'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger has gone on a bootless errand.

There is no man that is ignorant, that to humble yourself at the feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts there is no room for amendment and reformation.

how oft by sorrow overborne, By care oppressed, or bitter malice wrung, By friends betrayed, or disappointment torn, My weary heart, all sickened and unstrung Hath yearned to leave the bootless strife afar, And find beneath this oak a quiet grave, Where the rough echo of the world's loud jar, Yields to the music of the mellow wave!

The like assaults attain my wand'ring mind, Seeing our bootless war with matchless fate.

From the pursuing of the hateful priest And bootless search of Ely are we come.

To the west "But sorrow not," said Finn, when all dismay'd They hastened on a drear and bootless quest With weary steps they turned to their stockade, "To-morrow will we hunt towards the east To high Dunskaith, and then make gladsome feast By night when we return.

A propos, when I first opened upon the just-mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, "What is good for a bootless bene?" To which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it)

Chaste maid Matilda, countess of account, Chase with thy bright eyes all these clouds of woe From these fair cheeks; I pray thee, sweet, do so: Think it is bootless folly to complain For that which never can be had again.

The doctor glanced at his bootless feet.

And the light that flashed from his black eyes, lo! Was a light that paled the red wine's glow; And he shook his fetters in bootless ire, And called on the Prophet, and named his sire.

Knightly in arms he was; one grievous blot, So deem'd full many a courtly dame, I wot, Cross'd the full growth of his aspiring days, And dimm'd the lustre of meridian praise: With bootless artifice their lures they troll'd; Still, Gugemer lov'd not, or nothing told.

"Where do you hail from?" would be a bootless question to put when the "hail-thrower" begins to administer throes to the breaking ranks.

Dobbin and Joseph Sedley were in India now, and old Sedley, always speculating in bootless schemes, once more brought ruin on his family.

I much fear that a bootless speculation in thy usual trade has driven thee to repair the loss by the murder of this unhappy man, who left his home well supplied with gold, and, as it would seem, with a valuable store of jewelry, too.

It was useless; and nearly a year had passed in the bootless struggle, when Lucy Stevens, who had vainly striven to blind herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her.

Or his extensive charity pervade To those who languish in the barren shade, Where oft, by want and modesty suppress'd, The bootless talent warms the lonely breast?

Again, when Insurrection them assists, Stirr'd by the French king and the wronged earl, Whose troth-plight wife King John had ta'en to wife, He only claps his hand upon his sword, Mocketh their threatenings, and in their attempts The harmless prince receives recureless death, Whom they too late with bootless tears lament.

After high aspirations, after renewed endeavours, after bootless toil, after long wanderings, after hope, effort, weariness, failure, painfully alternating and recurring, it is an immense relief to the exhausted mind to be able to say, "At length I know that I can know nothing about anything." ...

Such bootless plaints, that know nor mean nor end, Do but increase the floods of thy lament; And since the world knows well there was no want In thee of ought, that did to him belong, Yet all, thou seest, could not his life prolong.

Nevertheless, Griffin persevered, until he had even given an account of the manner in which he and Cuffe examined the lugger's anchorage, in the bootless attempt to discover the wreck.

" Ah! luckless speech, and bootless boast!

For, where the distant prospect fading dies, And sea and land seem mingling with the skies, A massy tower of polish'd marble rose; There dwelt the fair physician of his woes: Nogiva was the name the princess bore; Her spouse old, shrewd, suspicious evermore, Here mew'd his lovely consort, young and fair, And watch'd her with a dotard's bootless care.

But beware lest you waste in bootless commiseration the brief opportunity of escaping from the hands of the enemy.

I tried the heeling process, and earnestly endeavored to toe the mark; but to successfully start the thing on foot was a bootless effort.

This no and nay, this quenchless, bootless fire, This cold affection and this hot desire, The act itself shall tell; and the poor friar Your partial favours humbly doth require.