"Peasantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through his adventures we seem to be moving through a fantastic world in which Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio might feel at home; but with Dame Chat, Gammer Gurton and Hodge we feel the solid earth beneath our feet and around us the strong air which nourished the peasantry and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Marechal, Comte de Domestic Peace Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Peasantry A Man of Business ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the humiliating fact that their own tenants were their bitterest foes, charged the Austrian Government with having instigated a communistic revolt. In a circular note to the European courts, Metternich protested that the outbreak of the Polish peasantry was purely spontaneous. A simultaneous attempt at revolution in Silesia was ruthlessly put down. Austria, Russia and Prussia now revoked the treaty of Vienna in regard to Poland. Cracow, which had been recognized as an independent ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... tolerably level pasture and tillable land near it, and a fine alpe. This is how the wealth of a village is reckoned. The Italians set great store by a little bit of bella pianura, or level ground; to them it is as precious as a hill or rock is to a Londoner out for a holiday. The peasantry are as blind to the beauties of rough unmanageable land as Peter Bell was to those of the primrose with a yellow brim (I quote from memory). The people complain of the climate of Dalpe, the snow not going off before the end of March or beginning of April. No climate, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... years, when deafness saddened his lot, deserted the halls of fame and the palaces of royalty, where he had been prominent, and retired with his wife to the little Italian village where he had been born of the peasantry. And there he spent years founding schools and doing other works for the public good. He died there in the arms of his wife, at the age of seventy-five; having had no children, he willed his property to the poor of his ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Emile A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Firm of Nucingen The Peasantry ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... her two brothers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and to keep house during the almost constant absence of her father. She was a quick, clever lass, of a high spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief, which is every day becoming rarer amongst the peasantry; but which forms the surest safeguard to the sturdy independence of the English character. Our little damsel possessed this quality in perfection; and when her father talked of giving up their comfortable cottage, and removing to the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... rested upon her staff and eyed the group, would have made a subject worthy of the pencil of a Landseer. She was wrapped in an old red cloak, with a large hood, and in her ears she wore a pair of long gold-dropped earrings, similar to what one sees among the Norman peasantry—the gift, as I afterwards learned, of a drowned lover. After scrutinising us for a second or two, during which time a large black cat kept walking to and fro, purring and rubbing itself against her, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... great movements in England is the institution of the Laborer's Friend Society, under the patronage of the most distinguished personages. Its principal object has been the promotion of allotments of land in the country, to be cultivated by the peasantry after their day's labor, thus adding to their day's wages the produce of their fields and gardens. It has been instrumental, first and last, of establishing nearly four hundred thousand of these allotments. It publishes, also, a monthly paper, called ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shall spend more time with my mother, more time in the study of my music, and read all the poetry I wish to, and ride on horseback, and dance, and, of course, help my mother more in taking care of the peasantry." ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... however, not so romantically inclined, the homesteaders were the peasantry of America. Through the early homesteading days folk who "picked up and set themselves down to grub on a piece of land" were not of the world or important to it. But the stream of immigration to the land was ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the calm surface of the story by the wind of surprise; the curtain falls over a group of innocent, guileless, and happy hearts, and as we gaze at them we breathe the prayer, that Scotland's peerage and Scotland's peasantry may always thus be blended into one bond of mutual esteem, endearment, and excellence. Well might Campbell say—'Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the "Gentle Shepherd" is engraven on the memory of its native country. Its verses have passed into proverbs, and it ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanics' institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... and children, chiefly missionaries, had fallen victims to the treachery of high-placed mandarins like Yue Hsien, and hundreds of others had had to fly for their lives, many of them owing their escape to the courageous protection of petty officials and of the local gentry and peasantry. In the Yangtsze valley order had been maintained by the energy of the viceroys of Nanking and Wu-chang, who had acted throughout the critical period in loyal co-operation with the British consuls and naval commanders, and had courageously disregarded the imperial edicts issued ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... really left it alone, so that the civilians had made a rather hurried departure. A few had elected to remain, and were to be seen walking furtively about the streets with that curious strained look that the war-driven peasantry of France and Belgium always wore. Here we met the 2nd battalion of the Manchesters, and were glad of the opportunity to make their acquaintance. A 7th officer, then Capt. L. Taylor, was amongst them and it may be mentioned here that ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... extinguishment of their national independence. Under the inspiration and lead of the famous Sir William Wallace, an outlaw knight, all the Lowlands were soon in determined revolt. It was chiefly from the peasantry that the patriot hero drew his followers. Wallace gained some successes, but at length was betrayed into Edward's hands. He was condemned to death as a traitor, and his head, garlanded with a crown of laurel, was exposed on London Bridge (1305). The romantic life of Wallace, his patriotic ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... French want to conserve the energy of their women and children who now do this hard work, and the Americans want a wider market for their modern farm equipment. It must be said, however, that the women of the French peasantry who were doing this hard work, appeared strong and healthful, and were enured to this difficult labor, no doubt, through many generations of this ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... present perplexity arises from the fact that the French Revolution has half succeeded and half failed. In one sense, Valmy was the decisive battle of the West, and in another Trafalgar. We have, indeed, destroyed the largest territorial tyrannies, and created a free peasantry in almost all Christian countries except England; of which we shall say more anon. But representative government, the one universal relic, is a very poor fragment of the full republican idea. The theory of the French Revolution presupposed ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... to the purposes of divination. We might be told of Aeromancy as the earliest form of Meteorology, and of Geomancy as the earliest form of Geology.[75] And we might be told of the popular superstitions which lingered, till a very recent period, among the peasantry of our own country, and which are now gradually disappearing in proportion as the light of Religion and Science is diffused.[76] These facts, which appear on the surface of human history, do unquestionably prove that there has been ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... ground, were thrown over the house where the sufferer lay. Again, according to certain ancient writers, arrows which had been extracted from a body without coming into contact with the earth and laid under sleepers, acted as a love-charm.