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Essay   Listen
verb
Essay  v. t.  (past & past part. essayed; pres. part. essaying)  
1.
To exert one's power or faculties upon; to make an effort to perform; to attempt; to endeavor; to make experiment or trial of; to try. "What marvel if I thus essay to sing?" "Essaying nothing she can not perform." "A danger lest the young enthusiast... should essay the impossible."
2.
To test the value and purity of (metals); to assay. See Assay. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Essay" Quotes from Famous Books



... that primitive man has delighted in speculating on the birth of the world in which he lives, on the origin of the living things that surround him, and especially on the beginnings of the race of beings to which he himself belongs. In a recent very interesting essay[2], the author of The Golden Bough has collected, from the records of tradition, history and travel, a valuable mass of evidence concerning the legends which have grown out of these speculations. Myths of this kind would appear to fall into two categories, each of which may not improbably ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd

... Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93] with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr. Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... incidents of his life, the fatherly tone of Cicero's letters to him, and the fact that Curio's nearest friends were among his disciples make this a natural inference. How intimate this relation was, one can see from the charming picture which Cicero draws, in the introductory chapters of his Essay on Friendship, of his own intercourse as a young man with the learned Augur Scaevola. Roman youth attended their counsellor and friend when he went to the forum to take part in public business, or sat with him at home discussing matters of public ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... search was over and every one had admired his own and his neighbor's valentines, Ethel Brown recited Hood's sonnet, "For the 14th of February," and Ethel Blue read part of Lamb's essay, "Valentine's Day," and they all felt that Saint Valentine's star was setting and that of the Father of ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... prostrated by disease, and forced to desist from the practice of medicine. I then commenced as soon as I was able, the preparation of a work, which I contemplated bringing before the public at some future period, provided I should live. In accordance with the plan of the proposed work, an essay on African slavery was to close the volume. After I had finished about a hundred pages manuscript, in order, the question of African slavery in the United States suddenly thrust itself upon my mind with such force, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... 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 ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... details of the preparation of the Reform Bill published by Lord Russell in the last edition of his 'Essay on the British Constitution.' Much of this conversation of Lord Lyndhurst's is extremely wide of the truth, but it is retained to show what was said and believed by competent ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... so myself. It's funny we should both think the same; I knew we should if once we talked. But there are other things—love, now," he added. "I wonder if we would think alike about that. I wrote an essay on love once; the master said it was the best I ever wrote, and I can remember the first sentence still—'Love is something that you feel ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... regime was to be established in the State Department. The policies originated by John Hay and developed with singular brilliancy by Mr. Root were shunted into the background and a new era was proclaimed. It is unnecessary to comment on the dismal essay at "dollar diplomacy" and the Mexican policy of that period. The simple fact is that Mr. Knox's name is not associated with a single successful foreign policy. Some might have succeeded but unfortunately the energy displayed ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... a certain extent, they had had to fight their way to the present harmony. She was with him, again, among the laurels, a favorite place with them, and Imogen sat on her former ledge of sunny rock and Sir Basil was extended beside her on the moss. She had been reading Emerson to him, and when the essay was finished and she had talked to him a little about the "over-soul,"—dear Basil's recollections of metaphysics were very confused,—she presently said to him, letting her hand slide into his while she spoke:—"Basil, dearest,—I want to ask ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... gold" is an expression which has behind it a long history of folk-thought. Professor Gaidoz, in his essay on Ransom by Weight (236), and Haberlandt, in his paper on the Tulapurusha, Man-Weighing (248) of India, have shown to what extent has prevailed in Europe and Asia the giving of one's weight in gold or other precious ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... 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

... essay in giraffe-hunting has been very successful," said Swinton, laughing, as they came up ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... of Welsh tradition and poetry. But the Welsh antiquarians have never obtained a hearing from the public; they have had no Macpherson to compensate for his corruption of their poetic legends by forcing them into popularity.—See also Mr. Sharon Turner's Essay ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... have lapsed into strange supineness and indifference to moral science, if in fifteen years he had learnt nothing new, and found nothing in his work which he wished to improve. Whoever will be at the expense of purchasing my Political and Moral Essays (Benziger, 1902, 6s.) will find in the first essay on the Origin and Extent of Civil Authority an advantageous substitute for the chapter on the State in this work. The essay is a dissertation written for the degree of B. Sc. in the University of Oxford; and represents, I hope, tolerably well ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... her, its, our, your, and their, agree with the nouns they represent, in number, gender, and person. But adjectives, having no change expressive of number, gender, or case, cannot accord with their nouns."—Wilson's Essay on Gram., p. 192. "Ours, yours, hers, and theirs, are most usually considered possessive cases of personal pronouns; but they are, more probably, possessive substitutes, not adjectives, but nouns."—Ib., p. 109. "Nor can mine or thine, with any more propriety ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... These Harry eagerly welcomed and voluntarily proposed to rewrite the composition. The result was a very much improved draft. He sent a copy home and received in reply a letter from his father, expressing surprise and gratification at the excellence of his essay. ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger

... his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy[130] of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... calculation in estimating the intellectual altitude of literary men. The wider the field the greater the scope for grandeur of design and the pomp of achievement; but it is seldom that a writer who can produce an essay of the highest order cannot also meet successfully the demands of a more protracted effort. Narrowness of bounds, want of compass for complete elaboration, is often no slight obstacle. The more minute the mechanism, the more arduous ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Montchrestien, adventurous and turbulent in his Protestant zeal, the writer of tragedies which connect the sixteenth century with the classical school of later years, became the advocate of a protectionist and a colonial policy in his Traicte de l'OEconomie Politique; the style of his essay towards economic reform has some of the passion ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... made no attempt to overcome the resistance, and the moment she turned, knew herself free to move in any other direction. But as the house was still her goal, she tried another space between two of the ricks. There again she found she could not pass. Making a third essay in yet another interval, she was once more stopped in like fashion. With that came the conviction that she was wanted elsewhere, and with it the thought of the Horn. She turned her face from the house and made straight for the hill, only that she took, as she had generally done ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... Adolphus had already terminated; and now the greatest service which he could render to the liberties of Germany was—to die. The all-engrossing power of an individual was at an end, but many came forward to essay their strength; the equivocal assistance of an over-powerful protector, gave place to a more noble self-exertion on the part of the Estates; and those who were formerly the mere instruments of his aggrandizement, now began to work for themselves. They now ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... boards for pun and song and dance! Our purpose is an essay in romance: An old-world story where such old-world facts As hate and love and death, through four swift acts— Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues, From the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse!— ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley

... I purpose to give up to reading; and intend, after all the delays which have obtruded themselves upon me, to finish my Essay on the Extent of the Mental powers; to revise my Treatise on Logick; to begin the Epick which I have long projected; to proceed in my perusal of the Scriptures with Grotius's Comment; and at my leisure to regale myself with the works of classicks, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... help; he armed himself with pistols and a poignard, and walked in the streets in the face of the sun. He was a tall, brave man, and was quite as cool then as this Honorable Court is now, while I relate their "glorious first essay" in man-stealing. Public opinion at length drove the (southern) kidnappers from Boston. Then the Crafts also left the town and the country, and found in the Monarchical Aristocracy of Old England what the New England Democracy refused ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... writers of ancient Greece; prose writers appear no earlier than the sixth century before the Christian era, at which time the first literary prose essay was produced, for which three contemporary authors claim the honor. The Greeks had arrived at a high degree of civilization before they can be said to have possessed a history of their own. Nations far behind them ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... he was gone! The lower portion of the window sash and pane were gone too. His successful experiments on the fragile texture of glass at the confectioner's, on the first day of his entrance to civilization, had not been lost upon him. His first essay at combining cause and effect ended in ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... fact that he was a tutor at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month and board, and that a year before he was unemployed, at the close he writes: "In these three hundred and sixty-five days I have again put forth a feeble essay toward fame and perhaps fortune. I have tried literature, albeit in a humble way. I have written some passable prose and it has been successfully published. The conviction is forced on me by observation, and not by vain enthusiasm, that I am fit for nothing else. Perhaps I may ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... sufficed to disturb that marvellous equanimity of his, which enabled him the rather good-naturedly to convert impetuosity and loss of temper in others, into an instrument of victory for himself. When others, not similarly blessed, would, in like manner, essay to rush to the rescue, their hurried and confused movements served only to place them more completely prostrate before him. The instant after the issue had been—perhaps suddenly—decided in Sir William's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... is discussed in an essay by Gaston Boissier in the first volume of La Religion romaine d'Auguste ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... longer in 'conflicts with Government offices', and to take up some literary work. He urged her to 'work out her notion of Divine Perfection', in a series of essays for Frazer's Magazine. She did so; and the result was submitted to Mr. Froude, who pronounced the second essay to be 'even more pregnant than the first. I cannot tell,' he said, 'how sanitary, with disordered intellects, the effects ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... purpose of this book is to provide an anthology of English lyrical poetry earlier than the advent of the Sonnet with Wyatt and Surrey during the sixteenth century. It includes 152 poems, ranging between 1225 and 1550 A.D., an essay on Some Aspects of Mediaeval Lyric by E. K. ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... bold and dauntless band. High flew the spray above their heads, yet onward still they bore, Midst cheer, and shout, and answering yell, and shot, and cannon-roar,— "Now, by the Holy Cross! I swear, since earth and sea began, Was never such a daring deed essay'd by ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... type of voice and the natural temperament of the singer do not accord—as sometimes happens—he would be unwise not to adhere to the work for which his vocal means, not his preference, are best adapted. To follow the contrary path, and essay roles requiring for their fitting expression more dramatic fire and intensity than his vocal instrument can supply, would be to shorten his career, owing to the certain deterioration and possible extinction of the voice. There are sufficient voiceless examples ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... it is not like Spain. The verdure was "in such condition as it is in the month of May in Andalusia; and the trees were all as different from ours as day from night, and also the fruits and grasses and the stones and all the things." The essay written by a cockney child after a day at the seaside or in the country, is not greatly different from some of the verbatim passages of this journal; and there is a charm in that fact too, for it gives us a picture of Columbus, in spite of his hunt for gold and precious stones, wandering, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... superstructure; the foundation of which must be there, though unseen, unnoticed in contemplation of the noble edifice. Very great stress is laid upon "the exceeding importance of truth;" which none will question, reminding us of the commencement of Bacon's essay, "What is truth? said laughing Pilate, and would not wait for an answer." "Nothing," says our author, "can atone for the want of truth, not the most brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... roused to anger by anything, had the supreme art of rebutting others' opinions without seeming to do so. It was doubtless Bodin's abominable Demonology that called forth his celebrated essay on witchcraft, in which that subject is treated in the most modern spirit. The old presumption in favor of the miraculous has fallen completely from him; his cool, quizzical regard was too much for Satan, who, with all his ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... breath upon the bronze mirror. They have had the best of the faculty in Akragas, Gela, and Syracuse, all save you; and I am sent by the dazed parents to beseech you to leave for a time the affairs of state and the great problems of philosophy, to essay your ancient skill in this strange mystery of life in death and death ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson

... humanity. "He is the chosen Gamaliel at whose feet I could sit for ever," he would say; "on every subject he speaks well and wisely;" and once, when he was strolling through Kensington Gardens with his sister-friend, Anna Sheldon, he had electrified her by quoting a favourite passage from his essay on friendship. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... their own days to the great mass of readers; but this is an incident that scarce any author can hope to avert. The changes of habits and customs, and the succession of writers who in their turn essay to hold the mirror up to Nature, must always produce such a result. But while the mind of man is capable of enjoying the most fortunate combinations of genius and fancy, the most faithful expositions of the springs of action, the most ludicrous and the most pathetic representations of human ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... however, a singular dissatisfaction obtained with the traders, and, being accompanied with a reluctance to make further advances, at last touched the gentle stoicism of the proprietors themselves. The youthful enthusiasm which had at first lifted the most ineffectual trial, the most useless essay, to the plane of actual achievement, died out, leaving them only the dull, prosaic record of half-finished ditches, purposeless shafts, untenable pits, abandoned engines, and meaningless disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star claim, and empty ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... hidden purposes, if such existed, of the negotiating powers. The first answer in historical writing was that offered by Henry Adams[252], in an essay entitled "The Declaration of Paris, 1861," in the preparation of which the author studied with care all the diplomatic correspondence available in print[253]. His treatment presents Russell as engaged in a policy of deception with the view of obtaining an ultimate advantage to Great ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... glimpse of this scientific principle toward the end of his life. In his essay on "Feeling Versus Intellect" he showed that he had lost faith in his former estimate of the place of the intellect in the ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant

... and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar direction. The love of Pope's Homer threw me into Pope on one side and into Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek—and the influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards as in my "Essay on Mind," a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented of as worthy of all repentance. The poem is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual thinking ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... book, besides the present drama, was certainly not a premeditated design in writing this little essay; but in support of the position—that every literary work, however guided by truth, may occasionally swerve into error, it may here be stated that the meek spirit of christianity can seldom be traced in any of those pious writings where our ancient religion, the church ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue

... remonstrances of the king against such an act of confiscation. In fact, the savings recommended by the committee were so trifling that it was thought better to waive the question for the time, and the first economical essay of the new regime ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... twenty-one years, and settled fishery, coasting trade, navigation, and minor boundary issues. But diplomats proposed, and the United States Senate disposed. Protectionist feeling was strong at Washington, and the currency problem absorbing, and hence this broad and statesmanlike essay in neighborliness could not secure an hour's attention. This plan having failed, the Canadian Government fell back on the letter of the treaty. A Commission which consisted of the Honorable E. H. Kellogg representing the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... In an essay written by Judge St. George Tucker, and published in 1796, he expresses similar sentiments, in language equally forcible, and ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin

... emotions which they could not thoroughly understand. Moreover, he wished 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

... sailors say that 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, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... at once have become bombastic and conceited at being the cause of such a universal upheaval—not so Spout. He retired quite quietly to his cosy kitchenette apartment in Harlem and wrote that charming and winsome essay in sentiment "Mollie's Holiday"—which in due course he followed with his celebrated treatise on reincarnation "A Drop of Blood" and "To Horse, to Horse" a stirring romance ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... theological faculty, entered the lists as Lefevre's opponent, and an animated dispute was waged between the friends of the two combatants. Of so great moment was the decision regarded by Poncher, Bishop of Paris, that he induced Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to write an essay in refutation of the views of Lefevre.[137] But the Sorbonne, not content with this, on the ninth of November, 1521, declared that he was a heretic who should presume to maintain the truth of Lefevre's proposition. Lefevre ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... engaged for about four months, Mrs. Hardy said at breakfast: 'I am going to try an experiment. I have given the cook leave to go out for the day. Mr. and Mrs. Partridge are coming to dinner, and I intend handing over the kitchen to the girls, and letting them make their first essay. We are going to have soup, a leg of mutton with potatoes and spinach, a dish of fried cutlets, and a cabinet pudding. I shall tell Sarah to lift any saucepan you may want on or off the fire, but all the rest I shall leave in your hands. ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as strenuous, conscious, &c., and a trial ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... to many descriptions of wool formerly valueless, and, coupled with the repeal of the duty, brought into the market many kinds unknown a few years ago. "Properties once prized," Mr. Southey remarks in his Essay on Wools, "have given way to some other property upon which machinery can better operate, and yield more desirable results. Spanish wool, once deemed indispensable, is now little sought after. It is supplanted by our colonial wool, which is steadily ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... together. The work was "taken up." Dakie Thayne read stories to them sometimes: Miss Craydocke had something always to produce and to summon them to sit and hear; some sketch of strange adventure, or a ghost marvel, or a bright, spicy magazine essay; or, knowing where to find sympathizers and helpers, Dakie would rush in upon them uncalled, with some discovery, or want, or beautiful thing to show of his own. They were quite a little coterie by themselves. It shaped itself to this ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... 4: In the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Manchester Literary Society, part iv., p. 45-87, will be found a most ingenious and amusing Essay, entitled "Comments on Sterne," which excited a good deal of interest at the time of its publication. This discovery may be considered, in some measure, as the result of the BIBLIOMANIA. In my edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, a suggestion is thrown out that even Burton may have been ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... But at the word her cries increase; Again requested to abate Her noise, she's more importunate. The Owl perceiving no redress, And that her words were less and less Accounted of, no longer pray'd, But thus an artifice essay'd: "Since 'tis impossible to nod, While harping like the Delphian god, You charm our ears, stead of a nap, A batch of nectar will I tap, Which lately from Minerva came; Now if you do not scorn the same, Together let us bumpers ply." ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... a nervous headache I was always conscious of renewed vital power and of keener sensations. I would try the experiment once more—hazarded under circumstances so different that it made me tremulous but to think of the vast abyss between my now and then—and essay, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... chest (small lungs) is considered by experienced agriculturists a sure sign, in pigs, for example, of easy fattening; and the same remark applies to cows, in reference to the produce of milk—that is, of butter." On this subject Professor Tanner makes the following remarks, in his excellent Essay on Breeding and Rearing Cattle:[18]—"In our high-bred animals we find a small liver and a small lung, accompanied with a gentle and peaceful disposition. Now, these conditions, which are so desirable for ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to its population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest, that is to the spirit of property. Whence it follows, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... Temple; St. Sepulchre, Northampton; St. Mary, Cambridge; and that of Little Maplestead, Essex. It was long thought that they were of Jewish origin; but through the ingenious and learned essays of Mr. Essex and of Mr. Britton, this erroneous notion has been entirely removed. Mr. Essex, in his Essay, observes, in support of his opinion, that "their Temple at Jerusalem was not of a circular form, neither was the Tabernacle of Moses; nor do we find the modern Jews affect that figure in building their synagogues. It has, however, been generally supposed that the round church at Cambridge, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various

... of the Essay with which this book is concerned, was, on the authority of Monk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, born, according to some accounts, at Bristol, according to others, at Clevedon, co. Somerset, but was descended from a family ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... on the back of another photograph, another of these marvellous tympana from Notre Dame, which you call, I suppose, impure. Well, look on this picture, and on this. Don't laugh; you must not laugh, that's very improper of you, this is classical architecture. I have taken it out of the essay on that ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in the right spirit—that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for any enlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times," he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literature should be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired into English civilization, into the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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," he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... was known as Count Rumford, a title bestowed on him by the Pope. Rumford's invention was first given to the public in London in 1812. He has gained great credit for his device, because of an elaborate essay that he wrote on it in Paris under the title of The excellent qualities of coffee and the art of making it in the highest perfection, and that he caused to be published in London in 1812. It was a simple percolator pot ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... can't tell, but I think it happens about once a year, and I dare say it's a statistical mystery—the averages must be kept right, and my mind is not to blame—no free will in the matter. This brings me to an essay in one of the magazines for August—I forget which—on the statistics of prayer. Not a nice name (perhaps it's not correct, but nearly so), and not a nice article, it seemed to me—but I only glanced at it; produced, like many other ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... caricatures and doggerel rhymes, his love of flowers and nature, his hospitalities, and his joy in getting his friends to meet and know and like each other. Though he made no mark at Woolwich he did carry off the prize for the best essay on the South African War. With it he made his first appearance in print, for it was printed in the R.M.A. Magazine. While he was at Woolwich the family circle was enlarged by the arrival of a cousin from Australia, and she and Donald became the greatest of friends. She ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... English tradition is still dominant. When we look to France for an exemplar we may find a model of value, but when we copy an Englishman we are but echoing our own faults. "The truth is," said Mr. Lowell in his memorable essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners—"the truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as we have ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... extent and severity as the summer advances, and promising to become, in the autumn, the greatest season of disease that England has known for this century. Dr. Macculloch attributes this alarming increase to malaria, on the production and propagation of which he has recently published an essay, the leading argument of which is, "that as the quantity of the poison which any person can inspire is necessarily small, and as this small quantity can be produced by a small marshy spot as well as a large ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various

... the writers severely to task for indulging in rhetoric and futile scintillations, instead of occupying themselves with the real exigencies of life. In the same year, Abraham Jacob Paperna published his essay in literary criticism, and the young Smolenskin, in an article appearing at Odessa, attacked Letteris for his artificial, insincere translation of Goethe's Faust into Hebrew. On all sides there blew a fresh breath of realism, and the critical spirit ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... he washed the feet of the Brahmins; he was persecuted, and finally slain, being crucified. He went down into hell, rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven (see "Asiatic Researches," vol. i.; on "The Gods of Greece, Italy, and India," by Sir William Jones, an essay which, though very imperfect, has much in it that is highly instructive). He is pictorially represented as standing on the serpent, the type of evil; his foot crushes its head, while the fang of the serpent pierces his heel; also, with a halo round his ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... in which I had indulged, and the peculiarly vacant condition of my mind, made the time favorable for expansion upon the theme which had occurred to me; and so I inflicted on the poor boy a long letter, or sermon, or essay, or whatever you may please to call it, which ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"

... many strong natures, a share of pity for the objects she despised, did not cast him out. A jerk in his gait, owing to the bit of lead Mrs. Mel had dropped into him, and a little, perhaps, to her self-satisfied essay in surgical science on his person, earned him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... would shiver the Union to fragments. The sovereignty of the people or true democracy, like the elements of fire and water, is a gentle and a genial thing, when the hand of representative government rests kindly upon it, but if that hand dares to essay a wrong, then will the power of the people become like the burning lava of the volcano, when its pent-up fires escape, or the resistless waves of the ocean, when the storm moves over its depths. The courts may guide and direct and check the popular will, but when a great political idea, ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... five pounds, April 26, 1669—two years, less one day, since the signature of the original contract. The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been entirely sold. It was by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, and was contained in a little Latin essay appended to ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... have supplied a prologue for the revival of the piece, bore out Beccari's claim when he wrote in his essay on tragi-comedy: 'First among the moderns to possess the happy boldness to make in this kind, namely the pastoral dramatic tale, of which there is no trace among the ancients, was Agostin de' Beccari, a worthy citizen ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... supposed acquiescence in these more derogatory etymologies, we feel that it would be improper and premature at this stage to attempt the solution of so important a question as that at which we have thus glanced, and of which the elaborate discussion may form one of the earliest subjects for a prize essay to be proposed by the Club, and will doubtless fill many a learned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... one night and bored him with a dreary recital of the prominence of his house in College politics, of the stump speeches that a former brother, now a historical personage, had made in Mayfield for prohibition, to say nothing of the essay prizes in philology that another ancient Phi had won in the dim past, when the chapter must have been more prominent than at present. In comparison with this record, the Rhos were numbskulls, dwelling in an amplified smoking-room, Walt must admit; their control of the Eleven and of the ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... essay on the causes of former changes of climate,* (* Hopkins, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 8 1852 page 56.) has attempted to calculate how much the annual temperature of Europe would be lowered if this Gulf Stream were ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... translation appeared at Brussels by "F. A. S. Chartreux, a Bruxelles." In 1642 a second French translation was published at Troyes, by "R. P. Francois Bouillon, de l'Ordre de S. Francois, et Bachelier de Theologie." Mr. Thomas Wright in his "Essay on St. Patrick's Purgatory," London, 1844, makes the singular mistake of supposing that Bouillon's "Histoire de la Vie et Purgatoire de S. Patrice" was founded on the drama of Calderon, it being simply a translation of Montalvan's "Vida y Purgatorio," from which, like itself, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... easier than to obtain one for the young baronet; and though Mr. Belamour did not depend on his own health enough to accept anything, he was quite willing to join the party, and to spend a little time abroad, while his nephew was growing somewhat older, making an essay of his talents, and at any rate putting off the commencement of stagnation. Thus matters settled themselves, the only disappointed member of the family being Mrs. Arden, who thought it very hard that she could not stir any one up to request an appointment ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... grounds for anticipating," he says, "that a solid universal peace and the impetus given by Europe must together cause such rapid intellectual expansion that India will now be carried swiftly through phases which have occupied long stages in the lifetime of other nations."[4] In another essay, in a more positive mood, he writes of British responsibility for "great non-Christian populations [in India] whose religious ideas and institutions are being rapidly transformed by English law and morality."[5] In a third passage he ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... criticism of Spencer in my work Aristocracy and Evolution. On that occasion Mr. Spencer wrote to me, complaining with much vehemence that I had misrepresented him; and he repeated the substance of his letter in a subsequent published essay. My criticism dealt, and could have dealt only, not with what he meant, but what he said; and certainly in his language—and, as I think, in his own mind—there was a constant confusion between the two truths in question. Apart, however, from what he considered ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... him that he need not discomfort himself for my sake, and he bounded forth bareheaded, with a yell of exultation. On the road we had a long and somewhat warm discussion on suicide, which was started by an essay of Montaigne's he happened to be reading. Every now and again he pulled the book from his pocket and read me extracts, until it was too dark to see; even then he once struck a ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema

... involves the moral certainty that Mexico and Cuba will in time be overrun, conquered, absorbed, and devoted to Slavery, by the martial, aggressive, ambitious despotism to 'which we shall have succumbed. Read Prof. Cairnes's recent essay on 'The Slave Power,' and you will have a clearer idea of the wolf we now hold by the ears, and which is far less dangerous while so held than he must ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... they were not excusable? May not 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

... (unless we wish to go to work) Some other business we must early find. What shall it be? The field of usefulness Is yearly narrowing with the advance Of wealth and population on this coast. There's little left that any man can do Without some other fellow stepping in And doing it as well. If one essay To pick a pocket he is sure to feel (With what disgust I need not say to you) Another hand inserted in the same. You crack a crib at dead of night, and lo! As you explore the dining-room for plate You find, in session there, a graceless band Stuffing their coats with spoons, their skins ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... granted, that a Christian is not bound to believe any Thing to have been of Divine Institution, that has not been declared to be such in Holy Writ. Yet great Offence has been taken at an Essay, in the First Part of the Fable of the Bees, call'd An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue; notwithstanding the great Caution it is wrote with. Since then, it is thought Criminal to surmise, that even Heathen ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... entered the room. He had forgotten her, forgotten all about her. As she came in he made a quick, courteous movement to rise—too quick; for a sharp pain shot through his breast, and he grew pale about the lips. But he made essay ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the rein in haste Because a chasm doth yawn across his way Too wide for leaping, and too steeply faced For climber to essay...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... of hyponia man thinks divine thoughts, views all things as they really are, and, finally, "becomes recipient of the Soul of the World," to use one of the finest expressions of Emerson. "I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay on the Oversoul." Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy cultivated every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or "ceremonial ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... charges Plato with gross misrepresentation. His portraits of them are denounced as mere caricatures, prompted by a spirit of antagonism; all antiquity is presumed to have been misled by him. No one, however, can read Grant's "Essay on the History of Moral Philosophy in Greece"[905] without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete and unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... adopted in the present essay as to the date of the Synoptic Gospels may seem over-conservative to those who accept the ably-argued conclusions of "Supernatural Religion." Quite possibly in a more detailed discussion these briefly-indicated ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... and sincerity. She started at once to write up the parade. She should be careful, of course, not to mention the major's name, or her own (her father never did) and she hoped she could at least make a good composition or essay on Memorial Day. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... the minutest pores and veins and fissures and lines of separation of the rocks, then suddenly freezes, and bursts asunder huge, and apparently solid blocks of adamantine stone. [Footnote: Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock, and he thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know that the stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble. Nevertheless, the people of that country do not quarry the said stones in winter, for that they be subject to frost; and many times ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... a little, but only a little, concerning our master, Mr. Wilson. At the last examination I had, in compliance with the request of one of the clergymen, read aloud a metrical composition of my own, sent in by way of essay on the given subject, Patriotism, and after this he had shown me a great increase of favour. Perhaps he recognized in me some germ of a literary faculty—I cannot tell: it has never come to much if he did, and he must be greatly disappointed in me, seeing I labour not in ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... coxcomb, or the involuntary arrest of his footsteps, which marks the man who is deeply moved; in a word, you see upon the stoop certain questions as clearly proposed to you as if a provincial academy had offered a hundred crowns for an essay; but in the exit you behold the solution of these questions clearly and precisely given to you. Our task would be far above the power of human intelligence if it consisted in enumerating the different ways by which men betray their feelings, the discernment of such things ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... already conceived, and waits only the removal of the gauze-like partition, to be able, with greater certainty of effect, to guide its instruments of destruction. "Hear," says Mr Ferguson, in his essay on this subject, "hear the peasants on different sides of the Alps, and the Pyrenees, the Rhyne, or the British channel, give vent to their prejudices and national passions; it is among them that we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... outside he had made a brief essay in the prize-ring, not without some success. He had been driven out, however, by an epithet spontaneously applied by ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... Thus in wrath Idas reviled him, and the strife would have gone further had not their comrades and Aeson's son himself with indignant cry restrained the contending chiefs; and Orpheus lifted his lyre in his left hand and made essay to sing. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... which I had been attached for a short time, made her first and last essay while I was on special duty at Wilmington. Having crossed New Inlet Bar early one morning, she steamed at her best speed towards the blockading-fleet, which kept beyond the range of her guns with much ease. After "raising ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson



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