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More "Delineation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its inmates, have brought them much under the notice of the officers and ladies of the garrison. She has no occasion to present the Indian in a theatrical garb—a mere thing of paint and feathers, less like the original than his own rude delineation on birch-bark or deer-skin. The reader will find in the following pages living men and women, whose feelings are in many respects like his own, and whose motives of action are very similar to those of the rest of ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... palace at Dur-Sargina, must bear the date of 600 B.C. The hero is supposed to be a solar personification, and the epic is interesting to modern writers not only on account of its description of the Deluge, but also for the pomp and dignity of its style, and for its noble delineation ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... to book forty-five, both inclusive. Of the other hundred and five books, nothing more has survived the ravages of time and barbarians than their general contents. In a perspicuous arrangement of his subject, in a full and circumstantial account of transactions, in the delineation of characters and other objects of description, to justness and aptitude of sentiment, and in an air of majesty (162) pervading the whole composition, this author may be regarded as one of the best models extant of historical narrative. His style is splendid ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... good merit and comprise some excellent descriptions of forest and clearing, and a clever delineation of the passions which actuate humanity in the rough.... The stories, eleven in all, deal with love and life and religion in many aspects, and as character studies of the simple Canadian peasantry, French and English, can compare favorably with similar selections in which Scotch, Welsh and Irish ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... read it to her mother whenever a spare hour enabled her to run home. Biddy had been greatly interested in the appeals and arguments of her talented countryman, and deeply impressed by his life-like delineation of the follies and superstitions of the ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... earthy. She is an angel as well as a woman; yet the height of her meditations does not interfere with, but rather aids her performance of the homeliest human duties; and the moral beauty of her nature lends a peculiar grace to her humblest ministries to human affections and needs. The vivid delineation of this character, from her childhood to her death, we cannot but rank among Mrs. Stowe's best claims to be considered a woman of true ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... compendium of the facts of Goldsmith's life, and so careful and minute a delineation of the mixed traits of his peculiar character as to be a very model of a ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... hazarded with very great diffidence. In England we know very little of the United States, and, however candid the intentions of a tourist may be, it is difficult in a short residence in the country so completely to throw off certain prejudices and misapprehensions as to proceed to the delineation of its social characteristics with any degree of fairness and accuracy. The similarity of language, and to a great extent of customs and manners, renders one prone rather to enter into continual comparisons of America with England than to look at her from the point from which she really ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... there was a brief moment when Egypt appeared to be, quite unknowingly, on the verge of an attempted reconquest of her lost province. There was a misunderstanding with Turkey regarding the delineation of the Syrio-Sinaitic frontier; and, immediately, the Egyptian Government took strong action and insisted that the question should be settled. Had there been bloodshed the seat of hostilities would have been Syria; and supposing that Egypt had been victorious, she would have pushed the opposing ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... The work is written with considerable strength of delineation; although his accounts are not quite safe authority for the character of his enemies. His words he spelled after a provincial pronunciation: thus, describing the crew of the Sydney, he writes, instead of Sepoys and Lascars, "Saypies ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... invent and improve everything; and a play could have had its natural length then. It would not have been necessary to crowd the whole history of Macbeth, from his youth to his old age, into an absurd epitome of three hours. One cannot trace a touch of real human nature in any actor's delineation of that very interesting Scotchman, because the actor always comes on the stage as if he were the same age when he murdered Duncan, and when, in his sear and yellow leaf, he was ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... few remarks on the work of which I now present a new translation to the English public, a work intended by its author "to embrace a summary of physical knowledge, as connected with a delineation of the material universe." ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... it is presumed, will not form his opinion of the bibliomaniacal taste of this great man, from the distorted and shameful delineation of his character, which, as a matter of curiosity only, is inserted at p. 237, ante. He will, on the contrary, look upon Cecil as a lover of books, not for the sake of the numerous panegyrical dedications to himself, which he must have so satisfactorily perused, but for the sake of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... reflection, an extensive knowledge of history, and accurate acquaintance with human nature, seems to be wholly influenced by his own wishes and his own conception of what the exigencies of the moment require. It would not be difficult, I think, and perhaps I may hereafter attempt to apply this delineation of his disposition to the events of his life, and to show how the leading idea in his mind has been the constant guide which he has followed, sometimes to the detriment of the best interests of the country and sometimes to that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... engaged the sculptor's attention, the body and members being omitted entirely, or else roughly blocked out; as, for instance, in the case of the squirrel given above, in which the hind parts are simply rounded off into convenient shape, with no attempt at their delineation. Somewhat the same method was evidently followed in the case of the supposed manatees, only after the pipe cavities had been excavated the block was shaped off in a manner best suited to serve the purpose of a handle. Without, however, attempting to institute ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... elaborate than usual, for there were several guests present. Since the host was a Prince, the birds presented were served whole; had both he and his guests been commoners, they would have been "chopped on gobbets." More interesting than any fictitious delineation on my part will be a genuine menu of the period, "The purveyance made for King Richard, being with the Duke of Lancaster at the Bishop's Palace of Durham at London," of course accompanied by their suites. That the suites were of no small size we gather from the provision ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Ireland was introduced in the upper house on the 21st of March by Lord Roden, who moved for a select committee of inquiry into the state of Ireland since 1835, with respect to the commission of crime. His lordship, indeed, adopted the most inculpatory view of the question, and every circumstance in his delineation of the matter—the deeply-rooted ribbon conspiracy; the unredressed grievances of the persecuted Protestants at Achill, and the general insecurity of life and property, were, in his opinion, either created by the conduct of Lord Normanby, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ourselves to bear. Little can any, who do not endure it, imagine of the life to which those who share the contests of an agitated and distracted country are doomed; but if they know not our griefs, neither can they dream of our consolation. We move like the delineation of Faith, over a barren and desert soil; the rock, and the thorn, and the stings of the adder, are round our feet; but we clasp a crucifix to our hearts for our comfort, and we fix our eyes upon the heavens ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... researches at home, the attention of the great astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope was chiefly directed to the measurement of the relative positions and distances apart of the double stars, and to the close examination of the nebulae. In the delineation of the form of these latter objects Herschel found ample employment for his skilful pencil. Many of the drawings he has made of the celestial wonders in the southern sky are admirable ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... from first to last, enlist the sympathies of the reader by its simplicity of style and fresh, genuine feeling.... The author is au fait at the delineation of character."—Boston Transcript. ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... inimitable remarks about the setting up for the philosopher, and supper being a turnpike to bed! This art of the biographer is what gives a memorableness to slight incidents, by the object being real and really seen; it is the 'infinitude of delineation, the intensity of conception which informs the Finite with a certain Infinitude of significance, ennobling the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... at all, by rendering that tribunal more numerous than would consist with a reasonable attention to economy. The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the proceeding. This can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors, or in the construction of it by the judges, as in common cases serve to limit the discretion of courts in favor of personal security. There will be no jury to stand between the judges ...
— The Federalist Papers
... incident. In Paradise Regained there are only two personages, both of whom are supernatural. Indeed, they can scarcely be called personages; the poet, in his fidelity to the letter, not having thought fit to open up the fertile vein of delineation which was afforded by the human character of Christ. The speakers are no more than the abstract principles of good and evil, two voices who hold a rhetorical disputation through four books and two ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... from the spirit with which they were written. In the first of the two, which he addressed to Sillar, he discovered and disclosed for the first time the distinctive individuality of his genius. It was a charming and touching piece of writing; charming as a delineation of his character, and touching as a confession of his creed,—the patient philosophy of the poor. As his social horizon was enlarged, his mental vision was sharpened; and before long, other interests than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... perplexing question, has baffled all human wisdom. Either some radical defect must have existed, in the measures devised for its removal, or the time has not yet come for successfully assailing the institution. Our work is completed, in the delineation we have given of its varied relations to our agricultural, commercial, and social interests. As the monopoly of the culture of cotton, imparts to slavery its economical value, the system will continue as long as this monopoly ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... descriptive power; and while as works of art they are far inferior to the Greek epics, in some respects they appeal far more strongly to the romantic mind of europe, namely, by the loving appreciation of natural beauty, their exquisite delineation of womanly love and devotion, and their tender sentiment ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... flow of poetical language he has substituted, even in his best performances, a style which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh, elaborate and abrupt; often strained into unnatural energy or condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of dramatic character. In his Filippo he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura verba, of the modern Tiberius. In Polinice, the characters of the rival brothers are beautifully contrasted; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the journey which you took with Dr. Samuel Johnson to the Western Isles, I take the liberty of transmitting my ideas of the conversation which happened between the doctor and myself concerning Lexicography and Poetry, which, as it is a little different from the delineation exhibited in the former edition of your Journal, cannot, I hope, be unacceptable; particularly since I have been informed that a second edition of that work is now in contemplation, if not in execution: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... literature of the age and especially in the best poetry, beginning already with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and continued in Tennyson and Browning. It is the inner life of man as depicted to us by these master singers, the story of the soul, even more than the delineation of nature which appeals to man's deepest experience and evokes his finest response. We see it in the art of our times, which, not content to be a mere expression of sensuous beauty or lifeless nature, seeks to be instinct ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... lays down this river, but without naming it. Mr Coxe does neither. Both of them specify Bristol Bay. Mr A.'s delineation of the coast of the peninsular projection, corresponds extremely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... at Uncle Remus's graphic delineation of the astonishment and admiration of the passers-by. The old man raised his head, stretched his eyes, and seemed to be looking over his spectacles right at Brother ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... great in the delineation of ideal female characters. The heroic ardour of Antigone, and the no less heroic persistence and endurance of Electra, are both founded on the strength of their affection. And the affection in both ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... accurate sketches of the mountains, rivers, lava-fjelds, geysers, people, and costumes. In nothing is Iceland so deficient as in pictorial representation. It has been very minutely surveyed by the Danes, and Olsen has left nothing to wish for in the way of topographical delineation, but artists do not seem to have found it an attractive field for the exercise of their talent. At least I could obtain no good pictures of Iceland in Copenhagen. The few indifferent sketches published there, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... find in Professor Whitney's Second Lecture? He objects, like myself, to comparing the growth of language and the growth of a tree, and like myself, he admits of an excuse, viz., when the metaphor is employed for the sake of brevity or liveliness of delineation (p.35). Ihad said:— ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly seeing eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it—is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true beginning, the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... such as the actual Athens of the day, might secure its pre-eminence, or its very existence. Close always, by the concrete turn of his genius, to the facts of the place and the hour, his first thought is to suggest a remedy for the peculiar evils of the Athenians at that moment; and in his delineation of the ideal state he does but elevate what Athens in particular, a ship so early going to pieces, might well be forced to become for her salvation, were [238] it still possible, into the eternal type of ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... this time I had composed nothing except several more or less high-falutin' essays, a few poems and one or two stories somewhat in imitation of Hawthorne, but in this my first real shot at the delineation of prairie life, I had no models. Perhaps this clear field helped me to be true. It was not fiction, as I had no intention at that time of becoming a fictionist, but it was fact, for it included the mud and cold of the landscape as well as its bloom ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the whole trend to the life of the open recognise that the Indian had developed a technique of wilderness life deserving of preservation for its value to the white man. While as for the Esquimaux, the author never sees the extraordinary prevalence amongst them of the art of graphic delineation displayed in bold etchings of incidents of the chase upon their implements and weapons (though not upon the articles made by the dozen for the curio-venders at Nome and Saint Michael) without dreaming that some day an artist will come from out that singular and most interesting people ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... least is must be settled whether or not it is the only element involved. If in a work of art, as we believe, what belongs to its excellence belongs to its beauty, we may not applaud one painter, for instance, for his marvelous color-schemes, another for his expression of emotion, another for his delineation of character, without acknowledging that expression of character and emotion come within our concept of visible beauty. Franz von Lenbach was once asked what he thought likely to be the fate of his own work. "As ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... stops abruptly, pushes back his chair, and dashes across the room to the cupboard. He takes the black bottle from the shelf, applies it to his lips, and remains for some time motionless. He then returns to finish the delineation of ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... beautiful delineation the cxix Psalm is, of this wonderful prototype delivered by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. The Commandments are rehearsed twenty-two times. The Law twenty-three. The Testimony twenty-three. The Statutes twenty-one. The Precepts twenty-two. ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... individual thought. This phase prevailed under different manifestations in Assyria and China. Pictorial art had, in fact, become merely the nursing mother of the alphabet, guiding its first steps—the hieroglyphic delineation or expression ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the sideboard was a large and elaborate piece of needlework, a perfect maze of doors and windows in green and red worsted, with a gigantic bird on either side preparing to alight. This was the work of the eldest daughter, and purported, in words at the bottom, to be an accurate delineation of Solomon's Temple. Close by stood a clock, tall and stately in its case, the hands of the brightest brass, over which appeared the moving face of a good-tempered looking moon. Then, on the next ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... churches or galleries of Italy I see St. Lawrence frying on his gridiron, or St. Sebastian pierced through with many arrows, or the Innocents being massacred in unpleasant detail, or hell being represented with Dantesque minuteness and particularity of delineation, I say to myself, with an internal ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... himself and found the acquaintance of interest at times. The faithfully reproduced atmosphere of Barnesville had almost a literary colour. Occasionally, though not frequently, he encouraged delineation of Jenny and Tom Scott and Thacker and "the boys." He had even inhaled at a distance vague ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is well told, the interest warmly sustained throughout, and the delineation of female character is marked by a delicate sense of moral beauty. It is a work that may be confided to the hands of a daughter by ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... among our few successful writers of interesting magazine stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the delineation of her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of local life.—Jewish ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... self-libelling would carry him. It seemed as if, with the power of painting fierce and gloomy personages, he had also the ambition to be himself the dark 'sublime he drew,' and that, in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeavored to fancy, where he could not find in his own character, fit subjects for ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in France as a remarkable "impressionist" and praised by the critics for the realistic accuracy and minuteness of his delineation. Kipling frankly acknowledged the great debt that he owed him. Tennyson spoke in high praise of his finesse in the choice of words, his feeling for the just word to catch and, as it were, visualize the precise shade ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... no further inducement to exercise her really considerable powers of verbal delineation. Charging her palette with lively colours, she sprang to the task—and that with a sprightly composure and deftness of touch which went far to cloak malice and rob ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... day of March. She was born in 1824, the daughter of the Rev. Patrick Bronte of Haworth in Yorkshire. In June, 1854, she married her father's curate, the Rev. Archer Bell Nicholls. Under the pseudonym of Currer Bell she published several novels, in which she displayed great power in the delineation of character. The most important of these were "Shirley," "Villette" and the celebrated "Jane Eyre." At the same time her sister, Emily Jane, who published under the name of Ellis Bell, won fame by her novel "Wuthering Heights." She ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... I wanted to see, or one that I most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,—equal to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity, and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius, in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish drama, "Dyveke," or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... was displayed in the powerful delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human passions. His personages seem to be real—living and breathing before us. So, too, with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Where delineation of human character is concerned, the case is different. I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates. My sister's disposition was not naturally ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... astonishing than Dickens's, less fertile, spontaneous, and inventive; but his art is sounder, and his delineation of character more truthful. After one has formed a taste for his books, Dickens's sentiment will seem overdone, and much of his humor will have the air of buffoonery. Thackeray had the advantage in another ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the Natural Beauty of a country, but may contend that this is beyond the province of Geography. It should be left to poets and painters, he might say, and geographers should confine themselves to the more prosaic business of exact measurement, of accurate delineation, of reasoning regarding the relation of the facts to one another, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... this author, it appears to us, bear very distinctly the impression of an amiable mind, a cultivated fancy, and a perverted taste. His genius seems naturally to delight in the representation of domestic virtues and pleasures, and the brilliant delineation of external nature. In both these departments, he is frequently very successful; but he seems to want vigour for the loftier flights of poetry. He is often puerile, diffuse, and artificial, and seems to have but little acquaintance with those chaster and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... — N. representation, representment^; imitation &c 19; illustration, delineation, depictment^; imagery, portraiture, iconography; design, designing; art, fine arts; painting &c 556; sculpture &c 557; engraving &c 558; photography, cinematography; radiography, autoradiography ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is a novel in every sense, the first of its kind, called by its admirers the only delineation of modern society,—as if other novels, those of Scott, for example, dealt with costume and condition, this with the spirit of life. It is a book over which some veil is still drawn. It is read by very intelligent persons with wonder and delight. It is preferred by some ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... minutely the religious tenets of travellers who visited the temple, and thus familiarized herself with all existing creeds and hierarchies. The lore so carefully garnered is finally analyzed, classified, and inscribed on papyrus. The delineation of scenes and sanctuaries in different latitudes, from Lhasa to Copan, gave full exercise to Edna's descriptive power, but imposed much labor in the departments of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... remarkable happening was being faithfully recorded upon the rapidly shifting thousand feet of film in the hopper of the machine, to later on astonish gaping crowds with a faithful delineation of the perils attending the ordinary life ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... his delineation of the Duchess. He had to paint a woman in a hazardous situation: a sovereign stooping in her widowhood to wed a servant; a lady living with the mystery of this unequal marriage round her like a veil. He dowered her with no salient ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales which they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt, in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "The Two Elves," says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found their ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... acknowledged a classic; it is