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Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine is an account of James Fenimore Cooper's travels in Europe at the time of the 1832 revolt in Paris, when he hoped General Lafayette would be declared President of France and when all of Europe was the stage for the morality play of French politics. Published in 1836 after General Lafayette's death, the book is, in part, an apologia for Lafayette, Cooper's ideal political man. Thus it is essential reading for understanding the development of Cooper's political ideas and his ideas about the nature of American culture. In The Rhine, Cooper deepens his skill at picturesque description of landscape and extends the range of the picturesque to include cityscapes. The complex relations between visual objectives and ideas reverberates throughout the book, whether Cooper is commenting on the public gardens of Heidelburg, a private Alpine landscape, or, especially, the garden at Lafayette's home. With American landscapes and politics always in the background for comparison, Cooper surveys the order of life in Europe and asks for a more liberal and humane political order in Europe and a more human and cultivated social order in America.
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Far from being mere antiquarian or sentimental curiosities, the rebuilt or reused fortresses of the Rhine reflect major changes in Germany and Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taylor begins The Castles of the Rhine with a synopsis of the major political, social and intellectual changes that influenced castle rebuilding in the nineteenth century. He then focuses on selected castles, describing their turbulent histories from the time of their original construction, through their destruction or decay, to their rediscovery in the 1800s and their continued preservation today. Reading this book is equivalent to looking at history though a romantic-nationalist kaleidoscope. Amply illustrated with maps and photographs, The Castles of the Rhine is a wonderful companion for anyone with dreams or experience of journeying along the Rhine.
In the years between about 1810 and 1840, Edinburgh―long and affectionately known as ‘Auld Reekie’―came to think of itself and be widely regarded as something else: the city became ‘Modern Athens’, an epithet later turned to ‘the Athens of the North’. The phrase is very well-known. It is also much used by those who have little understanding of the often confused and contradictory messages hidden within the apparent convenience of a trite or hackneyed term that conceals a myriad of nuanced meanings. This book examines the circumstances underlying a remarkable change in perception of a place and an age. It looks in detail at the ‘when’, the ‘by whom’, the ‘why’, the...