The composers of old popular tunes are seldom known; it is therefore only proper to regard the whole nation as the composer of its principal national tune, if its origin has not been definitively ascertained; and in this sense it is perhaps right to assign the composition of the English National Anthem to John Bull.
— from Musical Myths and Facts, Volume 1 (of 2) by Carl Engel

Under all these circumstances of internal and external danger—with but slender garrisons at the points of greatest exposure, and those so miserably provided that the soldiers were deserting by dozens, showing dispositions not equivocal of going over to the enemy—without provisions or the means of procuring them, and scarcely knowing whom to trust among their own people, lest the disaffection should prove to be even more extensive than recent disclosures had taught the officers to suppose,—the Spring of 1781 may well be counted as the darkest period of the revolution.
— from Life of Joseph Brant—Thayendanegea (Vol. II) Including the Border Wars of the American Revolution and Sketches of the Indian Campaigns of Generals Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne; And Other Matters Connected with the Indian Relations of the United States and Great Britain, from the Peace of 1783 to the Indian Peace of 1795 by William L. (William Leete) Stone

The Renaissance was, in fact, the throwing off of all that was Teutonic and mediæval, the resumption of progressive thought and scientific knowledge, at the point where it had been interrupted by the Germanic inroads of the fifth century.
— from Anglo-Saxon Britain by Grant Allen

But they are certainly not belfries; and as no more probable conjecture has been made on their original purpose, they are still known as Fire Towers.
— from The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 333, September 27, 1828 by Various