[37] Among the peasantry of the north-east of Scotland the prehistoric weapons called celts went by the name of "thunderbolts" and were coveted as the sure bringers of success, always provided that they were not allowed to fall to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... things. Another fancy of his, an artist's superstition merely, may be mentioned. The Caros, like some other local families, suggested a Roman lineage, more or less grafted on the stock of the Slingers. Their features recalled those of the Italian peasantry to any one as familiar as he was with them; and there were evidences that the Roman colonists had been populous and long-abiding in and near this corner of Britain. Tradition urged that a temple to Venus once stood at the top of the Roman road leading ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... memories of our fantastic journeyings. Stretches of long white road and blazing sun. Laughing valleys and corn fields and white farmsteads among the trees. Now and then a village fete or wedding at which we played to the enthusiasm of the sober vested peasantry. Nights passed in barns, deserted byres, on the floor of cottages and infinitesimal cafes. Hours of idleness by the wayside after the midday meal, when the four of us sat round the fare provided by Blanquette, black bread, cheese, charcuterie ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... sheep in their husbandry, and especially of milch kine. Bradford and Window both mention hoes, spades, mattocks, and sickles, while shovels, scythes, bill-hooks (brush-scythes, the terrible weapons of the English peasantry in their great "Mon mouth" and earlier uprisings), pitchforks, etc., find very early mention in inventories and colonial records. Josselyn, in his "Two Voyages to New England," gives, in 1628, the following very ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... The peasantry, who inhabit the wilderness beyond, say that I am mad. That is because I will have nothing to do with them. I live here alone with my old sister, who is also my housekeeper. We keep no servants—I hate them. I have one friend, a dog; yes, I would sooner have old Pepper than the rest of Creation ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... Hence the manners of the people were altogether free from the abject deportment of slaves and villeins in other nations—a cringing disposition of the lower class toward their superiors, which continues even to this day among the peasantry of Europe, and which patriarchal nations have never known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century, were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of the people, so different from that of the lower orders in feudal countries. They soon even came ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of Greece, thronged the broad avenue of the Piraeus; women, carrying upon their heads olive jars, baskets of grapes, and vases of water, glided among the crowd, with that majestic motion so peculiar to the peasantry in ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... the estate is entailed, or you might soon be a beggar, for there is no saying what debts he might, in his madness, be guilty of. He has already been dismissed from the magistracy by the lord lieutenant, in consequence of his haranguing the discontented peasantry, and, I may say, exciting them to acts of violence and insubordination. He has been seen dancing and hurrahing round a stack fired by an incendiary. He has turned away his keepers, and allowed all poachers to go over the manor. In short, he is not in his senses; and, although I am far from advising ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of that march the things that were the sacrament of civilization had gone. Rheims was possessed, the village churches of the "Island of France" and of Artois were ruins or desolations. The peasantry already knew the destruction of something more than such material things, the end of a certain social pact which war in Christendom had spared. They had been massacred in droves, with no purpose save that of terror; they had been netted in droves, the little ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... south of Dublin is Donnybrook, the place where a famous annual fair is held. We happened to be in the city at the time of this, and one pleasant afternoon we drove out to see this great gathering of the Irish peasantry. The fair-ground presented a busy, gay, and curious scene. A large enclosed space was covered with booths and tents—horse-markets—cattle-markets—buyers, sellers, and crowds of spectators. There was almost every thing one could think of, for sale; there were all sorts ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... perhaps brushes against the bagpipers who bray constantly in those hilly defiles. They are in Neapolitan costume, these pifferari, and have their legs incomprehensibly tied up in the stockings and garters affected by the peasantry of the provinces, and wear brave red sashes about their waists. They are simple, harmless-looking people, and would no doubt rob and kill in the most amiable manner, if brigandage came into fashion in ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... sumptuous dimensions, which, if it was ever completely finished, is now in a state of great dilapidation. No doubt it shared the fate of its fellows, when the Revolution proclaimed "peace to the cottage, war to the castle." The peasantry almost everywhere rose, like galley-slaves whose chains had been suddenly struck off, and gutted the chateaux, the strongholds of feudal extortion and injustice. How violent and sweeping have been the revolutions of this people compared with those of the stronger and more self-controlled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... gone, Maltravers left Cleveland alone to write letters (Cleveland was an exemplary and voluminous correspondent) and strolled with his dogs into the village. The effect which the presence of Maltravers produced among his peasantry was one that seldom failed to refresh and soothe his more bitter and disturbed thoughts. They had gradually (for the poor are quick-sighted) become sensible of his justice,—a finer quality than many that seem more amiable. They felt that his real ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Angelus" rings out from the church steeple, and the two poor souls, resting for a moment from their labours, devote a few seconds to the silent prayers enjoined by their church. That is all; and yet in that one picture the sorrows, the toils, and the consolations of the needy French peasantry are summed up in a single glimpse of a pair ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... et Democratie" discusses the declining birth-rate of France, and finds the cause to be the voluntary prevention of child-bearing on the part of the people, going so far as to say that where large families occur amongst the peasantry, it is due to ignorance of the ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... of Caledonia. Something like a rude prosaic outline of several of the most noted of the Northern ballads, the adventures and depredations of the old ocean kings, still lends life to the evening tale; and among others, the story of the Haunted Ships is still popular among the maritime peasantry. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... and the Blessed Virgin. These objects, with them, stand for religion. A father who comes with his child in his arms to receive the medal will not die without confessing himself."—The reader will find on the clergy and peasantry in the south of France details and pictures taken from life in the novels of Ferdinand Fabre ("L'abbe Tigrane," "les Courbezons," "Lucifer,," "Barnabe," "Mon Oncle ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ago, in the neighbourhood of Kilkargan, and, so far as I know, everywhere the feeling is as bitter as ever, among those who have been dispossessed, and also among the tenants and peasantry, who have found themselves handed over to the mercies of Dutchmen, or other followers of William. At Kilkargan there was not that grievance; but, although they had still one of the old family as ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... nearly lost his life through unwittingly trampling upon the susceptibilities of the people, in the following manner. It appears that the peasantry in the suburbs of Ferrara bore ill-will toward the citizens of that town and called them "asses." This little pleasantry was manifested by the suburbanites in "hee-hawing" at the citizens when fitting opportunity presented itself. Now it happened that Paganini played at a concert, and some ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... terrible irony whereby "the Commons were enclosing the commons." He spoke of the English revolution of the eighteenth century, "a revolution of the rich against the poor." He mourned with Goldsmith the destruction of England's peasantry. He cried aloud like Cobbett, for he too had discovered the murder of England his mother. But his cry was unintelligible and his hopes of a resurrection unmeaning to those who knew not what ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... British Museum, and in other collections which have been freely ransacked for the materials of the following pages, as many thousands more have undoubtedly perished. Originally printed as broadsides, and sold for a halfpenny at country fairs, it used to be the fashion of the peasantry to paste them up in cupboards, or on the backs of doors, and farmers' wives, as well as servant girls and farm labourers, who were able to read, would often paste them on the lids of their trunks, as the best means ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... hatched in the little independent republic of Cracow. As such it had little importance; though, owing to the incompetence of the Austrian commander, the Poles gained some initial successes. More fateful was the attitude of the Orthodox Ruthenian peasantry, who were divided from their Catholic Polish over-lords by centuries of religious and feudal oppression. The Poles had sought, by lavish promises, to draw them into their ranks; their reply was to rise in support of the Austrian government. In the fight at Gdow (February 26th), where Benedek ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... to his heart. The two understood each other. They knew that it was Christ and not merely a crowd of terrified peasants who had met them. They were His eyes that looked out at them through the tear-filled eyes of the peasantry. It was His voice that appealed to them in their cries and anguish. He seemed to be saying to them: "Inasmuch as ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto Me." In a few moments the Prince had halted his party and unpacked ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... in almost equal numbers. "I find it wise," said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, and to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and efficiency." The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... tournaments, and notice humbler personages, and more homely amusements. At a distance from the pavilion, the tourneyings, the music, the plays, and other exhibitions, was a crowd composed of some seven or eight hundred peasantry engaged in and witnessing the athletic games of the Borders. Near these were a number of humbler booths, in which the spectators and competitors might regale themselves with the spirits and tippeny ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... largely consumed in Paris; the wealth produced by the manufacturers of North England is largely spent in the south of England and upon the Continent; until their recent and successful revolt, the wealth produced by the Irish peasantry was largely spent in London and upon ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... and mercantile activity of this large city. A large and busy city, and yet I feel that I am among a people who are, ineradically, provincial peasants, men and women of a temper impervious to civilisation. Here too are those symbols of peasantry, the white caps of endless shape and fashion which seem to exert such an attraction on the sentimental English mind. Yet they are not by any means beautiful. And what terrible faces they enfold—battered, shapeless, featureless faces that may have been tossed ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Rowan tree or Mountain ash, is used by the Scottish peasantry with the same view; and a small twig of it is sewed up in the cow's tail, to preserve the animal and its produce from the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... remark on the singular hazard of bringing untried troops against the proverbial discipline of a German army, and the probability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europe would be renewed, by the evidence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... real value, corn and cattle. Nothing is wanting but encouragement and cultivation; the Canadians are at their ease even without labor; nature is here a bounteous mother, who pours forth her gifts almost unsolicited: bigotry, stupidity, and laziness, united, have not been able to keep the peasantry poor. I rejoice to find such admirable capabilities where I propose to ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... d'honneur," was beginning to be uneasy about you; and, as I had the peculiar good fortune of the Chevalier Marston's acquaintance, I was sent to pick him up if he had fallen in honourable combat in the plains of Champagne, or if any fragment of him were recoverable from the hands of the peasantry, to preserve it for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... is a kind of hood, more generally known among the Bearnese peasantry as a sarot. Whilst forming a coif it also completely ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... proffering to him their rustic presents. This was no doubt the case in former days, when the noble bard wrote his elegant poems—in the happy ancient days! when maidens were as yet generous, and men kindly! Now the degenerate peasantry of the district are much more inclined to ask than to give, and their blue eyes seem to ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their cue from the king, they were lavish in praise and generous in approval, and at an unusual exhibition of skill the stand grew bright with waving scarfs and handkerchiefs. Simultaneous with such an animated demonstration from the galleries would come a roar of approval from the peasantry below, crowded where best they could find places, bespeaking for their part, likewise, an increasing lust for ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... their people. But when Twelfth Night was gone by, and quietness descended upon the four occupants of the castle, they found that they had succeeded in telling each other much more than they supposed, in the intervals between Christmas trees, and dinners for the peasantry, and all the pleasant noise and excitement of the Yuletide. Very soon their lives dropped into peaceful channels again, and upon the tidal wave of merriment succeeded the calm flow of an untroubled existence. There ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the wealth of France. Economically speaking, he became satisfied that his enormous money-investment had proved to be an almost total loss, and the reaction on his mind was as violent as the emotion. For three hundred years it prostrated France. The efforts of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry to recover their property, so far as it was recoverable, have lasted to the present day and we had best take care not to ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... he had learned from Aristotle of Bologna, an Italian, whom he had taken into his service as an architect, mintmaster, and founder. The triumph of the arms of the Grand Prince was rapidly followed by the incursions of swarms of the peasantry, who, secretly urged forward by Ivan, rushed upon the routed enemy, and completed the work of devastation. This licentious exhibition of popular feeling Ivan affected to repress, and, availing himself of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... The same tale, a series of incidents and plot, with the monstrous element modified, which survived in the oral traditions of illiterate peasantry. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... dinner of mashed potatoes and milk ('The Irish peasantry live almost entirely on that,' croaked Alice, 'and they are physically a fine race'), the younger sister started on her walk to Chelsea. Her destination was a plain, low roomy old house in Queen's Road, over against the hospital gardens. On asking for Miss Nunn, she was led to a back room ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... consequence of a very confused situation was a declaration of war against Great Britain. Though an England which was ruled by a George III or a Prince Regent—an England of rotten boroughs, of an ignorant and oppressed peasantry, and of a social organization in which caste was almost as definitely drawn as in an Oriental despotism—could hardly appeal to the enthusiastic democrat as embodying all the ideals of his system, yet the England of ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an empty basket ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... folk-tales proper, by which I mean stories collected from the peasantry, I have made a selection from the works of Gaidoz, Sebillot, and Luzel. In no sense are these translations; they are rather adaptations. The profound inequality between Breton folk-tales is, of course, very marked ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... from ten to twenty feet in height, are now supposed to have been the burial places of the ancient Celts. The peasantry can with difficulty be persuaded to open any of them, on account of a prevalent superstition that it will ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... pleasant stoop in front, with women perpetually washing the floors and the windows, with beautiful and brilliant flowers blooming profusely in every window, and often trailing and climbing about its whole area. Here, I take it, is the home of a real peasantry, a contented class, comfortable and looking for no higher lot. These houses seem durable and ultimate. The roofs of both houses and piazzas are broken, projected, picturesque, and often ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they brood, they embrace. There are little trellises and cornices and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... appalling movement by a party of Order comprehending in it all who had anything to lose, a period of reaction ensued. In the reign of Richard II, whichever faction might be in the ascendant, and whatever direction the king's own sympathies may have originally taken, the last state of the peasantry was without doubt worse than the first. Wycliffism as an influence rapidly declined with the death of Wyclif himself, as it hardly could but decline, considering the absence from his teaching of any tangible ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... business. At that time, when the war was raging with France, gold was at a premium. The guinea was worth about twenty-six or twenty-seven shillings. Bianconi therefore began to buy up the hoarded-up guineas of the peasantry. The loyalists became alarmed at his proceedings, and began to circulate the report that Bianconi, the foreigner, was buying up bullion to send secretly to Bonaparte! The country people, however, parted with their guineas ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... great Pelasgic family, were expelled from Boeotia by Thracian hordes. [They afterward returned in the time of the Dorian emigration.] Some of the population must, however, have remained—the peasantry of the land; and in Hesiod we probably possess the national poetry, and arrive at the national religion, of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and occasionally venturing to attack small detachments of troops or isolated parties of police. They were not very formidable, but they were very troublesome, and most difficult to catch, for the peasantry regarded them as patriots, and aided and shielded them in every way. The head-quarters of these gangs of Dacoits were the Ghauts. In the thick bush and deep valleys and gorges there they could always take refuge, while sometimes the more daring chiefs converted these detached ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... entertainments. The cultivation of tea is universal, and agriculture—which, you know is the art of tilling the earth—is held in high esteem; the principal products being rice, wheat, yams, potatoes, turnips, and cabbages. The dwellings of the peasantry too, are not in villages, as in old England, but are scattered through the country; and they have no fences, gates, or anything to guard against wild beasts, or robbers. The females raise silk-worms, spin cotton, manufacture woollen stuffs, ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... of July) and taken prisoner by Don Frederick of Toledo and Chiappin Vitelli. Of his army, barely one hundred foot soldiers found their way into the beleaguered town. Twelve hundred were killed on the field of battle—almost in sight of Mons—and a much larger number butchered by the peasantry of the neighborhood.[906] A handful of officers and men, scarcely more fortunate, shared the captivity of their commander, and were destined to have their fortunes depend for a considerable time upon the fluctuating interests of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... this year of expectation, was ploughed throughout its whole surface by perpetual civil war. The fatal edict of June, 1585, had drowned the unhappy land in blood. Foreign armies, called in by the various contending factions, ravaged its-fair territory, butchered its peasantry, and changed its fertile plains to a wilderness. The unhappy creature who wore the crown of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet, was but the tool in the hands of the most profligate and designing of his own subjects, and of foreigners. Slowly and surely the net, spread by the hands of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... would render the passage easy. Marradi is a castle situated at the foot of the mountains which separate Tuscany from Romagna; and, though destitute of walls, the river, the mountains, and the inhabitants, make it a place of great strength; for the peasantry are warlike and faithful, and the rapid current undermining the banks has left them of such tremendous height that it is impossible to approach it from the valley if a small bridge over the stream be defended; ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a very large tree was cut down near Goulson, in the parish of Hartland, into which it was reported and believed by the peasantry of the neighbourhood, that "Major Docton" was conjured. The tree was purchased by a builder in Bideford, and cut into planks, one of which was washed away by the tide, and drifted to Appledore, where it was picked up by some boatmen, and sold to the proprietor of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... of every excess. It had not only seized with violence all that its wants demanded, but destroyed in mere wantonness what did not tempt its cupidity. No vandal ferocity was ever more destructive. Those crimes, however, were not committed with impunity. Want, sickness, and an enraged peasantry, inflicted terrible reprisals, and caused daily a fearful ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher"—an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... of the public legislature. The effect of this law had been to give the magistrates the power of ordering relief to the poor in their own dwellings, and the principle being followed up, led from bad to worse, until every spark of independence in the breast of the peasantry had been nearly extinguished. The parish must keep them, it was often said; and they did not care to obtain an honest livelihood by the sweat of their brow. The existing state of things had indeed reduced the labouring population in many districts to a state of deplorable misery and distress. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... this morning at nine o'clock and put up at the Hotel d'Arenberg. On the road we stopped at a peasant's house to drink coffee; and we were entertained by our hostess with complaints against the Prussians, who commit, as she said, all sorts of exactions on the peasantry on whom they are quartered. Not content with exacting three meals a day, when they were only entitled to two, and for which they are bound to give their rations, they sell these, and appropriate the money to their own use; then ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... suppose that the change takes place on a considerable scale, and that a large sum is diverted from buying plate and jewels to employing productive laborers, whom we shall suppose to have been previously, like the Irish peasantry, only half employed and half fed. The laborers, on receiving their increased wages, will not lay them out in plate and jewels, but in food. There is not, however, additional food in the country; nor any unproductive laborers or animals, as in the former case, whose food ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... here are larger, and not so fortified as those about Cabul. Balabagh stands on a high bank of conglomerate, overhanging the Soorkhab, and is in danger of being cut away by the river. The peasantry are civil, and