"Precursor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terminated the military operations of the year, for the rainy season, precursor of the winter, had now set in. Leicester, leaving Sir William Stanley, with twelve hundred English and Irish horse, in command of Deventer; Sir John Burrowes, with one thousand men, in Doesburg; and Sir Robert Yorke, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Trinity, condemned by the Council of Soissons about 1121, and by the Council of Sens in 1140, which chiefly led St. Bernard to his cruel persecution of this famous man. That great saint, using the habitual language of ecclesiastical charity, called Abelard an infernal dragon and the precursor of Antichrist. Among his heresies Abelard seems to have held the opinion that the devil has no power over man; but at all events the Church had in those days, as Abelard learnt to his cost, though, considering that his disciple Arnauld of Brescia ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... over the room. However, I have found an old shawl which answers for a table-cloth, and have made our "parlor" look a little more habitable. Jim came in yesterday in a silent mood, and sat looking vacantly into the fire. The young men said that this mood was the usual precursor of an "ugly fit." ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... currency, incur, concur, occurrence, cursory, excursion, course, discourse, intercourse, recourse; (2) curriculum, precursor, discursive, recurrent, concourse, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... was the precursor of the New Monthly, which started about 1830, or thereabouts I think, after which the old one ailed, but went on till fatal old Heraud finished it off by editing it, and fairly massacred that elderly innocent. You speak, in a former letter (touching the continuation ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to have the two thus meet together. To be lifted up in hilarity is the precursor of being cast down in dejection. A sudden rise of the thermometer is generally followed by as sudden a fall. "I am not sorry," said Sir Walter Scott, after the breaking up of a merry group of guests at Abbotsford, "being one ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... prior to the opening of the Christian era, made a wooden pigeon that actually flew by means of a mechanism of balancing weights and the breath of a mysterious spirit hidden within it. There may yet arise one credulous enough to state that the mysterious spirit was precursor of the internal combustion engine, but, however that may be, the pigeon of Archytas almost certainly existed, and perhaps it actually glided or flew for short distances—or else Aulus Gellius was an utter liar, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... miles per hour, burn about 35 lb. of coal per mile, when taking trains weighing about 230 tons gross. A variation from this type has been adopted on the Northern and Welsh sections, known as the "Precursor" class. These engines have 5 ft. 6 in. coupled wheels, and weigh 31 tons 8 cwt. in working order, but in other respects are very similar to the standard engines just described; with the Scotch express, averaging in total weight 187 tons, between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... the insufferable militarism of Germany may very probably be the precursor of a much wider alliance against any aggression whatever in the future. Only through some such arrangement is there any reasonable hope of a control and cessation of that constant international bickering and pressure, that rivalry in finance, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... them by the water's edge difficult. The tan-work lads used to come now and then for a swim, but you would not find a tan-work lad bathing on a chill April night. Yet there was no question where our precursor had gone. He was making for the shore. Tam unshuttered his lantern, and the steps went clearly down the corkscrew path. 'Maybe he is after our cave. We'd ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... misty, drizzly day the precursor of a long spell of dark and gloomy weather, that Claudia at length grew to fear would never come ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... quotes the same text as authority for sending heretics to the stake.[2] According to this peculiar exegesis, the law and custom of the day merely sanctioned the law of Christ. To regard our Saviour as the precursor or rather the author of the criminal code of the Inquisition evidences, one must admit, a ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... explained the hygienist's view of why people get sick. The sequence of causation goes: enervation, toxemia, alternative elimination, disease. However, there is one more link in this chain, a precursor to enervation that, for good and understandable reasons, seemed unknown to the earlier hygienists. That precursor is long term sub-clinical malnutrition. Lack of nutrition effects virtually everybody today. Almost all of us are ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... of comb in melted beeswax, and sticking it to the top. Bees should never be allowed to send off more than two colonies in one season. To restrict them to one is still better. Excessive swarming is a precursor of destruction, rather than an evidence (as usually regarded) of prosperity. A given number of bees will make far less honey in two hives than in one, unless they are so numerous as greatly to crowd the hive. When a late swarm comes out, take away the queen, and they will immediately return. Any ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... movement here passing under review. He has made known the time when it should appear, the character it would bear, and the work it is to do. He has also connected this with the great event of all-overshadowing importance to this world, of which it is a startling sign and sure precursor; namely, the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask the special attention of the reader to ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... neglecting their duties. We may sneer, if we will, at the weaknesses—the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity—which we fancy that we discover. We may lament—and in that we shall not be wrong—the influence which such men as Jerome obtained over them— the example and precursor of so much which has since then been ruinous to family and social life: but we must confess that the fault lay not with the themselves, but with their fathers, husbands, and brothers; we must confess that in these women the spirit of the old Roman matrons, which seemed to have been so long dead, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... that pride is The precursor of a fall. Those beneath you to deride is Not expedient at all. Howsoever meek and humble Your inferiors may be, They perchance may make you tumble, So ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... distant countries, to tell them harrowing tales, let them know it is intended to take them for a view behind the dike,—that they may understand the source of the trickling stream of brothel slaves that, almost unobserved, flows steadily into our fair land, and know that the stream is the precursor of a flood. No mere wall of immigration restrictions will ever get control of the flow so long as men are permitted to hold slaves after they have once been landed. And for the further reason, that so soon as China and Japan have drilled a little longer with the fire-arms furnished ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... a hideous invention of modern times. They date from the seventeenth century. Before that time there were only guard-houses where the soldiers played cards and told tales. Louis XIV was a precursor of Bonaparte. But