"Mercurial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... killed at Chancellorsville had a parallel in the endearing friendship which sprung up between Grant and his principal subordinate, William T. Sherman, who was to bear a hardly less momentous part than his own in the conclusion of the war. Sherman was a man of quick wits and fancy, bright and mercurial disposition, capable of being a delightful companion to children, and capable of being sharp and inconsiderate to duller subordinates. It is a high tribute both to this brilliant soldier and to Grant himself that ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... for the excursion across the valley to inspect the ruins of a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour before. During this time, another transformation had taken place in our mercurial hostess! It was the Calvé of Paris, Calvé the witch, Calvé the capiteuse, who presided at the dainty, flower-decked table ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... again, this time with better results. For five minutes he beat the bedclothes; then his spirits rose and, like the mercurial Celt that he was, he chanted blithely a verse from "The Night Before Larry ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... being autumn, leaves of wild laurel were glistening and gyrating on the white foam of the Kodor like a quantity of mercurial salmon fry. And as I sat on some rocks overlooking the river there occurred to me the thought that, as likely as not, the cause of the gulls' and cormorants' fretful cries where the surf lay moaning behind a belt of trees to the right was that, like myself, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... danger from the outskirts was soon taken up in the centre of the city, and now nothing was to be seen in any direction but a dashing and scampering of the mercurial and excitable citizens of the place, each to his lodge or burrow. Far as the eye could reach was spread the city, and in every direction the scene was the same. We rode leisurely along until we had reached the more thickly settled portion of the city, when ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... marked for martyr. There is the note of cricket-time in his earlier life, and how long this attached to the physical delights of his being cannot be told here. His eyes were lodged too far in heaven to have kept the delights for long, to have comprehended all that clogged his impatiently mercurial feet. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... principles furnished by the Tomato will, when concentrated, produce, if taken medicinally, effects very similar to those brought about by taking mercurial salts, viz., an ulcerative-state of the mouth, with a profuse flow of saliva, and with excessive stimulation of the liver: peevishness also on the following day, with a depressing backache in men, suggesting paralysis, and with a profuse fluor albus ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... spirits till he got in sight of Huntercombe Hall; and then it suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind that he should probably not be received with an ovation, petty larceny being a novelty in that ancient house ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... one's quarters, shift one's quarters; dodge; keep going, keep moving;. put in motion, set in motion; move; impel &c. 276; propel &c. 284; render movable, mobilize. Adj. moving &c. v.; in motion; transitional; motory[obs3], motive; shifting, movable, mobile, mercurial, unquiet; restless &c. (changeable) 149; nomadic &c. 266; erratic &c. 279. Adv. under way; on the move, on the wing, on the tramp, on the march. Phr. eppur si muove [It][Galileo]; es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille[Ger], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... adventure ending in the happiest laughter over the expulsion of the dramatist. I may not have any right to say so, but I throw myself on the mercy of my hearers: I remember nothing in any chronicle so mercurial or jovial in its high spirits as this story of the first encounter and the beginning of friendship between ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... had seated herself on a rock at a little distance, called to them. Her strength was restored by the fresh meat, and her childish spirits had risen with the hope of safety. The mercurial little creature had wreathed seaweed about her head, and holding in her hand a long twig decorated with a tuft of leaves to represent a wand, she personified one of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of summoning the fire brigade; also, that nine ounces of poison to eleven ounces of other ingredients, well worked into the hands at different times, as it must be, when handling, or returning skins painted with it, would not tend to lengthen the life of the learner? Corrosive sublimate being a mercurial preparation—i.e, bichloride of mercury—I ask any chemist amongst my readers what effect three ounces of that dangerous preparation, six ounces of arsenic, yellow soap, and spirits of wine would have upon the constitution? Would it not be readily absorbed through the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... in, we presume, the most approved fashion. Owing to his bulk and natural laziness, which rendered jumping about like a jack- in-the-box impossible, Hugh Mathison preferred to stand on the defensive; while his lighter opponent, giving way to the natural bent of his mercurial temperament and corporeal predilections, comported himself in a manner that cannot be likened to anything mortal or immortal, human or inhuman, unless it be to an insane cat, whose veins ran wild-fire instead ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... lose their power of germination if subjected to heat. But one observer now made another experiment, which seemed to go entirely the other way, and puzzled him altogether. He took some of this boiled infusion that I have been speaking of, and by the use of a mercurial bath—a kind of trough used in laboratories—he deftly inverted a vessel containing the infusion into the mercury, so