Yet I wonder at their laxity in this.

'Thither' must mean 'to Adonais': a laxity of expression.

Laxity which leaves us to quarrel and torment each other, tenderness which encourages disorder and disobedience till they must be put down perforce, is ultimate unkindness.

Such an affliction as flatfoot, dependent upon a laxity of the ligaments in one who seems perfectly healthy and strong, may lead the analyst back to a thymus-centered personality.

To ladies who never opened their best rooms save to dust and air them on days when company was expected, and who would as soon have lounged in them informally as they would have desecrated a church, this laxity was heinous.

See ante, iii 198, note 1. 'Such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that the inquirer is kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of intellectual retrogradation knows less as he hears more.'

The Lady Marina was a guest in the Ducal Palace, detained under surveillance, yet treated with much honor; her friends might see her in the presence of the ducal guards who watched within the doors of her sumptuous chambers, but she was not free to go to her own, who had guarded her with such laxity that in striving to reach the court of the enemy she had imperiled the dignity of the Republic by her silent censure.

Softness N. softness, pliableness &c adj.; flexibility; pliancy, pliability; sequacity^, malleability; ductility, tractility^; extendibility, extensibility; plasticity; inelasticity, flaccidity, laxity.

We were to cross part of Skie on horseback; a mode of travelling very uncomfortable, for the road is so narrow, where any road can be found, that only one can go, and so craggy, that the attention can never be remitted; it allows, therefore, neither the gaiety of conversation, nor the laxity of solitude; nor has it, in itself, the amusement of much variety, as it affords only all the possible transpositions of bog, rock, and rivulet.

But the fact that we are tired of conventional laxity is no good reason for rushing to the other extreme of conventional and hampering austerity.

As it is, the laxity of these repels many a thoughtful mind quite as firmly convinced as they can be of the necessity of free enquiry and quite as anxious to reconcile the different sides of knowledge.

He inherited some of the moral laxity which Johnson chose to pardon in his ancestor.

Nor is she even a Pamela adapted and refined to modern notions; for though the story is conducted without those derelictions of decorum which we are to believe had their excuse in the manners of Richardson's time, yet it stamped with a coarseness of language and laxity of tone which have certainly no excuse in ours.

Or Wordsworthwith his eternalHere we go up, and up, and up, and here we go down, down, and here we go roundabout, roundabout!Look at the nerveless laxity of his Excursion!What interminable prosing!

Buddhist thought entered the field of justice: in Sung time we hear complaints that judges did not apply the laws and showed laxity, because they hoped to gain religious merit by sparing the lives of criminals.

And is there not great danger, in encouraging the young and inexperienced to suppose that the maintenance of any of our testimonies may be neglected, except when we feel a Divine intimation to uphold them, and may it not open the door to great laxity in our practice?

Their control should be uniform and consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity.

He is, to judge from his book, a good man, one who is not so willing as the majority of us, to let his philanthropy remain "Like unscour'd armour, hung by the wall;" and we hope the forcible positions of the truths he has here inculcated, will bestir others from their laxity.

We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare, with great pride, the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity.

* LAXITY IN QUOTATIONS.

Among the many privileges which I propose to claim as a set-off for what are called advancing years is a greater laxity in quotation.

It is doubtless the increasing Chamber practice of the judges which has occasioned this regrettable laxity.

VESTA, the Roman goddess of the hearth, identified with the Greek Hestia; was the guardian of domestic life and had a shrine in every household; had a temple in Rome in which a heaven-kindled fire was kept constantly burning and guarded by first four then six virgins called Vestals, whose persons were held sacred as well as their office, since any laxity in its discharge might be disastrous to the city.

Such was the laxity of the times on the subject of injustice to the people of this hemisphere, that the predatory expeditions of Drake and others against the wealthy occupants of the more southern countries, seem to have left no spots on their escutcheons; and the honors and favors of Queen Elizabeth had been liberally extended to men who would now be deemed freebooters.

Covetousness, the love of pleasure, injustice to the poor, treachery and deceit and moral laxity are among his favourite themes.