(1478-1535) Thomas More, the first English humanist of the Renaissance, was born in London in 1478. Educated at Oxford, he could write a most beautiful Latin. It was not the Latin of the Church but the original classical Latin. At Oxford More met a foreign humanist, and made friends with him. Erasmus believed in the common sense of a man and taught that men ought to think for themselves, and not merely to believe things to be true because their fathers, or the priest had said they were true.

I know English boys and girls begin to go to school(it is called "infant") at five; at seven they go to junior schools or departments; at eleven they go to secondary schools. (After selection procedures at the age of eleven they can study at different types of secondary shool: grammar schools which provide an academic education oriented toeards university entry; secondary modern schools which were originally designed to give a general education with a practical bias(уклон); a few secondary technics schools offering a general education related to industry, commerce and agriculture; and schools providing all three or any two types of education, in separately orginized streams known as multilateral or bilateral schools).

All British universities are private institutions. Students have to pay fees and living costs, but every student may obtain a personal grant from local authorities. If the parents do not earn much money, their children will receive a full grant which will cover all the expenses. Students studying for first degrees are known as “undergraduates”. New undergraduates in some universities are called “fresher”. They have lectures, there are regular seminars. After three or four years the students will take their finals.

Вступ. Філософія забезпечує культурі самопізнання, а людському життю — смислові орієнтири. Справедливо вважається, що істинна філософія є духовною квінтесенцією епохи, живою душею культури. Звичайно, соціальні джерела і соціальне значення філософських вчень залежать від тих соціальних форм, що викликають їх до життя. Хоч всесвітня філософія, по суті, обертається навколо “вічних” проблем. До їх числа належить і проблема взаємовідносин Людини і Природи, яка в нинішній переломний момент людської історії набула, на жаль, трагічного звучання.

Buckingham palace is the official London residence of Her Majesty The Queen and as such is one of the best known and most potent symbols of the British monarchy. Yet it has been a royal residence for only just over two hundred and thirty years and a palace for much less; and its name, known the world over, is owed not to a monarch but to an English Duke. Buckingham House was built for John, first Duke of Buckingham, between 1702 and 1705. It was sold to the Crown in 1762.

The Russian Federation is the largest country in the world. It occupies about one-seventh of the earth's surface. It covers the eastern part of Europe and the northern part of Asia. Its total area is about 17 million square kilometres. The country is washed by 12 seas of 3 oceans:the Pacific, the Arctic and the Atlantic. In the south Russia borders on China, Mongolia, Korea, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the west it borders on Norway, Finland, the Baltic States, Belorussia, the Ukraine.

In March of 1918 Moscow became the capital. The supreme organs of state power and many central institutions moved to Moscow from Petrograd. It was extremely difficult in the years of the Civil war to see the image of a new city in deserted and unheated Moscow.  The rapid growth of Moscow's population occurred during the twenties and thirties, in 1931 work began to develop the Master Reconstruction Plan of Moscow, a plan which many people abroad considered to be vain dream.

Is it necessary to learn foreign languages nowadays? You can just go to the shop and buy an electronic translator. But is it capable of giving you really required information? More and more people come to a thought that electronic machine never will be able to replace human's brain. All over the world people are learning foreign languages. Everybody knows his own language, but another one is very useful. It is important to know it when we travel to other countries or when we must read foreign literature in the original.

Washington, the capital of the United States is situatedon the Rotomac River in the District of Columbia. The district is a piece of land which doesn't belong to any state but to all the states. All these states are sovereignty. Under the Constitution, the federal government is devided into three branches. The legislative power is vested in Congress and made up of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representative. There are 435 members in the House of Representative and 100 senators.

Jan or Johannes Vermeer van Delft, b. October 1632, d. December 1675, a Dutch genre painter who lived and worked in Delft, created some of the most exquisite paintings in Western art. His works are rare. Of the 35 or 36 paintings generally attributed to him, most portray figures in interiors. All his works are admired for the sensitivity with which he rendered effects of light and color and for the poetic quality of his images. Little is known for certain about Vermeer's life and career.