the evil has attained its plenitude since the monstrous institution of the obligatory enlistment. The shame of emperors and of republics is to have made it an obligation for men to kill. In the ages called barbarous, cities and princes entrusted their defence to mercenaries, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... westward, and the vessel was standing under reefed mainsail, whole foresail, and topsail, and jib. Towards nine, the wind shifted to the southward, and a small dark cloud was observed hovering over the land. This ominous appearance, as is well known, is often the precursor of a coming squall, and seems as if sent as a ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Sainte Helene d'une maniere inconnue', London. Murray; Bruxelles, De Mat, 20 Avril 1817. This work merits a note. Metternich (vol, i. pp. 312-13) says, "At the time when it appeared the manuscript of St. Helena made a great impression upon Europe. This pamphlet was generally regarded as a precursor of the memoirs which Napoleon was thought to be writing in his place of exile. The report soon spread that the work was conceived and executed by Madame de Stael. Madame de Stael, for her part, attributed ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... best men—the most learned, the most graceful, the most eloquent, the most successful—has come at some one time or other the dreadful agony of bashfulness. Indeed, it is the higher order of man being that it most surely attacks; it is the precursor of many excellences, and, like the knight's vigil, if patiently and bravely borne, the knight is twice the hero. It is this recollection, which can alone assuage the sufferer, that he should always carry with him. He should remember that the compound ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... urged in his presence the preference of hope to possession; and as I remember produced an Italian sonnet on the subject. "Let us not," cries Johnson, "amuse ourselves with subtleties and sonnets, when speaking about hope, which is the follower of faith and the precursor of eternity; but if you only mean those air-built hopes which to-day excite and to-morrow will destroy, let us talk away, and remember that we only talk of the pleasures of hope; we feel those of possession, and ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of consequence," he said aggravatingly. "I was just thinking of the way folks are talking." Then he laughed right out; and if Joan had only understood the man she would have known that his merriment was but the precursor of something ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... with everything, from the station (Pettybaw Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name, which she thought as perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a "tirling-pin," that old-time precursor of knockers and bells, at an antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at once, taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and the draper's wife ran down the loaning to see if we were in ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... come to hold a portfolio under the first Consul. He did not fear death, and he envied with consuming envy those to whom nature had given the qualities of initiative. But his nerves always played him false. The consciousness of having to resolve to take a decided step alone, was the precursor of a fit of trembling. His heart did not fail, but he could not control the parched voice, nor the twitching features, not the ghastly palsy of inner misgiving. In this respect Robespierre recalls a more illustrious man; we think of Cicero tremblingly calling upon ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... especial notice as having been the first extravagant story written under the form of a circumstantial narration of travels. It was the precursor of "The Voyage to the Moon," Baron Muenchausen, and various Utopias. We must therefore allow it the merit of originality, and it evinces talent, for mere exaggeration would not be entertaining. The intention was to ridicule the marvellous travellers' stories then current. Much of this history is ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the revival of the Gospel of Christ and the regeneration of the world appeared in the north and south. The Italian monk and fanatic, Joachim of Floris (about A.D. 1200), preached that this regeneration was predestined to happen. A precursor of Hegel, he taught three eras: the dominion of the Father, or the first era, characterised by fear and the severity of the law; the dominion of the Son, or the era of faith and compassion; and the dominion of the Holy Ghost, or the era of love. This last era ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of this touching story, are we not called on to pause, and read the uncertainty of earth's best joys and purest happiness; that the brightest sunshine is often the precursor of a dark cloud. When the gourd is all flourishing, a worm may unseen be preying at its root! When the vessel is gliding joyously on the calm sea, the treacherous rock may be at hand, and, in one brief hour, it has become ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... day. Fortunately I escaped along with my old man out of the house before it fell in with a crash behind us. There was no business doing; everybody on the Rialto seemed stunned, and everything lifeless. But this dreadful event was only the precursor of another approaching monster, which soon breathed out its poisonous breath over the town and the surrounding country. It was known that the pestilence, which had first made its way from the Levant into Sicily, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... though the one which most attracted its alarmed attention. The considerable numbers in which this assemblage was suddenly occurring; the fact that the son of the Liberator had already taken its command, and only as the precursor of his formidable sire; the accredited rumor that Ghirelli at the head of a purely Roman legion was daily expected to join the frontier force; that Nicotera was stirring in the old Neapolitan kingdom, while the Liberator himself at Florence ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... When we remember all the strange literary effort gathered round about that year in the West—Symbolism, the Yellow Book, Art for Art's sake—and the limbo into which it has been thrust by now, we may realise how great a precursor and, in his own despite, a leader, Anton Tchehov was. When Western literature was plunging with enthusiasm into one cul de sac after another, incapable of diagnosing its own disease, Tchehov in Russia, unknown to the West, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... was to be a panegyric of Braithwaite, treating him as the Precursor of a movement ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... descanted on the several contingents from Antigone as they strode by; then of those from God's houses at Halki, the pearl of the Marmora; amongst them the monastery of John the Precursor, and the Convents of St. George, Hagia Trias, and lastly the Very Holy House of the All Holy Mother of God, founded by John VIII. Palaeologus. After them, in turn, the consecrated from Prinkipo, especially those from the Kamares ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... precursor of this Company was a Joint Stock Association, established at Dorchester under the auspices of the Rev. Mr. White, "patriarch of Dorchester," and called the "Dorchester Adventurers," with a view to fishing, farming, and hunting; but the undertaking was not successful, and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... one man, should it carry so alarming a sound? Is the whole bench of bishops bound and compromised by the audacity of any one amongst its