that the latter reached a little beyond the level of the mouth of the inverted vessel. You see that he thus had a quantity of the infusion shut off from any ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pregnancy; a mild laxative is therefore occasionally necessary. The mildest must be selected, as a strong purgative is highly improper, and even dangerous. Calomel and all other preparations of mercury are to be especially avoided, as a mercurial medicine is apt to weaken the system, and sometimes even to produce a miscarriage. Let me again urge the importance of a lady, during the whole period of pregnancy, being particular as to the state of her bowels, as costiveness is a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... was consideration for her brother and his career. For while for her father she cherished an affectionate pride and for her mother an amused and protective pity, her great passion was for her brother—her handsome, vivacious, audacious and mercurial brother, Tony. With him she counted it only joy to share her all too meagre wages whenever he found himself in financial straits. And a not infrequent situation this was with Tony, who, while he seemed to have inherited from his mother the vivacity, quick wit and general ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... of the sun occurred in 1878, [Page 138] astronomers were determined that the question of the existence of an intra-mercurial planet should be settled. Maps of all the stars in the region of the sun were carefully studied, sections of the sky about the sun were assigned to different observers, who should attend to nothing but to look for a possible planet. It is now conceded ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... ready to file out of the company streets before the order reached them. We marched by the moonlight into the space between the belligerent regiments; but Lytle had already got his own men under control, and the less mercurial Thirteenth were not disposed to be aggressive, so that we were soon dismissed with a compliment for our promptness. I ordered the colonels to march the regiments back to the camps separately, and with my staff rode through that of the Thirteenth, to see how matters were there. All was quiet, the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... contributed very much to the quota of general noise. Although Henderson had chaffed Daubeny on his virtuous stillness, yet all the boys sat very nearly as quiet as Dubbs himself during school hours. Even Henderson and such mercurial spirits were awed into silence and sobriety. You would hardly have known that in that quarter of the room there was a form at all. Quicksilver itself would have lost its volatility under Mr ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... KIRKLAND alone such grace from Heaven could win, His features radiant as the soul within; That smile would let him through Saint Peter's gate While sad-eyed martyrs had to stand and wait. Here flits mercurial Farrar; standing there, See mild, benignant, cautious, learned Ware, And sturdy, patient, faithful, honest Hedge, Whose grinding logic gave our wits their edge; Ticknor, with honeyed voice and courtly grace; And Willard, larynxed like a double bass; And Channing, with his bland, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Danube to that splendid lake!" cried the mercurial stripling; "and what is there in all the lordship of Stramen to vie ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... a touch of embarrassment. It occurred to him that he had been betrayed by his mercurial temperament into an attitude which, considering the circumstances, was perhaps a trifle too jubilant. He gave his mustache a pull, and reverted ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... large, broad chamber, its groined roof supported by six squat stone pillars. Light came not only from mercurial lamps affixed to the ceiling, but from others suspended above the three rows of benches which ran the length ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Jack Skyscrape, a mercurial man, Who fluttered over all things like a fan, More brave than firm, and more disposed to dare And die at once than wrestle with despair, Exclaimed, "G—d damn!"—those syllables intense,— Nucleus of England's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the hydrogen-gas thermometer is the almost universal standard with which mercurial thermometers may be compared, while above this point the nitrogen-gas thermometer is used. In both of these standards the change in temperature is measured by the change in pressure of a constant ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... Mercurial ointment mixed with black cylinder oil and applied every quarter of an hour, or as often as expedient. The following is also recommended as a good cooling compound for heavy bearings:—Tallow 2 lb., plumbage 6 oz., sugar of lead 4 oz. Melt the tallow with gentle heat and add the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... that in the supper scene of his second number, Lorrequer bore so striking a resemblance to his contemporary, Nicholas Nickleby; while his biographer, Mr. Fitzpatrick, observes that the identity of Harry Lorrequer is never maintained throughout the novel, that mercurial hero being alternately represented old, young, good-looking, and ugly. So much indeed was Lever impressed with the fact, that he actually besought the artist to represent O'Malley the same person throughout ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... of old-world method and application. Mentally and physically they were splendid men. The whole race of Flemings and Dutch was found by our young recruits to be a grave and powerful people, although exceptional cases of mercurial temperament were not rare. Some curious individuals were to be found among them, as is more the case in European nationalities in general than in our own. Both Americans were much liked and respected by all their new-found brethren, though Brother Hecker, for reasons soon to be ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Sure I am that a Quack sold 21 Pills for 20 