"Essay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Southwest. He now decided to essay the Northwest. When the Sautaux were at war with the Crees, he met the Crees and heard of the great salt sea in the north. Surely this was the Sea of the North—Hudson Bay—of which the Nipissing chief had told Groseillers long ago. Then the Crees ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... drifted to the quiet eddy of Elba. He there had leisure to review his career, to note where he had served his generation and succeeded, where also he had dashed himself fruitlessly against the fundamental instincts of mankind. Undoubtedly he did essay this mental stock-taking. He remarked to the conscientious Drouot that he was wrong in not making peace at the Congress of Prague; that trust in his own genius and in his soldiery led him astray; "but those who blame me have never drunk of Fortune's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in your Oxford Essay, translate Jami's 'Haft Aurang' as the 'Seven Thrones,' it also meaning, I see, the seven Stars of the Great Bear—'The Seven Stars.' Why should not this latter be the Translation? more intelligible, Poetical, and Eastern (as far ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... favorite studies were debating, philosophy, history and the political sciences. His greatest achievement came when he was a Senior. The Sons of the American Revolution had offered a prize for the best essay on "The Principles of the American Revolution." The contest was open to all college students of ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... Reader there were seventeen selections from the Bible; William Wirt's "Description of the Blind Preacher;" Phillip's "Character of Napoleon Bonaparte;" Bacon's "Essay on Studies;" Nott's "Speech on the Death of Alexander Hamilton;" Addison's "Westminster Abbey;" Irving's "Alhambra;" Rogers's "Genevra;" Willis's "Parrhasius;" Montgomery's "Make Way for Liberty;" two extracts from Milton and ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... on the attributes of a true woman, or, 'How did you spend your summer holiday?' with all the tenses wrong, and the idioms translated word for word. And every essay a practical repetition of the one before. It's not once in a blue moon that one comes across a girl with any originality of thought. Oh, yes! that's the way we shall spend five evenings a week. You will sit at that ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... about the book in its first vogue:—"I am greatly pleased with your 'Miscellaneous Pieces,'" said Charles James Fox to Mrs. Barbauld's brother. Dr. Aikin bowed. "I particularly admire," continued Fox, "your essay 'Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.'" "That," replied Aikin, "is my sister's." "I like much," continued Fox, "your essay on 'Monastic Institutions.'" "That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's." Fox thought ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... indicate that Santa Cristina is subject to inundations. In the exhibition at the Trocadero, one of these stilts, extremely well made and carved, was exhibited; and M. Hamy, whose thorough knowledge of everything relating to Oceania is well known, has written an essay upon ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... street or in the assembly hall, debate is certain to arise. Written argument is no less common. Hardly a periodical is published but contains argumentative writing. The fiery editorial that urges voters to the polls, the calm and polished essay that points out the dangers of organized labor, the scientific treatise that demonstrates the practicability of a sea-level canal on the Isthmus are attempts to change existing conditions and ideas, and thus come within the field ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... much to my neighbor, who plainly would rather die than thus commit himself with me, and who, in fact, would well-nigh strike me speechless with surprise if he did so. If there is any necessity for communication, as with the conductor, we essay first to express ourselves by gesture, and then utter our desires with a certain hollow and remote effect, which is not otherwise to be described. I have sometimes tried to speak above my breath, when, being about to leave the car, I have made a virtue of offering my place to the prettiest ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... very learned monograph which he had published in the Scientific American on the "Co-Relation of the Etheric Forces in the Phenomena of Light and Heat," and of course he had never forgiven him. From that day forth a relentless duel of wits between them had continued. Every essay, monograph, or book that the one published, the other criticised with cold but ruthless severity, to the great delectation of the scientific world, if not to the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... victoriously exposed by the ingenious M. Tarde, to regard the reading of a letter as the symmetrical opposite (the right glove matching the left, or inside of an outside) of the writing thereof. Save in the case of lovers or moonstruck persons, like those in Emerson's essay on "Friendship," the reading of a letter is necessarily less potent, and, as the French say, intimate, in emotion, than the writing of it. Indeed, we catch ourselves repeatedly thrusting into our pocket for perusal at greater leisure those very letters which poured out like burning lava from ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... apology for the insignificant size of this volume is the very character of the material composing it. In preparing the legends I sought especially for weird beauty; and I could not forget this striking observation in Sir Walter Scott's "Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad": "The supernatural, though appealing to certain powerful emotions very widely and deeply sown amongst the human race, is, nevertheless, a spring which is peculiarly apt to lose its elasticity by being too much ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... and the setting stars counsel to slumber. Yet if thy desire be such to know our calamities, and briefly to hear Troy's last agony, though my spirit shudders at the remembrance and recoils in pain, I will essay. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... An Essay on the Development of Libraries and their Fittings, from the earliest times to the ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... was said by Rosmini, is a kind of extension of the personality into the outside world. He might have said as truly that it is a kind of penetration of the outside world within the limits of the personality, or that it is at any rate a prophesying of, and essay after, the more living phase of matter in the direction of which it is tending. If approached from the dynamical or living side of the underlying substratum, it is the beginning of the comparatively stable equilibrium which we call brute matter; if ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... papers in the Public Journals for the present month is in the Quarterly Review, No. 87. It purports to be a notice of "Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, an Old Servant. With some Account of the Writer, written by himself: and an introductory Essay on the Lives and Works of our Uneducated Poets. By Robert Southey, Esq." We extract such portion of the paper as relates to JONES, reserving a few notices of other uneducated poets for ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... volume, the introductory paper on "The Kinds of Criticism" has not before appeared in print. All the rest, with one exception (the Essay on Lockhart which appeared in the National Review), were originally published in Macmillan's Magazine. To the Editors and Publishers of both these periodicals I owe my best thanks for permission to reprint the articles. To the Editor ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... reducing the exorbitant salaries and pensions of the great officers of state and other nobles. This was not, however, his worst crime. Well aware of the constitutional timidity of the monarch, he had assumed an authority which rendered him odious to all those whose ambition prompted them to essay their own powers of governing, and among these, as a natural consequence, was the Cardinal de Richelieu, who, despising the abilities of the finance minister, chafed under his own inferiority of place, and did not fail to imbue the Queen-mother with the same feeling. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... once in five years—Penny Green being long-lived—but was always ready and anxious to carry out. Indeed in the back room of his shop, the draper, Mr. Pinnock, had a coffin which he had been trying (as he said) "to work off" for twenty-two years. It represented Mr. Pinnock's single and disastrous essay in sharp business. Two and twenty years earlier Old Wirk had been not only dying but "as good as dead." Mr. Pinnock on a stock-replenishing excursion in Tidborough, had bought a coffin, at the undertaker's, of a size to fit Old Wirk, and for the reason that, buying it then, he could convey it ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... his Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or amusement it can give by discarding the forms, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... essay, a parallel drawn between English men and English mastiffs by the celebrated cardinal Ximenes comes not unappropriately ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the English jockey, whose attenuated form is accounted for in the following dialogue in an old work entitled 'Newmarket, or an Essay on the Turf,' 1771. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... covered the number of yards a clown could cover in a given time on a handspring basis. He had shocked the schoolmaster by handing in an essay on ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... was no need for us to essay this futile expedient, breaking the force of the billows as they reared up in their colossal grandeur to annihilate us and keeping us steadily facing their attack; and presently, shortly after six bells, when we really experienced pretty nearly the worst of it, there ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... how feebly words essay To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess The might, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... having looked through an essay on "Piers Plowman," which she was to take to her English Literature tutor on the following day, went aimlessly upstairs and put her head into Connie's room. The old house was panelled, and its guest-room, though small and shabby, had yet absorbed ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... death of Darwin, the veteran Professor Dana re-entered the lists and contributed a powerful defence of the theory of subsidence in the form of a reply to an essay written by the ablest exponent of the anti-Darwinian views on this subject, Dr. A. Geikie. While pointing out that the Darwinian position had been to a great extent misunderstood by its opponents, he showed that the rival theory presented ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... — "tormented and awry with passion" — also appears in Walter Pater's essay on "Aesthetic Poetry", which, according to Mr. Ferris Greenslet's monograph on Pater, was written in 1868, but first published in 'Appreciations', 1889. "Leaves from Australian Forests", in which these sonnets were first printed, was published in ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... absurdity of his task as he finally got rid of the little animal, and made his first essay at milking, finding to his great delight that he was successful, while the goat-mother took it all as a matter of course, and did not move while her new friend refreshed himself with a hearty draught of the contents of the little pail; and then, snatching at a happy thought, drew the hardened cake ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... Poe himself implies this when he says, in an earlier passage of his essay on Hawthorne: "The Tale Proper" (i.e., short-story), "in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent which can be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the highest genius could be most ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... for the fuller explanation of these transactions to my History of the Popes and my French History. My meaning is very fully recognised in an essay in the Revue Germanique, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... during 1756 he wrote a few essays for "The Universal Visitor," and superintended and contributed largely to another publication entitled "The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review." Among the articles he wrote for the magazine was a review of Mr. Jonas Hanway's "Essay on Tea," to which the author made an angry answer. Johnson, after a full and deliberate pause, made a reply to it, the only instance, I believe, in the whole course of his life, when he condescended to oppose anything that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "these rhymes" from the lips of Byron's nurse, May Gray, who regarded them as a first essay in the direction of poetry. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... from an inability, but from an excessive nicety-a desire to write a prize essay, instead of a good, sociable, familiar letter. To make a letter interesting, the writer must transfer his thoughts from his mind to his paper, as truly as the rays of the sun place the likeness of an object in front of the lens through which it acts upon the silvered ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the Paper for this Day as a loose Essay upon Friendship, in which I shall throw my Observations together without any set Form, that I may avoid repeating what has been ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to adapt the rules fitted for an ancient state of society to another in which the very fundamental conceptions were altered. A mysterious system had thus grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. Of Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to us they remain a permanent part of our little world. It is the abiding glory of Dickens, it is one of Shakespeare's abiding glories, to have created many such: but we look to find these characters in the novel or the play: the essay by virtue of its limitations of space is unsuited for character-studies, and even in the subject of our present reading the difficulty of hunting the various Coverley Essays down in the great number ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... heard below. As I was closing the shutters of the windows, the distant whooting of the bird of Minerva, as from the often-visited woodhouse, gave the subject in that charming Ode to Wisdom, which does honour to our sex, as it was written by one of it. I made an essay, a week ago, to set the three last stanzas of it, as not unsuitable to my unhappy situation; and after I had re-perused the Ode, those were my lesson; and, I am sure, in the solemn address they contain to the All-Wise ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... surtout le genre ennuyeux. In almost any age of English literature, or indeed of any other literature, an experienced critic can detect the tone of the epoch at once in prose or verse. There is in them an unmistakeable Zeit-Geist in phraseology and form. The Elizabethan drama, essay, or philosophy could not be mistaken for the drama, essay, or philosophy of the Restoration; the heroic couplet reigned from Dryden to Byron; Ciceronian diction reigned from Addison to Burke; and then the Quarterlies, with Southey, Lamb, Scott, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... this lady. After twenty years of marriage, in the year 1749, the countess gave birth to her first child; two hours after the birth of her son, she seated herself at her writing-table to write an essay on the Newtonian system; in consequence of this she sickened and died in two days. After her death, Voltaire accepted Frederick's invitation to Sans-Souci.] Ah! I wish he were here; so long as I do not see him, I doubt if he ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Essay on the Plants of the Burdekin Expedition page 8. Near Davenport Range, and between ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... lasting good, and leave lasting consolation to the world,—such work might be performed as would stir the most callous souls to life and energy and aspiration,—with HER sweet Presence near me, visibly close and constant, there is no task so difficult that I would not essay and conquer in, for her sake, her service, her greater glory! But ALONE!"—and he gave a slight, hopeless gesture—"Nay,—Christ knows I will do the utmost best I can, but the solitary ways of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Pieces of singularly antique furniture are arranged round the room, of which, he adds, master is proud indeed. Two plaster figures, standing in dingy niches, he tells us are wonders of the white man's genius. In his own random style he gives us an essay on the arts, adding a word here and there to remind us of master's exquisite taste, and anxiously waits our confirmation of what ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... which I have already written. I am indebted to the Publisher of Contentio Veritatis and the other contributors to that volume for raising no objection to my publishing Lectures which might possibly be regarded as in part a condensation, in part an expansion of my Essay on 'The ultimate basis of Theism.' I have dealt more systematically with many of the problems here discussed in an Essay upon 'Personality in God and Man' contributed to Personal Idealism (edited by Henry {x} Sturt) and in my 'Theory of Good and Evil.' Some of the doctrinal ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... are written in an admirable style and, though arranged without apparent method, a system of political philosophy may be gathered from their contents. Thus the third essay, That Politics may be reduced to a Science, defends that thesis, and dwells on the importance of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the session was the most interesting, when one of the pastors read an essay upon the "means of promoting an awakening among the unconverted;" which was followed by remarks from nearly all the pastors present. The interest was greatest when some gave expression to their deep feeling of responsibility, and to the conviction that their own want of earnestness and spirituality ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... hazard of publishing his works, he established a printing-press in his own house, where he struck off copies of the proceedings against him, which were sold at one guinea each; a blasphemous and obscene poem entitled, "An Essay on Woman," with annotations; and the forty-five first numbers of the "North Briton," with notes and emendations. His pen was seconded by hundreds of newspaper writers and pamphleteers who wrote on his behalf, and John Wilkes thereby became ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... I saw her raise an umbrella and set out upon her cheerless promenade directly in our wake, and I made a desperate essay at redressing the wrong. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... me, and he turned aside, As if he wished himself to hide: Then with his coat he made essay To wipe those briny tears away. I follow'd him, and said, "My friend "What ails you? wherefore weep you so?" —"Shame on me, Sir! this lusty lamb, He makes my tears to flow. To-day I fetched him from the rock; He is the last of all ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... put on that black coat, that acts as a color contrast against the red backs of the books, which were not noticeable before against your red suspenders, I see that you have been there and read your forgery story in Bernheim's essay on hypnotic suggestion, and returned the book upside down. So you stole that story too! In consequence of all this I consider that I have the right to conclude that you committed your crime through need, or because you were ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... effect from Robinson's first essay on Friday. Canning has done remarkably well as yet, and gives great satisfaction. Nothing can prevent the mad war of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... considering, sir, not as a perpetual and standing law, to be interwoven with our constitution, or added to the principles of our government, but as a temporary establishment for the present year; an expedient to be laid aside when our affairs cease to require it; an experimental essay of a new practice, which may be changed or continued according ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... some pertinent remarks upon this subject in a very sensible essay by "a late captain of infantry" (U.S.). ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Miss Lucy Mowbray, the sister of my beloved friend, my manuscript 'Essay upon the Art of Squeezing a Lady's Hand;' begging that she will read it attentively, and never suffer her hand to be squeezed in any other manner than that which I ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... was still pondering my problem (I had come to such fantastic absurdities as contemplating an essay on the Chinese gamut, rejecting it on the grounds that Brenda was the only musician in the family), that awful lunch was abruptly closed by a unanimous refusal of the last course. Perhaps the others were as eager as I was to put an end to that ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... York American. He was something of a literary authority at the time, a man of fortune and college-bred, known in a mild way as the author of an anniversary discourse delivered before the New York Historical Society in 1818, of a political satire entitled "The Bucktail Bards," and later of an "Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts." Among his friends was Mr. Henry D. Sedgwick, a summer neighbor, so to speak, of Mr. Bryant's, having a country-house at Stockbridge, a few miles from Great Barrington, and a house in town, which was frequented by the literati of the day, such as Verplanck, Halleck, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Reader will soon perceive) I leave it to show it self, being very well satisfy'd how much more proper it had been for him to have found out this himself, than for me to prepossess him with an Opinion of something extraordinary in an Essay began and finished in the idler hours of a fortnight's time: for I can only esteem it a laborious idleness, which is Parent to so inconsiderable a Birth. I have gratified the Bookseller in pretending an occasion for a Preface; the other two Persons concern'd are the Reader ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... An Essay to excite and assist that good work, the instruction of Negro-servants in Christianity. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... they too have been ridden by some wild spirit within them, which goaded them to their beastly work? But if the acceptance of the doctrine of multiple personality is going to involve me in the reconsideration of criminal jurisprudence, I must close this essay. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... profound contempt for woman whom they talked of as an animal made solely for their pleasure. Every moment they quoted Schopenhauer, who was their god, and his well-known essay "On Women;" they wished that harems and towers might be reintroduced, and had the ancient maxim: "Mulier, perpetuus infans,"[10] woven into their table-linen, and below it, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... soundest principles of reasoning, and proves not so much the safety of our globe from cometary destruction, (for some comet, hitherto unseen by mortal eyes, may now be winging its flight directly towards our globe,) as the astonishing powers of the mind of man, which can thus essay to penetrate the veil of futurity, and read the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... be) with precision, delicacy, and evident delight. They are too much loved by the author not to be palated by the reader. But beyond the mere felicity of pencil, the nature of the piece could never fail to move my heart. When I read his essay "On the Past and Future," every word seemed to be something I had said myself. I could have thought he had been eavesdropping at the doors of my heart, so entire was the coincidence between his writing and my thought. It is a sign perhaps of a somewhat vain disposition. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... father, as also Mrs. Emerson and mother; the daughters and myself growing up together. And as father is thought to know and understand the poet perhaps better than any other contemporary, I venture sending by post one of his books, which contains an essay on Mr. Emerson, which may interest you. It was thought so fine and true on its first appearance that it was published in illuminated form for private circulation only; but as there is not a copy of the small edition to be obtained, I send 'Concord ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Essay.' This is respectable evidence; but that of Dr. Blair is more direct from the fountain-head, as well as more full. Let me add to it that of Dr. Joseph Warton; 'The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read the whole scheme of The Essay on Man, in the hand-writing of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope was to versify and illustrate.' Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. ii. p. 62. BOSWELL. In the above short ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... practice rope, unwind the lasso from the horn of the saddle, and essay a "mounted" throw. Your patient animal remains perfectly still and quiet. He seems to know you are a tenderfoot, and to feel quite sure what is going to happen. You whirl your lasso round your head, and aim it at the horns of a harmless steer in the corral some yards away. But ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... manners were precisely of the same date with his habiliments, next came hobbling in. Poring through his spectacles over the catalogue which lay upon the counter, the first thing which caught his eye, was An Essay upon Old Maids. "Tom, Tom," said the complaisant Librarian, calling to a lad at the other end of the shop, "reach down the Old Maids for the gentleman. They won't appear to advantage, I'm afraid, a little dusty or damaged, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... run towards the chamber and before the door thereof, but the peasants were all at a loss because now to them pertained no leader; yet did they urge one another on saying that it were shame not to avenge their chief, but for all that did they naught, & made no essay to fight. Then went the King out to his men, set them in array, & caused his banner to be unfurled, but made he no onset & thereafter bade he all his men go out to his ship, then rowed they down the river and so out on ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... will, however, be of little use, unless another, and a very different kind of Index, be arranged in the mind of the reader; an Index explanatory of the principal purposes and contents of the various parts of this essay. It is difficult to analyze the nature of the reluctance with which either a writer or painter takes it upon him to explain the meaning of his own work, even in cases where, without such explanation, it must in a measure remain ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... moral and critical," has an ingenious essay on this subject, in which he attempts to ascertain, not so much the efficient as the final causes of the phenomenon, and to obviate those superstitions in regard to it, which have sometimes troubled weak minds. He labours, with great earnestness, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Al-Dajjal is there." He is a manner of Moslem Antichrist, the Man of Sin per excellentiam, who will come in the latter days and lay waste the earth, leading 70,000 Jews, till encountered and slain by Jesus at the gate of Lud. (Sale's Essay, sect. 4.) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 9. Essay to direct and extend the Enquiries of patriotic Travellers. By Count Berchtold.—The second volume contains a Catalogue of Travels in Europe; the first alone relates to the subject of the title. 2 vols. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... and when a great mission, like that to the Congo, which he could have made a turning-point in African history, was placed in his hands, he could only ask for "a respite," and, with the charm of the Sphinx strong upon him, rushed on his fate in a chivalrous determination to essay the impossible. But was it right or justifiable that wise politicians and experienced generals should take advantage of such enthusiasm and self-sacrifice, and let one man go unaided to achieve what ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the caprice of events which had converted the dwelling of Bolingbroke into a malting-house and a mill. This house, once sacred to philosophy and poetry, long sanctified by the residence of the noblest genius of his age, honoured by the frequent visits of Pope, and the birthplace of the immortal Essay on Man, is now appropriated to the lowest uses! The house of Bolingbroke become a windmill! The spot on which the Essay on Man was concocted and produced, converted into a distillery of pernicious spirits! Such are the lessons of time! Such are the means by which an eternal agency sets at nought ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... paper on Inchcolm having been sent to his friend Dr. Petrie of Dublin, author of the well-known essay on the "Early Ecclesiastical Architecture and Round Towers of Ireland," it was returned after a time, enriched with many notes and illustrations. In now reprinting the paper these have been added, and are ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... graduated at Harvard College, during the last twenty years, with high honors, before the age of eighteen; and we suppose that nearly every one of them has lived to regret it. "Nature," says Tissot, in his Essay on the Health of Men of Letters, "is unable successfully to carry on two rapid processes at the same time. We attempt a prodigy, and the result is a fool." There was a child in Languedoc who at six years was of the size of a large man; of course, his mind was a vacuum. On the other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... angry, loud, Force their vain grief on the reluctant crowd: The party's patron, sorely sighing, cried, "Why would you urge me? I at first denied." Fiercely they answer'd, "Why will you complain, Who saw no danger, or was warn'd in vain?" A few essay'd the troubled soul to calm, But dread prevail'd, and anguish and alarm. Now rose the