Excerpt from The Heroic Periods in a Nation's History: An Appeal to the Soldiers of the American ArmiesIt is only a nation that can have anything truly heroic in its history, and the converse of this holds equally true, every real nation created by God, even the smallest and most obscure of them, have had, somewhere in the course of their political existence, their heroic periods. It is the historical sign of nationality. It has been their birth struggle, or some other eventful time or times to which they are ever lookin g back, as that which gives them a title to' stand in the family of na tions. It is that which gave them oneness and totality, or se cured it against destruction, and to which they, therefore, refer as identical with their national life and national contin uance. Even Portugal thus looks back to the days of Vasco da Gama, Holland remembers, and yet lives in, the remem brance of her glorious struggle for nationality, and so, too, the national existence of Sweden yet derives strength from the great period of her emerging from anarchy in the days of Gustavus Vasa. It is the remembrance of Tell and his heroic time that makes Switzerland a true nation, preventing the league character, which enters too much into her structure, from wholly marring her noble history. In the greater nations this has shown itself still more strikingly. All that is politic ally high and glorious has ever connected itself with these thoughts of a national life, as a true personality having at some periods of its course such facts of a glorious past, and making that past the ground of its hope in the future.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.