indubitably the most entertaining, in Some respects the most valuable, work of its kind in the English language, Regarded as a series of pictures of the society of the time, the Diary is unsurpassed for vivid Colouring and truthful delineation. As such alone it would possess a strong claim upon our attention, but how largely is our interest increased, when we find that the figures which fill the most prominent positions in the foreground ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... is a valuable delineation of society when set free from moral influence, and proves how little simple coercion can check a general disposition to crime. So rare was reformation, that a single instance is mentioned with triumph: among the few who redeemed that settlement from utter ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... In the delineation of war scenes Captain King's style is crisp and vigorous, inspiring in the breast of the reader a thrill of genuine patriotic ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... things, is, when joined to a feeling heart, the surest guide to him who would describe natural truth, whether of the souls of men or of material forms. The realists of art may not be so well satisfied with a composition, as with the delineation, line by line, and point by point, of a scene in nature; yet the more comprehensive critic will own that universality will gain by the composition far more than local identity can lose. By his imaginative skill, Church has portrayed in two or three pictures those characteristics of scenery ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... to the watch-house scene, and that in the police office, together with the delineation of the. "Old Charlies," as the guardians of the night were then called; to which I may add the portraits of the two magistrates; I can confidently refer to thousands now alive for their truth. Those matters took place long before ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... could, but the call would not come for the calling. Mrs Brandon got it very soon, though she strenuously denied the honour. My good nurse was in the family-way, and Mr Cate had frightened her into fits, with a vivid delineation of the agonies of a new-born infant, under the torture of eternal fire, because it had died unelected. However, Brandon began a little to weary of waiting and long prayer, and perhaps of the now too frequent visits of Mr Cate. He commenced ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of erratic assays, a preliminary study of the runs of value or shapes of the ore-bodies is necessary before any calculation of averages. A preliminary delineation of the boundaries of the payable areas on the assay plan will indicate the sections of the mine which are unpayable, and from which therefore samples can be rightly excluded in arriving at an average of the payable ore (Fig. 1). In a general way, only the ore which must be mined ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... gods. At the end of this period theosophy invented the god of the golden germ, the great Person (known also by other titles), who is the one (pantheistic) god, in whom all things are contained, and who himself is contain in even the smallest thing. The Atharvan transfers the same idea in its delineation of the pantheistic image to Varuna, that Varuna who is the seas and yet is contained "in the drop of water" (iv. 16), a Varuna as different to the Varuna of the Rik as is the Atharvan Indra to his older prototype. Philosophically the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... of the photographic delineation. Theoretically, a perfect photograph is absolutely inexhaustible. In a picture you can find nothing which the artist has not seen before you; but in a perfect photograph there will be as many beauties lurking, unobserved, as there are flowers that blush unseen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Keeley, who was fooling them to the top of their bent, accoutred from top to toe as Mynheer Punch the Great, while his clever little wife—who, by the way, possesses, I think, more of the "vis comica" than any actress of the day—caused sides to shake and eyes to water by her naive and humorous delineation of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... The delineation of that Promethean fortitude which defied conscience, as he has shown it in Manfred, is his greatest achievement. The terrific fables of Marlowe and of Goethe, in their respective versions of the legend of Faustus, had disclosed the utmost writhings ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... things according to our wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the mind "which ecstacy is very cunning in." Neither a mere description of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, without the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews us the object, throws a sparkling radiance on ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... were a faithful, loving, and yet critical, and in part condemnatory, delineation of Jeremy Bentham, and his place and working in this section of the world's history. Bentham will not be put down by logic, and should not be put down, for we need him greatly as a backwoodsman: neither can reconciliation be effected till the one party ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... is remarked that we find mention made of this contrivance both in Homer's "Hymn to Mercury," and in the "Argonautics" of Apollonius Rhodius. The scholiast of the latter gives a description of the process, which exactly answers to the Mexican delineation. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... inconsistency of so much wisdom with so much folly, does not perhaps correspond exactly to the ideas of our author. The commentator Warburton makes the character of Polonius, a character only of manners, discriminated by properties superficial, accidental, and acquired. The poet intended a nobler delineation of a mixed character of manners and of nature. Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observations, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... study of handwriting would be complete unless it recognised that phase of it which touches on the delineation of character by ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... certain delicacy it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have been so near to him. One's mother, for instance: suppose some of her little ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would furnish amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility would draw her portrait, with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be generally recognized. One's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... souls should have counted it little short of treason to extract anything like fun from an episode which for us, in the day of it, was full of very solemn mortification. In this sketch, as indeed all through his works, it is in the delineation of individual character—in the analysis of motives—that Hawthorne's peculiar and amazing power is especially manifest, intermingled withal with a certain droll self-distrust and deprecation of adverse criticism, to which he has here given expression in a series of foot-notes, ostensibly from ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation. IRIS. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... humorous,—with the plot subordinate to the character delineation of its quaint people and to the exquisite descriptions of picturesque spots and of lovely, old, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... would tell us that the Beautiful is that which is agreeable to the senses of sight and hearing. They would admire, in painting, the delineation of naked flesh, luxuriant as it glows upon the canvas of Vandyke and Rubens; in statuary, they would seek voluptuous and sensual positions; while in music, they would love that which titillates the ear, which lulls them into an indolent yet delicious languor. Such men are the dwellers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Astronomy. Gunnery. History. Fortification. Navigation. Encamping. Decimal arithmetic. Intrenching. Trigonometry. Approaching. Dialing. Attacking. Gauging. Delineation. Mining. Architecture. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... young poet are so exceptional, and such interesting objects of study, that a narrative like this can well afford to linger awhile in the delineation of this most envied of all the forms of genius. And by contrasting the powers and limitations of two such young persons as Gifted Hopkins and Cyprian Eveleth, we may better appreciate the nature of that divine inspiration which gives to poetry the superiority it ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the poet says he can incite men to love, which is the most important fact among every kind of animal, the painter can do the same, all the more so because he presents the lover with the image of his beloved; and the lover often does with it what he would not do with the writer's delineation of the same charms, i.e. talk with it and kiss it; so great is the painter's influence on the minds of men that he incites them to love and {79} become enamoured of a picture which does not represent any ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... monstrous in his triumphs or more tragic in his fall. Everything connected with his strange career was distorted, exaggerated, seemingly out of all proportion to the familiarities, the conventionalities, and even the possibilities of existence. As the ancient Greeks, in their sculpture, for the delineation of their gods permitted themselves the use of the heroic size and made their immortals and their demi-gods more than common tall, and more than common comely, so might the modern historian seem privileged in the use of a superlative style in dealing with a life so phenomenal, so ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Israel the Lord came in person, and to them the apostles addressed their Lord's words at the beginning of their ministry. The history of the event in the Acts of the Apostles corresponds exactly with the prophetic delineation in this parable: it was when the Jews rejected the Gospel, that the messengers turned ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to object to this striking delineation a want of historical correctness, inasmuch as the animating principle of the true chivalrous character was the sense of honour, not the mere regard to, or saving of, appearances. This, we think, must be an hypercriticism, from all we remember of books ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... is so imperfect in its delineation of habitual conduct liable to another construction, that the agitated Flowerpot returns, with quick indignation, "your arm was always reaching out whenever you sat in a chair anywhere near me, and whenever I sang you always kept looking straight ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... cause of evil in others; the passion which leads to murder rouses the fiercer passion which aches for vengeance; and at last, when the avengers of crime have become morally as bad as the criminals, they are all involved in a common destruction. Vittoria is probably Webster's most powerful delineation. Bold, bad, proud, glittering in her baleful beauty, strong in that evil courage which shrinks from crime as little as from danger, she meets her murderers with the same self-reliant scorn with which she met her judges. "Kill her attendant first," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... which prompted Raphael's fondness for lovely women and happy children shows itself also in his delineation of angels. The archangel Michael, the angel visitors of Abraham, and the celestial spirits appearing to Heliodorus all follow closely upon the Madonnas in the purity and serenity of their beauty. In the same fellowship also belongs the beautiful youth ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... produce drawings on which any reliance can be placed. The drawing of a ratchet-tooth lever escapement of eight and one-half degrees pallet action will now be resumed. In the drawing at Fig. 18 is shown a complete delineation of such an escapement with eight and one-half degrees of pallet action and equidistant locking faces. It is, of course, understood the escape wheel is to be drawn ten inches in diameter, and that the degree arcs shown in Fig. 1 will ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... from thought," if "the burden of the action is too heavy for him to bear," if "by a calculating consideration he exhausts all possible issues of the action," it should at least be continually present to his mind. We should look for the delineation of a soul harassed and haunted by one idea; torn by the conflict between conscience and filial obedience; or balancing advantage and peril in an agony of suspense and vacillation; forecasting consequence and result ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... trimming the hair varies in a great degree, and an enemy may by this means be discovered at a considerable distance." "The Pueblos generally, when accurate and particular in delineation [pictographs], designate the women of that tribe by a huge coil of hair over either ear. This custom prevails also among the Coyotero Apaches, the woman wearing the hair in coil to denote a virgin or an unmarried person, while the coil is absent in the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Sackford, in procuring the Charts of the seuerall prouinces of this realme to be set foorth, we are in hope that in time he will delineate this whole land so perfectlie, as shall be comparable or beyond anie delineation heretofore made of anie other region; and therefore leaue that to his well deserued praise. If any well willer will imitate him in so praiseworthie a worke for the two other regions, we will be glad to further his endeuour with ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... short time, at a window in a dark day, as in Exp. 2. Sect. III. and then closing your eyes, and covering them with your hands, an exact delineation of the window remains for some time visible in the eye. This experiment requires a little practice to make it succeed well; since, if the eyes are fatigued by looking too long on the window, or the day be too bright, the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the sense of a static, detailed delineation of various qualities of objects, has no place in the child's story, for it bores the child, who is very persistent in wanting the main theme uninterrupted. But description that has touches of movement and action or that lays emphasis on a single effect and has point, distinctly aids visualization, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... and philosophy, his vivid, interesting, contemporary history, which gives a broad and sympathetic delineation of important phases of western life and development, fill a place that American literature could ill ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... "Winter's Tale" have on the stage "few qualities to distinguish them from almost any of Beaumont and Fletcher's." It is difficult to discuss such generalizations with the temperance of criticism. They can be true only if Professor Thorndike's theory is correct,—that the delineation of character is solely for stage effect. There is another theory announced and recorded by Shakspere himself, and illustrated in every drama he wrote,—that the sole end and aim of the stage itself and of the characters ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... his father. Concerning the composition of "Die Entfuhrung," Mozart delivered himself at greater length and more explicitly than about any other opera. From the above excerpt one can learn his notions touching musical characterization and delineation. ["Turkish" music, or "Janizary" music, is that in which the percussion effects of Oriental music are imitated—music utilizing the large ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... foundation on which national character and institutions, for good or for evil, have been formed. Voltaire was of great service to history, by turning it from courts and camps to the progress of literature, science, and the arts—to the delineation of manners, and the preparation of anecdotes descriptive of character; but, notwithstanding all his talent, he never got a glimpse of the general causes which influence society. He gave us the history of philosophy, but not the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have based his account of French affairs at this important point upon so inaccurate and prejudiced a writer as Varillas. To be correct in his delineation of these transactions was almost as important for his object, as to be correct in the narration of purely English occurrences. If he desired to avoid the labor, from which he might well wish to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... took a long whiff at his pipe, and, receiving from his servant a small bag of fine sand, spread it smoothly on the floor, leaving the mass about a quarter of an inch in thickness. This was his black-board, designed to serve for the delineation of his journey. On the westernmost margin of his sand, he dotted a point with his finger for the starting at Timbo. As he proceeded with his track over Africa towards the grand capital, he marked the outlines of the principal territories, and spotted the remarkable towns through which ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... gratified at this, because the defects of this romancer are the besetting sins of certain of our own novelists, who had at one time a fair degree of transient popularity. A lack of skill in the creation or accurate delineation of individual character, which, instead of representing men and women, are didactic exhibitions of the author himself, projected into various personages, and all bearing an unmistakable family resemblance—this ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... although he published the portrait as late as 1854 he did not represent her as she then looked; indeed, at that time he had probably no intercourse with her, and therefore was obliged to draw from memory. The truthfulness of Heine's delineation is testified by the approval of many who knew George Sand, and also by ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... among the records of private and personal experience. More true knowledge of the spirit of an age, more real acquaintance with the feelings and actual circumstances of a people, may be gleaned from a delineation of the affairs of a single family, than from studied historical composition. The one is the expression of cotemporary and spontaneous feeling, and, although limited, is unquestionably genuine; the other is a deduction from knowledge, imperfect even when most extensive, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... freedom is imperious, and in whose shame is our glory, may be satisfied in that arrangement of the globe and its affairs; or may be even at present convinced of their degraded position in it by his method of its delineation. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... themes, and (with the exception of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson in his earlier plays, and perhaps Massinger) they handle these horrors with little or no moral purpose, save that of exciting and amusing the audience, and of displaying their own power of delineation in a way which makes one but too ready to believe the accusations of the Puritans (supported as they are by many ugly anecdotes) that the play-writers and actors were mostly men of fierce and reckless lives, who had but too practical an acquaintance ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... prominent among the causes, or, at the very least, among the signals of a great change in modern literature. The former directed men's attention with a new force to the picturesque effects of the Past; and the latter, for the first time, attempted the more accurate delineation of a class of feelings deeply important to modern minds, but for which our elder poetry offered no exponent, and perhaps could offer none, because they are feelings that arise from Passion incapable of being converted ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... masterly that these men stand forth as the spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at delineation are like ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of the Borgian Codex, which is in fact the lower part of the figure on plate 76, heretofore alluded to, although having reference to the underworld, appears to be in part a delineation of night. The large black figure probably represents night, the smaller star-like figures denoting stars, and the large one the night sun, or moon. The house in the lower right-hand corner, with the black lining, is the house of darkness. The wind symbol above ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... this work I shall give a brief delineation of the political movements of the last twelve or fourteen years, or at least of those events that came within my knowledge, which I believe will include almost every thing relating to reform and the public characters who have taken any part in promoting or retarding that desirable ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... occurs not only in propositions but also in the delineation of feeling, as, for instance, when feelings are ascribed to a character other than those which nature and the subject-matter demand. You will find this fault in an epigram by Vulteius, which was for ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... was of that common sort which renders delineation superfluous, received them with the customary forms of ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... self-delineation, which so strongly pervades his maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a school-boy, than what these fondly circumstantial effusions supply. Thus the sports ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... from experience of what he had seen, if the art of DRAWING had not been also carried to some excellence—although to PAINTING itself the poet makes none but dubious and obscure allusions. Still, if, on the one hand [178], in embroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of Achilles), delineation in its more complex and minute form was attempted,—and if, on the other hand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not only to garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had hitherto cradled herself. She called the three councils together to consult them on the means by which these disorders were to be remedied. The majority was in favor of sending an extraordinary ambassador to Spain, who by a circumstantial and vivid delineation should make the king acquainted with the true position of affairs, and if possible prevail on him to adopt efficient measures of reform. This proposition was opposed by Viglius, who, however, had not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... himself, or his readers, to consider how long the nations over whom our freedom is imperious, and in whose shame is our glory, may be satisfied in that arrangement of the globe and its affairs; or may be even at present convinced of their degraded position in it by his method of its delineation. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... distinguished audience before him, and of his reputation as an orator. From the beginning to the end it was elevated in tone, eloquent in the highest sense of that word, and warm in expression of his affection for the friend he eulogized. His delineation of Garfield as a soldier, an orator, and a man, in all the relations of life, was without exaggeration, but was tinged with his personal friendship and love. He described him on the 2nd of July, the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... psychological, or philosophical point of view. His address on that occasion was masterly, and his conversation at various social functions instructive and pithy. I remember in one of them, especially, his delineation of the characteristics and services of Leibnitz, who was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, and it was perfection in that kind of conversation which is worthy of men claiming to possess immortal souls: for it brought out, especially, examples of Leibnitz's amazing forethought as to ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... it with another drawing, both of which we have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. These "two perfect early drawings," he writes, "are of A Lemon Tree, and another of the same date, of A Byzantine Well, which determine for you without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any seen since Correggio's time. But you see by what precision of ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... the middle age, for the most part ignored by those writers who have treated it pre-eminently as the "Age of Faith"—this rebellious and antinomian element, the recognition of which has made the delineation of the middle age by the writers of the Romantic school in France, by Victor Hugo for instance in Notre-Dame de Paris, so suggestive and exciting, is found alike in the history of Abelard and the legend of Tannhaeuser. More and more, as we come to mark changes ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the reprint of an Irish story of exciting interest, which, by its powerful delineation of passion, its bright daguerreotypes of character, and the wild intensity of its plot, must become a favorite with the lovers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... there is no throb of heart in them.... These things, however, did not seem to affect her audience. They cheered her as if their hearts were really touched.... These, however, are but early impressions, and we shall be anxious to see her in still another delineation." ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... survives, by men, George Eliot's Romola being the only notable exception. The true representatives of female novelists are now the leaders of that school which confines itself to minute observation, whether of outward facts or inward feeling, and which is above all things devoted to the close delineation of contemporary society. The analysis of character within the range of ordinary experience, the play of civilised emotion, the vicissitudes of grief or joy in the parsonage, the ball-room, and the village, the troubled course of legitimate love-making, have all contributed the congenial ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... in examining and enumerating the various groups and clusters of stars which passed before his eye in the field of his powerful telescope, he did not fail to remember the sublime object of his life, and to which he made all his other investigations subordinate, viz., the delineation of the structural configuration of the heavens, and the inclusion of all aggregations, groups, clusters, and galaxies of stars which are apparently scattered promiscuously throughout the regions of space into one grand harmonious design of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... portraitures of the men and analysis of their lives and work, that will be vivid and picturesque, as well as accurate and faithful, and that will combine the authority of careful historic narration with the interest attaching to anecdote and personal delineation. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... feeling heart, the surest guide to him who would describe natural truth, whether of the souls of men or of material forms. The realists of art may not be so well satisfied with a composition, as with the delineation, line by line, and point by point, of a scene in nature; yet the more comprehensive critic will own that universality will gain by the composition far more than local identity can lose. By his imaginative skill, Church ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... are only two pictures, he says, in Milton; Adam bending over the sleeping Eve, and the entrance of Dalilah, like a ship under full sail. Certainly the above lines are no picture; but they are more exciting than any clear delineation could be; they are full of scent, and air, and the emotions of ease and bliss. The other passage has more of architectural quality in it, and describes what first met Satan's gaze, when he entered the Garden and sat, perched like ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... at La Pointe about the year 1800, and although the traditions given by Sikassig[)e] is similar to the one surviving at Red Lake, the diagram is an interesting variant for the reason that there is a greater amount of detail in the delineation of objects mentioned ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... no commentary. I may as well, however, bear witness, that exactly as the schoolboy still walks before her "mind's eye," his image rises familiarly to mine, who never saw him until he was past the middle of life: that I trace in every feature of her delineation the same gentleness of aspect and demeanor which the presence of the female sex, whether in silk or in russet, ever commanded in the man; and that her description of the change on his countenance when passing from the "doggie of the mill" to the dream of Paradise is a perfect picture of what ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to Babylon, to boast of having been the instrument through whom the generals were entrapped into the fatal tent, this boast is not to be treated as matter of fact. For not only does Xenophon explain the catastrophe differently, but in the delineation which he gives of Menon, dark and odious as it is in the extreme, he does not advance any such imputation; indirectly, indeed, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... faces concealed by hideous masks, and others enveloped in the cowls, through which only the eyes could be distinguished, the figure of the cross upon the breast, and under that emblem, of divine peace, inflicting such horrible tortures on their fellow-men that the pen shrinks from their delineation. Nor was it the mere instruments of torture Marie beheld: she saw them in actual use; she heard the shrieks and groans of the hapless victims, at times mingled with the brutal leers and jests of their fiendish tormentors; she seemed to take in at one view, every species of torture ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... long been a certain stubborn though planless diligence in digging for the outward details of Friedrich's Life-History; though as to organizing them, assorting them, or even putting labels on them; much more as to the least interpretation or human delineation of the man and his affairs,—you need not inquire in Prussia. In France, in England, it is still worse. There an immense ignorance prevails even as to the outward facts and phenomena of Friedrich's life; and instead of the Prussian no-interpretation, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... boy laughed loudly at Uncle Remus's graphic delineation of the astonishment and admiration of the passers-by. The old man raised his head, stretched his eyes, and seemed to be looking over his spectacles right at Brother ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... conclusion of the story, I daily received letters of remonstrance, especially from the ladies. God bless them for their tender mercies! The Professor was quite right when he said that I had not reached to an adequate delineation of their virtues; and I fear that I must go on blotting their characters in endeavouring to reach the ideal in my mind. These letters were, however, combined with others from the sterner sex, and some of them were not altogether free from personal invective. But, notwithstanding, I kept to my ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... exceedingly erroneous. Well-known streams have been found to extend in either direction many miles beyond the points at which their sources have been laid down on the maps, and great rivers and lakes have, as it were, been discovered, of which no delineation had ever been given by geographers. The extent of these errors in remote and difficultly accessible points may be inferred from what has been found to occur in the part of the region which is most accessible, best known, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... then, by the Sunne, shewing the distinction of time. By Sunne, Mone, and Sterres, this Dialling may be performed, and the precise Time of day or night knowen. But the demonstratiue delineation of these Dialls, of all sortes, requireth good skill, both of Astronomie, and Geometrie Elementall, Sphaericall, Phaenomenall, and Conikall. Then, to vse the groundes of the Arte, for any regular Superficies, in any place offred: and (in any possible ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... impunity. He was told by Mr Cate that he was in a desperate way. Brandon did all he could, but the call would not come for the calling. Mrs Brandon got it very soon, though she strenuously denied the honour. My good nurse was in the family-way, and Mr Cate had frightened her into fits, with a vivid delineation of the agonies of a new-born infant, under the torture of eternal fire, because it had died unelected. However, Brandon began a little to weary of waiting and long prayer, and perhaps of the now too frequent visits of Mr Cate. He commenced to have his fits of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Western Isles, I take the liberty of transmitting my ideas of the conversation which happened between the doctor and myself concerning Lexicography and Poetry, which, as it is a little different from the delineation exhibited in the former edition of your Journal, cannot, I hope, be unacceptable; particularly since I have been informed that a second edition of that work is now in contemplation, if not in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of comfort in a violent death, leaving his poor problems unsolved and his children naked and starving. Such a picture, if drawn by a foreigner, would arouse English indignation from shore to shore; but it is home-drawn. The only foreign delineation is in the author's Jehoiachin Settle, a stage Yankee, whose avocation is planting English children in Canada after the manner of Miss Rye. Settle is a preposterous failure, but every other limb of the writer's argument ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth, with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded, and especially of those who fall within that most picturesque delineation— ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... inventory of the features of men, or of fair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modern novels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanship that delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds,' and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought and emotion." Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and important element. They spring from and cling to stories of individual human lives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidance of the future ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... further inducement to exercise her really considerable powers of verbal delineation. Charging her palette with lively colours, she sprang to the task—and that with a sprightly composure and deftness of touch which went far to cloak malice ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader; rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in New Bond Street, where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of his time. Walk up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see—such miracles of delineation, such witcheries of effect, as were never before put ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... a more definite delineation of the reasons that operated to raise up the conspiracy. There was a partial feud that had long existed in the mutual jealousies between the slaveholders and non-slaveholding population. Nothing very remarkable, however, had transpired to indicate ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... make an indelible impression upon the heart of every reader. How striking, and alas! how true, is this delineation of character. Religious when in company with professors—profane when with the world; pretending to be a Christian on a Sunday; striving to climb with Christian the Hill Difficulty—every other day running down the hill with Timorous and Mistrust. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mark actually was their Author. Hear him discussing S. Mark's "characteristics," at p. 151:—"In the consecution of his narrations, Mark puts them together very loosely." "Mark is also characterised by a conciseness and apparent incompleteness of delineation which are allied to the obscure." "The abrupt introduction" of many of his details is again and again appealed to by Dr. Davidson, and illustrated by references to the Gospel. What, in the name of ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... between his personal qualities, the position which he held, and the life that he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all history has to show; and it is a pity that Southey's biography—so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man—should have taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman possessed. But Southey accomplished his own purpose, which, apparently, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slavery. That we leave to others. Thus far this very perplexing question, has baffled all human wisdom. Either some radical defect must have existed, in the measures devised for its removal, or the time has not yet come for successfully assailing the institution. Our work is completed, in the delineation we have given of its varied relations to our agricultural, commercial, and social interests. As the monopoly of the culture of cotton, imparts to slavery its economical value, the system will continue as long as this monopoly is maintained. Slave labor products ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... could mention five or six who were unconscious contributors to the character.—That it should have been so often, though erroneously, supposed to have been drawn after some particular person, is, perhaps, complimentary to the general truth of the delineation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... we extract Mr. Pickwick's masterly description of that heartrending scene? His note-book, blotted with the tears of sympathising humanity, lies open before us; one word, and it is in the printer's hands. But, no! we will be resolute! We will not wring the public bosom, with the delineation of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... strongly individualistic in temperament, and his satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and the system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully. This conception caused Gogol to concentrate his best efforts upon delineation of character. It was the characters that were to be revealed, their actions to be held up to scorn and ridicule, not the conditions which created the characters and made them act as they did. If any lesson at all was to be drawn from ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... we are not to look to him for any great intensity of delineation of passion, especially in the sense to which that word is more commonly confined. He has nowhere left us (as some other men of letters have) any hint that he abstained from doing this because the passion would have been so tremendous that it was on the whole best for mankind ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... word is impossible. To describe it in a few words is not easy. Froude himself called it in after life a "cry of pain," meaning that it was intended to relieve the intolerable pressure of his thoughts. It is not a novel, it is not a treatise, it is not poetry, it is not romance. It is the delineation of a mood; and though it was called, with some reason, sceptical, its moral, if it has a moral, is that scepticism leads to misconduct. That unpleasant and unverified hypothesis, soon rejected by Froude himself, has been revived by M. Bourget in Le Disciple, and L'Etape. The Nemesis of Faith is ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... willing to delude others, he will be obliged to acknowledge, that the portrait he has painted, although in its combination it resembles nothing in the universe, is nevertheless in all its constituent members an exact delineation of that which nature presents to our view. Hobbes in his Leviathan says, "The universe, the whole mass of things, is corporeal, that is to say, body; and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely, length, breadth, and depth: also every part of body is likewise body, and hath ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... elevation to the character of the tales which they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt, in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "The Two Elves," says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... repeat it here—that Herr Grosse has no (individual) living prototype. Like the other Persons of the Drama, in this book and in the books which have preceded it, he is drawn from my general observation of humanity. I have always considered it to be a mistake in Art to limit the delineation of character in fiction to a literary portrait taken from any one "sitter." The result of this process is generally (to my mind) to produce a ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... anomalous position, and encountered its difficulties and perils, make themselves felt and appreciated in all the details of the narrative, while the picture presented of Eastern character and manners is one which only the most intimate knowledge, combined with rare faculties of delineation, could furnish, and differs in many features from any other to be found in European descriptions of life in India. "Meadows Taylor was never, properly speaking, in the civil service of the East India Company or the Crown, nor did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... immense number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly esteemed for the time that had been expended on it in the plumage of the birds, and other minutiae in the delineation of the different animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various trees seen therein;" and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to the ornithological museums which Breughel ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... still his working out of the definition of poetry, his distinction between novels and poems, and between poetry and eloquence, is interesting as throwing light upon his own poetic susceptibilities. He holds that poetry is the delineation of the deeper and more secret workings of human emotion. It is curious to find one who is sometimes assailed as the advocate of a grovelling philosophy complaining that the chivalrous spirit has almost disappeared from books of education, that the youth of both sexes of the educated ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... of Swiss valour were saddened by the breaking out of that great plague, which visited with its ravages the greater part of Europe and Asia, and of which the most vivid delineation ever written (except that of a similar pest by Thucydides) has been preserved in the Decameron of Boccacio. Whole towns were depopulated. Estates were left without claimants or occupiers. Priests, physicians, grave-diggers, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... of elasticity, which made me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. I might go much farther, I might indulge in poetic rapture—most unbecoming my mature age—and after all, fall far short of the reality. The reader will do well to allow a large percentage of omitted ecstatic delineation in consequence of want of ardour on the part of the writer. This is in fact ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the rough, eccentric, but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality and delicacy. There was in his performances a freshness, a distinctiveness, and, above all, an entire freedom from any thing coarse or offensive, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... conflict is more emphasized, as in the cases of Hamlet and Macbeth. "See thou character" became in an increasing degree Shakespeare's watchword. He grew to care less for mere incident, for plots based on mistaken identity, as in The Comedy of Errors; but he became more and more interested in the delineation of character, in showing the effect of evil on Macbeth and his wife, of jealousy on Othello, of indecision on Hamlet, as well as in exploring the ineffectual attempts of many of his characters to escape ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... terror for the crime. This, indeed, is a triumph in art never achieved but by the highest genius. The inferior writer, when venturing upon the grandest stage of passion, (which unquestionably exists in the delineation of great guilt as of heroic virtue,) falls into the error either of gilding the crime in order to produce sympathy for the criminal, or, in the spirit of a spurious morality, of involving both crime and criminal in a common odium. It is to discrimination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... is by Heine. He represents her as Chopin knew her, for although he published the portrait as late as 1854 he did not represent her as she then looked; indeed, at that time he had probably no intercourse with her, and therefore was obliged to draw from memory. The truthfulness of Heine's delineation is testified by the approval of many who knew George Sand, and also by Couture's ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Phrenologist as signifying one who goes about over the country feeling the bumps on the heads of those who consult him, looking for hills and hollows, depressions and ridges of the cranium, and predicating thereon a delineation ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... Colonel, after this chapter, mounts his best hunter and disappears over a high hedge into space so far as our story is concerned, any further delineation of his wholesome but very ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... reasons for keeping such company." "Reasons, and good ones," said the artist, laughing; "see—where could I find such a picture of life as that, unless among the originals of The Cabin?" He held up his sketch-book and showed a correct delineation of the very scene in which he had so lately been the presiding spirit. One of his best pictures contains this fac-simile of the tap-room, with its ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... succession of scenes rather than unified, organic drama. But, after all, the main thing is the substance—"the weighty content, and this will most certainly secure for them for a long time to come a place in the repertoire of the theater of the Germanic world. So long as we admit that in the delineation of character, in the presentation of noble figures, and in the mastery of dialogue, Shakespeare is unexcelled, so long we must admit that Shakespeare has a place ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... witnessed in a youth four years older than himself. He was present when some of these sketches were taken, and viewed the process with delight and attention; particularly, that pleasing and accurate delineation of the celebrated iceberg in Amsterdam Island, opposite where the ships lay; which measured three hundred feet high, and out of which a cascade ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... testimony to Jesus, he acquired the art of breathing into his Greek the simple manner and the sweet tone of a Hebrew story. There is nothing in all literature more perfectly told than the story of the walk to Emmaus. Nothing can be better than the delineation of character which is suggested to us in the story of Zacharias, or of Anna, or of Zacchaeus. There is always a freshness to remind us that the Gospel is "good tidings of great joy" (ii. 10), and the Magnificat (i. 46-55), the Benedictus (i. 68-79), the Gloria in Excelsis (ii. 14), and the ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... remainder of this day's occurrences, so painfully pregnant in discoveries relative to this savage people. The reader, it is believed, will think the account in the text abundantly minute, without any addition. What a fine specimen to prove the accuracy of Rousseau's delineation of our species, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... with outward events, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in order by means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certain errors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesque surrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert to the circumstances of the time in which this inward history was passing. We will say, therefore, that that night there was a cry of alarm passing all through the succession of country towns and rural communities that lay around Boston, and dying ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of art is often of the highest aesthetic merit. Velasquez's pictures of dwarfs and degenerate princes are as artistic as Raphael's Madonnas; Goethe's Mephistopheles is one of his supreme artistic achievements; Shakespeare is as successful artistically in his delineation of Lady Macbeth as of Desdemona. Now for us who claim that the purpose of art must be divined from the actual practice of artists, from the inside, and should not be an arbitrary construction, from the outside, the existence of such examples is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... indefatigable pen she produced, in 1843, three three-volume novels, "Hargreave," "Jessie Phillips," and "The Laurringtons"—the first a not very successful sketch of a man of fashion; the second, an unfair and exaggerated delineation of the action of the new Poor Law; and the third, a forcible and lively satire upon "superior people," in which some of the passages are in ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never carry you away with her story, as Charles Reade sometimes can, and make you forget ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... are above it. (The pattern of the drapery is rather singular). Mary exhibits a more quiet expression: her resignation is calm and fixed, while her heart seems to be broken. But it is in the figure and countenance of St. John, that the artist has reached all that an artist could reach in a delineation of the same subject. The beloved disciple simply looks upwards—upon the breathless corpse of his crucified master. In that look, the world appears to be for ever forgotten. His arms and hands are locked together, in the agony of his soul. There ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... him, after his eyes have been put out, to beg his way through the world. The Greeks seem to have been deeply impressed with the evils, vicissitudes, and sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as evils, ([Greek: kaka].) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture inflicted on a condemned captive at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... form and meaning is a necessity to the artist, and if he does not find it, he will invent it. Hence the embarrassment of some of the English Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is all that is meant. The early painters were thus naive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... grandfather's chiding, runs with it into the cemetery where it is lost among the graves and never seen again. This account stands by itself, having no direct connection with what precedes or follows; but the delineation is so vivid, the poetic element in it so strong, that it may be said to stand without assistance, and does not require the name of Hawthorne ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... intercourse with its inmates, have brought them much under the notice of the officers and ladies of the garrison. She has no occasion to present the Indian in a theatrical garb—a mere thing of paint and feathers, less like the original than his own rude delineation on birch-bark or deer-skin. The reader will find in the following pages living men and women, whose feelings are in many respects like his own, and whose motives of action are very similar to those of the rest of the world, though far less artfully covered ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... abruptly, pushes back his chair, and dashes across the room to the cupboard. He takes the black bottle from the shelf, applies it to his lips, and remains for some time motionless. He then returns to finish the delineation of G.H. with ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... History. Fortification. Navigation. Encamping. Decimal arithmetic. Intrenching. Trigonometry. Approaching. Dialing. Attacking. Gauging. Delineation. Mining. Architecture. Fireworking. Surveying. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... countenance, but the doctor's brow grew still blacker than ever. Bertie was executing his chef d'oeuvre in the delineation of Mrs. Proudie's ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... any of the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and sordid violence. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... friends are the most unmitigated book-thieves. But perhaps even the too frequent loss of books is an evil to be preferred to the egoistical meanness of the selfish collector. Balzac gives in his 'Cousin Pons' a vivid delineation of such a person. The hero is a poor drudging music-teacher and orchestra-player, who has invested every franc of his hard-won earnings in the collecting of exquisite paintings, prints, bric-a-brac, and ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Tom Westlake "harked back" and related his experiences of the day. He possessed considerable power of graphic delineation, and gradually aroused the interest of his gay and volatile ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... by the National Opera Company. We thus had in juxtaposition an admirable operatic adaptation of a Shakespearian comedy and a modern comedy, of which I thought at the time I could not speak in higher praise than to say that it was truly Shakespearian in its delineation of character. In my book, "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," I have analyzed Wagner's comedy from many points of view, and printed besides the results of investigations of the old Nuremberg mastersingers made on the spot. The significance ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... little hesitation in pronouncing George Eliot the foremost of the many women who have written fiction. The literary critics sometimes dispute her supremacy by urging the claims of Jane Austen, who is said to have Shaksperean power in the delineation of character. But the name of Jane Austen is unknown to the general public. For every reader of Pride and Prejudice there are a score ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... charm of the photographic delineation. Theoretically, a perfect photograph is absolutely inexhaustible. In a picture you can find nothing which the artist has not seen before you; but in a perfect photograph there will be as many beauties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... succeed in time, as well as the English, because we have the same language, and equal intellect; but there must be system and discipline in writing plays—a knowledge of stage effect—of sound, cadences, fitness of time and place, interest of plot, spirit of delineation, nature, poetry, and a hundred et ceteras, which are required, to constitute a good dramatic poet, who cannot, in this country, and while occupied in other pursuits, spring up over night like asparagus, ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... skilfully executed. It was a hazardous undertaking to present the character backwards, and let us see the closing scenes of his life first,—like a Hebrew Bible, of which the beginning is at the end; but the author's genius has triumphed over the perils of the task, and given us a delineation as consistent and symmetrical as it is striking and vigorous. Ignorant of books, simple, and credulous, guileless himself, and suspecting no evil in others, with moderate intellectual powers, he commands our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth. Religion does not make a part of my subject; it is something beyond human powers, and has failed in all human hands except Milton's and Dante's, and even Dante's powers are involved in his delineation of human passions, though in supernatural circumstances. What made Socrates the greatest of men? His moral truth—his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly less than his miracles? His moral precepts. And if ethics have made a philosopher ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the characters may be made to stand out above the story. You will also remember we found that the stage—the vaudeville quite as much as the legitimate—is "character-ridden," that is, an actor who has made a pronounced success in the delineation of one character type forever afterward wants another play or playlet "just like the last, but with a different plot," so that he can go right on playing the same old character. This we saw has in some cases resulted ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Mak the sheep-stealer. Lively characters were also created out of nonentities like the various Judaeans and soldiers, and the shepherds. But these were all minors; they had no influence on the course of the action, and the smallness of their part made anything like a full delineation impossible. They were real men, recognizable as akin to local types, but no more; one never knew anything of them beyond their simplicity or brutality. Meanwhile their superiors, clothed in the stiff dress of tradition and reverence, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... respectfully to observe, that they hope their examples may not be altogether devoid of indirect instruction; and lest it should be supposed that they lived without object, aim, or principle, they would observe that the maxim which has influenced the delineation of the different Scenes and Characters is, that feeling, unguided and unrestrained, soon becomes mere selfishness; while the simple endeavour to fulfil each immediate claim of duty may lead to the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consist with a reasonable attention to economy. The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the proceeding. This can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors, or in the construction of it by the judges, as in common cases serve to limit the discretion of courts in favor of personal security. There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are to pronounce the sentence of the law, and the party ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... guilt to Camilla, Leonardo has excused it by an emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... points in the geography of Asia, as given by Ptolemy, respect the coasts of India, the route to the Seres, and the Caspian sea. His delineation of India is equally erroneous with his delineation of the British Isles: according to him, it stretches in a right line from west to east, a little to the south of a line drawn between the Ganges and the Indus. He possessed, however, information respecting places in the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... England are known to him as they are to few. He is tempted to draw too largely upon this source of interest: in other words, there is too much of description in his volume. Life is hardly long enough for such elaborate painting. We may admire the skill of the delineation, but we cannot pause sufficiently before the canvas to do full justice to the painter. Those poems in which Mr. Tuckerman expresses the emotions of bereavement and sorrow are those which have the highest merit in point of thought and expression. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the annoyance of children; and that we should not hesitate to take our pleasures. Men, who have contrived to get the keys, come into the Convent during the night, which they have spent in the most dissipated manner." That is the precise delineation of the Canadian Nunneries; into which other men besides Priests are admitted, if the parties are willing to pay the entrance bribe to the Chaplain.—Secrets of Nunneries, by Scipio de Ricci. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... accuracy of my delineation I have high authority. A year and some months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that he had been honoured with a presentation to, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation. IRIS. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... if "the burden of the action is too heavy for him to bear," if "by a calculating consideration he exhausts all possible issues of the action," it should at least be continually present to his mind. We should look for the delineation of a soul harassed and haunted by one idea; torn by the conflict between conscience and filial obedience; or balancing advantage and peril in an agony of suspense and vacillation; forecasting consequence and result to himself and others; and so absorbed in this terrible secret as ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... heaven, and his intimate conferences with the Deity. Every doubt was silenced by this supernatural evidence; and the articles of the faith of Zoroaster were fixed with equal authority and precision. [9] A short delineation of that celebrated system will be found useful, not only to display the character of the Persian nation, but to illustrate many of their most important transactions, both in peace and war, with the Roman ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... perfectly sincere, yet it was self-deception, for it was not as if it was herself whom she was analysing, but rather as if it was some character in a book; indeed, she would have described herself almost exactly as she is here described, except that her delineation would have been much more clever and more exact. She would not have spared herself—for this reason, that her own character was more a study to her than a reality, her faults rather circumstances than sins; it was her mind, rather ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... life of the capital in its boundless liberty and licence is brought on the stage. Most pieces of this sort were doubtless of a very fugitive nature and made no pretension to a place in literature; but the mimes of Laberius, full of pungent delineation of character and in point of language and metre exhibiting the hand of a master, maintained their ground in it; and even the historian must regret that we are no longer permitted to compare the drama of the republican death-struggle in Rome ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... wonderful tricks of light and shadow with the over-arching foliage. The smooth sandy stretches at the outskirts of the gardens shine like water at rest, on which the leaves of an occasional sparse tuft of palms are etched with crystalline hardness of delineation. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... which the irregular habits of his life will not forfeit. The longest poem in his published volume, entitled "The Country Lass," in the same measure as the "Queen's Wake," contains much simple and graphic delineation of life; while the ballad of "The Brownie of Blednoch," has passages of singular power. His ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... horse, are so masterly that these men stand forth as the spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at delineation are like the scribbling of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... he would fain fathom the depths of those rude scribblings and quaint efforts at delineation, whence, in the course of ages, have been evolved the wonders of the alphabet and the marvellous creations of a Rubens and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... in Edinburgh, who, though labouring under the great disability of being deaf and dumb, has for some years back been an enthusiastic art student, has succeeded in procuring admission for three oil paintings, each of which gives good indication of his deftness and skill in the delineation of nature, and the ardour with which he has followed up his studies. "Hide and Seek" represents some children playing at that game in a hay field. "Largo, the Beach at Low Water" gives us a pretty coast scene, with figures on the beach. "Baiting the Line" is a very effective ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in In Her Earliest Youth, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... regarded in France as a remarkable "impressionist" and praised by the critics for the realistic accuracy and minuteness of his delineation. Kipling frankly acknowledged the great debt that he owed him. Tennyson spoke in high praise of his finesse in the choice of words, his feeling for the just word to catch and, as it were, visualize the precise shade of meaning desired. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... with the ancients, and if ever introduced in a painting, was subordinate. The end and aim of painting among the ancients was to represent and illustrate the myths of the gods, the deeds of heroes, and important historical events, hence giving all prominence to the delineation of the human form. Landscape, on the other hand, illustrated nothing, represented no important event deserving of record, and was thus totally without significance in a Grecian temple or pinacotheca. In an age ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... this has already been adduced to make any protestation or appeal against such an estimate as preposterous in its superfluity as the misconception just mentioned is preposterous in its perversity. The great if not incomparable power displayed in Webster's delineation of such criminals as Flamineo and Bosola—Bonapartes in the bud, Napoleons in a nutshell, Caesars who have missed their Rubicon and collapse into the likeness of a Catiline—is a sign rather of his noble English loathing for the traditions associated with such names as Caesar and Medici and Borgia, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the acceptance thereof, by will, and he would not wholly believe, until there was no alternative. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, and quite naturally Dr. Hargrove began to discredit the entire narrative of wrongs, which had attained colossal proportions from her delineation, and to censure himself most harshly for having suffered this dazzling Delilah to extort from him a solemn promise of secrecy; for, unworthy of sympathy as he now deemed her, his rigid rectitude would not permit him to regard that unworthiness as sufficient justification for abrogating his plighted ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... your attention from these scenes of horror to others of a different kind, the delineation of which is absolutely necessary to complete the picture. Those hosts which had so long been the scourge of Germany and Europe, and had left us this last hideous monument of their presence, perhaps never to return, were now in precipitate flight, as though hurried away by an impetuous ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... Smith Russell, and very many of the latter's most successful recitations were written for him by Field. They talked them over together, compared their versions and methods, and stimulated each other to fresh feats of mimicry and eccentric character delineation. Many a night, and oft after midnight, in the rotunda of the Tremont House, when John A. Rice of bibliomaniac fame, was its lessee, I was the sole paying auditor of these seances, the balance of the audience ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... his broad, epical delineation of the American spirit ... It is an honest and fair story ...It is very interesting: and the heroine is a type of woman as fresh, original and captivating as any that has appeared in American novels for a long time past."—The Outlook, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... time? The physical form, instead of being adequate to the ideas expressed, and therefore helpful to the artist, is a positive embarrassment, a source of weakness. The most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque delineation of the Judgment, when compared with the pangs inflicted on the spirit by a guilty conscience, pangs whereof words may render some account, but which can find no analogue in writhings of the limbs or face, must of necessity ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... career was distorted, exaggerated, seemingly out of all proportion to the familiarities, the conventionalities, and even the possibilities of existence. As the ancient Greeks, in their sculpture, for the delineation of their gods permitted themselves the use of the heroic size and made their immortals and their demi-gods more than common tall, and more than common comely, so might the modern historian seem ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that Sesostris (by which is meant the Sethosians) drew upon boards schemes of all the countries, which he had traversed: and copies of these were given both to [204]the Egyptians, and to the Scythians, who held them in high estimation. This is a curious account of the first delineation of countries, and origin of maps; which were first described upon [205]pillars. We may from hence be enabled to solve the enigma concerning Atlas, who is said to have supported the heavens upon his shoulders. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... 1832. Sir Walter Scott, though he excelled all his cotemporaries in the humorous delineation of character, wrote little humorous verse. The two pieces published in this volume are so excellent that one is surprised to find no more of the same description ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the Maker of all things, he has received reward well worthy the sacrifice, I would not for an instant deny; but the sense of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly constituted; and it would be with infinite gratitude that he would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation of natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as to make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of the three-hours' Sunday service of two centuries ago, lest that which was not called wearisome in the passing prove wearisome in the delineation now. It needed all this accumulation of small details to show how widely the externals of New-England church-going have changed since those early days. But what must have been the daily life of that Puritan minister ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... these Epistles was evident from the spirit with which they were written. In the first of the two, which he addressed to Sillar, he discovered and disclosed for the first time the distinctive individuality of his genius. It was a charming and touching piece of writing; charming as a delineation of his character, and touching as a confession of his creed,—the patient philosophy of the poor. As his social horizon was enlarged, his mental vision was sharpened; and before long, other interests than those which concerned ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... They look to its delineation of the operations of the Federal Government, and they must not exceed the limits it marks out, in their administration. The court have said "that Congress cannot exercise municipal jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain, within the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... and figure are sufficiently portrayed without any set description. What could be more delicate than the intimation of the foregone 'good-night' between the sisters, or the scene of Lyddy plaiting Thyrza's hair? The delineation of the upper middle class culture by which this exquisite flower of maidenhood is first caressed and transplanted, then slighted and left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Kean's superb delineation of the ruthless Richard in the scene where, in the illusion of his dying agony, swordless, he continues to lunge and feint, may comprehend the frightful mental overturn which prompted Raikes to sink inertly into a chair near the table, and with ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... of the philosophers, he will look for the broad foundation on which national character and institutions, for good or for evil, have been formed. Voltaire was of great service to history, by turning it from courts and camps to the progress of literature, science, and the arts—to the delineation of manners, and the preparation of anecdotes descriptive of character; but, notwithstanding all his talent, he never got a glimpse of the general causes which influence society. He gave us the history of philosophy, but not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... to escape the taint of degrading Plautus to the status of a petty moralizer[29]. In particular, he lauds the Aul unreservedly as a chef d'oeuvre of character delineation and pronounces it immeasurably superior to Moliere's imitation, "L'Avare."[30] This whole critique, while interesting, falls into the prevailing trend of imputing to Plautus far too high a plane ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... for his carelessness. He burns homesteads and villages, fusillades men and women, and makes the war a war without quarter or grace. Yet he is no swashbuckler of the melodramatic stage. There is a fine reserve, a brief gravity, in the delineation of him, his clear will, his quickness, his intrepidity, his relentlessness, which make of him the incarnation of aristocratic coldness, hatred, and pride. You might guillotine Lantenac with exquisite satisfaction, and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... in this volume were written for celebrations or commemorations in which several persons took part. Each of them is, therefore, only a partial presentation of the life and character of its subject. The delineation in every case is not comprehensive and proportionate, but rather portrays the man in some of his aspects ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... has given most evidence of poetic power in the delineation of those dark characters who intrude like ghosts and demons upon the fair and healthy current of the book, and vanish anon into the caverns and cellars whence ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... from the letters. guildry and treasurer's accounts, forming 3 vols. of the Spalding Club; Cosmo Innes, Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, Spalding Club; Walter Thore, The History of Aberdeen (1811); Robert Wilson, Historical Account and Delineation of Aberdeen (1822); William Kennedy, The Annals of Aberdeen (1818); Orem, Descripjion of the Chanonry, Cathedral and King's College of Old Aberdeen, 1724-1725 (1830); Sir Andrew Leith Hay of Rannes, The Castellated Architecture of Aberdeen; Giles, Specimens of old Castellated Houses ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... less astonishing than Dickens's, less fertile, spontaneous, and inventive; but his art is sounder, and his delineation of character more truthful. After one has formed a taste for his books, Dickens's sentiment will seem overdone, and much of his humor will have the air of buffoonery. Thackeray had the advantage in another particular: he described the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... showed that the gods were no examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with impunity, while he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Stunsfield, near Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, (a large Pavement of rich Mosaick Work of the Ancient Romans, which is adornd with several Figures alluding to Mirth and Concord, in particular that of Bacchus seated on a Panther.) This is to give Notice the Exact Delineation of the same is Engraven and Imprinted on a large Elephant sheet of Paper, which are to be sold at Mr. Charles Lillies, Perfumer, at the corner of Beauford Buildings, in the Strand, at 1s. N.B. There are to be had, at the same Place, at one Guinea each, on superfine Atlas Paper, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... beauty, of masterly psychology, and finished artistic form, it is so rich in idea and life that one must refrain from touching on the contents in order to keep within the narrow limits of this essay. A most superbly delicate delineation of the feminine soul is here given in the drawing of Hanka and Aagot; nowhere else is woman's love in its dawn and growth described with such mastery, with a deftness and sureness of touch which reminds one of the very greatest passages in that ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... systems of character delineation and reading the horoscope for medical diagnosis yet ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... "Kirwan's Letters to Archbishop Hughes." She read it to her mother whenever a spare hour enabled her to run home. Biddy had been greatly interested in the appeals and arguments of her talented countryman, and deeply impressed by his life-like delineation of the follies and superstitions of ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... earth. He knew not she was there, for she rarely now asked a question respecting his engagements, or expressed any interest in his movements, yet how her ears drank in the music of his voice, and her eyes flashed back the proud light that shone in his! As she listened to his delineation of woman's claims to the sympathy and the defence of every generous heart, as she heard his biting sarcasm on the cowardly nature that, having wronged, would now crush into deeper ruin his fair client, as she saw kindling eyes fixed upon him, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... your chief characters is to show the cloven hoof. Once the initial scheme granted, the rest may be as bracing as an Alpine breeze; but the critics will scent brimstone. But to build an immoral play upon a "moral" basis—that way gladness lies. Critics, who would rage at the delineation of a character remotely resembling a human being's, will pat you on the back with a good-humoured smile, and at most a laughing word of reprobation for your azure audacities. Ladies, who, whether they are married or unmarried, are in England presumed to be agnostics in sexual matters, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
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