|
|
|
More "Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... data I have collected about the Matterhorn, I am at this moment in doubt which is its top. For as, in order to examine the beds on its flanks, I walked up the Zmutt glacier, I saw that the line a b in Fig. 31 gradually lost its steepness; and about half-way up the glacier, the conjectural summit a then bearing nearly S. E. (forty degrees east of south), I found the contour was as in Fig. 32. In Fig. 33, I have given the contour as seen from Zermatt; and in all three, the same letters indicate ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... a venture, only conjectural to us at this distance, he knew well; but in him there was nothing that shrank from danger, though he did not court it after the rash manner of many of his compeers. Neither reckless nor riotous, Boone was never ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... and the stiff folds of the tunic, the cold demeanor of the goddess, recall the masters whom Pheidias was destined to supersede. No copy of this statue survives, and hence a description of it must be largely conjectural, made up from hints gleaned from ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... critical sagacity of which he has left us few examples. Now it is remarkable that the majority of the changes proposed by Mr. Collier in the notes to this edition of Shakespeare (8 vols., 8vo., 1842-3) evince a capacity for the apprehension of figurative language and for conjectural emendation of the very calibre indicated by this proposed change of "pregnant hinges" to "begging hinges." He has throughout his literary career, which began, we believe, with the publication of the "Poetical Decameron," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... scarcely expected that even the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can scarcely—outside private collections—be very easily accessible. Fortunately the old Monthly Review for September, 1796, with most exemplary ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... and I had hoped that the discussion in the newspapers would have ceased, at all events, until the appearance of the promised book. It has not been so; and at this distance from Guiana I was not aware of how much conjectural matter was being printed week by week in the local press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr. Abel's friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished only with an ebony stand on which stood a ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... was because the project of building a hotel was abandoned. I have taken the liberty to give as a title for it "The Plaint of the Merrimac." As it was written in almost undecipherable hieroglyphics, some of the words are conjectural:— ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... live stock of all descriptions, which they drive over the mountains and sell for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing the people of the South, partly from the feeling and partly from the necessity growing out ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to the final overthrow of the stern old pile. As he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were thrown back, and complexions ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... educational and philosophical. Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to knowledge than the other. There is an element of guess-work and an element of number and measure in them. In music, for example, especially in flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while in carpentering there is more application of rule and measure. Of the creative arts, then, we may make two classes—the less exact and the more exact. And the exacter part of all ...
— Philebus • Plato
... insubstantial and reflected phantasms with some activity and mimic play, a theory of the association of Ideas has been erected, without having previously established that they are capable of such confederation. A wearisome catalogue of faculties, many of which are conjectural, has been enumerated; Abstraction, Conception, Contemplation, Consciousness, Comparison, Imagination, Judgment, Memory, Recollection, Reminiscence, Retention, Perception, Sensation, Reflection, Thought, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... original, but of an abridgment which some one had made for his own improvement. On one point all philological critics are unanimous: namely, that the text is very much corrupted, and they have endeavoured to restore it by conjectural emendations. Its great obscurity is either expressly complained of by commentators, or substantiated by the fact, that all in turn reject the interpretations of their predecessors, while they cannot approve their own to those ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... had partially covered their fronts with light parapet; but Hooker's whole corps fought in open ground, and lost about fifteen hundred men. He reported four hundred rebel dead left on the ground, and that the rebel wounded would number four thousand; but this was conjectural, for most of them got back within their own lines. We had, however, met successfully a bold sally, had repelled it handsomely, and were also put on our guard; and the event illustrated the future tactics of our enemy. This sally came from the Peach-Tree line, which General Johnston ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... certainty that if the citations from that play are correctly credited to Fletcher, he never wrote a line of "Henry VIII." Professor Thorndike is not consistent with himself. On one page he calls his theory conjectural, on another, a "reasonable conclusion." The play itself ought to convince any fair mind that Shakspere had no share in it, for it contains an obvious imitation of Ophelia's madness in "Hamlet," which in some points ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... dates of Michael Angelo's compositions are conjectural, it may be assumed that the two sonnets on Dante were written when he was himself in exile. We know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... scale. On the contrary, the predaceous cephalopods and the highly organized crustaceous are among the oldest fossils. Such appears to be the order of nature as evidenced by facts, and it must be admitted, however repugnant to preconceived notions or mere mortal conjectural amendments. ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... company was ever brought to trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been brought to justice,"—unless by this phrase he designates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... at that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in this instance, and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the chief difficulty was overcome, and it was possible to sketch the probable series of our ancestors. It must be well understood that not only is the whole series conjectural, but no living animal must be regarded as an ancestral form. The parental types have long been extinct, and we may, at the most, use very conservative living types to illustrate their nature, just as, in the matter of languages, German is not the parent, but the cousin of Anglo-Saxon, or Greek ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had raised it to a position of lofty eminence, though the law of gravitation, which accounts for the form and permanency of the planetary orbits, still remained undiscovered. Theories formerly obscure or conjectural were either rejected or elucidated with accuracy and precision, and the solar system, having the Sun as its centre, with his attendant family of planets and their satellites revolving in majestic orbits ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... kingdom and to primitive times. There is no evidence to prove whether the original edifice had, or had not, a third story; since the chamber seen by the Arabs was no doubt a late Babylonian work. The third story of the accompanying sketch must therefore be regarded as conjectural. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... however, that some or most of the snakes in which no rattles appear, are nevertheless intended for rattlers. It may have been that the figures were so well understood that the addition of rattles in the drawings was quite unnecessary. This, however, is quite conjectural. The species of rattlesnake is probably Crotalus basiliscus or C. terrificus of southern Mexico and adjacent regions, not C. horridus or adamanteus as supposed by Stempell since these two species are confined to the United States. Among the figures shown on ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... cost, the estimates of the majority are very much more indefinite and conjectural than the more carefully prepared estimates of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers. Upon this point the majority of the Senate ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... Shakespeare have his way alone. But at the same time he puts aside with just indignation Pope's supercilious talk about the "dull duty of an editor"; and after giving an admirable summary of what that dull duty is, declares that one part of it alone, the business of conjectural criticism, "demands more than humanity possesses." Yet it is that part of his functions, the part which appeals most to vanity, that he exercised with the most sparing caution. He saw that it was not ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... other solemnities, may possibly have refined upon those moresque divertisements, and produced this delightful entertainment, by leaving out the warlike part of the carousals, and forming a poetical design for the use of the machines, the songs, and dances. But however it began, (for this is only conjectural,) we know, that, for some centuries, the knowledge of music has flourished principally in Italy, the mother of learning and of arts[2]; that poetry and painting have been there restored, and so cultivated by Italian masters, that all ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... got my morning paper early enough to be able to send down to the office a correction of any error in my conjectural notice of the last act, and reception of the play, or even a report of the speech at the end; and if the theatre had been burnt down, or the leading player had fallen in a fit, I would have sent an account of it, so as not to lose my berth for apparent inattention to business. There are editors ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... dashed the odours of Araby here and there to discourage the herrings. A large velvet cloak, the worse for wear, disguised the rents of the sofa, whereon sat Mrs Gunning, majestic in another of faded purple satin, beneath which her dress remained conjectural. A noble square of Limerick point was flung over her head and hung veil-like by each ear; and, indeed, with the little cherub Lucy at her feet, she might have ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... less than two leagues from the mouth of the strait, if more it was only a little more. The coast of the island then turned north close to that of Spain, and was joined to the island of Cadiz or Gadiz, or Caliz, as it is now called. I affirm this for two reasons, one by authority and the other by conjectural demonstration. The authority is that Plato in his Critias, telling how Neptune distributed the sovereignty of the island among his ten sons, said that the second son was called in the mother tongue "Gadirum," which in Greek we ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... of casting a nativity, but a suspicion, or, indeed, rather more than a suspicion, seems to have crossed his mind as to the value of these astrological predictions, for he says in fine, "I found astrology to give generally strong conjectural ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... in medicine. He spoke of it as an art entirely conjectural, and his opinion on this subject was fired and incontrovertible. His vigorous mind rejected all but ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the disposing thereof as aforesaide text reads "aforesaidel" corrospondent and agreeing with spelling as in original Sidenote: A petiment in corrupt English. reading "petiment" conjectural Sidenote: Anaglipts are cunning carues and grauers. reading conjectural: beginning of each line is missing naglipts / e cunning / arues and / rauers effected by many seuerall workmen text reads "wookmen" Bagistanus must giue place text reads "geue" although the Obelisk of Iupiter text reads "Obelist" asosciated ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides, but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... be snatched from the hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil. Their method of working through an artificially picked Pre-Parliament and a conjectural Constituent Assembly, had to be opposed by our political method of mobilizing the forces around the Soviets, through the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and through insurrection. This could be done only by means of an open break, before the eyes of ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... troubles are purely conjectural," said Sewell with a laugh. "I'm bound to say that Barker himself didn't say a word to justify the conjecture that he was either in love or wished to be out of it. However, I've given him some wholesome advice ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... new collation of the old MS. containing most of Books Seventy-eight and Seventy-nine, and with many new and brilliant conjectural emendations by the editor.) Two volumes. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... Mr. Cunningham, speaking of Houndsditch, merely quotes the words of Stow. It would appear that Stow's reason for the name is entirely conjectural; and indeed the same reason would justify the same name being applied to all the "ditches" in London in the year 1500, and indeed much later. This passage of Arnold throws a new light upon the name, at least, of that rivulet; for stagnant its waters could not be, from its inclination to the horizon. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... "What means this way of addressing Him? save that, though He knew that the Son of God was to come, yet he did not think that He had come in the weakness of the flesh?" But afterwards, when he saw Him work miracles, he had a sort of conjectural suspicion that He was the Son of God. Hence on Mk. 1:24, "I know who Thou art, the Holy one of God," Chrysostom [*Victor of Antioch. Cf. Catena Aurea] says that "he had no certain or firm knowledge of God's coming." Yet he knew that He was "the Christ ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... everywhere condemned, and in the end it was deemed advisable to bring Dreyfus back to France and accord him a new trial. This trial, which lasted from August 7 to September 7, 1899, indicated that he had been convicted on the most flimsy and uncertain evidence, largely conjectural in character, while there was strong evidence in his favor. Yet the judges of the court-martial seemed biased against him, and by a vote of three judges to two, he was again found guilty - "of treason, with extenuating circumstances," as if ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... which the last four centuries have bestowed upon man.] The improvements of the savage races whose history we can distinctly trace are borrowed and imitative, and our theories as to the origin and natural development of industrial art are conjectural. Of course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of human industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate, and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different countries; and while the geographical ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... text was handwritten, probably by a professional copyist. All line-endings were regularized by added dashes of variable length; some "real" dashes are therefore conjectural. Instead of typographic variants such as italics or boldface, some words are distinguished by underlining or smaller writing. Abbreviations such as "Mr." were written with superscripts as M^r.; they have been simplified ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... offered. They are more or less conjectural. One is that the Yemishi of Mutsu were led by chieftains of Yamato origin, men who had migrated to the northeast in search of fortune or impelled by disaffection. It seems scarcely credible, however, that a fact so special would have eluded historical reference, whereas ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... preserved, by tradition, on the west borders, but much mangled by reciters; so that some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible. In particular, the Eden has been substituted for the Eske, p. 193, the latter ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... class of men madly desirous to read cuneiform and runic inscriptions simply because of their unreadableness, adding to our compulsory stock of knowledge about the royal Smiths and Joneses of to-day much conjectural and conflicting information concerning their royal prototypes of an antiquity unknown, and, as we fondly hoped, unknowable. Were there only a compensatory arrangement for this also in another class who should be driven by a like irresistible instinct to unreadable books, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... this region traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... losses. A sense of satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Archeological and Historical knowledge of Yore, beyond our most sanguine expectation. The path is open and becoming easy to pursue; much therefore will be achieved by following the comparative process and discarding all the conjectural systems. ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... be added that Guppy's later views give some support to the conjectural existence of the "lost continent." "The distribution of the genus Dammara" (Agathis) led him to modify his earlier conclusions. He tells us:—"In my volume on the geology of Vanua Levu it was shown that the Tertiary period was an age of submergence ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... is the sense of Zimmer's translation, which is only conjectural, of this difficult passage (see Zeitschrift fuer Deutsches Alterthum und Deutsche Litteratur, Bd. xxxii, 1888, S. 275). The idea is probably more clearly expressed in Stowe, H. 1. 13 and YBL. 43a, 41, and may be rendered, 'membrum virile ejus coram viros Hiberniae ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... evolution, is also, not the most honoured, but often just the reverse; remembering, above all, that we know nothing historically of the mental condition of the founders of religion, we may hesitate to accept the anthropological hypothesis en masse. At best it is conjectural, and the facts are such that opponents have more justification than is commonly admitted for regarding the bulk of savage religion as degenerate, or corrupted, from its own highest elements. I am by no means, as yet, arguing positively in favour of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... he has collected his documents, and he has given them to us as they are, guiding us adroitly along the course of the life which they illustrate, but not allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... it may be asked what is the relation of the particles of insulating bodies, such as air, sulphur, or lac, when they intervene in the line of magnetic action? The answer to this is at present merely conjectural. I have long thought there must be a particular condition of such bodies corresponding to the state which causes currents in metals and other conductors (26. 53. 191. 201. 213.); and considering that the bodies ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... supposed to find support upon the outlying circle of mountains. But the precise mechanism through which the observed revolution of the heavenly bodies was effected remains here, as with the Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural. The simple fact would appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the Egyptians, despite their most careful observations of the tangible phenomena of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical conception of the cosmos was attainable. We shall see in due course ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... had wheeled away all Cheveleigh and half Ormersfield, till the last unfortunate wheal failed when the rope broke, and there were no funds to buy a new one. No wonder Lord Ormersfield trembled when he heard his son launch out into those easily-ascending conjectural calculations, freely working sums in his head, so exactly like the old Earl, his grandfather, that she could have laughed, but for sympathy with the father, and anxiety to see how the son would take the damp so ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... 1513, MOURNERS.]—This attribution of the different speeches or songs to different speakers is, of course, conjectural. Ancient dramas come down to us with no stage directions and very ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... published from tradition, with some conjectural emendations. It is corrected by a copy in Mrs Brown's MS., from which it differs in the concluding stanzas. Some verses ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... understand an obviously corrupt passage in Villani, viii. 41. One of the unlucky Blacks was a Portinari, doubtless a kinsman of Beatrice—a fact which curiously seems to have escaped the conjectural commentators. ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... suggesting that an event may have happened. He is certain that it happened, and calls on the reader to be certain too, (though not a trace of it exists in any record whatever,) because it would solve the phenomena so neatly. Just read over again, if you have forgotten it, the conjectural restoration of the Inscription in page 126 of the second volume; and then, on your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me whether in Bentley's edition of Milton there is anything which approaches to the audacity of that emendation. Niebuhr requires you ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... roughly to gauge his trustworthiness as a guide in other departments of criticism, where, from the nature of the case, no test can be applied. In the land of the unverifiable there are no efficient critical police. When a writer expatiates amidst conjectural quotations from conjectural apocryphal Gospels, he is beyond the reach of refutation. But in the present case, as it so happens, verification is possible, at least to a limited extent; and it is important to avail ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... population must determine the question, even against the efforts of the Federal Government? Did the Southern leaders prefer the election of a Republican, their open opponent, to Douglas, their friend and half-ally? To such questions as these there can be little more than a conjectural answer. It would be most interesting to know the true thoughts and purposes of the leading delegates. We shall see a little later the interpretation given by one of their defenders. But the strong presumption is that their action was the fruit less of a policy ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... an asterisk and in parentheses (*) are those at which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently are more exact and trustworthy ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... out:—but the Tobacco-PIPES that are shown as Friedrich Wilhelm's in the KUNSTKAMMER or Museum of Berlin, pipes which no rational smoker, not compelled to it, would have used, awaken just doubt as to the cicerones; and you leave the Locality of the Tabagie a thing conjectural. In summer season, at Potsdam and in country situations, Tabagie could be held under a tent: we expressly know, his Majesty held Tabagie at Wusterhausen nightly on the Steps of the big Fountain, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... them on their pulpits. The questions, "Have we got any Bible?" and "If any Bible, how much?" had not been hatched. When I was in Princeton Seminary, our profoundly learned Hebrew Professor, Dr. J. Addison Alexander no more disturbed us with the much-vaunted conjectural Biblical criticisms than he disturbed us with Joe Smith's "golden plates" at Nauvoo. For this fact I feel deeply thankful; and I comfort myself with the reflection that the great British preachers of the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... found the curious little reptiles he was in search of under a root or in a cranny of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry, sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might as well have been numbered, or called ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... us to follow the process of thought by which the Middle Ages turned Virgil into a wizard. Here and there the texts become quite silly, separately or in consent; and just where they agree in the most surprising way—i.e. in the arrangement of the lines—the conjectural emendator is invited to do his worst by a note at the head of the older Codex, "Sunt vero versus xxii"—"There are ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... still we must assert this point of superiority for Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a well-mounted scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet displayed sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a felicity of philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as better scholars do not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be learned from books. But, as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the reader ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of the ill-starred colony and the conjectural refuge of its remnants among the Croatan Indians of Virginia—as Raleigh named the whole region, including the present North Carolina—fittingly completes the history of Sir Walter's American enterprise. The failure of the colony has been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... contains a relation of most of the facts which had come under my own inspection at the time it was written, interspersed with some conjectural observations. Since then Dr. G. Pearson has established an inquiry into the validity of my principal assertion, the result of which cannot but be highly flattering to my feelings. It contains not a single case which I think ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... and vices of the men who piled the first stones of great empires, are chronicled in history as facts deserving record. The portrait of an ancient hero is a treasure beyond value, even though the features be but conjectural. How much more precious would be a faithful portrait of his character, in which the features should be his salient traits—the expression, outline, and complexion ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... first words. We do not know with accuracy about the earliest factors in the mental environment. (Inez has told various stories about early family friction, and even about contracting an infection at home, much of which seems highly conjectural.) Between the ages of 7 and 10 several sicknesses, diphtheria, measles with some cardiac complication, etc., kept her much out of school. Part of the time she lived in New Orleans, and part of the time in a country district. She only went to school ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... be thus obtained, the writer will repine at no censure which the precipitate publication of mere conjectural suggestions may incur; but shall think himself fully rewarded by having excited the attention of those, who may point out the most appropriate means of relieving a tedious and ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... had assuredly been, and the memory of him still was, the master-fact in Watts-Dunton's life. 'Algernon' was as an adopted child, 'Gabriel' as a long-lost only brother. As he was to the outer world of his own day, so too to posterity Rossetti, the man, is conjectural and mysterious. We know that he was in his prime the most inspiring and splendid of companions. But we know this only by faith. The evidence is as vague as it is emphatic. Of the style and substance of not a few great talkers in the past we can piece together ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands, which contain little groups of plants and animals peculiar to themselves, but most nearly allied to those of South America, have not hitherto received any, even a conjectural explanation. The Galapagos are a volcanic group of high antiquity and have probably never been more closely connected with the continent than they ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... edifice, or at any rate the greater portion of it, had an upper story. Traces of such a structure appear over the halls numbered I and VI.; and it is thought that the story extended over the entire range of halls. One traveller, on conjectural grounds, even assigns to the building an elevation of three stories, and ventures to restore the second and third in the mode represented in the woodcut. [PLATE V. Fig. 2.] According to this author ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... to pleasure; for they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments from the principles of religion as well as from natural reason, since without the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness must be but conjectural and defective. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... reads "aforesaidel" corrospondent and agreeing with spelling as in original Sidenote: A petiment in corrupt English. reading "petiment" conjectural Sidenote: Anaglipts are cunning carues and grauers. reading conjectural: beginning of each line is missing naglipts / e cunning / arues and / rauers effected by many seuerall workmen text reads "wookmen" Bagistanus must giue place text reads "geue" although the Obelisk of Iupiter text reads "Obelist" asosciated with curious ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... week-day or early morning services. Passing to the south we enter the ambulatory. It is vaulted in stone, and the plain horseshoe arches at the end without any ribs (see illustration), are worthy of notice. In this space several interesting relics of the old abbey, and some conjectural models of the church in its former condition, may be seen. Here, too, is a fifteenth-century walnut wood chest: and here are two stone cressets, possibly used by the builders, which when done with were built by them into the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... snatched from the hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil. Their method of working through an artificially picked Pre-Parliament and a conjectural Constituent Assembly, had to be opposed by our political method of mobilizing the forces around the Soviets, through the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and through insurrection. This could be done only by means ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... mentioned above and to later works bearing on the subject have been inserted in the hope that others, more leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further research, and convert those portions of the narrative which are at present largely conjectural from story ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... 900,000 years ago. But the historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question: at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and Romans?" Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where were the ancestors of the Semitic and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... definitely brought his heroes into relation to the various Italian places[485] connected with the Argonautic legend, while he may even, as a compliment to Vespasian,[486] have brought them back 'by way of the North Sea past Britain and Gaul'. This ingenious conjectural reconstruction has some probability, slight as is the evidence on which it rests. Valerius was almost bound to give his epic a Roman tinge. More convincing, however, is the suggestion of the same critic[487] that the poem was designed ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... an abridgment which some one had made for his own improvement. On one point all philological critics are unanimous: namely, that the text is very much corrupted, and they have endeavoured to restore it by conjectural emendations. Its great obscurity is either expressly complained of by commentators, or substantiated by the fact, that all in turn reject the interpretations of their predecessors, while they cannot approve their own to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "bibliothecariate" of Apollonius, which is clearly asserted by Suidas, on account of chronological calculations which are themselves uncertain. Moreover, it is more probable that the words following "some say" in the second "life" are a remnant of the original life than a conjectural addition, because the first "life" is evidently incomplete, nothing being said about the end ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... which was supposed to refer to the subject of this notice relates to a child who died in infancy, and it is now satisfactorily settled that Joseph del Gesu first saw the light on October 16, 1687. The date of death is merely conjectural, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... appear the most extraordinary. These principles we have found to be sufficiently convincing, even with regard to our most certain reasonings from causation: But I shall venture to affirm, that with regard to these conjectural or probable reasonings they still acquire a ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I can not say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... style proves to demonstration, and against the frantic scepticism even of a Ritson, the antique and venerable character of those compositions. I send you a copy of the Ballad, with the gaps (where the tooth of time or of the worm, edax rerum, hath impaired it) filled up with conjectural restorations of my own. But how far do they fall short of the original simplicity! Non cuivis contingit. As the title is lacking, as well as the ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... {anesis}: a conjectural emendation of {aneos}. (Perhaps however, the word was rather {ananeosis}, "after a short time there was a renewal of evils"). Grote wishes to translate this clause, "after a short time there was an abatement of evils," ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... become incorporated in the mass of merchandise for sale in a neutral country it is an unwarranted and inquisitorial proceeding to detain shipments for examination as to whether those goods are ultimately destined for the enemy's country or use. Whatever may be the conjectural conclusions to be drawn from trade statistics, which, when stated by value, are of uncertain evidence as to quantity, the United States maintains the right to sell goods into the general stock of a neutral country, and denounces as illegal and unjustifiable ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... science of the Greeks was remarkable, though it is completely overshadowed by their philosophy; yet it was largely based on what has proved to be a wrong method of procedure, viz the introspective and conjectural, rather than the inductive and experimental methods. They investigated Nature by studying their own minds, by considering the meanings of words, rather than by studying things and recording phenomena. This wrong (though by no means, on the face of it, absurd) method was not pursued exclusively, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... caused by Sprot's dates. Of these we can only give a conjectural version, for the sake of argument. Logan received a letter from Gowrie about July 6, 1600. He returned a reply, by Bower, but when did Bower start with the reply? Let us say on July 9. Bower returned, ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... habitually wrote. In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But although this insinuation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... and that he saw him close behind him, at the moment the stones were thrown that broke the windows. It appeared that Mr. Random was at that time active in encouraging the mob. To oppose the angry confectioner's conjectural evidence, the lad who threw the stone, and who was now produced, declared that Forester held back his arm, and said, "My good lad, don't break this man's windows: go home quietly; here's a shilling for you." The person ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... discerned in so long a time. To this it is answered, that the little change as yet perceived, doth rather prove their newness, and that they have not continued so long; than that they will continue forever as they are. And if conjectural arguments may receive answer by conjectures; it then seemeth that some alteration may be found. For either Aristotle, Pliny, Strabo, Beda, Aquinas, and others, were grossly mistaken; or else those parts of the world lying within the burnt zone, were not ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... allow me to have the Greek court I mentioned?' she asked tentatively, after a long break in their discourse, as she scanned the green stones along the base of the arcade, with a conjectural countenance as ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Todd's query (no. 10. p. 155.) respecting the meaning of the words "Reheting" and "Rehetour," used by our early English writers, has not hitherto been answered, I beg to send him a conjectural explanation, which, if not conclusive, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... the Venetian ambassador in Spain, to the Council of Ten. See "Calendar of State Papers &c. in Venice," 1520- 6. Edited by Rawdon Brown. No. 697, London, 1869. Purchas, III. p. 809.] It is evident that the representation of the western sea, upon the map given to the king, was merely conjectural of its existence in connection with the supposed strait, laid down upon the map, according to Hakluyt. This explanation will serve also to account most readily for the partial knowledge which the letter exhibits, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... or words in brackets are conjectural readings, the original being illegible or worn in many places. When no conjectural reading is given, the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... examples. Now it is remarkable that the majority of the changes proposed by Mr. Collier in the notes to this edition of Shakespeare (8 vols., 8vo., 1842-3) evince a capacity for the apprehension of figurative language and for conjectural emendation of the very calibre indicated by this proposed change of "pregnant hinges" to "begging hinges." He has throughout his literary career, which began, we believe, with the publication of the "Poetical Decameron," in 1820, shown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... case there can hardly be said to be any countervailing evidence whatever. Again, there is the fact that he declined to act as a delegate to the proposed Reform convention, as subsequently mentioned in the text. But there is no need to resort to circumstantial or conjectural evidence. We have the testimony of Mackenzie himself, who, after his return to Canada, was ready enough to betray the secrets of his somewhile coadjutors, and who would have been only too glad if ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... to introduce, in the place of fanciful and conjectural systems—careful, patient investigation: the principle of the procurement of well-known facts, in order that, by severe induction, philosophy might attain to general laws, and to a classification of the sciences. The fault of the ages ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... wrathful; then our bond Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... the series of connection, or his diction of ambiguity, while only one sense is present to his mind. Yet if he has been employed on an abstruse, or complicated argument, he will find, when he has awhile withdrawn his mind, and returns as a new reader to his work, that he has only a conjectural glimpse of his own meaning, and that to explain it to those whom he desires to instruct, he must open his sentiments, disentangle his method, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the ascription of the Gospels to their respective authors had been arbitrary or conjectural, they would have been ascribed to more eminent men. This observation holds concerning the first three Gospels, the reputed authors of which were enabled, by their situation, to obtain true intelligence, and were likely to deliver an honest account of what they ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... This conjectural history of the immigration of the Ibans explains the peculiar fact that, although all the Ibans of all parts are easily distinguishable from all the other peoples, and although they all recognise one another as belonging ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... and our own appetites. I cannot feel sure how my voting will affect the condition of Central Asia in the coming ages, but I have good reason to believe that the future populations there will be none the worse off because I abstain from conjectural vilification of my opponents during the present parliamentary session, and I am very sure that I shall be less injurious to my contemporaries. On the whole, and in the vast majority of instances, the action ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Percy as living with Smith in Highbury may or may not be the same as the lady he married in Maidenhead. If one short sweet spell of constancy and heart repose interrupted the plunging torrent of his profligate life, we will not deprive him of that long past possibility. After that conjectural date, alas, he seems to have plunged deeper and deeper into the shaking quagmires of ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... be deposed for a piece of solemn and offensive trickery, and the man selected to replace him was his sole partner and accomplice in the act. For so strange a choice, good ground must have existed; but it remains conjectural: some supposing Mataafa scratched as too independent; others that Tamasese had indeed betrayed Laupepa, and his new advancement was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is not certainly known by the saints, nor at all believed by her; wherefore her plagues must come unlooked for by her. And as to the saints, their guesses as to the time of her ruin must needs be conjectural and uncertain. For her part, she shall say, and that when she stands where she must suddenly fall, "I shall be a ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... The chroniclers talk of a hundred thousand people going out from Flanders to England between the defeat of the Armada in 1588 and the repulse of the French from before Valenciennes in 1656. But the numbers are obviously conjectural. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Darlington. Then removing out of the circle, and standing up, Here I stand, unworthy of a seat with the rest of the company, till I have cleared myself. And now, suppose me to be her, let me hear you charge, and do you hear what the poor culprit can say to it in her own defence. And then answering the conjectural and unproved circumstances, by circumstances as fairly to be supposed favourable, she brought off triumphantly the censured lady; and so much to every one's satisfaction, that she was led to her chair, and voted a double rank in the circle, as the reinstated Miss Fanny Darlington, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... place. It was intended that Jasper should urge on the search after Edwin, and the pursuit of the murderer, thus endeavoring to divert suspicion from himself, the real murderer. As to anything further, it would be purely conjectural." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance—which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out—by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dates are, of course, conjectural; but those given are accepted by high authorities. Paul was about forty-four at the time of ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... "brim" of the reservoir; and it must have been supplied in its lower part with a set of stopcocks, by means of which the water could be drawn off when needed. Representations of the "molten sea" have been given by Mangeant, De Voguee, Thenius, and others; but all of them are, necessarily, conjectural. The design of Mangeant is reproduced in the preceding representation. It is concluded that the oxen must have been of colossal size in order to bear a proper proportion to the basin, and not present the appearance of being ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... textual criticism: (a) original preserved; (b) a single copy preserved, conjectural emendation; (c) several copies preserved, comparison of errors, families ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... addition through the apex of the cone; in this case, the surface to which the printing-ink adhered would diminish or enlarge, and in this altered state the impression might be retransferred to paper. It must be admitted, that this conjectural explanation is liable to very considerable difficulties; for, although the converse operation of taking an impression from a liquid surface has a parallel in the art of marbling paper, the possibility of transferring the ink from the copper ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... from it, it will serve roughly to gauge his trustworthiness as a guide in other departments of criticism, where, from the nature of the case, no test can be applied. In the land of the unverifiable there are no efficient critical police. When a writer expatiates amidst conjectural quotations from conjectural apocryphal Gospels, he is beyond the reach of refutation. But in the present case, as it so happens, verification is possible, at least to a limited extent; and it is important to avail ourselves of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... this text were damaged, especially at the beginnings or ends of lines. One line at the top of a page, shown as a row of asterisks, is entirely missing. Other words have been reconstructed from their surviving portions; the conjectural letters are shown in {braces}. The html version of this e-text shows the reconstructions. Other errors are listed at the end of ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... infidel haters of that ecclesiastical hierarchy to which the archbishop of Cambray himself belonged. This lover of liberty, this gentle rebuker of kings, was of the free-thinkers, at least in the sympathy of political thought. Nay, the Revolution itself is foreshown in a remarkable glimpse of conjectural prophecy which occurs in the "Telemachus." Idomeneus is a headstrong king, whom Mentor is made by the author to reprove and instruct, for the Duke of Burgundy's benefit. To Idomeneus—a character taken, and not unplausibly taken, to have been suggested to ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... where all kinds of perils might await them. They were yet, in fact, a thousand miles from Astoria, but the distance was unknown to them at the time: everything before and around them was vague and conjectural, and wore an aspect ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... suppose?" said Nigel, thrusting in his conjectural emendation, with infinite difficulty, betwixt two clauses of the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... The numerous emendations are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have smitten in my ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... not doubt that the people of the United States will wish the Democratic Party to continue in control of the Government. They are not in the habit of rejecting those who have actually served them for those who are making doubtful and conjectural promises of service. Least of all are they likely to substitute those who promised to render them particular services and proved false to that promise for those who have actually rendered ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... not themselves: they are more, they are all: For them are past and future spread together Like a green landscape lit by golden weather: For them the rhythmic change conjectural Of time and place is but the question whether Their God shall stand (as stand ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... replies at last, "your reductions and your constructions are too easy-going, too conjectural, too much dominated by prepossessions and the 'will to interpret.' The alleged sources or determinants for this dream may or may not have played the parts you assign to them; the mystery of the matter must remain inscrutable. But what your ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the well. So the name of the city of Timbuctoo is said by some to be derived from the Berber Word teen, "well", and Buktu, the name of the person who on its present site dug a well for the rendezvous or casual supply of passing caravans. But this derivation is merely conjectural. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Questions 1 and 2 can be answered 'immediately'; but No. 3 takes two hours. The 8th, 9th, and 10th were considered together, and are estimated to have taken an hour and a half, between 7 and 11.30 P.M.; though, as he was in an omnibus for part of the time and there fell asleep, this must be conjectural. The 13th question could not be answered at all; but was luckily not important. He had answered the 11th and 12th during a railway journey to Paris on October 2, and had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... original conception of his employer's character had suffered extensive modification; but no final outline had replaced the first conjectural image. The two years spent in Mr. Spence's service had produced too many contradictory impressions to be fitted into any definite pattern; and the chief lesson Millner had learned from them was ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... light parapet; but Hooker's whole corps fought in open ground, and lost about fifteen hundred men. He reported four hundred rebel dead left on the ground, and that the rebel wounded would number four thousand; but this was conjectural, for most of them got back within their own lines. We had, however, met successfully a bold sally, had repelled it handsomely, and were also put on our guard; and the event illustrated the future tactics of our enemy. This sally came from the Peach-Tree line, which General Johnston had carefully ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... ever brought to trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been brought to justice,"—unless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the facts begin to resolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer isolated experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after certain antecedents, certain consequences are uniformly seen to follow; when facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explanation; and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by the help ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... the great river above London there are but three examples of fortification, or at any rate of fortification directly dependent upon the river. Of these the first, at Lechlade, is conjectural; the second, at Windsor, came quite late in history, and the only one which seems to have been a primeval fortified ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... these dimensions from Middleton's Plan of the Palatine Hill (ut supra, p. 156), but until the site has been excavated they must be more or less conjectural. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... money, which came, apparently, from the pockets of the Leyden Adventurers (Pickering, Greene, etc.), and some of the Pilgrims, was requisite to pay for the SPEEDWELL and her refitting, etc.; but how much came from either is conjectural at best. But aside from "Hollands cheese," "strong-waters" (schnapps), some few things that Cushman names; and probably a few others, obtained in Holland, most of the "provisioning," as repeatedly appears, was done at the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... Massachusetts, and the "Skeleton in Armor" dug up at Fall River, Mass., and made the subject of a ballad by Longfellow, have figured prominently in the discussion of this pre-Columbian discovery. But these conjectural evidences are no longer regarded as having any connection with historical probability or as dating back to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Even the most indefatigable tax assessors find it such a fruitless and elusive task in attempting to discover what personal property is held by these multimillionaires, that the assessment is usually a conjectural or haphazard performance. The extent of their land holdings is known; these cannot be hid in a safe deposit vault. But their other varieties of property are carefully concealed from public and official knowledge. Since this is so, it is entirely probable that ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Some corrections are conjectural. Numbers were only changed when there was a discrepancy between a catalog entry and its ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... violate the rights of others. She may use any precautions dictated by the prudence or fears of her officers, either as to delay, or the progress or course of her voyage; but she is not at liberty to inflict injuries upon other innocent parties simply because of conjectural dangers. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... is to be considered as one period only because its contribution to the subject is as yet small and chronologically precedes the first great group. It ranges from the earliest beginnings of history to somewhere about B.C. 2300. The dates are largely conjectural, but for the most part the sequence of the events is known. It is the period covered by Dr. H. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... handwritten, probably by a professional copyist. All line-endings were regularized by added dashes of variable length; some "real" dashes are therefore conjectural. Instead of typographic variants such as italics or boldface, some words are distinguished by underlining or smaller writing. Abbreviations such as "Mr." were written with superscripts as M^r.; they have been ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... blowing over, when fortune brought another; for a messenger came with a letter from one Archias, the Hierophant at Athens, to his namesake Archias, who was his friend and guest. This did not merely contain a vague conjectural suspicion, but, as appeared afterwards, disclosed every particular of the design. The messenger being brought in to Archias, who was now pretty well drunk, and delivering the letter, said to him, "The writer of this desired it might ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... been set there, he remembered, soon after his own coming to the place; the records had been searched, and the arms of every prior copied and emblazoned in the panes. There they all were; from Lanzo of five centuries ago, whose arms were conjectural, down to Robert Crowham, who had forsaken his trust; telling the long tale of prelates and monastic life, from the beginning to the close. He looked round beyond the circle of light cast by his own candle, and the place seemed full of ghosts ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... work, was a distinguished English antiquary, born in the year 1715, and deceased in 1804. His most celebrated work is "A New System of Ancient Mythology," which appeared in 1773-76. Although objectionable on account of its too conjectural character, it contains a fund of details on the subject of symbolism, and may be consulted with ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... with its last emotions! Was I never more to look upon that radiant form? never more behold that face so divinely fair? never more listen to that melodious voice? Never more! The negative answer to these mental interrogatives—though only conjectural—was ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... but involved in legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind, and even now, after the discovery of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have been the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures at a simple ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... effective, and especially the most truth-telling, of all possible "lives." No letters indeed are likely to increase the literary repute of the author of the Confessions and of the Caesars; but they may very well clear up and fill in the hitherto rather fragmentary and conjectural notion of his character, and they may, on the other hand, confirm that idea of both which, however false it may seem to his children, and others who were united to him by ties of affection, has commended itself to careful students ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... properly with nature; it would then be held a proper explanation of those natural appearances with which it corresponded; and, the more of those phenomena that were thus explained by the theory, the more would that, which had been first conjectural, be converted into a theory legitimately ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Ferguson, enlisted in the undertaking the slaves of four plantations within forty miles of the city; and in the city itself, it was said that the personal roll of Peter Poyas embraced a membership of six hundred names. More than one witness placed the conjectural strength of Vesey's forces as high as 9,000, but I am inclined to write this down as a gross overestimate of the people actually enrolled ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... is pretended that it can act and feel without the assistance of this body; that deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful opinion of the immortality of the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... see?" said Panky, who was by way of being great at conjectural emendations. "Can you not see how impossible it is for the Sunchild, or any of the people to whom he declared (as we now know provisionally) that he belonged, could have made the forgiveness of his own sins depend on the readiness with which he forgave other people? No man in his senses would ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... much valued by students of American history. With the exception of one word, to which he called my attention, Dr. Toner has given as exact a reproduction of the Rules, in their present damaged condition, as can be made in print. The illegible parts are precisely indicated, without any conjectural insertions, and young Washington's spelling and punctuation subjected to no ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... unreasoning distrust to unquestioning confidence. Henceforth, he could believe anything for the very same reason that had, at first, made him believe nothing. Having no idea of the bounds of human reasoning and penetration, he saw no limits to the conjectural genius of his companion. With perfect faith, therefore, he inquired: "And what was the accomplice saying to the woman with the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... sensitive part. I cannot well comment upon his meaning, for as you may easily judge, what with cabinet, board, and Oak Farm, I have enough in my head to-day—and the subject is a fine and subtle one. But I may perhaps be able to think upon it to-night, in the meantime I think yours is a very just conjectural sketch. We have not got in cabinet to-day to the really pinching part of the discussion, the Roman catholic religious education. That comes on Monday. My mind does not waver; pray for me, that I may do right. I have an appointment with Peel to-morrow, and I rather ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... occasionally rather for their grandeur and melody than for their exact connexion with the context or bearing upon his meaning. The consequence was a certain gorgeous haziness and bewilderment, which made the task of translating his harangues rather troublesome and conjectural. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the great Roman Bath in the middle of the last century; and this anyone can see by reference to the map in Prebendary Scarth's 'Aquae Solis'—the diagram (copied from Spry) there being almost similar to Sutherland's conjectural plan of the baths, except that the section of Lucas's Bath, correctly represented in Sutherland's map is figured upside-down by Spry and Scarth. It is quite clear what Sutherland knew of the great Roman Bath; it is equally clear that when he proceeded, on ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... they remain at Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton; but the inference derives support from the words, "I have read with admiration ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... their train that they were both able to escape for an hour into the care-free mood of their earlier travels, when they were so easily taken out of themselves. The time had been when they could have found enough in the conjectural fortunes and characters of their fellow-passengers to occupy them. This phase of their youth had lasted long, and the world was still full of novelty and interest for them; but it required all the charm of the dining-car ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fragments, attempt to fix in canonical form the cloudy mixture of dreams and boasts and legends and hypotheses by which most royal families in central Greece recorded their descent from a traditional ancestress and a conjectural God. The Works and Days form an attempt to collect and arrange the rules and tabus relating to agriculture. The work of Hesiod as a whole is one of the most valiant failures in literature. The confusion and absurdity of it are only equalled by its strange helpless beauty and its extraordinary ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... before I abandoned it, and was so fortunate as to get him to admit a degree of improvement such as led to his desiring to recall his conjectural judgment on my possibilities as a sonnet-writer, but as the letters in which he characterises the advance are neither so terse in criticism, nor so interesting from the exposition of principles, as the one quoted, I pass them by. With more confidence in my ultimate comparative ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... and sell for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... make a speech! This extraordinary omission set the house in a buzz of conjectural wonderment till "The Maid of Honour" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... included among the few unauthenticated relics in the museum at the homestead. It is a reasonable inference that whatever education he received was obtained here, but this fact, as well as the character and amount of his early training, is wholly conjectural. The first formal separate biography of Shakespeare was published in 1743, one hundred and twenty-seven years after his death, by Rowe, who says that the boy was withdrawn from school in 1578 to assist his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the alarm generally entertained of that encroaching and immense power. He even thinks that, even if she possessed Constantinople, she could not long retain it. As all this is future, and of course conjectural, we may legitimately express our doubts of any authority on the subject. That Russia does not think with the Marquis is evident, for all her real movements for the last fifty years have been but preliminaries to the seizure of Turkey. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... passed, and he heard nothing. Half that delay sufficed to bring out all the self-tormenting capacities of a nature such as his. To his mother's conjectural explanations he could lend no ear. Doubtless Lady Whitelaw (against whom, for subtle reasons, he was already prejudiced) had taken offence; either she would not reply at all, or presently there would come a few lines of polite displeasure, intimating ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and in parentheses (*) are those at which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently are more exact and trustworthy than the others. In a few cases where the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... resides. I must say that his details were rather vague. She rode in a circus or had a talking horse—he was not quite sure; and concerning her conjugal or extra-conjugal heart affairs he admitted that his information was either unauthenticated or conjectural. At any rate, she had not a shred of reputation. And she didn't want it, said Renniker; it would be as much use to her ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... to the forest," says Gilgamesh, if the conjectural restoration of the line in question (l. 126) is correct. Enkidu replies by again drawing a lurid picture of what will happen "When we go (together) to the forest......." This speech of Enkidu is continued on the reverse. In reply Gilgamesh emphasizes ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nothing of the kind. She tried to sketch her remembrance of both that and the gable of the mullion chamber, and Martyn prowled about in search of some hiding-place. Our antiquarian friend, Mr. Stafford, had made a conjectural drawing of the Chapel restored, and all the portfolios about the house were searched for it, disquieting mamma, who suspected Martyn's Oxford notions of intending to rebuild it, nor would he say that it ought not to be ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, oris should be read aris, it being, as we see, Aen. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter Hercaeus that Aeneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would flatu for fato, since it is most clear it ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... whether it does not seem easy to avoid all questions of that kind. If the statue is injured, leave it so, but provide a perfect copy of the statue in its restored form; offer, if you like, prizes to sculptors for conjectural restorations, and choose the most beautiful, but do ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 2 preliminary leaves containing title and dedication by Paulus Manutius to Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Montpellier, 331 numbered leaves of text, 10 unnumbered leaves of translations of the Greek passages, conjectural emendations which the editor "would not hesitate to adopt it he should ever find an ancient MS. to confirm them" and a final leaf with colophon and anchor. The Scholia, 24 unnumbered leaves, have a ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... acceptance with God. Upon the two latter subjects, a natural, perhaps, and venial, but a fruitless, eager, and impatient curiosity, prompted by the philosophy and by the scholastic habits of the age, which carried men much into bold hypotheses and conjectural solutions, raised, amongst some who professed Christianity, very wild and unfounded opinions. I think there is no reason to believe that the number of these bore any considerable proportion to the body ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... intellect—seeking to divest what is genuine in these apparent vagaries of Nature from the cheats of venal impostors and the exaggeration of puzzled witnesses—have more soberly endeavoured to render such exceptional thaumaturgia of philosophical use, in enlarging our conjectural knowledge of the complex laws of being—sometimes through physiological, sometimes through metaphysical research. Without discredit, however, to the many able and distinguished speculators on so vague a subject, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Nos. 1 and 27, the justi- fication will be found in the note to the poem. The finished poems from 1 to 51 are ranged chronologically by the years, but in the section 52-74 a fanciful grouping of the fragments was preferred to the inevitable misrepresentations of conjectural dating. G. M. H. dated his poems from their inception, and however much he revised a poem he would date his recast as his first draft. Thus Handsome Heart was written and sent to me in '79; and the recast, which I ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... has always maintained an obstinate silence on the subject, and as the mere fact of the loss (however probable) is not more accurately known to me than its extent, or its particular mode, or its cause,—I shall not allow myself to make any conjectural speculations on the subject. It can be interesting to you and me only from one of its consequences, viz. its leading him afterwards to seek a professorship: for most certain it is, that, if the splendour of Mr. Wilson's youthful condition as to pecuniary ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... quarter, and commenced blowing with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... stands on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... would in all probability have drawn him as a puppy in gown and band; and no one who knows aught of the painter can doubt that he would have strikingly preserved the likeness. As for ourselves, we merely indulge in a piece of conjectural criticism. The other parts of the article are cast very much into the ordinary type of that side of the controversy to which it belongs: there is rather more than the usual amount of misrepresentation, inconsistency, and abuse, with here and there a peculiarity of statement. Patrons ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... earlier school, and the stiff folds of the tunic, the cold demeanor of the goddess, recall the masters whom Pheidias was destined to supersede. No copy of this statue survives, and hence a description of it must be largely conjectural, made up from hints ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... mouth and maw Share shrieking the soul's board and soil her bed, Till man's blind spirit, their sick slave, resign Its kingdom to the priests whose souls are swine, And the scourged serf lie reddening from their rod, Discrowned, disrobed, dismantled, with lost eyes Seeking where lurks in what conjectural skies That triple-headed hound of ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... The shots have not been unkindly ones; and I am glad of the result, viz. that our knowledge of the dates—both as to the composition and first publication of the poems —is now much more exact than before. When a conjectural one is given in this edition, the fact is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... observed, "No part of English history since the Conquest is so obscure, so uncertain, so little authentic or consistent, as that of the Wars between the two Roses." It adds also to the importance of that conjectural research in which Fiction may be made so interesting and so useful, that "this profound darkness falls upon us just on the eve of the restoration of letters;" [Hume] while amidst the gloom, we perceive the movement ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... modernized in spelling, and, to some extent, in algebraical notation; it also seems that conjectural methods of introducing interpolations into the text have been necessary. For all this we are sorry: the scientific value of the collection is little altered, but its literary value is somewhat lowered. But it could not be helped: the printers ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... possessed the monarchy of Ireland. After these concessions, the remaining difference between Mr. Whitaker and his adversaries is minute and obscure. The genuine history, which he produces, of a Fergus, the cousin of Ossian, who was transplanted (A.D. 320) from Ireland to Caledonia, is built on a conjectural supplement to the Erse poetry, and the feeble evidence of Richard of Cirencester, a monk of the fourteenth century. The lively spirit of the learned and ingenious antiquarian has tempted him to forget the nature of a question, which he so vehemently ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... one knows not whence, to vanish away one knows not whither; but inquiringly, as when a first interview shows us the outward seeming of one known by hearsay—one whom our mind has dwelt on curiously, making conjectural images at random, and wondering which was nearest to the truth. And to neither of those who saw this meeting, for all they felt interest to note what each would think of the other, did the thought come of any very strong resemblance ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a philological trouble for which the Sanscrit could not afford at least a conjectural cure? A dictionary of that extremely venerable tongue is an ostrich's stomach, which can crack the hardest etymological nut. The Sanscrit name for the Lotus is simply Padma. The learned Brahmins call the Egyptian deities Padma Devi, or Lotus-Gods; the second of the eighteen Hindoo Puranas ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Mr. Gosse's book; he has collected his documents, and he has given them to us as they are, guiding us adroitly along the course of the life which they illustrate, but not allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... carried altogether into that remote anterior epoch which is shadowed forth, if you will, under the exploits of Hercules. For with that charming candour by which he often contrives to neutralise the errors of his conjectural method of writing history, Dr Thirlwall himself adds:—"This expedition of Hercules may indeed suggest a doubt whether it was not an earlier and simpler form of the same tradition, which grew at length into the argument of the Iliad; for there is a striking resemblance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... our English Homer is sufficiently known by name. As it stands a terrifying beacon to conjectural criticism, I shall just notice some of those violations which the learned critic ventured to commit, with all the arrogance of a Scaliger. This man, so deeply versed in ancient learning, it will appear, was destitute of taste and genius in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Besides, Berthier gave no orders of himself; he thought it enough to repeat exactly the very letter of Napoleon's commands; for, as to their spirit, either from fatigue or habit, he was incessantly confounding the positive with the conjectural ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... geography, but by his treatise entitled Chronographia, one of the first attempts to establish an exact scheme of general chronology, earned for himself the title of "father of chronology." His method of procedure, however, was usually conjectural; and guess-work, however careful, acute and plausible, is still guess-work and not testimony. Apollodorus, an Athenian who flourished in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., wrote a metrical chronicle of events, ranging from the supposed period of the fall of Troy to his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... confessed. As lovers of poetry we acknowledge that, without Scott's interpolation, we could have no more of Kinmont Willie than verses, "much mangled by reciters," as Scott says, of a ballad perhaps no more poetical than Jock o' the Side. Scott says that "some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible." As it is now very intelligible, to say "conjectural emendations" is a ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... l. 1513, MOURNERS.]—This attribution of the different speeches or songs to different speakers is, of course, conjectural. Ancient dramas come down to us with no stage directions and very imperfect indications of ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... a work of compromises, or of conjectural interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures, neither is it a paraphrase, but a strict [strictly] literal rendering. It neither adds nor takes away; but aims to express the original with the utmost clearness and force, and with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... man, sees in progress the fundamental law of the universe, and thus admits the difference between earlier and later into the very citadel of its contemplative outlook. With its past and future history of the world, conjectural as it is, I do not wish to quarrel. But I think that, in the intoxication of a quick success, much that is required for a true understanding of the universe has been forgotten. Something of Hellenism, something, too, of Oriental resignation, must be ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... coast of the island then turned north close to that of Spain, and was joined to the island of Cadiz or Gadiz, or Caliz, as it is now called. I affirm this for two reasons, one by authority and the other by conjectural demonstration. The authority is that Plato in his Critias, telling how Neptune distributed the sovereignty of the island among his ten sons, said that the second son was called in the mother tongue "Gadirum," ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... India, the Vedas, and the question of their real antiquity led him again to a more exhaustive examination of the astronomical literature of the Brahmans. In all these researches, which were necessarily of a somewhat conjectural character, Colebrooke was guided by his usual caution. Instead of attempting, for instance, afree and more or less divinatory translation of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, he began with the tedious ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... of conjectural possibility lay the mediate truth of the matter: which truth—thus resembling precious gold in its valueless rock matrix—lay embedded in, and was to be extracted from, the irresponsible utterances of the double row of loosely ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... In each parish there were persons called searchers, ancient women who were informed by the sexton of a death, and whose duty it was to visit the deceased and state the cause of death. They had no medical knowledge, and therefore their diagnosis could only have been very conjectural. This they reported to the parish clerk. The clerk made out his bill for the week, took it to the Hall of the company, and deposited it in a box on the staircase. All the returns were then tabulated, arranged, and printed, and when copies had been sent to the authorities, others were placed in the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... vault of the heavens was supposed to find support upon the outlying circle of mountains. But the precise mechanism through which the observed revolution of the heavenly bodies was effected remains here, as with the Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural. The simple fact would appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the Egyptians, despite their most careful observations of the tangible phenomena of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the fairest and most moving spectacle in nature's processional, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a formless sort of place which was Seattle. They surveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined dimensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and-fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some faces of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... this traveller's brief, lose time in conjectural answers to the questions which every step here will raise from the ravaged shrine. But this is a very solemn one; and must be kept in our hearts, till we may perhaps get clue to it. One thing only we are ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the stars gave forth a brightness that is rarely seen, except in the clear cold nights of a high latitude. Each and all of these sublime emblems of the power of God were twinkling like bright torches glowing in space; and the mind had only to endow each with its probable or known dimensions, its conjectural and reasonable uses, to form a picture of the truest sublimity in which man is made to occupy his real position. In this world, where, in a certain sense, he is master, where all things are apparently under his ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... be asked what is the relation of the particles of insulating bodies, such as air, sulphur, or lac, when they intervene in the line of magnetic action? The answer to this is at present merely conjectural. I have long thought there must be a particular condition of such bodies corresponding to the state which causes currents in metals and other conductors (26. 53. 191. 201. 213.); and considering that the bodies are insulators one would expect that state to be one of tension. I have by rotating ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... science, for the reality of which M. Comte in France and Mr. Buckle in England have been the foremost champions, would bear the same relation to political events as Optics and Astronomy do to the phenomena of light and of the solar and sidereal systems. It would deal less with the conjectural and probable than with the predicable and positive. 'In the moral as in the physical world,' say its leading advocates, 'are invariable rule, inevitable sequence, undeviating regularity,' constituting 'one ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... was to print the text of the poem as it appears in the manuscript, with a literal translation in parallel columns, placing all conjectural emendations at the foot of each page; but, on comparing the text with the version in this juxta-position, so numerous and so enormous and puerile did the blunders of the copyist appear, and, consequently, so great the discrepance between the text ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... arose, and the audience departed, greatly wondering at the talent displayed by Alan Fairford at his first appearance in a case so difficult and so complicated, and assigning a hundred conjectural causes, each different from the others, for the singular interruption which had clouded his day of success. The worst of the whole was, that six agents, who had each come to the separate resolution of thrusting a retaining fee into Alan's hand as he left the court, shook their heads as they returned ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... bright star Alcyone thus became the "central sun," but in a purely passive sense, its headship being determined by its situation at the point of neutralisation of opposing tendencies, and of consequent rest. By an avowedly conjectural method, the solar period of revolution round this point was fixed at ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... de Medicis had many faults cannot be denied by her most zealous biographer, but that she was outraged both as a wife and as a mother is no less certain; and adopting, as we have a right to do, the conjectural style of M. de Sully,—perhaps, we say in our turn, had the Queen, from the period of her marriage, been treated with the deference and respect which were her due, the harsher features of her character might have become softened, and the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