members? Certainly not. But yet such an act, though it should be that of a rash precursor, marks the universal change of position; there is ever some sympathy between the van and the rear of the same body at the same time; and the boldest could not have dared to go ahead so rashly, if the rearmost was not known to be pressing forward to his support, far more closely ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... will act as did the Federals, and employ his reserves elsewhere. A vigorous attack is, almost invariably, the only means of keeping him to his ground. But an attack which is certain to be repulsed, and to be repulsed in quick time, is even less effective than a demonstration. It may be the precursor ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the wiser of his contemporaries saw, Erasmus was, at heart, neither Protestant nor Papist, but an "Independent Christian"; and, as the wiser of his modern biographers have discerned, he was the precursor, not of sixteenth century reform, but of eighteenth century "enlightenment"; a sort of broad-church Voltaire, who held by his "Independent Christianity" as stoutly as ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... presentiment herself, and had made some exertions which proved much increased activity of brain. Alas! though their coming had thus been rendered very happy, the brightening had been but the symptom and precursor of a sudden attack of paralysis, whence there was no symptom of recovery, and which in a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nation afresh, and evoked the first great popular demonstration of loyalty that had been witnessed since the early days of the reign. I was present in the Cathedral at that solemn and stately service on the 27th February, 1872, the precursor of the still more stately service held at Westminster on the 21st June, 1887. Except on the occasion of the Jubilee of the last-mentioned year, and of that of 1897, London has never witnessed a more remarkable outburst of loyal enthusiasm. At night the whole ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... the precursor of railway travelling then coming into vogue, for Lord George foresaw that the railways would revolutionize racing and enormously increase the ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... Dialogo entre el amor y un viejo has real charm, and has saved his name from the oblivion to which most of his fellows have justly been consigned. The bishop Ambrosio Montesino (Cancionero, 1508) was a fervent religious poet and the precursor of the ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... Germany be what she was in the heroic age of the Reformation,—the instructor of the ignorant, the friend of the helpless, the dread of Romanism, and the mother of giants. The evil days are nearly numbered. "Good Friday is the precursor ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and in constant correspondence with him. Even as I write, in Dunfermline old men who knew Grandfather Morrison speak of him as one of the finest orators and ablest men they have known. He was publisher of "The Precursor," a small edition it might be said of Cobbett's "Register," and thought to have been the first radical paper in Scotland. I have read some of his writings, and in view of the importance now given to technical education, I think the most remarkable of them is ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... defiant words. Prayer tells God what it knows that He knows already, for it relieves the burdened heart to tell Him. It asks Him to see and hear what it knows that He does see and hear. But the prayer is not for mere observance followed by no divine act, but for taking knowledge as the precursor of the appropriate help. Of such seeing and hearing by God, believing prayer is the appointed condition. 'Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him'; but that is not a reason for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... progress. It was in vain he repeated his assurance that he came to reconcile them to the protectorate and not to deliver them from it. But the popular instinct insisted upon regarding him as at least the precursor of their union with the Kingdom of Greece. The legislative assembly met January 27, 1859, and proposed annexation to Greece. Finding that this was their firm wish and determination, Mr. Gladstone despatched ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... plane, and the stars were observed by bringing the sights on the movable diameter to bear upon them. Their altitude was then read off on the circle. Ultimately, the circle of the astrolabe, mounted with one of its diameters parallel to the earth's axis, became the armillary sphere, the precursor of our modern equatorial telescope. Great stone quadrants fixed in the meridian were also employed from very early times. Out of such furnishings, little modified by the lapse of centuries, was provided the ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... studied the wise maxims of Pythagoras, and being a disciple of the Brahma school, abominators of flesh and strong liquors, he hoped to be excused, by drinking the ladies in aqua pura.—" Water is a monstrous drink for Christians!" said the alderman, "the sure precursor of coughs, colds, consumptions, agues, dropsies, pleurisies, and spleen. I never knew a water-drinker in my life that was ever a fellow of any spirit, mere morbid anatomies, starvelings and hypochondriacs: your water-drinkers never die ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... unprofessional eye saw the danger the boy was in; and the boy himself, lying awake during most of the weary hours of the night, had confided to his friend some thoughts which it seemed to Hinton could only come to such a child as the precursor of death. He now loved the boy for his own sake, and he was determined, even more determined than during the height of the fever, to do something to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... became surly. I recognised the precursor of its becoming dangerous. One day on a walk in the hills I came on Thrackles and Pulz lying on their stomachs gazing down fixedly at Dr. Schermerhorn's camp. This was nothing extraordinary, but they started guiltily ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don't think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to herself that the horrible forebodings she had in reference to the island, were but the precursor of what might be expected. The grandeur and sublimity of its scenery, its isolated position, being surrounded by the waters of the Atlantic—the unnatural music and noises, all conspired to fill the mind of this young girl with the idea that something was about to ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... violence, at one decisive rent, From the best youth in England their dear pride, Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time In which worst losses easily might wean The best of names, when patriotic love 305 Did of itself in modesty give way, Like the Precursor when the Deity Is come Whose harbinger he was; a time In which apostasy from ancient faith Seemed but conversion to a higher creed; 310 Withal a season dangerous and wild, A time when sage Experience would have snatched Flowers out of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... numbers of that species, and the species would become rarer: we feel not the least surprise at one species of a genus being rare and another abundant; why then should we be surprised at its extinction, when we have good reason to believe that this very rarity is its regular precursor ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the moment the head seeks power or aggrandizement for itself, the hands work for their good alone, or the feet strive to bear the body alone the paths they only wish to tread. Disease follows, if the evil is not remedied; disease, the sure precursor of dissolution. How disturbed and unhappy each member of such an aggregated man must be, you ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Church and most intelligent laymen have already discerned the only emphatic answer to this question. The Church is undoubtedly passing quietly through a revolution in its conception and attitude toward the Bible, more fundamental and far-reaching than that represented by its precursor the Protestant Reformation; but its real significance is daily becoming more apparent. Not a grain of truth which the Bible contains has been destroyed or permanently obscured. Instead, the debris of time-honored traditions and dogmas have been cleared ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... centre of a vast system of commerce, the emporium, in fact, where will take place the exchange of the products of the Indian Archipelago for those of the vast plains of Australia. It may require some effort of the imagination, certainly, to discover the precursor of such a state of things in the miserable traffic now carried on by the Macassar proas; but still, I think, we possess some data on which to found such an opinion, and I am persuaded that Port Essington will ultimately hold ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... At the time of his father's death, in 1841, seven volumes of the "Prodromus" had appeared: Alphonse completed the seventeenth volume in 1873. In 1855 appeared his "Geographie botanique raisonnee," "which was the most important work of his life," and if not a precursor, "yet one of the inevitable foundation-stones" of modern evolutionary principles. He also wrote "Histoire des Savants," 1873, and "Phytographie," 1880. He was lavish of assistance to workers in Botany, and was distinguished by a dignified and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Christ our Lord," and are called to follow "the example of their steadfastness in the faith and obedience to God's holy commandments." There are days dedicated to the memory of the Blessed Virgin; the Apostles; the Baptist as the precursor, and St. Stephen as the {118} protomartyr; to St. Mark and St. Luke as Evangelists; to St. Paul and St. Barnabas on account of their extraordinary call; to the Holy Innocents as the earliest who suffered for Christ's sake; to St. Michael ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... iron heated to a low red-heat. I had never before beheld such a weird, awe-inspiring spectacle, but as I gazed upon it the memory came to me that I had somewhere read of something similar, and I also remembered that it had been described as the precursor of a hurricane, or some ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Malachi, whose opinion in this matter was soon brought to bear,[1] had announced with much energy a precursor of the Messiah, who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger who should come to make straight the paths before the elected one of God. This messenger was no other than the prophet Elias, who, according to a widely spread belief, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... are worse than some of those of coal-miners. Why stop here? Who ever said we would stop here? I welcome and support this measure, not only for its own sake, but much more because it is, I believe, simply the precursor of the general movement which is in progress all over the world, and in other industries besides this, towards reconciling the conditions of labour with the well-ascertained laws of science and health. If we are told that because we support this measure ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... called to explain. To the use of fine phrases was now added a facility in employing violence at a pinch which likewise remained characteristic of Buonaparte's career down to the end. Nasica, who alone records the tale, sees in this event the precursor of the long series of state-strokes which culminated on the eighteenth Brumaire. There is a story that in one of the scuffles incident to this brawl a member of Pozzo di Borgo's family was thrown down and trampled on. Be that as it may, Buonaparte ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... consideration on which the patent is to issue bears no just proportion to that of the ordinary preemptor, and that this bill is but the precursor of a system of land distribution to a privileged class, unequal, unjust, and which ought not to receive the sanction of the General Government. Many thousand pioneers have turned their steps to the Western ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... have required no large exertion of editorial self-denial to have abstained from marring the pages with puns of which Punch would be ashamed, and with the vulgar affectation of patronage with which the sea captain of the nineteenth century condescends to criticize and approve of his half-barbarous precursor; but it must have been a defect in his heart, rather than in his understanding, which betrayed him into such an offence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the night stood a great colossal form, not of a naked savage, but a form clad perhaps, in the panoply of the Macedonian phalanx, the representative of the Europe that then was and was yet to be, the precursor, it may be, to the classically informed mind of the missionary to the Gentiles, of that long procession of great world conquerors. It was the Man of Macedon who stood there in the might of his strength ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... Elizabeth that there was no treason in Hayward's Henry IV, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus' (Apophthegms, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author of The History of King Richard the Thirde, generally attributed to Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the writing of history. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... character of Robespierre, show sufficiently that Lamartine, though he may not as yet have taken a positive direction in politics, has at least, from his vague poetical conceptions, returned to a sound state of political criticism, the inevitable precursor of sound theories. His views on the execution of the royal family are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... valley of the Conon from that of the Peffer. The day was mild and pleasant, and the atmosphere clear; but the higher hills again exhibited their ominous belts of vapor, and there had been a slight frost during the night,—at this autumnal season the almost certain precursor of rain. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of malaise increased in the night, and was, in fact, the precursor of a short but sharp attack of a form of typhoid which was running through the hotel at the time. Being in bed next afternoon about four o'clock, I was dismayed to hear that Miss Maynard had arrived to see me, and, moreover, had arrived ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... list of projects for a universal language[1] and their dates will strengthen the conviction from an historical point of view that the fulness of time is accomplished, while the history of the rise and fall of Volapk and of the extraordinary rise of Esperanto, in spite of its precursor's failure, are ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... having been a very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins. Up and did several businesses, and so with my wife by water to White Hall, she to her father's, I to the Duke, where we did our usual business. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... paroxysms of the volcano, above referred to, had by that time taken place, but the third, and worst—that which occurred about 10 A.M.—was yet in store for them, though they knew it not, and a lull in the roar, accompanied by thicker darkness than ever, was its precursor. There was not, however, any lull in the violence ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Eve!" cried David, holding his wife closely to him.—"At Saintes, not very far from here, in the sixteenth century, there lived one of the very greatest of Frenchmen, for he was not merely the inventor of glaze, he was the glorious precursor of Buffon and Cuvier besides; he was the first geologist, good, simple soul that he was. Bernard Palissy endured the martyrdom appointed for all seekers into secrets but his wife and children and all his neighbors were against him. His wife used to sell his tools; nobody understood ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... growing so bright and beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean House and read Lucy Harcourt's letter. The faint was a precursor of fever, the physician said, when summoned to her aid, and in a tremor of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her at once removed to New York, and that ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... churches of the land. But it is not for us to despise the poor. Has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom? That little group in front of that poor old school-house may become historic as the precursor of a great movement of blessing to millions among the poorest of the poor ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... Italian physician, Sanctorius, who was in so many ways the precursor of our modern methods of physiological research by the means of instruments of precision, was the first, so far as I am aware, to suggest a monthly cycle of the organism in men. He had carefully studied the weight of the body with reference to the amount of excretions, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... she who, with her accustomed grace and address, determined him to make common cause with his younger against their eldest brother. Divers incidents retarded for a whole year the outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The position of the young King Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... performance dominated by a deliberation as great and brilliant as the dawn), I argued that this good cheer was out of proportion; that Emerson should keep back a smile so striking and circumstantial for rare occasions, such as enormous surprise; or, he should make it the precursor to a tremendous roar of laughter. I have yet to learn that any one heard him laugh aloud,—which pastime he has called, with certainly a familiar precision that indicates personal experience, a "pleasant spasm," ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... saw," replied the priest; "and certainly, as far as my senses would enable me to judge, the appearance was most unusual—I may say supernatural; but I had heard of this Phantom Ship before, and moreover that its appearance was the precursor of disaster. So did it prove in our case, although, indeed, we had one on board, now no more, whose weight of guilt was more than sufficient to sink any vessel; one, the swallowing up of whom, with all that wealth from which he anticipated such enjoyment in his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... visited by a terrific thunderstorm, when the tower was struck by lightning. The damage, however, was not great, as, fortunately, the excessive rains which followed quenched the fire that had been kindled. This incident, however, was the precursor of one of the stormiest periods in the history of the city and its cathedral church. Roger de Skerning occupied the episcopal chair, and the prior was one William de Brunham, a man of fierce and truculent disposition. An outbreak of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... towers upwards like a mountain, the luminous radiation resembling a mere 'spur' at its base. From the very brightness of the light of some of the fixed stars we may infer the intensity of that dark radiation, which is the precursor and inseparable associate ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... sober, and, together with his quiet wife, kept out of the way, letting father and mother reap their due of honour and thanks. But the next day he took hold strongly, and the old folks felt a shadow—precursor of the grave—fall upon them finally. The world is ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... brilliant circle than this in any of our cities. There was none where so much freedom of thought was united to so much scholarship. The "Anthology" was the literary precursor of the "North American Review," and the theological herald of the "Christian Examiner." Like all first beginnings it showed many marks of immaturity. It mingled extracts and original contributions, theology and medicine, with all manner of literary chips and shavings. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Pinkney arrived, the matter of the colonial trade had already been settled indirectly by the Order of May 16, and it was soon to disappear from prominence, merged in the extreme measures of which that blockade was the precursor; but impressment remained an unhealed sore ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... by certain naturalists that the song of the house-mouse is the result of a disease in its throat, and is therefore a precursor of death. The mouse that came to my study ceased her visits soon after the week had passed and was never seen again; and I was unable to determine how her end was hastened. Brighteye could not, at any rate, have suffered seriously, else he would have succumbed, either to some enemy ever ready to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... year, but it is pleasing to note that the others have shown at least some slight improvement—crude naphtha and benzol having during the year risen nearly one hundred per cent. in value. Let us hope that this is the precursor of a general rise in value from which we shall all profit. For the purpose of bringing about this much desired end, I understand that some of the gentlemen present to-day have been burning their tar in the retort furnaces, and as it will be interesting to know what success they have attained, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... they might safely put out to sea; but found the waves still extremely high and boisterous. There my uncle, having drunk a draught or two of cold water, flung himself down upon a cloth which was spread for him, when immediately the flames and their precursor, a strong stench of sulphur, dispersed the rest of the company, and compelled him to rise. He raised himself with the assistance of two of the servants, but instantly fell down dead; suffocated, I imagine by some gross and noxious vapor. As soon as it was light again, which was not until the third ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... however, as in many preceding years, no stone was left unturned by opposition whereby there was the remotest chance of bringing ministers into public contempt. They were assailed at every point wherein they were considered vulnerable; and one attack was but the precursor of another. Mr. Brinsley Sheridan, who had made his first speech during last November, and had won golden opinions by his oratory on that occasion, moved three propositions: the first declaring that the military force could not justifiably be applied in dispersing tumultuous assemblies, without ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and went counter to their previous course, thereby acknowledging it to be bad, and supported in the Republican party the men and principles they had so fiercely condemned. The Liberty party was not in any sense the precursor of the Republican party, which was based as much on expediency as on abstract right, and was, therefore, able to accomplish good instead of harm. To say that extreme Abolitionists triumphed in Republican success and were causes of it, is as absurd as to call ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... direction. Now, as ever, the impulse was given by the middle classes, and they were in no mood to imperil their own cause by revolutionary claims. They could not always succeed, however, in checking the fury of the populace, which had been taught to clamour for reform as the precursor of a good time coming for the suffering and toiling masses of mankind. The streets of London were illuminated, and the windows of those who omitted to illuminate or were otherwise obnoxious were tumultuously ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Chicawgun to-night. Get a move on you!" will bring you sullen service, and probably breed kicks on the grub supply, which is the immediate precursor of mutiny. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... British Institution was the establishment of the ordinary aforesaid. The prospectus of the Institution bore this notice: "There is a public ordinary every day at four o'clock, price three shillings. Each person to drink port, claret, or whatever liquor he shall choose." A disastrous precursor of the free lunch this would seem. And so it proved. But not immediately. Attracted by the novelty of having a famous actor for host, the ordinary went swimmingly for a time. Macklin presided in person. As soon as the door of the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... act of Charles III. as being but revenge for the tumult of Aranjuez under the ministry of Esquilace,*1* arguing that the Jesuits were in fact the authors of it, and that it was but the precursor of a plot to dethrone the King and place his brother Don Luis upon the throne, as being not so liberal in his ideas. Others, again, have stated*2* that the Jesuits set about a calumny that Charles III. was not the Queen's son by ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... had just become a sorrow. So perhaps my downfall as a lover was a precursor of better results as ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... tribe, for the purchase of their land in the State of Indiana. He has succeeded in procuring from them a cession of two hundred thousand acres, on terms advantageous to themselves and the United States. It may be considered the precursor to a total cession of their remaining land in that State, and their consequent emigration to the western territory; a result desirable in many respects, especially connected with advantages to a portion of our citizens, and doubly gratifying from its being compatible with the best interests ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... side by side with the preaching of atheism in religion and morals, a growth had become apparent in the preaching of extreme democracy or Socialist Radicalism in politics, a preaching of which Bright was in this country the precursor, and which first came to a head between the years 1880 and 1900, in the writings of Henry George and the English followers of Marx. What I looked on as the fallacies of these new political gospels seemed to me no less dangerous, and also no less absurd, than those which I had previously ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... glow was already appearing in the eastern sky, precursor of the sun, Paddy and I at once set off. As we drew near he shouted, "Pullingo, Pullingo." Directly afterwards we saw the black crawl out of his hut. "Our friend doesn't take much time to dress in the morning," observed Paddy, "seeing he ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... Constitution of the 3rd of May, was sweeping over Poland. Equality of civic rights, freedom of the peasant, a liberal form of government, political and social reforms of all descriptions, were the questions of the hour. The first Commission of Education to be established in Europe, the precursor of our modern Ministry of Education, that had been opened two years before Kosciuszko left Poland, and on which sat Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kollontaj, both afterwards to be closely associated with Kosciuszko in his war for national independence, was, founding ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... critical moment a trivial incident arose that pierced Robespierre's armour in its weakest joint, and that crystallized the fear of the Convention into ridicule,—ridicule that proved the precursor of revolt. Catherine Theot, a female spiritualist, or medium, as we {214} should call her at the present day, highly elated at the triumph of the Supreme Being over the unemotional Goddess of Reason, had ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... opposition, and yoke nations to their car. Of fear he evidently had no comprehension whatever. The rustling of the autumn breeze in his gown alarmed him as much, as did the clang of those horses' hoofs upon the pavements, though he so well knew it was the precursor of suffering ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... animals which have red or black hair; it is scarcely found at all in the lamb, sucking pig, chicken, and the white meat of the largest fowls. For this reason true connoisseurs always prefer the second joint; instinct with them was the precursor ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... God and to eternity, and which has all its being and welfare wrapped up in those sublime verities, is made to strive and sigh for them in vain, to stretch out its hands to—nothing? This day rises upon us fair and beautiful,—the precursor, [285] I believe, of endless days. If not, I would say with Job, "Let it be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it; for darkness and the shadow of death stain it." But what a different staining was upon it this morning! As ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... could almost have endorsed the sentiment just then. Perhaps Andy's low spirits were intensified by the uncomfortable motion of the ship, which was beginning to strike landsmen with that rolling headache, the sure precursor of a worse visitation. Suffice it to say, that the mass of groaning misery in the steerage and cabins, on the subsequent night, would melt the heart of any but the most hardened 'old salt.' Did not Robert and Arthur regret their emigration bitterly, when shaken by the fangs of the fell ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of opposing vibrations. But the vocal cords are wedded in phonation, and by their attrition the node is formed. Very often strands of tough mucus appear spanning the chink or slit between the cords when they are drawn up in tone-production. The presence of these bands of mucus is an assured precursor of the node. Often they indicate the existence of a node which is hardly perceptible through the laryngeal mirror. The mucus is nature's effort to relieve the attrition, and so to ease the inflammation at the point of difficulty. The obstinacy with which the nodes caused by ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... imaginations which answered readily to the summons of their poets, the Welsh chiefs and leaders united in acclamations of applause; and the song of the bard went farther to render popular the intended alliance of the Prince, than had all the graver arguments of his priestly precursor in the same topic. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and always to those of other trades. Your toleration of them appears to me one of the worst symptoms of your political state of health. It shows among your public men an ignorance or a cowardice, or a desire of ill-earned popularity, which is generally a precursor of a democratic revolution.