unarmed. Ravens, quails, minas, sparrows, and a beautiful swallow were seen about the Soorkhab river; the latter, with metallic blue on the back of the head, crown of head tawny, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the other way, for a certain place is said to be paved with "good" ones, and surely "bad" ones would not lead us upwards. Then the phrase of a man "slapping the gates of Heaven in his own face," is one of those wild poetic figures of speech in which the Irish peasantry often indulge. The phrase "slapping the door" is every-day and common; but when applied to "the gates of Heaven," and "in a man's own face," the common phrase becomes fine. But how often the commonest things become poetry by the fitness of their ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... dwell in them alone, their life hid in Nature, and their cries of rude praise going up continually to Nature's God? And yet the Highlands of Scotland have not hitherto produced one great rural poet, except Macpherson, who did belong to the peasantry. And so of the seafaring class; only, so far as we remember, have expressed, the one in verse, and the other in prose, the 'poetry' of their calling,—namely, Cooper and Falconer, both of whose descriptions of sea storms and scenery have been equalled, if not surpassed, however, by ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... glimmer through,—once more he saw the great roses in his garden, pink and white and cream and yellow, clambering over the walls and up to the very roof of his picturesque and peaceful home—the white doves nesting in the warm sun—the ripe apples hanging on the gnarled boughs, the simple peasantry walking up his garden paths, coming to him with their little histories of pain and disappointment and sorrow; which were as great to them as any of the wider miseries of sufferers more beset with anguish than themselves. He thought of it all sorrowfully ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... toilet after the fatigues of her wandering, gave some occasion for her being taken for a little crazy; this, and the circumstance of her being mistaken for another person, may explain the disinclination to afford her assistance, which otherwise does not belong to the character of the Swedish peasantry. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... footpath. In the centre of the edifice, there is a well of most beautiful water, supplied from some hidden spring; and from the bottom of which bubbles of gas are constantly ascending to the surface. The well is divided by a large stone into two parts, one evidently intended for a bath. The peasantry in the neighbourhood call it the Virgin Mary's Well, and ascribe the most astonishing cures to bathing in its waters. I could not, however, find out what it was. Some said it was a nunnery, and that the field adjoining had been a burial-ground; but all seemed remarkably ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... two great instances of the danger of foreign speculation. The capital of the mining companies was squandered with no other effect than that of providing employment, for a certain number of years, to the lowest of the Mexican peasantry; whereas the same amount, applied to a similar purpose in this country, would not only have produced a handsome return to the invester, but would have afforded work and wages to a considerable portion of the community. There is a reciprocity between labour and capital which never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... sometimes pass by the name. The word 'Boer,' simply means 'farmer,' and is not synonymous with our word boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. Those, however, who have fled from English Law on various pretexts, and have been joined by English deserters, and every other variety of bad character in their distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. The great objection many of the ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... camp to Paris did him far greater harm than even a defeat would have done. With but a scanty commissariat, Conde was of course obliged to permit every sort of licence. All the crops were ruined in the neighbouring fields; the peasantry were plundered, injured, and their domestic peace destroyed; and the country-houses of the rich Parisians were pillaged and burned in all directions. The evils of civil war now came home to the hearts of the people of the capital, and, forgetting how great a part they themselves had taken in ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... usefulness of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing. Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants rather piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew and liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants, which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and from every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions in favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing them. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... persons, were documents which few, save ecclesiastics, could draw or dispute. Not content, moreover, with their territories and their tithings, the churchmen perpetually devised new burthens upon the peasantry. Ploughs, sickles, horses, oxen, all implements of husbandry, were taxed for the benefit of those who toiled not, but who gathered into barns. In the course of the twelfth century, many religious houses, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the colonists as they willed. However much the Governor may have despised the Intendant, the Intendant the Seignior, or the Priest all put together, the merchant, artisan, and peasant were of no account. Wealth without title was only a bait for extortion. The peasantry were serfs, and the nobles uneducated despots. Education was in the hands of the clergy, while power was solely vested in the Heads of Military Departments. But if ignorance was particularly characteristic of the Canadians, the New Englanders could lay little ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... act it is the perfect preciousness and distinction of truthfulness. Truthfulness in manners gives distinction and dignity in all classes of society; truthfulness gives that simplicity of manners which is one of the special graces of royalty, and also of an unspoiled and especially a Catholic peasantry. Vulgarity has an element of restless unreality and pretentious striving, an affectation or assumption of ways which do not belong to it, and in particular an unwillingness to serve, and a dread of owning any obligation of service. Yet service perfects manners and dignity, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... somewhat prominent part; that is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in the neighborhood. But owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... speedily overcome by the enemy, who marched on quietly, feeling alternately puzzled and astonished at never being confronted by any French forces. As the invaders drew nearer to Paris they found an abundance of vegetables and fruit at their disposal, but most of the peasantry had fled, taking their live stock with them, and, as a German officer told me in after years, eggs, cheese, butter, and milk could seldom ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... were robbery, rape, and murder," when the castle of each Norman baron was a strong hold from which the lordly proprietor issued to oppress and plunder the neighbouring districts, and when the Saxon peasantry were treated by their gay and gallant tyrants as a herd of loathsome swine—but for our own parts we beg to be excused; we had rather live in the same age with the author of Waverley and Blackwood's Magazine. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... dignity adopted by Nicholas Oresme is somewhat unusual. He divides professions into (1) honourable, or those which increase the actual quantity of goods in the community or help its development, such as ecclesiastical offices, the law, the soldiery, the peasantry, artisans, and merchants, and (2) degrading—such as campsores, mercatores ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... The peasantry were busy in the fields—the song that cheered their labor was on the breeze, and the heavy wagon tottered by, laden with the clusters of the vine. Everything around me wore that happy look which makes the heart glad. In the morning I arose with the lark; and at night I slept where the sunset ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... wonderfully ludicrous in its extravagance. We are led to infer that those best of friends, der Kaiser and his cousins George and Nicholas, are merely pretending hostility in order to rid themselves of a troublesome peasantry! We do not know what Mr. Shufelt has been reading lately, but we hope that time may modify his ideas to such a degree that he will turn his dignified style and pure English to some object ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... was born—you who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened, slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as wealth accumulates and the cities grow. I am for the average man—like myself. They've lifted me out of the crowd to an elevation which I do not deserve. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... removed the superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw, untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should be the measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long as things are so, there will be constant changes ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... relief upon the scene around them. The whiteness of the linen worn by the paludiers (the name given to men who gather salt in the salt-marshes) contrasts vigorously with the blues and browns of the peasantry and the original and sacredly preserved jewelry of the women. These two classes, and that of the sailors in their jerkins and varnished leather caps are as distinct from one another as the castes of India, and still recognize the distance that parts them from the bourgeoisie, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... significant of danger, and every rumour of conspiracy was taken for fact. The report of a strange fleet off the Southern coast, which turned out to be English, threw them all into panic; and the Corpus Christi crosses which the peasantry affixed to their doors, were nothing but signs for the Papist destroyer to pass by, and to spare his fellows in the general massacre ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... "the Hooks" and "the Cods," kept the land in a continual state of disorder and practically of civil war. They had already been active for many years. The Hooks were supported by the nobles, by the peasantry and by that large part of the poorer townsfolk that was excluded from all share in the municipal government. The Cods represented the interests of the powerful burgher corporations. In later times these same principles and interests divided the Orangist ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... his return till the end of the month, when the same enthusiastic spirit accompanied his progress. "Every town and village was crowded. The sacred emblem of the arch, with flowers and branches of trees, with happy devices, prevailed everywhere. The peasantry all well dressed." Subsequently, a curious incident occurred. "Some hundreds of miners from the mountains came to serenade their king. They are a particular race of Saxon origin, and for centuries have preserved their customs, language, and manners. Their countenance is interesting; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... for fear of coming up with the Guise party. I made my money serve, too, by purchasing cheaply the hospitality of farmers and woodmen. My youth had withstood well the experiences attending my escape from Paris, and enabled me to fare on the coarse food of the peasantry. There was plenty of healthy blood in my veins to keep me warm. Outside of my doublet, my shoulders had no covering but the light mantle, of which I was now glad that I had been unable to rid myself in ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Greeks did not make such a very good thing of it with their equality (which included slavery); that the Biblical point is far from past argument; that M. Zola, for instance, supplies an interesting commentary on Mr Hamerton's rose-coloured pictures of the French peasantry; that whatever Mr Arnold's own lot may have been, others who have lived in small French towns with the commis voyageur have not found his manners so greatly superior to those of the English bagman. But just at this moment, and, in fact, in an increasing degree ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a fiction maintained by Henry, that he was marching in a friendly country; plunder was strictly forbidden, and everything was to be paid for; but unfortunately, the peasantry on his way never realized this, and the soldiery often took care they should not. Therefore, when the advanced guard came to the village that had been marked out for their halt, instead of finding provisions and forage to be purchased, they met with only bare walls, and a few stray ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ordinary Swiss people he formed from the first a high opinion which everything during his stay among them confirmed. He thought it the greatest injustice to call them "the Americans of the Continent." In his first letters he said of the peasantry all about Lausanne that they were as pleasant a people as need be. He never passed, on any of the roads, man, woman, or child, without a salutation; and anything churlish or disagreeable he never noticed in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... cask of wine in a cart. One of the staff-officers instantly appropriated the keg, and proceeded to share his prize most generously. Never had I tasted anything so refreshing and delicious, but as the wine was the ordinary sour stuff drunk by the peasantry of northern France, my appreciation must be ascribed to my famished condition rather than to any ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... city, there's no doubtin', Bates every city on the say; 'Tis there you'll hear O'Connell spoutin', And Lady Morgan making tay; For 'tis the capital of the finest nation, Wid charmin' peasantry on a fruitful sod, Fightin' like divils for conciliation, An' hatin' each other for the love ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... is no doubtin', Beats every city upon the say. 'Tis there you'll see O'Connell spouting, And Lady Morgan making "tay." For 'tis the capital of the greatest nation With finest peasantry on a fruitful sod, Fighting like devils for conciliation, And hating each other for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... how he got here; so let us explain at once. Soon after our hero went to school, Harry's father had died of a fever. He had been a journeyman blacksmith, and in the receipt, consequently, of rather better wages than generally fall to the lot of the peasantry, but not enough to leave much of a margin over current expenditure. Moreover, the Winburns had always been open-handed with whatever money they had; so that all he left for his widow and child, of worldly goods, was their "few sticks" of furniture, L5 in the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... moved by what was going on around them, wrote strongly against the abuse of power by the nobles and the King, teaching that kings were but the servants of the people. The poor, ignorant, downtrodden peasantry, urged by the selfish trading classes who used them for their own ends, united in a great movement to take away the privileges of the nobles. The serfs flung off the heavy yoke, and went to the worst ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... 'The peasantry of Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and of almost every country in Europe subsist principally, and most of them entirely, on vegetable food.... The Persians, Hindoos, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, the inhabitants ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... The peasantry of Spanish Chili, though for much the greater part of Spanish descent, dress after the manner of the Araucanians. Thinly dispersed over an extensive country, and unincumbered by restraint, they enjoy complete ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... when Gladstone made his speech just quoted, a bill was up in the House of Commons called "The Relief of Distress Bill." Simple people might at once assume that this relief bill was for the relief of the starving peasantry, but this is a very hasty conclusion, ill-considered and quite absurd. The "Relief Bill" was for the relief of the English landlords who owned land in Ireland. So the landlords would not be actually compelled to levy on the last potato and waylay the remittances sent from America, the English ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... accomplished, the Marquis ordered the steward to see that all the portraits were sent to the Chateau de Montgeron; then, after pressing his hand in farewell, he returned to the station by the road whence he had come, avoiding the village in order to escape the curious eyes of the peasantry. ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... upon her going to the grotto, however, and she continued to visit it, when her vision arose before her again and again. In course of time the singular event became much talked about, especially among the peasantry of that vicinity, who believed implicitly that the Virgin Mary appeared ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... among the tribes, as it always is where the monogamic family prevails. There were doubtless traces of the old custom, common to most races, of wife capture, a custom which long continued as a mere fiction to some extent among the peasantry of certain localities in Germany. In this survival the bride makes feint to escape, and is chased and captured by the bridegroom. Some modern authorities have tried to show that there is a survival of this old custom of courtship, whereby the advances are supposed to be made by the men. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... simplicity. Indeed, it is to the decline of this happy simplicity that the decline of this custom may be traced, and the rural dance on the green, and the homely May-day pageant, have gradually disappeared in proportion as the peasantry have become expensive and artificial in their pleasures, and too knowing for simple enjoyment. Some attempts, indeed, have been made by men of both taste and learning to rally back the popular feeling to their standards of primitive simplicity; but the time has gone by, the feeling ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Hamlet's drinking song fine, and finely sung. But the whole point of the Opera is in the last Act, where there is a ballet that has nothing to do with the piece, but pretty to see little PALLADINO in short white skirts, dancing merrily in a forest glade, among the happy peasantry, to whom comes Ophelia, mad as several hatters, and after a lunatic scene, charming, both musically and dramatically, throws herself into the water, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... Compared with our older continents America is mankind stripped for achievement. So many things are not there at all, need not be considered; no institutional aristocracy, no Kaisers, Czars, nor King-Emperors to maintain a litigious sequel to the Empire of Rome; it has no uneducated immovable peasantry rooted to the soil, indeed it has no rooting to the soil at all; it is, from the Forty-ninth Parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, one triumphant embodiment of freedom and deliberate agreement. For I mean all America, Spanish-speaking as well as ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... slight experience with the larger world. Some were middle-class lawyers, merchants, and squires; a few, but very few, were of higher rank, while scores were of the soil, coarse in language and habits, and given to practices characteristic of the peasantry of England at that time. The fact that hardly a fifth of those in Massachusetts were professed Christians renders it doubtful how far religious convictions were the only driving motive that sent hundreds of these men to New England. The leaders were, in a majority of ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the Feudal System, which had received a mortal blow by the intermingling of the classes and the masses in the era of the Crusades, was threatened, from above, by the movement towards centralisation and absolutism, and from below, by the growing discontent of the peasantry and artisans, who had begun to realise, but as yet only in a vague way, their own strength. In every department the battle for supremacy was being waged between the old and the new, and the printing-press was at hand to enable the patrons ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... is tendered a seat upon an ancient throne; the form is old, but the spirit, how new! Republican though she is to the backbone, Norway has elected to be governed by monarchical methods, fearing with her isolated and primitive peasantry, to put the machinery of control into the hands of the people themselves. She must have a king, but he shall be of a new variety; in short, a republican king. She will not even have him addressed as were the monarchs of old, ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... inform you,' said his lordship, 'that the police in that barbarous district are as superstitious as the peasantry. I, myself, told the chief constable my theory, and for six weeks he has been trying to run down the miscreants, who, I am sure, are making a rendezvous of the castle. Would you believe it, sir, that the constabulary, after a few nights' experience in the castle, threatened ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... The Imaginary Mistress The Peasantry Ursule Mirouet Another Study of Woman The Thirteen The ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... return, have warmer feelings of attachment towards their owners than are to be found in colonies belonging to other nations. Newton perceived and acknowledged this, and, comparing the condition of the people at Lieu Desire with that of most of the peasantry of Europe, was unwillingly obliged to confess that the former were in every respect the more fortunate and the more happy ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... fretwork of cross purposes, is a decided change from the quiet order of our rural life. Hmm! There everything is under the administration of one undisputed will, and is executed by the unquestioning obedience of our happy and contented slave peasantry. I prefer the country. But I thought this was just the change that would arouse and electrify an invalid who has ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Balfour when he was Chief Secretary, and which culminated in the Wyndham Purchase Act, have created a new Ireland. Mr. Redmond, speaking a year or two ago, said that Ireland "was studded with the beautiful and happy homes of an emancipated peasantry." It is a true picture, but it is a picture of the result of Unionist policy in Ireland, a policy which Mr. Redmond and his friends, including the present Government, have done their best to hamper. The driving power of the agitation for Home Rule has always been ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... people at the North mean by speaking of the negroes as a bestial or brutal race. Except in some insensibility to animal pain, I never knew of an act in my regiment which I should call brutal. In reading Kay's "Condition of the English Peasantry" I was constantly struck with the unlikeness of my men to those therein described. This could not proceed from my prejudices as an abolitionist, for they would have led me the other way, and indeed I had once written a little essay to show the brutalizing influences ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of all classes, generally arrange marriages for their children, without consulting their inclinations. Among the peasantry, if the girl has the name of being a good housewife, her parents will not fail to have applications for her, whatever may be her age or personal endowments. As soon as a young man is old enough to be married, his parents seek a wife for him, and all is settled before the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... of this people—than just sufficient to support him. The merchants are consequently obliged to travel about from place to place, collecting the stuff, which they do chiefly at the country fairs, where the peasantry assemble once a year, bringing their work to be disposed of. It is these customs of the people which have made it necessary for us to set up an establishment in their country, like the Dutch at Chinsurah and ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral practice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the suspicion of any simper ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... western or Romand Switzerland preserves a character definitely apart from the eastern, and this barrier across the Bernese valley, unpassed for a thousand years, still divides the German from the Romand speaking peasantry. To the north and west lies Gruyere, greenest of pastoral countries, uniquely set in a ring of azure heights, where like a lost Provence, the Romand spirit has preserved its eternal youthfulness and charm. Greatly loved by all the Swiss, its annals piously preserved by ancient chroniclers, this ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... at them, indignant at their indifference, thinking of what he could say or do in order to make an impression to electrify this calm peasantry, to fulfill his mission ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... democracy; it is revolution." She was thinking of those Old World hard-and-fast divisions of society into royalty, aristocracy, commons, peasantry. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of these executions, some even of the peasantry, though these were confined to the shire of Mid-Lothian, pursued, captured, plundered, and murdered the miserable fugitives who fell in their way. One strange story have we of these times of blood and persecution: Kirkton the historian ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of some of the Irish peasantry connected with their belief in fairies, which consists of giving a cachetic or rachitic child large doses of a preparation of fox-glove (Irish—luss-more, or great herb), to drive out or kill the fairy in the child. It was supposed to kill an unhallowed child ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... if it had been picked up bodily in some rural district in Germany, and set down unaltered here in Iowa. "Wie gehts," I venture, as I wheel past a couple of plump, rosy-cheeked maidens, in the quaint, old-fashioned garb of the German peasantry. "Wie gehts," is the demure reply from them, both at once; but not the shadow of a dimple responds to my unhappy attempt to win from them a smile. Pretty but not coquettish are these communistic maidens of Amana. At Tiffin, the stilly air of night, is made joyous with the mellifluous ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... charged him with the organisation of the militia in Upper Calabria. Eager to serve his country, the newly made field officer hurried to his post. The English had not yet landed, but some of Ruffo's former followers had been put on shore, and laboured, not unsuccessfully, to induce the peasantry to revolt. Pepe soon found himself in action. Surprised in the town of Scigliano, he shut himself up in a house with two-and-twenty French soldiers, and there made a desperate defence against an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... classical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete. The Metawali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of "Bilad B'sharrah," which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah, the Great Lady. Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... although, I believe, in great retirement, spending 200l. upon himself, and giving away 2,000l.—Mr. Edward Kenyon spoke of you to me as having such opportunities of knowing both the city and the country as rarely befell even a resident, and what you say of the peasantry gives me a strong desire ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... efficient weapon when used as an accusation, for Wycliff and the friars alike both dreaded its imputation. Perhaps of all that period, John Ball alone held it consistently and without shame. Eloquent in the way of popular appeal, he manifestly endeavoured to force it as a social reform on the peasantry, who were suffering under the intolerable grievance of the Statutes of Labourers. But though he roused the countryside to his following, and made the people for the first time a thing of dread to nobles and King, it does not appear that his ideas spread much beyond his immediate lieutenants. ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... management of a small establishment. The parents were invited as guests, to enjoy the dishes which the princesses had prepared with their own hands, and there each child was free to follow the bent of its own industrial inclination. In the Highlands, again, among the reserved and dignified Scottish peasantry, the children were encouraged to visit freely, to make themselves acquainted with the wants and feelings of the poor, and to regard them with an understanding ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... of a practised warrior and carefully noting its military points and capabilities. He saw that the Moor was well prepared for possible hostilities. Every town was strongly fortified. The Vega was studded with towers of refuge for the peasantry: every pass of the mountain had its castle of defence, every lofty height its watch-tower. As the Christian cavaliers passed under the walls of the fortresses, lances and scimetars flashed from their battlements, and the Moorish sentinels darted from their dark eyes glances of hatred and defiance. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Caradoc Evans (Duffield & Co.). "My People" is a record of the peasantry of West Wales, and these chronicles are set down with a biblical economy of speech that makes for a noteworthy literary style. I refuse to believe that they are a truthful portrait of the folk of whom ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... VII., the second of the great re-creative forces of that time, was of the Tuscan peasantry, Etrurian in type, therefore Italian in speech, by name Hildebrand. Whether an historian understands his career or no is a very test of whether that historian understands the nature of Europe. For St. Gregory VII. imposed nothing upon Europe. ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... self-sufficing; at the most it imported commodities like iron and salt; for the rest, it drew on itself and its own resources. This produced at once a great uniformity and a great isolation. There was a great uniformity, because most men lived the same grey, quiet life of agriculture. The peasantry of Europe, in these days when most men were peasants, lived in the same way, under the same custom of the manor, from Berwick to Carcassonne, and from Carcassonne to Magdeburg. But there was also a great ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... village commune, there is no country in Europe except the United Kingdom where the peasant land-holders have not some form of corporate existence. In Ireland the transition from landlordism to a peasant proprietary not only does not create any corporate existence among the occupying peasantry but rather deprives them of the slight social coherence which they formerly possessed as tenants of the same landlord. The estate office has its uses as well as its disadvantages, and the landlord or agent is by no ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... greater number of those who lost their lives were buried amid the ruins of the houses, but many perished in fires that were kindled in most of the towns, particularly in Oppido, where the flames were fed by great magazines of oil. Not a few, especially among the peasantry dwelling in the country, were suddenly engulfed in fissures. Many who were only half buried in the ruins, and who might have been saved had there been help at hand, were left to die a lingering death from cold ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... During the early years of her schooldays Betty had observed that America appeared upon the whole to be regarded by her schoolfellows principally as a place to which the more unfortunate among the peasantry emigrated as steerage passengers when things could become no worse for them in their own country. The United States was not mentally detached from any other portion of the huge Western Continent. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the requirements of the service. Wellington had not yet begun that career of victory which created a national enthusiasm for war, and filled our ranks with willing soldiers. And another clause of the same bill was framed in the hope of making the service more acceptable to the peasantry, by limiting the time for which recruits were to be enlisted, and entering men, at first, in the infantry for seven years, or in the cavalry (as that branch of the service required a longer apprenticeship) for ten; then allowing them the option of renewing their engagement for two periods—in ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... regiment. The duke—who had already offered Rupert an appointment on his staff, an offer he had gratefully declined, as he preferred to do duty with his regiment—at once acceded to his request, and he was thus spared the horror of seeing the agony of the unhappy peasantry and townspeople, at the destruction of their houses. Rupert, in his rides with messages across the country, saw enough to make him heartsick at the distress into which the people of the country ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty |
