Word: critically
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...first syllable of Christian as applied to their denomination is usually pronounced as in Christ, probably incorrectly, but this serves at least to mark a distinction in meaning. The word is not defined in its narrow sense by Webster. Ignorance of these facts is very pardonable, but a critic, who confessed to no clear understanding of the use of the word, should have avoided making a point based on such ignorance...
...vain do we search in our relentless critic's article for hearty, unbegrudged praise. Of some of the finest essays not a word. Were he disposed to be fair even, he could hardly fail to acknowledge the merits of "Quotation and Originality," of the "Progress of Culture." His complaint that he finds nothing practical in such a particularly unpractical, un-bread-and-butter subject as "Poetry and Imagination," and his surprise at hearing nothing new or startling on "Immortality," are fair specimens of his captious criticism...
Were we able to detect any signs of failing strength - but we do not - in him who has all his life guided us so well and taught us so many never-to-be-forgotten lessons in true wisdom, it would be unmanly and ungenerous to turn, as our critic does, and upbraid him for those weaknesses to which all mortal flesh is subject. Such ingratitude is unfilial, inhuman. Charles Sumner used to regretfully say, "The age of chivalry is gone." Were such dispositions and sentiments as our truculent critic's article shows common in our Senator's time, he might...
...estimate the love of literary studies there is here by the number of graduates who devote themselves to a literary life, we may reach the same conclusion as the critic; but this is hardly a fair test, since in the world at large the number of educated men engaged in purely intellectual labor is comparatively small, ardent as their love may be for Belles-Lettres...
...astounding" result was attained. To say that superficial knowledge, extended to all subjects, becomes culture, is correct, - otherwise, no one could be cultured, for no one can be an universal specialist - but when from this premise the conclusion is reached that "culture is superficial knowledge," the enthymeme of our critic should indeed be deeply hidden. Expanded, it becomes the following syllogism...