l. whereof the Patient took 4 at two doses, to the great hazard of his life, who then repairing to me for my advice, I by Tryal of one of them found them to be Mercurial, and wished him to return them back, but the Quack would not give him 10 s. for the ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... by the Chinaman, and Kerry stood out in the darkness of the dismal, brick-walled street, feeling something as nearly akin to dejection as was possible in one of his mercurial spirit. Something trickled upon the brim of his hat, and, raising his head, Kerry detected rain upon his upturned face. He breathed a prayer of thankfulness. This would put an ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... At the moment Daddy was in a new and unaccustomed phase of piety. After a period of revolutionary spouting, in which Byron, Tom Paine, and the various publications of Richard Carlile had formed his chief scriptures, a certain Baptist preacher laid hold of the Irishman's mercurial sense. Daddy was awakened and converted, burnt his Byron and his Tom Paine in his three-pair back with every circumstance of insult and contumely, and looked about for an employer worthy of one of the elect. Purcell at the time had ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... used for the purposes of health. Sister Marshman was seized with a disease of the liver, a disease which proves fatal in three cases out of four. Sister Ward was ill of the same disorder, and both of them underwent a long course of mercurial treatment, as is usual in that disease. Exercise was considered by the physicians as of the first importance, and we certainly thought no expense too great to save the valuable lives of our sisters. ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... tube containing a 50 per cent. solution of alcohol and water, plunge it into water of 20 deg.C., and put its interior in hermetic communication with the receiver of a mercurial air-pump. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... securely bolted to the bulkhead, side by side, in such a position that they could be seen from outside by merely glancing through the window. And near them, hung in gimbals from a long bracket, was a very fine Fitzroy mercurial barometer. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... consented—for what did he want with a one-third share in a core-drill?—whereupon Tom, the load of debt being off his mind, brightened up again in an instant—he was a most mercurial fellow—and forthwith he fell to begging my father's consent to his making one more attempt—just one. He was sure of striking it this time, he had studied the formation carefully and he had selected a spot where the chances of disappointment ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... and Bellair, whose billet regarding the "broad gauge" occasioned her to swoon, and dispelled the romantic attachment of Lord Montacute, was but a repetition of the French countesses, who thronged the antechambers of Law a century before. More vehement in their desires, more mercurial in their temperament than the English, the French, when seized with any general mania, push it even into greater excesses, and induce upon themselves and their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... great man; and in order to confute a friendly objector decides to select from the workhouse a boy to experiment with. He chooses a boy with a bad reputation but with excellent instincts, and adopts him, the story narrating the adventures of the mercurial lad who thus finds himself suddenly lifted several degrees in the social scale. The idea is novel and handled with Mr. Manville Fenn's accustomed cleverness, the restless boyish nature, with its inevitable tendency to get into scrapes, being ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... own occupations to attend to; and besides, she is too old to run after a child, and he is too mercurial to be ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... right bauld ye set your nose out, As plump and gray as onie grozet; [gooseberry] O for some rank mercurial rozet, [rosin] Or fell red smeddum! [deadly, dust] I'd gie you sic a hearty doze o't, Wad ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... a most active being, its habits conforming to the organisation with which it is endowed. Such an array of paddles prophesies of a mercurial temperament and an energetic character. It can, however, anchor itself and lie by when occasion offers. It is provided with two long cables, prettily set with spiral filaments or tendrils, by means of which it can make fast to any point. When not in ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the nursery Coryston ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... helm. But I have scarcely introduced this extraordinary gentleman to the reader. He was a tall, black-haired, mercurial Frenchman, with an eye like a falcon, who, with only an occasional Gallicism purposely indulged in, spoke American like a native. I had every confidence in his prudence and skill in the management of his craft; and still, as I perceived that we were gradually settling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... mankind and cheer them in their wintry desolation; that comfortable inmate, whose smile, during eight months of the year, was our sufficient consolation for summer's lingering advance and early flight? Alas! blindly inhospitable, grudging the food that kept him cheery and mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and compel him to smoulder away his life on a daily pittance which once would have been too scanty for his breakfast. Without a metaphor, we now make our fire in an air-tight stove, and supply it with some half a dozen sticks of wood ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... satisfaction, we turn to contemplate the character of a true-hearted and undaunted Southern patriot, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee. Coming as he did from a section in which secessionism predominates, and representing a mercurial and sensitive people, he stood out fearlessly and zealously in behalf of the maintenance of the Union at all hazards. He is an admirable example of the self-made man, having received no education in his youth, and owing to the application of maturer years the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... we are more lenient with human nature than theologians generally are. We know that the spirits of men and their views of the present and the future go up and down with the barometer, and that a permanent depression of one inch in the mercurial column would affect the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the canal bank Mr. Mortimer continued to carol. Mercurial man! Like all actors he loved applause, but unlike the most of them he was capable of supplying it when the public failed; and this knack of being his own best audience had lifted him, before now, out of quite a number ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... friends at dinner to meet Hawthorne, who was then on a brief visit to London. Among the guests were the Countess of ——, Kinglake, the author of "Eothen," Charles Sumner, then on his way to Paris, and Leigh Hunt, the mercurial qualities of whose blood were even then perceptible ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... dissecting, the policies of their rulers. But underlying, you will find a deeply practical sense and appreciation of material benefits. The German Socialist is in fact a practical dreamer, quite in contrast to his mercurial, effervescent Latin prototype. The rulers of Germany have learned the lesson that the stability of a throne rests in the welfare of her people and everyone must admit that they have succeeded in this ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... intercourse amongst ourselves. One was the national reserve;' and this was strengthened by concurring with a national temperament—not phlegmatic (as is so falsely alleged), but melancholic, dignified, and for that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our social meetings of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... which Reasons I would never recommend this Method where the Patient labours under no other Disorder which requires the Use of Mercury, and would confine it entirely to Cases where Patients, having the Itch, labour, at the same Time, under the Lues venerea, and require the free Use of mercurial Frictions; under such Circumstances the mercurial Ointment may be as well rubbed on the Parts affected with the ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... and hence this method is admirably adapted to the examination of medicinal antimonial compounds. The arsenites of silver and copper are reduced by the formiate of soda to their metals, mixed with metallic arsenic. The mercurial salts are all reduced with the metal plainly visible as a bright silvery ring on the cool portion of the tube. The chloride and nitrate of silver are completely reduced, and may be obtained after working out the soda, as bright metallic spangles. The salts of antimony and zinc are thus reduced; ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... Ancona, he reaches Rome just when a beautiful and mysterious poetess, the delight of Roman society, is being crowned on the Capitol. The only name she is known by is Corinne. The pair are soon introduced by the mercurial Erfeuil, and promptly fall in love with each other, Corinne seeking partly to fix her hold on Nelvil, partly to remove his Britannic contempt for Italy and the Italians, by guiding him to all the great spectacles of Rome and indeed of the country generally, and by explaining to him at great length ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... antidotes for the mineral acids; as soap in solution, a simple remedy, and always at hand. Lard, magnesia, and oil are antidotes for poisoning by arsenic; albumen,—in the form of the white of an egg,—milk, etc., for corrosive sublimate, and other mercurial preparations. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... mental climates suited; they were akin, yet had strong differences. Perhaps in the quickness of their mutual attraction Frenchman recognised Frenchman. But Ainger was the French Huguenot and du Maurier the French sceptic. Both had mercurial perceptions, and exercised them on much the same objects. Both were wits and humorists, but Ainger was more of a wit than a humorist, and du Maurier was more of a humorist than a wit. Both were men of fancy rather than of imagination, men of sentiment ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... are submitted to the patient's horrified inspection. Frightened by the hideous pictures before him, and at the same time soothed and charmed by the high-flown encomiums which the quack pronounces on his particular "non-mercurial mode of treatment," the patient becomes anxious to submit himself to the process. The quack is equally ready to take the case in hand, and the only stumbling-block likely to be in the way, may be the patients' inability to pay the large fee demanded. When the victim, however, is manifestly pecunious, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... emotion with which he was seized, when Leverrier, from his great height, and with that blunt intonation which he can command, thus addressed him: "It is then you, sir, who pretend to have observed the intra-mercurial planet, and who have committed the grave offence of keeping your observation secret for nine months. I warn you that I have come here with the intention of doing justice to your pretensions, and of demonstrating either that you have been dishonest or deceived. Tell me, then, unequivocally, what ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... is notable that Bacon seems to have been specially attracted to Welshmen (one might even find evidence of this in the life of the Welshman, Henry VII), a people of vivacious temperament unlike his own; this is illustrated by his long and intimate friendship with the mercurial Sir Toby Mathew, his "alter ego," a man of dissipated habits in early life, though we are not told that he was homosexual. Bacon had many friendships with men, but there is no evidence that he was ever in love or cherished any affectionate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... pride in their profession—assume generally a looseness of style: there may be an appropriateness in this, considering the mercurial contents of their pockets. In walking, a freedom of gait, approaching the swagger, is generally adopted; cigar-smoking at the office door is considered respectable; hands may be inserted ad libitum in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... See The Ontario High School Physics, page 223, also Science of Common Life, page 41. Try to graduate it from the mercurial thermometer. Have the boys ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... for not having informed Mr. Galloway of his intended departure—as from the message, it would appear he had not done—she determined to go round; and did so, following closely on the heels of the maid. Her ladyship had already wonderfully recovered her spirits. They were of a mercurial nature, liable to go up and down at touch; and Hamish had contrived to cheer ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and hawk-faced, with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other—small, quick, mercurial, with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in his left hand—was Scott, of the Courier, who had come through more dangers and brought off more brilliant coups than any man in the profession, save the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The mercurial French half-breeds now joined in the struggle. They forwarded a petition to Her Majesty the Queen, couched in excellent terms, in the French language, in the main asking that their right to enjoy the liberty of commerce be given them. This petition was signed ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the leading families in the development of the colonies. Their descendants fell heir to the traits of their French-English forbears: freedom of belief, courage to follow a cause, a touch of the wanderlust, the mercurial French mind, and the steady poise of the followers of the Inward Light. A trace of bitterness had come down the years, however, with the family history; a feud-like resentment against the family of Jerome Thaine ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... elasticity, different degrees of tension, and different degrees of capacity to hold vapor. Dalton, by a series of experiments with barometer-tubes, into which he introduced air and vapor at certain temperatures, found what its force was upon the mercurial column from degree to degree. He also experimentally determined the ratio of the weight of moisture and of air, the former being five-eights of the latter,—in other words, how many grains of moisture additional could be held by the air, advancing from degree to degree of temperature. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Fleay's remarkable theory[147] as to surmise that the central episode of faithless love occurred about 1594. If so, here was enough to deepen and impassion the plastic personality of the rhymer of VENUS AND ADONIS; to add a new string to the heretofore Mercurial lyre. All the while, too, he was undergoing the kind of culture and of psychological training involved in his craft of acting—a culture involving a good deal of contact with the imaginative literature of the Renaissance, so far as then translated, and a psychological ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... least is not supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to keep pace with its out-stripping neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to her, and all. (That sentence should properly have come in the Post Script, but we airy Mercurial Spirits, there is no keeping us in). Time—as was said of one of us—toils after us in vain. I am afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and then ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Herrick, with his habitual reserve, his nature refined, critical, and yet imaginative, with its strong bias to pessimism, and its intolerance of all shams, and Cedric, with his facile, pleasure-loving temperament, at once indolent and mercurial—a creature of moods and tenses, as fiery as a Welshman, but full of lovable ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of their mercurial nature: I was once spending the summer at a village in the mountains, and not far from my chamber-window were three or four cabins occupied by very cleanly, orderly negroes, who had hitherto been a source of no annoyance, for I am very fond of negroes and like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the most extraordinary is that called Rasesvara or the mercurial system.[788] According to it quicksilver, if eaten or otherwise applied, not only preserves the body from decay but delivers from transmigration the soul which inhabits this glorified body. Quicksilver is even asserted to be identical with the supreme self. This curious Darsana is ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... conducive to health. The two months of fog in London are often termed the suicidal months, because of the number of persons who destroy their own lives in those months. The people of Paris with their mercurial temperaments would never endure it for a ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... remarks apply equally to the various forms of chronic rheumatism, chorea, paralysis agitans, infantile paralysis, hysterical paralysis, mercurial and lead poisoning, muscular atrophy; rigid atrophy, consequent upon the rheumatic diathesis; locomotor ataxia, as a result of rheumatism; syphilis, or local injury; cranial, facial, and intercostal neuralgia; sciatica, lumbago, and their ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... Ruthven Smith been blessed or cursed by an anonymous letter. He did not know what to make of it, or how to treat it. Instead of exciting him, as it might had he been a man of mercurial ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... harebells. She had dropped into a different world, and the old one would fade like a receding star. She would soon find her that her only choice must be to make new associations and friendships and find new pleasures; and this her mercurial, frank, and fearless nature would incline her ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... at different times, for several days together. These ulcers came without any apparent cause, have continued for many weeks, and have only been a little benefitted by rest, although he has applied many kinds of ointment, the last consisting of equal parts of mercurial and of the tar ointment. I applied the lunar caustic upon each ulcer, but not over the excoriation, and I enjoined the patient to leave the ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... The speaker, a mercurial youth of two and twenty, was one of a group of young people assembled, some on horseback, some in yellow buckboards, in front of a stately ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the transit of the stratum a' a' a a the barometer falls, and this fall has been characterised as the posterior slope; and when the edge a a occupies the place of b b, the descent of the mercurial column is completed, another minimum extends in the direction of the former, and this minimum has been ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... the group, was the delight of them all. The carriage of a bantam rooster, the courage of a lion, more brain than he could stagger under; a disposition fiery, mercurial, sanguine, witty; he was made, according to Billy Fairfax's dictum, of "wire and brass tacks," and he possessed what Honey Smith (who himself had no mean gift in that direction) called "the gift ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... suit of "Tyrian bloom, satin grain, and garter blue silk breeches, L8 2s. 7d." Thus magnificently attired, he attended the theater and watched the reception of the play and the effect of each individual scene, with that vicissitude of feeling incident to his mercurial nature. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... guide-book by Dr. Samuel Mitchell. The idea expanded as Irving proceeded, and he ended by not merely satirizing the pedantry of local antiquaries, but by creating a distinct literary type out of the solid Dutch burgher whose phlegm had long been an object of ridicule to the mercurial Americans. Though far from the most finished of Irving's productions, "Knickerbocker" manifests the most original power and is the most genuinely national in its quaintness and drollery. The very tardiness and prolixity ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... after another change from snow to rain, the wind shifted to the southeast, and the cold became, suddenly, very severe. According to the engineer's calculation, the mercurial column of a Fahrenheit thermometer would not have marked less than eight degrees below zero, and this intense cold, rendered still more painful by a sharp gale, lasted for several days. The colonists were again shut up in Granite House, and as it was necessary ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... not be so sure," Julien interposed, setting down his glass. "The politics of Paris are the politics of France, and the spirit of the Parisian is essentially mercurial. Besides, the days of the great alliance draw nearer—the next step forward after the arbitration treaty. Who can doubt that when that is completed, France will embrace the chance of ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... This mercurial brigand, it would appear, has paid Turon another visit, but, with the exception of what may be considered the legalised robbery of the betting ring, has not levied contributions. Rather the other way, indeed. A hasty note for Mr. Dawson, whom he had tricked into temporary ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... mercurial column stood higher than I had yet observed it here, and clouds of cirrus lay in long streaks across the sky, ranging from east to west, but these were most abundant towards the northern horizon. The day was comparatively cool and pleasant, the thermometer ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... as these were gained, it is no wonder that Law should have been almost worshipped by the mercurial population. Never was monarch more flattered than he was. All the small poets and litterateurs of the day poured floods of adulation upon him. According to them, he was the saviour of the country, the tutelary divinity ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the young man, whose mercurial temperament no trouble could repress, had gone away in excellent spirits, leaving her an address where she could always find him, and give him regular news of his aunts, though he made her promise to give them, as yet, no tidings ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... array of figures—beautiful, revolting, sly, fatuous, witty, brave, pusillanimous, mean, generous—meets the eye as we recall one by one these famous stories; beautiful and amorous, but mercurial ladies with henna scented feet and black eyes—often with a suspicion of kohl and more than a suspicion of Abu Murreh [456] in them—peeping cautiously through the close jalousies of some lattice; love sick princes overcoming all obstacles; executioners with blood-dripping scimitars; ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the stuffed leather of an armed chair. Learning somehow or other sinks down to that part into which it was first driven, and produces therein a leaden heaviness and weight, which counteract those lively emotions of the brain that might otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the safety of established order. I leave this conjecture to the consideration ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attended him was named Terro; he thought, by some peculiar train of reasoning, that he could cure him by applying a mercurial ointment to the chest, to which no one raised any objection. The rapid effect of the remedy delighted the two friends, but it frightened me, for in less than twenty-four hours the patient was labouring under ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not necessary for Mackellar to tell us that, whereas Mr. Henry is phlegmatic and deliberate, the Master is impulsive and mercurial. It is not necessary for him to attempt analysis of the emotions and thoughts of the leading characters, since these are sufficiently evident from what they do and say. The action happens to the eye and ear, without the interpretation of an analytic intellect; but the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... appointed for this purpose, reported in 1876 that sixty of the most reliable of Joule's experiments gave the mean value 774.1. The experiments were made with water at a temperature of about 60 deg. F., according to the mercurial thermometer, and reduced to its value at the temperature of melting ice, according to the formula given by Regnault for the variation of the specific heat of water at varying temperature under the constant pressure of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... variable, inconstant, unstable, unsteadfast, reversible, alterable, revocable, mobile, convertible, transmutable, commutable, kaleidoscopic, transformable, impermanent; volatile, fickle, mercurial, protean, irresolute, capricious, vacillating, fitful, inconstant, erratic, eccentric, crotchety; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to tell me the difference between an infusion and decoction; and the history, the virtues, and the botanical or medical name of the bark. Chambers will tell you more perhaps than you will wish to read of it. Your little mercurial disquisition is ingenious, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Materials.—"The indefatigable Rumford made an elaborate series of experiments on the conductivity of the substances used in clothing. His method was this:—A mercurial thermometer was suspended in the axis of a cylindrical glass tube ending with a globe, in such a manner that the centre of the bulb of the thermometer occupied the centre of the globe; the space between the internal surface of the globe and the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... I have a mercurial temperament. My spirits rise and fall as if they were Consols. Monotonous Egypt depressed me, as it depressed the Israelites; but the passage of the Red Sea set me sounding my timbrel. I love fresh air; I love the sea, if the sea will but ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... man, if he went well recommended, would be likely to find, I imagine, constant employment in the town of Danbury. He might make arrangements to take his meals on the jump, and would sleep of course with his hat and boots on. Browne is mercurial. Browne would be happy in Danbury. Till he died. For a fortnight, say—one brief, glowing, ecstatic fortnight. Fourteen giddy days would surely finish him. Imagine Browne (him of the eagle eye) up in the morning, his face washed, hair combed, breakfast taken aboard, and everything trim ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... An extreme development of the idea that physical processes can produce spiritual results is found in Rasesvara Darsana or the Mercurial System described in the Sarva-Darsana-Sangraha chap. IX. Marco Polo (Yule's Edition, vol. II. pp. 365, 369) had ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... waters are very useful in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, and kindred diseases, and in glandular affections and certain chronic diseases of the stomach, liver, intestines, spleen, kidneys, bladder and uterus, and in dropsy, scrofula, chlorosis and mercurial diseases. It is beneficial, used both internally and externally in the form of baths at different degrees of temperature, best determined in each case by the physician under whose advice, as a general rule, they should ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... were troubled in their minds, and wailed piercingly, for they seem to be mercurial in temperament, and no better weather ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... quantity, perhaps, when it is remembered that four grains is a fatal dose. Fortunately, however, for the prevention of accidents, but unfortunately for the therapeutic value of the soap, a decomposition of the sublimate occurs as soon as it is incorporated in the soap mass, by which an insoluble mercurial soap is formed. This change takes place independently of the alkali used in the soap; in fact, as mentioned above, a well-made soap contains no appreciable amount of free alkali, but is due to the action of the fat acids. Corrosive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... personae. "Enter a Song singing" is the stage-direction in a seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are intended ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... eclipse. It has even been named Vulcan. These announcements would have received little attention but for the fact that the motion of Mercury has irregularities which have not been accounted for by known planets; and Le Verrier[3] has stated that an intra-Mercurial planet or ring of asteroids would account for the unexplained part of the motion of the line of apses of Mercury's orbit amounting ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... sunset, it is by no means an easy object to observe on account of the mists which usually hang about low down near the earth. One opportunity, however, offers itself from time to time to solve the riddle of an "intra-Mercurial" planet, that is to say, of a planet which circulates within the path followed by Mercury. The opportunity in question is furnished by a total eclipse of the sun; for when, during an eclipse of that kind, the body of the moon for a few minutes entirely hides the sun's face, and the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... was in an agony. He was menaced with the very thing he was in the hope of staving off, or a discussion on the subject of the sick man's previous life. The doctor was so mercurial and quick of apprehension, that, once fairly on the scent, he was nearly certain he would extract every thing from the patient. This was the principal reason why the deacon did not wish to send for him; the expense, though a serious objection ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper |
