Even those people who, when Holymead's arrest was announced, had ridiculed the idea of a man like Holymead murdering a lifelong friend, had to admit that the police had collected some damaging evidence.

The State encouraged and paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.

But the opposition press justly ridiculed the pretensions of the alleged concession, as the precarious and barren result of a mission costing several million of francs.

Those who have not a Taste for this Elevation of Stile, and are apt to ridicule a Poet when he departs from the common Forms of Expression, would do well to see how Aristotle has treated an Ancient Author called Euclid, for his insipid Mirth upon this Occasion.

When the reader came to the allusions to secret arrests, protracted imprisonments, and the tedious formalities of the law and lawyers, he declared that it would be necessary to pull down the Bastile before it could be acted with safety, as Beaumarchais was ridiculing every thing which ought to be respected.

" To these could be added several others, but at present we shall content ourselves with quoting the two following, as specimens of the satirical or ludicrous: Prior, on himself, ridiculing the folly of those who value themselves on their pedigree.

A little further on in the work, ridiculing the notion entertained in France, that the Negroes would not work without compulsion, he takes occasion to allude to other Negroes, who had been liberated by the same proclamation, but who were more immediately under his own eye and cognizance.

Whether it be that we think it shews greater Art to expose and turn to ridicule a Man whose Character seems so improper a Subject for it, or that we are pleased by some implicit kind of Revenge to see him taken down and humbled in his Reputation, and in some measure reduced to our own Rank, who had so far raised himself above us in the Reports and Opinions of Mankind.

Estcourt was a writer for the stage as well as actor, and had shown his agreement with the Spectators dramatic criticisms by ridiculing the Italian opera with an interlude called Prunella.

By asking some applause from them as to comic actors at the close of some mime he ridiculed most tellingly the whole life of man.

Its chief purpose was to ridicule the proceedings of the Royal Society, but Swift was not well enough acquainted with music and some of the other sciences fostered by the Society to attack them to advantage.

Though he never referred to them save to ridicule every suggestion of their existence, or to attribute the weird noises to the wind, yet never a day passed

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the termssuch as piquerepiquethe capotthey savoured (she thought) of affectation.

One of them got into the hands of the Emperor, who thinking the Christians were ridiculing the Sacred Book, ordered instanter all the cities of the coast to be searched to discover the offender who introduced them.

The Duke of Buckingham, then the admitted leader of fashionable prodigacy, borrowed the aid of Samuel Butler, at whose "Hudibras" the world was still laughing,of Thomas Sprat, then on the high-road to those preferments which have given him an important place in history,of Martin Clifford, a familiar of the green-room and coffee-house,and concocted a farce ridiculing the person and office of the Laureate.

I hardly know whether or not they were avowed infidels; but they alike ridiculed all religious professions and possessed some very singular notions regarding life and death.

He shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the State; so that philosophers like Varro could pour contempt on players with impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples the same things.

" And in the "Imitation of Horace," addressed to Lord Fortescue: "Better be Cibber, I maintain it still, Than ridicule all taste, blaspheme, quadrille.

He contended that the Africans ought to be better treated, and to be raised to a better condition; and he ridiculed the inconsistency of those who held them in bondage.

The literary banditti who now govern France began their operations by ridiculing the King's private characterfrom ridicule they proceeded to calumny, and from calumny to treason; and perhaps the first libel that degraded him in the eyes of his subjects opened the path from the palace to the scaffold.

If a Country Gentleman appears a little curious in observing the Edifices, Signs, Clocks, Coaches, and Dials, it is not to be imagined how the Polite Rabble of this Town, who are acquainted with these Objects, ridicule his Rusticity.

Sir, before I engage in a discussion of the question, I cannot but think it necessary to observe, that the honourable gentleman who spoke the second in this debate, has been very far from consulting either policy or justice in his declamation, and that he deviated from the subject only to ridicule his country, to exalt our enemies, and depress our efforts.

He wrote a piece called The Rehearsal Transposed, in which he very successfully ridiculed Dr. Parker.

They ridiculed the presumption of these ignorant and fanatical legislators, ascribed to them the design of substituting the law of Moses for the law of the land, and conjured the people to unite in defence of their own "birthright and inheritance," for the preservation of which so many miseries had been endured, so much blood had been shed.

"Mr. somewhat ridicules my plan of reading Milton with a view to his astronomy, but I have found it very pleasant, and have certainly a juster idea of Milton's variety of greatness than I had before.