water through the lessening sand, And they seem'd sinking while they yet could stand. The sun went down, they look'd ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... figure, with placid countenance and solemn gravity of feature, would readily deceive any one as to the true mental organism within. The late parish priest of Alaminos (Batangas)—a Franciscan friar, who spent half his life in the Colony—left a brief manuscript essay on the native character. I have read it. In his opinion, the native is an incomprehensible phenomenon, the mainspring of whose line of thought and the guiding motive of whose actions have never yet been, and perhaps never will ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the men who "when they saw the issue of the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause." To the young, or even the middle-aged, it has little meaning. I met a scholar-soldier in the South who had given expression to the sentiment of his race and generation in an essay—one might almost say an elegy—so chivalrous in spirit and so fine in literary form that it moved me well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I found myself so visibly affected by it that my neighbour at the desk glanced at me in surprise, and ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... England, whose name is still to be seen upon ancient watches and clocks. Tompion was a most exquisite mechanic, proud of his work and jealous of his name. He is the Tompion who figured in Farquhar's play of "The Inconstant;" and Prior mentions him in his "Essay on Learning," where he says that Tompion on a watch or clock was proof positive of its excellence. A person once brought him a watch to repair, upon which his name had been fraudulently engraved. He took up a hammer and smashed it, and then selecting one of his own watches, gave ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... thou art now to hear a work, which, if the author be put into comparison with the subject, might be likened to a portrait of Alexander, in executing which, some inferior dauber has usurped the pencil of Apelles; but which essay, however it may appear unworthy of the subject in the eyes of many, must yet command some envy in those who candidly consider its contents, and the difficulty of portraying the great personage concerning whom it is written. Still, I pray thee, give thine attention to what ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... most famous American cat was Agrippina, who belonged to Miss Agnes Repplier of Philadelphia. She is famous because of the charming essay which her mistress wrote in ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... lice, of Great Britain, mentions the name of "Pheretima, as recorded by Herodotus, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Dictator Sylla, the two Herods, the Emperor Maximian, and Phillip the Second." Schioedte, in his essay "On Phthirius, and on the Structure of the Mouth in Pediculus" (Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1866, page 213), says that these statements will not bear examination, and that this disease should ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... ungenerously and artfully endeavored to retain for himself the honor of writing a clever little essay, really the work of his brother, and actually obtained a prize from ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... upon the different systems of Zooelogy, see Agassiz's Essay on Classification in his Contributions to the Natural History of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... ii.—Mr. Romanes spoke on Mr. Darwin's essay on Instinct at a meeting of the Linnean Society, December 6th, 1883, and some account of it is given in "Nature" of the same date. But it was not ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... not given to every new age. The cogs in the wheels of time slip back, at times. The classic revival may be permeated with enthusiasm, but it is a second edition of an old work—not a virile essay at expression of living thought. The later Renaissance was but half modern in its spirit; the classic period of the eighteenth century in England was half ancient in its mood. But the twentieth century breaks with a new promise ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... narrow, crooked streets of the little town, with its precarious wooden sidewalks, the language of old Castile, spoken with surprising purity, was heard more often than English. In fact, as Mr. Stevenson himself says in his essay on The Old Pacific Capital: "It was difficult to get along without a word or two of that language for ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... to surprise them with the result of his prowess—in regard to which his belief was unlimited. He felt, besides, that it was better there should be no witness to the trifling failures which might be expected to occur in the first essay of one wholly unacquainted with the art of angling, as ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... first opportunity that arose for placing me out in the world had been gladly seized upon by my poor father, who consented to pay the modest premium required by the Miss Bagshots, in order that I might be taught the duties of a governess, and essay my powers of tuition upon the younger pupils ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-eminent endowments. But it is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hand, brown braids bobbing, she would thus essay two, three, even four steps of staggering ascent, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... of Browning's poetic nature is vividly reflected in the memorable essay on Shelley which he wrote at Paris in 1851, as an introduction to a series of letters since shown to have been forged. The essay—unfortunately not included in his Works—is a document of first-rate importance for the mind of Browning in the midst of his greatest time; it is ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... referred to the commercial side of the expedition, kept himself principally to his room, thinking and writing. What he was writing about he told to nobody, not even Yaquita, and it seemed to have already assumed the importance of a veritable essay. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... successful, but from the struggles and failures of the unfortunate as well; and I have endeavored to make clear both the philosophy and the application of all the principles so deduced. Though in theory these rules are obligatory on all who essay the short story, they are frequently and knowingly evaded or violated by the masters of the art, whose genius is great enough to excuse their disregard of the conventions, or whose skill is sufficient to smooth over their technical lapses; but ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... But when my essay was examined, the three gentlemen above-named were affrighted. There are truths the unstudied simplicity of which emits a lustre which obscures all the results of an eloquence which exaggerates or extenuates; Louis XIII. furnished such proofs in abundance. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... On this, and the whole marcher and Welsh aspect of the period, 1258-1267, see my essay on Wales and the March during the Barons' Wars in Owens College Historical Essays, pp. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... biography of Fielding which entirely discredits the unlikely story of his having been a stroller at Bartholomew Fair; and I may also, I think, claim to have thrown some additional light on Fielding's relations with the Cibbers, seeing that the last critical essay upon the author of the Apology which I have met with, contains no reference to Fielding at all. For such minor novelties as the passage from the Universal Spectator, and the account of the projected translation of Lucian, etc., the reader is referred to the book ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... man's association with Hurrell Froude. Many years after, when Freeman had venomously accused him of "dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost forgotten fame"—poor Froude's offence was that he dared to write an essay on Thomas a Becket—he defended himself with rare emotion against the charge. "I look back upon my brother," he said, "as on the whole the most remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have never seen any person—not one—in whom, as I now think him, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. My passage through the principal German cities had been brilliantly marked by balloon ascents; but as yet no German had accompanied me in my car, and the fine experiments made at Paris by MM. Green, Eugene Godard, and Poitevin had not tempted the grave Teutons to essay ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... speak of Leonardo da Vinci, mingling with his own fantasies the perfect words of that essay which, so wonderful was his memory, he seemed to know by heart. He found exotic fancies in the likeness between Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile. Seen through his eyes, the seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... Journal concentrated in one, containing his Experience and Travels," Wheeling, 1848; (3) "The Dealings of God, Man, and the Devil; as exemplified in the Life, Experience, and Travels of Lorenzo Dow," 2 vols. in one. With an Introductory Essay by the Rev. John Dowling, D.D., of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... master's dressing-gown, in which he had encoiled his shivering frame, on the entrance of De Breze and the concierge of the house in which Lemercier had his apartment. Recognising the Vicomte as one of his master's acquaintances, he checked the first impulse that prompted him to essay a feeble bark, and permitted himself, with a petulant whine, to be extracted from his covering, and held in the arms of the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Accomplish it he did and without any visible effort or strain. Eighty-nine of the hundred he shot through the heart; the remaining eleven with difficult fancy shots which he was, against all reason, tempted to essay, and which, against all ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... by fame throughout the cities of Aonia,[67] gave unerring answers to the people consulting him. The azure Liriope[68] was the first to make essay and experiment of his infallible voice; whom once Cephisus encircled in his winding stream, and offered violence to, {when} enclosed by his waters. The most beauteous Nymph produced an infant from her teeming womb, which even then might have been beloved, and she called him ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the facts so laboriously acquired within a short six months after she read her little essay on "Plato's Conception of the Beautiful" at the graduation exercises. (That effort, by the way, lay heavy on the neighborhood for weeks, but was pronounced a triumph. It was certainly a masterpiece of fearless quotation.)... ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... what is common in all classes is almost universal amongst the uneducated. You have only to make a system of giving your cast-off clothes to some shivering family, and you will not have to wait long for an eloquent essay on their shabbiness, or for an outburst of sincere indignation if you venture to reserve a warm jacket for a needy relative. Prescriptive rights, in short, grow faster than pumpkins, which is amongst the many warnings life affords us ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... measure interesting to those who study the species. We note, in the first place, that although for ages in contact with the constructive work which occupies his masters, the dog shows no tendency whatever to essay any undertakings of this nature. He is quite alive to considerations of personal comfort and is particularly fond of a warm bed; yet, except for a few unverified stories, we may say that there is no evidence whatever to show that they ever try to ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... he recognized the importance of this portion of the civil order, and mastered the intricate lore of the established ceremonial. In this office, which he held for life, he busied himself with a Digest of the Auspices and wrote an essay on Divination. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... nature de l'air, containing his statement of the law connecting the volume and pressure of a gas, is contained in the second essay. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... convenient to know the relative power of different manures to absorb moisture from the atmosphere, especially when we wish to manure lands that suffer from drought. The following results are given by C. W. Johnson, in his essay on salt, (pp. 8 and 19). In these experiments the animal manures were employed without ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... Hamblin's first essay into the Arizona country was in the troublous fall and winter of 1857, a year when he and his family were living in the south end of Mountain Meadows, Utah. He happened to be in Salt Lake when the famous Arkansas emigrant train passed through his district. ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Jeanne; he held both one and the other to have been divinely sent, in the sense that all which is not of the devil is of God. It was sufficient for him that no evil had been found in the child, and he intended to essay him, hoping that Guillaume would do what Jeanne had done. Whether the Archbishop thus acted rightly or wrongly the issue was to decide, but he might have exalted the shepherd without denying the Saint who was ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... hero, Weir of Hermiston, is avowedly suggested by the historical personality of Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield. This famous judge has been for generations the subject of a hundred Edinburgh tales and anecdotes. Readers of Stevenson's essay on the Raeburn exhibition, in "Virginibus Puerisque," will remember how he is fascinated by Raeburn's portrait of Braxfield, even as Lockhart had been fascinated by a different portrait of the same worthy sixty years before (see "Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk"); nor did his interest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... object of this version is to show what "The Thousand Nights and a Night" really is. Not, however, for reasons to be more fully stated in the Terminal Essay, by straining verbum reddere verbo, but by writing as the Arab would have written in English. On this point I am all with Saint Jerome (Pref. in Jobum) "Vel verbum e verbo, vel sensum e sensu, vel ex utroque commixtum, et medic temperatum genus ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and divide the cash equally at the end of each week. I was appointed treasurer. Peace and good-humor reigned ever afterwards. This pooling of extra earnings not being intended to create artificial prices was really cooeperation. It was my first essay in financial organization. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Symonds' 'Studies of the Greek Poets' there is an essay on Pindar which dwells with much appreciative eloquence upon the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... 209 of his Einleitung, gives bibliographical references to most of those which are given at length in Prof. M. Mller's brilliant essay on "The Migration of Fables" (Selected Essays, i. 500-76), which is entirely devoted to the travels of the fable from India to La Fontaine. See also Mr. Clouston, Pop. Tales, ii. 432 seq. I have translated ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... Washed in baptismal waters she shall be Led like the clean-fleeced yeanling to the fold. Trust me, my daughter—for through me the Church Which is the truth, which is the life, doth speak. Yet first 't were best essay to cure the Prince Of this moon-fostered madness, bred, no doubt, By baneful potions which these cunning knaves Are ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... could reply, referring her to his Essay on the deformed in soul and body; and then ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from an essay on George Bernard Shaw by Robert Blatchford, the English Socialist: "Shaw is something much better than a wit, much better than an artist, much better than a politician or a dramatist; he is a moralist, a teacher of ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... monster, "thou queen of my heart! Thy portrait I oft have essay'd; Yet ne'er to the canvass could I with my art The least of thy wonderful beauties impart; And my failure with scorn ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Perhaps the noblest essay in symphonic music of the followers of Franck is the second symphony of Vincent D'Indy.[A] His vein is indeed throughout nearest akin of all the disciples to the serious muse ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... He disengaged her arms from his neck, and placed her gently in a chair. She sobbed on for some time in silence—a silence which Marston himself did not essay to break. He walked to the door, apparently with the intention of leaving her. He hesitated however, and returned; took a hurried turn through the room; hesitated again; sat down; then returned to the door, not to depart, but to close it carefully, and walked gloomily to the window, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... barn—and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. And then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with a man's feelings of security, especially if he happens to be a little nervous, to sound the deer-bleat in a wild region of country. I once undertook to experiment with the instrument myself, and made my first essay in attempting to call up an antelope which I discovered in the distance. I succeeded admirably in luring the wary victim within shooting range, had raised upon my knees, and was just in the act ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... behind, blown, spent and hopelessly out of the race, soon lost to view among the distant swales and ravines. Then everyone turned to welcome the coming harbinger, to congratulate him on his escape, to demand the reason for his daring essay. Gregg and his men were first to reach him, and while one of them was seen through the levelled glasses to dismount and give the courier his fresh horse, thereby showing that the gray was well nigh exhausted, the whole party turned slowly toward the post. Then one of their number ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King |
