Waiving his great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions, "Have you heard" (his customary exordium)"have you heard," said he, "how they treat me?

The heirs of the great lords who had followed the Conqueror, and who with their vast estates in Normandy and in England had inherited the arrogant pretensions of their fathers, found themselves of little account in the national councils.

If I have more than my share, it is your Lordship's fault; for I have always reverenced your judgment too much, to exalt myself in your presence by any false pretensions.

Any one with the slightest pretensions to refined cookery, must, in this particular, implicitly follow the example of our friends across the Channel.

In justice to the public and to myself, I must disavow for the following pages any higher literary pretension than what is conveyed by the simple title of "Notes," under which I have ventured to give them to the world.

As Franklin himself owns, the maxims have little pretension to originality.

MY FIRST PLAY At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office.

Yet insignificant as he assuredly is, he cannot put pen to paper without a feeling that millions of eyes are fixed upon him...." Leigh Hunt, says Blackwood, "is a man of extravagant pretensions ... exquisitely bad taste and extremely vulgar modes of thinking."

"It may be presumption for one of my humble pretensions to set myself in opposition to persons of your age, experience, and celebrity; but I am bound, by the sacred duties of the high functions I have undertaken to perform, to use my poor abilities in such a way as I can, to advance the noble science of medicine, and, in so doing, to give strength to the weak, courage to the disheartened, and comfort to the afflicted.

Then the Spaniard will not embitter his character with ridiculous pretensions of despotism, but with a frank look and a stout heart we shall extend our hands to one another, and commerce, industry, agriculture, the sciences, will develop under the mantle of liberty, with wise and just laws, as in prosperous England."

"Thou art too winning even to be resisted by one wearied with rebutting plausible pretensions," he added.

Having stabled his horse, then, and seen him supplied with such provender as the place afforded, he looked about the hotel, which he found to be an institution of very considerable pretensions.

But there is a still finer poem which belongs to this period of his history, though written, I believe, before he reached VeniceThe Lament of Tasso: and I am led to notice it the more particularly, as one of its noblest passages affords an illustration of the opinion which I have early maintainedthat Lord Byron's extraordinary pretensions to the influence of love was but a metaphysical conception of the passion.

The arrogance, the insolence, of the Junker officer, his aristocratic pretension, his bearish manners, have made him a byword, not only in his own country but all over Europe; and his belief in sheer militarism and Jingo imperialism has made him a menace.

True, the elder ones tried to check the younger in their good-natured, forthright Irish way; but they retorted, and persisted in their superior pretensions.

The haughty pretensions of this diplomatist, whose attention seemed turned to theological disputes rather than politics, gave great disgust; and he contributed not a little to the persecution which led to the tragical end of Barneveldt's valuable life.

Gregory dared to fulminate the sentence of excommunication against Henry and his adherents, to pronounce him rightfully deposed, to free his subjects from their oaths of allegiance; and instead of shocking mankind by this gross encroachment on the civil authority, he found the stupid people ready to second his most exorbitant pretensions.

For talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits of their ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their secret pretensions, and give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious, musical and wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to be.

By his hypocritical pretensions to devotion, he gained the favour of the zealots and clergy: by his seeming concern for public good, he acquired the affections of the public: and besides the private friendships which he had cultivated with the barons, his animosity against the favourites created an union of interests between him and that powerful order.

The close connection which existed between the various Parliaments and their political functionsfor they had occasion incessantly to interfere between the acts of the government and the respective pretensions of the provinces or of the three ordersnaturally increased the importance of this supreme magistracy.

What passed between them is not known with certainty; but they quarrelled, either concerning their mutual pretensions to the crown, or because Comyn refused to join Bruce in the proposed insurrection against the English; or, as many writers say, because Bruce charged Comyn with having betrayed to the English his purpose of rising up against King Edward.

The difference, I take it, was this:Jack was more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions.

It was therefore suggested by Morton, and readily assented to by the Duke, that the only means of overturning the present usurpation was to unite the opposite factions by contracting a marriage between the Earl of Richmond and the princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King Edward, and thereby blending together the opposite pretensions of their families.

Modest by nature, credulous of appearances, the noisy pretensions of the hundred and one small celebrities, and the din of their retainers this side and that, in comparison with his own unattended course, what wonder if his heart sinks and he gives up the game; how shall his little pipe, though it be of silver, hope to be heard in this land of bassoons?

Tiberius and Nero are on the road to oblivion, and the subjects of the Lama may boast comparative pretensions to rank as a free and enlightened nation.