"Old English" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sides, the parapets spreading at both ends of the structure. One would almost imagine that it was an old Italian bridge transported to our wooden-building land. The side of the valley held by the rebel troops rises sharply, not densely wooded, but covered by large trees thickly placed, as in an old English park. Along the top of this ridge ran a solid stone wall, thicker and of heavier stones than any we saw in the neighborhood. Where the wall ended rifle pits had been dug. Behind the massive trunks, and in the branches of the old trees, behind ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The Swiss chalet may hang in the mountain pass; the pointed Gothic may shoot up among the evergreens of the rugged hill-side; the Italian roof, with its overlooking campanile, may command the wooded slope or the open plain; or the quaint and shadowy style of the old English mansion, embosomed in its vines and shrubbery, may nestle in the quiet, shaded valley, all suited to their respective positions, and each in harmony with the natural features by which it is surrounded. Nor does the effect which such structures give to the landscape ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... necessary for me, while I was in her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults. The captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb, "that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day;" and, continuing in his mirth, protested "he would have gladly given a hundred ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... taken place in himself, from the reckless, racketty young Englishman to the super-exquisite foreign dandy. It was as if the fiery, effervescent atmosphere of the Boulevards of Paris had insolently penetrated into the old English mansion, and ruffled and infected its quiet native air, to the remotest corners ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... a few old English families, too, families who, in all probability, can point to Celtic blood at some distant period in their history, that possess family ghosts. I have, for example, stayed in one house where, prior to a death, a boat is seen gliding noiselessly along a stream ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... an American word. It is derived from "slee," in Dutch; which is pronounced like "sleigh." Some persons contend; that the Americans ought to use the old English words "sled," or: "sledge." But these words do not precisely express the things we possess. There is as much reason for calling a pleasure conveyance by a name different from "sled," as there is for saying "coach" instead of "wagon." "Sleigh" will become English, ere long, as ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... which our emigrating habit now constantly creates, this prosaic turn of mind is intensified. In the American mind and in the colonial mind there is, as contrasted with the old English mind, a LITERALNESS, a tendency to say, "The facts are so-and-so, whatever may be thought or fancied about them". We used before the civil war to say that the Americans worshipped the almighty dollar; ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... hall-stove, which, after a prolonged search, was found in London and duly installed as a presiding deity to defy the dampness that pervades all those ivy-covered habitations, as well as the neuralgia that wrings their possessors. What a blessing it proved, more than any one thing making the old English house seem like an American home! The delightful summer heat we, in America, enjoy in the coldest seasons, is quite unknown to our Saxon cousins. Although many came to see our stove in full working order, yet we could not persuade them to adopt the American system of heating the whole house at an ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... with a lout [the old English courtesy, now considered rustic] of the deepest veneration, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... on the bench, and marched to die or be free. He was the son and lover, the plain, shy youth of the singing school and the village choir, whose heart beat to arms for his country, and who felt, though he could not say with the old English cavalier:— ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... far steadier than it has since proved. I could name some who, I think, contributed greatly to his ruin, the buffoons and the misses, to whom he was an eye-sore. 'Tis true he was of a jolly temper after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we were become quite another nation. The Chancellor gone, and dying in exile, the Earl his successor sold that which cost 50,000 building to the young Duke of Albemarle for 25,000, to pay debts ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... might suffice to explain that much—but that these new words are more especially taken from the jargon of parties, the mechanical arts, or the language of trade. They assert, in addition to this, that old English words are often used by the Americans in new acceptations; and lastly, that the inhabitants of the United States frequently intermingle their phraseology in the strangest manner, and sometimes place words ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... painted; and covered profusely with verses, armorial bearings, and devices. In every third compartment are two birds holding a scroll between them, on which, and on the cross beams, the following rude verses are written in old English characters:— ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... deity they served. See Selden, De Dis Syris, Synt. 1. c. 2. It is a curious coincidence, that as the Witch of Endor is called "Oub," and the African sorceress "Obi," from the serpent-deity Oub, so the old English name of a witch, "hag," bears apparent relationship to the word hak, the ancient British name of a species of snake. In Yorkshire, according to Stukeley, they call snakes "hags" and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... his clean-shaven mouth. "A kind of expiation or amercement by fine, known to the Mosaic, Roman, and old English law. Gad, sir, the Jews might have made you MARRY his widow or sister. An old custom, and I think superseded—sir, properly superseded—by the alternative of ordeal by battle in the mediaeval times. I don't myself fancy these pecuniary fashions ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... spread itself through all our brooks and streams to the very heart and centre of England. Thus, from day to day, as in society at large, new introductions constantly take place, and old friends die out for ever. The brown rat replaces the old English black rat; strange weeds kill off the weeds of ancient days; fresh flies and grubs and beetles crop up, and disturb the primitive entomological balance. The bustard is gone from Salisbury Plain; the fenland butterflies have disappeared with the drainage of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... cards while I waited. I had them done in the Old English character. I suggested some little decoration to give them a tone,—an ivy leaf in the corner, or a little flourish under the name,—but Amrod was opposed to this. He seemed to think it was not essential, and it would have been charged extra, and also he had nothing of the kind in stock. ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... as to reprint. As regards its size, the Gulistan is but a small book, but intrinsically it is indeed a very great book, such as could only be produced by a great mind, and it comprises more wisdom and wit than a score of old English folios could together yield to the most devoted reader. Some querulous persons there are who affect to consider the present as a shallow age, because, forsooth, huge volumes of learning—each the labour of a lifetime—are not now ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... by the Bras d'Or was fringed with Gaelic. Now I have heard many languages in my time, and know how to appreciate the luxurious Greek, the stately Latin, the mellifluous Chinese, the epithetical Sclavic, the soft Italian, the rich Castilian, the sprightly French, sonorous German, and good old English, but candor compels me to say, that I do not think much of the Gaelic. It is ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Obviously the word "learned" in our Version is there used in its old English sense, "instructed, taught." No slight on "book-learning" is ever conveyed in the Scriptures. But the man in view here is not the highly-educated person, but the believer who has listened with the ear "of the taught" (see the end of the verse), as a disciple at the Master's ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... to the Harleian Miscellany[508][*] The selection of the pamphlets of which it was composed was made by Mr. Oldys[509], a man of eager curiosity and indefatigable diligence, who first exerted that spirit of inquiry into the literature of the old English writers, by which the works of our great dramatick poet have of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... for the preservation of French dominion in the next war. Like brave and loyal men, they did their duty to God and their country, preferring death and ruin in a lost cause to surrendering the flag which was the symbol of their native land. The spirit, if not the words, of the old English loyalist ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... use; and the very names of many things, the uses of which are almost forgotten, are suggestive of former occupations and older methods of practising household economy and the preparation of food. It is common knowledge that the purest old English is met with in the dialects of the countryside, and oftentimes once household words, now lost in modern speech, are found again when the old names or original purposes of the curios remaining to us are discovered. The ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... intellectuality that had so greatly attracted me as a young man, Ben Flint died. In the realm of gymnasts, jugglers, circus-riders, dancers in which Andrew had thence found his being, there was no one to replace the mellow old English clown, who travelled around with Sterne and Montaigne and Shakespeare and Bunyan and the Bible, as the only books of his permanent library. Such knowledge as he possessed of the myriad activities of the great world ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... camp-fire, and admire its ruddy glow, reflected on the snow-white covers of our wagons. These were parked in a semi-circle around us, and forcibly recalled to my mind the stories I had read in my boyhood, of gipsy encampments upon some grand old English barren. ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... 'affirm,' is by no means violent. Izaak Walton has 'Lebault allows waterfrogs to be good meat,' and here the word is equivalent to affirms. At the same time, when we consider some of the meanings of allow in old English, and of allouer in old French, and also remember that the verbs prize and praise are from one root, I think we must admit allaudare to a share in the paternity of allow. The sentence from Hakluyt would read ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of religion already mentioned, he was the author of an Apologie (1643, Thomason Tracts, E. 34 (32)), justifying his support of the king's cause; of Elvira ... a comedy (1667), printed in R. Dodsley's Select Collect. of Old English Plays (Hazlitt, 1876), vol. xv., and of Worse and Worse, an adaptation from the Spanish, acted but not printed. Other writings are also ascribed to him, including the authorship with Sir Samuel Tuke of The Adventures of Five Hours (1663). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Orleanists had again gained the preponderance in France: they unfurled the Oriflamme against the Duke of Burgundy, who was now in fact hard pressed. Henry negociated with them both. But while the Orleanists made difficulties about granting him the independent possession of the old English provinces, Burgundy declared himself ready to acknowledge him as King.[67] The common interests moreover of home politics allied him ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... or rather the head gardener. He came out with his master some thirty or forty years ago, but his old English prejudice will go to the grave with him, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... lady's riddles are found in an old English song, and its traditional derivatives. The song, which is given below, is found in Sloane MS. 2593, which contains other carols and ballads (see pp. 123-8)[A]. From this is ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... words, "earnest," is a peculiarly interesting one. It is found three times in Paul's epistles.[15] An earnest is a pledge given in advance as an evidence of good faith. We are familiar with the usage of paying down a small part of the price agreed upon to make a business transaction binding. In old English it is called caution money. My mother has told me of seeing her mother many a time pay a shilling in the Belfast market-house to insure the delivery of a bag of potatoes, paying the remainder ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... and disposed to read, he took much pleasure in perusing the poems of Robert Buchanan and Miss Ingelow. The latter's "Ballads" particularly delighted him. One, written "in the old English manner", he quickly learned by heart, repeating it with a ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Brave. The old English sense of the word in 'to go brave' retained, expressing Andrew's sincere and respectful admiration. Had he meant to insinuate a hint of the church's being too fine, he would have ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of two rather rickety old carriages, somewhat resembling in form the old English chaise, she put all the girls in one, and seated herself beside Mrs. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Birmingham, and while out on a stroll, came upon the City Hall, which was crowded with a great meeting in aid of foreign missions. The heroic Robert Moffat, the Apostle of South Africa, was addressing the multitude, who cheered him in the old English fashion. Two years before that, Robert Moffat had met a young man in a boarding house in Aldersgate Street, London, and induced him to become a missionary in Africa. The young man was the sublimest of all modern missionaries, David ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... subscribed—and then quit. To fill in the time, we printed a book: we printed it like a William Morris book—printed it just as well as we could. It was cold in the old barn where we first set up "The Philistine," so I built a little building like an old English chapel right alongside of my house. There was one basement and a room upstairs. I wanted it to be comfortable and pretty, and so we furnished our little shop cozily. We had four girls and three boys working for us then. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the most delightful things imaginable, after you have indulged in your morning's ablutions, and have produced that indefinable lilac tint on your chin, which tells of easy shaving soap and a Rogers's true old English razor, to don your shawl dressing-gown, and, having adjusted your bonnet grec towards the right side of your head, so as to allow the glossy curl to escape and hang pendant on the left; when all this is done, to "light the brown cigar," to put yourself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... usurers were depicted in hideous colours (Fig. 366). The most celebrated of these popular compositions was evidently that which must have furnished the idea to Shakespeare of the Merchant of Venice, for in this old English drama mention is made of a bargain struck between a Jew and a Christian, who borrows money of him, on condition that, if he cannot refund it on a certain day, the lender shall have the right of cutting a pound of flesh from his body. All the evil which the people said ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... 'There is an old English and Latin book of poems by Barclay, called "The Ship of Fools;" at the end of which are a number of Eglogues; so he writes it, from Egloga[816], which are probably the first in our language. If you cannot find the book I will get Mr. Dodsley to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... for many years every Whig historian was anxious to prove that the old English government was all but republican—every Tory, to prove it all but despotic. 