"Feudal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for example, which is but one small item of his business, the commuting of the old feudal duty of his Landholders to do Service in Wartime, into a fixed money payment: nothing could be fairer, more clearly advantageous to both parties; and most of his "Knights" gladly accepted the proposal: yet a certain factious set ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... a question for me to argue upon," Sir Ingram said surlily. "King Edward bids me fight in Scotland, and as his knight and vassal I put on my harness without question. But I own to you that seeing I have fought beside him in Gascony, when he, as a feudal vassal of the King of France, made war upon his lord, I cannot see that the offence is an unpardonable one when you Scotchmen do the same here. Concerning the lawfulness of his claim to be your lord paramount, I own that I neither ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... been as deadly as the first, though less successful, and when this nominal leadership of Western Europe was thus conferred on the gallant Frederick, he found the Teutonic races weakened by the loss of a million of their most valiant warriors—that is, of the feudal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... seeing a little garden-chair, with an emaciated old lady in it, drawn by a nurse round and round the gravelled space before the house. That was Miss Wordsworth, taking her daily exercise. It was a great trouble, at times, that she could not be placed in some safe privacy; and Wordsworth's feudal loyalty was put to a severe test in the matter. It had been settled that a cottage should be built for his sister, in a field of his, beyond the garden. The plan was made, and the turf marked out, and the digging about to begin, when the great lady at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Wessyngton family, of the county of Durham, in feudal times, produced many men of mark in the field and in the cloister, and at a later period the Washingtons were intrepid supporters of the unfortunate House of Stuart. Compromised by this allegiance, two brothers, John and Andrew, uncles of Sir Henry Washington, the gallant defender ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... protests of the friar and the insolent responses of the Pope awakened their interest; for Italy then, like the unhappy martyr, had risen to proclaim the decline of that monstrous power which, in the name of a religion profaned by it, sanctifies its own illegitimate and feudal origin, its abuses, its pride, its vices, its crimes. It was a beautiful and affecting spectacle to see the illustrious poet receiving the warm congratulations of his fellow-citizens, who enthusiastically recognized in him the utterer of so many lofty ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... retained. As in the Saxon poem on the Gospel history, the Hliand, the twelve disciples may be represented as Thanes owing loyalty to their Prince, in common poetic terms befitting the men of Beowulf or Byrhtnoth. As in the French poems on Alexander the Great, Alexander may become a feudal king, and take over completely all that belongs to such a rank. There may be no consciousness of any need for a new vocabulary or a new mode of expression to fit the foreign themes. In France, it is true, there is a general distinction ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... a rule, are well disposed towards all strangers, and wish to extend their commerce. Their social state rather represents a conservative than a radical disposition; their government is a sort of semipatriarchal-feudal arrangement; and, like a band of robbers, all hold by their different chiefs from feeling the necessity of mutual support. Bordering the south of the lake there are vast fields of iron; cotton is also abundant, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... over conquered tribes of no Slavic descent. This was done when Rurik and his successors descended the Dwina, the Dnieper, and established there new dominions. In the course of time, the conquerors cleared the forests, established villages and cities. As, in other feudal countries, the tower, the Schloss, was outside of the village or of the borough,—so was In Russia the dwor or manor, where the conqueror or master dwelt,—and from which was derived his name of dworianin. That the genuine Russian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... I knew something of his habits. I knew the fear in which he went when he was in England and away from the feudal guards who had surrounded him in Albania. I knew of his famous door with its steel latch and I was planning to circumvent all these precautions and bring to him not only the death he deserved, but a full knowledge of his fate ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... were just now in residence after six months spent abroad, struck them as a very grave impropriety. Natural respect demanded that, at some fitting moment, and in a suitable manner, their daughter should present herself to her feudal superiors, to whom she was assuredly indebted, though indirectly, for 'the blessings she enjoyed.' This was Mrs. Rockett's phrase, and the rheumatic, wheezy old gardener uttered the same opinion in less conventional language. They had no affection ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... ambition and the lust of power, a passion which stifles all other human feelings, and never properly erects its throne till the mind has become a cold and dreary wilderness. His youth was passed in the last civil wars, and he still saw around him remains of the feudal independence. I will not pretend to decide how much this may have influenced him, but it is undeniable that the sense which he often showed of the great importance of political questions was altogether lost in the following age, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... people could swim together; a tepidarium and a calidarium* on the same proportions, born of a wild craving for the huge; and then the terrific massiveness of the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, such as no feudal castle ever knew; and, in addition, the general immensity which makes passing visitors look like lost ants; such an extraordinary riot of the great and the mighty that one wonders for what men, for what multitudes, this monstrous edifice was reared. To-day, you would say a mass of rocks in the rough, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... separated by a multitude of individual differences, he stood aloof and indispensable, like one of the gaunt iron bridges of his great railroad. He was at once the destroyer and the builder—the inexorable foe of the old feudal order and the beneficent source of the new industrialism. Though half of Dinwiddie hated him, the other half (hating him, perhaps none the less) ate its bread from his hands. The town, which had lived, fought, lost, and suffered not as a group of individuals, but as a psychological unit, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of the middle ages, and afterwards into the day laborer of modern times.(413) It is more particularly to be remarked, that machines, since 1750, "first made the constitutional liberty of many, instead of the feudal freedom of a few, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the feudal system, by which the public defense was provided for chiefly at the expense of individuals, the system of loans has been introduced, and as no nation can raise within the year by taxes sufficient sums for its defense and military operations in time of war the sums loaned and debts ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... spared the holders and cultivators of the soil the exactions which, by right or by might, its lords were used to levy. "So the peasants," she writes, "were accustomed not to put themselves to any inconvenience; and when came the Revolution they were already so well relieved virtually from feudal bonds that they took revenge on nobody." A new seigneur of Nohant, coming to take possession, and thinking to levy his utmost dues, in cash and in kind, found his rustic tenants turn a deaf ear to his summons. Ere he could insist the storm burst, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... twenty thousand francs. This was a large fortune in a poor country, where, all commodities were cheap. But the Tepeleni family, holding the rank of beys, had to maintain a state like that of the great financiers of feudal Europe. They had to keep a large stud of horses, with a great retinue of servants and men-at-arms, and consequently to incur heavy expenses; thus they constantly found their revenue inadequate. The most natural means of raising it which occurred to them ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Conquest the feudal law was introduced here in all its rigor, the whole of which is built on