album; scrap book, note book, memorandum book, commonplace book; extracts, excerpta^, cuttings; fugitive pieces, fugitive writing; spicilegium^, flowers, anthology, collectanea^, analecta^; compilation.

The unusual improbabilities of this Gothic romance were welcomed by readers weary of commonplace works where nothing ever happens.

As to his second reason for the suppression of names, to wit, "the uncertainty to whom the passages originally belonged,"to make the most of it, it is but partial and relative; and, surely, no other grammar ever before so multiplied the difficulty in the eyes of teachers, and so widened the field for commonplace authorship, as has the compilation in question.

I recollect the timid expectation with which I went to meet Robert Browningand the disappointment which I endured in his presence at his commonplace bonhomie, his facile, uninteresting talk.

The immense stake depending on the result, the grandeur of Napoleon's isolated efforts against the flower of the European forces, and the awful responsibility resting on the head of their great leader, give to this conflict a romantic sublimity, unshared by all the manoeuvring of science in a hundred commonplace combats of other wars.

We sometimes encounter extravagant varieties of type, humorously intended, but the use of which seems a game hardly worth Mr. Reade's candle, which certainly possesses enough illuminating power of its own, without seeking additional refulgence by such commonplace expedients.

The genius of destruction, tired apparently of the old commonplace killing, had invented the 'unseen death.'

Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.

It may be interesting, therefore, to supply some sketch of the events of his life, and of the particular poem which Browning has aptly compared to a gorgeous chapel lying perdue in a dull old commonplace mansion.

This is doubtless due to the fact that the preparation of food being such a commonplace matter, its important relations to health, mind, and body have been overlooked, and it has been regarded as a menial service which might be undertaken with little or no preparation, and without attention to matters other than those which relate to the pleasure of the eye and the palate.

I have erred against every commonplace notion of decorum.

Little groups of bored people drifted about under the trees and exchanged the usual commonplace observations.

But then, after all, to make a French speech is a commonplace accomplishment.

Then, with lack- lustre eyes, she surveyed our belongings, murmuring endless commonplace phrases.

I never felt more keenly or heavily the immeasurable distance between earth and heaven than now, when after the day has been spent in listening to the plausibilities of commonplace politicians, I open my Bible at night.

Her father, without appearing to notice the commonplace pun, went on to say, "You don't know, Mr. King, what tricks she can play with her voice.

After a few commonplace remarks, they passed on up the stairway to the broad landing, on which was an arched door that led to the passage opening into the organ loft of the chapel.

They greeted my companion with exclamations of delight; then they led us into the usual commonplace room with divans and whitewashed walls.

"Simple, modest, commonplace stays, my lord," and she said it slowly and with a mighty air.

This commonplace story had been, it appeared, implicitly credited by Captain Dalston; and Violet Dalston and Henry Grainger were united in holy wedlocknot at the village church near where Captain Dalston resided, but in one of the Leeds churches.

Certainly my heart and mind were full enough not to waste looks on a commonplace stranger unless there had been some such overpowering reason.

The Pacific Ocean, from pole to pole, so free on the line where the dispute as to the day it is, goes on forever, that only one small island is subject to the witchery of mathematics, and the proof in commonplace transactions unmixed with the skies that whatever may be the matter with the sunthe earth do move, is round, do roll over, and does not spill off the sea in doing so.

Great dinners, long soirées, commonplace visits, balls themselves, were odious to her.

Jim Driscollthat pitiful nonentity, with his stout mistrustful commonplace wife!

Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by the daily bungling commonplace persons.