"Old English" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old English ballad, the ballad of the "Cockle-shells," that Edith used to sing often in the old days, when its note of melancholy seemed best to express her happiness. It was only that line, and the voice seemed to break, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that literature was kept alive in our country by King Alfred's affection for the old English songs. We know that he used to recite them himself and would make his children get them by heart. He was not much of a scholar himself, but he had all the learning of Mercia to help him. Archbishop Plegmund and his chaplains were the King's secretaries, 'and night ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... 100. Gillian. A common old English name (according to Coles and others, a corruption of Juliana), often contracted into Gill of Jill, and used as a familiar term for a woman, as Jack was for a man. The two are often associated; as in the proverbs "Every Jack must have ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... with some attributive adjunct—generally a participle ('remaining')—to serve the purpose of an adverb or adverbial clause. The noun (or pronoun) is usually said to be the nominative absolute; but, in the case of pronouns, Milton uses the nominative and the objective indifferently. In Old English the dative ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Sir Englishman. The time has been, I've studied love-lays in the English tongue, And been enamour'd of rare poesy: Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu; For Margaret has got ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "you look like the picture of the sturdy retainers of the old English barons. O, I do hope that water won't go away very soon. The rattling of the water in your boots ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... The cruel old English sport of bull baiting was still continued at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, where it is said to have existed since the year 1209, in the reign of King John. The story goes that, in that year, William, Earl Warren, lord of the town, standing on the walls of his ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... a few steps farther, Jamieson, who is as excellent in points of etymology as Johnson is deficient, quotes, in his Scottish Dictionary, an instance where the identical expression, meselle-houses, is used in old English; ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... some families," Rebecca continued. "You can't think what a difference there is though. We are not so wealthy in Hampshire as you lucky folks of the City. But then I am in a gentleman's family—good old English stock. I suppose you know Sir Pitt's father refused a peerage. And you see how I am treated. I am pretty comfortable. Indeed it is rather a good place. But how very good of you ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... She went for much the same reason as that given by the ladye of high degree in the old English song—she who had left her lord and bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... means harmony. The word hell is from the old English hell, meaning to build a wall around, to separate; to be helled was to be shut off from. Now if there is such a thing as harmony there must be that something one can be in right relations with; for to be in right relations with anything is to be in harmony with it. Again, if there is ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... parties. According to him, there is no other role in the political movement for the workers than that of satellite of the Radical bourgeoisie. He glorifies the "essentially economic" tactics of the old English Trade Unions, and has not the faintest idea that it was these very tactics that made the English workers the tail of the ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... Northumbrian had indeed been attempted at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Mr. Repp and also by a disciple of the great Fin Magnusen, Mr. J. M. M'Caul, but the least said about these versions the better, both being wide of the mark. Being imperfectly acquainted with Old English they made the most absurd statements regarding the purpose the monument was supposed to ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... couple of servants, four rams with curling horns — a purchase from the late Lord Western; a noble blood-hound, the gift of a noble Lord famous for the breed; a real old English mastiff-bitch, from the stock at Lyme Park; and a handsome spaniel cocker. Besides this collection of quadrupeds, we had a vast assortment of useless lumber, which had cost us many hundred pounds. Being most darkly ignorant of every thing relating to the country ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... sufficiently recovered to leave her pretty and bowery bedroom and come down to the general living room. This room, half kitchen, half parlor, again in an undefined way reminded her of the old English farmhouse where she and Maurice had been both happy and unhappy not so long ago. Here Cecile saw for the first time young Mme. Malet's husband. He was a big and handsome fellow, very dark—as dark as Joe; he had a certain look of Joe which rather puzzled Cecile and caused her look at him ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... our American tune of "Coronation," but to the old English "Miles Lane." That tune, you remember, repeats over four times the words, "Crown Him," in the last line, gradually increasing in volume, and the fourth time touched with a ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... is an old English polish, commonly used before French polish and varnish were introduced, especially for hard woods like oak. Its advantages are that it is cheap, easily prepared, easily applied, and easily repaired. Its disadvantages are that it will not stand wetting, is easily marred, requires ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... [Footnote A: In old English "yet" means "continuously" or "always"; and it is still used in Cumberland with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... Propagation.—The old English method of dividing the plants in March or early April may be followed where better means of propagation are not practicable. Many of the best border varieties are shy in producing new growths (suckers) from the rootstock, and are in consequence not amenable to this method. It is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... took thirty German prisoners!' cried the squire. 'Good old English bull-dog! But how did he ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... account given by Saunders of these barbarities. The English officers now endeavoured to rival each other in acts of cruelty to obtain official commendation and royal favour. Sir Walter Raleigh was especially active in Cork, and brought a charge of treason against the Barrys and Roches, old English settlers; but Barry set fire to his castle, and took to the woods, where he joined Lord Desmond. Lord Roche was taken prisoner, but eventually escaped from his persecutors. Pretended plots were rumoured in all directions, and numbers of innocent persons were executed. William Burke was hanged ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... St. Gregory, based on a similar theme, the hero of which, however, is innocent throughout, was widely diffused through mediaeval Europe. It forms No. 81 of the Gesta Romanorum. There is an old English poem[1] on the subject, and it also received lyric treatment at the hands of the German meistersinger, Hartmann von Aue. An Italian story, Il Figliuolo di germani, the chronicle of St. Albinus, and the Servian romaunt of the Holy Foundling Simeon ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... coffee through the streets of the metropolis, his system of delivering fresh coffee daily to the grocery trade, and his Japanese paper filter device to insure the proper making of the coffee, made him famous. He brought something of the spirit of the old English coffee house to America, and incorporated it in Keen's Chop House in New ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... admiration of Cæsar; which survived in the huge war-horse carrying the great weight of the mail-clad Norman knight in the active exercises of the tournament; and the descendants of which are the Shire horses of to-day.—“The Old English Warhorse,” by Sir Walter Gilbey. We may add here, as an interesting fact, that there is evidence to show that the horses of our neighbourhood were specially valued, as far back as the time of the Commonwealth. Cromwell wrote to an acquaintance, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... its obsolete sense, according no doubt to its Saxon origin, means a sponsor, one who answers for a child in baptism, a godfather. Its modern acceptation all know to be widely different. Can any of your correspondents quote a passage or two from old English authors, wherein its obsolete sense ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... be punished if they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among New England historical collections no other such well of good old English ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... who is counting the butter at Copenhagen, that great activity is manifesting itself among the officers and men of the German Slack-Water Fleet. This is owing to the fact that they are learning a new German National Anthem which has just been introduced into the Fleet, set to an old English tune. A rough translation of the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... prolonged search, was found in London and duly installed as a presiding deity to defy the dampness that pervades all those ivy-covered habitations, as well as the neuralgia that wrings their possessors. What a blessing it proved, more than any one thing making the old English house seem like an American home! The delightful summer heat we, in America, enjoy in the coldest seasons, is quite unknown to our Saxon cousins. Although many came to see our stove in full working order, yet we could not persuade them to adopt the American ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... old English town-guilds, and the other mysteries and interludes that follow, have still an uncommon reality about them if we take them in the spirit in which they were originally acted. Their office as the begetters of the greater literary drama to come, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... clever," she said, "and you are supposed to understand all about money matters. Surely you know of a bank where I can take these wretched notes and get gold instead, the good old English gold that was worth its face-value all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... beautiful room!" she said in a quivering voice. "And the garden is like one in an old English song." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... in the house an old English man servant named Jerry Pike. He had formerly been a groom and attendant on Peter's uncle, Major Schermerhorn, and volunteered in the army at the time of the war with Mexico, that he might follow his dear master, whom he had ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... archery for those who could draw a bow or point an arrow; and we are yet to learn the sight that is more dangerous for your bachelor to witness, or the ceremony which more perfectly develops all that the sex would wish us to remark, than this 'old English' custom. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... putting aside the Latin classics, I have found my greatest pleasure in our old English dramatists,—not from any excessive love of their work, which often irritates me by its want of truth to nature, even while it shames me by its language,—but from curiosity in searching their plots and examining their character. If I live a few years longer, I shall, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... do not know that I have ever greatly relished any plays but those of Shakespeare and Goldoni, and two or three of Beaumont and Fletcher, and one or so of Marlow's, and all of Ibsen's and Maeterlinck's. The taste for the old English dramatists I believe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... them according to custom, and let them learn English by having to speak to him. About July a case came to his knowledge that roused all his sympathies, and at the same time afforded a good opportunity to try his plan. "I have taken a four-year-old English boy into our family. He was born in Charlestown, but somehow found his way to Savannah. His father was hanged, for murder I have heard, and his mother has married another man, and abandoned the child. A woman here took charge of him, but treated him most cruelly. Once ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... son, fellow. Connected with this word is the Scottish Chiel, the Old English Childe, and the ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... last a pause, as each party seemed worn out; for, "the hand of Providence had disciplined 'all' Europe into sobriety, as men tame wild elephants by alternate blows and caresses: now, that Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English notions and feelings, it will with difficulty be credited, how great an influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of secret defamation (the too constant attendant on party zeal!) during ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... beast, on the lawn outside the long windows. The lawn has been in bad condition for nearly two years, on account of the building of the Morgan memorial, but has now been planted again. One May-day we had an old English festival around a Maypole on the green, with Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, the hobby- horse, the dragon and all the rest, including Jack in the Green and an elephant. This was such a success that we were asked to repeat it across the river ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... The old English who had come to Britain were heathen, and believed in many false gods: the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday was to the moon, Wednesday to a great terrible god, named Woden, and Thursday to a god named Thor, ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... directly or by implication, from the Palazzo Nuovo. I shall first translate the piece of the Zancarol Chronicle given by Cadorin, which has chiefly misled the Venetian antiquaries. I wish I could put the rich old Italian into old English, but must be content to lose its raciness, as it is necessary that the reader should be fully ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... speeches. He had been in London; and he described, in a correct narrative style, his impressions of St. Paul's, the Tower, and Westminster Palace. His brother fell in love with Mrs. Forster at first sight, and sat silent until she remarked to him how strangely the hotel omnibuses resembled old English stage coaches, when he became recklessly talkative and soon convinced her that American society produced quite as choice a compound of off-handedness and folly as London could. But all this was amusing after her long seclusion; and once or twice, when the thought ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... years which followed the dissolution of the Parliament of 1628, he resided at his seat in one of the most beautiful parts of the county of Buckingham. The house, which has since his time been greatly altered, and which is now, we believe, almost entirely neglected, was an old English mansion, built in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. It stood on the brow of a hill which overlooks a narrow valley. The extensive woods which surround it were pierced by long avenues. One of those avenues the grandfather of the great statesman had cut for the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from a wild boar which would have slain or cruelly mangled her. The old father had inspired no confidence in his children: she met her outlaw again and again by stealth, and eventually became the bride of Wulfstan, last representative of the old English family who had possessed Michelham ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... marble, with an inscription in black letters,—the only such memorial that I could discern, although many dead people doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, as is customary in old English churches. There were no modern painted windows, flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adornments, such as the present taste for mediaeval restoration often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the gray village-church. It is probably the worshipping-place ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the gardens of old English homes. Any arched or covered seat out of doors is called an alcove. But this is rather an elaborate one. The marble pillars are of fine design, and the whole thing is ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... production makes almost any luxury accessible to every one. It is also possible to find modern and agreeable forms for older academic exercises. If Greek and Latin were too full or too difficult, courses in Romanic and Germanic philology would do as well. Anglo-Saxon gave way to Old English; and Chaucer to the Lake Poets. Philosophy struggled for favor with the English novel on equal terms. The works of Raphael were photographed and lithographed until the Sistine Madonna became as commonly known as the face of any strenuous and popular statesman ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... 4. Obviously the word "learned" in our Version is there used in its old English sense, "instructed, taught." No slight on "book-learning" is ever conveyed in the Scriptures. But the man in view here is not the highly-educated person, but the believer who has listened with the ear "of the taught" (see the end of the verse), as a disciple at the Master's feet; and so goes ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... An old English proverb says, that more know Torn Fool than Tom Fool knows; and the influence of the adage seems to extend to works composed under the influence of an idle or foolish planet. Many corresponding circumstances are detected by readers, of which the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... new communities which our emigrating habit now constantly creates, this prosaic turn of mind is intensified. In the American mind and in the colonial mind there is, as contrasted with the old English mind, a LITERALNESS, a tendency to say, "The facts are so-and-so, whatever may be thought or fancied about them". We used before the civil war to say that the Americans worshipped the almighty dollar; we now know that they can ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... golden crowns, and, as the number of students had now risen to one hundred and twenty, summoned him to Rome to undertake the establishing of a similar college in the papal city. By Allen's advice, the old English hospice was turned into a seminary and Jesuits were placed there to help Dr Maurice Clennock, the rector. The pope appointed Allen to a canonry in Courtrai and sent him back to Douai (July 1576); ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sufficient for the effective presentation of the author's opinions. The best characters are an Irish parson, a fox-hunting squire and his commonplace worldly wife, and a thoughtless and reckless but not unkind man of the world. Here is a sketch of a commonplace old English vicar, such as has been familiar in the pages of novels and essays time out ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... corrected and put forth in the English that now is used in England, for our Southern men; nothing thereto adding, ne yet therefrom minishing. And I intend hereafter, with the help of GOD to put it forth in his own old English, which shall well serve, I doubt not, both for the Northern men and the faithful ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... and about London, the name of jumbles is given to a common kind of gingerbread, to be obtained at the small sweet-shops: but these are not the old English jumball of the text. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... and putting the key into the pocket of his cassock, same as in the old Pope's days. I go in whenever I like, and he lets me take whatever I please. At Christmas some rich Americans wanted a skull-cap to save a dying man, and I got it for the asking. Now an old English lady wants a stocking to cure her rheumatism, and I'll get that too. I've saved a little hair from the last cutting, and if you ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... three acts, called Fatal Curiosity, founded on an old English story, was acted with success at ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and says, "Strong it is to smell unto, and bitter to taste" (xxvii. 4, Holland's translation). Our old English writers spoke of it under both aspects. It occurs in several recipes of the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms, as a strong and bitter purgative. Chaucer ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... never searched for them. Condition governed his choice a good deal; he was fond of Spanish books, his mother having been a Spaniard, and of early German ones, being a German on his father's side. He took the classics and Americana rather hesitatingly, and there is no doubt that the old English literature interested him most powerfully, as it was most fully represented on his shelves. The folio volume of black-letter ballads, knocked down to his agent at the Daniel sale for L750, was regarded by him with special tenderness; but we think that its real history was unknown to ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... gleaming allotments. The effect gained is for me one of great charm—the charm of a vivid, exquisitely ordered, green silence, with a touch of monastic, or Quakerish, decorum. I would not have it otherwise, and I speak of it only to suggest by contrast the different, desultory charm of an old English village, where beauty has not been so much planned, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Burdock, who married a first cousin of my father, an heiress, who brought him an estate of a thousand a-year. This gentleman is a declared opponent of the ministry in parliament; and having an opulent fortune, piques himself upon living in the country, and maintaining old English hospitality — By the bye, this is a phrase very much used by the English themselves both in words and writing; but I never heard of it out of the island, except by way of irony and sarcasm. What the hospitality of our forefathers ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... that this festival was celebrated in winter, and still continues in Scandinavia under the appellation of Julifred, the peace of Juul. (Yule is the term used for Christmas season in the old English and Scottish dialects.) But this feast was solemnized not in honor of the Earth, but of the Sun, called by them Thor or Taranium. The festival of Herth was held later, in the month of February; as may be seen in Mallet's "Introduction to the History ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... employee of the Government, was translating Ovid on the banks of the James river; industry changed the face of the land; a choice breed of horses, the tobacco culture, hunting, local politics, hospitality—churches after the old English model, manor houses with lawns, bricks, and portraits significant of ancestral models, justified the pioneer's declaration that Virginia 'was the poor man's best country in the world.' Beautiful, indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the early travellers; auspicious ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... quaint old village—a curious, old-fashioned scene. We feel as if we had somehow become transmogrified, and instead of being flesh-and-blood men and women from practical New York, were playing our parts in some old English novel. Odd little tumble-down houses, with peaked roofs and mullioned windows, ranged about a triangular common, look sleepily out upon a statue of Palmerston in the middle of the open place, the gray walls of Romsey Abbey, a thousand years old, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... which has an inexpressibly unpleasant effect to those who are not habituated to it." (p. xxv. We again underscore the un-Saxon words.) Now if there be any short cut to the Anglo-Saxon, it is through the German; and how far the Bostonians deserve the reproach of a neglect of old English masterpieces we do not pretend to say, but the first modern reprint of the best works of Latimer, More, Sidney, Fuller, Selden, Browne, and Feltham was made in Boston, under the care of the late Dr. Alexander ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... a vast square apartment, wainscoted with old English oak, brighter and richer in its dark hues than mahogany, received the entering guests; and what with the profusion of wax-lights, pendant in gorgeous chandeliers from the carved roof, or fixed in silver sconces ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the feller," Tom said, after a few minutes' silence, "but it shall be in the old English style, stand up and knock down. I'll have no pistols, 'cos I never used 'em, and don't think I could hit a man, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... lawn, over which it cast its shadow broad and far, he perceived his guardian poring idly over an oft-read book, one of those books of which literary dreamers are apt to grow fanatically fond—books by the old English writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half sublime, interspersed with praises of the country, imbued with a poetical rather than orthodox religion, and adorned with a strange mixture of monastic learning and aphorisms ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... used transitively, "troubles," though in Old English it is generally intransitive, meaning to be careful or thoughtful; it is from the Anglo-Saxon 'Carian'; it became obsolete in the seventeenth century. The substantive cark, trouble or anxiety, is generally in ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... religion, and contrasted it with the religious formalism of the West. "Italy," wrote Mr. H.G. Wells, on his recent visit to Russia, "abounds in noble churches because the Italians are artists and architects, and a church is an essential part of the old English social system, but Moscow glitters with two thousand crosses because the people are organically Christian. I feel in Russia that for the first time in my life I am in a country where Christianity is alive. The people I saw crossing themselves whenever they passed a church, the bearded men who ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Webster, the elder brother of Daniel, a man of remarkable intellectual endowments; in sagacity and judgment, in the opinion of those who knew them both, fully equal to his distinguished brother, well read, as all the gentlemen of the old school were, in the old English authors; a profound lawyer, and, at times when he could be prevailed upon to speak, as eloquent as his brother; of commanding personal presence, which in no way can be so well described as by borrowing a Homeric epithet, for he was truly a ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... was of great benefit to Benjamin was an old English grammar which he bought at a book-store. He ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... author of the following poem, as a writer who has more than once given us poems indicating much refinement of taste, based on sound old English scholarship: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty which I am told bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem. I beg to quote the emphatic language of my estimable friend (if he will allow me to call him so), the Black Bear in Piccadilly, and to assure all to whom these presents may ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... George Wakeham, an old English fisherman from Devonshire, who had spent forty years of his life on The Labrador and had an Eskimo wife, welcomed us to his house. Near it was an eminence called Watch Hill, from which the general ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... extent in mode and effect. The Swiss chalet may hang in the mountain pass; the pointed Gothic may shoot up among the evergreens of the rugged hill-side; the Italian roof, with its overlooking campanile, may command the wooded slope or the open plain; or the quaint and shadowy style of the old English mansion, embosomed in its vines and shrubbery, may nestle in the quiet, shaded valley, all suited to their respective positions, and each in harmony with the natural features by which it is surrounded. Nor does the effect which such structures give to the landscape in an ornamental ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... "'It was an old English acquaintance, who was poor and asking charity,' she said, when questioned, but her manner led me to think there was something wrong, particularly as I saw her with him again, and thought she held ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Books on this Period will be found in the Classified List of Books in the Appendix. The pronunciation of names will be found in the Index. The Leading Dates stand unenclosed; all others are in parentheses. [2] Gildas, in Bohn's "Six Old English Chronicles"; but compare Professor C. Oman's "England before the Norman Conquest," pp. 175-176. [3] The Picts and Scots were ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... said, that Manners bear the same relation to life that tone bears to conversation; and a good life loses great portion of the power it might exert over those who come within the influence of its sphere if it ultimate itself in ungracious or repulsive Manners. In the old English writers we often find persons characterized as Christian gentlemen or Christian ladies; and courtesy seems formerly to have been clearly understood to be a Christian virtue. Our conflict with, and our escape ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... by two or three different constituencies. Secretary Thurloe had been returned; Cromwell's two sons, Richard and Henry, had been returned, Henry as member for Cambridge University; several gentlemen holding posts in his Highness's household had been returned. Of the old English peers, there had been returned the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Stamford, and Lord Dacres; and of the titular nobility there were Lord Herbert, Lord Eure, Lord Grey of Groby, and the great Fairfax. Among men of Parliamentary ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the deep coombe at the bottom of Marden Hill these great beeches begin, true woodland trees, and somehow more forest-like than the hundreds and hundreds of acres of fir trees that are called forest. There is another spirit among the beech trees; they look like deer and memories of old English life. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... houses. About the reign of James I., or, perhaps, a little sooner, architects began to perceive the additional grandeur of entering the great hall at once. This apartment subsequently gave its name to the whole house.—See an interesting paper on Old English Halls, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... I gave it him on his birthday long since. It was bright then; old English pewter, I think. I saw it in a little store where they sold ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... another and that defacing School Board which has ground the lower middle class of England and its labouring population into one common monotony had not yet laid a hand upon the people. They spoke a very beautiful old English there, full of the quaint plurals long since obsolete in most other places. "Shoon" and "housen," for example, and now and then a double plural—a compromise between the ancient manner and the new—would creep into their speech; "eysen" was the plural of "eye," "peasen" ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... no "green room" in the modern American theatre. We have all read about a meeting place in the rear of the stage that went by this title in the old English novels and biographies. They may exist still in some foreign theatres, I am not sure—but I doubt it. What I am sure of is that the American stage is sacred to its artists, principals and subordinates alike, and to its stage manager and the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... it is said to have come from Geneva. Besides these, xxv and xliv, which are the only other tunes from this source in H. A. M., are very favourable examples, and I do not think that they will rescue the book. Nor can I believe that these old English D.C.M. tunes were ever much used. They are too much alike for many of them to have been committed to memory, while all the editions which I happen to have seen are full of misprints, and the four-line tunes which ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... light to see one approaching on horse back. The dogs were called off, and he heard a voice exclaim ride up. A very handsome picket fence surrounded the house, and upon arriving at the gate he was met by a fine looking old English gentleman, who invited him to dismount and have his horse stabled. Thanking him for his kindness, he at once dismounted, and taking the extended hand of the old gentleman, said: "Sir, I am a benighted traveller, and a stranger in this section, and have sought your ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... yolks add water and salt. Beat whites and pour yolks over whites; fold and cut with a spoon. Do not beat. Pour in saucepan, loosen with a knife around edges, cook until it sets. Sprinkle grated cheese on top and put in oven for two or three minutes. Serve very hot. Old English ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... embezzlement or arson. Miss Thompkins, however, kept on insinuating. Audrey regarded herself as decidedly wiser than Miss Thompkins. Her opinions on vital matters changed almost weekly, but she was always absolutely sure that the new opinion was final and incontrovertible. Her scorn of the old English Audrey, though concealed, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... for the scene before us. From the accounts we had read and received, we had pictured Auckland to our minds as little better than a collection of log-huts, with here and there, perhaps, a slightly more comfortable frame-house. And here is the reality. A city that would put to shame many an old English town. A main street—Queen Street—that might even compare favourably with many a leading London thoroughfare in all its details. Fine handsome edifices of stone, with elaborate architecture and finish; large plate-glass ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... bell and wear the garland," alluding to our old English races; the winner being rewarded with a silver bell, and crowned with a garland: or to the morris dance, in which the leader carried the garland and danced with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dining-room bay hung low over the grass, as Frank wished, and the windows were diamond-paned and leaded, swiveled on brass rods. The parlor and dining-room were separated by sliding doors; but the intention was to hang in this opening a silk hanging depicting a wedding scene in Normandy. Old English oak was used in the dining-room, an American imitation of Chippendale and Sheraton for the sitting-room and the bedrooms. There were a few simple water-colors hung here and there, some bronzes of Hosmer and Powers, a marble venus by Potter, a now ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... "Skipper Ireson," "The Relief of Lucknow," "Barbara Frietchie" and others. Nothing is more rare than a fine ballad. Coleridge's ballad of the "Ancient Mariner" is probably the greatest English poem written since Milton's time, and there are many old English ballads which are nearly equal to it. The ballad of "Mary Garvin," simply as a work of art, takes the first place among Longfellow's poems. Tennyson and Whittier both tried their hands on the siege of Lucknow, and Whittier carried off ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... moreover, to the dryness of the air. Captain Stoddart took me all over this curious city, and kindly introduced me to one of the partners of a great mercantile house, who invited us both to dinner. We regaled ourselves on smelts, fillet of veal, and old English roast beef, to which hospitable meal we did ample justice, not forgetting to pledge our absent friends in bumpers ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... pleasurable recollections of the period when "the good old English gentleman" used to keep his pack of beagles or little harriers, slow but sure, occasionally carried to the field in a pair of panniers on a horse's back; often an object of ridicule at an early period of the chase, but rarely failing to accomplish their object ere the day closed, "the puzzling ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... to try an old English receipt on those trout," he began cheerfully—and stopped short at sight of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... in 954 he made himself their master. North-humberland was now thoroughly amalgamated with the English kingdom, and was to be governed by an Englishman, Oswulf, with the title of Earl, an old Danish title equivalent to the English Ealdorman, having nothing to do, except philologically, with the old English word Eorl. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Welsh poetry see, besides Skene, Professor Rhys, op. cit. Gildas and Nennius (but not the Vita Gildae) will be found conveniently translated, with Geoffrey himself, in a volume of Bohn's Historical Library, Six Old English Chronicles. The E.E.T.S. edition of Merlin contains a very long excursus by Mr Stuart-Glennie on the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... no Anglo-Saxon but that of Alfred, which was the old English. The early migrations were from Belgium. Doubtless the Teutons had made the conquest ascribed to them, but I think they did not revolutionize the language. They conquered the people, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... to the "twelve grand points in Masonry," which formed a part of the old English lectures, says, "When the candidate was intrusted, he represented Asher, for he was then presented with the glorious fruit of masonic knowledge, as Asher was represented by fatness and royal dainties."—Hist. Landm., vol. i. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... be driven in a low pony-phaeton. But in one respect he was altogether unlike his father. His whole time was spent among his books, and he was at this moment engaged in revising and editing a very long and altogether unreadable old English chronicle in rhyme, for publication by one of those learned societies which are rife in London. Of Robert of Gloucester, and William Langland, of Andrew of Wyntown and the Lady Juliana Berners, he could discourse, if not ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... age, educated and trained by the devoted, affectionate care of a pious mother. The influence which the latter exerts upon the former is also set forth during the progress of the story. Those readers who are fond of delineations of English scenery and of the time-hallowed influences of the old English Church, will be pleased with the style of the volume, while some few mothers may possess the delightful consciousness of viewing in Mary Ashton the image of their loved ones now laboring in the vineyard of the Lord, or transferred to his more blessed service in the skies. But ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Dying." Thomas Westwood tells us that there were few modern volumes in his library, it being his custom to give away and throw away (as the same writer asserts) presentation copies of contemporaneous literature. Says Barry Cornwall: "Lamb's pleasures lay amongst the books of the old English writers," and Lamb himself uttered these memorable words: "I cannot sit and think—books think ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... that we have examined we have not found any instances recorded of the old English law of hanging the remains of executed criminals in chains as having been carried into effect in our country. But from some investigations of Mr. James E. Mauran, of Newport, R.I., we learn that on March 12, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... on him! my titled, tawdry cousin there? What are his pretensions, that he shall presume to brand me as a poor dependent!—What are his claims to independence? How does he spend the income Fortune has allotted to him? Does he rejoice to revive in the mansion of his ancestors the spirit of old English hospitality? Do the eyes of aged tenants twinkle with joy when they hope his coming? do the poor bless his arrival? I say no. He is the lord of land—and is also, what he seems still more proud of, a lord of parliament; but I will front him in both capacities, and frankly tell him, that in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... outset in standards of conduct. They had brought with them the principle of paternalism, and, in time of trouble, they looked to France for support. The English colonists brought with them the principle of self-reliance and, in time of trouble, they looked only to themselves. And so the old English ideals had a new birth and a broader field of application on American soil. There is nothing finer in our country's history than the attitude of the New England colonists during the intercolonial wars. Their northern frontier covering two hundred miles of unprotected territory was ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... hear them implore on the family when I am walking in the field with the young count (for in this country the sons bear the same title with their fathers [Footnote: Prince, (ancient Kniaz) and Boyard, (which is equivalent in rank to our old English Baron,) are titles used by Russians and Polanders, both nations being descended from the Sclavonians, and their languages derived from the same roots. Prince indicates the highest rank of a subject; Boyard simply that of Nobleman. But both personages must be understood to be of hereditary ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... feet. Writers used to go so far as to name the dressmaker; and it was a poor kind of a heroine who didn't wear a red velvet by Worth. But that has been largely abandoned in these days of commissions. Still, when the heroine goes out on the terrace to spoon after dinner (a quaint old English custom for the origin of which see any novel by the "Duchess," page 179) the average reader wants to know what sort of a filmy wrap she snatches up on the way out. He demands a description, with as many illustrations as the publisher will stand for, of what ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... the interpretation of other than human life. We have left behind us the bloodshot centuries when killing was the only sport, and we have come to the slightly more reputable times when lovers of killing are conscious that a distinct effort is necessary in order to keep up 'the good old English sports.' Better things are in store for us. Even now, although the most expensively bound and the most plentiful books in the stationers' shops are those about killing and its thousand ramifications, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... jolly, good sort of fellow that everyone acknowledged him to be, with a tender heart and a ready hand for the unfortunate, always honest and upright, yet thoroughly practical and business-like in all his undertakings. Henry Rayne was descended from a good old English family, whose name he bore proudly and honorably, and many an interesting anecdote he was wont to tell at his dinner table of the "Stephens," "Edwards," and "Henrys," of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... 913, of Part I, Canto I. As both of these extracts, however, are somewhat too broad for our pages, we content ourselves with simply referring thereto. In the same category, also, is the definition, in Bailey's Old English Dictionary, of the term free bench, as prevailing in the manors of East and West Embourn, Chaddleworth in the county of Berks, Tor in Devonshire, and ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... monopolize this growing necessity. The mere fact that this young man could form such a stupendous plan indicates that in him we are meeting for the first time a new type of industrial leader. At that time monopolies were unknown in the United States. That certain old English Kings had frequently granted exclusive trading privileges to favored merchants most educated Americans knew; and their knowledge of monopolies extended little further than this. Yet about 1868 John D. Rockefeller started consciously to revive this ancient practice, and to bring ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... excessive, and in Cromwell's time, with the accession of the Puritans to power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of the old English life from whose abuse had grown riot, it was purged away. Ben Jonson, in The Staple of Newes, puts into the mouth of a sour character a complaint which no doubt was becoming common in that day, and was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... that when tired of the effort of conversing he really longed to find somebody to talk to; and in this mood he one evening strolled into the library, leaving the gay party in the drawing room to themselves. Miss Fanny was there, quite intent upon a book of selections from the old English poets. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was not a place in which one could fancy him at home. But it was, to my vision, a cottage glorified and translated; it was a palace of art, on a slightly reduced scale—and might besides have been the dearest haunt of the old English genius loci. It nestled under a cluster of magnificent beeches, it had little creaking lattices that opened out of, or into, pendent mats of ivy, and gables, and old red tiles, as well as a general aspect of being painted in water-colours and inhabited by people ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... with these is our old English ensign, St. George's red cross on white field; Round which, from Richard to Roberts, Britons conquer or ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... only son of an almost too indulgent father, who was the very best example of an old English gentleman of his day you could ever meet. He also had seen a good deal of life, and was not unfamiliar with any of its varied aspects. He was intellectual and genial, and dispensed his hospitality with the most winning courtesy. To me he was all kindness, and I have ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... the wall, and lay face uppermost, the glass case open and smashed, the hands: stopped at the hour of half-past nine. It was a clock of the seventeenth century, of a design still to be found occasionally in old English houses. A landscape scene was painted in the arch above the dial, showing the moon above a wood, in a sky crowded with stars. The moon was depicted as a human face, with eyes which moved in response to the swing of the pendulum. But the pendulum was motionless, and the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... slavery beneath the royal power he believed himself to be trampling down the last constitutional force which could hold the Monarchy in check. What he really did was to give life and energy to new forces which were bound from their very nature to battle with the Monarchy for even more than the old English freedom. When Cromwell seized on the Church he held himself to be seizing for the Crown the mastery which the Church had wielded till now over the consciences and reverence of men. But the very humiliation of the great religious body broke the spell beneath which Englishmen ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... again and was soon absorbed in arranging a full-page display of plumbers' furnishings for the advertising. It had occurred to me that by arranging the picture matter in a neat device with verses from "Home Sweet Home" running through it in double-leaded old English type, I could set up a page that would be the delight of all business readers and make this number of the magazine a conspicuous success. My mind was so absorbed that I scarcely noticed that over an hour elapsed before the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... That old English gentleman, whom I just remember, when Ingham first went to sea, as the model of mild, kind old men, at Ingham's mother's house,—then he went to sea once himself for the first time,—and he had a mother himself,—and as he went off, she gave him the best ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Suffice it to say that at no time of its history has it been so well equipped in all directions, and at no time has it stood higher in public esteem than it does at present. The old City Library possesses treasures befitting an old English "City of Churches," and the present Public Library fulfils the general purposes of a modern rate-supported Library. The Lending Library consists of about 18,000 volumes in all departments of knowledge, from which some 6,000 adults and juveniles borrow ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... not imagine how her Portia could endure to hear the old English Prayer-book droned out. For her part, she liked one thing or the other, either a rousing Nonconformist sermon in a meeting-house or a ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This was a village containing perhaps thirty dwellings, and two hundred inhabitants; a court-house and jail all under one roof, built of stone and plastered; small doors and windows in the style of some of the old English castles. London was built in the forks, or between the east and west branches of the river Thames; hence, you would hear people speak of "going to the forks," instead of the village; it is about two hundred miles from Buffalo, and the nearest port ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... temptations, distractions, and corruptions, that it is almost impossible to preserve the real essence of prayer in public prayer. But in secret all those temptations and distractions are happily absent. We have no temptation to be too long in secret prayer, or too loud, or too eloquent. Stately old English goes for nothing in secret prayer. We never need to go to our knees in secret trembling, lest we lose the thread of our prayer, or forget that so fit and so fine expression. The longer we are the better in secret prayer. Much speaking is really a virtue ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... will at once begin with the number of teeth in the escape wheel. It is not obligatory in the lever, as in the verge, to have an uneven number of teeth in the wheel. While nearly all have 15 teeth, we might make them of 14 or 16; occasionally we find some in complicated watches of 12 teeth, and in old English watches, of 30, which is a clumsy arrangement, and if the pallets embrace only three teeth in the latter, the pallet center cannot be pitched on ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... entries of Scottish acceptance of English suzerainty under Constantine II., and later, but they all end in the statement, "this held not long." The "submission" of Malcolm I. to Edmund (945) is not a submission but an alliance; the old English word for "fellow-worker," or "ally," designates Malcolm as fellow-worker ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb, that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day; and continuing in his mirth, protested, that he would have gladly given a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... the woman, who answered aloud, "I have the best of reasons for what I have said. My son, who lives in New Hampshire, occasionally sends me the Gazette, and in one number, which came nearly a year ago, appeared this very article, taken originally from an old English paper." ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... it occurs, of adopting—though the heart should disown—the enmities of one's own family, or country, or religious sect. In forms how afflicting must that necessity have sometimes occurred during the Parliamentary war! And, in after years, amongst our beautiful old English metrical romances, I found the same impassioned complaint uttered by a knight, Sir Ywain, as early ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... communicating with a long and narrow suburb, flanked on either side by rich meadows of the brightest green, beyond which spreads the city; the fine old city, perhaps the most curious specimen at present extant of the genuine old English town. Yes, there it spreads from north to south, with its venerable houses, its numerous gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its mighty mound, which, if tradition speaks true, was raised by human hands to serve as the grave-heap of an old heathen king, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... forms of one great apostacy. In politics the Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, "root and branch men," or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals: not content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. Macaulay's vigorous words explain the difference between the Presbyterians and the Independents: that difference is explained also by Wood in words as vigorous but less dignified and scholarly. "The Presbyterians," he says, "with their disciples seemed to be ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson |
