Word: useful
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...speak with the highest possible respect for the men who head our rank-lists, when we call this a throwing of pearls before swine. We regard such a course, as the elder Mr. Weller did the sending of flannel "veskits" to the young niggers who would have no possible use for them. But this extravagant waste of unappreciated cuts will be the only step taken, if any, in this particular...
...estimation of Thackeray. It has always been the fashion to decry Thackeray as a cynic. While his critics unite in praise of his keen insight into all the foibles and vices of our nature, they are equally unanimous in declaring that he has turned this power to a bad use, that he has made it the vehicle of his sarcasm. An attentive study of all his works, and especially of those parts in which he is accused of bitterness, will discover facts which go far to refute this accusation. Setting aside those passages in which he is justly allowed...
...reason why we have thus to cultivate and reform our taste from the beginning, is that our surroundings - excepting only where man has not interfered with "Dame Nature," to use the correct expression - are the reverse of artistic. The interior of most of our churches suggests as surely an ideally enlarged soap-box as the Cologne Cathedral interior calls up the vague mystery of a vast forest...
Durer's engraving of St. Jerome is surprisingly well reproduced, and does very great credit to the publisher's experts. The clearness of the impression is amazing. The table at which St. Jerome is reading recalls some of Eastlake's remarks about the absurdity of those in use at present. Durer evidently was not particularly occupied with St. Jerome as a saint; he merely wished to represent an old man absorbed in study, and took far more delight in giving in firm, strong lines all the details of a homely interior. The flood of light warms one's very heart...
...writer sends out his thoughts in search of something funny : but witticisms are coy birds and fly high; few are able to capture them at will, or furnish them to order. In nine cases out of ten, wearied with his fruitless endeavors, he descends to a lower plane, makes use of vulgarity, and passes it off for wit. Some, as we have before hinted, seem unable to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious article; others there are who, from their moral status, seem incapable of appreciating anything genuine, who derive their intellectual nourishment almost exclusively from trashy literature. Among...