Those that have exalted their thoughts above the minuter parts of the creation, who have observed the motions of the heavenly bodies, and attempted systems of the universe, have not been denied the honour which they deserved by so great an attempt, whatever has been their success.

In every portion of them which we can decry, we find attention bestowed upon the minuter objects.

'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione in his Courtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.

It is difficult to give any accurate description of it that shall go into minuter details.

If we had Phrynicus, Plato, Eupolis, Cratinus, Ameipsias, and so many other celebrated rivals of Aristophanes, of whom all that we can find are a few fragments scattered in Plutarch, Athenaeus, and Suidas, we might compare them with our poet, settle the general scheme, observe the minuter differences, and form a complete notion of their comick stage.

He is to exhibit, in his portraits of nature, such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristicks which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.

But if any one will make minuter divisions, from differences that he knows in the internal frame of watches, and to such precise complex ideas give names that shall prevail; they will then be new species, to them who have those ideas with names to them, and can by those differences distinguish watches into these several sorts; and then WATCH will be a generical name.

Suppose that he extended his researches somewhat to those minuter vegetable forms, the mosses, fungi, lichens; suppose that he went a little further still, and tried what the microscope would show him in any stagnant pool, whether fresh water or salt, of Desmidiae, Diatoms, and all those wondrous atomies which seem as yet to defy our classification into plants or animals.

We had light enough to discern its symmetry and proportions; but the colour of the rocka dark greyand the minuter graces of the columns, were undistinguishable in the evening gloom.

Pardon me therefore, my dear and ever-honoured pupil, if I may seem to offend against those minuter laws of etiquette, which were made only for common cases.

The System of Logic owed little to her except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect my writings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism.

In the preceding chapter we closed the minuter narrative with a scene at the Hut, in the spring of 1765.

Besides perfect skeletons of American and foreign birds and other animals, there is an immense number of detached crania, from the elephant and hippopotamus down to the minuter orders.

I could not endure the thought of opposing the venom that was thus scattered against me, in detail and through its minuter particles.

Yet it is evident to us that these, and even minuter points of accentual scansion, have been regarded by Mr. Coleridge as worthy of study and observation.

Most of these rings broke up, their fragments conglomerated and forming a sphere; one in particular separating into a multitude of minuter spheres, others assuming a highly elliptical form, condensing here and thinning out there; while the central mass grew brighter and denser as it contracted; till there lay before me a perfect miniature of the solar system, with planets, satellites, asteroids, and meteoric rings.

The day of the minuter study of the whole continent has now dawned, and we are witnessing a most notable work.

Take the stories which are translated in the present volume, and you might fancy them all written by Ariosto, with a difference; the Death of Agrican perhaps with minuter touches of nature, but certainly not with greater simplicity and earnestness.

It has been now for some time an allowed and understood thing that in these domestic backgrounds the growth of our country and the minuter traits of private life are to be studied with most clear and usurious profit.

We have made such use of it as is permitted to fiction, neither neglecting the leading and known facts of the event, nor adhering to the minuter circumstances more closely than the connection of our tale demanded.

It will now be readily understood how flesh is affected for bad, if an animal is slaughtered when the circulation of its blood has been increased by over-driving, ill-usage, or other causes of excitement, to such a degree of rapidity as to be too great for the capillaries to perform their functions, and causing the blood to be congealed in its minuter vessels.

Vaucheria affords a choice hunting ground to the microscopist, for its tangled masses are the home of numberless infusoria, rotifers, and the minuter crustacea, while the filaments more advanced in age are usually thickly incrusted with diatoms.