"Precursor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circular saws were ripping into logs fresh from Baudette's operations on the Magwa River, and seventy miles up the river a large crew was shipping and excavating at the iron mine. These things and many others being on foot, Clark had experienced that intellectual restlessness which in him was the precursor ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... them will serve as an example and an incentive to still more honorable deeds. To the other brave officers and men composing the expedition the General tenders his cordial thanks and congratulations. He is proud of them and hails the success achieved by their valor as but the precursor of still greater victories. Each corps engaged in the action will in future bear upon its colors the name ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... poet is to arise with sympathies large and wide, to show us, in verse most musical, in words full meaning, with that grace of humour which is a fresh light upon life, how men and women lived: and to be the great precursor of a greater than he. Geoffrey Chaucer is to come to us. After him ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... school reflects, as is natural, the general tendency of English literature toward a livelier and more varied movement, with a wider range of subjects and sympathies. In his letters, as in his poetry, the precursor of the Naturalistic school was Cowper, who could be simple without being trivial, was never prosy and often pathetic, and who possessed the rare art of stamping on his reader's mind an enduring impression of quiet and somewhat commonplace society in the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... London. Murray; Bruxelles, De Mat, 20 Avril 1817. This work merits a note. Metternich (vol, i. pp. 312-13) says, "At the time when it appeared the manuscript of St. Helena made a great impression upon Europe. This pamphlet was generally regarded as a precursor of the memoirs which Napoleon was thought to be writing in his place of exile. The report soon spread that the work was conceived and executed by Madame de Stael. Madame de Stael, for her part, attributed it to Benjamin Constant, from whom she was at this time separated by some disagreement." ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... heard a voice, he looked across to the shores of Europe, and there in the night stood a great colossal form, not of a naked savage, but a form clad perhaps, in the panoply of the Macedonian phalanx, the representative of the Europe that then was and was yet to be, the precursor, it may be, to the classically informed mind of the missionary to the Gentiles, of that long procession of great world conquerors. It was the Man of Macedon who stood there in the might of his strength and cried, like the crying of an infant in the night, the crying of an infant for the light, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... would become rarer: we feel not the least surprise at one species of a genus being rare and another abundant; why then should we be surprised at its extinction, when we have good reason to believe that this very rarity is its regular precursor ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Holborn, Cowper was a fellow-clerk to an attorney with the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow. At the Fleet-street corner of Chancery-lane, Cowley, we believe, was born. In Salisbury-court, Fleet-street, was the house of Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, the precursor of Spenser, and one of the authors of the first regular English tragedy. On the demolition of this house, part of the ground was occupied by the celebrated theatre built after the Restoration, at which Betterton performed, and of which Sir William Davenant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... reference to the peaceful victories of science and art. Beginning with agriculture—the improvement of stock and the better housing of agricultural laborers, we trace the effect of his constant toil in the series of industrial triumphs, of which the great exhibition of 1851 was the magnificent precursor; and, in recent years, the same kind of objects have always enlisted the best energies of the queen and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... lake held up by ice in the neighbourhood of Fen Bogs and Eller Beck. This great gorge is tenanted at the present time by Pickering Beck, an exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous trench out of the limestone tableland. Compared to the torrential rushes of water carrying along huge quantities of gravel and boulders that must have flowed from the lake at the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... him,—all these things brought the woman back to life. At the moment when her doubts and fears at last left her, when she could look forward to the bright evening of her stormy life, a hidden catastrophe, buried in the heart of the family, and of which we shall presently make mention, came as the precursor of ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Egypt were worshipped side by side with those of old Rome, where all sorts of exotic art, philosophy, literature and politics took root and flourished. That is usually regarded as a period of decadence, and it was certainly a precursor of the empire's fall. When we consider that it was contemporaneous with great material prosperity and with the spread of luxury and a certain loosening of the moral fiber, such as we are experiencing in America today, we can not help feeling a little perturbed. Yet there is another ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... had clearly grasped the essential facts of the situation as we see them to-day. "The author of The Project of Perpetual Peace" concludes Prof. Pierre Robert in a sympathetic summary of his career (Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Francaise, Vol. VI), "is the precursor of the twentieth century." His statue, we cannot doubt, will be a conspicuous object, beside Sully's, on the future Palace ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the present day, French painting will preserve the essence of its classic traditions, variously modified from decade to decade, but never losing the quality in virtue of which what is French is always measurably the most classic thing going; but of this next period certainly Prudhon is the precursor, who, with all his classic serenity, presages its passion for ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... authority[J] has estimated, that, on the average, land which has been drained produces a quarter more grain per acre than that which is undrained. But this by no means exhausts the benefits derived from it, draining being merely the precursor of further improvement. It is only after it has been carried out that the farmer derives the full benefit of the manures which he applies. He gains also by the increased facility of working the soil, and by the rapidity with which it dries after continued rain, ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... exactness. It proves only what was not denied. Malone refers to the will of John Shakspere, found by Joseph Moseley, with sufficient clearness; and it is charitable to assume that the Irish editor intended to observe the instructions of his precursor. He failed, it seems—but why? It would be useless to go in search of the rationale ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... stop to dwell on the awful sensations with which Mrs. Legend heard the first ring at her door, on the eventful night in question. It was the precursor of the entrance of Miss Annual, as regular a devotee of letters as ever conned a primer. The meeting was sentimental and affectionate. Before either had time, however, to disburthen her mind of one half of its prepared