Verso

For years, the boxy myrtle hedges running through the heart of the Rose Garden have concerned Tom Carruth, the E.L. and Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collections at The Huntington.

What do we mean by an "English," a "French," or an "American" garden? What are the differences between them in the early modern transatlantic world, and what might they—or those who experience them—still share?

The family feud between England's Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) and her cousin, the Scottish Queen Mary (1542–1587)—not "Bloody" Mary, Elizabeth's half-sister—has fascinated people since the 16th century.

Something rare and golden will be unveiled in the Huntington Art Gallery this weekend. Beginning Dec. 1, four tempera-with-gold-leaf panels from an altarpiece by Florentine Renaissance master Cosimo Rosselli (1439–1507) can be seen reunited on the same wall, hung in a beautiful new display after more than 200 years of separation.

When push comes to shove, there are two kinds of people in the world. The kind who will either run away from a fire or a fist fight, and the kind who will run toward it to get a closer look.

The French surgeon Ambroise Paré occupies a curious place in medical history. He is a towering figure in Renaissance medicine and the history of surgery, and yet relatively unknown, especially next to prominent contemporaries like the anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) or the nonconformist thinker Paracelsus (d. 1541).

When we analyze an early-modern medical book nowadays, we often read it on Early English Books Online (EEBO), Google Books, or a similar platform. While such digitization has opened up all kinds of scholarly opportunities, it has also meant that we less frequently encounter a historical medical book as a material object.

Few documents of the Founding era were more admired in the United States before the Civil War than George Washington's Farewell Address. Americans liked to think of themselves as the same nation to which its first president appealed in 1796—patriotic citizenry with "reflecting and virtuous minds" whose "love of liberty" was interwoven "with every ligament" of their hearts and who held dear the "unity of government" that made them "one people."