raree-shows

Updated: May 8, 2025

I persuade myself, that the time you stay at Venice will be properly employed, in seeing all that is to be seen in that extraordinary place: and in conversing with people who can inform you, not of the raree-shows of the town, but of the constitution of the government; for which purpose I send you the inclosed letters of recommendation from Sir James Grey, the King's Resident at Venice, but who is now in England.

Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield - Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1749

But these different habits and characters were still of farther use to our hero, for by their means he had a better opportunity of seeing the world, and knowing mankind, than most of our youths who make the grand tour; for, as he had none of those petty amusements and raree-shows, which so much divert our young gentlemen abroad, to engage his attention, it was wholly applied to the study of mankind, their various passions and inclinations; and he made the greater improvement in his study, as in many of his characters they acted before him without reserve or disguise.

Unknown - The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew: King of the Beggars; containing his Life, a Dictionary of the: Cant Language, and many Entertaining Particulars of that: Extraordinary Man

Bands of music and merry-go-rounds in all the open places and squares; open-air bakeries of pancakes and waffles; theatrical exhibitions, raree-shows, jugglers, and mountebanks at every corner all these phenomena which had been at every kermis for centuries, and were to repeat themselves for centuries afterwards, now enlivened the atmosphere of the grey, episcopal city.

John Lothrop Motley - Life and Death of John of Barneveld — Complete (1609-1623)

In the third, you could hardly be so cowardly as to run away from the temptation that is to prove whether you were really born to be a priest." "That was decided when I entered the Clergy House." "Nonsense; nothing of the sort, my dear boy. The only thing that was decided then was that you thought you were. Wait and see our ethical and religious raree-shows.

Arlo Bates - The Puritans

Flam, whose indignation now provoked him to display his whole stock of erudition, eagerly exclaimed: "Do you call that patriotism in your favorite Athenians, to be so fond of raree-shows, as not only to devote the money of the state to the play-house, but to make it capital to divert a little of it to the wants of the gallant soldiers who were fighting their battles?

Hannah More - Coelebs In Search of a Wife