Stands he not, in the amiable ripeness of his years, a living representative of the Golden Age?

An artificial ripeness in Stilton cheese is sometimes produced by inserting a small piece of decayed Cheshire into an aperture at the top.

" Such pretty eloquence, thoughtful withal, was not what I had looked for in this new cousin of minethis free-tongued maid, who, like a painted peach-fruit all unripe, wears the gay livery of maturity, tricking the eye with a false ripeness.

'Besides its great importance as a fruit-producer, it has a special beauty of its own when the clusters of dates are hanging in golden ripeness under its coronal of dark-green leaves.

and where shall we dispose of them, until they come to a holy ripeness?

It now seemed like a part of the mellow ripeness of the day.

They reached the old orchard, and ran about among the trees picking up applesnow the little soft yellow crab applesthen the huge, round, ruddy pippinsnext the golden-coat bell apples, oblong and mellow, which had dropped from pure ripeness from the autumn boughs.

To-day, on the contrary,to use a somewhat daring metaphor,nations have become autochthonous; they have repudiated the feeble processes of conception and tutelage; they spring, armed and full-grown, from the forehead of their progenitors, or rise, in sudden ripeness, from the soil.