a military plan. I shall not now enter into the particulars of that constitution, which belongs more properly to the next part of our "Commentaries"; but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... eternal rhythm of living humanity. The ancient hieratic civilizations of the Orient decay, and through their dissolution they give birth to the Graeco-Roman world, which in turn is followed by the feudal and aristocratic civilization of Central Europe; it also decays and disintegrates through its own excesses, like the preceding civilizations, and it is replaced by the bourgeois civilization which has reached its culminating ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... gandr, enchantment; gand- reithr was the witches' ride. {83} Can'wick Street, Candlewick, where now there is Cannon Street. {86a} Champarty, Champartage, was a feudal levy of a share of profit from the ground (campi pars), based originally upon aid given to enable profit to be earned. Thus it became a law term for right of a stranger to fixed share in any profits that on such condition he helped ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... had taken at once to his burrow in the ruin. It was a very ancient feudal castle, only just enough of it remaining to give an idea of the shape it once had been, for regardless of the respect that is due to antiquity the keepers had carted away loads of the solid masonry to build their houses, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... ecclesiastic, thrifty merchant and active artisan, passed and repassed in an unceasing stream. It was rich in points of interest, preeminent among which were its castle and its convent. In the castle the stout-hearted Loudunians found a refuge and a stronghold against the ambitions of the feudal lords and the tyranny of the crown. To its convent, pleasantly situated in a grove of time-honored trees, they sent their ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Riots in all cities were daily occurrences, rating no more than obscure paragraphs, while in many areas gangs of hoodlums actually maintained themselves in power for weeks at a time, ruling their possessions like feudal baronies and exacting tribute from ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... you serve a king, Monsieur d'Artagnan, who should have a hundred kings his equals in the kingdom? Could I, tell me, do, with such weakness, the great things I meditate? Have you ever seen an artist effect solid works with a rebellious instrument? Far from us, monsieur, those old leavens of feudal abuses! The Fronde, which threatened to ruin the monarchy, has emancipated it. I am master at home, Captain d'Artagnan, and I shall have servants who, wanting, perhaps, your genius, will carry devotedness and obedience up to heroism. Of what ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Blandford, laughing, "what you don't understand about it is just the difference, of course. I suppose it was the feudal way in which we lived that gave us our lordly baronial airs and ...
— Options • O. Henry
... had his own peculiarities. Born in a Shorncliffe barrack hut, he had a feudal attitude toward people of higher birth. As for a prince— there was almost no limit to what he would not endure from one, without concerning himself whether the prince was right or wrong. Not that he did not know his rights; his limitations were not Prussian; he would stand up ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... content to publish under his own name works of which he certainly had no reason to be ashamed. One of the earliest of these was, "La Jacquerie"—a sort of long melodrama, or series of scenes, illustrating feudal aggressions and cruelties in France, and the consequent peasant revolts of the fourteenth century. It shows much historical research and care in collection of materials, is rich in references to the barbarous customs and strange manners of the times, and, like the "Chronicle of Charles IX.," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... early life, when I resided in the island of Mull, most of those old feudal customs which civilization had almost banished from the Lowlands, were still religiously observed in the Hebrides—more especially those of a social and festive character, which it was thought had the effect of keeping up old acquaintance, and of tightening the bonds of good fellowship. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... kind to all The vassals of this ancient hall And feudal fief! To foes how stern a foe was he! And to the valiant and the free How ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... great chamber of the Bell Tower grew at last to be of frequent and almost continual recurrence. It was, there, long ago, in times of trouble and danger, that the De Lacys of those evil days used to sit in feudal judgment upon captive adversaries, and, as tradition alleged, often gave them no more time for shrift and prayer, than it needed to mount to the battlement of the turret over-head, from which they were forthwith hung by the necks, for a caveat and admonition ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... doubtless inspired by them, is a marked spread of the aristocratic spirit—selfish, heartless, subtle, of mere physical 'refinement'; a spirit, too, all the more inhuman because it is for the most part not tempered by any intercourse with homely dependants, as in the feudal aristocracy. It would seem to be the product of 'the higher education,' a university priggishness, poor as proud. It is the deadliest spirit abroad; but, of course, though it may poison life and especially art for a while, the great laughing democracy will in good ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... feudal air about the whole place—feudal, in a small and neighborly kind of way. Jack's father died just a year before his only son came of age; and Jack himself, surrounded by sisters and an excellent and beneficently-minded ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the most remarkable memorials of Old Japan. The graves are in a temple which is divided into several courts, surrounded by walls and connected with each other by beautiful gates. The first of these courts is ornamented with more than two hundred stone lanterns, presented to the temple by the feudal princes of the country, the name of the giver and the date at which it was given being inscribed on each. Some of these peculiar memorials are only half-finished, perhaps an evidence of the sudden close of the power of the Shoguns and the feudal princes in Japan. In another of the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Tuileries, or the luxurious streets beyond the Rue de Rivoli, to the Senate of the emancipated People, and the gloomy and desolate grandeur of the Faubourg St. Germain, in whose venerable haunts the impoverished descendants of the old feudal tyrants, whom the birth of the Senate overthrew, yet congregate;—the ghosts of departed powers proud of the shadows of great names. As the English outcast paused midway on the bridge, and for the first time lifting his head from his bosom, gazed around, there broke at ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the exquisite "I sing of a maiden that is makeles,"{29} are rather songs to or about the Virgin than strictly Christmas carols; the Annunciation rather than the Nativity is their theme. Others again tell the whole story of Christ's life. The feudal idea is strong in ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... after the maintenance of canals and dykes, he tilled the ground, he sowed, he reaped, he garnered the grain for his lord and for himself. Yet to those upon whom they were incumbent, these posthumous obligations, the sequel and continuation of feudal service, at length seemed too heavy, and theologians exercised their ingenuity to find means of lightening the burden. They authorized the manes to look to their servants for the discharge of all manual labour which they ought ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... spin for us, separate and combine the raw materials, and work the miracles of our times. No one has the right to monopolise any one of these machines and to say to others—"This is mine, if you wish to make use of it you must pay me a tax on each article you produce," any more than the feudal lord of the middle ages had the right to say to the cultivator—"This hill and this meadow are mine and you must pay me tribute for every sheaf of barley you bind, and on each ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbirds set in the outer edges, like so many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like the retainers about the rude court of a feudal baron. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... cannot be followed in these strenuous times, but one must make a selection of the best, and then, if he have time and inclination, add to this number. To my mind, the four great novels of Scott are Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Talisman and The Heart of Midlothian. The first gives you feudal England as no one else has painted it, with a picture of Richard the Lion-Hearted which no historian has ever approached. It contains some of the most thrilling scenes in ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... investigation, without obeying the summons of the examining-magistrate, without even reading Arsene Lupin's letters to the papers on "the Varennes Flight," the duke, his daughter and his valet stealthily took a slow train for Vannes and arrived one evening, at the old feudal castle that towers over the headland of Sarzeau. The duke at once organized a defence with the aid of the Breton peasants, true mediaeval vassals to a man. On the fourth day, Mussy arrived; on the fifth, Caorches; and, on the seventh, d'Emboise, whose ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... what they are. England is not yet a commercial country in the sense in which that epithet is used for her; and let us still hope that she will not soon become so. She might surely as well be called feudal England, or chivalrous England. If in western civilised Europe there does exist a nation among whom there are high signors, and with whom the owners of the land are the true aristocracy, the aristocracy that is trusted as being best and fittest to rule, that nation ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... great European state family presented a curious spectacle. On every hand there was a cheerful trust in the future. The present was as bad as possible, but belonged to the passing and not to the coming hour. Truth was abroad, felt the philosophers, and must prevail. Feudal privilege, oppression, vice and venality in government, the misery of the poor—all would slowly fade away. The human mind was never keener than in the eighteenth century; reasonableness, hope, and thoroughness characterized ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of a Scotch landlord had been formed upon what he had heard of the Highland Chiefs; for it is long since a lowland landlord has been so curtailed in his feudal authority, that he has little more influence over his tenants than an English landlord; and of late years most of the Highland Chiefs have destroyed, by means too well known, the princely ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... their compeers,—won Southern dislike by their hostility to slavery. The South itself, singularly barren of original literature,—its prolific new births in our own day are one of the most conspicuous fruits of emancipation,—clung fondly to the classical and feudal traditions, and hardly admitted any literary sovereign later ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... queer old place it seemed, half farm, half feudal castle: fowls strutting at large about the back premises (which we were compelled to skirt), and then a front door of ponderous oak, deep-set between walls fully six feet thick, and studded all over with wooden pegs. The facade, indeed, was wholly grim, with a castellated tower at one ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... constituted, under the old feudal organization of Japan, a class of territorial nobility, who numbered about two hundred and fifty. Under Iyemidzu (1623-51) the daimios were obliged to live in Yedo half the time with their families; and, before this, those nobles had been in the habit ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... between Scott and Stevenson has been gravely offered by the latter's friends. They are doing a beautiful artist a serious injustice, You could place Stevenson's ravishing assortment of cameos in any chamber of Scott's feudal castle. It is an intaglio beside a cathedral, a humming-bird beside an eagle. It is anything exquisite ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... works. A private railroad spur pierced the western side of the enclosure, for food and coal supplies, as well as for the handling of the numerous imports and exports of this wonderfully complete feudal domain. As the colony lay there basking in the sunshine of early spring, under its drifting streamers of smoke, it seemed an ideal picture of peaceful activities. Here a locomotive puffed, shunting cars; there, a steam-jet flung its plumes of snowy vapor into air; yonder, a steam hammer ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... us as friends, Dorothy; trust us, and you will find more happiness here than you suspect. Castle Craneycrow was born and went to ruin in the midst of feud and strife; it has outlived its feudal days, so let there be no war between us," said ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the East, in that unsuccessful expedition against the Parthians which has stamped his memory with incapacity and shame."[17] The rude battlements on the top of the tower, and all the old walls and fortifications which surround it, are the work of the Gaetani family, who long maintained their feudal warfare here. Forsyth observes:—"Crassus built this tomb of travertine stone 24 feet thick, to secure the bones of a single woman; while the adjoining castle had but a thin wall of soft tufo to defend all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... ghost, whom we generally find in the stock stories of the supernatural as an appanage of the feudal castle, may be either a thought-form or an unusually vivid impression in the astral light, or again he may really be an earth-bound ancestor still haunting the scenes in which his thoughts and hopes ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... great apostle of the Gentiles" a rascal? Rascal formerly meant a servant: one devoted to the interest of another; but now it is nearly synonymous with villain. Villain once had none of the odium which is now associated with the term; but it signified one who, under the feudal system, rented or held lands of another. Thus, Henry the VIII. says to a vassal or tenant, "As you are an accomplished villain, I order that you receive L700 out of the public treasury." The word villain, then, has given up its original idea, and ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... out of the words of this simple man. Until then I had heard only one side of the case. If I were to be the servant of justice, as Mr. Wright had advised, what was I to do? These tenants had been Grimshawed and were being Grimshawed out of the just fruits of their toil by the feudal chief whose remote ancestor had been a king's favorite. For half a moment I watched the wavering needle of ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... of all my race. My name Ends with me. Yonder hang my helm and shield; They will be buried with me in the grave.[48] And must I think, when yielding up my breath, That thou but wait'st the closing of mine eyes, To stoop thy knee to this new feudal court, And take in vassalage from Austria's hands The noble lands, which I from God received, Free and unfetter'd as the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout back Death has!" he exclaimed. "What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a concept which was not a part of English law at the time; but it was granted "in free and common soccage" with the holder a tenant of the King with obligations of fealty and of the payment of a quitrent. The fixed rent replaced the service, military or personal, required under feudal law; and the socage tenure in effect did not subject the land to the rules of escheat or return of the land to the King if inherited by minors or widows. For Englishmen in America, the "Instructions for the government of the ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... half that distance of Tallwoods, settlers nestled here or there in these enfolding hills and forests; but of neighbors in importance equal to that of the owner of Tallwoods there were few or none in that portion of the state. The time was almost feudal, but wilder and richer than any feudal day, in that fief tribute was unknown. The original landlord of these acres had availed himself of the easy laws and easy ways of the time and place, and taken over to himself from the loose public ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... that grey house! I, who had known the ease and the delights and the ever-laughing joys of Kilohana, and of the Parkers at old Mana, and of Puuwaawaa! You remember. We did live in feudal spaciousness in those days. Would you, can you, believe it, Martha—at Nahala the only sewing machine I had was one of those the early missionaries brought, a tiny, crazy thing that one cranked around ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... their military spirit; and their slavish tenures are all dissolved by act of parliament; so that they are at present as free and independent of their chiefs, as the law can make them: but the original attachment still remains, and is founded on something prior to the feudal system, about which the writers of this age have made such a pother, as if it was a new discovery, like the Copernican system. Every peculiarity of policy, custom, and even temperament, is affectedly traced to this origin, as if ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Tudor sovereigns were making secure dominion in "these isles," the Byzantine Empire was moving slowly to its end, and favouring circumstances were already making Italy the centre of the world's commerce and culture. There the feudal system, never deeply rooted, was declining slowly, and Italian energy and enterprise now having larger opportunity, seized the commerce of the East as it received vast impulse from the Crusades, and this trade became the source ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... leading us to believe that the regeneration of the world will be a gradual and progressive work. Civilization and Christianity are diffusing their influence throughout the globe, mitigating the sufferings and multiplying the enjoyments of the human family. Free institutions are taking the place of feudal oppressions—education is pouring its light on minds hitherto enveloped in all the darkness of ignorance—the whole system of slavery, both personal and political, is undermined by public opinion, and must soon be prostrated; and the signs of the times assure us that the enormous mass ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... sharply drawn here as in cities like Richmond or Charleston. Middle Georgia was perhaps the most democratic section of the South. It was a democracy, it is true, working within the limitations of slavery,* and greatly tempered with the feudal ideas of the older States, but it was a life which gave room for the development of well-marked individual types. There were many Georgia "Crackers" in the surrounding country; they were even recognized more than in other States as part of the social structure. While ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... resembled more a citadel intended for the accommodation of armed vassals than the commodious dwelling of feudal lords, one turret gave evidence, by its internal arrangement, of a degree of refinement and a nearer approach to comfort than its fellows, and seeming to proclaim that within its massive walls the lords of the castle were accustomed to reside. The apartments ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... and six years between the death of Confucius (B.C. 478) and the birth of Mencius (B.C. 372), the political and moral state of China had altered greatly for the worse. The smaller feudal states had been swallowed up by larger ones, the princes were constantly at war with one another, and there was but little loyalty to the occupant of the imperial throne; moreover, the moral standard of things had lowered ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and peeresses was a lady of majestic port, whose ascendant expression and commanding voice were commonly held to typify all that is best in the feudal system; or, in other words, to indicate that her opinions had never been contradicted in her life. When one of these is a firm belief in the holder's divine rights and semi-divine origin, the effect is undoubtedly impressive. And ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... fruits of that schoolboy passion were garnered in Scott's original ballads, metrical romances, and no less romantic novels, all so picturesque with feudal lights and shadows, so pure with chivalric sentiment; but an earlier result was The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of folk-songs gleaned in vacation excursions from pipers and shepherds and old ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... easy it is with a certain type of man, to restore the old feudal conditions of service and relationship. Stevenson did this in essentials in Samoa. He tells us how he managed to get good service out of the Samoans (who are accredited with great unwillingness ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... leave": hence the modern phrase to signify the departure of one person from another, which in feudal times could not be done without leave or ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... spirit, the passion of variety in modern life. The legacy of all the ages, is it not descended upon us?—the spirit of a thousand nations? All our arts are thousand-nation arts, shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own. Italian music, out of its feudal kingdoms, comes to us as essentially solo music—melody; and the civilization of Greece, being a civilization of heroes, individuals, comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts, its striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearer to the people in it than the Greek Chorus, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... ingle-corner of the old farmhouse. Such a crowd of thoughts, hopes, dreads, rushed into his mind that the whirl and jostle of them in his brain made him giddy. He had left Bristol at dawn; it was now late afternoon and an April day. He had entered the "Berkeley Arms" in the old feudal town, called for his ale, and been stared at by an old crony, yet never recognized. A year of absence, danger, privation, slavery had put five years at least on to the young yeoman's back. The laughter had gone out of his eyes, the roundness out of his cheeks, and ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... power, barbaric show. They would fight on, glorifying their petty deeds of personal gain; but not always. The mystery of human defeat in the midst of success would be borne in upon them. The barbarians of trade would give way, as had the barbarians of feudal war. This heaving, moaning city, blessedly quiet tonight, would learn its lesson of futility. His eyes that had been long searching the dark were opened now, and he could bide his few years of life in peace. He had labored too long in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... conquered should obey the conquerors, or, as they euphoniously paraphrase it, that the feebler and more unwarlike races should submit to the braver and manlier. The smallest acquaintance with human life in the middle ages, shows how supremely natural the dominion of the feudal nobility over men of low condition appeared to the nobility themselves, and how unnatural the conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them. It hardly seemed less so to the class held in subjection. ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... ourselves.—But soon I was struck with the very erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the Valley of Hinnom,—but to the left it is level with the city-walls, and its surface is covered with bare ribs of rock running along it; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... belong to the same period of civilization. But between ancient Greece and modern England there yawn immense gulfs of human history; the establishment and the partial failure of a common European religion, the barbarian invasions, the feudal system, the regrouping of modern Europe, the age of mechanical invention, and the industrial revolution. In an average page of French or German philosophy nearly all the nouns can be translated directly into exact equivalents in ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... carefully guarded. Only one good timber tree on each holding in the life- time of a tenant might be cut by the Lord of the Manor, and the tenants themselves might only cut old rotten trees! But this is as much as you will wish to hear of these old customs, which prove that the Norman feudal system was kept out of this Episcopal manor. It was not even mentioned in Domesday Book, near as it was to Winchester. There it lay, peacefully on its island of chalk down, shut in by the well-preserved trees, till Stephen's brother, Bishop Henry de ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... towers and walls, where the jackdaws build in the ivy; their moats, where the hoary carp bask and fatten; their drawbridges and heavy doors and loopholed windows,—these all tell of the unrest, the semi-war-like state of feudal days, when each great seigneur was a petty king in his own county, with his private as well as public feuds, and his little army of men-at-arms ready to do his bidding, to sally forth and fight for the king or to defend his own walls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the castle at the south side of the town, but were prevented from entering by a guard of feudal retainers, who looked as if they had been well drilled. They were as solemn as the vultures that sat perched along the rampart overlooking a great artificial moat dividing the town from the high hill ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Roman German Empire. That this eclecticism will reach a point hitherto unsuspected is guaranteed in particular by the politico-aesthetic gourmanderie of a German king, who thinks he can play all the parts of monarchy, both of the feudal and the bureaucratic, both of the absolute and the constitutional, of the autocratic as of the democratic, if not in the person of his people, then in his own person, if not for the people, then for himself. Germany ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... balcony, whence now and then a laughing face looks down upon the traveller. There is an ancient inn by the roadside, a time-worn church, and above, on the hill-top, against the still blue sky, the castle, dusky with age, but still keeping a feudal dignity, though half its yellow walls ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... recognised of his kingcraft and his absolute sovereignty. Bacon assailed with a force and keenness which showed what he could do as an opponent, the amazing and intolerable grievances arising out of the survival of such feudal customs as Wardship and Purveyance; customs which made over a man's eldest son and property, during a minority, to the keeping of the King, that is, to a King's favourite, and allowed the King's servants to cut down a man's timber ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the type of woman who enjoys seeing such things as these; and though she would not have tortured herself had she lived in feudal days, I am sure she would have dined calmly over an underground dungeon where an enemy—an inconvenient wretch like me, for instance—suffered ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... vegetable-gardens and cypress-groves which clothe its long flank rise large, formless piles, whose foundations are as old as the Eternal City, and whose superstructures are the wreck of temples of the kingly and republican periods, and palaces and villas of imperial times, and haughty feudal abodes, only to be distinguished from one another by the antiquary amid their indiscriminate ruin and the tangle of wild-briers and fern, ivy and trailers with which they are overgrown. On the summit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of our immediate past; an architecture "without ancestry or hope of posterity," an architecture devoid of coherence or conviction; willing to lie, willing to steal. What impression such a city as Chicago or Pittsburgh might have made upon some denizen of those cathedral-crowned feudal cities of the past we do not know. He would certainly have been amazed at its giant energy, and probably revolted at its grimy dreariness. We are wont to pity the mediaeval man for the dirt he lived in, even while smoke greys our sky and dirt permeates the very air we breathe: ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... matter, furnishes us with a proof, that the chiefs of clans were elective, contrary to the opinions of modern authors, and more especially of our modern historical novelists; which latter speak of them as hereditary feudal lords, and even talk of their estates descending to their daughters; although under the system of clanship, females could not inherit, and no man could have more than a life interest in his estate. Here we have an instance of a chief divesting himself of the dignity of office, and joining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... is commonly understood; or, perhaps, more truly stated, there was romance instead of chivalry. In Italy, an earlier imitation of, and a more evident and intentional blending with, the Latin literature took place than elsewhere. The operation of the feudal system, too, was incalculably weaker, of that singular chain of independent interdependents, the principle of which was a confederacy for the preservation of individual, consistently with general, freedom. In short, Italy, in the time of Dante, was an afterbirth of eldest Greece, a renewal ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... at work behind all this, I found it was in the life of one young man, a simple, holy life burning with a passion for Jesus. In this life could be found the kindling of the tender flames burning so hotly in these young hearts. He was a young American officer engaged, by the feudal lord of the province, to teach military tactics and English. He dared not teach Christianity; that would have meant instant dismissal. So for two years he lived the message, so simply and lovingly that he won the love of his pupils. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... which seem to have a charm for every one, are more than fulfilled in the spectacle of those antique kings, lying in the splendour of their crowns and breastplates of embossed plate of gold; their swords, studded with golden imagery, at their sides, as in some feudal monument; their very faces covered up most strangely in golden masks. The very floor of one tomb, we read, was thick with gold- dust—the heavy gilding fallen from some perished kingly vestment; in another was a downfall of golden leaves and flowers; and, amid this profusion ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... mark thee unfold Nature's mystery. For this we thank thee, yet one thing remains Shall shrine thee deeper in the heart of man, In ages yet to be when we are dust; Thou hast put forth thy hand to rend our chains, Our birthright to restore from feudal ban; O righteous soul, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... fierce and savage faces of the men scattered about the courtyard, the remoteness of the adobe, and the care taken to guard against surprise, old Bartolini's hacienda was an establishment not unlike that of the feudal barons or a nest of banditti according to the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... Ages the heads of the Church exercised all the rights of a feudal lord, and were even more tenacious of their privileges. The serfs were prohibited from migrating from one part of the country to another. The daughter of a serf could not marry without the consent of the lord, who frequently demanded payment ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... last beams Fall on a slave; not such as, swept along By the full tide of power, the conqueror led To crimson glory and undying fame; But base, ignoble slaves; slaves to a horde Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords, Rich in some dozen paltry villages; Strong in some hundred spearmen; only great In ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... unwed. See the wholesale loss of opportunity under our regime of so-called equality and industrialism, with the drummer and the counter-jumper in the saddle, for so many faculties and graces which could flourish in the feudal world. See our kindliness for the humble and the outcast, how it wars with that stern weeding-out which until now has been the condition of every perfection in the breed. See everywhere the struggle and the squeeze; and ever-lastingly the problem how to make them less. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... his head with an ironical sigh. "Ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It strikes at the root of the whole feudal system. I really think you owe me an apology, Tom. I supposed you wished to marry the girl's money, and here you are, basely seeking to go into business ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... borders, and almost in our midst, which will be entirely beyond our control, and threaten the very existence of our race, and of the principles we most cherish. For the danger is that, suddenly released from all the restrictions of their own feudal climes, they will fly to the other extreme, and become lawless, reckless, and turbulent. For many years to come all legislation must have an eye to the possible and probable capacities and immense importance of the yet unsettled West, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the small French gentleman. Arthur was full of joy—Yusuf gruff, brief, anxious, like one acting under some compulsion most unwillingly, and even despondently, but apparently constrained by a certain instinctive feudal feeling, which made him follow the desires of the young ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... courageous Protestant youth named Saleh, who took the Sitt Abla by night over the rough mountain road to Abeih in safety. But even here she was not safe. The Druzes of Lebanon at that time were at the height of their feudal power. Girls and women were killed among them without the least notice on the part of the mountain government. Abla was like a prisoner in the missionary's house, not venturing to go outside the door, and in order to be at peace, she went down with her brother to Beirut, where she has since ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... kindness sprang from original virtue, and how much from anxiety that the least connection of the family should be worthy of their reflected lustre, it is difficult to say. No doubt it pleased them to be generous on a feudal scale, particularly since Gabrielle, with her striking beauty and sharp wits, showed possibilities of doing them credit. As soon as the aged Dr. Harrow had been bundled out, the establishment of the Considines became a game as entertaining to Lady Halberton in the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... States, who led the way in the overthrow of the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance, are among the last to indicate how their own citizens may elect another nationality. The papers submitted herewith indicate what is necessary to place us on a par with other leading nations in liberality of legislation on this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... huts for his followers; and became known directly all over the country as Sir Roger de Rockville, or Sir Roger of the hamlet on the Rock. Sir Roger, no doubt, was a mighty hunter before the lord of the feudal district: it is certain that his descendants were. For generations they led a jolly life at Rockville, and were always ready to exchange the excitement of the chase for a bit of civil war. Without that the country would have grown dull, and ale and venison lost their flavor. There was no gay London ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... penetrated—one still finds in India conditions prevailing which continued in Europe beyond the Middle Ages. The customary tie between master and servant, lasting from one generation to another, preserves the community of interest which prevented the feudal bond from being irksome. The modern severance of classes, the modern desire for aloofness, has not yet come. The servants are an integral part of the household, sharing in its ceremonies and festivities, crowding into their master's presence without impairing his privacy, and following him as escort ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.'' "The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.'' Feudal relations became fetters: "They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. . . . A similar movement is going on before our own eyes.'' "The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgoisie ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... more so if they had belonged to the State, and been paid by a public which they benefited and despised. The ladies of Low Town (as the city subjacent to the Hill had been styled from a date remote in the feudal ages) entered those shops with a certain awe, and left them with a certain pride. There they had learned what the Hill approved; there they had bought what the Hill had purchased. It is much in this life to be quite sure that we are in the right, whatever ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... purchase freedom from his wrath, or immunity from his exactions. Such gifts gradually became regular, and formed the income of the German, (Tacit. Germ. Section 15) Persian, (Herodot. iii.89), and other kings. So, too, in the middle ages, 'The feudal aids are the beginning of taxation, of which they for a long time answered the purpose.' (Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. x. pt. 1, p. 189) This fact frees Achilles from the apparent charge of sordidness. Plato, however, (De Rep. vi. 4), says, "We cannot commend Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and we can imagine that such a name may have been conferred on a medieval bruiser. There is also the possibility, considering the brutality of many old nicknames, that the bearer of the name had been judicially deprived of his right hand, a very common punishment, especially for striking a feudal superior. Thus Renaut de Montauban, finding that his ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... life and interests of Mediaeval Europe than does the lyric poetry of the period. In Northern France, in Provence, in all parts of Germany, in Italy, and a little later in Spain, we see a most remarkable outburst of song. The subjects were the same in all the countries. Love-the love of feudal chivalry—patriotism, and religion were the themes that employed the mediaeval lyrist in whatever country he sang. In all these lyrics much was made of form, the verse being always skillfully constructed, sometimes very complicated. The lyric poetry ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... dukes of Ferrara, which is to be found a little farther on, has a fine feudal aspect. It is a vast collection of towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which one enters by a protected bridge. The castle, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... servant had been discharged for theft from various places previously, this would be more important than any other circumstance. I showed how safeguards which had been devised in the middle ages to protect citizens from the feudal lord were now used to aid criminals in evading the law, and I ended by rather unjustly compar- ing Judge Folger to the great Lord Chancellor Eldon, of whom it was said that, despite his profound knowledge ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in persuading Stefano Milano to abandon for ever the service of the Senate for that of his feudal lord. The promises and commands of the latter were sufficient of themselves to reconcile him to the change, and all were convinced there was no time to lose. The felucca soon spread her canvas to the wind and slid away from the beach. Jacopo permitted his gondola to be towed a league ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... into the street again. It was interesting to watch this square little man roll sturdily along, throwing out his stout arms impatiently and flinging at the nervous villagers—who treated him almost as a sort of feudal lord—guttural Flemish commands to keep cool and not make fools ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... show how the German people were in the grip of the Prussian military machine, of a reactionary bureaucracy, and of a Prussian feudal Junkerthum; how behind that military machine and that feudal Junkerthum there were even more formidable moral and spiritual forces at work; how the whole German nation were under the spell of a false political creed; how the Universities, the Churches, the Press, were ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... the young men of his own school who favor the Papacy. Those who are accustomed to associate Puseyism with a set of sentimentalists, who mourn the Reformation, wish for the return of the good old times of the feudal ages, and give Rome their hearts and Canterbury only their pockets, will find that such doctrines and practices find no favor in the present volumes. The greatest rascal in the novel is a piece of incarnate malignity named Pearce—a Jesuit, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... and their leader. He sat, self-contained, but courteous and responsive to all alike, at the head of his table, and though that is, as she had discovered, in most respects an essentially democratic country, she felt that there was something almost feudal in the relations between him and his men. She could not imagine them being confined to the mere exaction of so much labour and the expectation of payment of wages due. She was also pleased that he had not changed his dress, which would, she felt, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... measure was not, however, judicious. It was in the highest degree irritating to Lower Canada. It was a positive grievance, and indeed it was a partial destruction of the constitution, at the instance of a placeman. There was one good thing in the Act. The power of commuting the seigniorial or feudal tenure into free and common soccage was given to the censitaire in transactions ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... other great movement of that age, the Reformation—Urbino, under its dukes of the house of Montefeltro, had wherewithal just then to make a boy of native artistic faculty from the first a willing learner. The gloomy old fortress of the feudal masters of the town had been replaced, in those later years of the Quattro-cento, by a consummate monument of Quattro-cento taste, a museum of ancient and modern art, the owners of which lived there, gallantly at home, amid the choicer flowers of living humanity. ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... distinct personality. Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing of the nouveau riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, his watch-chain was simple and inconspicuous enough for a school-boy—and he was worth three million pounds, with a palace building in Park Lane and a feudal castle in Wales leased for a period of years. There was nothing greatly striking in his carriage; indeed, he did not make enough of his height and bulk; but his eye was strong and clear, his head was powerful, and his quick smile was very winning. Yet—yet, he was not the type of man who, to her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to do his day's work in the Baber Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul. A light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs—men of blood, fed and cowed by blood—stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the wind from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating couriers dashed in with letters from the outlying districts with rumours of rebellion, intrigue, famine, failure of payments, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... twelfth century as a poetry essentially aristocratic, intended for nobles and for courts, appealing but rarely to the middle classes and to the common people not at all. The environment which enabled this poetry to exist was provided by the feudal society of Southern France. Kings, princes and nobles themselves pursued the art and also became the patrons of troubadours who had risen from the lower classes. Occasionally troubadours existed with sufficient resources of their own to remain independent; Folquet of Marseilles seems to have ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... established the republic and overthrew the Manchus represented a victory for the south. But the transformation during the last five years of the nominal republic into a corrupt oligarchy of satraps or military governors or feudal lords has represented a victory for the north. It is a significant fact, symbolically at least, that the most powerful remaining tuchun or military governor in China—in some respects the only powerful ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... rocks has been, in large portions, strangely colored by bands of brilliant hues, which present to the eye of the voyager a singularly pleasing appearance. One of these cliffs resembles so much the turreted entrance and arched portal of some old feudal castle that it has been called "Rock Castle." Beyond this is another architectural curiosity, denominated "The Grand Portal," which consists of an arched opening in the rocks. The cliff is composed of a vast mass, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... was an interesting survival of feudal times, and with its old-time carved and forged companions, such as vanes and weathercocks, doorknockers and figureheads, formed a picturesque element of decoration and symbolism. Many chapters might be written on historic, commemorative, emblematic, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... in too many instances the extreme difficulty of cherishing in one common course of national legislation the opposite interests of republican equality and feudal aristocracy and servitude. The truth is, we have undertaken a moral impossibility. These interests are from their nature irreconcilable. The one is based upon the pure principles of rational liberty; the other, under the name of freedom, revives the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... opinions respecting rank, and respecting the need of keeping the people from much thought. But allow these opinions to have a foundation in truth; suppose high fences of rank to be necessary to refinement of manners; suppose that the happiest of all ages were the feudal, when aristocracy was in its flower and glory, when the noble, superior to the laws, committed more murders in one year than the multitude in twenty. Suppose it best for the laborer to live and die in thoughtless ignorance. Allow all this, and that we have reason to look with envy ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Tilden is also the story of Segelfoss, in its passing from the tranquil dignity of a semi-feudal estate to the complex and ruthless modernity of an industrial centre. Segelfoss By (1915) treats of the fortunes of the succeeding generation, and the further development of ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Duke: and he bowed to the Duke, and the Duke bowed to him: and now, to instance the peculiar justness in the mind of Mr. Raikes, he, though he worshipped a coronet and would gladly have recalled the feudal times to a corrupt land, could not help thinking that his bow had beaten the Duke's and was better. He would rather not have thought so, for it upset his preconceptions and threatened a revolution in his ideas. For this reason he followed the Duke, and tried, if possible, to correct, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dreadful a crisis! That schism, which, as a fact, is urged, in the way of excuse, merely as a possibility, is already itself the opprobrium for Spain never to be washed out. For in Spain, what was the aristocracy? Let us not deceive ourselves, by limiting this term to the feudal nobility or grandees; the aristocracy comprehended every man that would naturally have become a commissioned officer in the army. Here, therefore, read the legend and superscription of the national dishonour. The Spanish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the great feudal lord of the North. He had served the colonial cause in many ways, and at the outbreak of the Revolution had been one of its hopes and props. But brilliant as his exploits had been, the intrigues of Gates, after the fall of Ticonderoga, had been successful, and he was deprived ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... kingdoms and duchies. Everywhere a single kingly or princely house supplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession. Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was always likely to succeed his father. The growth of feudal notions too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle. Still no rule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late prince had not left a full-grown son. The question as to legitimate ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... as a prose-poem, is one of the happiest illustrations possible of the language, manners, modes of thought and expression prevalent in England in the fifteenth century. Chivalry was not yet dead, ideals were still cherished, the feudal system still obtained, Gothic architecture had not yet said its last word, Englishmen were papal to the backbone, and religion was a potent factor in their live, in spite of much that was harsh, crude, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... already spoken of his reforms in his southern kingdom. It was his purpose to introduce similar reforms into the government of Germany, abolishing the feudal system, and creating a centralized and organized state, with a well-regulated system of finance. But ideas such as these were much too far in advance of the age. State and church alike opposed them, and Frederick's intelligent views did not long survive him. History must have its evolution, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... from industrial sources in the broad sense include all rents from wealth owned, interest on loans made, and proceeds of sales from enterprises conducted, by the government. In feudal times, these were mostly obtained in the form of rents from the private domains of kings and nobles. In many early and medieval states these sources of receipts were adequate to the need of government; then they decreased ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... The caption, "A Feudal Aristocracy," caught her attention. "Long Island," she learned, "is a poem itself to-day, even if it is suffering from cheap developments, the encroachment of tenantry, and the swarming of the commuters. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... emperors to adopt more effectual and coercive methods. The lands bestowed on the veterans, as the free reward of their valor were henceforward granted under a condition which contain the first rudiments of the feudal tenures; that their sons, who succeeded to the inheritance, should devote themselves to the profession of arms, as soon as they attained the age of manhood; and their cowardly refusal was punished by the lose of honor, of fortune, or even of life. But as the annual growth of the sons of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... for their country. All these antics ought not to make one forget that these men are fighting for the holiest of causes, the integrity of their country, and that the worst of Republics is better than the best of feudal monarchies; but I confess I frequently despair of their ever attaining to the dignity of free men, until they have been further tried in the school ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... was divided into many small principalities under the rule of daimios or feudal lords, who were often at war with one another, though they were all subject to the suzerainty of the Shogun, the nominal ruler of the whole country. Together with the samurais the daimios constituted the feudal nobility. It is curious to think that little more than forty years ago the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... a small and compact country, this process was completed at a comparatively early date. In France it was not until the days of Louis XV (in 1756) that the "last feudal brigand," as Taine calls the Marquis de Pleumartin in ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... this is a good thing, it is not universally good. We have gained in sympathy; but we have lost in brotherhood. Old quarrels had more equality than modern exonerations. Two peasants in the Middle Ages quarrelled about their two fields. But they went to the same church, served in the same semi-feudal militia, and had the same morality, which ever might happen to be breaking it at the moment. The very cause of their quarrel was the cause of their fraternity; they both liked land. But suppose ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... degrees, like rain-fraught breeze rising in time of dearth, Whispers of Wisdom, far and wide, are muttering o'er the earth; And lo! rough Reason's breath, that wafts strong human health to all, Has blown aside the gates where Pride dozed in her feudal hall. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... animals and boasted of by civilized men. Dogs and gentlemen do not bite and beat their females; and if Black Dennis Nolan resembled a stag, a he-wolf, and a dog in many points, in this particular he also resembled a gentleman. Like some hammering old feudal baron of the Norman time and the finer type, his battles were all with men. Those who did not ride behind him he rode against. He feared the saints and a priest, even as did the barons of old; ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... the portions of the colony of New York that lie west of the river counties, were generally, if not invariably, simple concessions of the fee, subject to quit-rents to the king, and reservations of mines of the precious metals, without any of the privileges of feudal seignory, as existed in the older manors on the Hudson, on the islands, and on the Sound. Why this distinction was made, it exceeds our power to say; but, that the fact was so, as a rule, we have it in proof, by means of a great number of the original ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... in this case of "Old George," Lord Ashbridge's wishes were law to the local authorities, for in this tranquil East-coast district the spirit of the feudal system with a beneficent lord and contented tenants strongly survived. It had triumphed even over such modern innovations as railroads, for Lord Ashbridge had the undoubted right to stop any train he pleased by signal at Ashbridge station. This he certainly ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... savage virtue dear. That won of yore the public ear, Ere Polity, sedate and sage, Had quench'd the fires of feudal rage.—WARTON. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Ages there subsisted between the towns and the feudal aristocracy an antagonism sometimes silent and slumbering, sometimes wakened into fierce consciousness and expressing itself not only in hardy words, but in sanguinary deeds. On the Continent the towns were ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... shrug, the sole reason for which seems to be that there is no other just like it in the city. I myself have always considered it imposing and majestic; but to the average man it is too suggestive of Old-World feudal life to be pleasing. On this afternoon—a dull, depressing one—it looked undeniably heavy as we approached it; but interesting in a very new way to me, because of the great turret at one angle, the ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... of many manors throughout the Palatinate I should have had all the old feudal dues coming in to my treasury—waifs and ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Elizabeth herself was no weak ingredient in the poetic spirit of the time. Loyalty and gallantry blended in the adoration paid her; and the supremacy which she claimed and exercised over the church, invested her regality with a sacred unction that pertained not to feudal sovereigns. It is scarce too much to say, that the virgin-queen appropriated the Catholic honours of the Virgin Mary. She was as great as Diana of the Ephesians. The moon shone but to furnish a type of her bright and stainless maidenhood. To magnify ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... in Forest or Park, With its sylvan honors and feudal bark, Is an aristocratic article: But split and sawn, and hack'd about town, Serving all needs of pauper or clown, Trod on! stagger'd on! Wood cut down Is ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... his five ships, leaving Roberval to prepare other ships at Honfleur and follow as he might. From first to last the relations of Cartier and Roberval appear to need further explanation than that which we possess. Roberval was evidently the nominal head of the enterprise and the feudal lord of the countries to be claimed, but Cartier seems to have been restless under any attempt to dictate the actual plan to be adopted, and his final desertion of Roberval may be ascribed to the position in which he was placed by the ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... whirling over and over into the echoing gorge below them, the depth of which the shadow of the mountains opposite mercifully hid from view. But Karl had no time in which to consider the thoughts of his passengers. He had his orders. If achievement were in the metal he intended to carry them out. The feudal castles of old Bosnia passed in stately review, Maglaj, Usora, clinging leech-like to their inaccessible peaks, grim sentinels of the vista of years, frowning at the roaring engine of modernity which sent its echoes mocking ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... monks. He could less endure that they should be considered as instruments of absolute power to enslave the people: when this was intimated, he observed that, during the period which immediately followed the extinction of the Carlovingian dynasty, when the feudal law absolutely triumphed over monarchy, the people were wholly left to themselves, and must have sunk into an absolute state of barbarism, if it had not been for the religious establishments. Those, he said, softened the manners of the conquerors, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... itself, in fact, the only intrinsically right and perfect arrangement. A utilitarian scheme was receiving an aesthetic consecration. That which was happening to democracy had happened before to the feudal and royalist systems; they too had come to be prized in themselves, for the pleasure men took in thinking of society organized in such an ancient, and thereby to their fancy, appropriate and beautiful manner. The practical ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... accident that the modern novel had its origin in England, but the result of general social causes. The modern novel essentially depends on the interest of the private life of ordinary men and women. But this interest was only possible on condition that the feudal and aristocratic spirit had received its deathblow, and it was only in England that such a revolution had taken place even partially. It was only in England as yet that the middle class had conquered a position of consideration, equality, and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... with the upper point of the lozenge resting on the modern Peking, and the lower on Si-an Fu in Shensi, whither the late Empress Dowager fled for safety during the Boxer rising in 1900. The ancient autocratic Imperial system had recently been disestablished, and a feudal system had taken its place. The country was divided up into a number of vassal states of varying size and importance, ruled each by its own baron, who swore allegiance to the sovereign of the Royal ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Only a wide space down the center had been kept free. Down this space walked the Archbishop and his canons, and after them followed those five stately figures in splendid harness, each bearing his feudal ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... 1024, Richard the second Duke of Normandy, built the church, which still exists. The provisions that supply the fortress, are sent up in a basket drawn by a machine. Tradition says, that there was in this castle an obligatory, or concealed trap-door, where, in feudal times, persons were taken, whom the state directed should be secretly put out of the way. Under pretext, of showing them the castle, they were conducted into a remote chamber, there they soon met their destined fate, for chancing to step upon the concealed door, they were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various |