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... and richly embroidered in silver. He was hanged with a silken rope, and instead of being swung into eternity from a common cart, a scaffold was erected under the gallows, which we think may be regarded as the precursor of the drop. Mr. T. Broadbent Trowsdale contributed to "Bygone Leicestershire" an informing paper on "Laurence Ferrers: the Murderer-Earl."[3] We reproduce an illustration of the execution from a print of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... upon the principles of science, from granites and syenites to melaphyres and basalts. After thirty years of study and progress, other savants, without differing from him, progressed further in the intimate knowledge of rocks; but the historian of science will not forget that Delesse was the precursor of this order of research. His studies of metamorphism will long do him honor. The mineralogical modifications which the eruptive rocks have undergone in the mass are the permanent witnesses which attracted all his attention. The chemical comparison of the metamorphic with the normal rock ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... early predilections seemed to be gaining strength, instead of becoming weaker; and, as in nature, the calm is known to succeed the tempest, the blind attachment of the colony to the parent country, was but a precursor of the alienation and violent disunion that were ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of illicit intercourse between a woman and a dog, a creature resembling in its upper extremities its mother, while its lower extremities were the exact counterpart of its canine father. This particular case was believed by Bateman and others to be a precursor to the murders and wickedness that followed in the time of Pope Alexander I. Volateranus, Cardani, and many others cite instances of this kind. Lycosthenes says that in the year 1110, in the bourg of Liege, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... true precursor of our present-day Matissists and Futurists. He, as they, has the courage to strip his imagination of all mechanical restrictions and let it go free to mould the world at ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... cause of the French was championed. Finding the French yoke as heavy as the Spanish yoke, Toussaint struck for absolute liberty.[418] He was not, in a real sense, the liberator of the Haitians, as commonly supposed, but he was the precursor of their liberty.[419] His deportation aroused them to struggle with new vigor. Under Dessalines, one of the generals in the army of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the rebellion grew more successful, and on January 1, 1804, the army swore ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... prolongation of the signals due to induction, each signal was made by two opposite currents in succession—a positive followed by a negative, or a negative followed by a positive, as the case might be. The after-current had the effect of curbing its precursor. This self-acting cable key was brought out in 1876, and tried on the lines of the Eastern ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... cruelly swept away by it. Voltaire and Diderot, Rousseau and Helvetius, had vanished, but Condorcet both assisted at the Encyclopaedia and sat in the Convention; the one eminent man of those who had tended the tree, who also came in due season to partake of its fruit; at once a precursor, and a sharer in the fulfilment. In neither character has he attracted the goodwill of any of those considerable sections and schools into which criticism of the Revolution has been mainly divided. As a thinker he is roughly classed as an Economist, and as a practical ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose anything announced in that timid tone and considered ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... dimensions, that the ordinary press of passengers made it like a theatrical squeeze on a Jenny Lind night; only with this lamentable difference—that the theatrical squeeze was a prelude to all that could charm the senses, whereas the ticket squeeze was, I knew but too well, the precursor of a day of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Italian Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free movement ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... time that the pair had sufficiently refreshed themselves the gloom of the departing day was deepening into the darkness of a moonless, starless night; and as they entered their hut the first shimmer of sheet lightning which was the precursor of the coming storm flickered above the tree-tops of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... house woke, so to speak, with one eye, and took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First came the fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master, and then, stepping around Toucle as though she were a tree or a rock, came his little partner Paul, his freckled face shining with soap and the earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to swallow hard again, when he felt the child's rough, strong fingers ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... which sets the atoms of our frame in a dance, like planets, and, once so liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the music, they never quite subside to their old stony state. But what is the Imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the Reason. And books that treat the old pedantries of the world, our times, places, professions, customs, opinions, histories, with a certain freedom, and distribute things, not after the usages of America and Europe, but after the laws of right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... reflection, - that is, if you choose to reflect (for instance) upon the wondrous legend of the seven sleepers (you may see where they lie in a row), who lived together - they were brothers and cousins - in primitive piety, in the sanctuary constructed by the blessed Saint Martin (emulous of his precursor, Saint Gatianus), in the face of the hillside that overhung the Loire, and who, twenty-five years after his death, yielded up their seven souls at the same moment, and enjoyed the curious privilege of retaining in their faces, in spite of this process, the rosy tints ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the birth of Christianity was one of fermenting opinion and decaying faith. Then, as now, men's minds were seething and unsettled, and that unrest which is the precursor of great changes in intellectual and spiritual habitudes affected the civilised world. Such a period is ever one of predisposition to superstition. The one true bond which unites God and man being obscured, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... development to which society tends. The scheme was visionary: but, as a protest against unjust monopolies which existed in that age, it woke up a response in society (cfr. Mill on Liberty, p. 47-50); and in its tendency it made Rousseau the precursor of the French revolution; but in typifying that movement it represented only its transient aspect of subversive energy, not its work of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... honorable measures by which this result can be accomplished." Although closely related to the present American Federation of Labor in point of time and personnel of leadership, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada was in reality the precursor of the present state federations of labor, which as specialized parts of the national federation now look ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... radiating from the S.E., a precursor of blizzard, we feared, and sure enough we got it next day, when it burst upon us whilst