phrases, ring upon ring proclaimed more company, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the passenger into Waterford County. The road above Whiting Bay leads to the fishing village of Ardmore. It was perhaps, the first place in Ireland where the light of Christianity shone, as St. Declan is generally agreed to have been a precursor of the National apostle. In the country districts surrounding, as in the fishing village itself, the language most in use is Gaelic. The round tower, said to be of later date than any other in Ireland, is unique in many respects. The Cathedral, with its exquisite chancel arch ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... his sleeping hours to five. He was thus able to devote four to study, beside two for conversation. He loved research; and his name is in a list of members of the Society of Antiquaries formed by Archbishop Parker, which, though subsequently dissolved, was the precursor of the present learned body bearing the name. In the Tower he could read without stint. He possessed a fair library. From the company of his books, writes Sir John Harington, he drew more true comfort than ever from his courtly companions ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... been a very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins. Up and did several businesses, and so with my wife by water to White Hall, she to her father's, I to the Duke, where we did our usual business. And ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... presents, day and night, a spectacle of the almost ceaseless industry of jaded operatives. The need of relief in this respect was long ago recognized. The attempt at combination-letters was not less a precursor of reform than an acknowledgment of its necessity. It remained for American inventive genius, in this generation, to conceive and perfect the greatest labor-saving device that has ever been applied to the art of printing,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... prolongation of the signals due to induction, each signal was made by two opposite currents in succession—a positive followed by a negative, or a negative followed by a positive, as the case might be. The after-current had the effect of curbing its precursor. This self-acting cable key was brought out in 1876, and tried on the lines ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... done, of course, on a smooth day, when the vessel does not roll- much. I remember very well being over the side painting in this way, one fine afternoon, our vessel going quietly along at the rate of four or five knots, and a pilot-fish, the sure precursor of a shark, swimming alongside of us. The captain was leaning over the rail watching him, and we went quietly on with our work. In the midst of our ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a man, and one who had so recently taken his degree. It was the first opportunity he had ever had for a pleasure-trip, and taking his young wife with him (proud indeed, we may be sure, at this earliest honour of his life, the precursor of so many more) he went to Massachusetts by a somewhat roundabout but very picturesque route, down the Great Lakes, through the Thousand Islands, over the St. Lawrence rapids, and on to Quebec, the only ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... replied the priest; "and certainly, as far as my senses would enable me to judge, the appearance was most unusual—I may say supernatural; but I had heard of this Phantom Ship before, and moreover that its appearance was the precursor of disaster. So did it prove in our case, although, indeed, we had one on board, now no more, whose weight of guilt was more than sufficient to sink any vessel; one, the swallowing up of whom, with all that wealth from which he anticipated such enjoyment ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Consul. He did not fear death, and he envied with consuming envy those to whom nature had given the qualities of initiative. But his nerves always played him false. The consciousness of having to resolve to take a decided step alone, was the precursor of a fit of trembling. His heart did not fail, but he could not control the parched voice, nor the twitching features, not the ghastly palsy of inner misgiving. In this respect Robespierre recalls a more illustrious man; we think of Cicero tremblingly calling upon the Senate to decide for him ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... the danger the boy was in; and the boy himself, lying awake during most of the weary hours of the night, had confided to his friend some thoughts which it seemed to Hinton could only come to such a child as the precursor of death. He now loved the boy for his own sake, and he was determined, even more determined than during the height of the fever, to do something to again ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... General Oglethorpe received instructions to make reprisals on the Spanish for their depredations on the southern borders of the Georgia Province. He rightly judged this to be the precursor of open hostilities, and hastened his preparations to put Carolina and Georgia in a state of defense. In October the British Government declared war on Spain, and November witnessed the beginning of fighting in the Colonies. Of course this meant a re-opening of ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... grown animals which have red or black hair; it is scarcely found at all in the lamb, sucking pig, chicken, and the white meat of the largest fowls. For this reason true connoisseurs always prefer the second joint; instinct with them was the precursor of science. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... such a sign either of declining strength or of declining spirit as would in a short time provoke the aggression of rivals and enemies. Abdication of royal or imperial authority is with States no less than with individuals the precursor of death. Loss of territory, indeed, in consequence of defeat, is in itself only in so far damaging as defeat may imply a want of capacity to resist attack, or as the diminution of territory may involve loss of resources. Thus the surrender of Lombardy by Austria, of Alsace by France, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... in his simplicity and orthodoxy he was the worthy successor of him who preached at the day of Pentecost. He realized the perfection which sacred eloquence attained, but to which Pagan art has vainly aspired,—a charm and a wonder to both learned and unlearned,—the precursor of the Bourdaloues and Lacordaires of the Roman Catholic Church, but especially the model for "all preachers who set above all worldly wisdom those divine revelations which alone can ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... and rain—the precursor of the coming winter—raged round the little settlement for several days, during which the party sat round their fire, talking of the past and the future, and learning to know each other more and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the managers of the Royal Institution on May 15, 1815. Here he made rapid progress in chemistry, and after a time was entrusted with easy analyses by Davy. In those days the Royal Institution published 'The Quarterly Journal of Science,' the precursor of our own 'Proceedings.' Faraday's first contribution to science appeared in that journal in 1816. It was an analysis of some caustic lime from Tuscany, which had been sent to Davy by the Duchess ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... Venice also added 14 sailing ships of war, or "nefs," and Doria 22; these formed a special squadron. The Venetian nefs were headed by Condalmiero in his flagship the Galleon of Venice, the most formidable warship in the Mediterranean, and the precursor of a revolution in naval architecture ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Mueller, or as he was now known and called, Balthazar, was rudely pushed into the hands of these ferocious agents of superstition, the apparent magnitude of the discovery induced a general and breathless pause. Like the treacherous calm that had so long reigned upon the lake, it was a precursor of a fearful and violent explosion. Little was said, for the occasion was too ominous for a display of vulgar feeling, but Conrad, Pippo, and one or two more, silently raised the fancied offender in their arms, and bore him desperately towards ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... pursued, and from the growing impatience of this country under it."[134] When Pinkney arrived, the matter of the colonial trade had already been settled indirectly by the Order of May 16, and it was soon to disappear from prominence, merged in the extreme measures of which that blockade was the precursor; but impressment remained an unhealed ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... cleansing, but especially a cleansing away of the carnal film from the mind's eye. Hence the primitive Church called baptism [Greek: phos], light, and the Eucharist [Greek: zoae], life. Baptism, therefore, was properly the sign, the 'precursor', or rather the first act, the 'initium', of that regeneration of which the whole spiritual life of a Christian is the complete process; the Eucharist indicating the means, namely, the continued assimilation ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... Perhaps it was his literary turn that led him first, in his new home, to try a stationery business, which, under the style of Kerr and Holmes, afterwards Kerr and Thompson, in Collins-street west, was, I think, the precursor of that particular trade in little early Melbourne. But that had to be given up, and after some looking about, with not overloaded means, he established the Melbourne "Argus". The preceding press efforts had, at my arrival, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... sent Greek books and Greek scholars to Venice and to Rome. Greek art inspired Michelangelo and Raphael. A great wave of enthusiasm for the new learning swept over Europe. The printing-press multiplied copies of the old literature and put them in the hands of the poor. It was the precursor of a new civilization, and because it was a new birth of thought, we call it ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... seigniory two hundred miles west of that on which we left him—two hundred miles nearer his goal. This galleon, called the Griffin because it carried on its prow the carving of a griffin, "in honor of the armorial bearings of Count Frontenac," was the precursor of those mighty fleets that now stir those ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... time of Apollonius in writings that have perished, for instance, in those of Antimachus of Colophon, but the "Argonautica" is perhaps the first poem still extant in which the expression of this spirit is developed with elaboration. The Medea of Apollonius is the direct precursor of the Dido of Virgil, and it is the pathos and passion of the fourth book of the "Aeneid" that keep alive ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... visited by a terrific thunderstorm, when the tower was struck by lightning. The damage, however, was not great, as, fortunately, the excessive rains which followed quenched the fire that had been kindled. This incident, however, was the precursor of one of the stormiest periods in the history of the city and its cathedral church. Roger de Skerning occupied the episcopal chair, and the prior was one William de Brunham, a man of fierce and truculent disposition. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... wind, which shook the casement, and by the sound of the driving rain which beat against the pane. Yes, the morning which dawned on Julia's bridal day was wild and stormy, but before noon the clouds cleared away and the afternoon was dry, hot and oppressive, a precursor to the mightier and more wrathful storm ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... of long standing, the skin in the lower part of the leg sometimes assumes a mahogany-brown or bluish hue, as a result of the deposit of blood pigment in the tissues, and this is frequently a precursor ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... onset had paused a moment, and then seeing that all around him were employed in the deadly strife, he had sought, with hellish vengeance, to complete the baffled work of revenge. Raising a shout of triumph, he sprang toward the defenseless Cora, sending his keen axe as the dreadful precursor of his approach. The tomahawk grazed her shoulder, and cutting the withes which bound her to the tree, left the maiden at liberty to fly. She eluded the grasp of the savage, and reckless of her own safety, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... saturated blankets, without fuel, or the chance of lighting a bivouac fire. It was the same for all; the generals of division, high staff-officers, colonels, captains, and private men. The first night on Crimean soil was no bad precursor of the dreadful ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... confederate in every age against his works, and would hunt them out for extermination as keenly as Herod did the innocents in Bethlehem. On this consideration, fearing that they might be intercepted by the long arms of these wicked princes before they could reach that remote Stewartian man or his precursor to whom they were mainly addressed, he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly secured from damp, &c. at a depth of seven or eight feet below ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... quickly a race like this would possess itself of the earth, and brook no rivals but the forces of nature! Whatever they do—simply because it is they—is impressive and important, and every movement, every gesture, is world-changing. Compared with his figures, those in the same chapel by his precursor, Masolino, are childish, and those by his follower, Filippino, unconvincing and without significance, because without tactile values. Even Michelangelo, where he comes in rivalry, has, for both reality and significance, to take a ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... are more Christian than Jewish. Christians, like Pico di Mirandola (1463-1494), under the influence of the Jewish Kabbalist Jochanan Aleman, and Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), sharer of Pico's spirit and precursor of the improved study of the Scriptures in Europe, made the Zohar the basis of their defence of Jewish literature against the attempts of various ecclesiastical bodies to crush ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... has never been attained, unless where nature and education, native endowment and circumstances, have concurred. This wonderful man received his commission for his achievements and his peculiar walk from the sign manual of nature. He was formed to be a woodsman, and the adventurous precursor in the first settlement of Kentucky. His home was in the woods, where others were bewildered and lost. It is a mysterious spectacle to see a man possessed of such an astonishing power of being perfectly familiar with his route and his resources in the depths ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... you. Hate is the German religion. The Germans can hate people they've never known, never seen. They hate on principle and without principle. Of course it's the proper precursor for their programme of conquering the world. If they were trying to love the world, they could not be preparing to demolish it and ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... that terrible precursor of judgment to come, the hue and cry was raised, and that night the footsore apprentice lay in Sandwich jail, a more than suspected felon, for his speedy capture had supplied what was taken to be conclusive evidence of his guilt. In his pocket they discovered ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... evasion, "I am not the Christ," and with equal decisiveness denied that he was Elias, or more accurately, Elijah, the prophet who, the rabbis said through a misinterpretation of Malachi's prediction, was to return to earth as the immediate precursor of the Messiah.