United States or Bermuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Their conflict brought back upon the memory of Gibbon the old Homeric simile, where the strife of Hector and Patroclus over the dead body of Cebriones is compared to the combat of two lions, that in their hate and hunger fight together on the mountain-tops over the carcass of a slaughtered stag: and the reluctant yielding of the Saracen power to the superior might of the Northern warriors, might not inaptly recall those other lines of the same book of the Iliad, where the downfall of Patroclus beneath Hector is likened to the forced yielding of the panting and exhausted wild boar, that had long and furiously fought with a superior beast of prey for the possession of the fountain among the rocks, at which each burned to drink.

Voltaire has not inaptly designated him "De l'or encroute de toutes les ordures de son siecle;" but the crust of superstition that enveloped his powerful mind, though it may have dimmed, could not obscure the brightness of his genius. To him, and apparently to him only, among all the inquiring spirits of the time, were known the properties of the concave and convex lens.

His standard of taste, as of manners, has not inaptly been likened to that of a Dutch sailor. When Catherine took up her residence in her new home, Waliszewski tells us, "her eye shortly fell on certain magnificent jewels. Forthwith, bursting into tears, she addressed her new protector: 'Who put these ornaments here?

On entering the house, they found a number of the neighboring females assembled, and indeed the whole family, in consequence of the alarm and agitation visible them, might not inaptly be compared to a brood of domestic fowl when a hawk, bent on destruction, is seen hovering over their heads.

The sun, as he then appeared, might not inaptly be compared to some great prophet, who, clothed with the majesty and terror of I an angry God, was commissioned to launch! his denunciations against the iniquities of nations, and to reveal to them, as they lay under the shadow of his wrath, the terrible calamities with which he was about to visit their transgressions.

Modern philosophy had no sooner triumphed over ancient religion and France over Germany than an extraordinary reaction, inaptly termed the romantic, took place in poetry.

Lord, mine eye On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry Wash, Lord, and purify my heart, And make it clean in every part; And when 't is clean, Lord, keep it too, For that is more than I can do." The thought in the following extracts from a poem written on the death of his friend Pennington's son is trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly expressed:

But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been described as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him on a better way. Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to Elizabeth-Jane.

He wrote a great deal of verse songs, hymns, epistles, eclogues, translations, tales, and occasional trifles; but three poems, A Hymn to Contentment, which is fanciful and melodious, A Night-piece on Death, in which inquisitorial research seems to have found the first faint dawn of Romanticism, and The Hermit, which has been not inaptly styled "the apex and chef d'oeuvre of Augustan poetry in England", constitute his chief claim to present remembrance.

Breckenridge, he said: "Bob, when you and I graduated, you took to the pulpit and I to the bottle, and I have stuck to my text a good deal closer than you have to yours!" Not inaptly has hell been described as "disqualification in the face of opportunity."