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Retrograde   /rˈɛtrəgrˌeɪd/   Listen
Retrograde

verb
(past & past part. retrograded; pres. part. retrograding)
1.
Move backward in an orbit, of celestial bodies.
2.
Move in a direction contrary to the usual one.
3.
Move back.  Synonym: retreat.
4.
Go back over.  Synonyms: hash over, rehash.
5.
Get worse or fall back to a previous condition.  Synonyms: regress, retrogress.



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"Retrograde" Quotes from Famous Books



... The same retrograde movement may be traced, in the relation which the authors themselves have assumed towards their readers. From the lofty address of Bacon: "these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam, which that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed their interest:" or from dedication to Monarch or ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... apparently he remained as cold and calm as ever. "My plan has been deeply calculated," he said, after a pause; "I have admitted into it, as a probable contingency, the defection of Bavaria. I am convinced that the plan of marching on Berlin is good. A retrograde movement, in the circumstances in which we are placed, is disastrous; and those who oppose my projects have undertaken a serious responsibility. However, I will think of it, and inform you of my final decision." ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... Wayne pushed on. On the twenty-third of October, he wrote to the Secretary of War that, "the safety of the western frontiers, the reputation of the Legion, the dignity and interests of the nation, all forbid a retrograde maneuver, or giving up one inch of ground we now possess, until the enemy are compelled to sue ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... man, stiff-set, heavy-jawed, with a strong step, and a short manner; obviously proud, reserved, silent, slightly imperious, self-centred, self-opinionated, well-educated in the kind of knowledge all such men must possess, but narrow in intellect, retrograde in sympathy, a stickler for social conventions, an almost unyielding upholder of royal rights, prerogatives, customs, and usages (although by his own marriage he had violated one of the first of ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine

... David who shared the family facility with the pen.[22] Recognizing Bessemer's invention as a "congruous appendage to [the] now highly developed powers of the blast furnace" which he describes as "too convenient, too powerful and too capable of further development to be superseded by any retrograde process," David Mushet greeted Bessemer's discovery as "one of the greatest operations ever devised in metallurgy."[23] A month later, however, David Mushet had so modified his opinion of Bessemer as to ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop

... Government, and who doubts which is to conquer? The struggle may be a long one, a costly one, and freedom may at last barely escape with her life. But so sure as humanity sweeps onward; so sure as the average progress of the race is never retrograde; so sure as right bears in its bosom the seeds of eternal life, and wrong the seeds of eternal death; so sure as God sits on His throne and the heavens do rule,' the free ideas of New England will yet bear sway over this continent, and, in their moral force at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... return to them because our youth has a hold on us which it asserts whenever a disappointment knocks us down. Our old loves (with the bad natures I know in them) are always lurking to avenge themselves on the new by tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity. A schoolgirl in Fallow field, the tailor's daughter, had sighed for the bliss of Beckley Court. Beckley Court was her Elysium ere the ardent feminine brain conceived a loftier summit. Fallen from that attained eminence, she sighed anew for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... stopped, and held on till the rod bent like a giant hoop and the line became rigid; but the fish was not to be checked. Its retrograde movement was slow, but steady ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... as it was, clashed with hers. She did not forget that there had been a time when Ruth, having practically to choose between them, had chosen to go Kirk's way and had abandoned herself to a life which could only be considered unhygienic and retrograde. Her defeat in the matter of Whiskers, the microbe-harbouring dog from Ireland, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... life with a retrograde movement; they imitate the crabs: in other words, they are launched stern foremost. Whether great or small, long or short, whether clothed in patrician copper or smeared with plebeian tar, they all start on their first voyage with their stern-posts acting the part of cut-water, and, also, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... at the moment when she descended the steps accompanied by her train, she made a retrograde movement, in order to behold him once more, when her crown fell off. Oswald hastened to pick it up; and in restoring it to her, said in Italian, that an humble mortal like himself might venture to place at the feet of a goddess ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... a retrograde movement in the doctrine of the leucocytes has gained ground surprisingly, especially in the last few years. Ever since Virchow's description of the lymphocytes, observers have tried to separate the various forms of leucocytes one from another, and if possible ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... afternoon, when news was brought us that Bustamante, with his generals and troops, had returned, and had passed through the village, on their way back to Mexico! Some say that this retrograde march is in consequence of a movement made in Mexico by General Valencia—others that it has been caused by a message received from General Paredes. We paid a visit in the evening to the old curate, who was pretty much in the dark, morally and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... he had another glimpse of the apparitions, when, having merely passed behind the bushes, they came out beyond them, in the direction of the real cave, and were lost once more in shadow. Lysander, engaged in making his retrograde movement, did not notice this very important circumstance; and the corporal was too intently occupied in watching Carl ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... Early's divisions of less than ten thousand men of all arms—was detached to watch the enemy; and the retrograde movement was completed so successfully that McClellan never suspected the evacuation. Two days later, his grand array—"an army with banners," bands braying and new arms glinting in the sun—moved down to the attack; and then, doubtless to his infinite disgust, he found only the smoking ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... faith the government deprived the King of our confidence and love, and caused the restoration of the Emperor to become the hope of the nation. In spite of the obstacles experienced by the ministry, in spite of the affronts to which they had been subjected, in spite of the retrograde steps which they had been compelled to take, they still clung to the baneful system which they had fostered; and, bigoted to these plans, they continued to persevere in those errors which recalled Napoleon from his exile, just as Napoleon persevered in the errors which recalled ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... many nights this seems to be the case, but at length the astronomer suspects that the planet must be commencing to move backwards. A few nights more, and the fact is confirmed beyond possibility of doubt, and the extraordinary discovery of the direct and the retrograde movement of Mars has ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... motion of Mars. In the adjoining figure we represent a portion of the circular tracks in which the earth and Mars move in accordance with the Copernican doctrine. I show particularly the case where the earth comes directly between the planet and the sun, because it is on such occasions that the retrograde movement (for so this backward movement of Mars is termed) is at its highest. Mars is then advancing in the direction shown by the arrow-head, and the earth is also advancing in the same direction. We, on the earth, however, being unconscious of our own motion, attribute, by the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... monastic life to enter as a profession. They could become full members of a number of the York trade-guilds. The social position of women in the retrograde fifteenth century fully agrees with the absence of women from among those who achieved notability in ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... to fall from the practised faith of their mothers, till to-day we read the alarming fact that American society has slid back, little by little, till now, alas, it is nearly in conformity with the moral barbarism of aristocratic institutions! In view of this retrograde state of things, as patriotic women of America, we can do nothing less than perform the work of our mothers over again. God grant we may do it—and do it more effectually than they—inasmuch as we, it is to be hoped, realize the necessity of so instructing our daughters, that after generations ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... circumstance which occurred during this great fight, alike illustrative of cowardice and of courage. The colonel of an infantry regiment, who shall be nameless, being hard pressed, showed a disposition not only to run away himself, but to order his regiment to retire. In fact, a retrograde movement had commenced, when my gallant and dear friend Lord Charles Spencer, aide-de-camp to Sir William Stewart, dashed forward, and, seizing the colours of the regiment, exclaimed, "If your colonel will not lead you, follow me, my boys." The gallantry of this youth, then only eighteen years ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... not being able to believe his ears, go himself at a run to throw a searching glance in the direction they said Admiral Tschitzakoff had taken. This news was indeed true; and the Emperor, overjoyed and out of breath from his race, exclaimed, "I have deceived the admiral." This retrograde movement of the enemy was hard to understand, when the opportunity to overwhelm us was within his reach; and I doubt whether the Emperor, in spite of his apparent satisfaction, was very sure of the happy consequences which this retreat of the enemy ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... good in her power, by her whose simple expression of a desire and slightest request had ever been a law with me. I, of course, consented, the moment that I saw that she had set her heart upon this step. We sent half our attendant troop on to Adrian; and with the other half our carriage took a retrograde ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... revolving course. The form of Mars high on a chariot stood, All sheath'd in arms, and gruffly look'd the god: Two geomantic figures were display'd Above his head, a warrior and a maid, One when direct, and one when retrograde. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... Biron and Romeo;" he is almost as poetical as they, quite as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's sectaries are a reason unto themselves. We have gone retrograde to the noble heresy, since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease: the kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis, in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful wits; ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... rendezvous, rendition, reparation, repercussion, repertory, replenish, replete, replevin, reprehend, reprobate, repulsive, requisite, rescind, residue, residuum, resilient, resplendent, resurgence, resuscitate, reticulate, retribution, retrograde, retrospect, rigorous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... train out of the plaits—accidents very frequent among novices in that business; and I have no doubt but that, in the course of a few months, I shall arrive at all possible perfection in the true Court retrograde motion. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... matters not whether the Emperors were good or bad, if the regime to which they consecrated their energies was exerted to crush the liberties of mankind. The imperial despotism, whether brilliant or disgraceful, was a mournful retrograde step in civilization; it implied the extinction of patriotism and the general degradation of the people, and would have been impossible in the days of Cato, Scipio, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... world. What was the combination of moral and political circumstances which produced so unparalleled a progress during that period in literature and the arts;—why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so soon received a check, and became retrograde,—are problems left to the wonder and conjecture of posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language—a type of the understandings of which it was ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Omnipotence I cannot doubt. It is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement retrograde, before ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... to practice, by men whom the visions of Rousseau had fired, and who were not afraid nor ashamed to wade through oceans of blood to the promised land of humanity and fine feeling. We in our days have seen the same result of sentimental doctrine in the barbarous love of the battle-field, the retrograde passion for methods of repression, the contempt for human life, the impatience of orderly and peaceful solution. We begin with introspection and the eternities, and end in blood and iron. Again, Rousseau's first piece was an anathema upon the science and art of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... that all epochs are alike, as good one as another. There are times better than those which follow them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them. Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings and retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while man ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... generals and gave them aloud these new orders, but, in a whisper, he instructed them to begin the retrograde movement, and to let the troops occupy the positions he had selected for them on the extensive ground he ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... Dr. Morgan and her fellow workers, they took up the burden, determined to do their best. Yet, despite their great efforts, the class did not advance as other classes have done. Nor yet could it retrograde for it stood in a position where any backward movement was impossible. It was known throughout Exeter as the 'caudal ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... of the world implied considerable acquaintance—how obtained I do not pretend to know—with the characters of men. Discovering that she was in danger of overstepping the limits of my patience, she drew back with a skill which performed the retrograde movement without ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... without discrimination of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence. Over the manner of conducting war Mexico possesses no exclusive control. She has no right to violate at pleasure the principles which an enlightened civilization has laid down for the conduct of nations at war, and thereby retrograde to a period of barbarism, which happily for the world has long since passed away. All nations are interested in enforcing an observance of those principles, and the United States, the oldest of the American Republics ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... lived before, some evidence Should that existence to the present bind; Some innate inkling of experience Should still imbue and permeate the mind, If we, progressing, pass from state to state, Or retrograde, as turns ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... age or epoch is not one of darkness, but of light; not of discouragement, but of hope. It is neither retrograde nor stagnant, but progressive to a degree never before witnessed in the history of man on so large a scale and involving all classes and so many ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point further down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon enabled me to ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts

... naturalist or a biologist I am always ashamed of what I have called a sport. Yet one of the truths of evolution is that not to practise strife, not to use violence, not to fish or hunt—that is to say, not to fight—is to retrograde as a natural man. Spiritual and intellectual growth is attained at the ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... the journalist makes this reflection: "Since 1836 there has been a retrograde movement in the cotton industry";—that is, it no longer keeps up its relation with other industries: another result foreseen from the theory of the proportionality ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... heads of the troops stationed in the rear of their captain. Much of the success of an attack, made by irregular soldiers, depends on the direction in which they are first got in motion. In the present instance it was retrograde, and in less than a minute after the bellowing report of the swivel among the rocks and caverns, the whole weight of the attack from the left rested on the prowess of the single arm of the veteran. Benjamin received a severe contusion from the recoil of his ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... their great disadvantage never to have had a much higher standard of religion, morals, civilisation, or industry set before them, than they had been able to evolve for themselves; and it is a law of nature that what is not progressive must be retrograde. The gentle Tahitian nature has entirely mastered the English turbulence, so that there is genuine absence of violence, there is no dishonesty; and drunkenness was then impossible; there is also a general habit of religious observance, but not including self- restraint ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fortunes, Flaccus, cannot be impeach'd. For at my birth the planets passing kind Could entertain no retrograde aspects: And that I may with kindness 'quite their love, My countrymen, I will prevent the cause 'Gainst all the false encounters of mishap. You name me your dictator, but prefix No time, no course, but give me leave to rule And yet exempt me not from your revenge. Thus by your pleasures ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... foraging excursions. Becoming uneasy by these bold attacks of the rebels, frequently driving his foraging parties within sight of his camp, Cornwallis, when he heard of the defeat of Ferguson at King's Mountain, concentrated his army, and, on the 14th of October, commenced his retrograde march towards Winnsboro, S.C. During this march, the British army halted for the night at Wilson's plantation, near Steele Creek. Cornwallis and Tarleton occupied the house of Mrs. Wilson, requiring her to prepare a meal for ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... functionaries appointed to enforce respect for it, that after a few years it fell into a veritable desuetude. Thus it happened that, while France at a short distance from this region was advancing with rapid strides towards the enfranchisement of the poorer classes, Varenne was executing a retrograde march and returning at full speed to the ancient tyranny of the country squires. It was easy enough for the Mauprats to pervert these poor folk; they feigned a friendly interest in them to mark their difference from the other nobles ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... was found that Sheridan had begun a retrograde movement down the valley to take a defensive position in front of Halltown. The brigade brought up the rear, the Sixth Michigan acting as ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... in that original formation; further it must be admitted, that in the generality of cases the 1000 men would have the advantage at the first commencement of being able to drive their opponent out of his position and force him to a retrograde movement; now, whether these two advantages are a counterpoise to the disadvantage of finding ourselves with 800 men to a certain extent disorganised by the combat, opposed to an enemy who is not materially weaker ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... each we have generally, on one side, a body of older theologians, who since their youth have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry professors who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and a mass of unthinking ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance save in making up a retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical tribunal; on the other side we have as generally the thinking, open-minded, devoted men who have listened to the revelation of their own time as well as of times past, and who are evidently thinking the future thought ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... repeated Fouquet. The eight oars stopped, and resisting the water, created a retrograde motion. It stopped. The twelve rowers in the other did not, at first, perceive this maneuver, for they continued to urge on their boat so vigorously that it arrived quickly within musket-shot. Fouquet ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... dark. From Rheims to Soissons the way was clear; then there came a sudden move southward to Chateau-Thierry from which indeed there was still a straight line to Paris but which still more clearly indicated the highroad leading to the Orleannais, the faithful districts of the Loire. This retrograde movement was not made without a great outcry from the generals. Their opinion was that the King ought to press on to conquer everything while the English forces were still depressed and discouraged. In their mind this deflection towards ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... found his forces spread out over a front of sixty miles from Ratisbon to positions south of Augsburg, and it needed all his skill to mass them before the Archduke's blows fell. Thanks to Austrian slowness the danger was averted, and a difficult retrograde movement was speedily changed into a triumphant offensive. Five successive days saw as many French victories, the chief of which, at Eckmuehl (April 22nd), forced the Archduke with the Austrian right wing northwards ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... unfair—perhaps it seems above all retrograde and ignorant—to express doubt and not to think hopefully of a cause in which so many lives have been spent with singular disinterestedness and self-devotion. Yet these adverse thoughts are in the air, not only amongst those who are unable to win in the race, but amongst those who ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... wife. When he turned for a moment to listen to the appeals of the woman, her husband improved the opportunity to commence a retreat. He moved off steadily for a few paces, when the enemy discovered the retrograde march, and again brought the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... Throne,[2] And with no lesse Nobility of Loue, Then that which deerest Father beares his Sonne, Do I impart towards you. For your intent [Sidenote: toward] [Sidenote: 18] In going backe to Schoole in Wittenberg,[3] It is most retrograde to our desire: [Sidenote: retrogard] And we beseech you, bend you to remaine Heere in the cheere and comfort of our eye, Our cheefest Courtier Cosin, and ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... Blood, Youth in 's equipage. Wiping the sweat from of her face that ran, With hair all wet she pussing thus began; Bright June, July and August hot are mine, In th' first Sol doth in crabbed Cancer shine. His progress to the North now's fully done, Then retrograde must be my burning Sun, Who to his Southward Tropick still is bent, Yet doth his parching heat but more augment Though he decline, because his flames so fair, Have throughly dry'd the earth, and heat ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... republic, a government founded on mock elections and supported only by the sword," was nearly a quarter of a century since pronounced by Daniel Webster, when speaking of the South American States, as "a movement, indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous movement, from the regular and old-fashioned ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... this retrograde movement on the part of the enemy to make a push for the beach, hoping that Bob would hear the rifle-shots (especially the double report, which I had arranged with him on a former occasion should be a signal of warning or a call for assistance), and hasten to the rendezvous ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... securing wise legislation, good official agents, or even a real expression of the people's will. The representative system is the most valuable system that has thus far been invented to make popular government possible and the introduction of more democracy, so-called, is a retrograde step. It is going back to the machinery of the New England town meeting and of the Republics of Greece and Rome, which we have given up because conditions have so changed as to make it impracticable ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... Grattan and his party, who urged that, as the Roman Catholics had recently been allowed to matriculate and take degrees at Trinity College, though not to share in the endowments of that wealthy institution, the endowment of another college, to be exclusively confined to Roman Catholics, would be a retrograde step, undoing the benefits of the recent concession of the authorities of Trinity; would be "a revival and re-enactment of the principles of separation and exclusion," and an injury to the whole community. ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... not one of those who draw from their own resources and accumulated feelings, or who improve with age. He belongs to a class (common in Scotland and elsewhere) who get up school-exercises on any given subject in a masterly manner at twenty, and who at forty are either where they were—or retrograde, if they are men of sense and modesty. The reason is, their vanity is weaned, after the first hey-day and animal spirits of youth are flown, from making an affected display of knowledge, which, however useful, is not their own, and may be much more simply ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... even to-day sustain the divine right of kings, when the kings themselves believe in it no longer, revolted at one time against the princes who were not willing to follow them in their misoneique and retrograde fanaticism and hurled themselves into regicide. Thus three Jesuits were executed in England in 1551 for complicity in a conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth, and two others in 1605 in connection with the powder plot. In France, Pere Guignard was beheaded for ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... tower upon the walls. At that moment De Valence opened one of the gates; and, at the head of a formidable body, charged the nearest Scots. A good soldier is never taken unawares, and Murray and Graham were prepared to receive him. Furiously driving him to a retrograde motion, they forced him back into the town. But there all was confusion. Wallace, with his resolute followers, had already put Cressingham and his legions to flight; and, closely pursued by Kirkpatrick, they threw themselves into the castle. Meanwhile, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... area, and in civilization retrograde.] Having thus traced the rapid early spread of Islam to its proper source, I proceed to the remaining topics, namely, the causes which have checked its further extension, and those likewise which have depressed the followers of this religion in the scale of civilization. ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... the redmen on the southeastern shore, having learned that their game was coming into their hands, had signaled the fact to their allies across the Susquehanna, so that they might be prepared for the retrograde movement which was actually made. Under the circumstances, there was but one thing remaining for the Mohawk to do, and that was to drift with the current until below the point where the last light had shown itself, and then to make an effort to land. Fortunately, the woods ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... to her charmed life, they hope, at least, to defame her character and to blacken her reputation. They seize every opportunity to misrepresent her doctrine, to travesty her history, and to denounce her as retrograde, old fashioned, and out of date. And, what makes matters worse, the falsest and most mischievous allegations are often accompanied by professions of friendship and consideration, and set forth in learned treatises, with an elegance of language and an elevation ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... we commenced a retrograde movement for the "old camp," and soon caught up with the big train, filled with all the delicacies of the season, for the brute portion ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... method which has been later applied to the problem, but with quite different results from those reached by more recent investigators. He says, "By setting out from Nipe which is the point where Columbus struck Cuba and proceeding in a retrograde direction along his course, we may surely trace his path, and shall be convinced that Guanahani is no other than ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... peace, to protect commerce and industry, more especially their own, and, at the same time, to secure to property the control, of affairs. In short, England and her liberty were their models, though some among them had too much good sense to wish to retrograde, as is the case with a party in America, in order to make the imitation more perfect. Those who were for swallowing the English system whole, were called the doctrinaires, from their faith in a theory, while the different shades of dissenting opinions were distributed among ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Till holy homicide the climes o'erspread. —For that fine apologue, writh mystic strain, Gave like the rest a golden age to man, Ascribed perfection to his infant state, Science unsought and all his arts innate; Supposed the experience of the growing race Must lead him retrograde and cramp his pace, Obscure his vision as his lights increast, And sink him from an ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... betrayed; for, on arriving near his encampment, we found his cannon mounted, his troops under arms, and at every point so perfectly prepared to receive us, that we were compelled, like fools, to make a retrograde movement, without inflicting on our enemy ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... which, without having the tenacity of clay, is sufficient to render it slimy and boggy: I am quite satisfied that two days' rain will at any time render this country impassable. The mortification and distress of mind I felt at being obliged to take a retrograde direction was heightened by seeing the horses struggling under loads far beyond their present powers, their labour rendered still more trying by the miserable country they were obliged ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... stage, another step forward. The instant society becomes organized in clans, natural selection cannot let these clans be broken up and die out,—the clan becomes the chief object or care of natural selection, because if you destroy it you retrograde again, you lose all you have gained; consequently, those clans in which the primeval selfish instincts were so modified that the individual conduct would be subordinated to some extent to the needs of the clan,—those are ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske

... of fights, maintained by troops separated and surprised, against an enemy which, more numerous to begin with, was attacking with its whole force united.". A tragic incident at the same time gave this encounter an importance which it has preserved in history. Admiral de Coligny, forced to make a retrograde movement, had sent to ask the Prince of Conde for aid; by a second message he urged the prince not to make a fruitless effort, and to fall back himself in all haste. "God forbid," answered Conde, "that Louis de Bourbon should turn his back to the enemy!" and he continued ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... kings do not offer the example of a single individual redeeming by brilliant personal qualities the vice of subalternity, to which his position condemned him; not a single one who has ever evinced any grand national aspiration. Around them in the obscurity of their courts, gather idle or retrograde courtiers, men who call themselves noble, but who have never been able to constitute an aristocracy. An aristocracy is a compact independent body, representing in itself an idea, and from one extremity of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... contrived this: would not Florentines be moved by the visible association of such cruel ignominy with two venerable men like Bernardo del Nero and Niccolo Ridolfi, who had taken their bias long before the new order of things had come to make Mediceanism retrograde—with two brilliant popular young men like Tornabuoni and Pucci, whose absence would be felt as a haunting vacancy wherever there was a meeting of chief Florentines? It was useless: such pity as could be awakened now was of that hopeless sort ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... term for Jew-hatred—was paralleled by the appearance of German anti-Semitism in which it found a congenial companion. Yet, the anti-Semitism of the West was after all only a weak aftermath of the infantile disease of Europe—the medieval Jew-hatred—whereas culturally retrograde Russia was still suffering from the same infection in its acute, "childish" form. The social and cultural anti-Semitism of the West did not undermine the modern foundations of Jewish civil equality. But Russian Judaeophobia, more ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... composer, who carried the art of canonic imitation to a much finer point than had been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab, etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... Constantine to us; so leave me all, I am best accompanied with none at all. [Exeunt. Manet Duke. Either the Plannets, that did meete together In the grand consultation of my birth, Were opposite to every good infusion, Or onely Venus stood as retrograde; For, but in love of this none-loving trull, I have beene fortunate even since my birth. I feele within my breast a searching fire Which doth ascend the engine of my braine, And when I seeke by reason to suppresse The heate it gives, the greaters the excesse. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... to the mastery—watch it, crucify it, "nail it to your Lord's cross." You may despise "the day of small things"—the Great Adversary does not. He knows the power of littles; that little by little consumes and eats out the vigor of the soul. And once the retrograde movement in the spiritual life begins, who can predict where it may end? the going on "from weakness to weakness," instead of "from strength to strength." Make no compromises; never join in the ungodly ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... causes which led to this apparently retrograde movement are still involved in considerable obscurity. The commercial prosperity of the age produced a class who travelled abroad and cultivated the fine arts, with the result that they desired to ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... did not start immediately, though, had they known it, every moment was precious. They wasted time in argument. Vespasian had come down with a diamond ring in one ear, and a ruby in the other. Fullalove saw this retrograde step, and said grimly, "Have you washed but half your face, or is this a ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward; which is the worst property in a servant of a prince, or state. Therefore it is good for princes, if they use ambitious men, to handle it, so as they be still progressive and not retrograde; which, because it cannot be without inconvenience, it is good not to use such natures at all. For if they rise not with their service, they will take order, to make their service fall with them. But since we have said, it were good not to use men of ambitious natures, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... them is concentrated the enlightenment of the period. The class to which they belong is socially and politically dominant—the advance guard of national progress. It has finally cast off the incubus of a retrograde political system; it has placed the nation in a position of unprecedented importance in Europe; and it is setting an example of ordered liberty to the whole civilised world. It has forced the Church and the priesthood to ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... to be the one religion for all men and all time, is convicted of absurdity and imposture by its failures; by the retrograde which marks its whole history in Western Asia. As a universal religion it has been tried ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... journey from Sartem to Lop is obviously retrograde, and this course must have been pursued by the Polos for commercial purposes; perhaps for collecting those valuable stones which are mentioned by Marco as giving so much profit when ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... Vanity Fair, by supposing, at some length, how our glorious dreamer would now describe the face of society in our present Vanity Fair. After describing the consequences that had arisen from religion having become FASHIONABLE, he hints at the retrograde movement towards Popery, known under the name of Puseyism. 'It happened, in process of time, that a part of the pilgrims who remained in Vanity Fair, began to visit the cave of Giant Pope, and it became a sort of fashionable pilgrimage ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... in the mean time, thunderstruck at the sudden arrival of the Austrians, whose numbers they were as yet unable to ascertain, had made a retrograde movement in their first terror. But this did not last long. "If we do not want to perish here to the last man, we must try to force a passage," said General Bisson. "Forward, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... love each thing Had giv'n at first by their great King; And still they creep—drawn on by this— And look back towards their first bliss. For, otherwise, it is most sure, Nothing that liveth could endure: Unless its love turn'd retrograde Sought that First Life, which ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... selection is here confronted with a puzzle which it cannot solve alone, but which at once becomes clear when germinal selection is added. For the determinants of organs that have no further value for the organism, must, as we have already explained, embark on a gradual course of retrograde development. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... connection wid the illegal alembic from which it is distillated, otherwise they will walk off wid the 'doublings,' or strong liquor, leaving you nothing but the residuum or feints. Take a friend's advice, therefore, and retrograde out of all society and connection wid the villains I have described; or if you superciliously overlook this warning, book it down as a fact that admits of no negation, that you will be denuded of reputation, of honesty, and of any pecuniary contingencies that ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... retrograde to tell you, as I have a few minutes more than I expected, of a visit I had an hour before I set out, from a man fresh from Africa—a Scotchman by birth, a missionary by vocation, who had been twenty years abroad, almost all that time in Africa: ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... When this retrograde movement of the Germans began, those who could not see the nature of the fighting believed that the German line of communication, the one from Aix-la-Chapelle through Belgium, had proved too long, and ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... rallied on the low hills already described, I discovered that the enemy, instead of attacking me in front, was wedging in between my division and the balance of the army; in short, endeavoring to cut me off from Chattanooga. This necessitated another retrograde movement, which brought me back to the southern face of Missionary Ridge, where I was joined by Carlin's brigade of Davis's division. Still thinking I could join General Thomas, I rode some distance to the left of my line to look for a way out, but found that the enemy had intervened ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan

... But on account of heavy taxation, high customs' dues, and other clogs to free commerce, the people are sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and wretchedness, and, except in the capital, there is a general retrograde movement. The Ottoman yoke is a peculiarly heavy one; it keeps the people in order, but it crushes them; and perhaps the Fezzanees may now regret somewhat the wholesome anarchy that distinguished the Arab ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... at Dresden, when the arrival of Napoleon was known. I represented the necessity of moving toward Dippoldiswalde to choose a favorable battle-field. It was supposed to be a retreat that I was proposing; and a mistaken idea of honor prevented a retrograde movement without fighting, which would have been the means of avoiding the catastrophe of the next day, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... both sides, of course. 'Idaho' Jack, professional gambler, for instance, frankly considered that the whole town was going to unmentionable depths of propriety. The organisation of the League was regarded by him, and by many others, as a sad retrograde towards the bondage of the ancient and dying East; and that he could not get drunk when and where he pleased, 'Idaho,' as he was called, regarded as a ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... we must retrograde a step. This very morning then, Margaret Brandt had met Jorian Ketel near her own door. He passed her with a scowl. This struck her, and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... years after the establishment of the menopause. Kiwisch describes the structural change in this gland as consisting, on the one hand, of an increase of the connective-tissue stroma; and, on the other hand, the Graafian vesicles themselves undergo retrograde change. In consequence of these microscopic changes, which take place very slowly, the entire organ ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... month the Marquis had been in this condition, half reasonable, half mad. Living with one thought prominent, all others were indistinct to him. To him love was every thing. His father, with his antiquated obstinacy, imbued with retrograde principles, disappeared like a ghost before the brilliant reality of passion. Besides, fear of a rival, dread of the brilliant Count Monte-Leone, who, full of love, as Henri had heard, aspired to nothing more than to become the husband ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the thousand years of Zohak's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into Phredun, of Phredun into Thraetaona, of Thraetaona into Traitana,—each a separate phase in the dissolving view ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... Jesus Christ stand up to plead for us, and that of his mere grace and love? Then this should teach Christians to be watchful and wary how they sin against God. This inference seems to run retrograde; but whoso duly considers it, will find it fairly fetched from the premises. Christianity teaches ingenuity, 36 and aptness to be sensible of kindnesses, and doth instruct us to a loathness to be overhard upon him from whom we have all at free cost. "Shall we-sin that grace ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... maintained without them, but grow still greater if it is left alone to pursue its natural course under a system that brought us out of commercial bondage into a freer air over fifty years ago. That system has been the secret of much of our success, and once we embark on the retrograde course of protection then that will be the beginning of our mercantile decadence. Is the heritage not too magnificent, too sacred, to have pranks ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... and made a few retrograde steps, searching on the ground, as if conscious only of her loss, shaking off his hand when he touched her arm ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... who was placed in command of the Venezuelan troops. But the revolutionary government was too feebly organized to give efficiency to the military force. Divisions arose, and the cause of independence was on the retrograde, when the dreadful earthquake of 1812, and the subsequent invasion by the Spanish force under General Monteverde, for the time, precluded all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... political events, which so frequently originate in rumours and party fictions. From this time, newspapers and periodical literature became distinct works—at present, there seems to be an attempt to revive this union; it is a retrograde step for the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... interest to these discoveries was the fact, ascertained by careful study, that not all of these beings were gifted with normally developed organs of vision, but that in some these organs had undergone a retrograde development, while others ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... Will the causes of war die away because war is forbidden? Certainly not; and the only result of the prohibition would be to throw back the exercise of war from national into private and mercenary hands; and that is precisely the retrograde or inverse course of civilization; for, in the natural order of civilization, war passes from the hands of knights, barons, insulated cities, into those of the universal community. If, again, it is attempted to put down this lawless guerilla ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... checks specified in the two last paragraphs, and perhaps others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has too often occurred in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule. It is very difficult to say why one civilised nation rises, becomes more powerful, and spreads more widely, than another; or why the same nation progresses more quickly ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... the reader's indulgence while accompanying us in a retrograde necessary to the connection of our narrative. When we left Mr. M'Fadden at the crossing, more than two years ago, he was labouring under the excitement of a wound he greatly feared would close the account of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... Zemstvo why it has not done more he will probably tell you that it is because its activity has been constantly restricted and counteracted by the Government. The Assemblies were obliged to accept as presidents the Marshals of Noblesse, many of whom were men of antiquated ideas and retrograde principles. At every turn the more enlightened, more active members found themselves opposed, thwarted, and finally checkmated by the Imperial officials. When a laudable attempt was made to tax trade and industry more equitably the scheme ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... place, La Rochelle appeared impregnable. Then the cardinal, whatever he said, very well knew that the horror of bloodshed in this encounter, in which Frenchman would combat against Frenchman, was a retrograde movement of sixty years impressed upon his policy; and the cardinal was at that period what we now call a man of progress. In fact, the sack of La Rochelle, and the assassination of three of four thousand Huguenots who allowed themselves to be killed, would resemble ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... beams do reject, And Luna in Cancro in sextile he behold. I will the effect hereafter unfold: Now Jupiter the gentle, of temperature mean, Poor Mercury the turncoat, he forsook clean. Now murthering Mars retrograde in Libra, With amiable tryne apply to my beam; And splendent Sol the ruler of the day, After his eclipse to Jupiter will lean: The goddess of pleasure (dame Venus, I mean) To me her poor servant seem friendly to be: So also ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... Constituent, Goupil de Prefeln, because he voted for the revision, also, his son-in-law, because he is his son-in-law. In the Bouches-du-Rhone, where the canton of Seignon, by mistake or through routine, swore "to maintain the constitution of the kingdom," it sets aside these retrograde elected representatives, commences proceedings against the "crime committed," and sends troops against Noves because the Noves elector, a justice who is denounced and in peril, has escaped from the electoral den.—After ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... The wolverine is something wonderful; it laughs at the ages; its bones, found side by side with those of the cave hyena, are the same as those found in its body as it exists to-day. It is an anomaly, an animal which does not advance nor retrograde. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... everything to perish which our forefathers planned and founded? Is this dismal superstition to overwhelm and bury the world and all that is bright and beautiful, as the lava stream rolled over the cities of Vesuvius? No, a thousand times no! Our retrograde and cowardly generation, which has lost all heart to enjoy life in sheer dread of future annihilation, may perhaps be doomed by the gods, as was that of Deucalion's day. Well—if so, what must be must! But such a world as they dream of never can, never will last. Let them ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... titles, have often made the same nation at variance with itself. And as they imagined every migration to have been a warlike expedition, they have represented Myrina as making great conquests; and what is extraordinary, going over the same ground, only in a retrograde direction, which Osiris had just passed before. Her first engagement was with the Atlantes of Cercene: against whom she marched with an army of 30,000 foot, and 2,000 horse; whom she completely armed with the skins of serpents. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... this retrograde movement, he gave a gentle pull to the wooden handle of an old-fashioned wire bell-pull in the midst of buggy, four-in-hand, and other whips, hanging in the entrance, a touch that was acknowledged by a single tinkle of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... the body increases its movement; in the ascending portion it diminishes its movement. At last the upward movement becomes so slow, that the impulse of momentum is lost, and the earth's attraction is again unopposed. The body then begins to retrograde, acquires progressively increasing velocity as it descends, overshoots the place of its original repose, and once more commences the ascent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... progress would reign supreme; where men like Fetters and methods like his would no longer be tolerated. The forces of enlightenment, set in motion by his aid, and supported by just laws, should engage the retrograde forces represented by Fetters. Communities, like men, must either grow or decay, advance or decline; they could not stand still. Clarendon was decaying. Fetters was the parasite which, by sending out its roots toward rich and poor alike, struck at both extremes of society, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the fear of it. Reflections upon the conduct of play-writers with regard servants. He cannot account for the turn his Clarissa has taken in his favour. Hints at one hopeful cause of it. Now matrimony seems to be in his power, he has some retrograde motions. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... to the Duke d'Aumale in 1843: 'I am between the dagger of the Carbonari and the chocolate of the Jesuits.' He chose, as bride for his eldest son, an Austrian princess, who, however, had known no country but Italy. His internal policy was not simply stationary, it was retrograde. If his consent was obtained to some progressive measure, he withdrew it at the last moment, or insisted on the introduction of modifications which nullified the whole. His want of stability drove one of his ministers to jump out of a window. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... because landlords did not anticipate that bread-stuffs brought from this country would interfere with the value of their rents. But England, with all her proud and selfish boasts about free-trade, may yet have to take a retrograde course, like France and Prussia, or her landed interests may be imperilled. The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those lands are so heavily mortgaged that such a reduction of value would ruin them; nor will ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... years she kept herself respectable under our roof, living amongst Christian women and joining in their prayers and hymn, night and morning, but not a trace of the softened, repentant spirit could one see, and finally a distinct retrograde movement accompanied with physical disability forced us to send her home. I despair of Mrs. Deh except when I look into the face of her daughter, the good, pure girl whose life's prayer it is that her mother ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... people who, having gained a dim perception that monopolies are an inevitable result of the modern concentration of industry, conclude that, after all, "the former days were better than these," and that our wisest course is a retrograde one. Fortunately, however, these people are comparatively few. It is a fact so plain that even the dullest can hardly fail to perceive it, that the consolidation and concentration of industry which have gone on everywhere have wonderfully ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... the other cage was after us again! Migul tried to elude it, to shake it off. But he had less success than formerly. It seemed to cling. We sped in the retrograde, constantly accelerating back to the Beginning. Then came a retardation, for a swift turn. In the haze and murk of the Beginning, Migul told us he could elude the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... reached the camp some hours into the night, and, after a little delay, calling in the pickets, and securing some native women who lived in the vicinity, to prevent their carrying word of our movement to the enemy, the detachment commenced its retrograde march,—leaving the enemy victorious, and free to go ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... groan over Man—you write like a metamorphosed (in retrograde direction) naturalist, and you the author of the best paper that ever appeared in the Anthropological Review! Eheu! Eheu! Eheu!—Your ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... two countries must be based. Lord Clarendon was confidentially informed yesterday that a Cabinet had just been held for the first time since Count Bernstorff became a member of it, and that with respect to internal affairs he had greatly alarmed and annoyed some of his colleagues by his retrograde opinions. Lord Clarendon had the honour of dining with the Crown Prince and Princess last night. The dinner was perfect, and everything conducted in the most admirable manner; there was afterwards a ball at "The Queen's" which was really a splendid ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... the coast of Caracas, ten months to make the tour of the gulf of Mexico and reach Tortoise Shoals opposite the port of the Havannah, while forty or fifty days might be sufficient to carry it from the straits of Florida to the bank of Newfoundland. It would be difficult to fix the rapidity of the retrograde current from this bank to the shores of Africa; estimating the mean velocity of the waters at seven or eight miles in twenty-four hours, we may allow ten or eleven months for this last distance. Such are the effects of the slow but regular motion which agitates the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... of liberty. It certainly was a moment for that boldness on which success so often depends, but Hidalgo at this critical stage took counsel from prudence instead of daring, and, fearing the arrival of reinforcements to the beaten army, withdrew his forces towards Queretaro—a weak and fatal retrograde movement, as ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... realised at the same time how impossible it would be for any man to win her love if he were an enemy to her cause. St. Genis—royalist, emigre, retrograde like herself—had obviously won his way to her heart chiefly by the sympathy of his own convictions. But what of de Marmont, to whom she was on the eve of plighting her troth? de Marmont the hot-headed Bonapartist ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... confessed, I returned to the old superstition—to a personal God. This fact is, once for all, not to be stifled, as many enlightened and well-meaning friends would fain have had it. But I must expressly contradict the report that my retrograde movement has carried me as far as to the threshold of a Church, and that I have even been received into her lap. No: my religions convictions and views have remained free from any tincture of ecclesiasticism; no chiming ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... whole population of the Italian cantons, and part of the French and German. In Geneva and other large towns the labor question troublesomely enters, and the radicals, like our Democrats, are sometimes the retrograde party. ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... defeated, and that their principal line of retreat would be in the direction of Ely's Ford, Stuart was ordered to proceed at once towards that point with a portion of his cavalry, in order to barricade the road and as much as possible impede the retrograde ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... the artillery and the sharpshooters; the rest had disappeared: the regiments, dislodged by the shells and the French bullets, retreated into the bottom, now intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean; a retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself, Wellington drew back. "The beginning ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... power of self-restraint to which Luther was a stranger. But with a lofty mien, though in the same tone, he rejected Luther's propositions, as the fruit of ludicrous obstinacy and narrowness of mind, nay, as a retrograde step into Popery. His letter, moreover, embittered the contest by importing into it extraneous matter of reproach, such as, in particular, Luther's conduct in the Peasants' War. Luther had reason to say of him, 'He rages against me, and threatens ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... been resolved to send to the Emperor not only the request of the army for a new chief, but a declaration in their own name and that of the troops "that if any order came from St. Petersburg, to suspend hostilities and greet the invaders as friends"—for it had all along been believed that the retrograde movements were the result of the advice of the minister, Count Romanzow—"such an order would be regarded as one that did not express his Imperial Majesty's real sentiments and wishes, but had been extracted from his Majesty ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty



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