'With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronology of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought, and obstinately refused ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... but I shall make good use of them and nothing shall be wasted. The wool which Mrs. S—— sent turned up yesterday and I have already given half of it to the women in one of the villages here to knit into socks. There is a dear old English colonel who has a soup kitchen near the firing line, and he is always looking for socks. He does a great deal of good, for he gets the men when they are carried in from the trenches and gives them hot drinks and hot water ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... this, which is rather too serious a subject.— The old English ballads are of a gayer and more lively turn. They are adventurous and romantic; but they relate chiefly to good living and good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes. Robin Hood is the chief of these, and he still, in imagination, haunts Sherwood Forest. The archers green glimmer under the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... on his way from the house to the sloops, was seized by Indians and dragged off by the hair. Then the whole body of savages appeared swarming over the fields, so confident of success that they neglected their usual tactics of surprise. A French officer, who, as an old English account says, was "habited like a gentleman," made them an harangue: they answered with a burst of yells, and then attacked the house, firing, screeching, and calling on Convers and his men to surrender. Others gave their attention to the two sloops, which lay together in the narrow ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... went with a party of friends, by invitation, to the house of a native gentleman, a Parsee merchant of old family and great respectability, and as we reached the steps of his door, a party of men came up with sticks in their hands, answering to our old English morice-dancers. These men were well clad in white dresses, with flowers stuck in their turbans; they formed a circle somewhat resembling the figure of moulinet, but without joining hands, the inner party ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... of the Papal Interest," whether at home or abroad. "The Papists in England," he said to the Parliament of 1656, "have been accounted, ever since I was born, Spaniolized; they never regarded France, or any other Papist state, but Spain only." The old English hatred of Spain, the old English resentment at the shameful part which the nation had been forced to play in the great German struggle by the policy of James and of Charles, lived on in Cromwell, and was ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... thing—to use that incense in the work of dedication and consecration is another. For instance, the old story of the "Quest of the Graal," best known to modern readers through Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," has been Christianised and consecrated. And so it was with some fine old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry. But, just now, we are going to listen to Catholic ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... A Million More An Old English Oak Anthem Betzko Beyond Byron and the Angel Change Charge of the "Black-Horse" Charge of Fremont's Body-Guard Charity Chickadee Christmas Eve [Illustrated] Daniel Do They Think of Us? Dust to Dust Fame Fido Gettysburg: Charge of the First Minnesota Heloise Hope Hurrah ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... "thou" had its old English manner and was not confined to the Friends alone. The more rigid, who sought to despise all things that savored of worldliness, used their objective in season and out. And among the younger of the citified Friends, "you" was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... English boy, have him bound to them according to custom, and let them learn English by having to speak to him. About July a case came to his knowledge that roused all his sympathies, and at the same time afforded a good opportunity to try his plan. "I have taken a four-year-old English boy into our family. He was born in Charlestown, but somehow found his way to Savannah. His father was hanged, for murder I have heard, and his mother has married another man, and abandoned the child. A woman here took ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... would trust himself to be driven in a low pony-phaeton. But in one respect he was altogether unlike his father. His whole time was spent among his books, and he was at this moment engaged in revising and editing a very long and altogether unreadable old English chronicle in rhyme, for publication by one of those learned societies which are rife in London. Of Robert of Gloucester, and William Langland, of Andrew of Wyntown and the Lady Juliana Berners, he ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of the Crismiss holydays, Sir John and me (who is a member of parlyment) had gone down to our place in Yorkshire for six wicks, to shoot grows and woodcox, and enjoy old English hospitalaty. This ugly Canady bisniss unluckaly put an end to our sports in the country, and brot us up to Buckly Square as fast as four posterses could gallip. When there, I found your parcel, containing the two vollumes ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was of olden times, and apart near the water, with a landlady of the good old English type; and her son, the waiter, rampant about canoes, kept an aviary under the porch and a capital swimming dog ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... is not exactly so. There appears to have been as late as Bach a soprano trombone, and it is figured by Virdung, A.D. 1511, as no larger than the field trumpet. The trumpet is not on so large a caliber, and in the seventeenth century had its own family of two clarinos and three tubas. The old English name of the trombone is sackbut. The old wooden cornet, or German zinke, an obsolete, cupped mouthpiece instrument, the real bass of which, according to family, is the now obsolete serpent, was used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the treble instrument ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... most of all their land. Now England has made it compulsory to leave no ground uncultivated. Golf-courses are now potato-patches. Parks and every bit of back yard all grow their quota of vegetables. The boys in the old English public schools work with the hoe where before they ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... George. When you came home this afternoon I realized something I hadn't realized before. I saw that the tide was against me, that I was like that old English king who set his throne on the sands and thought he could stay the waters. If—if anything had happened to you, I couldn't have fought on, but now that you're here with me again, now that you've risked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them are acting a Scout's play, sir; some are doing Cone Exercises; one or two are practising deep breathing; and the rest are dancing an Old English Morris Dance." ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... the competition is often, if not generally, most severe between nearly related species when they are in contact, so that one drives the other before it, as the Hanoverian the old English rat, the small Asiatic cockroach in Russia, its greater congener, etc. And this, when duly considered, explains many curious results; such, for instance, as the considerable number of different genera of plants and animals which are generally found to ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... where they are in their language called (as Leland writeth) Barthes. Also by the witnes of Humfrey Llhoyd, there is an Iland neere vnto Wales, called Insula Bardorum, and Bardsey, whereof the one name in Latine, and the other in Saxon or old English, signifieth the Iland of the Bardes ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... taste may; for from all the elaborate display of modern architecture, all the profuse luxuriance and endless variety of modern horticulture, I now turn away, to feast in thought on the recollection of that venerable scene. The palace itself is a fine specimen of the chaste old English style; but the most conspicuous, the most unfading feature, was the cathedral itself, which formed the boundary of one-half of the garden; a mass of sober magnificence, rising in calm repose against the sky, which, to my awe-struck gaze ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... young Bunyan. Perhaps there is near your dwelling an Elstow—a quiet hamlet of some fifty houses sprinkled about in the picturesque confusion, and with the easy amplitude of space, which gives an old English village its look of leisure and longevity. And it is now verging to the close of the summer's day. The daws are taking short excursions from the steeple, and tamer fowls have gone home from the darkening and dewy green. But old Bunyan's ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... within me. I slept—for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing as before, close to my sister's bed."[2] Somewhat similar in effect were the fancies that came to this dreamy boy on Sunday mornings during service in the fine old English church. Through the wide central field of uncolored glass, set in a rich framework of gorgeous color,—for the side panes of the great windows were pictured with the stories of saints and martyrs,—the lad saw "white fleecy clouds ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... de Coverley is among the number. Addison has, however, gained himself immortal honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Who is there that can forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable nameless graces and varied traits of nature and of old English character in it—to his unpretending virtues and amiable weaknesses—to his modesty, generosity, hospitality, and eccentric whims—to the respect of his neighbours, and the affection of his domestics—to his wayward, hopeless, secret passion for his fair enemy, the widow, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Cervantes; But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,— To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will, Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain That only the finest and clearest remain, Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, And you'll find ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... large tree that formed the pride of the lawn, over which it cast its shadow broad and far, he perceived his guardian poring idly over an oft-read book, one of those books of which literary dreamers are apt to grow fanatically fond—books by the old English writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half sublime, interspersed with praises of the country, imbued with a poetical rather than orthodox religion, and adorned with a strange mixture ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... papers, that books are constantly advancing in price. Although many have gone up, many others have gone down, and at no time probably were good and useful books to be bought so cheap as now. If we look at old sale catalogues we shall find early printed books, specimens of old English poetry and the drama, fetching merely a fraction of what would have to be given for them now; but, on the other hand, we shall find pounds then given for standard books which would not now realize the same number of shillings; this is specially the ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... I replied judicially, "is worthy of the gem. The dark green cover, elaborately tooled, the old English lettering, the heavy linen paper, mark this as one of our very choicest publications. The letter-press is of course De Vinne's best,—there is nothing better on this side of the Atlantic. The text is a beautiful, slender stream, meandering gracefully ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... ballads are generally ranked alongside Negro spirituals as being the most important of America's contributions to folk song. As compared with the old English and Scottish ballads, the cowboy and all other ballads of the American frontiers generally sound cheap and shoddy. Since John A. Lomax brought out his collection in 1910, cowboy songs have found their way ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... do not know that I have ever greatly relished any plays but those of Shakespeare and Goldoni, and two or three of Beaumont and Fletcher, and one or so of Marlow's, and all of Ibsen's and Maeterlinck's. The taste for the old English dramatists I believe I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Chaucer, whether we regard it as a work of literary art, or as an historic reflector of the age, is "The Vision of Piers Plowman," by Robert Langland, which appeared between 1360 and 1370. It stands between the Semi-Saxon and the old English, in point of language, retaining the alliterative feature of the former; and, as a teacher of history, it displays very clearly the newly awakened spirit of religious inquiry, and the desire for religious reform among the English people: ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the yeomanry cavalry exercising, while we could hear from the town, which was full of soldiers, 'Dumbarton's drums beat bonny, O!' Yet while we stood upon this eminence, rising up so far as it does—inland, and having the habitual old English feeling of our own security as islanders—we could not help looking upon the fortress, in spite of its cannon and soldiers, and the rumours of invasion, as set up against the hostilities of wind and weather ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... to the indulgence of the reader, is the third of a series intended to illustrate the history and manners of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, whom a great historian very appropriately names "The Old English:" it does not claim the merit of deep research, only of an earnest endeavour to be true to the facts, and in harmony with the tone, of the eventful period ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... enmities of one's own family, or country, or religious sect. In forms how afflicting must that necessity have sometimes occurred during the Parliamentary war! And, in after years, amongst our beautiful old English metrical romances, I found the same impassioned complaint uttered by a knight, Sir Ywain, as early as ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... aground, and it is high time that the mothers should be asking, "What do you mean to do?" In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real-estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in reform he received a mountain of curses from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... tomb-stone with the off-scouring of the people, the meanest of the human species, shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, &c. for none but such would deign to be his companions. Their amusement seems to be the favourite old English game of hustle-cap, and our idle and unprincipled youth is endeavouring to cheat, by concealing some of the half-pence under the broad brim of his hat. This is perceived by the shoe-black, and warmly resented ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... recognized one of the strangers in the sleigh as John Estaugh, with whose preaching years before in London she had been deeply impressed, and ever since she had treasured in her memory many of his words. It was almost like a glimpse of her dear old English home to see him enter, and stepping forward with more than usual cordiality ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... with them longer. All that night it rained very hard and we found no place where we could land. About ten o'clock the next morning, however, after a night of rowing and paddling, we espied a canoe coming toward us at great speed. The men in it proved to be of our old English company, who supposed us to be Spaniards and were coming to attack us. They had given me and my companions up for lost, but now we were all mutually rejoiced, and were soon reunited on the shore of a deep bay which lay concealed behind a point ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... An old English form of this game substitutes the words "Fire, air, and water," for "Beast, bird, and fish," the players being required to name some animal that lives in the air or water when those elements are named, but to keep silence when fire is named. In ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... division of the New-York and Erie Railway, in avoiding the necessity for viaducts, than could possibly have been exhibited in constructing them. This remark is a key to the difference between the old English and the American systems of civil engineering. The one is for show, the other for use. We say the old English system, because a better practice has now arisen. Cost is looked to as well as splendor; and there is no engineer now in England whose reputation, would sustain him in constructing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... but I never could do it. I'll read any day as long as you like, but that writing, I could never manage. My friend Morley is a powerful hand at it. His journal circulates a good deal about here; and if as I often tell him he would only sink his high-flying philosophy and stick to old English politics, he might make a property of it. You'll like to ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... principle he declared that purely agricultural countries are economically backward and intellectually stagnant, being condemned to pay tribute to the nations who have learned to work up their raw products into more valuable commodities. The good old English doctrine that certain countries were intended by Providence to be eternally agricultural, and that their function in the economy of the universe is to supply raw material for the industrial nations, was always in his eyes an abomination—an ingenious, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... is characteristic. Blair's Grave, representing another version of the sentiment, appeared simultaneously and independently. Blair, like Thomson, living in Scotland, was outside the Pope circle of wit, and had studied the old English authors instead of Pope and Dryden. He negotiated for the publication of his poem through Watts and Doddridge, each of whom was an eminent interpreter of the religious sentiment of the middle classes. Both wrote hymns still popular, and ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Taylor alone—one of the highest that ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been desecrated by the fictions—so to call them—of John Milton; majestic as are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... been a villa, and a villa, in England at least, was not a place in which one could fancy him at home. But it was, to my vision, a cottage glorified and translated; it was a palace of art, on a slightly reduced scale,—it was an old English demesne. It nestled under a cluster of magnificent beeches, it had little creaking lattices that opened out of, or into, pendent mats of ivy, and gables, and old red tiles, as well as a general aspect of being painted in water-colors and inhabited by people whose lives would go ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... while the County was yet a part of Prince William and the property of Lord Fairfax, the immigrants securing ninety-nine-year leases on the land at the rate of two shillings sterling per 100 acres. The above-noted interim saw a steady influx of the fine old English Cavalier[18] stock, the settlers occupying large tracts of land in the eastern and southern portions of the County or most of the territory extending from the Potomac River southward to Middleburg and from the Catoctin and Bull Run mountains eastward to the eastern border of the County. It is more ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... verb "write," which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage. Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods, one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards supplied the place of these materials. Real paper, manufactured from the pellicle of the Egyptian ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... in our version, has the same double meaning as that has in old English, or as "force" has now, sometimes signifying "strength" and sometimes an "army." The latter is the more appropriate here. "The day of Thine army" will then be equivalent to the day of mustering ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... and they requested him, by signs, to make an exchange. Another native had joined the other two, armed with a musket. I made signs to him to let me look at it, but he would not trust it out of his hands. I remarked it was an old English worn-out gun without a hammer to the lock. Perceiving that they were beginning to be troublesome, we jumped into the boat and threw them some biscuits, which they devoured with the ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... The old English lawyers occasionally rejected the evidence of women on the ground that they are "frail." But the exclusion of women as witnesses in the old days was not for psychological reasons, nor did it originate from a critical study of the probative ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... few steps farther, Jamieson, who is as excellent in points of etymology as Johnson is deficient, quotes, in his Scottish Dictionary, an instance where the identical expression, meselle-houses, is used in old English; ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... writings of the day; for each section had its own peculiar rules, and courts and decisions in the various colonies, and sometimes in one colony, contradicted one another. Until the adoption of the Constitution the old English law prevailed, and while unmarried women could make deeds, wills, and other business transactions, the wife's identity was largely merged into that of her husband. The colonial husband seems to have had considerable confidence ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... an old English family, which traced its descent back to the year of our Lord 61, the days of the heroic Boadicea, down through the brilliant circle of the Knights of the Round Table, to Francis Peabody, who in 1635 went from St. Albans, in Hertfordshire, to the New World, and settled ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... together wherever they met. Sir Beverley had never troubled himself about the intimacy. The girl belonged to the county, and if not quite the brilliant match for Piers that he would have chosen, she came at least of good old English stock. He knew and liked her father, and he would not have made any very strenuous opposition to an alliance between the two. The girl was well bred and heiress to the Colonel's estate. She would have added ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... sung by a chorus of fresh children's voices, is perhaps the most perfect expression of the spirit of Christmastide. Especially is this true of the old English and German carols, which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at Christmas time there is with me the memory of one carol sweeter than all, which was sung to me alone by a little ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... new card four times and explained that it was the rawest sort of dog to carry a brace of names in your card holster; that it gave you the drop on the swells every time, and that they just had to throw up both hands and pass you the pot when you showed down. Said that Bottes was old English for Botts, and that Smythe was new American for Smith; the Augustus was just a fancy touch, a ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... of it never did much interest me; excepting the Morte, which I suppose most interested him also, as he took it up first of all. I am not sure if such a Romance as Arthur's is not best told in the artless old English in which it was told to Arthur's artless successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew in something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of Shalott, rather than elaborated into a modern Epic form. I ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... took to you as a boy at school? Was it because you scribbled inaccurate sonatas and I had myself a talent for knocking tunes off the piano? Not a bit of it. I thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many youthful errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English baronet, and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things Teutonic. And that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You gratify my historic sense—like an old building. You are picturesque. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Mary, they're too common; Joan's too formal for a woman; Jane's a prettier name beside, But we had a Jane that died. They would say, if 'twas Rebecca, That she was a little Quaker; Edith's pretty, but that looks Better in old English books; ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... little. But it was the sincere utterance of an earnest soul. It may not have been an orthodox start, but it was the one start for Bud. And there be those who have repeated with the finest aesthetic appreciation the old English liturgies who have never known religious aspiration so sincere as that of this ignorant young Hercules, whose best confession was that he meant hereafter "to put in his best licks for Jesus Christ." And there be those who can define repentance ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... George Wakeham, an old English fisherman from Devonshire, who had spent forty years of his life on The Labrador and had an Eskimo wife, welcomed us to his house. Near it was an eminence called Watch Hill, from which the general situation of the ice pack could be observed. Day after day I climbed Watch Hill, and for hours at ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... of steel, the celebrated chair at Longford Castle in Wiltshire is worthy of some notice as a remarkable specimen of German Renaissance. It is fully described in Richardson's "Studies from Old English Mansions." It was the work of Thomas Rukers, and was presented by the city of Augsburg to the Emperor of Germany in 1577. The city arms are at the back, and also the bust of the Emperor. The other minute and carefully ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... Horse stands for something that year by year we are forgetting, those quaint old English feasts that have done so much to make England merry, and have made history into a beautiful legend that bears the name of Alfred. Yet the White Horse is falling into neglect. The author of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' lamented the fact ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... a man of considerable note—a solicitor on the highway in William Rufus's time. At about the age of thirty he went to one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see about something, and never returned again. While there he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... old English sport of bull baiting was still continued at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, where it is said to have existed since the year 1209, in the reign of King John. The story goes that, in that year, William, Earl Warren, lord ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... have corrected and put forth in the English that now is used in England, for our Southern men; nothing thereto adding, ne yet therefrom minishing. And I intend hereafter, with the help of GOD to put it forth in his own old English, which shall well serve, I doubt not, both for the Northern men and the faithful brethren ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... The word hell is from the old English hell, meaning to build a wall around, to separate; to be helled was to be shut off from. Now if there is such a thing as harmony there must be that something one can be in right relations with; for to be in right relations ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... The old English East India company was established in 1600, by a charter from Queen Elizabeth. In the first twelve voyages which they fitted out for India, they appear to have traded as a regulated company, with separate stocks, though only in the general ships of the company. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... a practical commentary on Webb's words. Miss Hargrove had come over to spend the night with Amy, and to try some fine old English glees that she had obtained from her city home. They had just adjourned from the supper-table to the piazza when Lumley appeared, hat in hand. He spoke to Leonard, but looked at Amy with a kind of wondering admiration, as if ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... surviving evidence that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say, "Ma fille, as-tu donne au cochon a manger?" to saying, "Pucelle d'Orleans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys?" There is an old English copy of verses which ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... first syllable of the name. Some writers derive it from Rome, and regard Romsey as a hybrid word taking the place of "Romana insula," the first word having been shortened and the second translated into Old English, or Saxon as some prefer to call it. Now it is true that there were several important Roman stations in the neighbourhood: Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum), Brige (Broughton), Venta Belgarum (Winchester), and Clausentum ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... the present volume is to deal with Old English Customs, not so much in their picturesque aspect—though that element is not wholly wanting—as in their fundamental relations to the organized life of the Middle Ages. Partly for that reason and partly because the work is comparatively ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... punished if they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among New England historical collections no other such well of good old English words and phrases. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... his Travels in Canada, in 1808—one week surrounding the festive board of this jolly Receiver General of Canada at Belmont, the next at Charlesbourg, making the romantic echoes of the Hermitage ring again with old English cheers and loyal toasts to "George the King," or else installing a "Baron" at the Union Hotel, Place d'Armes,—possibly in the very Council-room in which the State secrets of Canada were in 1865 daily canvassed—and flinging down to the landlord as Lambert says, "250 guineas for the entertainement." ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... lived in the house an old English man servant named Jerry Pike. He had formerly been a groom and attendant on Peter's uncle, Major Schermerhorn, and volunteered in the army at the time of the war with Mexico, that he might follow his dear master, whom he had served ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... characteristic article for The Times of India (July 19, 1899), which threw a flood of light on the subject of the habits and characteristics of the Indian rat as found in town and country. He was the first to show that Mus rattus, the old English black rat, which is the common house rat of India outside the large seaports, has become, through centuries of contact with the Indian people, a domestic animal like the cat in Britain. When one realises the fact that this same rat is responsible ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... is derived from the Old English word commonty which came to mean "the body of the common people, commons." Communication is from the Latin communicare, also derived from communis—common, and ic (the formative of factitive verbs)—to make, ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... political cowardice has rendered useless the old English compromise. People have begun to be terrified of an improvement merely because it is complete. They call it utopian and revolutionary that anyone should really have his own way, or anything be really done, and done with. Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... preach, and also because he regarded his characters as puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... an old English parsonage Down by the sea, There came in the twilight A message to me; Its quaint Saxon legend Deeply engraven, Hath as it seems to me Teaching for heaven; And on through the hours The quiet words ring, Like a low inspiration, "Doe the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... hooks and points were riveted on at the ends by the native blacksmith, for whom we cut paper patterns, of the exact size, for everything we wanted. We next had large nails driven into the souls of our shoes by a local shoemaker, who made them for us by hand out of an old English file, and who wanted to pull them all out again because we would not pay him the exorbitant price he demanded. In buying provisions for the expedition, we spent three hours among the half dilapidated bazaars of the town, which have ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish "manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers of modern languages to let the old English ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... is that of the typical old English inn. "As late as 1870 the ruins of the famous Tabard could be found. It was near St. Saviour in the Borough High Street. Turning from the street into one of those courtyards which abound in the east of London, the visitor comes upon the ruins of the once famous ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... come to town, after being formally disinherited, he had managed to get a billet as Latin, French, and Old English reader in a publishing house of repute. As it happened, on this very afternoon he was strolling down the Strand, having finished a rather stiff day's work, and with a mind filled with those idle and somewhat confused odds and ends of speculation with which most brain workers will be acquainted. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... the novelty of the piano in the year 1767, we find on an old English play bill of the Covent Garden Theater a certain Miss Brickler advertised to sing a favorite song from "Judith," accompanied by Mr. Dibdin on "a new instrument" called the pianoforte. This was at the intermission after the first act ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... This is an old English game, which has become a favorite athletic exercise in almost all countries, as a trial of strength and endurance. In England it used to be called "French and English," from the ancient rivalry that existed between the two ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... long and low apartment, roughly plastered. The heavy ceiling-beams, hewn with axes, were uncovered, giving an old English effect, although this was not striven for, but made under the stress of necessity. The broad windows were trellised with vines, through which filtered the sunshine. A cooling evening breeze stirred the leaves lazily. The chairs were broad and comfortable—the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... itself with fancies seemingly so childish, the monks were true to their vows, and true to their duty as far as they comprehended what duty meant. Among many good, the prior John Haughton was the best. He was of an old English family, and had been educated at Cambridge, where he must have been the contemporary of Latimer. At the age of twenty-eight he took the vows as a monk, and had been twenty years a Carthusian at the opening of the troubles of the Reformation. He is described as "small in stature, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... In the romance of Sir Tristram it is the castle of King Marc, the cowardly and treacherous king of Cornwall, the southwest county of England. teen. See note, l. 147, The Scholar-Gipsy. (Grief, sorrow; from the old English teona, meaning injury.) ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... not, perhaps, any harder task than to tame the natural wildness of Wit, and to civilize the Fancy. The generality of our old English Poets abound in forced conceits and affected phrases; and even those who are said to come the nearest to exactness, are but too often fond of unnatural beauties, and aim at something better than perfection. If Mr. ADDISON's example and precepts be the occasion that there now ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... such belief, it is small wonder that two of Bunce's plays had characteristics in them to suit a member of the Wallack family. And being such a lover of old English Comedy accounts for some of the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... old English carols, mummers cut up queer antics, servitors brought in the Boar's Head and Wassail Bowl, and finally it was announced that all present would participate in the old-fashioned dance of Sir ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... and had the one brought up to hunt, while the other was nursed at home in all luxury; and when grown, and let loose, the one caught a hare, while the other yelped and ran away. So the word handy, in old English hend, meaning quick, alert, or gifted with prompt perception, is derived from knowing how to use the hands. BRUSONIUS ("Facetiae," Lyons, 1562) has collected a great number of classic anecdotes to illustrate ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... over, before we have received it in its present form. Yet there are accredited professors of English who do not know these facts, and who, if called upon, could neither prove them nor disprove them. They have not worked in the Bodleian, in the British Museum, or in other foreign libraries, on Old English texts and authorities. They think themselves well up in Old English if they can translate the text of Beowulf fairly well, remember its most difficult vocabulary, and can tell a tale or two ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... November 2, 1862, he expresses himself very warmly about his disappointment in the attitude of many of his old English friends with reference to our civil conflict. He had recently heard the details of the death of "the noble ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the continued expression of his large personality. He delivered the public address in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University; he gave a course of lectures on the Old English Dramatists before the Lowell Institute; he collected a volume of his poems; he wrote and spoke on public affairs; and, the year before his death, revised, rearranged, and carefully edited a definitive series of his writings in ten volumes. He died at Elmwood, August 12, 1891. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Audrey regarded herself as decidedly wiser than Miss Thompkins. Her opinions on vital matters changed almost weekly, but she was always absolutely sure that the new opinion was final and incontrovertible. Her scorn of the old English Audrey, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... sketch begins abruptly; but there is no reason to suppose that anything preceded it except the unrecorded musings in the author's mind, and one or two memoranda in the "English Note-Books." We must therefore imagine the central figure, Middleton, who is the American descendant of an old English family, as having been properly introduced, and then pass at once to the opening sentences. The rest will explain itself. ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coalition, which opposed these changes, selected for itself, as has been seen, the name of "Whig." The name was, perhaps, better chosen than the American Whigs realized. They meant—and it was true as far as it went—that, like the old English Whigs, they stood for free government by deliberative assemblies against arbitrary personal power. They were not deep enough in history to understand that they also stood, like the old English Whigs, for oligarchy against ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... green hollow, surrounded by splendid old trees and velvet turf, stands Ightham Mote, a gem among old English moated manor-houses. It is the home of Mr. J.C. Colyer-Fergusson, who allows the public to see the house and grounds on Fridays, between 11 and 1, and 2 and 6. A charge of 6d. ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... to read it. Aunt Emma always glanced over the paper first, indeed, and often cut out such offending paragraphs. But I never attached much importance to their absence before, because I thought it was merely a little fussy result of auntie's good old English sense of maidenly modesty. I supposed she merely meant to spare my blushes. I knew girls were often prevented on particular days ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... is an old English country home, a fastness still piled up against time; whose stately walls and halls within, and beautiful century-old trees in the park without, record great times and striking figures. The manor was ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... bell and wear the garland," alluding to our old English races; the winner being rewarded with a silver bell, and crowned with a garland: or to the morris dance, in which the leader carried the garland and danced with bells ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... before. And why? Because they did not believe that law came from God, and that the powers that be are ordained by Him. Therefore, whenever they were oppressed, they did not try to right themselves by lawful ways, according to the old English God-fearing custom, but to break down the old law by riot and bloodshed, and then to set up new laws of their own. But those new laws would never stand. They made them, but they would not obey them when they were made, and they could not make others obey them; because they had no real reverence ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... estate from the highroad. As she sauntered along, doing nothing in particular, she noticed Mabel, who was standing under an orange tree close to the wall. At the same moment, advancing towards them came the sound of Rachel's voice caroling an old English song. Now there is nothing in the least wrong or unorthodox in standing under an orange tree, yet the instant Irene glimpsed Mabel's face she was certain her schoolmate was in that particular spot for some reason the reverse of good. She looked uneasily at Irene, glanced ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... after a few verses, describing St. Paul's voyage, came to the eighth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter: "And hardly passing it, came unto a place which is called the Fair Havens," &c.; when old Tom Jones, the boatswain, an old English man-of-war's man, who was lying on his breast across the weather end of the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... intended for users whose text readers cannot use the "real" (Unicode, UTF-8) version of the file. Some compromises have been made, mainly in the spelling of Old English. ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers —all kith and kin to noble Benjamin —this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable. Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared a royal fish. .. Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing way. The whale never figured in any grand imposing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... earliest applied work of which we have record were the armorial bearings of the Crusaders. A little later came rather elaborate designs applied to their cloaks and banners. Among other specimens of Old English needlework is a piece of applied work at Stonyhurst College depicting a knight on horseback. That this knight represents a Crusader is beyond question since the cross, the insignia of the cause, is a prominent figure in the ornamentation ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... Steps of Strutt—The historian of the old English ports—the author of the following pages has endeavored to record a yearly revel, already fast hastening to decay. The Easter phase will soon be numbered with the pastimes of past times: its dogs will have had their day, and its Deer will be Fallow. A few more seasons, and this City Common ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... so ill, again became friendly, and the remainder of our voyage proceeded swiftly and favourably under the magnificent tropical sky: agreeable it was sure to be; for the peculiar charm of a sail between the tropics is appreciated by all seamen. An old English captain, with whom I became acquainted during this voyage, assured me that he could imagine no greater luxury for the remainder of his life, than to possess a good quick-sailing ship, to keep a good table, and to sail between the tropics, without ever making land. I cannot, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... went into a house of its own, or, in default of that, went into lodgings, or into a hotel of a kind happily obsolescent. Such a family now frankly goes into one of the hotels which abound in London, of a type combining more of the Continental and American features than the traits of the old English hotel, which was dark, cold, grim, and silently rapacious, heavy In appointments and unwholesome in refection. The new sort of hotel is apt to be large, but it is of all sizes, and it offers a home reasonably cheerful on inclusive terms not ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... intangible atmosphere, in which the spirit of the play shall be revealed. To secure this, he often calls in the aid of music. When Sir Henry Irving produced 'Much Ado about Nothing,' the note of joyous comedy that echoed and reechoed thruout the performance, was sustained by sparkling rhythms, old English dance-tunes, most of them, that frolicked gaily thru the evening. In Mr. Belasco's production of the 'Darling of the Gods,' the accompanying music was almost incessant, but so subdued, so artfully modulated, so delicately adjusted to the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the wounded. The gaunt and wolflike police dogs were pressed into the two latter tasks, and were taught listening-post duty. And so on through all available breeds,—including the stolidly wise Old English sheepdogs who were to prove invaluable in finding and succoring and reporting the wounded,—down to the humble terriers and mongrels who were taught to rid trenches ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... Englishman. The time has been, I've studied love-lays in the English tongue, And been enamour'd of rare poesy: Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu; For Margaret has got ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based on reports of a Hudson's Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a little south of the Saskatchewan and made some observations. Now look at your Journal, and see what Lewis thought of ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... children acted simple impromptu plays, Cinderella, Blue Beard, Beauty and the beast, on the lawn outside the long windows. The lawn has been in bad condition for nearly two years, on account of the building of the Morgan memorial, but has now been planted again. One May-day we had an old English festival around a Maypole on the green, with Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, the hobby- horse, the dragon and all the rest, including Jack in the Green and an elephant. This was such a success that we were asked to repeat it across the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... when I had read the last word. 'Typical old English paterfamilias! Tyrannical, I'll be bound. I'll bet something the young fellow ran away from parental tyranny. How did the thing come out at the first attempt? I don't seem ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... He's cheap at it"—with a nod towards the Admiral. "A real true-blue old English gentleman! You can always tell ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though far better than that of France, which establishes a certain amount of direct taxation, is radically vicious, as it makes property, and that of a particular species, the test of power. It is, in truth, the old English plan a little modified; and the recent revolution that has lately taken place in England under the name of reform, goes to prove that it is a system which contains in itself the seeds of vital changes. As every political question is strictly one of practice, changes ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... social scale, we find, in class upon class, that as the annual income increases the number of children in the family diminishes, until we come to the old English nobility of whom, according to Darwin, 19 per cent. are childless. These last have every reason to wish for heirs to inherit their titles and what land and wealth they possess, and, as their record in war proves them to be no cowards' breed, it would be a monstrous indictment ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... the paradox is easily explained, we find much more similarity when we compare the Norwegian drama with that tragedy of Catiline which Ben Jonson published in 1611. Needless to state, Ibsen had never read the old English play; it would be safe to lay a wager that, when he died, Ibsen had never heard or seen the name of Ben Jonson. Yet there is an odd sort of resemblance, founded on the fact that each poet keeps very close to the incidents recorded by the Latins. Neither of them takes Sallust's ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... our loyal duty to our sovereign; and, without meaning to put any force upon the inclination of those who believe otherwise, I cannot see how I can deny my guests and friends the privilege of drinking a health to the King, or to my husband, after the old English fashion." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... career, he had given 13,345 performances and had appeared in 577 characters, a record which has probably never been approached. He was especially notable in his representations of the "fine old English gentleman," and he became to Boston a sort of Conservatory of Acting in himself. That he was appreciated both as man and artist his long residence in ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson |
