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More "Minuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whom I quote say that they "cannot express" the excessive minuteness of the granules in question, and they estimate their diameter at less than 1/200000 of an inch. Under the highest powers of the microscope, at present applicable, such specks are hardly discernible. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... or ritualistic law—an important part of the Mosaic Code—constantly points to Jehovah as the King of the Jews, as well as their Supreme Deity, for whose worship the rites and ceremonies are devised with great minuteness, to keep His personality constantly before their minds. Moreover, all their rites and ceremonies were typical and emblematical of the promised Saviour who was to arise; in a more emphatic sense their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... in a solid cloud; the right panel—by far the best, I think—shows the Circumcision, where the painter has set himself various difficulties of architecture and goldsmith's work for the pleasure of overcoming them, every detail being painted with Dutch minuteness and yet leaving the picture big; while the middle panel, which is concave, depicts an Adoration of the Magi that will bear much study. The whole effect is very northern: not much less so than our own new National ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... in public life, he is all life and interest in the social circle," said Major Favraud. "His range of thought is the grandest and most unlimited, his powers of conversation are the rarest I have ever met with. Yet he never refused, on any occasion, to answer with minuteness the inquiries of the smallest child or most insignificant dependant. 'Had he not been Alexander, he must have been Parmenio.' Had fortune not struck out for him the path of a statesman, he would have made the most impressive and perfect of teachers. As it was, without the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... produced out of them up to 5040; wherefore the law ought to order phratries and demes and villages, and also military ranks and movements, as well as coins and measures, dry and liquid, and weights, so as to be commensurable and agreeable to one another. Nor should we fear the appearance of minuteness, if the law commands that all the vessels which a man possesses should have a common measure, when we consider generally that the divisions and variations of numbers have a use in respect of all the variations of which they ...
— Laws • Plato
... Richard Green, Bishop Stubbs, Professor Gneist of Berlin, and others, who with consummate learning have gone to the roots of things,—some of whom, indeed, are dry writers, regardless of style, disdainful of any thing but facts, which they have treated with true scholastic minuteness. It appears from these historians, as quoted by Taylor, and from other authorities to which the earlier writers on English history had no access, that the germs of our free institutions existed among the Anglo-Saxons, and were developed to a considerable extent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... carrying the sap downwards after its preparation in the leaf. It is believed that the passage of the sap in plants is conducted in a manner precisely similar to that of the blood in man, from the regular contraction and expansion of the vessels; but, on account of their extreme minuteness, it is almost an impossibility to be certain upon this point. Numerous observations made with the microscope show that their diameter seldom exceeds a 290th part of a line, or a 3,000th part of an inch. Leuwenhoeck reckoned 20,000 vessels in ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to the strictly useful? I fear they are the worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the duration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alike proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and succession of events, the workers in biology have not only ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... contains examples of more complicated Forms, which severally require so much minuteness of description that I am in despair of being able to do justice to them separately, and must leave most of them to tell ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... shams of society to the realities of war, and sets before us with a graphic power and minuteness the inner life of that great struggle in which Count Tolstoi took part.... A thrilling tale of besieged Sebastopol. All is intensely real, intensely life-like, and doubly striking from its very simplicity. We have before our eyes war as it really ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Protestant clergyman. This union of the three creeds in homage to their sovereign did not displease the Emperor, strange as it was. Count Beugnot's Memoirs must be consulted for a full account of the activity, the interest in details, the minuteness of the administrative investigations which, at Duesseldorf as everywhere else, characterized Napoleon in these laborious journeys, on which, under pretext of seeking distraction, he kept himself in almost as active movement ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... expansions, till at length, when the Reformation was concluded, it terminated, after many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth. We can thus trace our poor law in the whole course of its growth, and into two stages through which it passed I must enter with some minuteness. The 12th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., and the 25th of the 27th, are so remarkable in their tone, and so rich in their detail, as to furnish a complete exposition of English thought at that time upon the subject; while the second of these two ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Mr. Wordsworth is now manifestly hopeless. We give him up as altogether incurable and beyond the power of criticism." The story of Margaret, indeed, though "it abounds, of course, with mawkish sentiment and details of preposterous minuteness, has considerable pathos". But the other passage which one would have thought must have gone home to every heart—that which describes the communing of the wanderer with nature [Footnote: Excursion, book i.]—is singled out for ridicule; while the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Linnaeus! The letter was from Baron Reuterholm of Dalecarlia. It contained a draft for twenty-five pounds, "as a token of good faith," and begged that Linnaeus would accept charge of an expedition to survey the natural resources of Dalecarlia in the same way that he had Lapland, only with greater minuteness. Linnaeus read the letter again. The draft fluttered from his fingers to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... case as a concession by the High Commissioners of Great Britain. His Lordship declined to follow Mr. Evarts "into the details of his argument." He maintained that "these very matters were examined at great length and with conscientious minuteness by the Commission whose award is under discussion." He admitted, with diplomatic courtesy, that "Mr. Evarts' reasoning is powerful," but still in his judgment, "capable of refutation." He did not, however, attempt to refute ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... some markings still smaller than the last; and in like manner has every increase in the power of the telescope developed more worlds and suns far away from our system and beyond our Milky Way. An approach to the infinite in minuteness and to the infinite in magnitude and distance is thus furnished to us ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... the bed, therefore, she carefully adjusts her glasses upon her nose, and proceeds to examine with much minuteness the earth beneath her. A tiny green leaf ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... the modern suburban abominations, "those thin tottering foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone," "those gloomy rows of formalised minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar," as Ruskin calls them. These modern erections have no more relation to their surroundings than would a Pullman-car or a newly painted piece of machinery. Age cannot improve ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... valleys, its hillsides, its swains, its toiling cattle, comes swooping to our vision! The leaves rustle, the birds warble, the rivers roar a song. The sun beats on the plain; the winds carry waves into the grain; the clouds plant shadows on the mountains. The minuteness and the accuracy of his observation are something wonderful; if farmers should not study him, our young poets may. He never puts a song in the throat of a jay or a wood-dove; he never makes a mother-bird break out in bravuras; he never puts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... one from a so-called "romantic," the other from a so-called "realistic" book—one readily observes the likeness in the subjects, which are of a ghastly repulsiveness; the same minuteness of observation—e.g., the lion's hind legs "slightly drawn up," the woman's thumbs "bent into the palms of her hands"; the same careful notation of effect on the several senses; the same rhetorical heightening—e.g., the "stalactites ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... moderns, who, in various forms, have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... are desirous to know more of so exalted a character than any general history can with propriety supply. We wish to see him not only as a hero, but as the hero of a respectable historian; and are anxious, with a laudable zeal, for such minuteness of detail, in the developement of every circumstance, not only relative to his public and professional character, but even to his private and domestic transactions, as is to be alone expected from what may be denominated the more humble labours of the biographer: who, nevertheless, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... places, and my left eye was nearly knocked out of its socket. The facts, leading to this barbarous outrage upon me, illustrate a phase of slavery destined to become an important element in the overthrow of the slave system, and I may, therefore state them with some minuteness. That phase is this: the conflict of slavery with the interests of the white mechanics and laborers of the south. In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Felix on the 7th of July, reluctantly satisfied that Sir John Franklin had not been buried in that vicinity. The minuteness of our search will appear in the number of exploded percussion caps, shot, and other small articles that were found in various places. The Inuits who were with us evinced a most remarkable interest in our labors, and with their eagle eyes were ever finding things that would have escaped our ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... in his natural vocation. But it was ordered otherwise; his death was destined to private malice, and to an ignoble hand. And much obscurity still rests upon the motives of the assassins, though its circumstances are reported with unusual minuteness of detail. One thing is evident, that the public and patriotic motives assigned by the perpetrators as the remote causes of their conspiracy, cannot have been the true ones. The grave historian may sum up his character of Commodus ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... mediaeval front of the cathedral, where the imagination of a Gothic architect had long ago flowered out indestructibly, in the first place, a grand design, and then covering it with such abundant detail of ornament, that the magnitude of the work seemed less a miracle than its minuteness. You would suppose that he must have softened the stone into wax, until his most delicate fancies were modelled in the pliant material, and then had hardened it into stone again. The whole was a vast, black-letter ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... escutcheon, this livid death's head, designed with such minuteness of detail that it seemed to stand out from the tapestry, was less lugubrious than the two personages who held up the hideous blazon and who seemed to be whispering to each ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... lay, approximately, a mile and a half from the station, quite by itself, and set well back from the road. Jimmie Dale could have found it with his eyes blindfolded—the Tocsin's directions had lacked none of their usual explicit minuteness. The road was quite deserted. Jimmie Dale met no one. Even in the houses that he passed the lights were in nearly every instance ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of the institution by intelligent officials. A young man who spoke excellent English was given me as a guide by the distinguished Director-in-Chief. Classification of the books is carried to great minuteness, and it is but the work of a moment, to one familiar with its principles, to turn to any book of the million. The apartments are plain and crowded, although some of the rooms of the adjoining palace had recently been turned into the library, which is fast outgrowing its ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... the unfortunate event which Father Medina mentions with as much minuteness as candor, two important points must not be overlooked by the judicious reader, which were the cause of this unfortunate deed. One was the extreme harshness of the provincial in his government, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... same thing that on the large Atlantic liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate a notice put up: "Authors are requested not to lie prostrate on the bowsprit." But even without this advantage, three or four generations of writers have chronicled with great minuteness their sensations during the transit. I need only say that my sensations were just as good as theirs. I will content myself with chronicling the fact that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none of them moving very ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... 