we were putting on our footgear after breakfast. There was nothing for it but to get back into our sleeping-bags, wherein we spent ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... none; but from Spanish fiction and from Spanish history Lesage borrowed what suited his purpose, without in any way compromising his originality. To the picaresque tales (and among these may be noted a distant precursor of Gil Blas in the Francion of Charles Sorel) he added his own humanity, and in place of a series of vulgar adventures we are given a broad picture of social life; the comedy of manners and intrigue grows, as the author proceeds, into a comedy of character, and to this something ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, and disobedient to parents. We cannot escape these scandals; and God has said that He has sent us like sheep in the midst of wolves. It is necessary for us then to combine the innocence of the dove with the prudence of the serpent. Now, when the precursor of Antichrist erects himself against the Church, he must find us innocent and prudent; these dispositions constitute wisdom. We must hate no one, but bear with the madmen who would violate the law of God. Remember ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... (so he signed his name), "the precursor and pilot of Daniel Boone to Kentucky," but little is known and less has been published. Apparently he was a native of the north of Ireland. In early life he emigrated to the neighborhood of Carlisle, Cumberland county, Pa., a district almost wholly ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... paint certain characteristic peculiarities, (for instance, the awkward carriage of the Bacchus-stricken Pentheus in his female attire, the gluttony of Hercules, and his boisterous demands on the hospitality of Admetus,) Euripides was a precursor of the new comedy, to which he had an evident inclination, as he frequently paints, under the names of the heroic ages, the men and manners of his own times. Hence Menander expressed a most marked admiration for him, and proclaimed himself ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in the state have appointed "city foresters." This is a step in the right direction, if it is a precursor to the establishment of municipal forests for these men to manage; otherwise it is a misnomer and can only be misleading to the people. The city governments, in an endeavor to create a complete park organization, have ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... have reduced his sleeping hours to five. He was thus able to devote four to study, beside two for conversation. He loved research; and his name is in a list of members of the Society of Antiquaries formed by Archbishop Parker, which, though subsequently dissolved, was the precursor of the present learned body bearing the name. In the Tower he could read without stint. He possessed a fair library. From the company of his books, writes Sir John Harington, he drew more true comfort than ever from his courtly companions in ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... authority. The scholastic age,—that is, the age of dialectics, when theology invoked the aid of philosophy to establish the truths of Christianity,—had not yet begun; but Anselm may be regarded as a pioneer, the precursor of Thomas Aquinas, since he was led into important theological controversies to establish the creed of Saint Augustine. It was not till several centuries after his death, however, that his remarkable originality of genius was fully appreciated. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... we have arrived in this narrative. Since that moment of unutterable anguish her spirits completely abandoned her. Naturally healthy she had ever been, but now she began to feel what the want of it meant; a feeling which to her, as the gradual precursor of death, and its consequent release from sorrow, brought something like hope and consolation. Yet this was not much; for we know that to the young heart entering upon the world of life and enjoyment, the prospect of early dissolution, no matter by what hopes or by what resignation ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... an apartment on the north-east side of the quadrangular building, where the sunshine never entered. Even daylight never came, but only a feeble, sickening twilight, precursor of the grave itself. It was not merely the gloom that intensified the horrors of the situation, or the ghastly traditions of the place, or the impending fate of our callous client; but there was a tier of shelves occupying the side ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... the ordinary man in dealing with ghosts is supremely unscientific, but it is less objectionable than that of the pseudo-scientist. The Inquisitor who forbade free inquiry into matters of religion because of human depravity, was the natural precursor of the Scientist who forbids the exercise of the reason on the subject of ghosts, on account of inherited tendencies to attribute such phenomena to causes outside the established order of nature. What difference ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... still smiling with anticipated triumph, kept bending eagerly over his crucible, stirring the mixture with his rod, and muttering to himself all the time. "Now," I heard him say, "it changes. There—there's the scum. And now the green and bronze shades flit across it. Oh, the beautiful green! the precursor of the golden-red hue that tells of the end attained! Ah! now the golden-red is coming—slowly—slowly! It deepens, it shines, it is dazzling! Ah, I have it!" So saying, he caught up his crucible in ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... evening that followed the exposure; the precursor of many and many miserable evenings in days to come. Mr. and Mrs. Channing, Hamish, Constance, and Arthur sat in the usual sitting-room when the rest had retired—sat in ominous silence. Even Hamish, with his naturally sunny ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... occasionally shifting a point or two. The sky had become covered over with one black mass of clouds, which hung down so low that they appeared almost to rest on the water; and there was that peculiar fitful moaning which is ever the precursor of a violent gale of wind. At nightfall we reefed our lug-sails; and, while one sat at the helm, the rest of us lounged against the gunnel, buttoned up in our pilot jackets; some shutting their eyes, as if to invite sleep, others watching ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... one of the most powerful lawyers in heaven. In his Novena (Manila, 1913), he is called the precursor of Christ, altho in reality he came to the world twelve centuries after Christ (p. 5). "In the chastity, color, and figure of his body, and in the eloquence of his spirit, he was the one most like Christ" (p. 7). ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... The discovery was soon made that any one was at liberty to reprint the book, and the initiative was thus given to a new era in cheap literature, founded on American reprints. A shilling edition followed the one-and-sixpence, and this in turn became the precursor of one 'complete for sixpence.' From April to December, 1852, twelve different editions (not reissues) were published, and within the twelve months of its first appearance eighteen different London publishing houses were engaged in supplying the great demand that ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... tone and complexion to things in this country. We have not yet had time to develop a truly national literature or art. We have produced but one poet of the highest order. Whitman is autochthonous. He had no precursor. He is a new type of man ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs |
