-indulgent. Philip’s ascent to power raised high hopes of a radical reform in French domestic policy, writes J.H.M. Salmon.
Possibly some innate realism prevented the Mesopotamians from seeing death other than objectively. But the Epic of Gilgamesh remains an eloquent witness to the poignancy of their interrogation of the meaning of human life and destiny. S.G.F. Brandon.