'Talking of the minuteness with which people will record the sayings of eminent persons, a story was told, that when Pope was on a visit to Spence[28] at Oxford, as they looked from the window they saw a Gentleman Commoner, who was just come in from riding, amusing himself with whipping at ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... doubt met with it in some of those old chroniclers who wrote exactly as not only the lower orders, but the generality of their fellow citizens, were speaking around them. And her use of it testifies to the minuteness of her care to reproduce the form and pressure of the time of which she ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... The minuteness of the confession was exceedingly painful; and, at its conclusion, she pressed her palms to ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... attempt the pitiless woman threatened to leave me. But the information she gave me about her own sex was a perfect torment to me. She told me the most lascivious details, and explained with the utmost minuteness the different external and internal movements which would be developed in the copulations pictured by Aretin. I thought it quite impossible that she could be reasoning from theory alone. She was not troubled by the slightest tincture of modesty, but philosophized on coition as coolly ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and terrible disease (morbus pedicularis), described with great minuteness by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a most loathsome disease.' Diocletian had withdrawn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ignore the investigations of Luthardt and others, which (as 'apologists' venture to think) show that the whole texture of the language in the Fourth Gospel is Hebraic? Why again, when he alludes to 'the minuteness of details' [14:4] in this Gospel as alleged in defence of its authenticity, is he satisfied with this mere caricature of the 'apologetic' argument? Having set up a man of straw, he has no difficulty in knocking him down. He has only to declare that 'the identification of an eye-witness by details ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... times better than the microscope," said he to himself again. "Atoms are annoying and disgusting to look at, with their incomprehensible and frightful minuteness, and their horrible celerity. One does not like to think that everything is composed of myriads, be they ever so beautiful,—which they are not, that ever I could see, but chiefly all head or a wriggling tail. Bah! This is much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... diverged into a graphic account of the fire in Beverly Square, and, seeing that Ziza listened with intense earnestness, he dilated upon every point, and went with special minuteness into ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... in and out of my mind in the course of one busy day, that I became their victim rather than their master. But now my language to my wife that unhappy evening returned to my consciousness with incredible vividness and minuteness. It will be seen from the precision with which I have already recorded it, how inexorable this ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... like some gorgon, hydra, or chimera dire planted at the gate, carried off a yearly tale of youths and virgins from the city. In literature, only a revolutionist can thoroughly overpower a revolutionist. Mr. Carlyle had fully as much daring as Byron; his writing at its best, if without the many-eyed minuteness and sustained pulsing force of Byron, has still the full swell and tide and energy of genius: he is as lawless in his disrespect for some things established. He had the unspeakable advantage of being that which, though not in this sense, only his own favourite word of contempt describes, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... examine the canvas, and make sure there were no rents or holes by which the water might escape. This was done with all the minuteness and care that the circumstances called for; and when the sailor at length became satisfied that the tarpauling was waterproof, he took the hand of his youthful protege in his own, and both kneeling upon the raft, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... readers, who cannot very logically account for either preference. We can only make sure that we have here an annalist, or analyst, as we choose, who fascinates us from his first page to his last, whose narrative or whose comment may enter into any minuteness of detail without fatiguing us, and can only truly grieve ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rendered her pity with a great deal of gesticulation, casting up her eyes, shrugging her shoulders, and sighing grievously. But the assistant's cheerfulness could not be abated even by the spectacle of extreme age; and she made the most of the whole occasion, recounting with great minuteness all the incidents of the visit to the photographer's, and running to get the dress Virginia sat in, that we might see how exactly it was given in the picture. Then she gave us much discourse concerning the Conservatorio and its usages, and seemed not to ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... forests that clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white between the ranges of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... in this state of feeble indecision as regarded the great questions, and with this minuteness of detail in secondary matters, that M. Necker presented himself on the 5th of May before the three orders at the opening of the session in the palace of Versailles by King Louis XVI. The royal procession had been saluted by the crowd with repeated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is a brief history of her life. Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence with supernatural power, constituted a second Witch of Endor, and able by "examining ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... translations in their language, he undertook to give some account of its grammatical forms. A little work printed in 1842, with the modest title of "A Spelling-book of the Seneca Language," comprises the variations of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, given with much minuteness. Those of the verbs are promised, but the book closes abruptly without them, for the reason—as the author afterwards explained to a correspondent—that he had not as yet been able to obtain such a complete knowledge of them as he desired. ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... author's general narrative of the Doctor's life in Mr. Croker's edition of 1831 - and not the least interesting circumstance connected with it is, that Johnson himself read, from time to time, Boswell's record of his sayings and doings; and, so far from being displeased with its minuteness, expressed great admiration of its accuracy, and encouraged the chronicler to proceed with his grand ulterior proceeding. See Life, vol. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... say all men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the concrete and not with the abstract,—fraternity and equality as a reality, not ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... with some minuteness one of the most extensive silver mines in the world, where an average of 5000 men and unnumbered animals are employed, it will not be necessary to go into details as we notice the many other celebrated ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... startles us now and then, with a vivid scene—until 1848, we are told, at the arrival of a staff-officer or of a general, every bell in the place had to be set ringing and gunpowder had to be fired off. One finds oneself revelling in the minuteness of the descriptions, one follows happily or sadly the fortunes of Ruppenthal and Kopp and Morgenstern. Everything is true, for the compilers of the book have felt, like Defoe, that "this supplying a story by invention is certainly a most scandalous crime." We are given all the names of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... his works as plates. Thus, for the past five years he had been making some curious experiments on a collection of hollyhocks; he had obtained a whole series of new colorings by artificial fecundations. She made these sorts of copies with extraordinary minuteness, an exactitude of design and of coloring so extreme that he marveled unceasingly at the conscientiousness of her work, and he often told her that she had a "good, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... condensed form a very large portion of all that is practically useful in the treatment of the diseases ordinarily occurring in this country. The symptoms are given with sufficient minuteness and detail to enable any one of ordinary capacities of observation to distinguish the complaint; and the treatment is so plainly laid down, that no one need make a mistake. If strictly followed, it will, in a very large proportion of cases, effect ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... so strange were the thoughts that floated through the mind of this child of twelve years old. And from these precocious yearnings after the infinite, Olive's fancy turned to earthly, childish things. She pictured with curious minuteness how she would feel when she awoke next morning, and found that Elspie was dead;—how there would be a funeral; how strange the house would seem afterward; even what would be done with the black bonnet and shawl which, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... in cloth most marvellously, not only counterchanging the pattern, but inlaying the inlays with smaller patternwork, thus combining great simplicity of effect with wonderful minuteness of detail. They mask the joins with chain-stitch, the colour of it artfully chosen with regard to the two colours of the cloth it divides or joins. Further, they often patch together pieces ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... will," and the reason of a description which appears so oddly to reverse the fact is that in reality the method by which this feat is performed is precisely that indicated in these ancient books. It is by the use of temporary visual machinery of inconceivable minuteness that the world of the infinitely little is so clearly seen; and in the same way (or rather in the opposite way) it is by temporarily enormously increasing the size of the machinery used that it becomes ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... the blood is returned from the arteries to the veins, not without some other admirable artifice" (non sine artificio quodam admirabili). It was this artificium admirabile of which Harvey was unable to give a description. On account of the minuteness of their structure, the capillaries were beyond his sight, aided as it was by a magnifying glass merely. He indeed demonstrated physiologically the existence of some such passages; but it remained for a later observer, with improved appliances, to verify the fact. This ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... miraculousness, distinctness and verisimilitude. All the phenomena of life in the camp, the court, the boudoir, the low faubourg, or the country chateau are ranged in order, and catalogued. This is done with relentless audacity, often with a touch of grotesque exaggeration, but always with almost wearying minuteness. Sometimes this great writer finds that a description of actuality fails to give the true spiritual key to a situation, and he overflows into allegory, or Swendenborgian mysticism, just as Bastien-Lepage resorts to a coating of actual gilt, in depicting that radiant ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... extravagantly vehement, and offensively familiar in expression; when this ended, a hymn was sung, and then another priest took the centre place, and preached. The sermon had considerable eloquence, but of a frightful kind. The preacher described, with ghastly minuteness, the last feeble fainting moments of human life, and then the gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the last loathsome stage of decomposition. Suddenly changing his tone, which had been that of sober accurate description, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... be doubted. Multiplied conversations with him, and views of the subject taken in all the shapes in which it can present itself, have possessed him with our estimates of every thing relating to it, with a minuteness which no written communication to Mr. Livingston could ever have attained. These will prepare them to meet and decide on every form of proposition which can occur, without awaiting new instructions from hence, which might draw to an ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... principle that has no exception. If you are without strong passions, you cannot be a painter at all. The laying of paint by an insensitive person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is not painting, but daubing or plastering; and that, observe, irrespective of the boldness or minuteness of the work. An insensitive person will daub with a camel's hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one will paint with mortar ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... red, quite large and pretty, though somewhat outre under the microscope, for from between the little lenses are projecting, straight, stiff hairs. As the insect is quite active, it must be that this fringing of the tiny eyelets with hair does not materially obscure its vision. When the minuteness of this singular arrangement is considered, it is surely remarkable. This general hairiness of the female especially, and that about the head, neck, and forward part of the thorax, stands correlated to a beautiful structure found only in the male, which has on the tarsus of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... for though the dimensions of the curious construction in question, intended to carry two hundred passengers, will appear large to those of our readers whose ideas of ballooning have never gone beyond the ordinary ascensions so much in vogue at the present day, they are yet of almost microscopic minuteness when compared with the developments of which M. Petin and his friends conceive his plans ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... no doubt Mr. Darwin intended that the change of front should escape us; for it cannot be believed that he did not perfectly well know what he had done. Mr. Darwin edited and re- edited with such minuteness of revision that it may be said no detail escaped him provided it was small enough; it is incredible that he should have allowed this paragraph to remain from first to last unchanged (except for the introduction of the words "by the Creator," ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... requires greater minuteness of regulation; and the steps of all advancing States are more and more to be picked among the old rubbish and the new materials. The difficulty lies in discovering the right path through the chaos of confusion. The adjustment of mutual rights and wrongs is also more difficult ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... good company, and this I discovered as soon as he was gone, for in a few days I became as melancholy as before. Fortunately, I was still allowed my walk in the garret, and I began to examine its contents with more minuteness. One of the chests was full of fine paper, pieces of cardboard, uncut pens, and clews of pack thread; the other was fastened down. A piece of polished black marble, an inch thick, six inches long, and three broad, attracted my attention, and I possessed myself of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... virtue of completion, lest I should be supposed a defender of Wouvermans or Gerard Dow; neither can I adequately praise the power of Tintoret, without fearing to be thought adverse to Holbein or Perugino. The fact is, that both finish and impetuosity, specific minuteness, or large abstraction, may be the signs of passion, or of its reverse; may result from affection or indifference, intellect or dulness. Some men finish from intense love of the beautiful in the smallest parts of what they do; others in pure incapability of comprehending anything ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... with so much detail that it is hard to believe that they are works of imagination and not true stories. "The little art he is truly master of, is of forging a story and imposing it upon the world as truth." So wrote one of his contemporaries. Charles Lamb, in criticizing Defoe, notices this minuteness of detail and remarks that he is, therefore, an author suited only for "servants" (meaning that this method can appeal only to comparatively uneducated minds). Really as every boy and girl knows, a good story ought to have this quality of seeming true, and the ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... born in Rhode Island, August 23, 1785. The late Commodore Mackenzie, of the navy, who possessed what we may term a fine biographical faculty, has traced in his interesting narrative of the Life of Perry, with fond minuteness, the early incidents of the boy's career. The chief characteristics, he tells us, "were an uncommon share of beauty, a sweetness and gentleness of disposition which corroborated the expression of his countenance, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... going on gorgeous wings, and none ever a stranger more than once. My non-parasitic friend "opened a new world" to me; a world that so flattered one with its grace and beauty, its marvellous delicacy and minuteness, its glory of color and curiousness of marking, and its exquisite adaptation of form to need and function, that in my meaner depths, or say my childish shallows—I resented Mrs. Fontenette's making the same avowal for herself—I didn't ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... oil, whalebone, arctic foxes, etcetera, etcetera, if they were to be got; and bring about a reconciliation between the Esquimaux and the Indians of the interior, if that were possible. With the careful minuteness peculiar to documents, Stanley's instructions went on to point out that he was to start from Moose—with two half-sized canoes, each capable of carrying ten pieces or packages of 90 pounds weight each, besides the crew—and bore through the ice, if the ice would allow ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... zeal and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always be in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting still. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July 1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scenes at first sight uninteresting, or even uninviting. He is absolutely free from affectation or sentimentality, and may be regarded as one of the greatest masters of the realistic in our literature. With these merits he has certain faults, too great minuteness in his pictures, too frequent dwelling upon the sordid and depraved aspects of character, and some degree of harshness both in matter and manner, and not unfrequently a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... round the front and rear of the various bodies, and inspected them with a minuteness and attention which showed that his years had not dulled his soldier's faculties, the Mayor faced round with the evident intention of addressing us. His clerk instantly darted in front of him, and waving his arms began to shout 'Silence, good people! Silence for ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more influence in the Economy nature, than the incurious are aware of; and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention; and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... figure of the flying monk might have been equally real if it had been an ignoble presentation of terror—the superb tree, which may almost be called an actor in the drama, might have been painted with even greater minuteness, though not perhaps with equal effect upon us, if it had arrested our attention by its details—the dying martyr and the noble assassin might have been made equally real in more vulgar types—but the triumph achieved by Titian is that the mind is filled ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the passage in talking over the past and the future. I told her everything I had ever done and said with the utmost minuteness. I described my life at the cottage, my excursions on the lake, all my friends, and related the history of "Breaking Away." In twelve days we reached New York. As soon as we had taken rooms at a hotel, I hastened with my ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... distinctive character of his language that he never attended a Trial. The description given, in his Life of Phips, of what was exhibited and declared by the "afflicted children," at the Examinations, exhibits a minuteness and vividness, seeming to have come from an eye-witness; but there is not a particular word or syllable, I think, in the account, from which an inference, either way, can be drawn whether, or not, he was present at them, personally. This is observable, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... course of proceeding was to examine the finger nails, and, according to their form, colour, thickness, surface, and grain, to determine the character and destinies of those who consulted him. I was at once pleased and surprised at the minuteness of his observation, and the infinite variety of his distinctions. Besides the qualities of the nails that I have mentioned, he noticed some which altogether eluded my senses, such as their milkiness, flintiness, friability, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Giorgione is the abstract thought, the dreaminess of look, the almost furtive glance. The minuteness of finish reminds us of Antonello, and the turn of the head suggests several of the latter's portraits. The delicacy with which the features are modelled, the high forehead, and the lighting of the face are points to be noted, as we shall find the ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... allowing me to finish, "that's enough; why did you not begin by telling me all that? there is half an hour that we have lost." This storm[36] disconcerted me. He perceived my confusion, and resumed his discourse with mildness.—"Come, make yourself easy, and repeat to me, with the greatest minuteness, all that has passed between you and X****." I then related the circumstances which had induced me to have an interview with Monsieur X****. I repeated our conversation word for word. I gave him a complete ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... observations of a secondary nature, the suggestion of the moment, were delivered orally as they now appear in print. The only alteration consists in a more commodious distribution, and here and there in additions, where the limits of the time prevented me from handling many matters with uniform minuteness. This may afford a compensation for the animation of oral delivery which sometimes throws a veil over deficiencies of expression, and always excites a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... on that point have been excised. The way of living which Homer describes is examined, and an effort is made to prove that he depicts the life of a single brief age of culture. The investigation is compelled to a tedious minuteness, because the points of attack—the alleged discrepancies in descriptions of the various details of existence—are so minute as to ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... determination, and the next day, when he sat in judgment, he marked off a whole company of the plaintiffs as well as of the accused, as were mentioned by name, and had them brought before him. Yue-ts'un examined them with additional minuteness, and discovered in point of fact, that the inmates of the Feng family were extremely few, that they merely relied upon this charge with the idea of obtaining some compensation for joss-sticks and burials; and that the Hsueeh family, presuming ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... in the conviction that a pretty girl is not only fond of him, but is instantly jealous of any other girl whose name is mentioned. He smiled at the flame in his reverie, and the boy examined, with clandestine minuteness, the set and pattern of his trousers, with glances of reference ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with minuteness of detail worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case, in fact the whole subject of sickness ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... ride on by the way dumb as a stone "; and the Trouveur aimed simply at being the most agreeable talker of his day. His romances, his rimes of Sir Tristram, his Romance of the Rose, are full of colour and fantasy, endless in detail, but with a sort of gorgeous idleness about their very length, the minuteness of their description of outer things, the vagueness of their touch when it passes to the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... with great diligence and minuteness, was altogether ineffectual; they could obtain no intelligence of the runaway. Mr. Trunnion was well distracted at the news of his flight; he raved with great fury at the imprudence of Peregrine, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... went to work with the minuteness of an auctioneer taking an inventory, or a sheriff levying an execution. Accordingly he came back full of notes; he had studied Carolus chiefly in respect of ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... present the antique pride of the Greenstreets was terribly at the mercy of her curiosity. She wished to see Miss Chancellor again, and to see her among her charming appurtenances, which Verena had described to her with great minuteness. The pretext that she would have valued most was wanting—that of Olive's having come out to Cambridge to pay the visit that had been solicited from the first; so she had to take the next best—she had to say to herself ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Henry James in 1811—but nothing practical was accomplished. Richard Trevethick, the anticipator of many things, also took out a patent in 1815, and in it he describes the screw propeller with considerable minuteness. Millington, Whytock, Perkins, Marestier, and Brown followed, with ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... which the servants at Midbranch looked forward to as necessary for the prosperity of the family; and the preliminary stages of which she had taken upon herself the responsibility of describing with so much minuteness of detail. With the politeness natural to the Southern negro, she opened the gate for the gentleman, but as she closed it behind him, she cast after him a look of earnest malevolence. "Ef dot ole Miss ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... standing behind her, came forward, greeted Tressady kindly, and they talked for a few minutes about the evening's debate. The keen look of the elder scanned the younger's face and manner the while with some minuteness. As for George, his dialogue with the Minister, at which more than one passer-by threw looks of interest and amusement, gave him no particular pleasure. Maxwell's qualities were not of the kind that specially appealed ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... best of these books. . . . The events are described with minuteness and care. The result is a very ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... friends are multiplied by agreeable words." He had to provide clean cloths and towels, cups without flaws, spoons of silver, mattresses, blankets and untorn sheets, pillows, quilts, etc. His duties are laid down with much minuteness; every morning he was required to go through the inventory, lest anything ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... situation, than to those reminding themselves of its fine compensations. Hawthorne's entries are to a great degree accounts of walks in the country, drives in stage-coaches, people he met in taverns. The minuteness of the things that attract his attention and that he deems worthy of being commemorated is frequently extreme, and from this fact we get the impression of a general vacancy in the field of vision. "Sunday evening, going by the jail, the setting sun kindled up the windows most cheerfully; ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... General Sherman both in his memoirs and report makes mention of this fact. General McCook himself belongs to a family which furnished many volunteers to the army. I refer to these circumstances with minuteness because I did General McCook injustice in my article in the Century, though not to the extent one would suppose from the public press. I am not willing to do any one an injustice, and if convinced that I have done one, I am always willing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... put above all the interests of the Church. They were, too, fierce partisans on the controversies about Church music, and had a zeal for the beauty and order of their respective churches that was admirable in its minuteness and its perseverance. They both had a large circle of friends with whom they rejoiced at annual festivities at their Colleges, and with whom they habitually and freely censured their immediate authorities. Those who were warmest in their devotion to the Vatican ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Saint Sulpice, he succeeded in forming another connection there, upon which he built greater expectations. This society of priests was beginning to distinguish itself, and from a seminary of a Paris parish to extend abroad. Ignorance, the minuteness of their practices, the absence of all patrons and of members at all distinguished in any way, inspired them with a blind obedience to Rome and to all its maxims; with a great aversion for everything that passed for Jansenism, and made them so dependent upon the bishops that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Blood, fled the Court in alarm, and took refuge in Savoy; while edict after edict was fulminated against the nobles, which threatened all their old and long-cherished privileges. The costume of each separate class was determined with a minuteness of detail which exasperated the magnificent courtiers, who had been accustomed to attire themselves in embroidery and cloth of gold, in rich laces, and plumed and jewelled hats, and who suddenly found themselves ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... is so important a factor in generating voice, writers on voice-production have described it with much minuteness, and because of these minute descriptions readers may have obtained an exaggerated idea of the size of this organ. But one of the marvels of voice-production is the smallness of the organ in which voice is generated, the size of the average larynx being about two inches in height by an inch and ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... MacBrair's, which is, as far as we know, the only one in existence. We have had but little opportunity to study the structure of that language. But what scanty material we have at hand leads us to the conclusion that it is quite loosely put together. The saving element in its verb is the minuteness with which it defines the time of an action. The causative form is made by the use of a suffix. It does not use the verb "to go" or "come" in order to express a future tense. Numerous particles are used in the substantive verb ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... hitherto been distinguished from the fixed stars only by their relative change of place, but the telescope proved them to be bodies so near to our own globe as to exhibit well-defined discs, while the fixed stars retained, even when magnified, the minuteness of remote and lucid points. The system of Jupiter, illuminated by four moons performing their revolutions in different and regular periods, exhibited to the proud reason of man the comparative insignificance of the globe he inhabits, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... The Queen and Prince left Osborne early on the 18th in their new yacht, Victoria and Albert, for Boulogne, and the visit to France, which lasted nine days, was brilliantly successful. The Queen, in her Journal, recorded with great minuteness the details of this interesting time, and some extracts are printed by Sir Theodore Martin in The Life ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Quiverful might be, he would not allow himself to be talked out of his opinion on this occasion, and proceeded with much minuteness to explain to his wife the tone in which Mr. Slope had spoken of Mrs. Proudie's interference in diocesan matters. As he did so, a new idea gradually instilled itself into the matron's head, and a new course of conduct ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... friends concerning the contemplated movement of Waally, with great minuteness, Unus was intelligent for a savage, and appeared to understand himself perfectly. He was of opinion that his countrymen would endeavour to cross, the first calm day, or the first day when the breeze should be light; and that was just the time ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... times. Once an Indian went forth to hunt. And he departed from the east branch of the Penobscot, and came to the head of another branch that leads into the east branch, and this he followed even to the foot of Mount Katahdin. [Footnote: This minuteness of needless detail is very characteristic of Indian tales. I do not think that it is introduced for the sake of local color, or to give an air of truthful seeming, because the Indian simply believes ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... required to submit to new. The irritation which the chancellor's demand for money raised among the states, gave rise to a thousand complaints; and the outrages committed by the troops, in their marches and quarters, were dwelt upon with a startling minuteness ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... any new light being thrown upon this important question, or any new rules of conduct pointed out, our author gives a minute detail of two cases, where any ancient female of ordinary capacity could have decided as well as himself, and relates with laboured minuteness the contrary opinions of some eminent physicians on a late memorable occasion in this country." Pinel an old woman! It will probably be new to most, if not all, of our readers that this illustrious man was regarded in ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... town-hall is to a pin's head." Again, it has been said that in proportion to the size of the particles the distance at which they revolve round the centre of the atom is as great as the distance from the earth to the sun. I must leave the realization of such infinite minuteness to the reader's ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... contemporary and reliable source—the inventories of the estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room, instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a clear picture of the household ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the brain), the weaker and less agitated parts must necessarily be driven aside from that point by the stronger which alone in this way reach it I had expounded all these matters with sufficient minuteness in the treatise which I formerly thought of publishing. And after these, I had shown what must be the fabric of the nerves and muscles of the human body to give the animal spirits contained in it the power to move the members, as when we ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... manner—and to apportion the proper seasoning with the accuracy of the chemist,—to be aware, exactly, of the order in which one dish should succeed another, and to do plentiful justice to all—was a minuteness of science to which Julian had hitherto been a stranger. Smith accordingly treated him as a mere novice in epicurism, cautioning him to eat his soup before the bouilli, and to forget the Manx custom of bolting the boiled meat before the broth, as if Cutlar MacCulloch and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Were it simply a friend to pursue 'Mid my million or two, Who could pay me in person or pelf What he owes me himself! 30 No: I could not but smile through my chafe: For the fellow lay safe As his mates do, the midge and the nit, —Through minuteness, to wit. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... doctor into his study, where he found him with the sword in his hand, which he had taken from over the mantel-piece, and was holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with great minuteness; the hilt being wrought in openwork, with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belonging to the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... following evening from Mrs. Berry herself. It was a long letter, and not only long, but badly written and crossed. It began with the weather, asked after Mr. Cox's health, and referred to the writer's; described with much minuteness a strange headache which had attacked Mrs. Cox, together with a long list of the remedies prescribed and the effects of each, and wound up in an out-of-the-way corner, in a vein of cheery optimism which reduced both readers to ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... contrary have formed the constant subject of her communications with God, but after her removal to Brescia, it pursued her with an almost painful persistence. Not once only, but continuously, uninterruptedly, it stood before her in all the distinctness of its first vivid colouring, and all the minuteness of its smallest details, so that whatever her occupations, alone or conversing with others, in the church and in her room, at all times and in all places, she seemed ever to see the mysterious ladder with its glorious throng of gem-crowned virgins and dazzling angels; she seemed ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... gentleman in the full prime of youthful manhood—handsome enough, and not badly executed; but if done by the same hand as the others, it was evidently some years before; for there was far more careful minuteness of detail, and less of that freshness of colouring and freedom of handling that delighted and surprised me in them. Nevertheless, I surveyed it with considerable interest. There was a certain individuality in the features and expression ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... proportions, which slowly emerged from the floor. Her dress was also of red samite, fantastically cut and flounced, as if she had been dressed for some exhibition of mimes or jugglers; and with the same minuteness which her predecessor had exhibited, she passed the lamp over her face and person, which seemed to rival the male's in ugliness. But with all this most unfavourable exterior, there was one trait in the features of both which argued alertness and intelligence ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... our author and his book with high respect for his powers,—we do not know but that we may say his genius,—and with no small admiration for this particular expression of them. The very minuteness of our criticism involves a compliment. It has been truly said, that many men never write a book at all, but that very few write only one. We think that the author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay" must and will write more. A mind so fruitful and inventive, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... one, for when they tried to tell the adventures which to them seemed so exciting, not to say tragical, the effect astonished them immensely, as their audience went into gales of laughter, especially at the wheelbarrow episode, which Bab insisted on telling, with grateful minuteness, to Ben's confusion. Thorny shouted, and even tender-hearted Betty forgot her tears over the lost dog to join in the familiar melody when Bab mimicked Pat's quotation ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... work so opposed to principles which he himself holds sacred, although I may be permitted to express my regret that he has not done so in a spirit more worthy of the cause which he defends. In spite of hostile criticism of very unusual minuteness and ability, no flaw or error has been pointed out which in the slightest degree affects my main argument, and I consider that every point yet objected to by Dr. Lightfoot, or indicated by Dr. Westcott, might be ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... south side of the tower there is a meridian line affixed, by means of which, if the sun shines, the hour of twelve is known to a certainty. This elegant pile of building has been examined with the greatest minuteness, by numerous architects, both within and without, and by all of them declared to be the work of a master; it being equally convenient as it is elegant. The church-yard, by which it is surrounded, corresponds with the building; its area contains four acres of ground, wherein are numerous ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... wander in the mazes of thought which he has opened to us. For Hegel has found admirers in England and Scotland when his popularity in Germany has departed, and he, like the philosophers whom he criticizes, is of the past. No other thinker has ever dissected the human mind with equal patience and minuteness. He has lightened the burden of thought because he has shown us that the chains which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to place ourselves not only above the opinions of men but above their modes of thinking, ...
— Sophist • Plato
... definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source—the inventories of the estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room, instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a clear picture of the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... open record of its immemorial past tells us at every turn that all agencies have conspired for loveliness and ruin itself has been benign. A passage of Wordsworth's describing the character of the lake-shores illustrates this fact with loving minuteness. ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Amboise. The Comte de Soissons, the second Prince of the Blood, fled the Court in alarm, and took refuge in Savoy; while edict after edict was fulminated against the nobles, which threatened all their old and long-cherished privileges. The costume of each separate class was determined with a minuteness of detail which exasperated the magnificent courtiers, who had been accustomed to attire themselves in embroidery and cloth of gold, in rich laces, and plumed and jewelled hats, and who suddenly found themselves reduced to a sobriety of costume repugnant to their habits; the Comte ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... and throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God of Love "clap on high his coloured winges twain;" and it is said of Gluttony in the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... some account of its grammatical forms. A little work printed in 1842, with the modest title of "A Spelling-book of the Seneca Language," comprises the variations of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, given with much minuteness. Those of the verbs are promised, but the book closes abruptly without them, for the reason—as the author afterwards explained to a correspondent—that he had not as yet been able to obtain such a complete knowledge of them as he desired. This difficulty is further exemplified ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... contented with the minuteness of this description. This character appears to have taken his eye as completely as it takes King Lear's, the moment that he gets a glimpse of him; and the poet betrays throughout that same philosophical interest in the study, which the monarch expresses so boldly; for beside the dramatic ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... his own Lutheran and Kantian sentiments. But the essence of Christianity, as of everything else, is the whole of it; and the genuine nature of a seed is at least as well expressed by what it becomes in contact with the earth and air as by what it seems in its primitive minuteness. It is quite true, as the modernists tell us, that in the beginning Christian faith was not a matter of scholastic definitions, nor even of intellectual dogmas. Religions seldom begin in that form, and paganism ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... most delicate manner—and to apportion the proper seasoning with the accuracy of the chemist,—to be aware, exactly, of the order in which one dish should succeed another, and to do plentiful justice to all—was a minuteness of science to which Julian had hitherto been a stranger. Smith accordingly treated him as a mere novice in epicurism, cautioning him to eat his soup before the bouilli, and to forget the Manx custom ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... half-empty vessel that freest emits The water that's in it. 'Tis thus with men's wits; Or at least with their knowledge. A man's capability Of imparting to others a truth with facility Is proportion'd forever with painful exactness To the portable nature, the vulgar compactness, The minuteness in size, or the lightness in weight, Of the truth he imparts. So small coins circulate More freely than large ones. A beggar asks alms, And we fling him a sixpence, nor feel any qualms; But if every street charity shook an investment, Or each beggar ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... were left in peace; from minuteness they escaped the notice of the Young Turk party in its schemes for the complete Ottomanisation of the Empire, and, until the present year 1917, no mention of 'the Jewish question' was propounded. But it will he remembered that in 1915, certain Jewish refugees, taking warning ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... suspect, that, if I had employed the language of exclusive eulogy,—such language as is employed at and concerning the Commencement dinners and the Alumni dinners, I might have described the celebration of Class-Day with much more minuteness than I have attempted to do, and should have heard no complaints of violated hospitality. This I would gladly have done, had it been possible. As it was not, I have pointed out those features which seemed to me objectionable,—certainly with no ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... business is not to be the slave of dates; he ought to be faithful to the character of the epoch, and of the dramatis personae which he has selected for representation. It is not his business to examine every trifle, to count over with servile minuteness every link in the chain of this epoch, or of the life of this character; that is the department of the historian and the biographer. The mission of the historical novelist is to select from them the most brilliant, the most interesting events, which are connected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... any minuteness the course of Mr. Tazewell through more than three of the most anxious months of his life would far exceed my present limits, and as I have already treated this topic in a separate work, and have been required to treat it again, I shall simply say here, that Mr. ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... good-looking man, made his appearance with the ostler; he bore the letter in his hand. Without glancing at me, he betook himself at once to consider the horse, going round him, and observing every point with the utmost minuteness. At last, after having gone round the horse three times, he stopped beside me, and keeping his eyes on the horse, bent his head towards his right shoulder. 'That horse is worth some money,' said he, turning towards me suddenly, and slightly touching me on the arm with the letter which he held in ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... eighth, ninth, and tenth magnitudes, nearly three hundred nebulae, and globular and other clusters, of all degrees of resolvability, and smaller scattered stars innumerable of every inferior magnitude, from the tenth to such as by their multitude and minuteness constitute irresolvable nebulosity, extending over tracts of many square degrees. Were there but one such object, it might be maintained without utter improbability that its apparent sphericity is only an effect of foreshortening, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... this livid death's head, designed with such minuteness of detail that it seemed to stand out from the tapestry, was less lugubrious than the two personages who held up the hideous blazon and who seemed to be whispering to each other ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... London Poor, by HENRY MAYHEW, is issued by Harper and Brothers, and will be found to increase the interest with which that remarkable series has been received by the public. His pictures of the condition of the laboring classes in London have a minuteness and vividness of detail which would not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... personality of extraordinary nobility and attractiveness. The personal affection inspired imagination and ideality to their highest flights. Its original object became invested with superhuman traits and elevated to a deity. To trace with certainty and minuteness the historic lineaments of the real man is not altogether possible; but the essential truth concerning him is ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... insurmountable defects in composition. Nor is it difficult to see what these defects are. The venerable Archdeacon, respectable for his industry, his learning, his researches, had not a ray of genius, and genius is the soul of history. He gives every thing with equal minuteness, makes no attempt at digesting or compression, and fills his pages with letters and state-papers at full length; the certain way, if not connected by ability, to send them to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... vases. A line of absolute correctness, observe. I do not care how slowly you do it, or with how many alterations, junctions, or re-touchings; the one thing I ask of you is, that the line shall be right, and right by measurement, to the same minuteness which you would have to give in a Government chart to the map ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... for the scattering of seeds, by their being furnished with special structures of very different kinds. The diverse modes by which such seeds are dispersed are well expressed by Mr. Darwin. He says:[50] "Seeds are disseminated {66} by their minuteness,—by their capsule being converted into a light balloon-like envelope,—by being embedded in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... themselves to English society. The reformed system which has taken its place at Oxford criticises, not without some justice, the limitations of the older one; the narrow range of its interests, the few books which men read, and the minuteness with which they were "got up." But if these men did not learn all that a University ought to teach its students, they at least learned two things. They learned to work hard, and they learned to make full use of what they knew. They framed an ideal of practical life, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the story of Burns's life has been told with such minuteness of detail, that the internal evidence of his poetry would seem only to be called in to verify or correct the verdict of tradition and the garbled gossip of those wise after the fact of his fame. It is so easy after a man has compelled ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... great deal of beautiful embroidery is to be met with, in silk and gold thread upon quite common stuffs; Persian and Moorish embroidery for instance, both remarkable for their delicacy and minuteness, and executed upon ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... by their different characters and accomplishments made lasting impressions on his youthful mind. The impressions must have been deep, since, writing in advanced age, he describes their personal appearance and their different idiosyncrasies with a minuteness which is at the same time a remarkable testimony to his precocious powers of observation. What is interesting in these intimacies as throwing light on Goethe's early characteristics is, that all these persons were of mature age, and all of them more or less eccentric in their habits and ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... the expressions used, imposed upon us, in the peremptory fashion in which it is sprung upon the interpreter, would carry the wildest dismay to our mind. Those understanding the Indian tongue have frequently assured me that the Indian, when interpreting, reproduces with minuteness, if he be granted, of course, a certain latitude for differences of idiom, the speaker's thought and expressions. It is said by one of his own writers that the Indian is much more prone to follow the evil than the moral practices of the white; and there can be no doubt, I think, that, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... purpose. Hence virtue may under different forms assume various names, and may thus be broken up into separate virtues. These are many or few, according as we distribute in smaller or larger groups the occasions for virtuous conduct, or analyze with greater or less minuteness the sentiments and ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... to present this journal letter, with a few omissions, just as it was written, trusting that the interest which attaches to aboriginal races and little-visited regions will carry my readers through the minuteness ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... cheerful countenance and agreeable conversation, for friends are multiplied by agreeable words." He had to provide clean cloths and towels, cups without flaws, spoons of silver, mattresses, blankets and untorn sheets, pillows, quilts, etc. His duties are laid down with much minuteness; every morning he was required to go through the inventory, lest ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... that she too had seen the woman's hand; which, however, did not seem to be the case. And finally, my mother going to the door, saw nothing, though she appeared much impressed by the extremeness of my terror and the minuteness of my description. I communicate the story, as it lies fixed in my memory, without attempting to explain it. The supposed apparition may have been merely a momentary affection of the eye, of the nature described by Sir Walter Scott in his "Demonology," and Sir David ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... (III. 12.) describes the compulsory work in the gold mines with great minuteness. The convicts were either prisoners taken in war, or people whom despotism in its blind fury found it expedient to put out of the way. The mines lay in the plain of Koptos, not far from the Red ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mouth of a child not ten years old. Another and more numerous class, evidently piquing themselves not a little upon avoiding this error, fall into another by fancying it necessary to write down to their young readers. They explain everything with a tiresome minuteness of detail, although any observer of children ought to know that a child's mind does not want everything explained. They think that simplicity demands this lengthy discussion of every trivial matter. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... ambition to write poetry rather than the call; a slight bent towards the country, heightened by a vague dissatisfaction and weariness with the artificial luxury of Rome, led them to choose pastoral poetry. They make up for depth of observation by a shallow minuteness. In the seven eclogues of Calpurnius may be found a larger assortment of vegetables, of agricultural implements and operations, than in the Bucolics of Vergil, but there is little poetry, pastoral or otherwise. The 'grace of all the Muses' and the breath of the country are fled ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... from the above in being intended for a hand-book, it is in fact a Cicerone, and therefore occasionally dwells with a degree of minuteness which could be interesting only to a person actually on the spot; but the "Vectis Scenery" takes the higher rank of an Exhibitor of picturesque scenes which ask little aid from verbal explanation, and is entitled to a place on the drawing-room table with other works of Art. The Engravings ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... curiosity and interest. The date of his entrance at Harrow,[44] the names of the boys who were, at that time, monitors, the list of his fellow pupils under Doctor Drury,[45]—all are noted down with a fond minuteness, as if to form points of retrospect in his after-life; and that he sometimes referred to them with this feeling will appear from one touching instance. On the first leaf of his "Scriptores Graeci," ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... see him, but in military uniform; never in the same position, but always in a natural one, and not the least with anything fantastic about him, either standing or walking, or lying down or riding. The figure, which was painted with the utmost minuteness, moved readily before her without any effort of hers, without her willing it or exerting her imagination to produce it. Frequently she saw him surrounded with something in motion, which was darker than the bright ground; but the figures were shadowy, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... degrees south. Sandstone, porphyry, and granite, succeed each other from the coast to a very considerable distance into the interior, on a N. W. line. The light ferruginous dust that is distributed over the county of Cumberland, and which annoys the traveller by its extreme minuteness, to the eastward of the Blue Mountains, is as different from the coarse gravelly soil on the secondary ranges to the westward of them, as the barren scrubs and thickly-wooded tracts of the former district are to the grassy and open forests ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... for printing from glass or paper negatives, giving a minuteness of detail unattained by any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... them from the shore to their summits were not that unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white between the ranges ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... liberty of conscience throughout the British realm, allowing the crop-eared Puritan and the Papist priest to build conventicles and mass houses under the very eaves of the palaces of Oxford and Canterbury; the mining and countermining of Jesuits and prelates, are detailed with impartial minuteness. The secret springs of the great movements of the time are laid bare; the mean and paltry instrumentalities are seen at work in the under world of corruption, prejudice, and falsehood. No one, save a blind, unreasoning partisan of Catholicism or Episcopacy, can contemplate this chapter in English ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not only metaphysical but subtle and complicated to the highest degree; how work out this idea, unless through the finest intricacy of shades of mental development? Admitted a philosophic comprehensiveness of historical estimate and a minuteness of familiarity with details, with the added assumption, besides, of speaking with the very voice of the times; how present this position, unless by standing at an eminent point, and addressing thence a not unprepared audience? Admitted an intense aching concentration of thought; how be self-consistent, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... independent treatment of the same material, with important differences of form. The place of the systematic generality of chap. iv. is here taken by the definite individual case, and what is analogous to it; the ritual is given with less minuteness, and the hierarchical subordination of ranks has no influence on the classification of offences. In this section also asham and hattath occur interchangeably as synonymous. In the third section a ram as an asham is prescribed (v. 17-19) for the very ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... uncommon among even the most prominent and widely advertised professional fiction-blacksmiths of the day. Mr. Whittier's style is that of a careful and sincere scholar, and we believe that his work will become notable in this and the succeeding amateur journalistic generation. The minuteness of the preceding criticism has been prompted not by a depreciatory estimate of his powers, but rather by an appreciative survey of his possibilities. "Say, Brother", by Mrs. Renshaw, is a poem describing life in the trenches of the Huns. The metre ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... observations comprehend; but, with the use of apparatus suitably arranged, the movements at all depths have been determined, with the exact amount of power exerted by streams coursing along the bed of the sea. The necessity for this minuteness of examination has been fully shown in some of the curious discoveries ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Mr Quiverful might be, he would not allow himself to be talked out of his opinion on this occasion; and proceeded with much minuteness to explain to his wife the tone in which Mr Slope had spoken of Mrs Proudie's interference in diocesan matters. As he did so, a new idea gradually instilled itself into the matron's head, and a new course of action presented itself to her judgement. What if, after all, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... his patient diligence and study of detail render his pictures so many miniatures, done in larger proportions; the lucidity of tint, the grace of the ornamental motives, the almost exaggerated minuteness of execution, are decided proofs of the artistic education of Fra Angelico. It is pleasant to imagine him, during his sojourn at Foligno and Cortona, making pilgrimages to Assisi, to draw inspiration from the works of the great masters in the splendid church of San Francesco. There he found ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... greater minuteness of regulation; and the steps of all advancing States are more and more to be picked among the old rubbish and the new materials. The difficulty lies in discovering the right path through the chaos of confusion. The adjustment ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... cause to decline this extension of his confidence, Alan, without hesitation, put the letter into his hand. Having turned it round as old Trumbull and Nanty Ewart had formerly done, and, like them, having examined the address with much minuteness, he asked whether he had observed these words, pointing to a pencil-writing upon the under side of the letter. Fairford answered in the negative, and, looking at the letter, read with surprise, 'CAVE NE LITERAS BELLEROPHONTIS ADFERRES'; a caution which coincided ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... North American mammals. In the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to avoid slipshod methods, the tendency was to treat as not serious, as unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried on with laborious minuteness in the laboratory. My taste was specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no more desire or ability to be a microscopist and section-cutter than to be a mathematician. Accordingly I abandoned all thought ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... impossible. It is well said that he planned his history "on the scale of an ordnance map." He did what a German professor does when he tries to fathom English society by studying the Times newspaper day by day. The enormous mass of detail, the infinitesimal minuteness of view, beat him. As he complained about Samuel Johnson, he runs into "big words about little things." Charles's mistress, her pug-dog, the page-boy who tended the dog, nay, the boy's putative father, occupy the foreground: and the poet, the statesman, and the hero retire ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... contradict monsieur. I speak English—I learned it when I was valet for Mr. Parker in London. That is why I am sent here. The pay is of a minuteness. Circumstances ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... cry attracted his, comrades; and several of them, dismounting, approached the strange object with looks of astonishment. One, more courageous than the rest, picked up the wig, which they all proceeded to examine with curious minuteness. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... The minuteness of the sub-fields that demand observation, is shown by an entry in the Psychological Index: "1202. Benedict, F.G. "Studies in Body—Temperature." 1. Influence of the Inversion of the Daily Routine; ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... regarded in at least one case as a concession by the High Commissioners of Great Britain. His Lordship declined to follow Mr. Evarts "into the details of his argument." He maintained that "these very matters were examined at great length and with conscientious minuteness by the Commission whose award is under discussion." He admitted, with diplomatic courtesy, that "Mr. Evarts' reasoning is powerful," but still in his judgment, "capable of refutation." He did not, however, attempt to refute it, but based his case simply on the ground that the award gave the $5,500,000 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... art yet another distinctive feature,—finish, which was carried to the very extreme of possibility. It is truly said that the leading quality of the people may be found in their pictures; viz., patience. Everything is represented with the minuteness of a daguerreotype; every vein in the wood of a piece of furniture, every fibre in a leaf, the threads of cloth, the stitches in a patch, every hair upon an animal's coat, every wrinkle in a man's face; everything finished with microscopic precision, as if ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... public life, he is all life and interest in the social circle," said Major Favraud. "His range of thought is the grandest and most unlimited, his powers of conversation are the rarest I have ever met with. Yet he never refused, on any occasion, to answer with minuteness the inquiries of the smallest child or most insignificant dependant. 'Had he not been Alexander, he must have been Parmenio.' Had fortune not struck out for him the path of a statesman, he would ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Atlantic liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate a notice put up: "Authors are requested not to lie prostrate on the bowsprit." But even without this advantage, three or four generations of writers have chronicled with great minuteness their sensations during the transit. I need only say that my sensations were just as good as theirs. I will content myself with chronicling the fact that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... might tell, and no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is a brief history of her life. Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... walking-sticks, shawls, household utensils, crockery, everything the contadino needs and loves. Gaspare, having money to lay out, considered it his serious duty to examine everything that was to be bought with slow minuteness. It did not matter whether the goods were suited to a masculine taste or not. He went into the mysteries of feminine attire with almost as much assiduity as a mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, and insisted upon Maurice sharing his interest and caution. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... healthy life; there is scarcely a suggestion of local color; the humor is nearly always mechanical; there is little conversation and the characters are never normal human beings. Although the stories are strongly romantic in subject, plot, and setting, there is an extraordinary realism in treatment, a minuteness and accuracy of detail equaling the work of Defoe. This is one secret of the magical art that not only transports us to the world of dream and vision where the author's own soul roamed, but for the time makes it all ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... and masons, bricklayers and carpenters, laboured incessantly. Under the liberal encouragement of the king and of his chief nobles, the arts recovered themselves and began to flourish anew. The engraving and painting of the hieroglyphics were resumed with success, and carried out with a minuteness and accuracy that provokes the admiration of the beholder. Bas-reliefs of extreme beauty and elaboration characterize the period. There rests upon some of them "a gentle and almost feminine tenderness, which has impressed upon the imitations of living creatures the stamp of an ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Diocletian and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and terrible disease (morbus pedicularis), described with great minuteness by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a most loathsome disease.' Diocletian had withdrawn from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... blight. And therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... chase, on an expedition which was to last for one or two months. The annals of the time describe this expedition with great particularity, presenting a scene of pomp almost surpassing credence. Some allowance must doubtless be made for exaggeration; and yet there is a minuteness of detail which, accompanied by corroborative evidence of the populousness and the power of these Tartar tribes, invests the narrative with a good degree of authenticity. We are informed that several hundreds of thousands of men were in movement; that each soldier ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... themselves. In pursuing this part of our plan, we have sometimes descended from that elevation of style, which the reader might expect in a quarto volume; we have frequently been obliged to record facts concerning children which may seem trifling, and to enter into a minuteness of detail which may appear unnecessary. No anecdotes, however, have been admitted without due deliberation; nothing has been introduced to gratify the idle curiosity of others, or to indulge our ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the boudoir, the low faubourg, or the country chateau are ranged in order, and catalogued. This is done with relentless audacity, often with a touch of grotesque exaggeration, but always with almost wearying minuteness. Sometimes this great writer finds that a description of actuality fails to give the true spiritual key to a situation, and he overflows into allegory, or Swendenborgian mysticism, just as Bastien-Lepage ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... part of Dorsetshire, the Channel Islands, part of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, and the six southern Welsh counties. In this way I had an opportunity of seeing a considerable portion of Great Britain, with a minuteness which few have enjoyed. And I did my business after a fashion in which no other official man has worked at least for many years. I went almost everywhere on horseback. I had two hunters of my own, and here and there, where I could, I ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... were the thoughts that floated through the mind of this child of twelve years old. And from these precocious yearnings after the infinite, Olive's fancy turned to earthly, childish things. She pictured with curious minuteness how she would feel when she awoke next morning, and found that Elspie was dead;—how there would be a funeral; how strange the house would seem afterward; even what would be done with the black bonnet and shawl which, two days since, Elspie had hung up against the nursery-door ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... fear they are worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the duration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alike proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and succession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, but have added more ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... tale of his affair with his cousin, and, although I was already well acquainted with it, I was glad to draw all the particulars from himself. I had seen the note his mother wrote to the doctor. The minuteness and undisguised description she had therein given struck me as very strange, and I augured that she herself must be a lewd and lecherous person, to have done more than merely hint at the affair, instead of dwelling, doubtless in erotic delight, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Reformation was concluded, it terminated, after many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth. We can thus trace our poor law in the whole course of its growth, and into two stages through which it passed I must enter with some minuteness. The 12th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., and the 25th of the 27th, are so remarkable in their tone, and so rich in their detail, as to furnish a complete exposition of English thought at that time upon the subject; while the second of these two acts, and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Such was the minuteness of investigation employed, that, although the grate had contained a large fire during the night, they proceeded to examine even the very chimney, in order to discover whether escape by it were possible; but this attempt, too, was fruitless, for the chimney, built in the old fashion, rose in ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and some that way, they yet Reflect the Rays of Light that fall on them, not towards one another, but outwards towards the Spectators Eye. In this Rude and General account of Whiteness, it seems that besides those Qualities, which are common to Bodies of other Colours, as for instance the Minuteness and Number of the Superficial parts, the two chief things attributed to Bodies as White are made to be, First, that its Little Protuberances and Superficial parts be of somewhat a Specular Nature, that they may as little Looking-glasses each of them Reflect the Beams it receives, (or ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... great among men have been remarkable at once for the grasp and minuteness of their knowledge. Great astronomers seem to know every iota of the Knowable. The Great Duke, when at the head of armies, could give all the particulars to be observed in a cavalry charge, and took care to have food ready for all his troops. Men think that greatness consists ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... seemed to recollect me: yet were there times of fierce and overpowering delirium, when my name was uttered in the transport of the most passionate enthusiasm—when my features as absent, though not present, were recalled and dwelt upon with all the minuteness of the most faithful detail; and I knelt by her in all those moments, when no other human being was near, and clasped her wan hand, and wiped the dew from her forehead, and gazed upon her convulsed and changing face, and called upon her in a voice ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... statesmen, with whom reform has been a characteristic trait, was more devoted or happy. His delight, deep and unfailing, extended to every department of the government, and the minuteness of his knowledge betrayed the intimate acquaintance which he had gained of the affairs of the State during his four years in the Senate. His message caught the inspiration of this fresh and joyous maturity. It ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... either preference. We can only make sure that we have here an annalist, or analyst, as we choose, who fascinates us from his first page to his last, whose narrative or whose comment may enter into any minuteness of detail without fatiguing us, and can only truly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... even the most determined lion-hunters; and if by any fortunate chance a stray Persian khan, or a "very magnificent three-tailed bashaw," was brought within the circle of the quidnuncs of the day, the sayings and doings of the illustrious stranger were chronicled with as much minuteness as if he had been the denizen of another planet. Every hair of his beard, every jewel in the hilt of his khanjar, was enumerated and criticised; while all oriental etiquette was violated by the constant enquiries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... took its rise, is probably that employment of physical knowledge, already won, as a means of further acquisition, which most impresses the imagination. For it has suddenly and immensely enlarged our power of overcoming the obstacles which almost infinite minuteness on the one hand, and almost infinite distance on the other, have hitherto opposed to the recognition of the presence and the condition of matter. One eighteen-millionth of a grain of sodium in the flame of ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... private life a very deep and fine sentiment which goes even to minuteness of detail and of superstition. He knows how to move you and make you palpitate from the first, simply in depicting a garden-walk, a dining-room, a piece of furniture. He divines the mysteries of provincial ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... earnestness, and minuteness, was George Muller led to put before God, in prayer, all matters that lay upon his mind. This man was to be peculiarly an example to believers as an intercessor; and so God gave him from the outset a ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... usually took on the quarter-deck. His conversations showed no signs of despair or mental lethargy. They ranged over a great variety of topics, general and personal. He discussed details of navigation and shipbuilding with a minuteness of knowledge that surprised the men ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in thy way, Tom," he said, "and I like the minuteness of thy calculations, for they show an aptitude for trade; but there is genius in our calling as well as cleverness. Come hither, boy," he added, drawing Tom to a window whence they could see the neighbors on their ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and close attention to minuteness of habit, some objection can be raised, perhaps. "Some men's behavior," said Bacon, "is like a verse wherein every syllable is measured," and he warned us that manners must be like apparel, "not too strait or point-device, but free for exercise or motion." However, it is better to err on the side ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... the language, the minuteness of the detail, the absolute certainty of the prevision. That is not the language of a man who simply is calculating that the course which he is pursuing is likely to end in his martyrdom; but the thing lies there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Periplus did not enter the Gulf of Persia, he certainly stretched over, with the monsoon, either to Karmania, or directly to Scindi, or to the Gulf of Cambay; for at these places the minuteness of information which distinguishes the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... suitable and of greatest merit and experience, in order that whatever is done be concurred in by all and the expense be no greater than what is unavoidable. You shall endeavor to make as safe as possible the regions pacified and subdued. You shall advise me, with the minuteness and circumspectness required by the importance of this matter and my desire for its execution, of what you do, of what is pacified, the means that you employ, and the condition in which it shall be placed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... will hold water against the tremendous testimony of men living at the time. There is a curious book printed at Amsterdam, written to make out no case whatever, and tiresome enough in its literal dictionary-like minuteness; scattered up and down the pages of which is full authority for my marquis. This is Mercier's Tableau de Paris. Rousseau is the authority for the peasant's shutting up his house when he had a bit of meat. The tax-tables ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of these pages being to invite the attention of British readers to a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most unaccountably neglected by the English public, the present would not be a fit occasion to enter with any minuteness into the history of Russian letters, or to give, in fact, more than a passing allusion to its chief features; the translator hopes that he will be excused for the meagreness of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... predecessors or immediate successors disclosed any lands the existence of which was not before known to Europeans; but they gave fuller knowledge of many countries and nations of which the names only were known; and they gave this knowledge with astonishing freshness, minuteness, and accuracy. The writers of these books travelled over many thousands of miles, and they described, in the main, what they saw, although, of course, they repeated, with more or less of exaggeration, much which they only knew from conversation or from hearsay. Besides the written ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... looking out on the garden, and it contained a small cot bedstead, besides a table and chairs. Here Hiram spent most of his time busily occupied. By every mail he received letters from New York, detailing with minuteness just what took place in his affairs from day to day. In short, his private office was moved from New York to Hampton, and the only apparent inconvenience was that he did business at arm's length, as they say. Daily came a letter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the simple facts—that is, his own words, an exact account of his health, what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Anthony's Seat is the fifth plate. Here we scarcely know which to admire most, the beautiful work and etchy spirit of the mountainous foreground, the minuteness and delicacy of the distant city, or the actual brightness of the Firth of Forth broken by the "noble breast-work of Salisbury Crags and the point of the Cat's nick." The Crags, it will be recollected, are about 550 feet above the level of the Firth of Forth: a few sheep lie scattered about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... whose castle, magnificently seated on a rocky throne, looks right worthy to have been the seat of Scotland's court, as it was for many years. It brought to our minds all the last scenes of the Lady of the Lake, which are laid here with a minuteness of local description and allusion characteristic ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... the golden cup to the baron, with a low bow, that nobleman could not find sufficient words to express his admiration. He sighed with rapture, and examined the cup from every side with the utmost minuteness. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... still inlay in cloth most marvellously, not only counterchanging the pattern, but inlaying the inlays with smaller patternwork, thus combining great simplicity of effect with wonderful minuteness of detail. They mask the joins with chain-stitch, the colour of it artfully chosen with regard to the two colours of the cloth it divides or joins. Further, they often patch together pieces of ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... not occurring in other Gospels, together with explanations of Jewish terms and customs, and the omission of all reference to the Jewish Law, point in this direction. Its vividness of narration and pictorial minuteness of observation bespeak the testimony of an eye-witness, and the assertion of Papias, quoted by Eusebius, that Mark was "the interpreter of Peter" is borne out by the Gospel itself no less than by what we otherwise know of Mark ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... nearly a month, and in its earliest days it led me right in the diagnosis of a microscopical mineral, iolite, not before found in our Irish granite, I think. The unlooked-for characters of the mineral, coupled with the extreme minuteness of the crystals, led me previously astray, until my meldometer fixed its fusibility for me as far above the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... defined the limits of their power in matters involving a temporal element. Again Peckham was fain to acquiesce. His policy had not only irritated the king, but alienated his fellow bishops. He visited his province with pertinacity and minuteness, and he was the less able to stand up against the king as he was engaged in violent quarrels with all his own suffragans. The leader of the bishops in resisting his claims was Thomas of Cantilupe. Restored ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... niece, sat by her, playing on a guitar, while herself was at work, with the assistance of spectacles, and had a prayer-book with the leaves folded down in several places, lying on the table before her. Perhaps, sir, I tire you with my minuteness, but the place, and every circumstance about it, is so impressed on my mind, that I shall never ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... singularly preserved at every entrance. The principal facade, however, is the most perfect as well as the most beautiful; its rose window, its ranges of saints, its pinnacles, and wreathed arches, are as much to be admired as any in France, and rivet the attention by the delicacy and minuteness of their details. Its date is of the twelfth century, and the utmost taste and cost were bestowed on its construction; although, on the side of the tower there is a space filled with trees, and unencumbered, yet it is to be regretted that, on the side next the chief entrance, the church ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the inward and higher nature of man, and in the existence of the spiritual life. As one critic says: "The earnestness, depth and grandeur, humility and conscious choice of high ideals, have raised his work far above mere intellectual acuteness and minuteness." ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... the sight of ready money; but they were gentlefolk besides, and that in a way which curiously unfitted them to combat Yankee craft. Suppose they have a paper to sign, they would think it a reflection on the other party to examine the terms with any great minuteness; nay, suppose them to observe some doubtful clause, it is ten to one they would refuse from delicacy to object to it. I know I am speaking within the mark, for I have seen such a case occur, and the Mexican, in spite of the advice ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recall the extraordinary popularity which certain English romances, setting forth humble unpoetic life, have enjoyed of late years. We refer to the Adam Bede and Silas Marner school of tales, in which every twig is drawn, every life-lineament set forth with a sort of DENNER minuteness—truthful, yet constrained, accurate but petty. In this novel, Mr. KIMBALL, while retaining all the accuracy of Adam Bede, has swept more broadly and forcibly out into life;—there are strong sorrows, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into four varieties, elephantia, leonina, tyria and allopicia, the pathology, symptoms and treatment of each of which are presented with wearisome minuteness and completeness. A long chapter, entitled "De infectione post coitum leprosi," discusses the transmission of the disease by means of sexual intercourse, and suggests the possible confusion of lepra ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... book in the English language. Not to mention other editions, the Religio Medici, which exhibits, owing to its history, an unusual variation of text, has been, together with the Christian Morals, separately edited with great minuteness by Dr. Greenhill. Nor is it unimportant to notice that Johnson, during his period of literary hack-work, also edited Sir Thomas Browne, and wrote what Wilkin's good taste has permitted to be still the standard text ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... same instant his steed lifted his head. There could be no doubt as to the cause, for within the next minute the figure of an Indian stepped forward toward the animal, and proceeded to examine him with a care and minuteness which showed that he expected ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... of the council may be said to comprise the administration of the purely local affairs of the commune and the formulation and expression of local needs and demands. In the code of 1884 the powers of the body are defined with exceeding minuteness. Some are purely advisory, to be exercised when the council is called upon by the higher administrative authorities for an expression of local interest or desire in respect to a particular question. Advice thus tendered may or may not be heeded. Other powers involve the initiation by the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... sordidness of life and the mad passion for the unattainable are admirably relieved, as in "Eugenie Grandet" and "Old Goriot," by a certain nobility and purity of motive. The novel is generally acknowledged one of Balzac's masterpieces, both in vigour of portraiture and minuteness of detail. Perhaps no one was ever better fitted to depict the ruin wrought by a fixed idea than Balzac himself, who wasted much of his laborious life in struggling to discover a short ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the death of Thackeray and Dickens fiction has become a finer art. If Mr. Howells had meant what many people supposed him to mean, the saying would have been merely impudent He used the word 'finer' in its literal sense, and meant only that a fashion of minuteness in investigation and in style had come upon us. There is a sense in which the dissector who makes a reticulation of the muscular and nervous systems of a little finger is a 'finer' surgeon than the giant ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Pigot and his prisoner started down the stairs, Lepine turned to an investigation of the two rooms. Every nook, every crevice, every inch of the floor, every drawer—all these he examined with a minuteness of which only the French police are capable, but his search disclosed nothing which shed any new light on the mystery. At last, he descended the stairs and left ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... about a great public character, whose name he had forgotten, making a particularly happy reply to another eminent and illustrious individual whom he had never been able to identify. He enlarged at some length and with great minuteness upon divers collateral circumstances, distantly connected with the anecdote in hand, but for the life of him he couldn't recollect at that precise moment what the anecdote was, although he had been in the habit of telling the story with great applause ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... knowledge has advanced, it has become apparent that it is only in rare instances that it is possible satisfactorily to connect together the composition and the properties of a soil, and with each advancement in the accuracy and minuteness of our analysis the difficulties have been rather increased than diminished. Although it is occasionally possible to predicate from its composition that a particular soil will be incapable of supporting vegetation, it not unfrequently happens that a fruitful and a barren ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... Southwold for the year 1616 contains the record of this tragedy of domestic life, penned with mournful minuteness by the faithful hand of the bereaved parent of two of the victims, Christopherus Younges, the Vicar of Southwold: we copy it verbatim from ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... grandeur which the works of the greater Italian painters possess: their merit consists in the faithful delineation of those ordinary scenes and common occurrences, which are familiar to the eye of the most careless observer. The power of the painter, therefore, could be displayed only in the minuteness of the finishing, or the brilliancy of the effect; and he endeavoured, by the powerful contrast of light and shade, to give an higher character to his works, than the nature of their subject could ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... palaeontology; and I will devote the rest of this chapter to a detailed consideration of a few highly special lines of evidence. By thus suddenly passing from one extreme to the other, I hope to convey the best idea that can be conveyed within a brief compass of the minuteness, as well as the extent, of the testimony which is ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... delicacy; a quality that is suggested, though not made explicit, by Shelley's allusion to Wordsworth's experience as "a sort of thought in sense." Nature possessed for him not merely enjoyable and describable characters of great variety and minuteness, but an immediately apprehended unity and meaning. It would be a great mistake to construe this meaning in sense as analogous to the crude symbolism of the educator Froebel, to whom, as he said, "the world of crystals proclaimed, in distinct and univocal terms, the laws ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... manifestly served to open the way to a repetition of the very crime they deplored. I felt myself under the same fascination. I wanted to test the mechanism; to follow out then and there the instructions given with such shortsighted minuteness and mark the result. But a sense of decorum prevented. It was clearly my duty to carry so important a discovery as this to the major and subject myself to his commands before making the experiment suggested by the scroll I had so carefully deciphered. Besides, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... head of an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zeal and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always be in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting still. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July 1814, for a still more ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
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