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More "Merit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... encomium had aroused the artist's pride in his first-born. An altered word would spoil the book. "My dear girl," said he, stretching out his great hand, from beneath which she wriggled an impatient shoulder, "my dear Doria," said he, very gently, "the possessor of the Order of Merit is both a critic and a man of common sense. Anyway, he knows more about novels than either of us do. If it weren't for him I would give you the proofs to blue pencil as much as you liked. But I'm sure you would make a thundering ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... have to offer belongs to recent times; but we cannot aver that the merit of the verses is inferior. The interest of the subjects is certainly immeasurably less; but, perhaps, not less propitious to the lilts and the luinneags, in which, as in her music and imitative dancing, the Highland border has found her best ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... chief, laying aside one document which seemed to merit fuller inquiry; it described a club much frequented by Chinese residents in London, men of a higher class than the sailors and firemen brought to the port by ships trading with the Far East, and an outstanding feature of the Young Manchus' operations was the intelligent ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... of prey which do not at all merit the reputation which poets have endeavored to make for them; although they may be stronger, they exhibit much less bravery than falcons, and only attack animals ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... he had heard aright. Then he remembered that he was wearing a suit of Ulick's clothes and that his hair was cut after the Doomsmen fashion. It was a comfortable assurance of the merit of his disguise that it had passed muster so easily; he had only to guard against talking too much, and detection was practically impossible. So he contented himself with what might pass for an obeisance and some vague words of apology. The priest, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... always exhibits traits of this national taste; but a dinner-party, with its due infusion of barristers, is the best possible exemplification of this give and take, which, even if it had no higher merit, is a powerful ally of good-humour, and the sworn foe to everything like over-irritability or morbid self-esteem. Indeed, I could not wish a very conceited man, of a somewhat grave temperament and distant demeanour, a much heavier punishment than a course of Irish ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... just appeared, and contain higher-coloured depravities than their predecessors. Some of them, indeed, might have been spared; but as a graphic illustration of the petty thievery of Paris, the following extract bears great merit:—] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... to you I risked my skin for the husband of madame! while madame, outrageously mocking her husband and me, abandoned herself to orgies with a lot of scamps. I am beside myself! My mother's son does not merit having been born in my country and having played all manner of pranks, as they say, in the capital of the world, if he cannot find something, in his turn, to laugh at in this adventure. In a word, madame," he said, sullenly, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... with gold and colours upon it. Eleusis—coming—the coming of Demeter thither, as thus told in the Homeric hymn, is the central instance in Greek mythology of such divine appearances. "She leaves for a season the company of the gods and abides among men;" and men's merit is to receive her in spite of appearances. Metaneira and others, in the Homeric hymn, partly detect her divine character; they find charis;—a certain gracious air—about her, which makes them think her, perhaps, a royal person in disguise. She becomes in her long wanderings almost wholly ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... others were ordinary miners and laborers; there was no indication of the new assistant among them. Pending further inquiry they were obliged to wait the conclusion of the expressman's humorous recital. This was evidently a performance of some artistic merit, depending upon a capital imitation of an Irishman, a German Jew, and another voice, which was universally recognized and applauded as being "Sam's style all over!" But for the presence of the minister, Sperry and the mill-owner would have joined ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the fact that a child who is deprived of the senses of sight and hearing might not be expected to be as gifted mentally as this little girl proves to be; hence it is quite possible we may be inclined to class as marvelous many things we discover in the development of her mind which do not merit such ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... religion of the country! An order was issued from Hampton Court, for the abrogation of this part of the oath; and at present all high sheriffs owe this obligation to the resentment of Sir Edward Coke, for having been pricked down as Sheriff of Bucks, to be kept out of parliament! The merit of having the oath changed, instanter, he was allowed; but he was not excused taking it, after it was accommodated to the conscientious and lynx-eyed detection of our ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... them. For his uncle's part, he hoped that Jose had now seen the futility of opposition to Holy Church, and that, yielding humbly to her gentle chastisement for the great injury he had inflicted upon her, he would now make amends and merit the favors which she was sure to bestow upon him in due season. To this end the uncle would bring to bear his own influence and that of His Eminence, the Archbishop of Seville. The letter closed with an invocation to the Saints and the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... painful infirmities for many years, brought on by the laborious discharge of his official duties, he contemplated accompanying them himself. He accordingly selected four priests of his community, who were gentlemen of merit and distinction, viz., Gabriel de Quelus, Abbe of Laudieu (one of the Montreal associates), M. Francis d'Allet, Gabriel Souart, and Dominick Gallitier. M. de Quelus was a man of illustrious birth, and was appointed by their ecclesiastical Superior (the Archbishop of Rouen) Grand Vicar of the missionaries ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... artists manoeuvring, wheeling, ambuscading, and charging upon his wealth and titles. She returned to the subject of her own accord, and told him she saw but one objection to such a match: the lady had a son by a man of rare merit and misfortune. Could he, at his age, undertake to be a father to that son? "Othahwise," said Lady Cicely, "mark my words, you will quall over that poor child; and you will have two to quall with, because I shall be ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... extends the hand of good fellowship to all mankind, with the exception of its own bondsmen, we must not be surprised to see the North, in spite of the goodness of its cause and the great negative merit of the absence of Slavery, sink into a secondary position, and lose the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... sacrifice in this world as an offering or as an oblation for a whole year in order to gain merit, the whole of it is not worth a quarter a farthing; reverence shown to the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... by the Muses, it is but Gratitude in us to encourage Poetical Merit wherever we find it. The Muses, contrary to all other Ladies, pay no Distinction to Dress, and never partially mistake the Pertness of Embroidery for Wit, nor the Modesty of Want for Dulness. Be the Author who he will, we push his Play as far as it will go. So (though ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... parts, without the aid of writing materials; that, admitting the superior probability of such a thing in a primitive age, we know nothing analogous to such a case; and that it so transcends the common limits of intellectual power, as, at the least, to merit, with as much justice as the opposite opinion, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... originality. There was much ferment, but also much real power, and many bits are quite unique and perfect. I think highly, too, of many of his songs, though they are not as great as Schubert's. He took pains with his declamation—no small merit forty years ago. Later on I saw a good deal of him at Dresden; but then already his head was tired, his powers on the wane. He consulted me about the text to his opera, 'Genoveva,' which he was arranging from Tieck's and Hebbel's plays, yet he would not take my advice—he seemed ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... During his residence at the Lyceum, however, he undoubtedly meditated the plan of his charming romantic poem, "Ruslan and Liudmila," and probably even composed the opening of the work. To this period, too, are to be assigned some stanzas of great merit, entitled "Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo," and an "Epistle to Licinius"—both works exhibiting considerable skill and mastery in versification, but by far too much tinged (as might indeed be expected) with the light reflected from the youthful poet's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... heart, felt a certainty that his work would receive recognition. But, still, he would argue with himself, his feeling of confidence might very well be due to the dear old gentlewoman's enthusiastic faith in him rather than in any merit in the book itself; and it was a well-established fact—to all unpublished writers at least—that publishers are a heartless folk, and exceedingly loth to extend a helpful hand to unrecognized genius, however great the worth of its offering. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... stand convicted of many and hideous crimes — witchcraft, sorcery, treachery to your King, vile cruelty to his subjects — crimes for which death alone is scarce punishment enough. You well merit a worse fate than the gallows. You well merit some of those lingering agonies that you have inflicted upon your wretched victims, and have rejoiced to witness. But we in England do not torture our prisoners, and it is England's pride that this is so. This fair ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Jenner's merit lay in the scientific application of his knowledge of the fact that the chapped hands of milkers of cows sometimes proved a preventive of small-pox, and from those of them whom he endeavored to inoculate resisting the infection. These results were probably known far beyond Jenner's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... to be said for me. To begin with, no one can help being what they are. There's no more merit in your being good than there is demerit in my ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... further stimulated by his daughter's applause. "I guess there aren't a whole lot of people in this town that could claim J. A. showed that much interest in 'em," he said. "Of course I don't set up to believe it's all because of merit, or anything like that. He'd do the same for anybody else that'd been with the company as long as I have, but still it IS something to be with the company that long and have him ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... his opportunity in the tremendous activities going on about him. His only advantage is superior training which must nevertheless be pitted against practical minds in strenuous rivalry for every desirable thing he would accomplish. The mere fact of education is considered no badge of merit. Education represents power, but until it manifests itself in action, it is merely static, not dynamic, potential, not actual. It conveys to its recipient no self-acting machinery which, without lubricant or engineer will reel ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... may be clouded by adversity, but cannot be wholly concealed; for true merit shines by a light of its own, and, glimmering through the rents and crannies of indigence, is perceived, respected, and honored by the generous ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... public a novel in two volumes, entitled Precaution. But it was published anonymously, and dealt with English society in so much the same way as the average British novel of the time that its author was thought by many to be an Englishman. It had no originality and no real merit of any kind. Yet it was the means of inciting Cooper to another attempt. And this ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... different. Stephen was a sobered boy. He had passed through perils and temptations from which, if he had escaped, it had been through no merit of his own. Things might have been far different. His life had been saved, so had his peace of mind, and now even the consequences of old transgressions had been lightened for him. What had he done ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Jordan, after bathing in the same waters as God himself, with palm-leaves in your hands, and the cross upon your breast, it was something else you promised, sire, than to eat flesh-meat on a Friday. If a meaner man were to do so, he would merit a heavy punishment. This royal hall is not so beset as it should be, when it falls upon me, a mean man, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... imagine a gentleman's nails possibly being different. This answer incensed me greatly, for I had not yet learnt that one of the chief conditions of "comme il faut"-ness was to hold one's tongue about the labour by which it had been acquired. "Comme il faut"-ness I looked upon as not only a great merit, a splendid accomplishment, an embodiment of all the perfection which must strive to attain, but as the one indispensable condition without which there could never be happiness, nor glory, nor any good whatsoever in this world. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... helps convince some men that a thing has merit like a little gold on the label. And it's pretty safe to bet that if a fellow needs a six or seven-syllabled word to describe his profession, he's a corn doctor when you come to look him up in the dictionary. And then you'll generally find him in the back part of the book ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... manuscript. Happily the manuscript, declined by publishers, was in the end destroyed, and editors have been saved from the necessity of printing or reprinting these crudities of a great poet's childhood. Their only merit, he assured Mr Gosse, lay in "their mellifluous smoothness." It was an event of capital importance in the history of Browning's mind when—probably in his thirteenth year—he lighted, in exploring a book-stall, upon a copy of one of the pirated editions of Shelley's ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... has never before been written in English—never in any language in convenient text-book form. This publication, then, should meet with an enthusiastic reception among students and amateurs of art, not so much, however, because it is the only book of its kind, as for its intrinsic merit and attractive form." ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... right to regulate medical matters at the spring, upon the principle which, of old, assigned the property of a newly discovered country to the bucanier who committed the earliest piracy on its shores. The acknowledgment of the Doctor's merit as having been first to proclaim and vindicate the merits of these healing fountains, had occasioned his being universally installed First Physician and Man of Science, which last qualification he could apply to all purposes, from the boiling of an egg to the giving a lecture. He was, indeed, qualified, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... perusal of it. For I purpose to submit these and other fruits of my diligence to be tasted by you at your discretion, each in its proper order; hoping that, if my larger undertakings do not excite your interest, my smaller works may at least merit your approbation, conciliate your favour, and call forth my gratitude towards you; who, unmindful of worldly affections, do not partially distribute your bounties to your family and friends, but to letters and merit; you, who, in the midst of such great and unceasing contests ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." Ezek. 36:25-27. The Old Testament, as well as the New, denounces self-righteousness in every form, and teaches men that they are saved not for the merit of their good works, but through God's free mercy: "Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart dost thou go in to possess their land," Deut. 9:5; "Not for your sakes do I this, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... 'Bad accident here. Come at once.' I know that will bring him. . . . And it has the further merit of being the truth!" she added with a ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... notions of the pure understanding in its theoretical use exclusively to phenomena. Nothing but a detailed criticism of the practical reason can remove all this misapprehension and set in a clear light the consistency which constitutes its greatest merit. ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... but alas! it might have been at the cost of his life, and I could not but be weak enough to rejoice when your sister's obstinacy snatched him from me. After all one is a mother! and the good Abbe says a pure life and invincible ignorance will merit acceptance! Besides, the Duke of Gloucester did him the honour to sit an hour by ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... merit. The story is exceedingly well told, and the characters are drawn with a freedom and boldness seldom met with."—Church of ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... have discharged his high duties with considerable distinction; but his lot was thrown upon stormy 10 times, and a most difficult crisis amongst tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms of superstition, and by a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of their own merit absolutely unparalleled; whilst the circumstances of their hard and trying position under 15 the jealous surveillance of an irresistible lord paramount, in the person of the Russian Czar, gave ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... oracle. There therefore he is with the two tables of testimony in his heart, as perfectly kept; he also is there with the whole fulfulling of the ceremonial law in his side, showing and pleading the perfection of his righteousness, and the merit of his blood with his Father, and to receive and to do us good, who believe in him, how well pleased the Father is with what he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... given to this book the labor of love. I know it isn't literature, Mul, but I have joyed in writing it and it has, at least, the merit of sincerity. It is an expression of faith and for all its faults and imperfections, I think you will find, tucked away in it somewhere, a modicum of merit. I have tried to limn something, however vague, of the beauty of the land ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... time; but when you are sensible of the benefit that will follow, I know you will not think much of that cost, and my own willingness to expose myself unto the utmost for the defence of my friends with you, makes me presume to plead something of merit, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... likewise omitted several passages of the Italian, and the whole is rather a paraphrase than a translation. This has induced us to give the public an exact and faithful version of that excellent performance, from the Venice edition in 8vo, in the year 1620 [1]: and as a proof of the merit and authenticity of the work, we beg leave to quote Mr. Addison's recommendation of it, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... had one great merit to the mind of a foreigner denied the lucidity of our Italian intelligence—it was adorably simple. I can give it to you now in a nutshell as I learned it later, not as I knew it then, for I did not know it then. Nobody knew it then except Messer ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... unfounded, the grand proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character. It was said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of him that he could write well—the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... exclusion, disappointment, and degradation, by which their hearts are worn out under more specious forms of tyranny; and that talent of despatch which Moliere attributes to one of his physicians is no ordinary merit in a practitioner like Cromwell: —"C'est un homme expeditif, qui aime a depecher ses malades; et quand on a mourir, cela se fait avec lui le plus vite du monde." A certain military Duke, who complains that Ireland is but half conquered, would, no doubt, upon an emergency, try ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Gauls into Italy we have heard as follows. In the reign of Tarquinius Priscus at Rome, the supreme government of the Celts, who compose the third part of Gaul, was in the hands of the Biturigians: they gave a king to the Celtic nation. This was Ambigatus, one very much distinguished by his merit, and both his great prosperity in his own concerns and in those of the public; for under his administration Gaul was so fruitful and so well peopled, that so very great a population appeared scarcely capable of being restrained by any government. He being now advanced in years, and anxious ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... relieve his own mind, by assuring himself of the fidelity of his viceroy, Gonsalvo de Cordova. That illustrious man had not escaped the usual lot of humanity; his brilliant successes had brought on him a full measure of the envy, which seems to wait on merit like its shadow. Even men like Rojas, the Castilian ambassador at Rome, and Prospero Colonna, the distinguished Italian commander, condescended to employ their influence at court to depreciate the Great Captain's services, and raise ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... surpasses all his contemporaries. While the verses that Chatterton acknowledged as his own, are passing under their eyes, they still recollect that they are the productions of a boy of seventeen; and are slow to allow them even that merit which they undoubtedly possess. "They are ingenious, but puerile; flowing, but not sufficiently correct." ——The best way of convincing the antiquarian reader of the merit of these compositions, would be to disfigure them with old spelling; as ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... gushed were those, fathomless and countless, which a life could not weep away. Not an impulse of the human and the woman heart that was not stirred; the adoring gratitude, the meek wonder thus to be loved, while deeming it so simple a merit thus to love;—as if all sacrifice in her were a thing of course,—to her, a virtue nature could not paragon, worlds could not repay! And there he lay, the victim to his own fearless faith, helpless—dependent upon her—a thing between life and death, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... an hour earlier, Miss Caldegard?" asked Sir Randal, as he came up. "Dick—my brother—is coming by an earlier train. Just like him, always changing his mind." And he smiled, as if this were merit. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... chiefly after the English Revolution of 1688 and the defeat of James II., clearly shows the soundness of our interpretation of history. The "penal code," under Queen Anne, and later on, at least has the merit of being free from hypocrisy and cant. It is an open religious persecution, as, in fact, it had been from ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... must look upon as the least alien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment! The young and old lords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less than did the proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had not even the merit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl, of whom she was ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred attendant ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a priest of Heliopolis, the great seat of Egyptian learning. The general correctness of Manetho's history, which runs back for nearly two thousand years, is shown by our finding the kings' names agree with many Egyptian inscriptions. Manetho owes his reputation to the merit of being the first who distinguished himself as a writer and critic upon religion and philosophy, as well as chronology and history, using the Greek language, but drawing his materials from native sources, especially the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and losing all chastity of mind enter upon a progressive corruption of life. It would be best if they could be kept wholly from such books; but there is a good deal in them of genuine profit and literary merit, which makes it difficult to keep them wholly out of the hands of youth. Therefore the editor undertook to expurgate the epigrammatists, especially Catullus and Martial. He was horrified when he read over their works, but he found some good among the bad, as in vipers not everything ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... aroused bitter animadversions, and cannot have been without effect in creating an undercurrent of thought in opposition to the main trend of opinion of the time. But the book can hardly be said to have done more than that. Indeed, some critics have denied it even this merit. After its publication, as before, the conception of transmutation of species remained in the popular estimation, both lay and scientific, an almost ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... attention on each of the 500 receipts as if the whole merit of the book was to be estimated entirely by the accuracy of my detail of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... and borough corruption prevails so very much that many people are promoted and kept in command that should be dismissed the service, and while such is the case the few Americans chosen for their merit may be expected to follow up their successes except where they meet with our best officers on even terms." [Footnote: To show that I am not quoting an authority biassed in our favor I will give Sir Edward Codrington's opinion of our rural better class ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... know why you appear to have taken such a dislike to me. I am sure I have done nothing to merit it. However, I am equally sure that I don't want anything to do with you. If you change your mind and can act like a man, instead of a kid, I shall be glad to see you. But don't get funny. We may be boys but we are quite able to take ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... up your mind, then, as to its being Lucille that we saw?' said Madame d'Heranville with a smile. 'If it was,' she added, more gravely, 'I think she can scarcely merit all the trouble you are giving yourself on her account. Her friendship for Andre does not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... his "three right arms." By his skill in blockading Valetta (1798-1800), Ball was the hero of the siege of Malta, and (June 6, 1801) was created a baronet for his services, and received the Order of Merit from Ferdinand IV of Naples. When Byron met him, Ball was "His Majesty's Civil Commissioner for the Island of Malta and its Dependencies, and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Order of St. John." S.T. Coleridge, who was ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... armourer said when they reached the shadow of the cathedral. "It is to him that the matter was committed, and though he was forced to take me into his confidence, the merit of following up the matter, if merit there be, ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... two men loved a woman, the natural way to make happiness for all was to let the sword do its eager office. For they had one of the least- believed and most unpopular of truths, that a woman's love is more a matter of mastery and possession than instinct, two men being of comparatively equal merit and sincerity. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Joseph, she never reached her destination at all, though where and how she met her fate remains one of the dark mysteries of the ocean. Two small points in connection with her loss are perhaps sufficiently curious to merit notice. In the first place, she was the only one of the ships that had no missionary on board; and secondly, she was called after the very saint who had been named special patron ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... more successful because he is less ambitious.... It is to be hoped that Mr. Ramakrishna's interesting sketches of Southern Indian village life will obtain a wide circulation in England. He is to be congratulated on having produced a work of no little merit and originality.—Madras Mail. ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... earlier it might have been done; but the Guises now knew of the plot; they must already possess the lists she held in her hand, and were evidently drawing the Reformers into a trap. Thus, rejoiced to find in these adversaries the very spirit she desired them to have, her policy now led her to make a merit of the discovery of their plot. These horrible calculations were made during the rapid moment while the young queen was opening the door. Mary Stuart stood dumb for an instant; the gay look left her eyes, which took on the acuteness that suspicion gives to the eyes of all, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... had often felt inclined to send them all to the devil: the made-up eyes, the kiss-me-quick lips, the tow wigs, the low jokes, the monkey-claws! There were some who had merit, no doubt, like that boy who was all over scratches, from head to foot, through training cats; but the rest, almost all of them, were a pack of good-for-nothings who copied their betters: amateurs, jossers all; and they had more work than she, who ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Antilles, and Mauritius, that in these countries sweet oranges faithfully transmit their character. Gallesio found that the willow-leafed and the Little China oranges reproduced their proper leaves and fruit; but the seedlings were not quite equal in merit to their parents. The red-fleshed orange, on the other hand, fails to reproduce itself. Gallesio also observed that the seeds of several other singular varieties all reproduced trees having a peculiar physiognomy, partly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... seized. "Mr. Dodd, you have taken us into a new world of knowledge; we never were so interested in our lives." At this pointblank praise David blushed, and was anything but comfortable, and began to back out of it all with a curt bow. Then, as the ladies can advance when a man of merit retreats, Lucy went the length of putting out her hand with a sweet, grateful smile; so he took it, and, in the ardor of encouraging so much spirit and modesty, she unconsciously pressed it. On this delicious ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... choir are the renowned frescos of Dominic Ghirlandaio,—scenes from the lives of John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary. These, however, are but names and frames. The great merit of these paintings is that they were the first, or among the first, to introduce the actual into the world of conventional and conventual art. They form a series of full-length portraits,—sometimes of celebrated contemporaries, as Politian, Marsilio Ficino, and others,—but always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... York, where his political opinions on the outbreak of the revolution had been influenced by his connection, through marriage, with the Livingstones, bitter opponents of the British government. His merit as a soldier naturally brought him into prominence when the war began, and his own ambition gladly led him to obey the order to go to Canada, where he hoped to emulate the fame of Wolfe and become the captor of Quebec. He formed a junction, close to the ancient capital, with ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... that it may never have occurred to the reader to consider how difficult, not to say dangerous, must be the operation of gutting, cleaning, and packing fish on a dark night with a smack dancing a North Sea hornpipe under one's feet. Among the dangers are two which merit notice. The one is the fisherman's liability, while working among the "ruck," to run a sharp fish-bone into his hand, the other to gash himself with his knife while attempting to operate on the tail of a skate. Either accident may be slight or ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... dazzling splendour of imperial virtues for the more tranquil, but not less fascinating appearance of retired and modest merit. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... a temptation to vanity. "Yet my mind hankered, therefore I would go to the steeple house and look on, though I durst not ring." One by one he gave up all the things he loved, things that even if we think them wrong do not seem to us to merit everlasting punishment. But at last the long struggle ended and his tortured mind found rest in ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... a personage in our story, and we do not purpose to enter into the diagnosis of his case. He has our sympathies on the merit of his sufferings alone, and quite as much for Nellie's sake; for it was tender, and gentle, and kind in her to feel so much for a poor Irish laborer. While she and Donald were talking about the case, Mr. Hasbrook ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... man with an ever-broadening vision. Some time during these years he had reached the position among his tribesmen which he long had coveted. He had been recognized by the Mohawks as one of their chieftains. This honour he had won by right not of birth but of merit, and for this reason he was known as a 'Pine-tree Chief.' Like the pine-tree, tall and strong and conspicuous among the trees of the forest, he had achieved a commanding place in the Mohawk nation. True, he was a chief merely by gift of his tribe, but he seems, nevertheless, ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... farther north than does that of either the eastern black walnut, or that of the shagbark hickory, Hicoria ovata, and considerably beyond that of the shellbark hickory, H. laciniosa. Therefore, in view of its hardiness, and the merit of its kernels, it is well worthy of consideration for planting in the most northern parts ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the stage proved a great success. The play had no special merit as a literary composition, but the character of Sellers delighted the public, and both author and actor were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... encouraged deep musings upon these vast inequalities of life. Piety had not taught her submission. Philosophy had not yet taught her the impossibility of adjusting these allotments of our earthly state, so as to distribute the gifts of fortune in accordance with merit. Little, however, did the proud grandees imagine, as in courtly splendor they swept by the plebeian maiden, enveloping her in the dust of their chariots, that her voice would yet aid to upheave their castles from their foundations, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... trouble by, refusing to adjudge in the matter of musical merit between Pan and Apollo, and this time was punished by having his ears changed into those of ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... larger rivals, far more respectable and aristocratic—if such terms may be permitted to anything appertaining to the land of so-called "equality" and "freedom," where, according to the poetical belief, there is no aristocracy save hat of merit and shoddy! ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... But as we have scarcely ever the same certainty in the one that we have in the other, I would, unless the truth were evident indeed, hold fast to peace." In that intellectual restlessness, to which the world is so deeply indebted, Burke could recognise but scanty merit. Himself the most industrious and active-minded of men, he was ever sober in cutting the channels of his activity, and he would have had others equally moderate. Perceiving that plain and righteous conduct is the end of life in this world, he prayed men ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Coke, it has probably escaped your attention that Mr. Coleman, at what I consider a great deal of peril to himself, came out to rescue this party-you and others-and although he studiously disclaims all merit in his finding us and bringing us in, I do not regard it in that way, and I am surprised that any member of this party should conduct himself in this manner toward a man who has been most devotedly and generously at our service." It was at this time that the professor raised himself and shook his ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Grand Vizier, Mehemed Emin Aali Pasha, decorated with my Imperial Order of the Medjidiye of the first class, and with the Order of Personal Merit; may God grant to you greatness, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... report to me. Your idea showed great ingenuity, and although the surprise was so complete that even had the attack been made by ships' boats only it would probably have been successful, this detracts in no way from the merit of the suggestion. Of course you have some years to serve yet before you can pass, but I can promise you that as soon as you do so you shall, if you are still here, have your appointment at once as mate, with employment in which ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... had no religious predilections, feeling herself spiritually secure in her philosophic principles, but sought only his welfare and advancement. His obstinacy was depriving him of the advantages due his birth and personal merit. Considering that Ninon was scarcely sixteen years of age, respiring nothing but love and pleasure, to effect by tenderness and the persuasive strength of her reasoning powers, such a change in a man so obstinate as the Count de Coligny, in an obstinate ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the Cuckoo," have less merit both as poetry and natural history, but they are older, and doubtless the latter poet benefited by them. Burke admired them so much that, while on a visit to Edinburgh, he sought the author out ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... contemporaries of other nations, and has merely followed their example in borrowing very largely from the Arabians," and Sprengel writes: "Here and there, though only very rarely, the author offers some remarks of his own, which merit special attention." ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... Burton's description of them they can hardly have been very dangerous, at least to the enemy. "They seem to have been made of tin for the bore, with a coating of leather, all secured by tight cordage. A horse could carry two of them, and it was their merit to stand a few discharges before they came to pieces." "History of Scotland," ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... (verse 834) there is a play on the word respice involving the goddess, and in his Asinaria (verse 716) mention is made of a closely related divinity, Fortuna Obsequens. Cicero (de legibus, II, 11, 28), in enumerating the divinities that merit human worship, includes "Fortuna, quae est vel Huius diei—nam valet in omnis dies—vel Respiciens ad opem ferendam, vel Fors, in quo incerti casus significantur magis" ... The name Fortuna Respiciens has also come to light in ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... week or two even my mother's message was driven from my head by hatred of my rival, the new groom—a villainous-looking rascal, some years my elder, who yet had not even the merit of being a good horseman ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... tactics, and seems at least to do homage to it, while he insists only on its extension. "The argument of design," he says, "is unquestionably the most popular ever developed, and the most seductive ever displayed. It has the rare merit of making the existence of God, which is the most subtle of all problems, appear a mere truism,—and the proofs of such existence, which have puzzled the wisest of human heads, seem self-evident." This tribute, however, must be read in the light of his ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... said the hunter, quietly. "All you have to do is to get the advantage of position, and then it is no merit to shoot straight. Drop three men out of a hundred, and you will stop the remainder; drop thirty out of a thousand, and the same thing happens. If there are only a hundred, and you have the upper ground, let them come within ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... to see my lord as usual, he told me that as he had handsomely provided for my daughter, and sent her to the Indies with a man of merit and fortune, he sincerely wished her great prosperity. "And," he added, "to let you see, madam, that I should never have parted from my first engagements of love to you, had you not laid yourself so open to censure for your misconduct, my next care shall be to provide for your son ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... established, be justly called a victory of the former —metoeci— or the -plebs-, the revolution even in this respect bore by no means the character which we are accustomed in the present day to designate as democratic. Pure personal merit without the support of birth and wealth could perhaps gain influence and consideration more easily under the regal government than under that of the patriciate. Then admission to the patriciate was not in law foreclosed; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... for all men,—that is genius.[148] Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense;[149] for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato,[150] and Milton[151] is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... well understood. The bird was fastened by a string to the stump of a large pine, the side of which, toward the point where the marksmen were placed, had been flattened with an axe, in order that it might serve the purpose of a target, by which the merit of each individual might be ascertained. The distance between the stump and shooting-stand was one hundred measured yards; a foot more or a foot less being thought an invasion of the right of one ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... out before, he never feels quite at his ease in his criticisms of contemporary work. 'The present,' he says, 'is about as agreeable a confusion to me as Ariosto on the first perusal. . . . Modern things dazzle me. I must look at them through Time's telescope. Elia complains that to him the merit of a MS. poem is uncertain; "print," as he excellently says, "settles it." Fifty years' toning does the same thing to a picture.' He is happier when he is writing about Watteau and Lancret, about Rubens and ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... overwhelming tumult of events. He has lain in his grave now nearly sixty years. Upon the legislation of his time his name was writ first in water and then in blood. He received less than his desert in life and the historic record has scarcely done justice to his merit. He was as great a party leader as Clay. He could hold his own in debate with Webster and Calhoun. He died a very poor man, though his opportunity for enrichment by perfectly legitimate means were many. It is enough to say that he lacked the business instinct and set ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... nothing to merit the alarm being raised, and he stood watching once more the spot where the boat had disappeared. Still he did not resume his march up and down, but recalled the night of the attack, and began to consider how easy it would be for a crafty enemy to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... fortune is assured," he said: "the treasures of Blue Beard are mine; this is the final trial to which the aforesaid Fate subjects me; it would be bad grace in me to revolt. A brave man does not complain. I could not merit the inestimable recompense which ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... tingle of the telegraphic bell, to inform them that there was a chimney on fire in Holborn, to which they need pay no attention, even though "called" by an excited informer, because it was already being attended to, and didn't merit farther notice; or to let them know that there was a fire raging in Whitechapel, which, although being most energetically looked after by the men of the brigade in its immediate neighbourhood, would be ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... its tone, while growing in importance; the Commedia checked it. The Provencal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose, it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... For the Trail is a vantage-ground, and from it, as your day's travel unrolls, you see many things. Nine tenths of your experience comes thus, for in the long journeys the side excursions are few enough and unimportant enough almost to merit classification with the accidents. In time the character of the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... vanity was to be pressed out of Linda's heart. Peter Steinmarc had misbehaved himself grossly, had appeared at that last interview in a guise which could not have made him fascinating to any young woman; but on that account the merit of submitting to him would be so much the greater. There could hardly be any moral sackcloth and ashes too coarse and too bitter for the correction of a sinful mind in this world, but for the special correction of a mind sinful as Linda's had been, marriage ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... measures twenty-six inches from shoulder to hem. It may easily be made longer, if desired, but the model is an excellent one for ordinary wear, and very "natty," and it has the merit of ...
— Handbook of Wool Knitting and Crochet • Anonymous
... competitive examinations for places in the civil service of the United States should be open on equal terms to citizens of both sexes, and that any so-called civil service reform that does not correct the existing unjust discrimination against women employes, and grade all salaries on merit and not sex, is a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... strong sufferance 160 His weakness shall o'ercome Satanic strength, And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh; That all the Angels and aethereal Powers— They now, and men hereafter—may discern From what consummate virtue I have chose This perfet man, by merit called my Son, To earn salvation for the sons of men." So spake the Eternal Father, and all Heaven Admiring stood a space; then into hymns Burst forth, and in celestial measures moved, 170 Circling the throne and singing, while the ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... usurpation more flagrant than that of Richard, or more repugnant to every principle of justice and public interest. To endure such a bloody usurper seemed to draw disgrace upon the nation, and to be attended with immediate danger to every individual who was distinguished by birth, merit, or services. Such was become the general voice of the people; all parties were united in the same sentiments; and the Lancastrians, so long oppressed, and of late so much discredited, felt their blasted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... wandering life, playing in all sorts of places—in taverns, at fairs, at peasants' marriages, and at balls. At last he gained access to an orchestra, and there, steadily rising higher and higher, he attained to the position of conductor. As a performer he had no great merit, but he understood music thoroughly. In his twenty-eighth year, he migrated to Russia. He was invited there by a great seigneur, who, although he could not abide music himself, maintained an orchestra from a love of display. In ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... distinguished Your self this way, and every Science has raised it self under Your Auspicious Bounty. So true a Notion of Merit, and so nice a Discernment of what is Curious, is but rarely found among Persons of an advanced Age; but You my Lord, by an uncommon Felicity of Genius, do even in the Bloom of Youth make Your Entrance in the World with the most refin'd ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... be troublesome. An American says, "Wouldn't you like to do this for me?" assuming the superior attitude of one who feels that to give an opportunity to do a kindness is itself to confer a favour. The Continental European shares with the American the merit of having manners on the self-regarding pattern of noblesse oblige, while the Englishman wants to know who you are, so as to put on his best manners only if the force majeure of your social standing compels him. No one wishes the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... thy merit, Kindly, unassuming Spirit! Careless of thy neighborhood, Thou dost show thy pleasant face On the moor, and in the wood, In the lane;—there's not a place, Howsoever mean it be, But 'tis ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... still clings to this place, where he has worked for forty years. He is an Hawaiian poet; and, besides translating some of our best hymns, has composed enough to make up the greater part of a bulky volume, which is said to be of great merit. He says that the language lends itself very readily to rhythmical expression. He was indefatigable in his youth, and was four times let down the pali by ropes to preach in the Waimanu Valley. Neither he nor his wife can mount a horse now, and it is very ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... amount of intelligence as a boy's in scrawling his copy-book when he cannot write. The device was thought ingenious at one period of architectural history; St. Paul's and Whitehall are covered with it, and it is in this I imagine that some of our modern architects suppose the great merit of those buildings to consist. There is, however, no excuse for errors in disposition of masonry, for there is but one law upon the subject, and that easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and all unnecessary expense, either in showing ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... farmer just home from Australia, who had bought High Farm, one of the biggest sheep-farming lands in the Cotswolds. Mr. Arthur Gatty was a young clerk in a solicitor's office in London; he was down at Queningford on his Easter holiday, staying with cousins at the County Bank. Both had the merit of being young men whom Miss Purcell had never seen before. She was so tired of all the young ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... creditor account kept with divine justice." Much less common than in China, the system of the "Holy Path" is yet widely practised in Japan. Elaborate tables are drawn up, containing a list of all good and bad actions it is possible to perform, with the numbers added which each counts on the side of merit or demerit. The numbers range from one to a hundred, or even more; and the tables afford an insight into the relative importance in which all kinds of actions present themselves to the Oriental mind. He who would tread life's journey along the Holy Path must, at least, aim at setting off his bad ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... O thou of great wisdom, O thou that are conversant with every kind of scripture, tell me what the merit is of one who cherishes a suppliant that craves ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... clapped her hands softly and laughed. And her laughter, having the merit of being perfectly genuine—for the young man very really pleased her fancy—was likewise very infectious. Richard found himself laughing too, he knew not why, save that he ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... man and one of the most deserving in the community in every sense of the term, should thus fail of a just reward when he has done so much for the benefit of others. * * * Believing as I do that the extension is no more than sheer justice to Obed Hussey,—quite equal in merit to any that has been granted,—as one of the most meritorious in the language of the Committee, I do most earnestly solicit thy kind aid and influence to get it through the Senate. * * * He was then (and still is) a comparatively ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... easy to live with. If the social atmosphere is not very stimulating or invigorating, it is easy to breathe, and pleasant withal; and one trait of theirs is not without its especial merit—they are less under the control of conventionalities than any people I ever heard of, and consequently have few affectations. If they do assume any little part, or play off any little game, it is with the palpable object ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... diversion came in her way, and should even be thankful for it. Mr. Juxon was an honest gentleman, a scholar and a man who had seen the world. If what he said was not always very original it was always very true, a merit not always conceded to the highest originality. He spoke intelligently; he told her the news; he lent her the newest books and reviews, and offered her his opinions upon them, with the regularity of a daily ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... may probably be counted on the fingers of two hands. Most of these productions are uncommon to excess, one or two exist in positively unique examples. There is no use in arguing against such a fact as this. If Nash had reached, or even approached, the highest order of merit, he would have been placed, long ere this, within the reach of all. Nevertheless, his merits, relative if not positive, were great. In the violent coming of age of Elizabethan literature, his voice was heard loudly, not always discordantly, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... attachment to my own, and my tenderness of invading the choice of my companions, who outwardly exempt, as they seemed, from jealousy, could not but in secret like me the better for the regard I had for, without making a merit of it to them. Thus easy, and beloved by the whole family, did I get on; when one day, that, about five in the afternoon, I stepped over to a fruit shop in Covent Garden, to pick some table fruit for myself and the young women, I met with ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... specious robe, so when there appeared this work of a "miserable Indian," who dared to portray them and the conditions that their control produced exactly as they were—for the indefinable touch by which the author gives an air of unimpeachable veracity to his story is perhaps its greatest artistic merit—the effect upon the mercurial Spanish temperament was, to say the least, electric. The very audacity of the thing left ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... people whose customs were like unto that of my native land. There was no prejudice toward me on account of my foreign birth, such as I had often encountered in Peru. The hand of fellowship was extended in this broad free land of the United States, where the greatness of men is measured almost by merit alone. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... said, regarding her gravely, "it is naturally not for me to say, but I sincerely believe that your portrait is a work of real merit. And whatever slight ability I may possess has of course been freely spent on it. But there is something else to consider—there is ability, but there is also the element of inspiration, and whatever I may have lacked in the one you have bountifully given me in the other. If others ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the merit of simplicity, Gottlieb, but it does not fall in with the scheme of the Empress, who is anxious that everything be accomplished legally and without bloodshed. But if we can burn them, we can capture ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Giovanni Battista Fontana, and published at Venice in 1641, show a distinct advance in style, and Tomasso Antonio Vitali, himself a famous violinist, wrote a "Chaconne" of such merit that it was played by no less a virtuoso than Joachim, at the Monday popular concerts in London, in 1870, nearly two hundred ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... There's nae merit in saving, I'll admit, unless there's a reason for't. The man who willna spend his siller when the time comes I despise as much as can anyone. But I despise, too, or I pity, the poor spendthrift who canna say "No!" when it wad be folly for him to spend his siller. Sicca one can ne'er meet the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what it is your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as it is beyond ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... into the child's head. How it is that girls are not ruined," said Miss Dorset, shaking her head, "ruined! by such examples, I cannot tell. They must have stronger heads than we think. As poor as Cinderella one day, and the next as rich as the Queen—without any merit of theirs, all because some chance man happens to take a fancy ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... thing different from the worth, or value of a man; and also from his merit, or desert; and consisteth in a particular power, or ability for that, whereof he is said to be worthy: which particular ability, is usually named ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... since I've been yours, I swear to you that I've not belonged to anyone else. I don't claim any merit for this; I ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... explain a situation for which no other explanation has been found," I said. "And it had also the merit ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... me in mind of a bear story, which has this merit over both of yours—it is true. I can speak of it as a thing of personal knowledge, occurring within my own personal experience. I began the study of law in Angelica, the county seat of Alleghany county, and as it was a good many years ago, it is fair to assume that I was a good many years younger ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... only to bear but to cover "a multitude of sins." This statement he introduces from the Proverbs of Solomon (ch. 10, 12). The Papists, however, pervert its meaning, explaining it in a way at variance with the doctrine of faith; they make of love to one's neighbor a work or virtue having merit with God. It is their desire to draw the conclusion that for the sake of our love our sins are covered; that is, forgiven and exterminated. But we shall not notice the dolts. It is clear enough from the text that reference is to hatred and love received from ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... tremendous activities going on about him. His only advantage is superior training which must nevertheless be pitted against practical minds in strenuous rivalry for every desirable thing he would accomplish. The mere fact of education is considered no badge of merit. Education represents power, but until it manifests itself in action, it is merely static, not dynamic, potential, not actual. It conveys to its recipient no self-acting machinery which, without lubricant or engineer will reel off success or impress ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... Worde printed upwards of five hundred books which have come down to us, complete or in fragments. Thanks to the indefatigable energy of Mr. Gordon Duff, we possess now a very full record of his books, enabling us not only to estimate his merit as a printer, but to see at a glance how consistently as a publisher he maintained the entirely popular character which Caxton ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... cried; and led her in triumph up the shining steps of the Fairy Palace, and into the Hall of Pearl, where the Queen was seated on her throne dispensing the graceful wreaths, which, woven by her own hand, were the choicest rewards bestowed in Fairy-land. It was easy to adjudge the crowns of merit among the fairies, for their beauty increased, or waned, according as they had ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... that particular campaign, and resulted in driving all organized Confederate forces out of the State of Missouri. After Pea Ridge was won, certain efforts were made to deprive Curtis of the credit due him for the victory; but, no matter what merit belonged to individual commanders, I was always convinced that Curtis was deserving of the highest commendation, not only for the skill displayed on the field, but for a zeal and daring in campaign which was not often exhibited at that early period of the war. Especially should this ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... the idea, my dear Pat," he explained, smiling. "Marian says Hiram has too much brains to look like a scarecrow for ignorant people to look down on, so she's making him fit, merely to enlighten them as to his merit." ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... believed on: Mic. v. 5, "This man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land." There were sin-offerings and burnt-offerings appointed in the law for a national atonement (Lev. iv., xiii., xxi.; Num. xv. 25, 26) which did typify pardoning of national sins through the merit of Jesus Christ. We must improve the office of the Mediator, and the promise of free grace, in the behalf of God's people, as well as of our own souls, which, if it be indeed done, will not hinder, but further a great mourning and deep humiliation in the land. And so ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... her own grief!" said Georgie, to a caller. Susan felt a little prick of guilt. She was too busy and too absorbed to feel any grief. And presently it occurred to her that perhaps Auntie knew it, and understood. Perhaps there was no merit in mere grieving. "But I wish I had been better to her while she was here!" thought ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... enactment in 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be tried summarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manner as the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slaves executed under this act should be paid for by the public. Thus stood the law when a negro uprising in the city of New York in 1712 and a reputed conspiracy there in 1741 brought atrociously numerous and severe punishments, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits, for all that. Certainly the regime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose. The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for practically ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the brother and sister; but it was more than the latter could enjoy alone, so she fled away and entered upon the vocation in which we found her engaged. Meantime her brother had risen in. rank, and at the close of the war had been transferred to the regular army as a reward of distinguished merit. Then his hereditary foe had laid siege to his weakened frame, and a brother officer had telegraphed to the sister in the Bankshire hills the first warning of the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one true being—that constant subject of all early thought—it was his merit to have conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, but as a perpetual energy, from the restless stream of which, [130] at certain points, some elements detach themselves, and harden into non-entity and death, corresponding, as outward objects, to man's inward condition of ignorance: ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... that month, Henry himself being present, in the Painted Chamber. The Chancellor's address, though in many points strange, and well-nigh ridiculous, is too interesting to be passed by unnoticed. He began by uttering eulogies on the King, specifying, among other topics of praise, this merit in particular,—that, whilst God had granted him victories and conquests as the fruits of his labour, he never assumed the least merit to himself, but ascribed all the glory to God only, "following in (p. 297) a manner the example of the very valiant Emperor Julius Caesar;" ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... any, but they never read anything that could by any stretch of the imagination be styled good reading. In the Edwards family some sixty have attained prominence in authorship or editorial life. "Richard Carvel," is by Mr. Winston Churchill, a descendant of Mr. Edwards, and I have found 135 books of merit written by the family. Eighteen considerable journals and periodicals have been edited and several important ones founded by ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... favour that villainy finds; the neglect that merit, even the rarest and the greatest, suffers at the hands of those of the same profession; the hatred of truth and great capacity; the ignorance of scholars in their own province; and the fact that true wares are almost always despised and the merely ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the world," observed Tallyho, "lacks nothing to gratify every sense of man! Here industry is on the alert to accumulate wealth, and dissipation in haste to spend it. Here riot and licentiousness roll triumphantly in gilded state, while merit pines in penury and obscurity;—and here ingenuity roams the streets for a scanty and precarious subsistence, exhibiting learned pigs, dogs, and so forth, that will cast accounts with the precision of an experienced arithmetician; and a tame ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... that Cordova was not the man to command an army. Diplomacy was his forte; and he might also, as a general, claim some merit for combinations in the cabinet. It was during his command that the plan was formed for enclosing the Carlists within certain fortified limits, in hopes that they would exhaust the resources of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... cruel blow which his disgrace in Rome had given them. For his uncle's part, he hoped that Jose had now seen the futility of opposition to Holy Church, and that, yielding humbly to her gentle chastisement for the great injury he had inflicted upon her, he would now make amends and merit the favors which she was sure to bestow upon him in due season. To this end the uncle would bring to bear his own influence and that of His Eminence, the Archbishop of Seville. The letter closed with an invocation to the Saints and the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... rhythm. Any one who cares to do so might test the validity of those rules in the nearest possible way, by applying them to the varied examples in this wide [6] survey of what has been actually well done in English prose, here exhibited on the side of their strictly prosaic merit—their conformity, before all other aims, to laws of a structure primarily reasonable. Not that that reasonable prose structure, or architecture, as Mr. Saintsbury conceives it, has been always, or even generally, the ideal, even of those chosen writers here in evidence. ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the French party was Colonel Fabvier, who was now, with some of the troops whom he commanded, defending the Acropolis from the siege of the Turks. He was an officer of considerable merit, with the interests of the Greeks at heart, but of surpassing vanity and ambition. His hope was to become the Napoleon of the East, to convert the whole male population of Greece into a huge army, with himself at its head. With him sympathized most of the military ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... Dodson and Fogg, as knows so little of me, to come down vith a present,' said Sam. 'I feel it as a wery high compliment, sir; it's a wery honorable thing to them, as they knows how to reward merit werever they meets it. Besides which, it's ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... with teacher and pupils. The literary merit of the stories used is high. The vocabulary is such as will open many books to the child, and the frequent repetition of words I consider excellent."—Miss ALICE M. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... the later course of Athenian policy, lays no claim to those high motives of patriotism which had inspired his people with sublime self-devotion two generations back. He boldly asserts the principle that it is lawful for the stronger to rule the weaker, and claims merit for Athens in abstaining from excessive abuse of her power. The Athenians, we may believe, had been tainted by the baseness of their confederates. In the early days of the Delian league they had not attempted to educate the Greeks whom they led up to the standard of their own splendid zeal,—or, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... session, and the novelist did not again use the idea. Mr. HUGH CARTON, whose name, we are informed by the wrapper of the book, that new and most trustworthy medium of communication between the candid publisher (unwilling that merit should shine unobserved) and the hesitating purchaser (who needs only the truth to send his hand to his purse) is a pseudonym covering the identity of "one of the leading clerics of our day," has however made a whole book of it. In The Grand Assize (HEINEMANN) Mr. CARTON ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... of the largest railroad systems in the world. It was a big step up for so young a man, and was of course pure favoritism, due to Mr. Cullen's influence. I didn't stay in the position long, for within two years I was offered the presidency of the Chicago & St. Paul, and I think that was won on merit. Whether or not, I hold the position still, and have made my road earn and pay dividends right ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... at the palace gates. This Prince was an impartial chief magistrate; he prided himself upon his "invariable" principles of justice, and he allowed nothing to influence his decisions. His plan for arranging all differences had the merit of being brief; and if brevity be the soul of wit, it certainly was most unreasonable in his subjects to consider his judgments no joke. He always counted the quarterings in the shields of the respective parties, and decided accordingly. Imagine ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... but so many sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure, character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a way of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of putting others forward to save the necessity of posing before them; then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far greater ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... change—the Forest Park. This was new to me. It is beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent merit of having been made mainly by nature. There are other parks, and fine ones, notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens; for St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlier day than did the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... supreme, and he should have as his official advisers a body of line officers who should themselves have the power to pass upon and coordinate all the work and all the proposals of the several bureaus. A system of promotion by merit, either by selection or by exclusion, or by both processes, should be introduced. It is out of the question, if the present principle of promotion by mere seniority is kept, to expect to get the best results from the higher officers. Our men come too old, and stay ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... every known old copy. For this purpose I saw, consulted and compared every quarto and every folio impression in the British Museum, at Oxford, at Cambridge, in the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Ellesmere, and in several private collections. If my edition have no other merit, I venture to assert that it has this. It was a work of great labour, but it was a work also of sincere love. It is my boast, and my only boast, that I have restored the text of Shakespeare, as nearly as possible, to the integrity of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... of living authors. Under other circumstances, I would exercise my editorial prerogative, and change the form of some of his expressions; but the style of Mr. Heady is peculiar: it is his own, and the merit of originality should not be denied to him, even in those rare instances in which he breaks away from the trammels of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... fraud; partly by persuasion and partly by force, they are induced to leave their homes and their kindred to enter these schools and take upon themselves the outward semblance of civilized life. They are chosen not on account of any particular merit of their own, not by reason of mental fitness, but solely because they have Indian blood in their veins. Without regard to their worldly condition; without any previous training; without any preparation whatever, they are transported to the schools—sometimes thousands of ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... you will probably set their smooth faces inward, where they can be seen, which is quite natural and well enough, provided this is not their only merit. If behind there is a lame and impotent conclusion, a tapering point on which it is impossible to build without depending upon the bank of earth, it will be better to have less beauty and more strength. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... did, soon completely succeed in his objects. For, after having kindled Elwood's political prejudices against the embargo law, which was held up to be such an outrage on the commercial rights of the North that it were almost a merit to violate it, Gaut proceeded to show how enormous were the profits to be made in this trade, and how safely the goods might be smuggled in, through the back roads and forest routes with which he was familiar, by employing Frenchmen, as he could, at a cheap rate, to bring ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... insulted, my zeal in your grace's service derided, my very men compelled, perforce of arms, to disobey me, and this by one high in your grace's estimation, nay, connected with your royal self. Surely, my gracious liege, I do but right in resigning the high honor your highness bestowed. I can have little merit to retain it, and such ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... quick to appreciate merit, he was no less so in detecting defects. The Russian soldiers came in for scathing criticism. The type at Egmont impressed him most unfavourably. The clumsy Russian foot-soldier was his special aversion. The accuracy of his criticism has been confirmed by military writers, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... to request the reader's indulgence and conclude. I am far from the vanity of thinking there is any merit in this narrative: I hope censure will be suspended, when it is considered that it was written by one who was as unwilling as unable to adorn the plainness of truth by the colouring of imagination. My life and fortune have been extremely chequered, and my adventures various. Even those I have related ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... "When a verb has two or more nominatives connected by and, it must agree with them jointly in the plural, because they are taken together." Therefore, is should be are; thus, "So much ability and merit are seldom found." Or: "So much ability and so much ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... being elected a member of the Accademia di San Luca in place of the sculptor Massimiliano, who had then just died. Cammuccini, the historical painter, proposed Gibson, and with the ardent assistance of Thorwaldsen he was elected resident Academician of merit. "Like Canova, Thorwaldsen was most generous to young artists," says Gibson of the great Danish master, "and he freely visited all who required his advice. I profited greatly by the knowledge which this splendid sculptor had of his art. On every occasion ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... that we belong to God! that out of countless millions of creatures, far nobler than we, to whom He might have given the joy of life, He has chosen to select us; to think that He has allotted to us a short period of existence here below, during which it is our privilege to be able to merit and draw near to Him for eternity; and that after this, our little time of trial, we are to reign with Him in everlasting glory! Of a certainty we are a favored people and a royal race, for we belong to God. He has purchased our souls by ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... venture to address this little Pamphlet to your Lordship's consideration. I am quite conscious that the outlines I have drawn, afford but a very imperfect description of the feelings they are intended to illustrate; but I claim for them one merit—their truth and freedom from exaggeration. I may have fallen short of the mark, but I have never overshot it: and while I have pointed out what appears to me, to be injustice on the part of others, I hope I have carefully abstained from ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... fulfilled all her expectations. And now just at this point of all others, just when he was most fit to understand, most worthy of trust, she turned from him. His heart swelled as if it would burst, with anger first, almost too strong to be repressed, and with that sense of injured merit which is of all things the most hard to bear. It is hard enough even when one is aware one deserves no better. But to be conscious of your worth and to feel that you are not appreciated, that is indeed too much for any one. There ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... colour-sense of an aesthete. On the other hand, to balance these pardonable defects, she was kind-hearted; not at all artificial in her manner and conversation, or unduly puffed up with her position, as one might have expected her to be from her appearance; and, to put her chief merit last, she reverenced her husband, and believed that in all things—except, perhaps, in those small matters sacred to femininity, which concerned her personal adornment—"he knew best." She was consequently prepared to extend ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Brigadier Dubourgay, the British Minister at Berlin (an old military gentleman, of diplomatic merit, who spells rather ill), when they spoke of this sad matter. My poor old Uncle; he was so good to me in boyhood, in those old days, when I blooded Cousin George's nose! Not unkind, ah, only proud and sad; and was called sulky, being of few words and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "Wanderings" with a hesitating hand. It has little merit, and must make its way through the world as well as it can. It will receive many a jostle as it goes along, and perhaps is destined to add one more to the number of slain in the field of modern criticism. But if it fall, it may still, in death, be useful to ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... University of Edinburgh, and a member of the Free Church of Scotland. At the University I succeeded in carrying a bursary of 14l. 10s. per annum, tenable for four years. I was first medallist in the class of Logic and Metaphysics, thirteenth prizeman in Mathematics, and had a certificate of merit in the class of Natural Philosophy, as will be seen from ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... period of preliminary curing will become a matter of reducing the moisture content of the nuts to a known amount before they are stored. It is likely that other refinements of the method will be made in the near future, but the procedure here described has given results that merit further trial by those concerned with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... might have been more active. Here, too, was Adela at length; every time his name was uttered, perforce she heard; every encomium bestowed upon him by the various speakers was to him like a new bud on the tree of hope. After all, why should he feel this humility towards her? What man of prominence, of merit, at all like his own would ever seek her hand? The semblance of chivalry which occasionally stirred within him was, in fact, quite inconsistent with his reasoned view of things; the English working class has, on the whole, as little ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... something,—the happiness probably of his own position in life, which allowed him to seek the blessings of an undivided couch,—brought to his memory the fact that his nephew had spoken to him about some young woman, some young woman who had possessed not even the merit ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... contented ourselves with this short abstract of the Periplus of the Euxine, because we have already given all the important information it contains on the subject of the commerce of this sea. It is very inferior in merit to the Periplus of the Euxine, which has also been attributed to this Arrian, though Dr. Vincent, we think, has proved that it is the work of an earlier writer, and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... governed by the morality of Christianity. You I know will not believe that in my case, and I know its falsehood as a general rule. I only ask, Do you think I can change the self-formed convictions of twenty-five years, and could you think such a change would have anything in it to merit reward from justice? I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions. To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity. But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... for I am Duty. Soldiers, Louis Bonaparte assassinates the Republic. Defend it. Louis Bonaparte is a bandit; all his accomplices will follow him to the galleys. They are there already. He who is worthy of the galleys is in the galleys. To merit fetters is to wear them. Look at that man who is at your head, and who dares to command you. You take him for a ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... history, a military treatise, an essay, or a scrap of autobiography. It has no more accuracy or literary merit than letters usually possess. So I hope you will not judge it too harshly. My only object is to try and show as truthfully as I can the part played in this monstrous war by a despatch rider during the months from August ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... of habit," said the hunter, quietly. "All you have to do is to get the advantage of position, and then it is no merit to shoot straight. Drop three men out of a hundred, and you will stop the remainder; drop thirty out of a thousand, and the same thing happens. If there are only a hundred, and you have the upper ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... it is true, upon the field of battle some few of its feudal pretensions, but in exchange, titles, honours, and wealth were lavished upon it, and its vanity could at any rate console its ambition. The good fortune of Mazarin opened the eyes of everyone to his merit. No one could refrain from applauding his firmness and his capacity. Had he proved unsuccessful, he would only have been looked upon as a second Concini; victorious, he was another Richelieu to whom it was necessary to succumb, but who ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... peasants lived in greater security. The doctrine of peace upon earth was set forth as one of the first principles of Olaf's mission, and he was never tired of showing that, while Odin and Thor took pleasure in bloodshed and rejoiced in war, Christ the White was a lover of peace, and accorded no merit ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... or a poem, printed or manuscript—I will not say daily, though I sometimes receive more than one in a day, but at very short intervals. I have been consulted by hundreds of writers of verse as to the merit of their performances, and have often advised the writers to the best of my ability. Of late I have found it impossible to attempt to read critically all the literary productions, in verse and in prose, which have heaped themselves on every exposed surface of my library, like snowdrifts along ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in a household picture The unskilled owner held so cheap he grudged Renewal of the chipped and tarnished frame, But values now as priceless—I arouse him Into a quick sense of the worth of that Whose merit hitherto, from lack of skill, Or dulling habit of acquaintanceship, He has not been ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... action in the performance of public duties. For a President there is no future except a re-election, which is in fact an approval by the country of his administration. A wise man will strive to so conduct affairs as to merit that approval. A House of Representatives already condemned by a popular verdict is but a poor guardian of the rights of the people; and a defeated administration performs its duties in the most indifferent manner. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... medicine and of incantations. Kshapanaka treated the primary elements. Amara-Singha compiled a Sanskrit dictionary and a philosophical treatise. Shankubetalabhatta composed comments, and Ghatakarpara a poetical work of no great merit. The books of Mihira are not mentioned. Varaha produced two works on astrology and one on arithmetic. And Bararuchi introduced certain improvements in grammar, commented upon the incantations, and wrote a poem in praise ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... boiled custard, take its merit in brief, Makes a noble dessert, where the dinner's ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... The description of the murder and the execution of the culprits, which here follows in the original, was taken from the newspapers of the day. Coming from such a source they have, as may be imagined, no literary merit whatever. The details of the crime are simply horrible, without one touch of even that sort of romance which sometimes gives a little dignity to murder. As such they precisely suited Mr. Thackeray's purpose at ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... returning by the 'Indian Chief,' has, in my opinion, some claims on the justice of the Society or Government of the United States, or both, which merit consideration. These claims arise out of a long and faithful course of medical services rendered to this Colony, (the only such services deserving much consideration, if we except those of Dr. Ayres and Dr. Peaco, since ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... last, discover by rational means the elbowed path leading to the outer world; and the cage would promptly be deserted. The failure of the great majority proves that the single fugitive was simply digging at random. Circumstances favoured him; and that is all. Do not let us make it a merit that he succeeded where all ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Marshall's; and it is proper to add that one of the distinctive marks of his last edition is the extensive incorporation into his text of the words of Marshall's opinions. Out of 190 cases cited by Hall, a recent English publicist of pre-eminent merit, 54 are American, and in more than three-fifths of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... overlooking that appreciable contingent of morally defective citizens that is to be counted on in any hybrid population, it will hold true that no contemplated enterprise or line of policy will fully commend itself to the popular sense of merit and expediency until it is given a moral turn, so as to bring it to square with the dictates of right and honest dealing. On no terms short of this will it effectually coalesce with the patriotic aspiration. To give the fullest practical effect ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... cartoons, with galleries of sculpture and antiquities and museums of patent models. There are art-schools and libraries, and the buildings, which have been constructing for several years, are of rare architectural merit. The Royal Albert Hall is a vast amphitheatre of great magnificence devoted to exhibitions of industry, art, and music. It is of oval form, and its external frieze and cornice are modelled after the Elgin Marbles. Opposite it are the gardens of the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Wulken was a singer of merit, a player on the harp, and a person of education. She certainly had no seraglio notions of wanting to be petted and pampered and taken care of, or she would not have assumed the office of stepmother to that big family and married a poor man. Bach never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... pockets of stock-jobbers. We have revised our Constitution, and by a great and united national effort, have secured our Protestant succession, only that we may become the tools of a faction, who arrogate to themselves the whole merit of what was a national act. We are governed by upstarts, who are unsettling the landmarks of our social system, and are displacing the influence of our landed gentry by that of a class of men who find their profit in our woes." The rule of the tradesman ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... existence of haut-ton—it is the point of attraction for greetings in splendid equipages, from the haughty bend or familiar nod of arrogance, to the humble bow of servility. Here mimicry without money assumes the consequential air of independence: while modest merit creeps along unheeded through the glittering crowd. Here all the senses are tantalized with profusion, and the eye is dazzled with temptation, for no other reason than because it is the constant business of a fashionable life—not to live in, but out of self, to imitate the luxuries of the affluent ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... rewards—if they did, they would reap very little. The bold man who risked everything to save the Calliope will never earn as much in a year as a horse-riding manikin can in two months. That is the way we encourage our finest merit. And meantime at the "Isthmian games" the hordes of scoundreldom who dwell at ease can enjoy themselves to their hearts' content in their own dreadful way; they break out in their usual riot of foulness; they degrade the shape of man; and the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... says she, "And must this poor man be whipped—and for a mere look? And you so fierce withal! I fear there be many men do merit whipping if this ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... emulation, and in keeping thought alive and preventing a Church from narrowing into a sect, than they do harm by creating a spirit of division. But the semi-political element which infused its bitterness into Church parties during the first half of the eighteenth century, had no such merit. It did nothing to promote either practical activity or theological inquiry. Under its influence High and Broad Church were too often not so much rival schools of religious thought, and representatives of different tones of religious feeling, as rival factions. King ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the established lines. Singularly enough, though entrance to West Point is made very broad, and a large number of those who go there to be educated at the expense of the Government have no social position to begin with, and no claims to special merit, and yet, after having been educated at the public expense, and appointed to life positions, they seem to cherish the feeling that they are a select few, entitled to special consideration, and that they are called upon to guard their class against any insidious invasions. Of course there are ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... discontent. Every man more troubled and perplexed at what they called the violation of one law, than delighted or pleased with the observance of all the rest of the charter. Never imputing the increase of their receipts, revenue, and plenty, to the wisdom, virtue, and merit of the crown; but objecting every small imposition to the exorbitancy and tyranny of the government. The growth of knowledge and virtue were disrelished for the infirmities of some learned men, and the increase of grace and favour to the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... respiration'—puffing. The amount of breath expended in the days of 'the Quarterlies' in this hopeless task would have moved windmills. Not a single favourite of those critics—selected, that is, from favouritism, and apart from merit—now survives. They failed even to obtain immortality for the writers in whom there was really something of genius, but whom they extolled beyond their deserts. Their pet idol, for example, was Samuel Rogers. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... than that of vanity ought to be given to the delicacy with which he was always careful to separate his own merit from every other man's, and to reject that praise to which he had no claim. He did not forget, in mentioning his performances, to mark every line that had been suggested or amended; and was so accurate, as to relate that he owed three ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in too much light from the hall at night—then they are only the more pathetic. For the small pictures of pulpy babies photographed as cupids, the tin souvenirs and the pseudo-Turkish scarves draped over trunks rob the rooms of the simplicity which is their only merit. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... and amusing a work of light literature as exists. Bracebridge Hall is well known from its genuine merit, and has taken its place among the standard works ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet. I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... any unkindness to you, Ellen," the doleful Tadman added apologetically, "for you've been a good friend to me, and if there's one merit I can lay claim to, it's a grateful heart; but of course, when a man marries, he never is the same to his relations as when he was single. It isn't in human ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... as Rejected Addresses, and of about equal merit, is the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, which our grandfathers, if they combined literary taste with Conservative opinions, were never tired of repeating. The extraordinary brilliancy of the group of men who contributed to it guaranteed ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was paying attention to Rita, and, as far as I was able to judge, was making progress in her good graces. My uncle and aunt were, of course, grateful to him for having preserved her from the puma; and though he claimed no merit for the service he had rendered, it was very natural that it should ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... is Plato's merit to have discovered that the laws of the physical universe are resolvable into numerical relations, and therefore capable of being represented by mathematical formulae."—Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... intemperate; they felt the loss of their beloved stimulus, their spirits sunk, and they had rather lay down and rot, and die, than exert themselves. There were a few who seemed to be like hogs, innately dirty, and who had rather lie dirty than clean. Mr. Miller had therefore great merit in compelling these men to follow the rules prescribed to the whole prison. For this he had the thanks of every ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... For you have made your private nuptial bed The humble and fair seminary of peace, No question but: many an unbenefic'd scholar Shall pray for you for this deed, and rejoice That some preferment in the world can yet Arise from merit. The virgins of your land That have no dowries shall hope your example Will raise them to rich husbands. Should you want Soldiers, 'twould make the very Turks and Moors Turn Christians, and serve you for this act. Last, the neglected poets of your time, In honour of this trophy ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... The greatest merit of fiction is the one so ably put forward by Sir James Mackintosh, namely, that it creates and nourishes sympathy. It extends this sympathy, too, in directions where, otherwise, we hardly see when it would have come. But it may ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... to the Congo was entrusted to Captain Tuckey, an officer of merit and varied services, who had published several works connected with geography and navigation. Besides a crew of about fifty, including marines and mechanics; he was accompanied by Mr. Smith, an eminent botanist, who likewise possessed some knowledge of geology; Mr. Cranck, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the Earl of Surrey, son of the conqueror of Flodden. Surrey's survey of the field soon convinced him to his own satisfaction that no half measures was likely to be of any avail. The plan proposed by him had certainly the merit of being sufficiently sweeping. Ireland was to be entirely reconquered. District was to be taken after district, and fortresses to be built to hold them according as they were conquered. The occupation was thus ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... not gone and precipitated matters! I thought you could never amaze me again; but even you might have felt she was a being to merit rather more time ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... McNabb who was to be "given his head" at this meeting was not a new friend of Catholic days but a very old one. A friendly critic of my manuscript asks whether he, even more than Belloc or Chesterton, does not merit the title of the Father of Distributism. At least he brings into the movement something none other could bring. He bases his social philosophy closely on the gospels—of which his knowledge is almost unique—and his articles bear such titles as "The Economics of Bethlehem" or "Big ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... accustomed to the Chinese doctor and his methods, our patients, begging that the best may be done for them, assure the helpers that merit will be accumulated by those who work towards this end. All are surprised to find that a uniform fee is charged and that there is no opportunity for bargaining, as the regular physician writes prescriptions ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend, and led to talk upon ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for any office, or meddled with the affairs of state, being then but a youth, was, to accuse the accuser of his father, Servilius the augur, having caught him in an offense against the state. This thing was much taken notice of among the Romans, who commended it as an act of high merit. Even without the provocation, the accusation was esteemed no unbecoming action, for they delighted to see young men as eagerly attacking injustice, as good dogs do wild beasts. But when great animosities ensued, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Sclavs. Neither did they leave England free from an attack of the same kind. Ethelred was delighted with their spirit, and rejoiced at the violence his nephews offered him; accepting an abominable wrong as though it were the richest of benefits. For he saw far more merit in their bravery than in piety. Thus he thought it nobler to be attacked by foes than courted by cowards, and felt that he saw in their valiant promise a sample of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... And so, by no merit of my own, I became a man of substance and not dependent on Aunt Jeanne's bounty, which I think ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... must have acknowledged himself Casey's inferior in all but amiability; and Casey no doubt knew this. But in friendship as in love there is usually one who likes and one who suffers himself to be liked, and the positions are not allotted by merit. Gilbart—a self-deceiver all his life—had accepted the compliment ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... against sin hit Him; all the blows that man struck back against God hit Him. Do you see that, Julie? That was wonderfully put, but the end was more wonderful. Both, ultimately, cannot kill the Heart of Jesus. There's no sin there to merit or to feel the anger, and we can hurt, but ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things, A rank adjudged by toil-won merit, Content that from employment springs, A heart that in his labor sings; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to hold ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... unequal in poetical merit, and many readers may not unreasonably wish to have those pointed out which, in the judgement of one acquainted with all, are among the best worth reading; though of course the choice of individual readers will not always be ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... ensued. Forest and open rang with shouts and the clash of steel, and hundreds of pistols flashed. The Northern horsemen were driven back. Davis, who led them here, a Southerner by birth, but a regular officer, a man of great merit, seeking to rally them, fell, wounded mortally. A strong body of Illinois troops came up and turned the tide of battle again. The Southern horsemen were driven back. Some of them were taken prisoners and a part of Stuart's baggage became a ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... prominent statesmen displayed such indifference, it is not surprising that for nearly 500 years no single trace of any architectural building of any merit at all in Rome can now be discovered, and that history is silent as to the existence of any monuments worthy of being mentioned. Works of public utility of a very extensive nature were indeed carried out during this period; such, for example, as the Appian Way from Rome to Capua, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... lands; they do not talk of exterminating anybody, but they cover the sea with their ships, they construct immense canals, roads and steamers without jabbering at every stroke of the spade about the rights of man. With them, labor, merit, talent and honest opulence are honored and rewarded aristocracies. Such Republicans would furnish France more Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons, and fewer Robespierres, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... of such a plan we leave undecided; neither in his memoirs nor in other sources is there any trace to be found of his having done so; in no critical works has it been touched upon, the measure being one which the mind had lost sight of. The merit of resuscitating the idea of this means is not great, for it suggests itself at once to any one who breaks loose from the trammels of fashion. Still it is necessary that it should suggest itself for us to bring it into consideration and compare it with the means which Buonaparte ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... interspersed throughout the work, and for these only the simplest materials are required. The studies are carried to those connecting principles which permit the organization of knowledge. The book is illustrated with a number of excellent photographs and over 200 drawings of more than usual merit. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... been yours, I swear to you that I've not belonged to anyone else. I don't claim any merit for this; I should ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... inextricably interwoven with the traditions and convictions which served to veil Mrs. Fontage's destitution not only from others but from herself. Viewed in that light the Rembrandt had perhaps been worth its purchase-money; and I regretted that works of art do not commonly sell on the merit of the moral ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... principle of religious toleration with a clearness which modern philsophers have considered to rival the theory of Locke; and Timour, also established an efficient police in his dominions, and was a patron of literature. Their sun went down full and cloudless, with the merit of having shed some rays of blessing upon the earth, scorching and withering as had been its day. It is remarkable also that all three had something of a misgiving, or softening of mind, miserably unsatisfactory as it was, shortly before their ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... represent. The same thing may be remarked in many other prints by those engravers who were employed by Rubens and Vandyke; they always gave more light than they were warranted by the picture—a circumstance which may merit the ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... admired. With ourselves, in spite of our addiction to athletics, the body takes a secondary place; after a certain age, at least, there are few men who make its systematic cultivation an important factor of their life; and in our estimate of merit physical qualities are accorded either none or the very smallest weight. It was otherwise with the Greeks; to them a good body was the necessary correlative of a good soul. Balance was what they aimed at, balance and harmony; and they could scarcely ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... pictures. Presently he comes back to the table for a magnifying glass, and scrutinizes a drawing very closely. He sighs; shakes his head, as if constrained to admit the extraordinary fascination and merit of the work; then marks the Secretary's list. Proceeding with his survey, he disappears behind the screen. Jennifer comes back with her book. A look round satisfies her that she is alone. She seats herself at the table and admires the memoir—her ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... Mark found everything she touched, or prepared, good, as everything she said sounded pleasant and reasonable. The last is a highly important ingredient in matrimonial life, but the first has its merit. And Bridget Woolston was both pleasant and reasonable. Though a little romantic, and inclined to hazard all for feeling, and what she conceived to be duty, at the bottom of all ran a vein of excellent sense, which had been reasonably attended to. Her temper ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... irony, "do you think it strange that the people of this country should choose an honest man once in a while? ain't we always ready to reward merit? Haven't we done it in the military way with General Grant? Haven't we a right to go into a new field? First the sword, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... new Elizabethan chimney, on a space scarcely larger than the crown of a hat, calmly surveying the world beneath him. High infantile voices appealed to him in vain; baby arms were outstretched to him in hopeless invitation; he remained exalted and obdurate, like Milton's hero, probably by his own merit "raised to that bad eminence." Indeed, there was already something Satanic in his budding horns and pointed mask as the smoke curled softly around him. Then he appropriately vanished, and San Francisco knew him no more. At the same time, however, one Owen M'Ginnis, a neighboring sandhill ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... principle of reward for merit, the teacher introduced a subordinate principle which proved effective when all else failed. The school was made corporately and jointly responsible for the individual. The offence of one was the offence of all, the merit of one the merit of all. Thus every pupil ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,'—remains, at the end of a century, unanswerable as an Apology,—unrivalled as a text-book,—unexhausted as a mine of suggestive thought. It may be convenient for an 'Essayist and Reviewer' to declare that "the merit of the Analogy lies in its want of originality." (p. 286.) There was not much originality perhaps in the remark that an apple falls to the ground. Whatever the faults of the Analogy, that work, under GOD, saved the Church. However "depressing to the soul" (p. 293.) of Mr. Pattison, it ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... I shall read 'meritoriously'—do you think? My friend, what ought I to tell you on that head (or the reverse rather)—of your discourse? I should like to match you at a fancy-flight; if I could, give you nearly as pleasant an assurance that 'there's no merit in the case,' but the hot weather and lack of wit get the better of my good will—besides, I remember once to have admired a certain enticing simplicity in the avowal of the Treasurer of a Charitable Institution at a Dinner got up in ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... offer this book, not for its literary merit, but as the tribute of a daughter to a loved father, whose earnest devotion to ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... change when we have had her so long. How are you getting on in the matter of servants? The other day I received a long letter from Mr. Taylor. I told you I did not expect to hear thence, nor did I. The letter is long, but it is worth your while to read it. In its way it has merit, that cannot be denied; abundance of information, talent of a certain kind, alloyed (I think) here and there with errors of taste. He might have spared many of the details of the bath scene, which, for ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Monnier, enrolled in the National Guard, had received promotion in that patriotic corps. From that date he began to neglect his shop, to criticise military matters, and to think that if merit had fair play he should be a Cincinnatus or a Washington, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me steadfastly whilst he smoked, as if critically taking stock of me, and presently said, "The devil hath an odd way of ordering matters. What particular merit have I that I should have been the one hit upon by you to thaw? Had you brought any one of the others to, he would have advised you against reviving us, and so I should have passed out of my frosty sleep into death as quietly, ay, and as painlessly, as that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... represents a more radical revolution than all the others combined. The softening of the bitter opposition of the early days through the general spirit of progress has been somewhat counteracted by a modern skepticism as to the supreme merit of a democratic government and a general disgust with the prevalent political corruption. This will continue to react strongly against any further extension of the suffrage until men can be made to see that a real democracy has not as yet existed, but that the dangerous experiment ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... The story has the merit of being, to some extent historically, and wholly artistically, true. For the matter-of-facts Mrs. Atherton provides a bibliography of her authorities. Those authorities I have not read, nor should others. Sufficient unto me is the authority of the novel itself splendidly ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... may find elegantly made out at the latter end of his Book, (for he shall see that I have read it quite through, and can hop over pages as fast as he for the life of him) where he can find no other Name or Character for two Gentlemen of Honour and Merit, viz. Mr. Congreve and Captain Vanbrooke, who have written several excellent Plays, and who are only scandalous to our Critick, by being good Poets, yet these he can give no other Names or Characters, but what are Abusive and Ridiculous. ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... entitled "Chekhov and Korolenko." The fellow goes into raptures over me and proves that I am more of an artist than Korolenko. He is probably talking rot, but, anyway, I am beginning to be conscious of one merit of mine: I am the only writer who, without ever publishing anything in the thick monthlies, has merely on the strength of writing newspaper rubbish won the attention of the lop-eared critics—there has been no instance of this before.... ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... obstetric operations is admirable. The drawings, representing original work, have the commendable merit ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... occasional bouts of house-breaking and burglary. They appropriated such property as they could lay hands on in the sequestered houses of the West End, and played tug-of-war with mahogany that lacked the merit of being portable. An epidemic of looting prevailed—and fine sport it ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... de Menezes, died at Cananor about the end of January 1526, in the thirtieth year of his age. He was a man of large stature, with a pleasing countenance, just in all his actions, continent, free from covetousness, a true patron of merit, and of the most unblemished honour. During his government he refused uniformly to accept any of the numerous presents offered him by the eastern princes; and conducted himself with such perfect integrity in every ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... also sin even more grievously than those who turn to the left. They add a sham piety; for, while those who err on the left cannot excuse their error, these do not hesitate to ascribe to themselves remarkable merit. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer of Shakspeare? A true lover of his excellences he certainly was not; for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... interrupted. "I must not hear another word. 'Macbeth doth murder sleep,' and I shall be nervous for a month after this. So, good-night, Mr. Garth, and be sure you merit your first name by taking good care of us while we imitate the example of your worthy captain and 'swing ourselves to sleep,' or rather let the waves perform that office for us. I shall make it my care to-morrow morning early, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... officer under arrest during the siege of Broach, in which Gordon had led the attack. The Colonel's brother, Gordon of Gordonstown, wrote to Murray, saying, "Whether you succeed or not, your two letters are admirably written; and you have obtained great merit and reputation for the gallant stand you have made for your friend." The Colonel himself wrote (August 20,1774): "I cannot sufficiently thank you, my dear sir, for the extraordinary zeal, activity, and warmth of friendship, with which you so strenuously supported and defended ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of this song is the precision with which each character enters and joins the slowly increasing circle. But that is its only merit. It is wretched doggrel, and would make the play far too tedious. I was, however, interested ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... person whom he remembered having received during those two months of slow recovery was Doctor Chassaigne, an old friend of his father, a medical man of real merit, who, with the one ambition of curing disease, modestly confined himself to the role of the practitioner. It was in vain that the doctor had sought to save Madame Froment, but he flattered himself ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Jockies (of the above description) has, I suppose, been long extinct in Scotland; but the old remembered beggar, even in my own time, like the Baccoch, or travelling cripple of Ireland, was expected to merit his quarters by something beyond an exposition of his distresses. He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not withheld from exercising his powers that way by any respect of persons, his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... another for him, and presently lay down in his corner. He wondered to himself what the business could be that his companion was evidently anxious that he should hear nothing of. He might wish that he should alone have the merit of reporting it, or it might be something that it was deemed the Duke of Burgundy himself, the butchers' friend and ally, would not approve of. At any rate he was determined, if possible, to find it all out; he therefore ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... luxury, were bliss refin'd, To view the alter'd region of the mind; Where whim and mystery, like wizards, rule, And conjure wisdom from the seeming fool; Where learned heads, like old cremonas, boast Their merit soundest that are cracked the most; While Genius' self, infected with the joke, His person decks with ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... do now. I am pleased that you are so fully convinced of my candour, for to know that you suspected me of a deficiency in this virtue would grieve and mortify me beyond expression. I do not derive any merit from the possession of it, for in me it is constitutional. Yet I think where it is possessed it will rarely exist alone, and where it is wanted there is reason to doubt the existence of almost every other virtue. As ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that are justified, and is inherent therein."(974) "That justice which is called ours, because we are justified from its being inherent in us, that same is (the justice of God) because it is infused into us by God, through the merit of Christ."(975) "If any one saith that men are justified ... to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost and is inherent in them,... let him be anathema."(976) Hence Justification is defined by the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... is no guilt in him, for that, from the day of his coming into the world, he hath seen neither ease nor joyance, and indeed his favour is faded and his charms changed [with long prison]. What is his offence that he should merit this punishment? Indeed, it is others than he who were to blame, and God hath given thee the victory over them, and there is no fault in this poor wight.' Quoth Belehwan, 'Indeed, it is as ye say; but I am fearful of his craft and am not assured from his mischief; belike the most part of the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... That on her own merit she might rise to the first rank of musicians, Alma did not doubt. Her difficulty lay in the thought that it might require a long time, a wearisome struggle, to gain the universal recognition which alone would satisfy her. Therefore must Cyrus Redgrave be brought to the exertion of all his influence, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... are entitled to confer degrees as a measure of honor the college wishes to bestow on men and women of merit. This privilege has been so much abused by some colleges that a little confusion arises as to the true value and significance of the degrees conferred. In 1890, there were 8,290 degrees conferred in course ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... in an arena outside of which each lords it in his own way. Education, equally distributed through the masses, brings the son of a porter into a government office to decide the fate of some man of merit or some landed proprietor whose door-bell his father may have answered. The last comer is therefore on equal terms with the oldest veteran in the service. A wealthy supernumerary splashes his superior as he drives his tilbury ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Robespierre, &c.; tragedies which never reached the stage, Brutus et Cassius, Philippe deux, Tibere; translations from Sophocles and Lessing, from Gray and Horace, from Tacitus and Aristotle; with elegies, dithyrambics and Ossianic rhapsodies. As a satirist he possessed great merit, though he sins from an excess of severity, and is sometimes malignant and unjust. He is the chief tragic poet of the revolutionary period, and as Camille Desmoulins expressed it, he decorated Melpomene with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... of course, that home exercises have the merit of being cheap. No special apparatus is required. The ordinary household furniture and such heirlooms as are readily available will usually suffice. An onyx clock will do instead of chest weights. Any two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica will take the place of dumb-bells or Indian ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... north of Phoenicia, and not in the south, in the neighbourhood, not of Tyre and Sidon, but of Marathus and Aradus. Two of them, known as the Meghazil,[673] form a group which is very remarkable, and which, if we may trust the restoration of M. Thobois,[674] must have had considerable architectural merit. Situated very near each other, on the culminating point of a great plateau of rock, they dominate the country far and wide, and attract the eye from a long distance. One seems to have been in much simpler and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... an approximation and unnatural alliance of sects, that I am inclined to think the evil thus produced would more than outweigh the good done by dispersing the Bibles. I think the last fifty or sixty pages of my brother's pamphlet[66] merit the serious consideration of all persons of the Established Church who have connected themselves with the sectaries ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the profession; for, how can a man give judicious directions unless he possesses personal knowledge of the details requisite to effect his ultimate purpose in the best and cheapest manner? It has happened to me more than once, when taking opportunities of being useful to a young man of merit, that I have experienced opposition in taking him from his books and drawings, and placing a mallet, chisel, or trowel in his hand, till, rendered confident by the solid knowledge which experience only can bestow, he was qualified to insist on the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... exalted station. A bishop was then not often selected because he could preach well, but because he knew how to govern. Who, even in our times, would think of filling the See of London, although it is Protestant, with a man whose chief merit is in his eloquence? They want a business man for such a post. Eloquence is no objection, but executive ability is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the Retreat, an American physician of celebrity in the department of Psychological Medicine says, "Merit of this kind is seldom duly appreciated by the world, for it does not strike the imagination like that of brilliant discoveries in the physical sciences, and the very reason that reforms like that in question are so obviously sanctioned ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... external embellishments of superior importance to mental or moral endowments. He rarely fails to remark upon men not so well dressed as himself, and to refer to the defect as one sufficient to make the individual contemptible, no matter what may be the circumstances or merit of the person referred to. I have more than once noticed that Charles Wilton passes over every thing in his disgust for ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... come to speech: it is much easier to speak of them than of ideas; and they are sometimes much more pressing with some! Nay, for another thing, may not this religious reticence, in these devout good souls, be perhaps a merit, and sign of health in them? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such religious men, have as yet nothing of 'Methodism;' no Doubt or even root of Doubt. Religion is not a diseased self-introspection, an agonising inquiry: their duties are clear to them, the way of supreme good plain, indisputable, and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... mistaken his man. On the very first occasion when he had attempted to put on the screw, Farnie had flatly refused to have anything to do with what he proposed. He said that he was not Monk's fag—a remark which had the merit of being absolutely true. ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... Quebec. General Carleton has gained honour by his behaviour this winter. He showed himself a brave steady officer careful not to expose rashly the lives of his men, in short a chief whom we esteem and cheerfully obey. Lieut. Colonel Maclean has likewise great merit in having contributed much to the preservation of this place by his forwarding the reparations of the fortifications and his indefatigable care and trouble in the directing the duty of the Garrison, together ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... veins both of humor and of stoicism, gave her man of genius exactly what he wanted. She survived him for many years, living her own life at Eastbourne, climbing Beachy Head in all weathers, interested in everything, and writing poems of little or no technical merit, but raised occasionally by sheer intensity of feeling—about her husband—into something very near the real thing. I quote these lines from a privately printed ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... department and receive a salary. In four years the commission saved the city a million dollars. Des Moines, Iowa, added to the Galveston plan the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, put in force a merit system for subordinate officials, and adopted the non-partisan open primary. These experiments proved so popular that in 1908-9 not less than one hundred and thirty-eight cities, including most of the large ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... tale might have had the merit of truth; it certainly lacked that of brevity. He talked on, rolling a fresh cigarette at every second sentence, and Gerald made notes of such points as he considered important, but at the conclusion of the Spaniard's statement the journalist could not see that it had differed ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... twenty thousand men killed in a battle, with no other feeling than that 'it was a glorious victory.' Twenty thousand, or ten thousand, what reck we of their sufferings? The hosts who perished are evidence of the completeness of the triumph; and the completeness of the triumph is the measure of merit, and the glory of the conqueror. Our schoolmasters, and the immoral books they so often put into our hands, have inspired us with an affection for heroes; and the hero is more heroic in proportion to the numbers of the slain—add a cypher, not one iota is added to our disapprobation. ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... number[33] of the Port Folio we inserted a very humorous parody of the following ballad of Buerger. We understand from the criticks in the German Language that the original is eminently beautiful. Its merit was once so highly appreciated in England that a host of translators started at once in the race for public favor. The ensuing version which is, we believe, by Sir Walter Scott, Esqr., well deserves ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... [Rose,] daughter of the celebrated Arabic poet Nasif el Yazijy, who aided Dr. Eli Smith in the translation of the Bible into Arabic. She is now a member of the Evangelical Church in Beirut. She herself has written several poems of rare merit; one an elegy upon the death of Dr. Smith; another expressing grateful thanks to Dr. Van Dyck for attending her sick brother. Only this can be introduced here, a poem lamenting the death of Sarah Huntington Bistany, daughter of Raheel, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... more than a heaven and a hell, to one or the other of which all spirits of men shall be assigned, perhaps on the basis of a very narrow margin of merit or demerit. As it affirms the existence of an infinite range of graded intelligences, so it claims the widest and fullest gradation of conditions of future existence. It holds that the honest, though, perchance, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... better with us than it did with our predecessors. Hence it follows that in the provinces of the natural sciences, in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics and geography the sages of our college have produced works of unsurpassed merit. Indeed the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cried, "hearken ere you strike. You can kill me if you will who are justly angered, and to die at your hands is an honour that I do not merit. Yet, dread lord, remember that if you slay me then you will never find ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... tale—the first she had ever read in her life—but she had only known life for two months past. Hence the effect produced on her by this work must not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any kind as to the greater or less merit of this composition from the pen of a Parisian who had thus imported into the province the manner, the brilliancy, if you will, of the new literary school, it could not fail to be a masterpiece to a young girl abandoning all her intelligence and her innocent heart to her first ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... old, and I say there is no love between us," he observed, "but it is by no doing of mine that you are here. Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... we would not bear it all," he remarked, "but grow impatient and exacting like children who rise in the night to examine the Christmas stocking, rather than wait until morning. Most often we should join those we loved rather than bide our time if we were certain. Moreover, what merit would there be in faith or fortitude? No, Miriam, it is best as it is, believe me. Every thing is for the best that God has done; we must not dare to question the ways any more than the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... as a brother and a friend, in consideration of the hearty friendship which we bear you, and of which we are willing to give you proof. We desire the same part in your friendship, considering that we believe it to be our merit, being of the same dignity with yourself. We conjure you thus in the quality of a brother. Adieu." The present consisted, in the first place, of one single ruby made into a cup, about half a foot high, an inch thick, and filled with round pearls of half a dram each. 2. Of the skin of a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... father shook his fist at him. Secure in his position, Melons redoubled his exertions and at last landed Tommy on the roof. Then it was that the humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been acting in collusion with Melons. He grinned delightedly back at his parents, as if "by merit raised to that bad eminence." Long before the ladder arrived that was to succor him, he became the sworn ally of Melons, and, I regret to say, incited by the same audacious boy, "chaffed" his own flesh and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Bonaparte, that it is difficult to appraise the importance of either, from the point of view of the progress of civilization and of the organization of modern political institutions, at its true worth. The faults of both are prominent and outstanding, but it nevertheless was the merit of the Revolution that it enabled France, and along with France a good portion of western Europe, to rid itself of the worst survivals of the Middle Ages, while to Napoleon much of western Europe is indebted for the foundation of its civil institutions, unified legal ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... registering manometer does not give so accurate indications, perhaps, but it possesses, as an offset, the merit of being very portable and easily put in place; and, besides, it inscribes the hour at which ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... have been more disposed to concealment than his sterner companion, did the circumstances very well admit of its adoption. But he had tact enough to discover that equivocation would be useless, at that moment, and he made a merit of necessity by imitating a frankness, which, in the case of Hutter, was the offspring of habits of indifference acting on a disposition that was always ruthless, and reckless of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... had spent many long, desolate Sunday afternoons thinking how lonely it would be in Heaven with nobody there but God and the angels and the Starr family. Even the family, it seemed, was not to be admitted as an entity, but separately, according to individual merit. Grandmother and Aunt Matilda had many a wordy battle as to who would be there and who wouldn't, but both were sadly agreed that Frank ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... it," writes the historian De Thou respecting the battle of Sainte Gemme, "as La Noue, the most generous of men, who has written on the civil wars with as much fidelity as judgment, always disposed to render conspicuous the merit of others, and very reserved respecting his own, has not said a word of this victory." De Thou, iv. (liv. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... he would propitiate those whom he had injured, and at the same time accumulate such an amount of merit for his benevolence, that the gods would make it easy for him when his time of reckoning came, and the accounts of his life were made ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... succession gain'd your crown, (Cowards are monarchs by that title made,) Part of your merit Chance would call her own, And half your virtues ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the first picture to dazzle and astonish by gorgeous variety, Paul in his seems to wish to get his effect by simplicity, and has produced the most noble harmony that can be conceived. Many more works are there that merit notice,—a singularly clever, brilliant, and odious Jordaens, for example; some curious costume-pieces; one or two works by the Belgian Raphael, who was a very Belgian Raphael, indeed; and a long gallery ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power, and prophecy. The boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much cognizant of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... desire to acknowledge the aid which has been readily extended to my undertaking by the Delegate from Minnesota— Hon. HENRY M. RICE— whose faithful and unwearied services— I will take the liberty to add— in behalf of the territory, merit the highest praise. I am also indebted for valuable information to EARL S. GOODRICH, Esq., editor of the Daily Pioneer (St. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... haue made mention. In returning at the end of the plaine are the abouesaid 4. pillers, to wit, two on ech side of the way, through the midst whereof they say it is needfull that euery one passe, saying, that who so passeth without looseth all that merit which in his pilgrimage he had gotten. Also from the mountaine of pardons vntill they be passed the said pillers none dare looke backward, for feare least the sinnes which he hath left in the mountains returne to him againe. Being past these pillers ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy—"if you see any merit in ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... on her whom he had called a saint. And what could have led him to suppose that the woman condemned by good Father Lemaistre and my Lord of Beauvais was not a bad woman? The truth is that in the presence of these friars he arrogated to himself merit for having executed a witch and taken pains therein, wherefore he came to ask for his pot of wine. One of the monks, who happened to be a friar preacher, Brother Pierre Bosquier, forgot himself so ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it— nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he was going to his work ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... with the end-rime—in the third scene, when the Weird Sisters speak. Again, there is the staff-rime when Banquo addresses them. Again, the strongest alliteration, combined with the end-rime, runs all through the Witches' spell-song in Act iv, scene 1. This feature in Shakspeare appears to me to merit closer investigation; all the more so because a less regular alliteration, but still a marked one, is found in not a few passages of a number of his plays. Only one further instance of the systematic employment of alliteration may here be noted in passing. It is in Ariel's songs in the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... issued) under his arm. Seeing me some way off, he held aloft the volumes and began to shout in great glee. When I came up to him he cried out, "Here is the very best I can do, and I am carrying it to Prescott as a reward of merit for having given me my first dinner in America. I stand by this book, and am willing to leave it, when ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... very glad to find how much I like it—that is speaking far below the mark—I may say how I wonder and delight in it. I am rejoiced to find that this is so; and I am quite sure that it is not owing to my old prejudice, but to the intrinsic merit and beauty of the Book itself. With all its faults of detail, often mere carelessness, what a broad Shakespearian Daylight over it all, and all with no Effort, and—a lot else that one may be contented to feel without having to write an ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... protection—and market commissioners who superintended the currency (in kind), commerce, the genuineness of wares, the justness of weights and measures, the prices of commodities, and the observance of prohibitions. Since to all official posts men of merit were appointed without regard to lineage, the cap-ranks inaugurated by Prince Shotoku were abolished, inasmuch as they designated personal status by inherited right only, and they were replaced by new cap-grades, nineteen in all, which were distinguished partly by their borders, partly by ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... aiding, assisting, abetting, and comforting the generals and other officers, civil and military, of the said King, to enforce his authority in and over this State, and the good people of the same: And whereas the aforesaid treason, and other atrocious crimes, justly merit forfeiture ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... a special kind of means with which he works, requiring knowledge and dexterity; but it may be assumed that in addition to his ability to express himself he has something to say. We may test a man's merit as a painter by his ability to paint. As an artist his greatness is to be judged with reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist his technical skill derives its value from the measure in which it is adequate to their expression. In the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... slightest claim,—I run the risk of passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... from Giacomi at Chiavenna, special qualities of wine, the produce of certain vineyards, are to be obtained. Up to the present time this wine trade has been conducted with simplicity and honesty by both the dealers and the growers. One chief merit of Valtelline wine is that it is pure. How long so desirable a state of things will survive the slow but steady development of an export business may ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is still further to be noted, as an expression of the Christian temper, as displayed in this kind of charity, that it never appears in the inscriptions as furnishing a claim for praise, or as being regarded as a peculiar merit. There is no departure from the usual simplicity of the gravestones in those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... written remarks in prose, poetry, or doggerel rhyme, so we found plenty of food for thought and some amusement before we got even half way through the volume. Some of these effusions might be described as of more than ordinary merit, and the remainder as good, bad, and indifferent. Those written in foreign languages—and there were many of them—we could neither read nor understand, but they gave us the impression that the fame of John o' Groat's had spread throughout the civilised world. There ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... only claim To merit, not to seek for fame, The good and just to please, A state above the fear of want, Domestic love, Heaven's choicest grant, Health, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... without any merit save to advance the interest of a patentee, or contractor, or railroad company, will become a law, while measures of interest to the whole people are suffered to slumber, and die at the close of the session from sheer neglect. It is known to Congressmen that these lobbyists are paid to influence ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... friendship, your companionship. I have made something of myself. If mademoiselle would only deign to—— It is impossible that she should love me—it would be an ineffable condescension—but is there not some merit in the thought that the last survivors of the two lines should ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... life-like pictures is shown by the following story. In a contest between him and some rival artists, horses were the objects represented. Perceiving that the judges were unfriendly to him, and partial, Apelles insisted that less prejudiced judges should pronounce upon the merit of the respective pieces, demanding, at the same time, that the paintings should be shown to some horses that were near. When brought before the pictures of his rival, the horses exhibited no concern; but upon being shown the painting of Apelles, they manifested by neighing and other intelligent ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... and will bother the critics not a little. The interest of the book is undeniable, and is wonderfully sustained to the end of the story. I think it exhibits far more power than any lady-novel of recent date, and it certainly has the rare merit of entire originality." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... himself suggested that I should bring them to you on Christmas Eve, when it is the custom for many to give to their friends tokens of their regard and good will. I congratulate you heartily, sir, and rejoice that, for once, merit has met with ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... judge the thing behind the word. Not what we are, but what we have, if the latter is substantial and declarative, is the only idea which multitudes have of success. In a clever character-study of a well-known public man we are told that, "As far as he has a philosophy at all, it is this, that merit rides in a motor-car." It is a definition which fosters the impression that success can be secured the more quickly and surely by methods that are bound up ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... listened to an offer of devotion, and rejected it—her heart would be more securely at peace. So she thought. Secretly she deemed it a hard thing never to have known that common triumph of her sex. And, moreover, it took away from the merit of her position as a leader and encourager of women living independently. There might be some who said, or thought, that she ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... hot on the trail of an idea. There will be none of that, so that it will not be difficult to keep sweet and serene. I would not thank any one to hand me a sword and shield when the battle is over; I want it now while the battle rages; I claim my full equipment now, not on merit, but on need. ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet. I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Writing; the whole Assembly was admitted, and gave, by their Presence, a new Beauty and Pleasure to these happy Mansions. I found the Man did not pretend to enter himself, but served as a kind of Forester in the Lawns to direct Passengers, who by their own Merit, or Instructions he procured for them, had Virtue enough to travel that way. I looked very attentively upon this kind homely Benefactor, and forgive me, Mr. SPECTATOR, if I own to you I took him for your self. We were no sooner entered, but we were sprinkled ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... can never be opened with a lie, Mr. Cleek. They might be opened by the very thing of which you speak—confession. I think I should take my chances upon that. At any rate, if I failed, I should at least have preserved my self-respect and done more to merit what I wanted than if I had secured it by treachery. Think of the boy you helped a little while ago. How much respect will you have for him if he never lives up to his promise; never goes to Clarges Street at all? Yet if he does live up to it, will he not be doubly worth ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... line until he makes his appearance at the rudder-chains, generally speaking quite out of breath, not at the rapidity of his motion, but because, when so long under the water, he has expended all the breath in his body, and is induced to take in salt water en lieu. There is much merit in this invention; people are very apt to be content with walking the deck of a man-of-war, and complain of it as a hardship, but when once they have learnt, by experience, the difference between being comfortable above board, and ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be an impropriety to mention in general orders a service such as you have rendered. To do so might subject you to greater peril, or to ill treatment were you to fall into the hands of the enemy. I needed no fresh proof of your merit to bear it in remembrance. No one can feel more sensibly the value of your gallant conduct, or more rejoice ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... M. Joly, of Toulouse, has in his possession portions of an irregularly circular, flat-bottomed vessel, from the cave of Nabrigas, on which the finger-marks of the hand that moulded the clay are still clearly distinguishable on the baked earthenware. That is the great merit of pottery, viewed as an historical document; it retains its shape and peculiarities unaltered through countless centuries, for the future edification of unborn antiquaries. Litera scripta manet, and so does baked pottery. The hand itself that formed that rude bowl has long since mouldered ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... time shows oddly in the introduction of our Revolutionary War, by way of episode, among the wars of Israel. Greenfield Hill, 1794, was an idyllic and moralizing poem, descriptive of a rural parish in Connecticut of which the author was for a time the pastor. It is not quite without merit; shows plainly the influence of Goldsmith, Thomson, and Beattie, but as a whole is tedious and tame. Byron was amused that there should have been an American poet christened Timothy, and it is to be feared that amusement would have been the chief emotion ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... aside the curtain, and the young girl's portrait was revealed. It was by no means a work of extraordinary merit. The artist was only twenty-four years of age, and had been compelled to interrupt his studies to toil for his daily bread, but it was full of originality and genius. Sabine gazed at it for a few moments in silence, and ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... There's merit in a voice that's truthful: Yours is not honey-sweet nor youthful, But querulously fit. And if we cannot sing, we'll say Something to ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... something; import, signify, matter, boot, be an object; carry weight &c. (influence) 175; make a figure &c. (repute) 873; be in the ascendant, come to the front, lead the way, take the lead, play first fiddle, throw all else into the shade; lie at the root of; deserve notice, merit notice, be worthy of notice, be worthy of regard, be worthy of consideration. attach importance to, ascribe importance to, give importance to &c. n.; value, care for, set store upon, set store by; mark &c. 550; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Macaulay had not the poetic sense he was really showing that he himself had not the dramatic sense. The baldness of the idea and of the language had evidently offended him. But this is exactly where the true merit lies. Macaulay is giving the rough, blunt words with which a simple-minded soldier appeals to two comrades to help him in a deed of valour. Any high-flown sentiment would have been absolutely out of character. The lines are, I think, taken ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... palls, but a stirring tale of heroic deeds exerts a powerful fascination. This explains the attractiveness of the hero tale, the story of adventure, and the stirring historical narrative. The action should have the merit of artistic moderation. Stories in which there is a carnival of action, for example, the "dime thriller", under whose spell so many boys fall, must be avoided. Literature that leaves the mind so feverish that the pupil loses interest in other subjects is worse than ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... a wealthy lady, the head of a family, who had derived the greatest possible benefit from the instructions of "Educatrix." If asked who she was, she could answer, that "Educatrix" would on no account allow the name to be made known, as it was a great merit of her system that she kept the names of her pupils a profound secret from each other, and from the rest of the world. The good sense of this regulation would at once be appreciated by all mature ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... among our people, but simply an humble individual, endeavoring to seek a livelihood by a profession obtained entirely by his own efforts, without relatives and friends able to assist him; except such friends as he gained by the merit of his course and conduct, which he here gratefully acknowledges; and whatever he has accomplished, other young men may, by making corresponding efforts, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... the promise was made to prevent you from throwing away four shillings in an injudicious purchase. I do not like my own share of the work, nor care that it should be read: Ellis Bell's I think good and vigorous, and Acton's have the merit of truth and simplicity. Mine are chiefly juvenile productions; the restless effervescence of a mind that would not be still. In those days, the sea too often 'wrought and was tempestuous,' and weed, sand, shingle—all turned up in the tumult. This image is much ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in a class by itself because it has high literary merit aside from great dramatic force. The poet flashes out frequently in the terse lines of the early part of the play, and later reaches high-water mark in the scenes at Stephen Ghent's home on the mountain top. The play is worth many ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... about life, you know, with a sort of general application, one of your best. It made me smile, not laugh. I always think that is such a test of merit. We smile at wit; we laugh ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Religion, for example. Well, I have no religion, that's plain. I might call myself this or that for the sake of seeming respectable, but it all comes to the same thing. I don't mind Bella going to church if she wishes, but I must teach her that there's no merit whatever in doing so. It isn't an ideal marriage, but perhaps as good as this imperfect world allows. If I have children, I can then put my educational theories ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... district who was nearly good enough for her; and George felt glad that she was reserved and critical. It would be disagreeable to contemplate her yielding to any suitor unless he were a man of exceptional merit. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... spread to others, or much corrupted even them that are tainted. We trust that the days are dawning now when Holy Church will have her ancient powers restored, and will be able to deal with heretics even as they merit. But however that may be, be it your work to watch and listen with all the powers you have. I trust that there will be nought you will hear save what is to the credit of these ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... at length that the people were the best judges of my merit, for they buy my works; and besides, in my rambles where I am not personally known, I have frequently heard one or other of my adages repeated, with as Poor Richard says at the end of it. This gives me some satisfaction, as it showed, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Only article of the kind, which by its own merit, and the simple publicity of its uses, has been adopted by the best families as an invariable table delicacy. It is prepared by a process to which long experience has given the greatest perfection, and from grain carefully selected from the choicest European crops; these advantages are so appreciable, ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... of the King the tone of this scene naturally rises—"in good time," as most readers will say. His brief interview with the two nobles has at least the merit of ease and animation. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... piece proceeds throughout by intrigue; that is, a complication of cross-purposes wherein the several persons strive to outwit and circumvent one another. And the stratagems all have the appropriate merit of causing a pleasant surprise, and a perplexity that is grateful, because it stops short of confusion; while the awkward and grotesque predicaments, into which the persons are thrown by their mutual crossing and tripping, hold attention ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... their pride of spirit, Their exultation in their trial, [xiv] Detracts most largely from the merit Of all their ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... therefore, leave poor Ned to tell his own tale, and what he saw in his vision, which at any rate has the merit of originality about it. As more extraordinary dreams have come to pass, there is no saying what the beginning of the twentieth century may bring forth, for International football matches with Australia, America, and Canada have been talked of, and some of them ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... the Indian himself, the frontiersman holds in slight esteem the soldiers who are sent for the protection of the border. The objects of his supreme hatred still often merit his good opinion for their bravery and fighting qualities, but upon raw Eastern recruits and West-Point fledglings he looks with mild disdain. Having learned the Indian methods by many hard knocks, he doubtless fails to exercise proper charity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... physical, but the intellectual and spiritual part, partook of the stolid transformation. But in not a single instance did it seem as if the wood were imbibing the ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide distinction is here! and how far the slightest portion of the latter merit have outvalued the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fact ignorant of what goes to constitute merit in a breeding animal, there is an inclination to treat as imaginary and unreal the higher values placed upon well-bred animals over those of mixed origin, unless they are larger and handsomer in proportion to the price demanded. The sums paid for qualities which are not at once apparent ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... Each man had his own work to do, and what other men did or left undone was their own business. His brother was in a mess, and he had to help him out of it, whether he deserved it or no—not weighing his merit, but pardoning his offences and just helping him in his need. The glories of life might fade away, as the old hymn said, or they might last; but all that each man had to care about so long as he remained ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... than a heaven and a hell, to one or the other of which all spirits of men shall be assigned, perhaps on the basis of a very narrow margin of merit or demerit. As it affirms the existence of an infinite range of graded intelligences, so it claims the widest and fullest gradation of conditions of future existence. It holds that the honest, though, perchance, mistaken soul who lived or tried to live according to the light he had received, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... well-bred, appropriate action, not less dignified for being somewhat too quiet; readiness for extempore replies; industry and method for prepared expositions of principle or fact. But his principal merit with the chiefs of the assembly was in the strong good sense and worldly tact which made him a safe speaker. For this merit he was largely indebted to his frequent conferences with Chillingly Mivers. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... In the case of a galvanometer, a coefficient expressing its delicacy. It is the reciprocal of the current required to deflect the needle through one degree. By using the reciprocal the smaller the current required the larger is the figure of merit. The same term may be ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... man of colossal finance. One can never blame Fleet Street for "booming" any man or woman. A couple of thousand pounds to a Press agent will secure for a burglar an invitation to dine at a peer's table. Plainly speaking, in Europe since the war, real merit has become almost a back number. Money buys ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... what I have heard to-night, that I have read in the journals a statement from an English source, that Sir Frederic Bruce attributed to Mr. Burlingame the merit of the happy reform in the relations of foreign governments to China. I am quite sure that I heard from Mr. Burlingame in New York, in his last visit to America, that the whole merit of it belonged to Sir Frederic Bruce. It appears that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... your coffers need replenishing, fair Lady Bountiful?" asked Ernest. "This is an association founded on principles which I revere. If any class of females merit the sympathy and kind offices of the generous sisterhood, it is that, whose services are so ill repaid, and whose lives must be one long drawn sigh of weariness and anxiety. Give, my Gabriella, to your ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Christ Jesus, as ever a poor sinner had to say, &c.—I bless the Lord I am not come here as a thief or murderer, and I am free of the blood of all men and hate bloodshed directly or indirectly, and now I am a poor sinner; and never could merit any thing but wrath: and I have no righteousness of my own, all is Jesus Christ's and his alone. Now as to my interrogations I was not clear to deny Pentland or Bothwel. The council asked me if I acknowledged authority; I said, All authority ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... military point of view, is about as important. It is twenty miles long and sixteen wide, and has held a conspicuous place in historical records for nearly three thousand years. The houses of the city are mostly large stone structures, and many have notable architectural merit, fronting thoroughfares of good width, well paved, and lighted with gas. An aspect of cleanliness and freshness pervades everything. Many of the streets run up the steep hillside on which the town stands, and are flanked by broad stone ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... fire bright, his coffee made exactly as his peculiar fancy dictated (for he was a man who had his theory about everything based upon what he knew of science, and often perfectly original)—then he began to think: not that Alice had any particular merit, but that he had got into remarkably good lodgings; his restlessness wore away, and he began to consider himself as almost settled for life ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... seamen. In the present very prosperous situation of our affairs, I have thought it would be wise to endeavor to gain a regular and acknowledged access in every court in Europe but most the Southern. The countries bordering on the Mediterranean I think will merit our earliest attention. They will be the important markets for our great commodities of ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... paths of love be spred over with flowers in one Word that you may not address in vain to the charming Mss. M. I am almost tempted to fall in love with that unknown beauty, 't would not be quite like Don Quixotte for your liking to her would be for me a very strong prejudice of her merit, which the poor Knight had not in ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... gentle with them was an instinct rather than merit in Harry Esmond; so much so that he thought almost with a feeling of shame of his liking for them and of the softness into which it betrayed him. On this day the poor fellow had not only had his young friend, the milkmaid's brother, on ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... enemy's spies are equally efficient. Yesterday, more by accident than any merit of my own, I caught a herring fisher in the mouth of the Schelde who was in English pay; I think I have hit on an apparently important clue, which I intend to follow up in Antwerp, after reporting myself ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... sitting-room Mrs. Heth entertained her distinguished son-to-be, during the little delay. She always enjoyed a good talk with Hugo. He was her pledge of a well-spent life, her Order of Merit, her V.C. and Star and Garter, rolled together in a single godlike figure. She beamed upon him, tugging at white gloves half a size too small. Canning tapped a well-shod foot with his walking-stick, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... dispatching Jimmy's Nellie for hot plates; "Roast Vealer for Mac," and as Mac smiled and acknowledged the honour, Rosy was dismissed. "Boilee Ham" was allotted to the Dandy; and as Bertie's Nellie scampered away, Cheon announced other triumphs in turn and in order of merit, each of the company receiving a dish also in order of merit: Tam-o'-Shanter contenting himself with the gravy boat, while, from the beginning, the Quiet Stockman had been honoured ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the manuscript. Happily the manuscript, declined by publishers, was in the end destroyed, and editors have been saved from the necessity of printing or reprinting these crudities of a great poet's childhood. Their only merit, he assured Mr Gosse, lay in "their mellifluous smoothness." It was an event of capital importance in the history of Browning's mind when—probably in his thirteenth year—he lighted, in exploring a book-stall, upon a copy of one ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the least. It is his own handwriting and his signature. Whoever formed the words, it is the same thing. It was needed only to prove to her that he had not even the merit of being true ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... take on passengers, Margaret's bright eyes would if possible discover a shop with the sign 'Grocery;' and then, going up to some one of her new friends, would gravely spell 'G-r-o, gro, c-e, ce, groce, r-y, ry, grocery;' followed usually by an intimation that a reward of merit would be acceptable. She was so extremely small for her age, that her achievement of spelling a three-syllable word was looked upon as something marvellous by the passengers, and some one would immediately take her ashore, and buy her some candy or ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... them from my sight, And each majestic phantom sunk in night. Then came the smallest tribe I yet had seen; Plain was their dress, and modest was their mien. "Great idol of mankind! we neither claim The praise of merit, nor aspire to fame! But safe, in deserts, from the applause of men, Would die unheard-of, as we lived unseen. 'Tis all we beg thee, to conceal from sight Those acts of goodness, which themselves requite. O let us still the secret joy partake, To follow virtue ev'n for virtue's ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... developed in it did not then exist; the military regime had prevented public opinion from acquiring strength, and the absence of a constitution, in which every individual could make himself known by his merit, had left the state unprovided with men of talent, capable of defending it. The favor of a king, being necessarily arbitrary, cannot be sufficient to excite emulation; circumstances which are peculiar to the interior of courts, may keep a man of great merit from the helm of affairs, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... friends, Mr Renwick is quite right. This feeling of indignation against our oppressors is a most imprudent thing. If we desire to enjoy our own contempt, and to deserve the derision of men, and to merit the abhorrence of Heaven, let us yield ourselves to all that Charles Stuart and his sect require. We can do nothing better, nothing so meritorious, nothing by which we can so reasonably hope for punishment here and condemnation hereafter. But if there is one man at this meeting,—I ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... jointed, the grip being 4 feet 9 inches and the shaft 8 feet. Its distinguishing merit consists of an array of barbs (the serrated spurs of sting-rays) fifteen in number, and ranging in length from 1 inches to 4 inches. In the first eight inches from the point are five barbs, the second being double, and the rest are spaced irregularly in accordance with ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... man entered Tours the Ah! Ah! of the crowd woke him up, and he came with great pomp with his suite to the Church of Notre-Dame de l'Egrignolles, formerly called la greigneur, as if you said that which has the most merit. Blanche went into the chapel where children are asked to God and of the Virgin, and went there alone, as was the custom, always however in the presence of the seneschal, of his varlets and the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... because it is intrenched in constitutional law and because it represents a more radical revolution than all the others combined. The softening of the bitter opposition of the early days through the general spirit of progress has been somewhat counteracted by a modern skepticism as to the supreme merit of a democratic government and a general disgust with the prevalent political corruption. This will continue to react strongly against any further extension of the suffrage until men can be made to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... The law of merit and of age is not the rule of three; Non constat that A. M. must prove as busy as A. B. When Wise the father tracked the son, ballooning through the skies, He taught a lesson to the old,—go thou and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... historical work, is now brought to a conclusion. In this series of biographies, in which the severe truth of history takes almost the wildness of romance, it is the singular merit of Miss Strickland that her research has enabled her to throw new light on many doubtful passages, to bring forth fresh facts, and to render every portion of our annals which she has described an interesting and valuable study. She has given a most valuable contribution to the history of England, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... perfecta res non est, non videtur punienda, unless indeed, because an act is not consummated, it does not seem to merit punishment. ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... sword do its eager office. For they had one of the least- believed and most unpopular of truths, that a woman's love is more a matter of mastery and possession than instinct, two men being of comparatively equal merit and sincerity. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... value. Soon he procured employment in furnishing frontispieces and designs for the booksellers. The most remarkable of these are the plates to an edition of "Hudibras," published in 1726; but even these are of no distinguished merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a portrait-painter. Most of his performances were small family pictures, containing several figures, which he calls "Conversation Pieces," from twelve to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... gratuity to spare.—On the other hand, unpopular essays will not even be accepted; and you must pay to have them printed: but then you seldom lose by it, as courtiers are so sensible of their deficiency in merit, that they generously reward all who know how to dawb them with ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... the other leading officers for their zeal and valor, he turned upon Tarik and accused him in severe tones of disobedience. He ended by depriving him of his command and putting him under arrest, while he sent the caliph a report in which Tarik was sharply blamed and the merit of his exploits made light of. He would have gone farther and put him to death, but this he dared not do without the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Her poems were upon all those delicate themes which would attract the mind of a pure young girl; upon the return of the swallows, the daisies, the weeping willows and similar topics, and were of such merit as to win much praise from the wise men of ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... appeared in 1723. Of the three small figures in the centre the middle one is Lord Burlington, a man of considerable taste in painting and architecture, but who ranked Mr. Kent, an indifferent artist, above his merit. On one side of the peer is Mr. Campbell, the architect; on the other, his lordship's postilion. On a show-cloth in this plate is also supposed to be the portrait of king George II. who gave 1000l. towards the Masquerade; together with that of the earl of Peterborough, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the distinguished Scotch lawyer, thought there was such a craft as witchcraft; and so did William Forbes, a member of the Faculty of Advocates, a professor of law in the University of Glasgow, and author of several works of considerable merit. The following extracts from Forbes's Institute of the Law of Scotland prove to some extent what was the legal creed in Scotland last ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... more pleased with myself. As I dopes it out I ought to make quite a hit, presenting Vee with something she's been wantin' a long time. Almost as though I'd had it raised special for her, and had been keepin' it secret for months. Looked like I was due to acquire merit in the domestic circle, ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... way of constellation, but was wholly attentive to the service of his mistress, and his dexterity, experience, and merit therein challenged a room in the Queen's favour which eclipsed the other's over-seeming greatness, and made it appear that there were others steered and stood at the helm besides himself, and more stars in the firmament of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... twenty-four hours longer, and many men might have been saved. This fatal city retained nearly twenty thousand, including three hundred officers and seven generals. Most of them had been wounded by the winter more than by the enemy, who had the merit of the triumph. Several others were still in good health, to all appearance at least, but their moral strength was completely exhausted. After courageously battling with so many difficulties, they lost heart ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... French refugees, many of whom had borne arms with credit. No person did more to promote the raising of these regiments than the Marquess of Ruvigny. He had been during many years an eminently faithful and useful servant of the French government. So highly was his merit appreciated at Versailles that he had been solicited to accept indulgences which scarcely any other heretic could by any solicitation obtain. Had he chosen to remain in his native country, he and his household would have been permitted to worship God privately according to their own forms. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the tombs of kings; but we have no remains of marble statues or metal castings or ivory carvings, not even of potteries, which at that time in other countries were common and beautiful. The gems and signet rings which the Persians engraved possessed much merit, and on them were wrought with great skill the figures of men and animals; but the nearest approach to sculpture were the figures of colossal bulls set to guard the portals of palaces, and these were probably borrowed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... aisle, close to the transept, we can trace the remains of a fresco representing the conversion of St. Hubert. Further on, there hangs a picture, by Cross, which is intended to represent the murder of Becket. As a work of art it is not without merit, but its details ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... sold a book which had been declined by fifteen houses to the sixteenth. He is willing to persevere with a manuscript and with an author, in spite of rebuffs and discouragement, if he believes that the author has merit; and if he is willing to persevere with an author in the day of small things, he will reap ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... Stretches her hands, exclaiming;—"Where! O, where! "Fly'st thou, the author of thy fortune left? "O, priz'd above my country! 'bove my sire! "O cruel, whither fly'st thou, whose success "At once my merit, and my fault displays? "Will not the gifted conquest move thy soul? "Will not my love thee move? Will not the thought "That all my hopes centre in thee alone? "By thee deserted, whither shall I fly? "Back to my natal town? Ruin'd it lies; "Or if still standing, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... 1519 belongs the Annunciation in the Cathedral of Treviso, the merit of which, in the opinion of the writer, has been greatly overstated. True, the Virgin, kneeling in the foreground as she awaits the divine message, is of unsurpassable suavity and beauty; but the foolish little archangel tumbling into the picture and ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... least, he was liked by all, he was simply the unhappy victim of circumstances. But in a mood of heroic retaliation against the troop he pictured himself as a pioneer scout residing aloof in a grim tower, surrounded by wireless apparatus and covered with merit badges. Scouts from all over the world would make pilgrimages to his obscure retreat for a timid glimpse ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... succeeding in the drawing or colouring of human figures; or in the grouping of large compositions; and though in flowers and birds their, performances are much more admired, yet even in these, some part of the merit is rather to be imputed to the native brightness and excellency of the colours, than to the skill of the painter; since it is very unusual to see the light and shade justly and naturally handled, or to find that ease and grace in the drawing, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... during those five centuries, under very different rules and rulers. They may be summed up under five names, which correspond with governments very unequal in merit and defect, in good and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... checked it. The Provencal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose, it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion and moral insensibility. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Lepage Dupratz; Charlevoix, "Histoire de la Nouvelle France;" "Lettres du Rev. G. Hecwelder;" "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society," v. i.; Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," pp. 135-190. What is said by Jefferson is of especial weight, on account of the personal merit of the writer, and of the matter-of-fact age in ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... troubles of poverty, and had never met with excellence in men except in poems, which she had long ago been taught to separate from the possibilities of actual life. She had, therefore, no conception of any degree of merit in a husband being sufficient to compensate for slender means of subsistence. She was not base-minded; nothing could have induced her to marry a man, however rich, whom she thought wicked. She wanted ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... laid. The people with a sigh their taxes bring, And, cursing Bob, forget to bless the king. Next hearken, Gay, to what thy charge requires, With servants, tenants, and the neighbouring squires, Let all domestics feel your gentle sway; Nor bribe, insult, nor flatter, nor betray. Let due reward to merit be allow'd; Nor with your kindred half the palace crowd; Nor think yourself secure in doing wrong, By telling noses [8] with a party strong. Be rich; but of your wealth make no parade; At least, before your master's debts are paid; Nor in a palace, built ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Zoe, your love has been bestowed on one who, if he cannot merit, can at least appreciate and adore you. Beings of similar loveliness, and similar devotedness of affection, mingled, in all my boyish dreams of greatness, with visions of curule chairs and ivory cars, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... volumes of these extraordinary adventures have just appeared, and contain higher-coloured depravities than their predecessors. Some of them, indeed, might have been spared; but as a graphic illustration of the petty thievery of Paris, the following extract bears great merit:—] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... themselves in a less formal way for the night's work before them, begin to flock to their seats. Not an eye wanders from the speaker, and the attention which he commands is of the kind paid in the House only to merit and ability of the highest order. And, certainly, the orator is not unworthy of this silent, but most respectful tribute to his talents. His manner is earnest and animated, his enunciation is beautifully clear and distinct, the tones of his voice are singularly pleasing and persuasive, stealing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... could only half like, and occasionally such as were thoroughly distasteful to me. Her husband had brought her own collection from Warrior Square, volumes of hymns in manuscript, copied by her own hand, many of them strange to me, none of those I read altogether devoid of literary merit, and some of them lovely both in feeling and form. But all, even the best, which to me were unobjectionable, belonged to one class,—a class breathing a certain tone difficult to describe; one, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the mill has to be kept turning; apparently dust, and not flour, is the proceed. Well, there is gold in the dust, which is a fine consolation, since - well, I can't help it; night or morning, I do my darndest, and if I cannot charge for merit, I must e'en charge for toil, of which I have plenty and plenty more ahead before this cup is drained; sweat ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... finally. Every boy admitted into the School had to pay an entrance fee not exceeding L3 and a tuition fee not less than L12 or more than L24. Fees for boarding in the Hostel were not to exceed L45. Certain exemptions from tuition fees could be granted as the reward of merit, and in a few instances the boarding fees might be remitted for similar reasons and to a limited extent. If the state of the Trust Funds permitted, a leaving Exhibition, to be called The Giggleswick Exhibition, might be awarded for the ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... one great merit to the mind of a foreigner denied the lucidity of our Italian intelligence—it was adorably simple. I can give it to you now in a nutshell as I learned it later, not as I knew it then, for I did not know it ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pale malt than formerly used; a more perfect fermentation is now requisite to keep up the genuine distinction in that flavour of porter from ordinary beers and ales, which, since the change of lengths, has much declined, though the only characteristic quality that gives it merit over other malt liquors—an object that deserves consideration in this great commercial branch of trade, and source of national wealth, where the loss of distinction will be the loss of trade. The rough, astringent, thirst-creating smack is the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... George Carterett, Sir John Colleton, and Sir William Berkeley, their Heirs and Assigns, full Power and Authority to give and confer unto, and upon such of the Inhabitants of the said Province, or Territory, as they shall think, do, or shall merit the same, such Marks of Favour, and Titles of Honour, as they shall think fit, so as their Titles of Honours be not the same as are enjoyed by, or conferred upon any of the Subjects of this Our Kingdom ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... important pass of Gum Swamp, and occupied it properly, the fortune of war might have been changed. It is a miry creek, impassible for many miles, except at the road. He missed it only by a few minutes. And his popularity, though gained by much merit, was lost by no greater crime than that of trusting too much ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... he, "there are certainly a few colonists in our old possessions of Senegal, but yonder in the Niger valley, beyond Djenny, there are, I think, only ourselves. We are the pioneers, the vanguard, the riskers full of faith and hope. And there is some merit in it, for to sensible stay-at-home folks it all seems like defying common sense. Can you picture it? A French family installed among savages, and unprotected, save for the vicinity of a little fort, where a French officer commands a dozen native soldiers—a French family, which ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation. (You observe my new vein of allegory?) Seriously, however, I must be permitted to allege that truth will prevail, that prejudice will melt before it, that diversity, accompanied by merit, will make itself felt as fascination, and that no virtuous aspiration will be frustrated—all which, if I mistake not, are doctrines of the schools, and they imply that the Jewess I prefer will prefer me. Any blockhead can cite generalities, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... labours of Mr. Thomas Paine, in explaining and enforcing the principles of the late Revolution, by ingenious and timely publications upon the nature of Liberty and Civil Government, have been well received by the citizens of these States, and merit the approbation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to ask after the prince!" said Mr. Linden, picking up the Sanguinaria with great devotion. "Is this the Star of the Order of Merit?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... breath of humanity," says Renan, "and not literary merit, that constitutes the beautiful." An Homeric poem written to-day, he goes on to say, would not be beautiful, because it would not be true; it would not contain this breath of a living humanity. "It is not Homer who is beautiful, it is the Homeric life." The literary spirit begat Tennyson, begat ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... there! But this were luxury, were bliss refin'd, To view the alter'd region of the mind; Where whim and mystery, like wizards, rule, And conjure wisdom from the seeming fool; Where learned heads, like old cremonas, boast Their merit soundest that are cracked the most; While Genius' self, infected with the joke, His person ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... fortune to witness one original of Dannecker's chisel—of transcendent merit. I mean, the colossal head of SCHILLER; who was the intimate friend, and a townsman of this able sculptor. I never stood before so expressive a modern countenance. The forehead is high and wide, and the projections, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... could realize that she was still a living creature and not a condemned spirit, suffering for the sins of some one else (she had thought of all her own, and could not feel that they were bad enough to merit such suffering, if God was the person she supposed),—in those first days Miss Rejoice ventured to question her sister about her engagement. She was afraid—she did hope the breaking of it had nothing to do with her. "It ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... way that shocked me, but it hurt his pride that she should be excluded from the society to which her rank entitled her. I had met her at Louisa's once or twice; but when I found that for her brother's sake she was always to be invited, I resolved to go there no more, and I made a merit of this with Clarendon. He was pleased; he said, 'That is well, that is right, my dear Cecilia.' And he went out more with me. One night at the Opera, the Comtesse de St. Cymon was in the box opposite to us, no lady with her, only some gentlemen. She watched me; I did all I could ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... attributed to him. In the Louvre are his most famous pictures, and what I now say is the result of calm and mature reflection. I had the Louvre pictures constantly before my eyes for three months. They are very large, and certainly have great merit; but had I my choice I would prefer Mr. Beckford's to any of ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... outer, the sense of truth and of purity he ever communicated to me in life, and courage and fidelity to conscience. I feel it to be honor enough and joy enough for a life-time that I am his first biographer, though but a late born child and of merit entirely insignificant. The literary work is, indeed, but of home-made quality, yet it serves to hold together what is the heaven-made wisdom of a great teacher of men. It will be found that Father Hecker has three words in this book to my one, though all my words I tried to make his. His journals, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Bartholomew or Matthias [Matyasz]. Thus the son of Maciej was always called Bardomiej,115 and again the son of Bartlomiej was called Maciej; the women were all christened Kachna or Maryna. In order to distinguish themselves amid such confusion, they took various nicknames, from some merit or defect, both men and women. Sometimes they would give a man several surnames, as a mark of the contempt or of the regard of his compatriots; sometimes the same gentleman was known by one name in Dobrzyn, and by a different title in the neighbouring ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... work the fury I felt at my misery. I tried to master positive knowledge so as to acquire the greatest personal value, and merit the position I should hold as soon as I could escape from nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the light I burned during these endless nights cost me more than food. It was a long duel, obstinate, with no sort of consolation. I found no sympathy anywhere. To have friends, ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. "The effusions signed C.L.," says Coleridge in the preface, "were written by Mr. Charles Lamb, of the India House. Independently of the signature, their superior merit would have sufficiently distinguished them." The "effusions" were four sonnets, two of them—the most noteworthy— touching upon the one love-romance of Lamb's life, [9]—his early attachment to the "fair-haired" Hertfordshire ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... with a bending lackey. But all this doesn't matter. The mother of Ab belonged to the very cream of the cream, and was dressed accordingly. Her garb was elegant but simple; it had, first, the one great merit, that it could easily be put on or taken off. It was sustained with but a single knot, a bow-knot—they had learned to make a bow-knot and other knots in the stone age, for, because of the manual requirements for living, they were cleverer fumblers with ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... if his firmness will last over to-morrow.' But what merit in courage, when that atheistical hound, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Influence. Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his "influence" in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington. Mere merit, fitness and capability, are useless baggage to you without "influence." The population of Washington consists pretty much entirely of government employee and the people who board them. There are thousands ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are thousands of scholastic merit Who worm their sense out but ne'er taste their spirit. Witness each pedant under Bentley bred; Each commentator that e'er commented. 70 (You scarce can seize a spot of classic ground, With leagues of Dutch morass so floated round.) Witness—but, Sir, I hold a cautious pen, Lest ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... not in my way; I liked it far less than translating the publisher's philosophy, for that was something in the line of one whom a competent judge had surnamed 'Lavengro.' I never could understand why reviews were instituted; works of merit do not require to be reviewed, they can speak for themselves, and require no praising; works of no merit at all will die of themselves, they require ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... to the latest posterity with the execration of humanity, for the part he played in the tragedy of the worst of judicial murders of which any record exists. Let us give even the devil his due. According to Michelet the Bishop was 'not a man without merit,' although the historian does not say in what Cauchon's merit consisted. Born at Rheims, he had been considered a learned priest when at the University of Paris; but he had the reputation of being a harsh and vindictive opponent to all who disagreed with his views, within or without the Church. ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... Huntingdon; but it was some stray spark from Emily that kindled Anne. As for Charlotte, her genius must have quickened in her when her nerves thrilled to the shock of Wuthering Heights. This, I know, is only another theory; but it has at least the merit of its modesty. It is not offered as in the least accounting for, or explaining, Charlotte's genius. It merely suggests with all possible humility a likely cause of its release. Anyhow, it is a theory that does Charlotte's genius no wrong, on which account it seems to me preferable to any other. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... burden and a bore; in fact he vowed it was the dampest and the dullest old ruin under the sun, and that he would sell it to-morrow if he could find a lunatic to buy. His want of sentiment struck me as his one deplorable trait. Yet even this displayed his characteristic merit of frankness. Nor was it at all unpleasant to hear his merry, boyish laughter ringing round hall and gallery, ere it died away against ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... This fact is the principle of all morality. That every act contrary to right and justice, deserves to be repressed by force, and punished when committed, equally in the absence of any law or contract: that man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and demerit of actions, as he does that between justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty; and feels, without being taught, and in the absence of law or contract, that it is wrong for vice to be rewarded ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Juliet it will be remembered that the author said nothing about her colour or dimensions, but described her indirectly, and succeeding generations have had their attention called to the merit of the performance. We know, for example, that she taught the candles to burn bright, and, furthermore, that she seemed to hang upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—most probably a pearl. So, in ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... small fortunes have settled themselves from England and Ireland. It is a thriving place, and their cottages and country houses are chiefly built, and their grounds laid out, in the English style, with park palings. Sir John Colborne has the merit of settling this loyal population in the centre of the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... in the army of Louis XIV, it was said that he had "well served the king—William." It might be said of Howe that he shares with Washington the merit of achieving American independence. He never quite deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the whole, to general admiration, He acquitted both himself and horse: the Squires Marvelled at merit of another nation; The boors cried "Dang it! who'd have thought it?"—Sires, The Nestors of the sporting generation, Swore praises, and recalled their former fires; The Huntsman's self relented to a grin, And rated ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in this design of any distinctive merit; it is only a somewhat completer version of the ordinary representation given in illuminated missals and other conventual work, suggesting, as if they had happened at the same moment, the answer, "If I have spoken evil, ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... would arrive from America. I have escaped with life from more dangers than one. Had it not been for the fall of Roberspierre and your timely arrival I know not what fate might have yet attended me. There seemed to be a determination to destroy all the Prisoners without regard to merit, character, or any thing else. During the time I laid at the height of my illness they took, in one night only, 169 persons out of this prison and executed all but eight. The distress that I have suffered at being obliged to exist in the midst of such horrors, exclusive of my ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... communications, he caused it to be continually dwelt upon in the Vienna Observer, the organ of the Austrian Government, which printed illustrative quotations from the writings of Mazzini, of whom it said that 'he has the one merit of despising hypocrisy, and proceeding firmly and directly to his true end. Persons who are versed in history will know that this is exactly the same end as that at which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi formerly aimed. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... mentions no Poll of Portsmouth, nor does it favour us with a "Yeo, heave, oh!" nor is there so very much "cut and thrust" about it. It was written in that uninspiring day when Pirates were a very real nuisance to such law-abiding folk as you and I; but it has the merit of being written, if not by a Pirate, at least by one who came into actual contact with them. I am not at all sure that "merit" is the right word to use in this instance, for to be a Pirate does not necessarily ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... yesterday he had got on well enough with both of the cousins, without being in the least intimate with either. Indeed, of the two he preferred, perhaps, the silent, solid Cayley to the more volatile Mark. Cayley's qualities, as they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark's weaknesses, on the other hand, ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... gate; after these, two cypress images of Juno Regina were carried; after these went seven and twenty virgins, arrayed in white vestments, and singing in honour of Juno Regina a hymn, which to the uncultivated minds of that time might appear to have merit, but if repeated now would seem inelegant and uncouth. The train of virgins was followed by the decemvirs, crowned with laurel, and in purple-bordered robes. From the gate they proceeded by the Jugarian street into the forum: ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Toulouse was a centre for much of the literary life of the time, and it was during the reign of Count Raimon VI., who was a poet of no small merit, that the art of the troubadours reached its culmination. For half a generation, it is said, his court was crowded with these poets, and he dwelt with them and they with him in brotherly affection. With the terrible Albigensian Crusade, the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and grace whenever it was assailed. The young gentlemen when in the society of the young ladies generally join them in this unique use of snuff, as they are always sure to be invited and urged if they decline, and to merit their favor of course they must appear social. I believe, in credit to their taste, however, that they really prefer a good cigar, and think it more in keeping with their ideas of manhood and neatness. I have seen young girls of ten 'rubbing and chewing,' as if they appreciated it as much as ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Hardie," said the principal, "don't be disconcerted: a fault regretted is half atoned; and I am not disposed to be hard on the errors of youth; I mean where there is merit ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the Cross, which shone there in the darkness and scattered the shades of night. But what does this signify, save that our Lord Jesus, out of the greatness of His goodness, looked upon him with the eyes of His mercy, although He found no merit in him, except what it pleased Him out of His goodness to bestow? For as God gives to His elect, out of His goodness alone, what no one has a right to demand, so out of His justice He gives to the wicked what they ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... is told with great brilliancy, the character and society sketching is very charming, while delightful incidents and happy surprises abound. It is a triple love-story, pure in tone, and of very high literary merit."—Chicago Herald. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the only child of Sir Richard Brandon. Sir Richard was a knight and a widower. He was knighted, not because of personal merit, but because he had been mayor of some place, sometime or other, when some one connected with royalty had something important to do with it! Little Diana was all that this knight and widower had on earth to care for, except, of course, his horses and dogs, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... receive him as a friend. They were still in prison, but the Protector had given orders, that they should be provided with handsome apartments, and every comfort compatible with confinement at the public expence. But though Monthault took on himself the merit of this lenient treatment, the prejudices of the whole family against him formed an insuperable bar to his designs. His change of conduct was too pointedly obtrusive; his piety and penance too ostentatious to pass on a man who was thoroughly conversant ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... meditate, methinks the flowers Have spirits far more generous than ours, And give us fair examples to despise The servile fawnings and idolatries, Wherewith we court these earthly things below, Which merit not ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... it! He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy. 'For now' (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) 'for the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men. Man was created a ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... his wildest imaginations and most cherished hopes,—"the wild part,"—really the great prairies, about two hundred miles west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies. The dream of his life was being fulfilled. He related, in a style not conspicuous for literary merit, but very well suited to the simple annals of the rich, how, having first procured guides, tents, ambulances, camp-equipage, they had pushed on briskly to a military fort, where, having made friends with "a pleasant, gentlemanly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... unfinished, and doubtless but for her recent illness would have received many corrections; but these few pages, which are called 'A Lonely Child,' drew tears from my eyes; crude as they are, they have the merit of real originality. They are too morbid to read to you, girls, and I sincerely trust and pray the young writer may never pen anything so sad again. Such as they are, however, they rank first in the order of merit and the prize is hers. Annie, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... & other papers wch I have seen & the Conversation I have had with the Baron, I really esteem him a modest candid & sensible Gentn. The Dr says he is spoken highly of to him by two of the best Judges of military merit in France, tho he is not him self a Frenchman but ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... confidence little short of sublime to challenge Proudhon in the audacious manner of this scintillating critique. The torrential eloquence, the scornful satire, and fierce invective of the attack, have rather tended to obscure for readers of a later generation the real merit of the book, the importance of the fundamental idea that history must be interpreted in the light of economic development, that economic evolution determines social life. The book is important for two other reasons. First, it was the author's first serious essay in economic ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... negative character of Protestantism in such books as Nicholl's "Pilgrimage." In this work a man was held up as a type to be imitated whose whole religion to all appearances consisted of holding the Pope to be Antichrist, and his Church the synagogue of Satan, of disliking the doctrines of merit and of justification by works, of denying the Real Presence, and of holding nothing but what could be proved to his ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... that the minority is of sufficient importance to merit attention, and that I ought not to have ignored it so completely as I did do. The whole difficulty of the hard-working minority was put in a single colloquial sentence by one of my correspondents. ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... instrumental pieces of his own composition, preserved among the manuscripts at the British Museum,[57] rank among the best productions of the time; and one of his anthems, "O Lorde, the Maker of all thyng," is of the highest order of merit, and still remains a ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... for dramatic emotions they would seem insipid. This analysis, in which every wife would find some one of her own sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a fruitless, hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which would consist in faintest tints and delicate shadings which critics would declare to be effeminate and diffuse. Besides, what man could rightly approach, unless he bore another heart within his heart, those solemn and touching elegies ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... similar duties. Quite a number were full rated cooks. A few were water tenders, electricians and gunners' mates, each of which occupations entitled them to the aforesaid rank of petty officer. Among the petty officers some had by sheer merit attained the rank of chief petty officer, which is about equal to the rank of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... excellent weapons to the socialistic agitators. Heinrich Storch(40) aimed to spread the views of Adam Smith(41) in Russia, by his "Cours d'economie politique" (1815). Without further developing the theory of political economy, he produced a book of exceptional merit by pointing out the application of the principles to Russia, particularly in regard to the effect of a progress of wealth on agriculture and manufactures; to the natural steps by which a new country changes from agriculture to a manufacturing regime; ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... my father was king of this country before the Jovians came, forty years ago," said Turgan gravely, "yet now there is no honor or merit in it. Even the rank of Kildare, which is but that of a slave ruling other more unfortunate slaves, could not have prevented my only daughter from being dragged away to the seraglio of that monster. To such a pass has one been brought whose birth made him the peer of any. But now we must ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... were contained within the limits of the Empire a number of petty tarns, which do not merit particular description. Such were the Bahr-el-Taka, and other small lakes on the right bank of the middle Orontes, the Birket-el-Limum in the Lebanon, and the Birket-er-Eam on the southern flank of Hermon. It is unnecessary, however, to pursue this subject any further. But a few words ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... about Fechter and his Hamlet. It was a performance of extraordinary merit; by far the most coherent, consistent, and intelligible Hamlet I ever saw. Some of the delicacies with which he rendered his conception clear were extremely subtle; and in particular he avoided that brutality towards Ophelia which, with a greater or ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... even above Christianity of later centuries. This creed relates to the element of human responsibility particularly, the other two remaining much as they were found by Buddha. According to his teachings, a man rested under an obligation to live nobly in the truest sense, and he acquired merit—karma—or lost it, in proportion to his deserts. At death a human soul is reincarnated, in a lower form of animal or even in a being residing in one of a series of unseen hells, if punishment is due; if a higher state is merited, progress is ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... No prince but you Could merit that sincerity I used, Nor durst another man have ventured it; But you, ere love misled your wandering eyes, Were sure the chief and best of human race, Framed in the very pride and boast of nature; So perfect, that the gods, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... long as this buckler remains to the people, they cannot be liable to much, or permanent oppression. The government may be administered with violence, offices may be bestowed exclusively upon those who have no other merit than that of carrying votes at elections,—the commerce of our country may be depressed by nonsensical theories, and public credit may suffer from bad intentions; but so long as we have an independent ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... looked, then fell back on my arm. It was not life which forsook her face, and left her whole sweet body inert—that I could have borne, for did she not merit death who had killed my love, killed me?—but happiness, the glow of youthful blood, the dreams of a youthful brain. And seeing this, seeing that the heart I thought a child's heart had gone down in this shipwreck, I felt ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... was pretty well satisfied about that, he inquired how his soul might be saved? The answer being made, "By the applying of Christ's merit by faith:" he was pleased with the answer, and was ready to give any one that should desire it an account ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... And though we have spoken of them, as mere critics on art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always no inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, or prose-works, that—pardon our tautology—are popular with the people. The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations of persons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the old masters; so that, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... sufficiently credulous to trust his hollow professions— whose hands are red with the blood of your children! What hope of happiness or peace could you indulge for me, in view of such a union? I should merit all the wretchedness that would inevitably be my life—long portion if, knowing his crimes, I could consent to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Unexpectedly I found embarrassment of choice dazing me, and I sat without attending to the later speakers. Was not successful humor more difficult than pathos? Were not tears more cheaply raised than laughter? Yet, on the other hand, Guy had one prize, and where merit was so even—I sat, I say, forgetful of the rest of the speakers, when suddenly I was aware of louder shouts of welcome, and I awaked to Josey Yeatts bowing ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... you be so anxious to meet me?" Lois replied. "I am sure that I have done nothing to merit your ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... He is made a noble; and his military rank is now that of lieutenant-General. Your turn will come next, my friend; and if promotion went strictly according to personal merit, no one would have been ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... extracted from a collection of considerable merit, now become uncommon, the authors of the different papers in which were Dr. Deacon and Dr. Byrom, and which is entitled Manchester Vindicated (Chester, 1749, 12mo.). The occasion was on a soldier snatching a white rose from the bosom of a young ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... paper contains nothing which deserves the name either of experiment or discovery, and as it is, in fact, destitute of every species of merit, we should have allowed it to pass among the multitude of those articles which must always find their way into the collections of a society which is pledged to publish two or three volumes every ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... especially in the province of Che-Kiang.[880] The true doctrine of the Mahayana is that everyone should strive for the happiness and salvation of all beings, but this beautiful truth may be sadly perverted if it is held that the endurance of pain is in itself meritorious and that such acquired merit can be transferred to others. Self-torture, seems not to be unknown in the popular ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Administration in 1912, to the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away with the spoils system. But in the National Government scores of thousands of offices have been put under the merit system, chiefly through the action of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... than any heartnut found so far. The kernels in many cases fall out whole or in halves. This strain received the O. K. of Prof. Reed and Dr. Deming and as you know when a nut gets by either of those gentlemen it has to possess some merit. The good result produced by nature without any assistance from man suggests the possibility of getting even better results from parents of superior characters. I believe the Japanese walnut offers interesting possibilities in breeding with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... which was conducted by examiners specially appointed by the governors. The result, which was kept a close secret until "Prize Saturday," was as eagerly looked forward to as the Derby by a betting man. The different forms were divided into classes, as at Oxford, according to merit, and the names printed along with the examination papers in pamphlet form. After this examination boys went up to the form above them, each boy usually remaining a year in each form. The system of punishment was as follows. A book called the "Black ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... deeply grateful to you. I feel certain that in all you say, you have no object in the world but kindness to us. But years have passed since we began this life; and to take from my brother any part of what has so endeared him to me, and so proved his better resolution—any fragment of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgotten reparation—would be to diminish the comfort it will be to him and me, when that time comes to each of us, of which you spoke just now. I thank you better with these tears than any words. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... pastry must be admitted to the royal table every day! The man held the reversion to the office of king's pastry-cook (the right to it when the occupant should die), and the right once acquired, the man could not, by court custom, be got rid of. Thus were court offices not open to merit; but conferred sometimes by favour, and sometimes for money; and greedily grasped at for the great profits they yielded. One wonders that the royal family did not discover that the new state of affairs, if it imposed some restrictions, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... Dupratz; Charlevoix, "Histoire de la Nouvelle France"; "Lettres du Rev. G. Hecwelder;" "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society," v. I; Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," pp. 135-190. What is said by Jefferson is of especial weight, on account of the personal merit of the writer, of his peculiar position, and of the matter-of-fact ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... has found peace with God: henceforth he is rich. He does not need now to huckster in small bargains between his conscience and the divine law every day, and struggle to diminish the ever-increasing amount of guilt by getting small entries of merit marked on the other side of the page. All this is past. He is in Christ Jesus, and to him, therefore, there is now ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Fouquet, "there is money here." D'Artagnan looked at the superintendent with astonishment. "You have been answered inconsiderately, monsieur, I know, because I heard it," said the minister; "a man of your merit ought to be known by everybody." D'Artagnan bowed. "Have you an order?" ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... courts must set forth a substantial claim under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.[294] Nor does jurisdiction arise simply because an averment of a federal right is made, "if it plainly appears that such averment is not real and substantial, but is without color of merit."[295] The federal question averred may be insubstantial because obviously without merit, or because its unsoundness so clearly results from previous decisions of the Supreme Court as to foreclose the issue and leaves no room for the inference that the questions sought to be raised can be subjects ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... more. It will be observed that they are more negative than positive. The reason of this is not far to seek. The main difference between my verses and those of other contemporary writers—the one point on which I claim for myself the merit of novelty—is the strict observance throughout of the rules of position. But the strict observance of position is in effect the strict avoidance of unclassical collocations of syllables: it is almost wholly negative. To illustrate my meaning I will instance the poems ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... Judith, "to have the romp come in on merit when she can't prove it. It really looks like a ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... evidence, at all times so necessary to a traveller, and indispensably so at the period when he travelled, and in most of the countries where his enquiries and his researches were carried on. His great and characteristic merit consists in freeing his mind from the opinions which must have previously occupied it;—in trusting entirely either to what e himself saw, or to what he learned from the best authority;—always, however, bringing the information acquired in this latter ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... to Claire. He had thought her straight. And all the time that she had been saying those things to him that night of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat, bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money. Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in Bill's position a ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... possible way in which it can be done, and I shall do no harm to the State. Kennedy will be a better governor than I could have been. He is an older, wiser, more experienced statesman. I am conscious that I have been over-rated by the people who love me. I was elected for my popularity, not for my merit. And now—I am not even the man that I was—my life seems torn out of my bosom. Oh, Cora, Cora! life of my life! But you shall be happy, dear one! free and happy after a little while. Ah! I know your gentle heart. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... yet come in America when a leader of smart society dares to invite to her table men and women whose only merit is that they have done something worth while. She is not sufficiently sure of her own place. She must continue all her social life to be seen only with the "right people." In England her position would be secure and she could summon whom she would to dine with her; but in New York we ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... perhaps it is all the better. I am to retain my situation, and so are two others; but there are many new hands coming in as rangers. I know nothing of them, but that they are little fitted for their places, and rail against the king all day long, which, I suppose, is their chief merit in the eyes of those who appoint them. However, one thing is certain, that if those fellows can not stalk a deer themselves, they will do all they can to prevent others; so you must be on the alert, for the punishment ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... longer, and many men might have been saved. This fatal city retained nearly twenty thousand, including three hundred officers and seven generals. Most of them had been wounded by the winter more than by the enemy, who had the merit of the triumph. Several others were still in good health, to all appearance at least, but their moral strength was completely exhausted. After courageously battling with so many difficulties, they lost heart when they were near the port, at the prospect of four more days' ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... bottom for the home-coming of the bride, though, to Graeme's masculine perceptions, its panelling of polished pitch pine from floor to ceiling, in which you could see yourself as in a mirror, had always appeared the very acme of cleanliness and comfort, with the additional merit of a tendency ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... attack of the same kind. Ethelred was delighted with their spirit, and rejoiced at the violence his nephews offered him; accepting an abominable wrong as though it were the richest of benefits. For he saw far more merit in their bravery than in piety. Thus he thought it nobler to be attacked by foes than courted by cowards, and felt that he saw in their valiant promise a sample of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... minister being asked why he did not promote merit? "Because," answered he, "merit ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... "There is no merit in labour which is not in anywise a burden, but, rather, a delight," pronounced those who ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... in the complete edition of 1817; and the biographers give a long list of publications, besides those above-mentioned, romantic, ethical, and spiritual, in verse and in prose. But he wrote mainly for his own pleasure, he never sought fame, and consequently his reputation never equalled his merit. His name, however, still smells sweet, passing sweet, amid the corruption and the frantic fury of his day, and the memory of the witty, genial, and virtuous litterateur ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... characters, notwithstanding the restraint which the artificialities of the period often put upon their utterance. On the other hand, work at first pronounced to be romantic establishes, by a universal recognition of its merit, the claim to be considered classic, or set apart; what is romantic to-day thus growing to be classic[175] tomorrow. It is evident, therefore, that the terms interlock and are not mutually exclusive. It is a mistaken attitude ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... defy public opinion invite social impalement, and rarely fail to merit the branding and opprobrium they invariably receive. Madam, I should imagine that to a nature so refined and shrinking as yours, almost any trial would seem slight in comparison with the certainty of becoming a target for sarcasm, pity, and malice, in every kitchen in the neighborhood. Permit my ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd To ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of Buddha, obtained by merit the Six Supernatural Powers. And by virtue of them it was given him to see the soul of his mother in the Gakido—the world of spirits doomed to suffer hunger in expiation of faults committed in a previous life. Mokenren saw that his mother suffered much; he grieved exceedingly because of her pain, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the North American Review, in 1817, appeared an original poem of such merit as to mark an era in the history of American verse. There was in William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis, it is true, no such youthful exuberance of feeling as the first stirrings of poetic genius in a new world ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... which seems to merit more attention than it has received, is the very frequent recurrence in Greek mythology of allusions to creatures which have been usually regarded as the creations of a poetic fancy, but which bear a strong resemblance to the Saurian and other monsters ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... In India, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a development of drama of a high character. The one called the Clay-waggon (a child's toy) is described as of very great literary merit,—realistic, graphic, and Shakespearean in its artistic representation of life.[2078] Every drama which has that character must be in and of the mores. In the Clay-waggon the story is that of a Brahmin of the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the too great imaginative wealth thrown by him into mere narrative.[266] "It does not seem to me to be enough to say of any description that it is the exact truth. The exact truth must be there; but the merit or art in the narrator, is the manner of stating the truth. As to which thing in literature, it always seems to me that there is a world to be done. And in these times, when the tendency is to be frightfully literal and catalogue-like—to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... 1844, we anchored off the grand City of Palaces, and well does it merit the name. We could not have, timed our visit better. The governor-general, the Earl of Ellenborough, was being feted on his return from the frontiers, which fetes were continued on the arrival, a few days after ourselves, of the Cornwallis at Kedgeree, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Australia as an important part of his view; whereas, I dwell mainly on their long continued separation. Notwithstanding this and other important differences between us, to him undoubtedly belongs the merit of first indicating the division of the Archipelago into an Australian and an Asiatic region, which it has been my good fortune to establish ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... groceries. Those which were the strongest in favour of the Empire, are now the strongest in favour of the Republic. Editors and writers whose dream it was a few months ago to obtain an invitation at the Tuileries or to the Palais Royal, or to merit by the basest of flatteries the Legion of Honour, now have become perfect Catos, and denounce courts and courtiers, Bonapartists and Orleanists. War they regard as the most wicked of crimes, and they appear entirely to have forgotten that ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... "In the golden highest sheath dwells the stainless, changeless Brahman; It is the radiant white Light of lights, known to the knowers of the Self."[35] "When the seer sees the golden-coloured Creator, the Lord, the Spirit, whose womb is Brahman, then, having thrown away merit and demerit, stainless, the wise one ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... over now to learn the ABC in the training school of responsibility for the big load that's to come on my shoulders. I've been asleep all these years. Thank Heaven I've waked up in time. It's no merit of mine—" ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... midst of them, and seizing upon them before they were forgotten, made them and the localities classical. Other districts have in this way been despoiled to some extent of their proper meed of honour. Fortune as well as merit has favoured the Border Minstrelsy in the race for survival and for precedence in the popular memory. But Galloway, a land pervaded with romance, claims at least one ballad that can rank with the best. Lord Gregory has aliases and duplicates without number. But the scene is always ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... must be proud of them also. They were worthy of esteem, they were entitled to applause; and mean, base, ineffably shabby, stupidly mean and base was the soul—if such a soul there were—that questioned their merit or grudged them a meet reward. (Applause.) He was delighted to have the opportunity of looking upon the two great heroes, Landsborough and McKinlay. They had undertaken and accomplished great things. Without deliberation they ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... genius, that gift of attention revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly, simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did indeed love or hate what ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... ordering a battle, preparing artillery, and that old captains marvelled at her skill in placing cannon.[65] The Duke quite understands that all these gifts were miraculous and that to God alone was the glory. For if the merit of the victories had been Jeanne's he would not have said ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... men, that he may vilify him by them. And they, bold fools as they are, will not spare to spit in his face. They will rail at his person, and deny the very being of it; they will rail at his blood, and deny the merit and worth of it. They will deny the very end why he accomplished the law, and by jiggs, and tricks, and quirks, which he helpeth them to, they set up fond names and images in his place, and give the glory of a Saviour to them. Thus Satan worketh ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... the same to me," said the Flea. "She may have the old Leap-frog, for all I care. I jumped the highest; but in this world merit seldom meets its reward. A fine exterior is ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... abide by the same view, when circumstances were changed and the feelings of the loyalists altered, but rather to bow to circumstances. For the persistence in the same view has never been regarded as a merit in men eminent for their guidance of the helm of state; but as in steering a ship one secret of the art is to run before the storm, even if you cannot make the harbour; yet, when you can do so by tacking about, it is folly to keep to the course ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was to happen" and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester's), but staunchly declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a merit of not having "closed an eye"—as if she had twenty or thirty—though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having most indisputably opened ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Hamilton. "He must have been a man of rare candour, too," says John Fiske, "for after weeks of debate he owned himself convinced."[47] Whatever could be said against the Constitution, Smith voiced it; and there was apparent merit in some of his objections. To a majority of the people, New York appeared to be surrendering natural advantages in much larger measure than other Commonwealths, while its concession of political power struck them as not unlikely to endanger the personal liberty of the citizen and the independence ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... If the merit of a historical novel be the exact reproduction of the life of another age, then Esmond is the greatest of its class. No other book has caught more perfectly the flavour of the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... feather flock together naturally, and before half a mile had been covered a tall, thin, boyish-looking officer, with a star of merit in the shape of a series of strips of diachylon upon his brow, gravitated towards the rear-guard and suddenly joined their ranks, holding out and shaking hands ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... was a Samaritan. The occurrence must have impressed the apostles as another evidence of acceptability and possible excellence on the part of aliens, to the disparagement of Jewish claims of superiority irrespective of merit. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... about, does not need to be emphasized, and the fact that two such competent authorities should agree upon a possible solution of a puzzling literary problem, makes that solution worthy of careful consideration; it would certainly have the merit of simplifying the question and deserves to ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... inhabitants produced more wealth per head than any other community in the Northern world, not even excluding the gold cities of Alaska and the Yukon. It was a considerable boast, but with more than usual justice. A cynic once declared that it was the only distinction of merit the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... the theatre in common with the whole nation derived from the court, and from a most flagitious monarch whose example made vice fashionable. In servile compliance with the reigning taste, the greatest poets of the day abandoned true fame, and discarded much of their literary merit: Otway and Dryden sunk into the most mean and criminal slavery to it—the former with the greatest powers for the pathetic ever possessed by any man, Shakspeare excepted, has left behind him plays which in an almost equal degree ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... rest of it we run about and amuse ourselves; then we work till fifty, and then we grow again to be children. We sleep half our lives; we give God a tenth of our time; and yet we think that with our good works we can merit heaven. What have I been doing to-day? I have talked for two hours, I have been at meals three hours, I have been idle four hours; ah, enter not into judgment with thy servant, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... imagination betrays itself in their every-day sayings and doings, and more directly in every branch of thought. Originality is not their strong point. Their utter ignorance of science shows this, and paradoxical as it may seem, their art, in spite of its merit and its universality, does the same. That art and imagination are necessarily bound together receives no very forcible confirmation from a land where, nationally speaking, at any rate, the first is easily first and the last easily last, as ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... now the Jainas also hold the view of the world originating from atoms and similar views, their theory is reviewed next.—The Jainas hold that the world comprises souls (jiva), and non-souls (ajiva), and that there is no Lord. The world further comprises six substances (dravya), viz. souls (jiva), merit (dharma), demerit (adharma), bodies (pudgala), time (kala), and space (akasa). The souls are of three different kinds-bound (in the state of bondage), perfected by Yoga (Yogasiddha), and released (mukta). 'Merit' ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Colonel Newcome, as you are newly arrived in Europe. Not men of worldly rank, necessarily, although some of them are amongst the noblest of Europe. But my maxim is, that genius is an illustration, and merit is better than any pedigree. You have heard of Professor Bodgers? Count Poski? Doctor McGuffog, who is called in his native country the Ezekiel of Clackmannan? Mr. Shaloony, the great Irish patriot? our papers have ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... involves self-restraint, and no man who wishes to retain his own respect and to merit the respect of others would think of advertising his own virtues or bragging of his own deeds. Nor would any Nation wishing to stand well in its own eyes and in the eyes of the world boast of its own conquests over weaker foes or shout itself hoarse ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the light diffused around him by the progress of reason, the thicker is the darkness of antiquated barbarism in which he buries himself like a mole, to throw up the barren hillocks of his Cimmerian labours." These gay shafts had at any rate the merit of stinging Shelley to action. 'The Defence of Poetry' was his reply. People like Peacock treat poetry, and art generally, as an adventitious seasoning of life—ornamental perhaps, but rather out of place in a progressive and practical age. Shelley undermines the whole position by ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... by these selected examiners and signed by the authors. The reports must be "based upon inherent and comparative merit. The elements of merit shall be held to include considerations relating to originality, invention, discovery, utility, quality, skill, workmanship, fitness for the purpose intended, adaptation to public wants, economy and cost." Each report, upon its completion, is delivered to the Centennial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... events or conditions foreseen: seductive in the review of them by a writer who has to be still foreseeing: nevertheless, that none of them were bardic of Bull, and that our sound man would have acted wisely in heeding some of the prescriptions, constituted their essential merit, consolatory to think of, though painful. The country has gone the wrong road, but it may yet cross over to the right one, when it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to man's estate he learned to draw. His sketches, at first rude, at last acquired considerable merit. He had been taught no rules of perspective; but while his perspective differed from that of a European, he did not ignore it, like the Chinese. He had now a very comfortable hewed-log residence, well furnished with such articles as were common with the better class ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... generates that beauty which is the object of sight; and that in the commensurate and the moderate alone the beauty of everything consists. But from such an opinion the compound only, and not the simple, can be beautiful, the single parts will have no peculiar beauty; and will only merit that appellation by conferring to the beauty of the whole. But it is surely necessary that a lovely whole should consist of beautiful parts, for the fair can never rise out of the deformed. But from such a definition, it follows, ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... a Society of several Gentlemen, eminent for their Learning and Merit, such as Sir Robert Cotton, Mr. Dodderidge, (afterwards Sir John Dodderidge, who died one of the Judges of the King's-Bench) Mr. Camden, Mr. Stow, &c. who had regular Meetings, or Conferences, for the Improvement and Illustration of the History and Antiquities of England. That ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... which may render them just before God. By faith, the penitent sinner receives all these blessings—is rescued from wrath, delivered from the guilt and bondage of sin, and made a child of God, and an heir of eternal life. Thus the triumph of the cross is complete, the pride of human merit is humbled in the dust, and all the glory of the salvation of sinners is rendered to the riches of ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... thou speakest well and like a true man!" he said joyously. "Unfamous as thou art, thou deservest honor for the frank confession of thy lack of merit! Believe me, there are some boastful rhymers in Al-Kyris who would benefit much by a share of thy becoming modesty! Give him his wish, Gisenya—" and Gisenya, obediently detaching a sprig of myrtle from the wreath ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... stood silent for some minutes, she with blushes, which the king took for a sign of modesty, answered, 'Sir, I am infinitely obliged to your majesty for your good opinion of me, for the honour you do me, and the great favour you offer me, which I cannot pretend to merit, and dare not refuse. ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... passing, lies perhaps the secret of the dry rot that too often settles on our American art schools. We, for some unknown reason, do not take the work of native painters seriously, nor encourage them in proportion to their merit. In consequence they retain but a ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... plans to escape, and not only that, but also to liberate others. That I did not make the attempt was the fault—or merit, perhaps—of a certain night watch, whose timidity, rather than sagacity, impelled him to refuse to unlock my door early one morning, although I gave him a plausible reason for the request. This night watch, I learned later, admitted that he feared to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... above respectability, or she would remain beneath it. Respectability might be an excellent thing; surely there must be some merit in a thing about which there was so much talk, after which there was so much hankering, and to which there was such desperate clinging. But as a sole possession, as a sole ambition, it seemed thin and poor and even pitiful. She had emancipated herself from its tyranny; she would not resume ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the site of the oldest Etruscan towns, which circumstance has led antiquaries to allow the Etruscans the honour of having fashioned these rude specimens of pottery; but as the samples display a higher degree of skill they refuse to allow the Etruscans the merit of having improved the clumsiness of their early handiwork. In the sixth and seventh cases are pale vases with deep red figures, chiefly of animals upon them, chiefly from Canino and Vulci. The exertions of the Prince of Canino in excavating on his estate ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Newspaper eulogy declares him to be a remarkable orator. He is often spoken of as of solid, and even brilliant, intellectual attainments. How much of all this vogue and of this unusual reputation is based upon the fact that he is a negro, and how much upon his native merit when weighed and judged without regard to any other consideration whatsoever? Has he, in fact, done that which, had he been a white man, would have given him a solid and substantial claim to the esteem ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... official churches have had no other merit but that they have preserved Christ as the treasury of the world, yet they are justified thereby. Even if they have solely repeated through all the past centuries "Lord! Lord!" still they stand above the secular world. For they know ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... think the stature all in all, Nor like a hero if he is not tall. The feeling sense all other wants supplies— I rate no actor's merit from his size. Superior height requires superior grace, And what's a giant with a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... and having its whole surface covered with an involved and rich ornamental design. Its eyes were, or seemed to be rubies, and saddle and bridle and housing were studded with small gems. There was little merit in the art of it beyond the engraving, but Cosmo saw the eyes of the lady fixed upon it, with a strange ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... delirium abated, and consciousness, that had been driven forcibly from her throne, hastened to assume the sceptre of her authority. The crisis was past, and the patient began to be sensible of those attentions on the part of his devoted wife, which had not only the merit of being unremitting, but that of being sweetened by the tears of solicitude and the blandness of love. I marked attentively the first impressions made by her devotedness on the returning sense. I saw his look following her eye, which was continually ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... otherwise than it is; and the wise reader is convinced that he could have done the thing himself without half trying. At that, the weary writer smiles a bitter smile; but it is one of the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. Nobody, except him who has tried it, will ever know how hard it is to write a really good detective story. The man or woman who can do it can also write a good play (according to modern ideas of plays), and possesses force of character, individuality, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... that you are called 'Robespierre the Incorruptible,"' Harry said; "but, nevertheless, you belong to France, and France will assuredly see that some day you have such a reward as you richly merit." ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... to compel him, whom I have loaded with benefits, to repay them in his turn; if not, he does not merit the least of the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... beating up the quarters of the royalists at Bovey Tracy, Fairfax sat down before Dartmouth, and in a few days entered it by storm. Poudram Castle being taken by him, and Exeter blockaded on all sides, Hopton, a man of merit, who now commanded the royalists, having advanced to the relief of that town with an army of eight thousand men, met with the parliamentary army at Torrington, where he was defeated, all his foot dispersed, and he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... day as are the crowd of common readers who know no other, yet he suffered not the brilliant novelties of the hour to wean his admiration from the authors whose reputation has stood the test of time. He was generous, however, to rising merit, and took pleasure in commending it to ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... supplied by the spinnerets, unite the pieces, so that the whole resembles a coarse fabric. Without being absolutely faultless, for there are always awkward pieces on the outside, which the worker could not handle, the gaudy building is not devoid of merit. The bird lining its nest would do no better. Whoso sees the curious, many-coloured productions in my pans takes them for an outcome of my industry, contrived with a view to some experimental mischief; and his surprise is great when I confess who the real author is. No one would ever ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... scruple to give her every assurance that no duel, or angry collision of any kind, was likely, to take place: at which news her face glowed with pleasure, and her lips flowed with many an expression of gratitude, although he assured hex again and again that he had done nothing on earth to merit her thanks. ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... be noted, this balance dispenses entirely with knife edges, and this statement carries with it the gist of its entire merit. There is no friction, and the elegance of the work and the nice adjustments of the parts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... basis, and stands not as it should upon the personal merits of those who compose it, but upon a pile of bank-books. In other cities, poor men, who are members of families which command respect for their talents or other admirable qualities, or who have merit of their own sufficient to entitle them to such recognition, are welcomed into what are called the "Select Circles" with as much cordiality as though they were millionaires. In New York, however, men ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... lose their merit of a touching simplicity in an unrhymed translation; but they will serve to show the habitual temper ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... particular, it proceeds from nothing but a difference in the tempers and complexions of men; and is besides very inconsiderable. Can we imagine it possible, that while human nature remains the same, men will ever become entirely indifferent to their power, riches, beauty or personal merit, and that their pride and vanity will not ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... only child of Sir Richard Brandon. Sir Richard was a knight and a widower. He was knighted, not because of personal merit, but because he had been mayor of some place, sometime or other, when some one connected with royalty had something important to do with it! Little Diana was all that this knight and widower had on earth to care for, except, of course, his horses and dogs, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... years of age he was at work in New York, and soon was discovered to be the editor in secret of a paper called The Thespian Mirror. The merit of this juvenile sheet attracted the attention of many people, and among them of Mr. Seaman, a wealthy New Yorker who offered the talented boy an opportunity to go to college free of expense. Young Payne ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as you have invited Joe—old Joe, who has no other merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty—to be your guest and guide at Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly yours. I don't know, Sir,' said the Major, wagging his double chin with a jocose air, 'what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... that all racing is rotten—as everything connected with losing money must be. Out here, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham; looking pretty on paper only. Every one knows every one else far too well for business purposes. How on earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and live in the same Station with him? He says, "on ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was also proved above, in 525. In the world, merits may as it were be transferred by men; that is, good may be done to children for the sake of their parents, or to the friends of any client out of favor; but the good of merit cannot be inscribed on their souls, but only be externally adjoined. The like is not possible with men as to their spiritual life: this, as was shewn above, must be implanted; and if it is not implanted ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... novel writing are very liberal, and he accepts as belonging to literature many specimens we should sternly reject. The one point to remember, however, is that he does not accept them all; he draws the line somewhere, and in that age when the novel was in its infancy, there was merit in doing even no more than this. He is very hard upon the old mediaeval romances, which it is true he seems to have known only through the abridged and degenerate texts circulated in his time, for the amusement ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... point at which I had been obliged from the want of good water to abandon it, in 1828, to lat. 32 degrees 26 minutes, and had marked down some hills to the westward of it. Still I do not think that I detract from his merit, and I am sure I do not wish to do so, when I say that his having so marked them can hardly be said to have given us any certain knowledge of ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... of the whites—a constantly increasing variety of professional and business men and women. Their places in the economic world will be assured and their prosperity guaranteed in proportion to the merit displayed by them in their several callings, for about them will have been established the solid bulwark of an industrial mass to which they may safely look for support. The esthetic demands will be met as the capacity of the race to procure ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... was about an inch long by an eighth broad. It had come into existence some ten years previously, in the following manner. The inter-house cricket cup at Wrykyn had originally been a rather tarnished and unimpressive vessel, whose only merit consisted in the fact that it was of silver. Ten years ago an Old Wrykinian, suddenly reflecting that it would not be a bad idea to do something for the school in a small way, hied him to the nearest jeweller's and purchased another silver cup, vast withal and cunningly ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... the careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who will whisper, that albeit my learning and good principles cannot (lauded be the heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at Gandercleugh hath been more favourable to my acquisitions in learning than to the enlargement ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... certainly a few colonists in our old possessions of Senegal, but yonder in the Niger valley, beyond Djenny, there are, I think, only ourselves. We are the pioneers, the vanguard, the riskers full of faith and hope. And there is some merit in it, for to sensible stay-at-home folks it all seems like defying common sense. Can you picture it? A French family installed among savages, and unprotected, save for the vicinity of a little fort, where a French officer commands a dozen native soldiers—a French family, which is sometimes ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... economic theory. This great work was intended to be, in its literal sense, the Bible of the working class, as indeed it has since become. Certainly, Jaures' tribute to Marx is well deserved and fairly sums up the work accomplished by him in the period 1847-1869. "To Marx belongs the merit," he says, " ... of having drawn together and unified the labor movement and the socialist idea. In the first third of the nineteenth century labor struggled and fought against the crushing power of capital; but it was not conscious itself ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... and the commercial proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of Irishmen. It is but small merit in the Irish Parliament of George I. and George II., if under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of patriotism. It was in dread of this most healthful process, that the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... system of merit and demerit established; everything good and everything bad has a specific value in numbers and decimals, which is accurately recorded against the owners thereof in the reports made for each year. The cadet appears to be expected to improve in conduct as well as knowledge; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the public I offer this book, not for its literary merit, but as the tribute of a daughter to a loved father, whose earnest devotion to duty was ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... mismanagement. This mismanagement has itself, as your Committee conceive, in a great measure arisen from dark cabals, and secret suggestions to persons in power, without a regular public inquiry into the good or evil tendency of any measure, or into the merit or demerit of any person intrusted with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... intoxicated by the young man's singular good fortune. What he particularly admired was the union of success and merit. When he compared the abundance of these works, tossed off apparently as in play, and the young man's cheerful evenness of temper with his own torn, distracted existence, a feeling came upon him ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... collection of six volumes of contemporary poems, and they show how much rarer humour was than sentiment, for Dodsley was not a man to omit anything sparkling. The following imitation of Ambrose Philips—a general butt—has merit: ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... promising young officer in the army. Graduating at West Point as he did during the second year of the war, he had won his way up to the command of a corps before its close. This he did upon his own merit and without influence." Such a statement from such a quarter is enough to show that once more the Second Connecticut was to be commanded by a soldier of more than ordinary qualities, a fact which was not long ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... for myself, I wish to claim no exemption from the rule. My one aim is to benefit my readers, and to advance truth. For this I would sacrifice the smiles of Courts, and incur the shallow sneers of the grovelling, chowder-headed horde of flunkeys who sit in high places. My work bears witness to my merit. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... have a fine ceremony," he said. "And another year if we can find a girl as worthy as Isidore we will give the reward to her. It will even be a good example that we shall set to Nanterre. Let us not be exclusive; let us welcome all merit." ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... monetary policy to South Africa. Customs duties from the Southern African Customs Union, which may equal as much as 70% of government revenue this year, and worker remittances from South Africa substantially supplement domestically earned income. Swaziland is not poor enough to merit an IMF program; however, the country is struggling to reduce the size of the civil service and control costs at public enterprises. The government is trying to improve the atmosphere for foreign investment. With an estimated 40% unemployment rate, Swaziland's ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... clothes ill, sat his horse worse, and was uneasy in the saddle. The unmistakable air of the gamin was apparent beneath the superficies of the gentleman. Conspicuous on his costume, and wound like an order of merit upon his breast, glittered a chain, the chain,—each tiny brick-like gem spiked with a hundred sparks, and building a fabric of sturdy probabilities with the celerity of the genii in constructing Aladdin's palace. There, a cable to haul up the treasure, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... nicely writ, with humour stings 140 But those who merit praise in other things; Yet we must needs this one exception make, And break our rules for silly Tropos'[60] sake; Who was too much despised to be accused, And therefore scarce deserves to be abused; Raised only by his mercenary tongue, For railing smoothly, and for reasoning wrong, As boys, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... your mind, then, as to its being Lucille that we saw?' said Madame d'Heranville with a smile. 'If it was,' she added, more gravely, 'I think she can scarcely merit all the trouble you are giving yourself on her account. Her friendship for Andre does not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... pursuance of the plan of our former Supplement, we are enabled to assemble within the present sheet the characteristics of eight works, whilst our quotations include fourteen prose tales and sketches, and poetical pieces, of great merit. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... her opinion without asking it. This woman of experience and good sense is incapable of recognising merit in a man who is sufficiently impertinent to make Mlle. Moriaz love him, without having at least fifty thousand livres ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... only one of the most picturesque and striking instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama, but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love, the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her mother like one entranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble. There is here one little ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... but of those also who shall come after us. For a little while when He had departed from the sight of men, that faith might be established in their hearts, whosoever believed, believed tho they saw Him not, and great has been the merit of their faith; for the procuring of which faith they brought only the movement of a pious heart, and not the touching of ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... larger cities. Art societies thrive and flourish in many States, and art teachers are in demand in most of our towns. Colonies of artists swarm in stately buildings in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The time has come when no artist of merit need starve ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... were at first of opinion that they could not award the prize to the author of any poem written in the vulgar tongue. At the same time they reported that one of the poems written in Gascon possessed such real merit, that the committee decided by a unanimous vote that a prize should be awarded to the author of the best poem written in the Gascon dialect. Many poems were accordingly sent in and examined. Lou Tres de May was selected as the best; and on the letter attached to the poem being opened, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... appear impressed, the three ladies, followed by Starr, trailed into the building, deserted at this hour; and it was the artist's quick eye that first caught the eccentric merit of the famous ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... do you wish me to say to you? Do you wish me to tell you it is good? It isn't. Do you wish me to tell you it is well drawn? It isn't. Do you wish me to say it has merit? It hasn't. Do you wish me to show you what is wrong with it? It is all wrong. Do you wish me to tell you what to do with it? Tear it ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Valparaiso, Talcahuano and Iquique. In itself this policy was not unreasonable, and in many ways extremely beneficial for the country. Unfortunately corruption crept into the expenditure of the large sums necessary to carry out this programme. Contracts were given by favour and not by merit, and the progress made in the construction of the new public works was far from satisfactory. The opposition in congress to President Balmaceda began to increase rapidly towards the close of 1887, and further gained ground in 1888. In order to ensure a majority ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... whether he ought to speak out or not), 'arter all, Sam,' said he, 'atween ourselves (but you must not let on I said so, for the fullness of time hain't yet come), half a yard of blue ribbon is a plaguy cheap way of rewardin' merit, as the English do; and, although we larf at 'em (for folks always will larf at what they hain't got, and never can get), yet titles ain't bad things as objects of ambition, are they?' Then, tappin' me on the shoulder, and lookin' up and smilin', ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... said thus much because it is my wish that the principles which have guided me in the composition of these Memoirs may be understood. I am aware that they will not please every reader; that is a success to which I cannot pretend. Some merit, however, may be allowed me on account of the labour I have undergone. It has neither been of a slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... are scores of men in the ranks merit promotion better far than I do. And—leave the Colonel's name alone. He is our chief, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Prince Consort was informed that Savoy was to go for Lombardy, and Nice for Venetia; others said that Nice was to be the price of the Duchies and Legations. There was a persistent impression that the island of Sardinia was mentioned, which would not merit record but for the general correctness of the other guesses. There is no reference, however, to Sardinia, in the version of the treaty which has since been published, and Cavour indignantly repudiated the idea of ceding this Italian island ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... honorable from the manner in which the appointment is made. The unanimous suffrage of the elective body in your favor is peculiarly expressive of the gratitude, confidence, and affection of the citizens of America, and is the highest testimonial at once of your merit and their esteem. We are sensible, sir, that nothing but the voice of your fellow-citizens could have called you from a retreat chosen with the fondest predilection, endeared by habit, and consecrated to the repose of declining years. We rejoice, and with us all America, that ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... liveliest ride he ever experienced. I knew I was safe in saying that, and the orderly remarked that he had about come to that conclusion himself, and he left me. I had never expected to rise, on pure merit, to that proud position of colonel's orderly, and I made up my mind if that night's ride did not founder me, or drive my spine up into the top of my hat, or glue the two sides of my empty stomach together, so they would never come apart, that I would try to conduct myself so that ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... sulphur, on the nearest assailants. Nor was caution a sufficient protection to those who kept aloof; for darts, discharged from engines or by the hand, inflicted wounds on most of them; and thus the brave and the timid, though of unequal merit, were exposed to ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... the keen and sharp yearning for reputation; he had not, as yet, tasted its sweets and bitters—fatal draught, which once tasted, begets too often an insatiable thirst! neither had he enemies and decriers whom he was desirous of abashing by merit. And that is a very ordinary cause for exertion in proud minds. He was, it is true, generally reputed clever, and fools were afraid of him: but as he actively interfered with no man's pretensions, so no man thought it necessary to call him a blockhead. At present, therefore, it was quietly ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... picture which was stationed, partly for business reasons, partly for ornament, in a corner near the office door. It was a figure of a gayly dressed damsel, nearly life-size, and was supposed by its blooming appearance to settle finally the merit of a new health food. The other clerk, who was a young fellow, hardly more than a boy, had placed it there. He had reached the first fever-stage of admiration of the other sex, and this gaudy beauty had resembled in his eyes a fair damsel of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... much the more obliged to speak of it," writes the historian De Thou respecting the battle of Sainte Gemme, "as La Noue, the most generous of men, who has written on the civil wars with as much fidelity as judgment, always disposed to render conspicuous the merit of others, and very reserved respecting his own, has not said a word of this victory." De Thou, iv. (liv. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... return your paper on Universal Art. It is not without merit; but I consider art such an important subject that I mean to deal with it exclusively myself. With thanks for kindly appreciation of my new venture, I ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... was entrusted to Captain Tuckey, an officer of merit and varied services, who had published several works connected with geography and navigation. Besides a crew of about fifty, including marines and mechanics; he was accompanied by Mr. Smith, an eminent botanist, who likewise ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... he is a follower of Frank Norris, and two or three facts lend it a specious probability. "McTeague" was printed in 1899; "Sister Carrie" a year later. Moreover, Norris was the first to see the merit of the latter book, and he fought a gallant fight, as literary advisor to Doubleday, Page & Co., against its suppression after it was in type. But this theory runs aground upon two circumstances, the first being that Dreiser did not actually ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of Karl disclosed the villainy of the Italians, and made known how narrowly the commissary had escaped the loss of his fair young bride; whilst, as he told his rude and simple tale, without claiming any merit, or appearing to be conscious of any, Adelaide learned that to this repulsive stupid clown she had three ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... The merit of this method of arguing may be left to the judgment of the reader, who will remark that wedded pairs are not described as leaving the hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of the lofty house," the innermost part. Is this the same as the "recess ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... repentances and righteous intentions and endeavours, are as much out of place as a means of procuring God's favour and help as Naaman's talents of silver and pieces of gold. We have God's favour irrespective of our merit, and we must humble ourselves to accept it as His free gift, which we could not earn and ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... "When I have ensured mine own salvation, and won mine husband's soul from Purgatory, and heaped up great store of merit belike!—Woman, I live but of bread and water, with here and there a lettuce leaf; a draught of milk of Sundays, but meat never saving holydays. I sleep never beyond three hours of a night, and of a Friday night ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... ordained, in a hum-drum sort of way, going where he was sent for, and performing his routine duties reasonably well, but without showing any great aptitude for his work. He had little interest, and had almost given up expecting promotion, which he certainly had done nothing particular to merit. But there was one point on which he was always ready to go out of his way, and take a little trouble. He was a good musician, and had formed choirs at all ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in which, of forenoons, she had always been accustomed to "go her household ways" in her own country. She did not choose to adopt English fashions because she was obliged to live in England; she adhered to her old Belgian modes, quite satisfied that there was a merit ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... 1922, when I sailed from Buffalo aboard the airship America on her expedition against the German fleet. For the first time in my modest career I found myself a figure of nation-wide interest, not through any particular merit or bravery of my own, but by reason of a series of fortunate accidents. I may say that I became a hero in ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... unremitting labor evinced by modern astronomers in the investigation and comparison of the older calculations, and the ingenious application of the results thus obtained to the observation of new facts. The merit of having paved the way for the discovery of the planet Neptune is due to M. Bouvard, who, in his persevering and assiduous efforts to deduce the entire orbit of Uranus from observations made during the forty years that succeeded the discovery of that planet in 1781, found the results ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Providence. After that, of course, she had never expected there would be a son, and with each year her anxiety to see Charles safely married had increased. He had seemed so amenable that at first she could hardly believe that the steed which she had led to waters of such divers merit would refuse to drink from any of them. If rank had no charm for him, which apparently it had not, she would try beauty. When beauty failed, even beauty with money in its hand, Lady Mary hesitated, and then fell back on goodness. But either the goodness was not ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... time they asked that they might be assessed at lower rates than their neighbours, on the ground that the antelope, being thus left undisturbed, did more damage to their crops; but I told them that this would lessen the merit (pun) of their actions in protecting the animals, and they must be treated just as the surrounding villages were. They consider it a good deed to scatter grain to pigeons and other birds, and often have a large number of half-tame birds about their villages. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... perceive, was known by report to Eratosthenes and some other Greeks, and which they call Orcynia) and settled there. Which nation to this time retains its position in those settlements, and has a very high character for justice and military merit: now also they continue in the same scarcity, indigence, hardihood, as the Germans, and use the same food and dress; but their proximity to the Province and knowledge of commodities from countries beyond the sea supplies to the Gauls many ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... his advancing years money had lost much of its attraction. Nor, if he knew himself, was he particularly affected by the glory which attends success. Duty, and duty only, drove him on—to elucidate his problem and merit the confidence put in him by his superiors. If suffering followed, that was not his fault; his business ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
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