Crabb Robinson recorded in his diary that Lamb had the "finest collection of shabby books" he ever saw; "such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is, I think, nowhere to be found."

How the farmers swore and the labourers chuckled when he took all the cottages into his own hands and rebuilt them, set up a first-rate industrial school, gave every man a pig and a garden, and broke up all the commons 'to thin the labour-market.'

It was used for the purpose of selling thoroughbreds and other horses of a first-rate order, until the expiration of the lease, which was, I think, in 1865.

" At this instant, Beulah and Maud Willoughby, (for so the adopted child was called as well as the real), entered the room, having taken the lodgings of their parents, in a morning walk, on which they were regularly sent by the mistress of the boarding-school, in which they were receiving what was then thought to be a first-rate American female education.

Josephine insisted on a romantic attachment, and pursued a visionary spouse with all the ardor and obstinacy of first-rate stupidity.

Recently it has been put in first-rate condition, for organs, like the players of them, get worse for wear, by T. H. and W. P. Miller, Esqrs.

I shall take her to Cairo, where second-rate Englishmen and first-rate Americans abound.

Next comes the territorial force with a maximum annual training of a fortnight in camp, preceded by ten to twenty lessons and officered by men whose professional training, though it far exceeds that of the rank and file, falls yet very much short of that given to the professional officers of a first-rate continental army.

And these sports, why, they like 'em, sir; and a man must keep sober if he's to win a prizeyou understand, sir?' 'Yes, Duncan, I understand,' I said; 'it's first-rate for these young lads, and for the old lads too, for the matter of that.

Many of these have the appearance of having been originally recitati, and their amusement must have depended chiefly on the face and manner of the singerHook himself; but in some he displayed that vice of rhyming which has often made nonsense go down, and which is tolerable only when introduced in the satire of a 'Don Juan' or the first-rate mimicry of 'Rejected Addresses.'

It has been suggested to publish a volume periodically, and let this come out as No. 1; so as to establish a journal of general foreign politics, for which there are ample means of first-rate information.

"Now, gentlemen, let me sell you Georgea first-rate bricklayerexcellent poseur de briquesbears an excellent characteronly he absconded once from his master for a few days.

I am very well content with my abode at the Weisser Wolf, tho' it is not a first-rate hotel.

But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion.

Then came another letter; he was expecting something to turn up very shortly, a first-rate post; but meantime, he could not live on nothing at all, and when they sent him a hundred-Krone note from home, he wrote back to say it was just enough to pay off some small debts he had....

The actual poetic value of his verses is not first-rate by any means.

He is a first-rate fellow, my College chum.

He's just got his new ones, and he gets about first-rate.

What a goodly cheery thing is hospitality, when it flows pure from a warm heart; nor does it lose aught in my estimation when viewed through the medium of a first-rate cellar and the social "Havana.

" "What sort of a man was he?" demanded five or six anxious voices, in a breath; among which the tones of Desire, however, maintained their supremacy rising above those of all the others, like the strains of a first-rate artist flourishing a quaver above the more modest thrills of the rest of the troupe.

She has an inquiring mind, and though before coming here she had received no religious instruction and had not even a Bible, she is now constantly asking me questions which prove her to be a first-rate thinker and reasoner.

"Please, Mrs. Lee, mother sends her compliments, and a pot of first-rate quince preserves," said one.

"Every one of us is a first-rate talkerand that's all the energy I've gotenergy to wag my tongue.

In short, the case stood thus:If it was not too soon 1800 years ago to stand in daily expectation of it, it is not too soon now: to say that it is too late, is not merely to impute error to the apostles, on a matter which they made of first-rate moral importance, but is to say, that those whom Peter calls "ungodly scoffers, walking after their own lusts"were right, and he was wrong, on the very point for which he thus vituperated them.

It was thus fitting that he should make an Empress of a scullery-maid, who, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had no vestige of beauty to commend her to his favour, and whose chief attractions in his eyes were that she had a coarse tongue and was a "first-rate toper.