[310] Furthermore, he declared that he was not "that prophet," by which was meant the Prophet whose coming Moses had foretold,[311] and who was not universally identified in the Jewish mind with the expected Messiah. "Then said they ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Switzerland teaches us that that alone cannot stem their victorious march, if circumstances are favourable to them. The German people rely upon their Governments, and do nothing, but Governments are weakened by the modern Liberalism (the precursor of Radicalism, as the dying of chickens precedes the Cholera) and will have to take the consequences of their own negligence. Notwithstanding people and princes, that godless band will march through Germany, because, though small, it is strong ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... a sense the precursor of the Reformation, which conceived in the innermost heart of the German people, shook Europe to her foundations. Once more it was the German people which, as formerly in the struggle between the Arian Goths and the Orthodox Church, shed it's heart's blood in a religious ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... greatest poet who ever sang repeatedly of love between man and woman, troubled for a time but eventually happy. For though there is in Agnimitra, as in all heroes of his type, something contemptible, there is in Malavika a sweetness, a delicacy, a purity, that make her no unworthy precursor of Sita, of Indumati, of the Yaksha's bride, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... the true grandeur of the precursor,—of the one whom we have called the inventor, and who undeniably was so—of Cavour! There can be no question that his own intimate familiarity with the details of the Bond of Virtue and the War of Freedom[7] of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... plain the pretended consideration on which the patent is to issue bears no just proportion to that of the ordinary preemptor, and that this bill is but the precursor of a system of land distribution to a privileged class, unequal, unjust, and which ought not to receive the sanction of the General Government. Many thousand pioneers have turned their steps to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... settlers was on the point of attacking the force under his command when an eleventh-hour letter arrived from Montagu, dismissing Scovil from office. Thus was happily averted, by the narrowest of margins, a threatened precursor of the fight at Alamance in 1771 (see Chapter XII). As the result of the petition of the Calhouns and others, courts were established in 1760, though not opened until four years later. Many horse thieves ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... ascertained that his literary stock-in-trade had been rescued from the hands of the sailors. It was not till the end of the century that Chrysoloras renewed the knowledge of the classics: but we may regard the austere Leontio as the chief precursor of the crowd of later immigrants, each with a gem, or bronze, or 'a brown Greek manuscript' for sale, and all eager to play their parts in the ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... turning-point to a new period, when he awakened the idea of knowledge, and was the founder of the theory of scientific knowledge, since he separated the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor of Bacon and Pascal. He did not attempt to make physics explain metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world. And he only reasoned from what was assumed to be true and invariable. He was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive methods of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... with many windows, commanding a fine view. But to one unused to many stairs, and weakened by continuous illness in a long sea-voyage, the exhaustion of that first ascent was something to be remembered. It was, however, but the precursor of hundreds of similar feats, which our residence involved, as nearly all families live up several flights of stairs. Only once did we see an elevator in Germany. In the elegant hotel known as the Kaiserhof, the sojourning-place of princes, diplomatists, and statesmen, we took our ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... seriously the narratives of chivalry, and his harsh style. Ariosto, in his continuation, by a judicious mixture of the gaiety of Pulci, has avoided the one; and Berni, in his reformation of Boiardo's poem, has corrected the other. Pulci may be considered as the precursor and model of Berni altogether, as he has partly been to Ariosto, however inferior to both his copyists. He is no less the founder of a new style of poetry very lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft. The serious poems on Roncesvalles ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... word unspoken. Shame seemed to crush her down to the earth; shame, the precursor of saving penitence—at least, John thought so. He quitted the room, leaving her to the ministry of his other self, his wife. As he sat down with me, and told me in a few words what indeed I had already more than half guessed, I could not but notice ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... supposed that he ever made a promise or entered on an engagement without intending to fulfil it, but none who knew him could deny that he wanted much of that steady, persevering determination which is the precursor of success, and the parent of all great actions. His strongest intentions were feebly supported after the first paroxysms of resolve, so that any judicious friend would strenuously have dissuaded him from an undertaking that involved a race with time. Mr. Coleridge, however, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... apparently deserted; but if, as we wait, we still look forward with steadfast will and humble heart, so that our Hope for the Future may be fed, not dulled or diverted by our Love for the Past, we shall not long be left without a Guide:—the way will be opened, the Precursor appointed—the Hour will come, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and pleasant, and the atmosphere clear; but the higher hills again exhibited their ominous belts of vapor, and there had been a slight frost during the night,—at this autumnal season the almost certain precursor ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of connection between Goethe and the Koran. This work contained the story of the Graf von Gleichen, which is acknowledged to have been a precursor of Goethe's "Stella." Dntzer in his "Erluterungen zu den deutschen Klassikern" says it is impossible to determine whence Goethe took the story for "Stella." He mentions that it was contained in Bayle's Dictionary, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... each blossom formed of the most beautiful white petals, shaded with pink; not only does each one of them possess a most pleasant and delicate perfume, but every one of these little flowers—every one which comes to perfection, I mean—is but the precursor of an apple. This one may be a Golden Pippin; that one which looks just like it may be the forerunner of a Belle-flower; while the little green speck at the bottom of this one may turn into a Russet, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... steps from the rank of a secondary power, and gradually rises to the rank of an ascendant city. Her leading citizen was Ismenias, one of the great organizers of the anti-Spartan movement—the precursor of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. He conducted successful operations in the northern part of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... The precursor of this Company was a Joint Stock Association, established at Dorchester under the auspices of the Rev. Mr. White, "patriarch of Dorchester," and called the "Dorchester Adventurers," with a view to fishing, farming, and hunting; but the undertaking was not successful, and an attempt was ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... made her exhale her soul like a flash of light, and communicated the sparkle of flame to all her motions. Beauvouloir shuddered when he noticed this phenomenon, which we may call in these days the phosphorescence of thought; the old physician of that period regarded it as the precursor of death. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... a decisive answer from Emmanuel Rask, one of the most gifted minds in the new school of philology, who had the honor of being a precursor of both Grimm and Burnouf. He showed that the list of the Jehangiri referred to an epoch later than that to which Zend must have belonged, and to parts of Persia different from those where it must have been spoken; he showed further that modern Persian is not derived ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... of thought seems intellectually nearer to us than the speculations of a Bruno or a Campanella. Hence it is easy to understand that he is often regarded, especially in his own country, as more than a precursor, as the first philosopher, of the modern age, definitely within its precincts. [Footnote: German critics have been generally severe on Bacon as deficient in the scientific spirit. Kuno Fischer, Baco van Verulam (1856). Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon van Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... that now beats with north-east winds upon the Foreland beyond. In fact, the Wantsum was an early Spithead: it stood to Rutupiae as the Solent stands to Portsmouth and Southampton. But Thanet Isle hardly shared at all in this increased civilisation; on the contrary, Rutupiae (the precursor of Sandwich Haven) seems to have diverted all its early commerce. For Rutupiae became clearly the naval capital of our island, the seat of that vir spectabilis, the Count of Saxon Shore, and the rendezvous of the fleets of those British 'usurpers' Maximus and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... now first obtained a place in Parliament. Their victory was not permanent then, but it was the precursor of the establishment of a permanent House of Commons which was to come in the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the laws of hospitality, the wish became but the precursor to the actual carrying-out of the evil thought. Thanks to my heedlessness, and the careless way in which I had guarded the earrings, she obtained them with little trouble; and after an amount of duplicity and deceit, terrible and shameful to contemplate in a woman so young, had contrived ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... me. Indeed, she exultingly told him of the aptness of her pupil, of her intention to persevere in teaching me, and of the duty which she felt it to teach me, at least to read the bible. Here arose the first cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the precursor of drenching rains ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... symptoms serve to distinguish this affection from enteritis and invagination of the bowel. As time passes the animal becomes quieter, but this cessation of pain may indicate that gangrene of the bowel has set in, and may, therefore, under certain circumstances, be considered a precursor of death. Gangrene may take place in from four to six days, when perforation of the bowel may occur and death ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... inhabitants, and the taking on of cargo consumed an hour. Soon after, we came to an island which had been transformed into a magazine; the side presented to us was a solid wall of rock. This was the precursor to our arrival at Kore, the most important naval station in Japan. The steamer touched anchor, which gave us an opportunity to note the many war-vessels in the harbor, three of which had been captured ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of the hive. This is done by dipping the end of a piece of comb in melted beeswax, and sticking it to the top. Bees should never be allowed to send off more than two colonies in one season. To restrict them to one is still better. Excessive swarming is a precursor of destruction, rather than an evidence (as usually regarded) of prosperity. A given number of bees will make far less honey in two hives than in one, unless they are so numerous as greatly to crowd the hive. When a late swarm comes out, take away the queen, and they will immediately ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... Moussorgsky, whose work was neglected during his lifetime, has proved to be a precursor to latter-day music. He was not affected in his development by Franz Liszt, whose influence on Tschaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakof, Glazounof—he less than the others—was considerable. Like Dostoievsky, Moussorgsky is ur-Russian, not a polished production of Western culture, as are Turgenieff, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Kinlossie boat round the Eagle Point was but the precursor of a succession of heavy squalls which quickly changed into a furious gale, compelling Ian Anderson to close reef his sails. Even when this was done, the boat rushed through the foaming water with tremendous velocity, and exhibited that tendency to drinking, to which reference has ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... how fine our mother thought the speech with which he opened that precursor of the Prussian Chambers, and the address showed him in fact to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the horrible forebodings she had in reference to the island, were but the precursor of what might be expected. The grandeur and sublimity of its scenery, its isolated position, being surrounded by the waters of the Atlantic—the unnatural music and noises, all conspired to fill the mind of this young girl ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... intermarried, and syphilis did not begin to tell on the Indian until the Americans settled the country. From these observations it is very evident that in the Polynesian Archipelago syphilis must have been the precursor of the phthisis and scrofula, as we know it to have been that which induced those diseases among the Indians of the Mississippi or Missouri Valleys, or of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts, or in the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... wise to have the two thus meet together. To be lifted up in hilarity is the precursor of being cast down in dejection. A sudden rise of the thermometer is generally followed by as sudden a fall. "I am not sorry," said Sir Walter Scott, after the breaking up of a merry group of guests at Abbotsford, "being one of those whom too much mirth always ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... of Mr. Drummond's library, and consulted there some 300 volumes for my novel: so it was not an idle work though a rapid one; 4thly, I wanted to show that though in a Popish age England's heart, and especially Langton's, was Protestant, quite a precursor of Luther. As this book is extant, at Lasham's, Guildford, I refer my readers to it. One curious matter is that my ideal scenes have taken such hold upon my neighbourhood that streams of tourists come constantly through Albury to visit ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... again, the Major notably, strove after importance by airs of previous knowledge and hints of undisclosed details. Even Mrs Trumbler made her cast, declaring that she had always known (the source of the information was left in obscurity) that pride such as Harry Tristram's was the sure precursor of a fall. None of them could compete with Mina Zabriska. To her alone the doors of Blent were open; she held exclusive right of access to its hidden mistress. The fact caused unmeasured indignation, the reason excited unresting curiosity. This state of things ought ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... birth of Christianity was one of fermenting opinion and decaying faith. Then, as now, men's minds were seething and unsettled, and that unrest which is the precursor of great changes in intellectual and spiritual habitudes affected the civilised world. Such a period is ever one of predisposition to superstition. The one true bond which unites God and man being obscured, and to the consciousness of many ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... mind of Napoleon, the most entirely known as well as the ablest of historic men. In another sphere, it is the vision of a higher world to be intimate with the character of Fenelon, the cherished model of politicians, ecclesiastics, and men of letters, the witness against one century and precursor of another, the advocate of the poor against oppression, of liberty in an age of arbitrary power, of tolerance in an age of persecution, of the humane virtues among men accustomed to sacrifice them to authority, the man of whom one enemy says that his cleverness ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... spokesman, has now become an absolute necessity of thought. Unless the great Dumb Ox is given a hearing, our mysticism will fill, not the churches, but the asylums and the little self-authorized Bethels where every man is his own precursor ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... hills, now decked in their autumnal glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark's, growing so bright and beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean House and read Lucy Harcourt's letter. The faint was a precursor of fever, the physician said, when summoned to her aid, and in a tremor of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her at once removed to New York, and that was ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... thrown down, and the image that had annually poured forth its precious blood for the healing of the spiritual and temporal maladies of all pious believers was buried under the ruins. But this calamity was only a precursor of a greater miracle; for, on removing the rubbish, the sacred image was found intact, and as ready as ever to bleed again to order for ready pay. The spiritual interpretation of this astounding phenomenon was, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... from the S.E., a precursor of blizzard, we feared, and sure enough we got it next day, when it burst upon us whilst we were putting on our footgear after breakfast. There was nothing for it but to get back into our sleeping-bags, wherein we ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... in bed, the mind is no less busy, than it is in sleep during a dream. The other and more perfect sort of mental indolence, is that which we often experience during our exercise in the open air. This is of the same nature as the condition of thought which seems to be the necessary precursor of sleep, and is ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... duration. But soon, instead of enjoying the present, they yielded to chimerical fears, and imagined that the order of nature was perverted. Some old Indians, the sages of the place, asserted that the disappearance of the insects must be the precursor of a great earthquake. Warm discussions arose; the least noise amid the foliage of the trees was listened to with an attentive ear; and when the air was again filled with mosquitos they were almost hailed with pleasure. We could not guess what modification of the atmosphere ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... towards the social and political drift of events, his teaching was no less harmoniously related to the new and most memorable drift of science which set in by his side. It is a misconception to pretend that he was a precursor of the Darwinian theory. Evolution, as a possible explanation of the ordering of the universe, is a great deal older than either Emerson or Darwin. What Darwin did was to work out in detail and with masses of minute evidence a definite hypothesis of the specific conditions under which ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... road to them by the water's edge difficult. The tan-work lads used to come now and then for a swim, but you would not find a tan-work lad bathing on a chill April night. Yet there was no question where our precursor had gone. He was making for the shore. Tam unshuttered his lantern, and the steps went clearly down the corkscrew path. 'Maybe he is after our cave. We'd ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... from Spanish fiction and from Spanish history Lesage borrowed what suited his purpose, without in any way compromising his originality. To the picaresque tales (and among these may be noted a distant precursor of Gil Blas in the Francion of Charles Sorel) he added his own humanity, and in place of a series of vulgar adventures we are given a broad picture of social life; the comedy of manners and intrigue grows, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Mag. was the precursor of the New Monthly, which started about 1830, or thereabouts I think, after which the old one ailed, but went on till fatal old Heraud finished it off by editing it, and fairly massacred that elderly innocent. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... of a memorable book, "Adam Bede," for which even its precursor, "Scenes from Clerical Life," had not prepared the world of letters. The novel was much admired in the royal circle. In one of the rooms at Osborne, as a pendant to a picture from the "Faery Queen," there hangs a representation ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... mob. At this time, however, as in many preceding years, no stone was left unturned by opposition whereby there was the remotest chance of bringing ministers into public contempt. They were assailed at every point wherein they were considered vulnerable; and one attack was but the precursor of another. Mr. Brinsley Sheridan, who had made his first speech during last November, and had won golden opinions by his oratory on that occasion, moved three propositions: the first declaring that the military force could not justifiably be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose anything announced in that timid ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late. Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing herself to Timothy Proud's coarse ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor. He spent his life in obscurity, and his works, though he was incidentally mentioned by Leibnitz under the name of "M. Dalgarus," passed into oblivion. Yet he undoubtedly was the precursor of Bishop Wilkins in his Essay toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, published in London, 1668, though indeed the first idea was far older, it having been, as reported by Piso, the wish of Galen that some way might be found ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... he descanted on the several contingents from Antigone as they strode by; then of those from God's houses at Halki, the pearl of the Marmora; amongst them the monastery of John the Precursor, and the Convents of St. George, Hagia Trias, and lastly the Very Holy House of the All Holy Mother of God, founded by John VIII. Palaeologus. After them, in turn, the consecrated from Prinkipo, especially those from ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in 1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism—the precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities were still simple agglomerations of small ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... your fancy the closing-in of a fine, blue-skied, sunny American Saturday evening, whose tranquillity and repose rendered it the fit precursor of the Sabbath. Imagine the tea-table placed in your sitting-parlor, all the windows open, and round it, first, the housekeeper pouring out tea; next her, Miss C. Borland; next her, your mother, whose looks spoke love as often as you were mentioned, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... then his specific office as the Forerunner is delineated at the close. The name is significant. 'John' means 'The Lord is gracious.' It was an omen, a condensed prophecy, the fulfilment of which stretched beyond its bearer to Him as whose precursor alone was John a token ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... (Turdus migratorius) appeared; this bird is hailed by the natives as the infallible precursor of warm weather. Ducks and geese were also seen in numbers and the reindeer advanced to the northward. The merganser (Mergus serrator) which preys upon small fish, was the first of the duck tribe that appeared; next came the teal (Anas crecca) which lives upon small insects that abound in the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... once more were steering southward. We were sailing on with a light breeze through a perfectly smooth sea, when a dull roaring sound was heard, like a heavy surf astern. The roar rapidly increased, and we saw a white line of foam rolling on. Thinking that it might be the precursor of a hurricane, we clewed up the topsails, but as the wave passed we rode easily over it with the same sort of movement which is felt when entering a river across a bar. It was followed with a short interval by another of similar character, ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... his hand would do so at the risk of his life. Whether he had a pistol with him at that moment or not, there was every reason to believe that he was armed, and that the blow with his hand was intended only as the precursor to a more deadly blow with a weapon. At such moments little time is allowed for reflection. The officer of the law was called upon to act and to act promptly. He did so, and the life of David S. Terry was the forfeit. He fell, a victim to his own ungovernable passions, urged on to his ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... of Christ our Lord," and are called to follow "the example of their steadfastness in the faith and obedience to God's holy commandments." There are days dedicated to the memory of the Blessed Virgin; the Apostles; the Baptist as the precursor, and St. Stephen as the {118} protomartyr; to St. Mark and St. Luke as Evangelists; to St. Paul and St. Barnabas on account of their extraordinary call; to the Holy Innocents as the earliest who suffered for Christ's sake; to St. Michael and All Angels, to remind us ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... of the physical students in Italy and England in his own time, Giordano Bruno, Telesio, Campanella, Gilbert, Galileo, or the founders of the Italian prototype of "Solomon's House" in the New Atlantis, the precursor of our Royal Societies, the Academy of the Lincei at Rome. Among these meditations was his inner life. But however he may have originally planned his course, and though at times under the influence of disappointment he threatened to retire to Cambridge ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... almost have endorsed the sentiment just then. Perhaps Andy's low spirits were intensified by the uncomfortable motion of the ship, which was beginning to strike landsmen with that rolling headache, the sure precursor of a worse visitation. Suffice it to say, that the mass of groaning misery in the steerage and cabins, on the subsequent night, would melt the heart of any but the most hardened 'old salt.' Did not Robert and Arthur regret their emigration bitterly, when shaken by the fangs ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... understand how this theory has found acceptance in Russia. It was not difficult to understand why Marx's doctrine of economic evolution was for many years rejected by most Russian Socialists; why the latter took the view that Socialism must be more quickly attained, that capitalism was not a necessary precursor of Socialism in Russia, but that an intelligent leadership of passive masses would successfully establish Socialism on the basis of the old Russian communal institutions. It was quite easy to understand the change that came with ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... The prospectus of the Institution bore this notice: "There is a public ordinary every day at four o'clock, price three shillings. Each person to drink port, claret, or whatever liquor he shall choose." A disastrous precursor of the free lunch this would seem. And so it proved. But not immediately. Attracted by the novelty of having a famous actor for host, the ordinary went swimmingly for a time. Macklin presided in person. As ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... The scheme was visionary: but, as a protest against unjust monopolies which existed in that age, it woke up a response in society (cfr. Mill on Liberty, p. 47-50); and in its tendency it made Rousseau the precursor of the French revolution; but in typifying that movement it represented only its transient aspect of subversive energy, not ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... nothing. The finely limbed Christ is as coarse in type and as violent in action as his executioners; sublimity is reached, strange to say, only in the bust of Tiberius, which crowns the rude archway through which the figures have issued into the open space. Titian is here the precursor of the Naturalisti—of Caravaggio and his school. Yet, all the same, how immeasurable is the distance between ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... evidently had no comprehension whatever. The rustling of the autumn breeze in his gown alarmed him as much, as did the clang of those horses' hoofs upon the pavements, though he so well knew it was the precursor of suffering and death. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Italian Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free movement ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... cried David, holding his wife closely to him.—"At Saintes, not very far from here, in the sixteenth century, there lived one of the very greatest of Frenchmen, for he was not merely the inventor of glaze, he was the glorious precursor of Buffon and Cuvier besides; he was the first geologist, good, simple soul that he was. Bernard Palissy endured the martyrdom appointed for all seekers into secrets but his wife and children and all his neighbors were against him. His wife used to sell his tools; nobody understood him, he wandered ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... the analysis of character in its lowest as in its highest forms which produced the essayists and the novel. Above all the "Absalom" was the first work in which literature became a great political power. In it Dryden showed himself the precursor of Swift and of Bolingbroke, of Burke and of Cobbett. The poem was bought eagerly, and it undoubtedly helped to bring about that triumph of the king with the prophecy of which it closed. But prisoner as Shaftesbury was, the struggle with him was ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... work was in press I for the first time came across Prof. J. Russell Soley's "Naval Campaign of 1812," in the "Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute," for October 20, 1881. It is apparently the precursor of a more extended history. Had I known that such a writer as Professor Soley was engaged on a work of this kind I certainly should not ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hideous invention of modern times. They date from the seventeenth century. Before that time there were only guard-houses where the soldiers played cards and told tales. Louis XIV was a precursor of Bonaparte. But the evil has attained its plenitude since the monstrous institution of the obligatory enlistment. The shame of emperors and of republics is to have made it an obligation for men to kill. In the ages called barbarous, cities and princes entrusted their defence to mercenaries, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... already discerned the only emphatic answer to this question. The Church is undoubtedly passing quietly through a revolution in its conception and attitude toward the Bible, more fundamental and far-reaching than that represented by its precursor the Protestant Reformation; but its real significance is daily becoming more apparent. Not a grain of truth which the Bible contains has been destroyed or permanently obscured. Instead, the debris of time-honored traditions and dogmas have been ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... Romans; yet it is from Roman edifices that we derive, and can trace by a gradual transition, the progress of that peculiar kind of architecture called GOTHIC, which presents in its later stages the most striking contrast that can be imagined to its original precursor. ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... having studied the wise maxims of Pythagoras, and being a disciple of the Brahma school, abominators of flesh and strong liquors, he hoped to be excused, by drinking the ladies in aqua pura.—" Water is a monstrous drink for Christians!" said the alderman, "the sure precursor of coughs, colds, consumptions, agues, dropsies, pleurisies, and spleen. I never knew a water-drinker in my life that was ever a fellow of any spirit, mere morbid anatomies, starvelings and hypochondriacs: your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Szchuen, which may be considered from some of its features the precursor of the Taeping Rebellion, and the first outbreak of the Tungan Mohammedans in the northwest, whom Keen Lung wished to massacre, marked the close of this long reign, which was rendered remarkable by so many military triumphs. The reputation of the Chinese empire was raised to the highest ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Zanzibar on the Pacific Ocean. He had been accompanied in his perilous journey by stout-hearted, brave, and faithful natives. Their mission almost completed, they began to sink into that listlessness which is often the precursor of death. They had been true to their master, and were now ready to die as bravely as they had lived. Read Mr. Stanley's account without ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and Whitfield are gone, the sect will probably decline: a second crop of apostles seldom acquire the influence of the founders. To-day's paper declares upon its say-so, that Mr. Fawkener is at hand, with Catherine Slay-Czar's(811) acquiescence to our terms; but I have not entire faith in a precursor on such an occasion, and from Holland too. It looks more like a courier to the stocks; and yet I am in little expectation of a war, as I believe we are boldly determined to remain at peace. And now my pen is quite dry-you are quite sure not from laziness, but from the season of the year, which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... myself, between the bars of the huge windows; for the ball is conducted upon exclusive principles, and is accessible only with tickets of admission. Two 'policias,' armed with revolvers and short Roman Swords, are stationed at the entrance-door, and this looks very much like the precursor of a row. Mulatto balls generally do end in some unlooked-for 'compromisa,' and it would not surprise me if this particular ball were to terminate in ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... When we remember all the strange literary effort gathered round about that year in the West—Symbolism, the Yellow Book, Art for Art's sake—and the limbo into which it has been thrust by now, we may realise how great a precursor and, in his own despite, a leader, Anton Tchehov was. When Western literature was plunging with enthusiasm into one cul de sac after another, incapable of diagnosing its own disease, Tchehov in Russia, unknown to the West, had achieved a ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... height of royal favor was not merely the precursor, but, by the arrogant presumption with which it inspired him, a principal cause of Essex's decline, which was now fast approaching. Confident in the affections of Elizabeth, he suffered himself to forget that she was still his queen and still ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Argentine Republic, and trade with those countries is improving. A provision for regular and more frequent mail communication, in our own ships, between the ports of this country and the nations of South America seems to me to deserve the attention of Congress as an essential precursor of an enlargement of our commerce with them and an extension ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... for the purchase of their land in the State of Indiana. He has succeeded in procuring from them a cession of two hundred thousand acres, on terms advantageous to themselves and the United States. It may be considered the precursor to a total cession of their remaining land in that State, and their consequent emigration to the western territory; a result desirable in many respects, especially connected with advantages to a portion of our citizens, and doubly gratifying from its being compatible ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... accomplished in Newgate was the precursor of similar work undertaken in other prisons, not in London only, but all over the country. With prisons now so much better managed, and with multitudes of workers, single or associated, striving for the welfare of prisoners, the record of Mrs. Fry's early labours may ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... tends to develop low inflammation, dropsical effusion, tubercular deposits, Bright's disease, derangements of the liver, diarrhea, leucorrhea, and is a precursor of low, protracted fevers. This condition of the blood predisposes to the development of other affections, providing they are in existence, and often it is found associated with Bright's disease, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... known as the Bayeux Tapestry. Probably no one of the great comets recorded in history has occasioned a more profound impression upon mankind in the superstitious ages than the celebrated body which appeared in the spring of the year 1066, and was regarded as the precursor of the invasion of England by William the Norman. As Pingre, the eminent cometographer, remarks, it forms the subject of an infinite number of relations in the European chronicles. The comet was first seen in China on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... send out this message. But what did I believe? What could I believe? All the incidents of the deadly struggle which must have preceded the fatal culminating act, were mysteries which my mind refused to penetrate. After hours of torturing uncertainty, and an evening which was the miserable precursor of a still more miserable night, I decided to drop conjecture and await the enlightenment which must ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green |
