"Precursor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about a mile from the fort. As band after band came up, the prairie and the adjacent hills resounded with their yells of defiance. In the evening they held their war-dance, which the trappers well understood to be the sure precursor of the battle on the next day. Their songs could be distinctly heard in the camp, and as they danced, with hideous contortions, in the gathering shades of night around their fires, it seemed as though a band of demons had ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the precursor, and cause as he thought it, of the great plague. He found that the old planetary tables were as much as a month in error in fixing this event, and even the Copernican tables were several days out; so he formed the resolve to devote his life to improving astronomical tables. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... exhilaration is often the precursor of disaster, and mine was to have a sudden downfall. It was getting on for noon and we were well into England—I guessed from the rivers we had passed that we were somewhere in the north of Yorkshire—when the machine began to make odd sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... constitution had thus far resisted the infection, but after returning from the sad duty of laying little Bertha's remains by those of her father, he felt the peculiar languor which is so often the precursor of the chill and subsequent fever. Although he had scarcely hoped to escape an attack, he had never before realized how disastrous it would be to the very ones he had come to serve. Who was there to take care of him? Mrs. Poland ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... brother's cigar stand, had moved out to Fifty-fourth Street, so that there was nobody who could have contradicted her. But lying awake planning how he might piece out life for his mother with comforts, and hearing in every knock the precursor of what might have happened to her, his heart was exercised as it is good for the heart to be even with pain and anxiety. And beyond the heart stretching there was always the House. He could seldom get away to it in his waking hours, but he knew it was there for him, and visiting it in dreams ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... intensely cold. The light of the midday sun had decreased still more, and on reaching the plateau again she saw that a dark cloud, not unlike the precursor of a thunder-storm, was brooding over the snowy peaks beyond. In spite of the cold this singular suggestion of summer phenomena was still borne out by the distant smiling valley, and even in the soft ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... swept away by it. Voltaire and Diderot, Rousseau and Helvetius, had vanished, but Condorcet both assisted at the Encyclopaedia and sat in the Convention; the one eminent man of those who had tended the tree, who also came in due season to partake of its fruit; at once a precursor, and a sharer in the fulfilment. In neither character has he attracted the goodwill of any of those considerable sections and schools into which criticism of the Revolution has been mainly divided. As a thinker he is roughly classed as an Economist, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... occasionally shifting a point or two. The sky had become covered over with one black mass of clouds, which hung down so low that they appeared almost to rest on the water; and there was that peculiar fitful moaning which is ever the precursor of a violent gale of wind. At nightfall we reefed our lug-sails; and, while one sat at the helm, the rest of us lounged against the gunnel, buttoned up in our pilot jackets; some shutting their eyes, as if to invite sleep, others watching the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... and Dumb Man's Tutor. He spent his life in obscurity, and his works, though he was incidentally mentioned by Leibnitz under the name of "M. Dalgarus," passed into oblivion. Yet he undoubtedly was the precursor of Bishop Wilkins in his Essay toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, published in London, 1668, though indeed the first idea was far older, it having been, as reported by Piso, the wish of Galen that some ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... of other trades. Your toleration of them appears to me one of the worst symptoms of your political state of health. It shows among your public men an ignorance or a cowardice, or a desire of ill-earned popularity, which is generally a precursor ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of the mendicant orders, St. John the Evangelist, whose head had rested on the Saviour's breast and who was to return to earth when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in Paradise.[165] Wherefore, in honour of the Precursor of the Saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... martyrdom may deliver yours from all sin. I have also given the bearer of these a cross for you: it contains some of the wood of the Lord's cross, and hair of St. John Baptist; by which you may always be consoled by our Saviour through the intercession of His precursor. To our most reverend brother and fellow-bishop Leander we have sent the pallium from the See of the Apostle St. Peter, in accordance with ancient custom, with your life, with ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... character of Robespierre, show sufficiently that Lamartine, though he may not as yet have taken a positive direction in politics, has at least, from his vague poetical conceptions, returned to a sound state of political criticism, the inevitable precursor of sound theories. His views on the execution of the royal family ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... opinion in this matter was soon brought to bear,[1] had announced with much energy a precursor of the Messiah, who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger who should come to make straight the paths before the elected one of God. This messenger was no other than the prophet Elias, who, according to a widely spread belief, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the sparkle of flame to all her motions. Beauvouloir shuddered when he noticed this phenomenon, which we may call in these days the phosphorescence of thought; the old physician of that period regarded it as the precursor of death. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... to be merely the precursor of a strong but steady gale from the north-west: and as soon as this became sufficiently apparent we hauled our wind once more and hove the craft to on the larboard tack under her jib and mizzen. This arrangement, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... like myself, between the bars of the huge windows; for the ball is conducted upon exclusive principles, and is accessible only with tickets of admission. Two 'policias,' armed with revolvers and short Roman Swords, are stationed at the entrance-door, and this looks very much like the precursor of a row. Mulatto balls generally do end in some unlooked-for 'compromisa,' and it would not surprise me if this particular ball were ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... evident that St. Francis knew these radiant hopes. Who knows even that it was not the Calabrian Seer who awoke his heart to its transports of love? If this be so, Gioacchino was not merely his precursor; he was his true spiritual father. However this may be, St. Francis found in Gioacchino's thought many of the elements which, unconsciously to himself, were to become the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Lady Nottingham's room to talk to her. She herself was feeling very tired, not with the sound and wholesome tiredness that is the precursor of long sleep and refreshed awakening, but with the restless fatigue of frayed nerves and disquiet mind that leads to intolerable tossings and turnings, and long vigils through the varying greys of dawn and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... located the most wonderful garden in Japan. Ujima is a place of twelve thousand inhabitants, and the taking on of cargo consumed an hour. Soon after, we came to an island which had been transformed into a magazine; the side presented to us was a solid wall of rock. This was the precursor to our arrival at Kore, the most important naval station in Japan. The steamer touched anchor, which gave us an opportunity to note the many war-vessels in the harbor, three of which had been captured ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... synthetic drugs; transit point for US-bound ecstasy; source of precursor chemicals for South American cocaine processors; transshipment point for cocaine, heroin, hashish, and marijuana entering Western Europe; money laundering related to trafficking of drugs, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... very threshold of this touching story, are we not called on to pause, and read the uncertainty of earth's best joys and purest happiness; that the brightest sunshine is often the precursor of a dark cloud. When the gourd is all flourishing, a worm may unseen be preying at its root! When the vessel is gliding joyously on the calm sea, the treacherous rock may be at hand, and, in one brief hour, it ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... top of the inside of the hive. This is done by dipping the end of a piece of comb in melted beeswax, and sticking it to the top. Bees should never be allowed to send off more than two colonies in one season. To restrict them to one is still better. Excessive swarming is a precursor of destruction, rather than an evidence (as usually regarded) of prosperity. A given number of bees will make far less honey in two hives than in one, unless they are so numerous as greatly to crowd the hive. When a late swarm comes out, take away the queen, and they will immediately return. Any ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... melancholy condition of Palestine to-day may remind us. Whether the literal fulfilment is to be anticipated or no seems less important than to note that the experience of forgiveness (and of the consequent blessings described above) is the precursor of this fair picture. Therefore, the Church's condition of growth and prosperity is its realisation in the persons of its individual members, of pardon, the renewal of the inner man by the indwelling Spirit, faithful obedience, communion with God, and lowly remembrance of past sins. Where churches ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps, of ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... facts as these, it appears a just conclusion that written language generally follows the spoken language through its various revolutions, but still at a certain distance,—not dropping so far behind as to lose sight of its precursor, nor following so close as to be led through ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... solidarity of human reason. For this cause S. Thomas, who is their spokesman, has now become an absolute necessity of thought. Unless the great Dumb Ox is given a hearing, our mysticism will fill, not the churches, but the asylums and the little self-authorized Bethels where every man is his own precursor and messiah. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... saw," replied the priest; "and certainly, as far as my senses would enable me to judge, the appearance was most unusual—I may say supernatural; but I had heard of this Phantom Ship before, and moreover that its appearance was the precursor of disaster. So did it prove in our case, although, indeed, we had one on board, now no more, whose weight of guilt was more than sufficient to sink any vessel; one, the swallowing up of whom, with all that wealth from which he anticipated such enjoyment in his own country, has manifested that the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... death, in 1841, seven volumes of the "Prodromus" had appeared: Alphonse completed the seventeenth volume in 1873. In 1855 appeared his "Geographie botanique raisonnee," "which was the most important work of his life," and if not a precursor, "yet one of the inevitable foundation-stones" of modern evolutionary principles. He also wrote "Histoire des Savants," 1873, and "Phytographie," 1880. He was lavish of assistance to workers in Botany, and was distinguished by a dignified and charming personality. (See Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer's ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... forgotten; she had just become a sorrow. So perhaps my downfall as a lover was a precursor of better results ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... to be a panegyric of Braithwaite, treating him as the Precursor of a movement that ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... evening that followed the exposure; the precursor of many and many miserable evenings in days to come. Mr. and Mrs. Channing, Hamish, Constance, and Arthur sat in the usual sitting-room when the rest had retired—sat in ominous silence. Even Hamish, with his naturally sunny face and sunny temper, looked gloomy as the grave. Was he deliberating ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... enervating, sure precursor, if she had thought to remember, if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness of her ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... "Register," and in constant correspondence with him. Even as I write, in Dunfermline old men who knew Grandfather Morrison speak of him as one of the finest orators and ablest men they have known. He was publisher of "The Precursor," a small edition it might be said of Cobbett's "Register," and thought to have been the first radical paper in Scotland. I have read some of his writings, and in view of the importance now given to technical education, I think ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... brilliant circle than this in any of our cities. There was none where so much freedom of thought was united to so much scholarship. The "Anthology" was the literary precursor of the "North American Review," and the theological herald of the "Christian Examiner." Like all first beginnings it showed many marks of immaturity. It mingled extracts and original contributions, theology and medicine, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... very best men—the most learned, the most graceful, the most eloquent, the most successful—has come at some one time or other the dreadful agony of bashfulness. Indeed, it is the higher order of man being that it most surely attacks; it is the precursor of many excellences, and, like the knight's vigil, if patiently and bravely borne, the knight is twice the hero. It is this recollection, which can alone assuage the sufferer, that he should always carry with him. He should remember ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... accounted for the act of Charles III. as being but revenge for the tumult of Aranjuez under the ministry of Esquilace,*1* arguing that the Jesuits were in fact the authors of it, and that it was but the precursor of a plot to dethrone the King and place his brother Don Luis upon the throne, as being not so liberal in his ideas. Others, again, have stated*2* that the Jesuits set about a calumny that Charles III. was not the Queen's son ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... was set for Thursday night, as Wain was to leave Patesville on Friday morning, taking with him the new teacher. The party would serve the double purpose of a compliment to the guest and a farewell to Rena, and it might prove the precursor, the mother secretly hoped, of other festivities to follow at some ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... ablest of historic men. In another sphere, it is the vision of a higher world to be intimate with the character of Fenelon, the cherished model of politicians, ecclesiastics, and men of letters, the witness against one century and precursor of another, the advocate of the poor against oppression, of liberty in an age of arbitrary power, of tolerance in an age of persecution, of the humane virtues among men accustomed to sacrifice them to authority, the man of whom one enemy says that his cleverness was enough to strike ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... form of monasticism—it is a getting away from the world. Monasticism does not necessarily imply celibacy, but as unrequited or misplaced love is usually the precursor of the monastic impulse, celibacy or some strange idea on the sex problem usually is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the recovery of her eldest son touched the heart of the nation afresh, and evoked the first great popular demonstration of loyalty that had been witnessed since the early days of the reign. I was present in the Cathedral at that solemn and stately service on the 27th February, 1872, the precursor of the still more stately service held at Westminster on the 21st June, 1887. Except on the occasion of the Jubilee of the last-mentioned year, and of that of 1897, London has never witnessed a more remarkable outburst of loyal enthusiasm. At night the whole town was ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... return said it appeared strange, and somewhat like a bird. A committee of the wise men were called to inquire into, and if possible to ascertain the meaning of, the strange phenomenon. They feared that it might be the omen of some disaster. Some thought it a precursor of good, others of evil; and some supposed it to be the star spoken of by their forefathers as the forerunner ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... rent, From the best youth in England their dear pride, Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time In which worst losses easily might wean The best of names, when patriotic love 305 Did of itself in modesty give way, Like the Precursor when the Deity Is come Whose harbinger he was; a time In which apostasy from ancient faith Seemed but conversion to a higher creed; 310 Withal a season dangerous and wild, A time when sage Experience would have snatched ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... representing the radiant energy of the body is constructed, the obscure radiation towers upwards like a mountain, the luminous radiation resembling a mere 'spur' at its base. From the very brightness of the light of some of the fixed stars we may infer the intensity of that dark radiation, which is the precursor and inseparable associate of their ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... an apartment on the north-east side of the quadrangular building, where the sunshine never entered. Even daylight never came, but only a feeble, sickening twilight, precursor of the grave itself. It was not merely the gloom that intensified the horrors of the situation, or the ghastly traditions of the place, or the impending fate of our callous client; but there was a tier of shelves ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of the volcano, above referred to, had by that time taken place, but the third, and worst—that which occurred about 10 A.M.—was yet in store for them, though they knew it not, and a lull in the roar, accompanied by thicker darkness than ever, was its precursor. There was not, however, any lull in the violence of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... side with the preaching of atheism in religion and morals, a growth had become apparent in the preaching of extreme democracy or Socialist Radicalism in politics, a preaching of which Bright was in this country the precursor, and which first came to a head between the years 1880 and 1900, in the writings of Henry George and the English followers of Marx. What I looked on as the fallacies of these new political gospels seemed to me no less dangerous, and also no less absurd, than those ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... constitutes, next to the pervading elegance above mentioned, his chief claim to our admiration. Another of his merits is a certain tender gallantry, or rather an honest admixture of animal passion with spiritual, also the precursor of the like ingenuous emotions in Ariosto; and he furthermore set his follower the example, not only of good breeding, but of a constant heroical cheerfulness, looking with faith on nature. Pulci ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... of our laughter Pat came down the Walk, his stately tail waving over the grasses. He proved to be the precursor of Dan, clothed and in his ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the demands of Christianity. It requires something more than reverence for the means by which it binds its power upon the disciple. The age in which faith terminates in the means of religion is the precursor of an age of unbelief. Ceremonies are but the ghosts of dead professions, unless a living faith convert them into ministers of goodness. Forms are needed, institutions are all but essential; but they are only the garments in which the Divine spirit of ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... defective in point of logical exactness. It proves only what was not denied. Malone refers to the will of John Shakspere, found by Joseph Moseley, with sufficient clearness; and it is charitable to assume that the Irish editor intended to observe the instructions of his precursor. He failed, it seems—but why? It would be useless to go in search of the rationale ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... written in 1892. When we remember all the strange literary effort gathered round about that year in the West—Symbolism, the Yellow Book, Art for Art's sake—and the limbo into which it has been thrust by now, we may realise how great a precursor and, in his own despite, a leader, Anton Tchehov was. When Western literature was plunging with enthusiasm into one cul de sac after another, incapable of diagnosing its own disease, Tchehov in Russia, unknown to the West, had achieved ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... however, little or nothing. The finely limbed Christ is as coarse in type and as violent in action as his executioners; sublimity is reached, strange to say, only in the bust of Tiberius, which crowns the rude archway through which the figures have issued into the open space. Titian is here the precursor of the Naturalisti—of Caravaggio and his school. Yet, all the same, how immeasurable is ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... understand why Marx's doctrine of economic evolution was for many years rejected by most Russian Socialists; why the latter took the view that Socialism must be more quickly attained, that capitalism was not a necessary precursor of Socialism in Russia, but that an intelligent leadership of passive masses would successfully establish Socialism on the basis of the old Russian communal institutions. It was quite easy to understand the change that came with Russia's industrial awakening, how the development ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... a foggy, misty, drizzly day the precursor of a long spell of dark and gloomy weather, that Claudia at length grew to fear would never ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... on the result of your distinguished services," said the Colonel, breaking through his official iciness. "I hope what has gone before may be but the precursor of many such services in the future," and he shook our ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... its few days' unfolding, is already stretching ()LA its hands to God and to eternity, and which has all its being and welfare wrapped up in those sublime verities, is made to strive and sigh for them in vain, to stretch out its hands to—nothing? This day rises upon us fair and beautiful,—the precursor, [285] I believe, of endless days. If not, I would say with Job, "Let it be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it; for darkness and the shadow of death stain it." But ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... caused him for a while to forget the presence of the Senator. It was only after some minutes spent in this wild enthusiasm that he remembered an important fact—that in all projects such as he was engaged in, intrigue should be the precursor of open action; and as this was to be the peculiar role which the Senator was expected to play, he again turned to ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... tell them harrowing tales, let them know it is intended to take them for a view behind the dike,—that they may understand the source of the trickling stream of brothel slaves that, almost unobserved, flows steadily into our fair land, and know that the stream is the precursor of a flood. No mere wall of immigration restrictions will ever get control of the flow so long as men are permitted to hold slaves after they have once been landed. And for the further reason, that so soon ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... he envied with consuming envy those to whom nature had given the qualities of initiative. But his nerves always played him false. The consciousness of having to resolve to take a decided step alone, was the precursor of a fit of trembling. His heart did not fail, but he could not control the parched voice, nor the twitching features, not the ghastly palsy of inner misgiving. In this respect Robespierre recalls a more illustrious man; we think of Cicero tremblingly calling upon the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... answered without evasion, "I am not the Christ," and with equal decisiveness denied that he was Elias, or more accurately, Elijah, the prophet who, the rabbis said through a misinterpretation of Malachi's prediction, was to return to earth as the immediate precursor of the Messiah.[310] Furthermore, he declared that he was not "that prophet," by which was meant the Prophet whose coming Moses had foretold,[311] and who was not universally identified in the Jewish mind with the expected Messiah. "Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... self-denial to have abstained from marring the pages with puns of which Punch would be ashamed, and with the vulgar affectation of patronage with which the sea captain of the nineteenth century condescends to criticize and approve of his half-barbarous precursor; but it must have been a defect in his heart, rather than in his understanding, which betrayed him into such an offence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. The Spaniards ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... trains at a speed of about 45 miles per hour, burn about 35 lb. of coal per mile, when taking trains weighing about 230 tons gross. A variation from this type has been adopted on the Northern and Welsh sections, known as the "Precursor" class. These engines have 5 ft. 6 in. coupled wheels, and weigh 31 tons 8 cwt. in working order, but in other respects are very similar to the standard engines just described; with the Scotch express, averaging in total weight 187 tons, between Crewe and Carlisle, over heavy gradients, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... Cedron. The six brutal Pharisees walked as close to our Lord as they could, struck him constantly with thick pointed sticks, and seeing that his bare and bleeding feet were torn by the stones and briars, exclaimed scornfully: 'His precursor, John the Baptist, has certainly not prepared a good path for him here;' or, 'The words of Malachy, "Behold, I send my angel before thy face, to prepare the way before thee," do not exactly ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the state have appointed "city foresters." This is a step in the right direction, if it is a precursor to the establishment of municipal forests for these men to manage; otherwise it is a misnomer and can only be misleading to the people. The city governments, in an endeavor to create a complete park organization, have so far adopted this title from European practice ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... than she had ever thought of any man before. Was this love at last, the great love that is so rare in the heart of an artist, who is incapable of abandoning herself unreservedly to a sentiment, or was it simply a dream of an honest, bourgeois life, well protected against ennui, that vile ennui, the precursor of storms, which she had so much reason to dread? In any event, she suffered herself to be deceived and had been living for several days in a state of delicious unrest, for love is so strong, so beautiful, that its semblance, its mirage, takes ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... on the point of leaving our cover, when we heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and directly afterwards we saw the figure of a man cautiously making his way among the trees. He might be an enemy, the precursor of others; but our fears on that score were soon set at rest by finding Ungka leap off my shoulder, and, running towards him, jump into ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... enshrouded in mystery, and when one of those erratic wanderers made its appearance in the sky it was beheld by the majority of mankind with feelings of awe and superstitious dread, and regarded as a harbinger of evil and disaster, the precursor of war, of famine, or the overthrow ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... romantic spirit before the time of Apollonius in writings that have perished, for instance, in those of Antimachus of Colophon, but the Argonautica is perhaps the first poem still extant in which the expression of this spirit is developed with elaboration. The Medea of Apollonius is the direct precursor of the Dido of Virgil, and it is the pathos and passion of the fourth book of the Aeneid that keep alive many ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... reached the corner. There he stopped. His color had heightened. The smile was still on his lips; it had altered, taken on a quality of gameness. He did not shake his fist at the embodied spirit of metropolitanism before him, as had a famous Gallic precursor of his, also a determined seeker for Success in a lesser sphere; but he paraphrased Rastignac's threat in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... attention of Julius. His heart beat quicker as it was revealed to him that his want of fidelity was discovered, or at least suspected. He lay quite still, hoping to hear more. But Marlowe said nothing in addition. Indeed, these words were the precursor of his waking. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... a precursor of the Calicurgi (The Calicurgus, or Pompilus, is a Hunting Wasp, feeding her larvae on Spiders. Cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect": chapter 12.—Translator's Note.) dwelling in the prehistoric coal-forests. Her prey ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... was only the mild precursor of the one which shook Europe to its foundations in 1848. It had centers wherever there were patriots and aching hearts. In Paris, Louis Philippe had fled at the sound of the word Republic, and when in Paris workmen were waving the national banner ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... they passed through Smithfield and Holborn, and turned away from Saint Giles into the Reading road, the precursor of Piccadilly. The roads were good for the time of year, and they reached Kingston before dark. The next morning Robin returned home, with strict charges to fetch Isoult in a week, and sooner should either ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... together, like the first, though somewhat less closely, by a leading idea, which, whether consciously or not, is hinted at in a pointed little prologue: the idea of the paradox of human action, and the apparent antagonism between motive and result. The volume differs considerably from its precursor, and it contains nothing quite equal to the best of the earlier poems. There is more variety, perhaps, but the human interest is less intense, the stories less moving and absorbing. With less humour, there is a much ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... warmth which always brings with it a half melancholy conviction of the year's decay,—which in itself is so delightful, would be so full of delight, were it not for the consciousness which it seems to contain of being the immediate precursor of winter with all its horrors. There is no sufficient constancy with us of the recurrence of such a season, to make any special name needful. But now and again there comes a day, when the winds of the equinox ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... lull in the hum of the little encampment, in all the jest and song and jingling stir of this scornfully intrepid company; perhaps for an instant the sense of the wilderness overawed them; perhaps it was only the customary precursor of increasing murmur;—before leaving his place, Ray suddenly stooped and laid his ear on the earth. There it was! Far off, far off, the phantasmal stroke of hoofs, rapid, many, unswerving. It had come,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Zachary recalls the Precursor's mission of proclaiming the Messiah and the new alliance. It is altogether appropriate to the Office of daybreak, as ushering in the dawn of a new era. The closing verse speaks of the light which ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Thalvogt, Ruler of the Valley—the name given figuratively to a dense gray mist which the south wind sweeps into the valleys from the mountain tops. It is well known as the precursor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... autumnal glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark's, growing so bright and beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean House and read Lucy Harcourt's letter. The faint was a precursor of fever, the physician said, when summoned to her aid, and in a tremor of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her at once removed to New York, and that was the ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... of our camp became surly. I recognised the precursor of its becoming dangerous. One day on a walk in the hills I came on Thrackles and Pulz lying on their stomachs gazing down fixedly at Dr. Schermerhorn's camp. This was nothing extraordinary, but they ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... constructed, represented in the adjoining figure, is still preserved as one of the treasures of the Royal Society. The telescope tube had the very modest dimension of one inch in diameter. It was, however, the precursor of a whole series of magnificent instruments, each outstripping the other in magnitude, until at last the culminating point was attained in 1845, by the construction of Lord Rosse's mammoth reflector of six ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... added, more soberly. "The Precursor still unceasingly prophesies the Advent. Come with me into the Place. The Gathering is all but assembled." Laying his large hand upon her arm, he led her forward unresistingly through the groups of men and women, and onward down a ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... said aggravatingly. "I was just thinking of the way folks are talking." Then he laughed right out; and if Joan had only understood the man she would have known that his merriment was but the precursor ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... members, for their management of the whole affair. The utmost good feeling prevailed, and not a sneer or a jeer was heard from the lords of creation, but a large majority seemed to hail this as a precursor of what they expect in the future, when the people shall be educated to respect the rights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the water. This must be done, of course, on a smooth day, when the vessel does not roll- much. I remember very well being over the side painting in this way, one fine afternoon, our vessel going quietly along at the rate of four or five knots, and a pilot-fish, the sure precursor of a shark, swimming alongside of us. The captain was leaning over the rail watching him, and we went quietly on with our work. In the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... with a judge in Concord, New Hampshire. He said fiercely, "I will buy two guns, go to Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other, or else wait quietly till spring and see what will come of it." A possible precursor ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... reconsideration it should appear that some of the stronger inductions have been expressed with greater universality than their evidence warrants, the weaker one must give way. The opinion so long prevalent that a comet, or any other unusual appearance in the heavenly regions, was the precursor of calamities to mankind, or to those at least who witnessed it; the belief in the veracity of the oracles of Delphi or Dodona; the reliance on astrology, or on the weather-prophecies in almanacs, were doubtless inductions supposed to be grounded on experience:(113) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... affairs the people now first obtained a place in Parliament. Their victory was not permanent then, but it was the precursor of the establishment of a permanent House of Commons which was to come in the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... different districts; but a competent authority[J] has estimated, that, on the average, land which has been drained produces a quarter more grain per acre than that which is undrained. But this by no means exhausts the benefits derived from it, draining being merely the precursor of further improvement. It is only after it has been carried out that the farmer derives the full benefit of the manures which he applies. He gains also by the increased facility of working the soil, and by the rapidity with which it dries after ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... eye of your fancy the closing-in of a fine, blue-skied, sunny American Saturday evening, whose tranquillity and repose rendered it the fit precursor of the Sabbath. Imagine the tea-table placed in your sitting-parlor, all the windows open, and round it, first, the housekeeper pouring out tea; next her, Miss C. Borland; next her, your mother, whose looks spoke love as often as ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... uncertain, testimony valueless," were the dissatisfied reflections of the disappointed detective as he replaced Mr. Adams's hat and umbrella on the hall rack. "Has he been brought to this state by the tragedy which has just taken place here, or is his present insane condition its precursor and cause?" Mr. Gryce might have found some answer to this question in his own mind if, at that moment, the fitful clanging of the front door bell, which had hitherto testified to the impatience of the curious crowd outside, had not been ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... the way of our marriage. Before 421 I left her, I had received full forgiveness for my unjust doubts and suspicions, and was allowed to indulge in a not unfounded hope that Mr. Frampton's recovery of his niece would only prove the precursor to my obtaining a wife. It was agreed that, on the following day but one, Mr. Frampton—who had to go to London to consult with his lawyer touching the legalities of the affair—should come to Barstone, and, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... senility and denounced as disregarding the obligations of the Constitution. But the wrath of the pro-slavery extremists was specially aroused against the Society of Friends, and was unrestrained by any considerations of either decency or truth. In this respect the debate was the precursor of every contest in Congress upon the subject that was to follow for the coming seventy years. The Quakers were the representative abolitionists of that day, and the measure of bitter and angry denunciation ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... escape these scandals; and God has said that He has sent us like sheep in the midst of wolves. It is necessary for us then to combine the innocence of the dove with the prudence of the serpent. Now, when the precursor of Antichrist erects himself against the Church, he must find us innocent and prudent; these dispositions constitute wisdom. We must hate no one, but bear with the madmen who would violate the law of God. Remember that God, descending a second time among men, proclaims ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... his miraculous journey at Zanzibar on the Pacific Ocean. He had been accompanied in his perilous journey by stout-hearted, brave, and faithful natives. Their mission almost completed, they began to sink into that listlessness which is often the precursor of death. They had been true to their master, and were now ready to die as bravely as they had lived. Read Mr. Stanley's account without ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... galaxy, some standing apart in glorious constellations; I recognize Arcturus and Orion and Perseus and the glittering jewels of the Southern Crown, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences; but the Evening Star, the soft and serene light that glowed in their van, the precursor of them all, has sunk below the horizon. The spheres, meanwhile, perform their appointed courses; the same motion which lifted them up to the mid-sky bears them onward to their setting; and they, too, like their bright leader, must soon be carried ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Hebrew as well as the accustomed studies of the period. A clear and independent thinker, he was not, like so many of his contemporaries, overborne by the weight of authority, but appealed to observation and experience in terms which make him the precursor of Roger Bacon. Grosseteste's successor as lector was himself a Minorite, Adam Marsh, whose reputation was so great that Grosseteste was afraid to leave him when sick in a French town, lest the Paris masters ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... was further discovered in the "Collection of all the Pieces relative to the Dunciad," on which he employed Savage: these exemplified the justness of the satire, or defended it from all attacks. The precursor of the Dunciad was a single chapter in "The Bathos; or, the Art of Sinking in Poetry;" where the humorous satirist discovers an analogy between flying-fishes, parrots, tortoises, &c., and certain writers, whose names are designated by initial letters. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... reefing, and the great main-sail had been successfully reduced to its smallest area and hoisted home again before the trees on the western shore began to bow and churn in the precursor blasts of the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Indeed, she exultingly told him of the aptness of her pupil, of her intention to persevere in teaching me, and of the duty which she felt it to teach me, at least to read the bible. Here arose the first cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the precursor of ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... textiles, glass, petroleum, coal Agriculture: accounts for 2.3% of GDP; emphasis on livestock production - beef, veal, pork, milk; major crops are sugar beets, fresh vegetables, fruits, grain, tobacco; net importer of farm products Illicit drugs: source of precursor chemicals for South American cocaine processors; increasingly important gateway country for cocaine entering the ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... were defeated and dispersed; and he himself, together with others, was carried off on board the royal ship, hanging with his head downwards, to the royal palace at the capital This victory was the precursor of others; everywhere "the Petti of Nubia were hewed in pieces, and scattered all over their lands," till "their stench filled the valleys." At last a general submission was made, and a large-tract of territory was ceded. The Egyptian terminus was pushed on from the twenty-second ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... containing twelve classical love-stories— "Sinorex and Camma," "Tereus and Progne," etc.—in style the precursor of Euphues, now first reprinted under the editorship of Professor I. GOLLANCZ. Frontispieces, a reproduction of the original title, and of ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... the Reverend T. R. Malthus's Essay on Population appeared. This was a precursor of the work of Darwin, and another of the great books of all time. He pointed out that population everywhere tended to outrun the means of subsistence, and that it was only prevented from doing so by preventive checks which involved ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... went in quest of the king of Bavaria; and that it was she who, with her accustomed grace and address, determined him to make common cause with his younger against their eldest brother. Divers incidents retarded for a whole year the outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The position of the young King Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the pretended consideration on which the patent is to issue bears no just proportion to that of the ordinary preemptor, and that this bill is but the precursor of a system of land distribution to a privileged class, unequal, unjust, and which ought not to receive the sanction of the General Government. Many thousand pioneers have turned their steps to the Western Territories, seeking, with their wives and children, homesteads to be acquired ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... descanted on the several contingents from Antigone as they strode by; then of those from God's houses at Halki, the pearl of the Marmora; amongst them the monastery of John the Precursor, and the Convents of St. George, Hagia Trias, and lastly the Very Holy House of the All Holy Mother of God, founded by John VIII. Palaeologus. After them, in turn, the consecrated from Prinkipo, especially those ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... discoverer of the New World, and to transfer that honour most undeservedly to Americus, whose name has long been indelibly affixed to this new grand division of our globe. Americus himself pretended to have made the first discovery of the continent of the New World, alleging that his great precursor Columbus was only the discoverer of the large West India islands. It has been already mentioned, in the introduction to the voyages of Columbus, that in his first voyage Americus sailed under the command of a Spanish officer named Ojeda ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... had had some experience in diplomacy, having for some time been placed in charge of the Government in the island of Guernsey. His appointment to the more onerous and responsible post of Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada was heralded as the precursor of better times. It was announced that he had come over charged with instructions to reverse the fatuous policy of his predecessor, and to conduct the administration in accordance with the well understood wishes of the people. It seems tolerably certain that some such general directions ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Henry of Susa's throughout the Middle Ages, quotes the same text as authority for sending heretics to the stake.[2] According to this peculiar exegesis, the law and custom of the day merely sanctioned the law of Christ. To regard our Saviour as the precursor or rather the author of the criminal code of the Inquisition evidences, one must admit, a very peculiar temper ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... and sought its materials in the generalities of science, those writers who have never made a very accurate distinction between the two, but have confounded philosophy with metaphysics, and science with physics, have naturally regarded Bacon as the precursor of Newton, Laplace, Faraday, and Liebig. It is in vain that critics oppose such a claim by asserting what is undeniable, that the great discoveries in modern science were neither made on Bacon's method nor under any direct guidance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Dyck," as he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art in Scotland took a great step forward.[1] A few of Ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... their car. Of fear he evidently had no comprehension whatever. The rustling of the autumn breeze in his gown alarmed him as much, as did the clang of those horses' hoofs upon the pavements, though he so well knew it was the precursor of suffering and death. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... extinct mammalia in the neighbourhood of the Plata, the areas of elevation and subsidence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as deduced from the study of coral formations, and the formation of mould (the precursor of a work he issued more than forty years later). Papers on the connection of certain volcanic phenomena, and on the formation of mountain chains, and other geological notes on South America, were read in 1838; the interesting Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, in ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... was the torturing moment. He knew what she desired and what weapons she could wield wherewith to subdue his will. The battle he fought with himself just then was but a precursor of the fiercer one which anon he would have to fight against her. The rending of his soul was expressed in every line of his face, which once more now looked haggard and harsh; Dea Flavia saw it all. She saw how he suffered, whilst with every passing second the inward struggle became ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... probably two hundred per cent., and it is daily increasing. But the sale of expensive works, and of library editions of standard authors in costly bindings, is yet more noticeable. Ten years ago such a display of magnificent works as is to be found at the Appletons' would have been a precursor of bankruptcy. There was no demand for them. A few dozen, in one little show-case, was the prudent whole. Now, one whole side of an immense store is not only filled with admirably bound library books, but from some inexhaustible source the void continually made in the shelves ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a dull crimson, and she drew the whistling breath that with her was the precursor of storm. Help for her outraged feelings and a snub for the young master came from a quarter which ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... which was the miraculous image of our Saviour, was thrown down, and the image that had annually poured forth its precious blood for the healing of the spiritual and temporal maladies of all pious believers was buried under the ruins. But this calamity was only a precursor of a greater miracle; for, on removing the rubbish, the sacred image was found intact, and as ready as ever to bleed again to order for ready pay. The spiritual interpretation of this astounding phenomenon was, that the devil, in his malice, had attempted, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society." The Commune, then, whose anniversary is celebrated on the 18th of March, every year, by the Socialists all over the world, has been, and still is considered the precursor of their contemplated state. The reign of terror and rebellion in which tens of thousands of Frenchmen met their death, while public buildings and priceless works of art were being burned or destroyed and many beautiful churches pillaged, is the boast of the Socialistic champions ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... of those rushes or swirls of water, which are common among rocks in such a position, swept him again forward, right into the eddy which he had struggled in vain to reach, and thrust him violently against the rock. This back current was the precursor of a tremendous billow, which came towering on like a black moving wall. Ruby saw it, and, twining his arm amongst the seaweed, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... did not carry out her little plan of delaying the Oriel wedding. Her idea had been to add some grandeur to it, in order to make it a more fitting precursor of that other greater wedding which was to follow so soon in its wake. But this, with the assistance of the countess, she found herself able to do without interfering with poor Mr Oriel's Sunday arrangements. The countess ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Bacon told Queen Elizabeth that there was no treason in Hayward's Henry IV, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus' (Apophthegms, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author of The History of King Richard the Thirde, generally attributed to Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's Life and Death of Thomas ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... up on the first morning was a faithful precursor of the indomitable vitality of the Patriarch. He was always first up and first off, and, amongst many charming peculiarities, was his indifference as to which way the road lay. We generally had a guide with us, and nothing was more common in toiling up a mountain side ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... sovereign occupies his place as the Son of Heaven, and he has appointed his three ducal ministers, though (a prince) were to send in a round symbol-of-rank large enough to fill both the hands, and that as the precursor of the team of horses (in the court-yard), such an offering would not be equal to (a lesson of) this Tao, which one ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... eradication program; used as transshipment point for Asian opiates, cannabis, and Latin American cocaine bound for growing domestic markets, to a lesser extent Western and Central Europe, and occasionally to the US; major source of heroin precursor chemicals; corruption and organized crime are key concerns; heroin ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... conducted the triumph. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty in the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before the king triumphing." Dr. Price, when he talks as if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent; for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very triumphantly chosen his place,) said, "I have prayed and preached these twenty years; and now I may say with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Blake. This was entitled, "The American Bookseller's complete reference trade-list, and alphabetical catalogue of books, published in this country, with the publishers' and authors' names, and prices." This quarto volume, making 351 pages (with its supplement issued in 1848) was the precursor of the now current "Trade List Annual," containing the lists of books published by all publishers whose lists could be secured. The titles are very brief, and are arranged in the catalogue under the names of the respective publishers, with an alphabetical index of authors and of anonymous ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... of a memorable book, "Adam Bede," for which even its precursor, "Scenes from Clerical Life," had not prepared the world of letters. The novel was much admired in the royal circle. In one of the rooms at Osborne, as a pendant to a picture from the "Faery Queen," there hangs a representation from a very different masterpiece in English literature, of the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... recognized not only as one of the most profound and clearest thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science. "The precursor of Galileo," says M. Haureau, in his work on Scholastic Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... so to speak, with one eye, and took on the aspect of a house in which someone is astir. First came the fox-terrier, inevitable precursor of his little master, and then, stepping around Toucle as though she were a tree or a rock, came his little partner Paul, his freckled face shining with soap and the earliness of the hour. Mr. Welles was apt to swallow hard again, when he felt the child's ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the precursor of many kind services and pleasant hours. Our new friends assist us to a deal of sight-seeing, and introduce us to cathedral, college, and garden. We walk out with them at sunrise and at sunset, and sit under the stately trees, and think it almost strange to be at home with people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... this letter records the beginning. The temporary clearing up of the weather referred to was but a hollow truce in the tremendous elemental warfare of that memorable autumn. The flood described in the Findhorn was but a faint precursor of the wave sixty feet high, which, a week or two later, burst through the splendid girdle of rock which at Relugas confines that loveliest of Scotch rivers, and spread over the fertile plain beneath, changing it into a sea. At some points ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... in the Slavic and Italian form, are very frequent in Ragusian literature. Junius Palmota wrote tragedies; selecting his subjects principally from Slavic history. But his most esteemed production is a Slavic version of a great Latin epic on Christ, by M.H. Vita, which may be considered as a kind of precursor to Klopstock's Messiah. John Gondola, a dramatic writer before him, translated Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... of the Nile country to the noise of the Talmud-School, who dressed in white on Sabbath, and wore a fourfold garment to signify the four letters of the Ineffable Name, and who by permutating these, could draw down spirits from Heaven, passed as the Messiah of the Race of Joseph, precursor of the true Messiah of the Race of David. The times were ripe. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," cried the Cabalists with one voice. The Jews had suffered so much and so long. Decimated for not dying of the Black Death, pillaged and murdered by the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... have endorsed the sentiment just then. Perhaps Andy's low spirits were intensified by the uncomfortable motion of the ship, which was beginning to strike landsmen with that rolling headache, the sure precursor of a worse visitation. Suffice it to say, that the mass of groaning misery in the steerage and cabins, on the subsequent night, would melt the heart of any but the most hardened 'old salt.' Did not Robert ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... are a hideous invention of modern times. They date from the seventeenth century. Before that time there were only guard-houses where the soldiers played cards and told tales. Louis XIV was a precursor of Bonaparte. But the evil has attained its plenitude since the monstrous institution of the obligatory enlistment. The shame of emperors and of republics is to have made it an obligation for men to kill. In the ages ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... ill-considered manoeuvre would not have sufficed to plunge him into such a depth of bitter and angry despondency as that in which he now found himself. But the rebuff had been too uncompromising to leave him a single hope. He was too shrewd not to see that here was no pretty feminine nay, precursor of the yielding yea, not to realise that Madeleine had meant what she said and would abide by it. And, under the sting of the moment betrayed into a degradingly ill-mannered outburst, he had shown that he measured the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... necessity of breaking with the past and making a completely new start; and his whole method of thought seems intellectually nearer to us than the speculations of a Bruno or a Campanella. Hence it is easy to understand that he is often regarded, especially in his own country, as more than a precursor, as the first philosopher, of the modern age, definitely within its precincts. [Footnote: German critics have been generally severe on Bacon as deficient in the scientific spirit. Kuno Fischer, Baco van Verulam (1856). Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon van Verulam und die Methode der ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury |
