It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion; What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion! FROM EPISTLE TO J. LAPRAIK I am nae poet, in a sense, But just a rhymer like by chance, An' hae to learning nae pretence; Yet what the matter?

While they are in this condition those who stand on neutral ground aggravate the trouble, irritating them still more by bearing reports to and fro under the pretence of devotion.

Money is false and light unless it be Bought by a man's own worthy qualities; And blood is such that its corrupt disease And ignorant pretence are foul to see.

To sea, my lord; seek your warlike sire: Send back this peasant with your full pretence, And think already that our pains have end, Since Cinna, with his followers, is your friend.

The man hath haste; good soldiers, take him hence: It would be good to alter his pretence.

God grant my long delay procures no harm, Nor this my tarrying frustrate my pretence.

It was my will an hour ago and more, As was my promise, for to make return; But other business hind'red my pretence.

" The case really is, the Jews are literally being robbed every day by the Moors one way or the other, and, if the people do not rob them, the constituted authorities continue to make exactions under every pretence.

Among the latter was the boat of the wine-seller, which departed from the Piazzetta, containing a stock of his merchandise, with Annina, under the pretence of making his profit out of the present turbulent temper of their ordinary customers.

All the finer sensibilities of character are deadened; all pride of personal appearance, all nice self-respect and proper regard for the good opinion of others, every sense of decorum, and at last every pretence of decency.

A waiter handed me the menu, and after I had ordered a light dinner I spread out La Vie Parisienne on the table, and bending over it made a pretence of admiring its drawings.

After that it had been impossible for him to keep up the pretence of avoiding her, and a sort of intimacy had continued, which neither of them quite admitted to be love, while neither would have called it mere friendship.

Every minister, servant, or vassal of the emperor, who received any disgust, covered his rebellion under the pretence of principle; and even the mother of this monarch, forgetting all the ties of nature, was seduced to countenance the insolence of his enemies.

Some writers have been desirous of refusing to this prince the title of Conqueror, in the sense which that term commonly bears; and, on pretence that the word is sometimes in old books applied to such as make an acquisition of territory by any means, they are willing to reject William's title, by right of war, to the crown of England.

But four years later than this date an event took place so fatal to national confidence that its impressions are scarcely yet effacedthis was the torturing and execution of several Englishmen in the island of Amboyna, on pretence of an unproved plot, of which every probability leads to the belief that they were wholly innocent.

The parliament of England soon found a pretext in an outrageous measure, under pretence of providing for the interests of commerce.

The hooting guest His self-importance thus express'd: 'Reason in man is mere pretence: How weak, how shallow is his sense!

His estate is too narrow for his mind, and therefore he is fain to make himself room in others' affairs, yet ever in pretence of love.

April 2.] pretence that to plead was to betray the liberties of Englishmen, stood mute; and his silence, according to a recent act, was taken for a confession of guilt.

If, on the one hand, the duke of York was repulsed with loss in his attempt to storm by night the works at Mardyke; on the other, the Marshal D'Aumont was made prisoner with fifteen hundred men by the Spanish governor of Ostend, who, under the pretence of delivering up the place, had decoyed him within the fortifications.

A loquacious personhe is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at noveltyonce assured me that he could never reflect without swelling on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean.

Ships festooned and hung with pennants, firing of cannon, illuminations, beating of drums and blowing of trumpets, shouting and applaudingthese are all the outward sign, the pretence and suggestion,as it were the hieroglyphic,of joy: but just there, joy is, as a rule, not to be found; it is the only guest who has declined to be present at the festival.

The chiming of bells, ecclesiastical millinery, attitudes of devotion, insane anticsthese are the pretence, the false show of piety.

As this hope was futile, there was no reason, at subsequent performances, to keep up the pretence of preserving a secret which was probably known, as a matter of fact, to most of the audience, and which was worthless when revealed.

One seems to strike her,it is mere pretence, however,and she falls.

* * Few to good-breeding make a just pretense; Good-breeding is the blossom of good-sense; The last result of an accomplished mind, With outward grace, the body's virtue, joined.

The wooden pretense of their attitude set Rudolph, for an instant, to laughing silently and bitterly.

It belonged to the Nevski he was sure; for one reason or another she had but made pretense of going to sea, and, instead, had come hereto wait.

She had not even slackened long enough to make the usual futile pretense of extending assistance to the unfortunate occupant, or occupants.

There was a moment's delay at the door, each hanging back under pretense of working at the sled.

(e) July 5, approach to and pretense to enter the box next to the right end (right one), and then choice of some other box.

It is an agreeable circumstance in this adjustment that the terms are in conformity with the previously ascertained views of the claimants themselves, thus removing all pretense for a future agitation of the subject in any form.

They have carried them off under pretense of legal adjudication, but not daring to approach a court of justice, they have plundered and sunk them by the way or in obscure places where no evidence could arise against them, maltreated the crews, and abandoned them in boats in the open sea or on desert shores without food or covering.

For centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep; then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and surrendered without a pretense of resistance.

Then followed the embargo, by which our vessels were detained in Bordeaux; the seizure of British goods on board of our ships, and of the property of American citizens under the pretense that it belonged to English subjects, and the imprisonment of American citizens captured on the high seas.

It is not, then, because of any failure to use all available means, diplomatic and military, to obtain reparation that liability for private claims can have been incurred by the United States, and if there is any pretense for such liability it must flow from the action, not from the neglect, of the United States.

After this, receiving a bill for the establishment of a ferry at the town of Kickapoo, the governor refused to sign it, and by special message assigned for reason of refusal not anything objectionable in the bill itself nor any pretense of the illegality or incompetency of the assembly as such, but only the fact that the assembly had by its act transferred the seat of government temporarily from Pawnee City to the Shawnee Mission.

Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense to distinction without nor to luxury within.

Under this pretense they stopped three days, feigning great annoyance at the delay.

These, quick to catch any slackening in the reins of the governing power which controlled their lives, dropped back into unreadiness and pretense more and more each hour.

But this pretense enabled her to justify herself for long mornings and afternoons at the Country Club with Henrietta.

This time the old man feigned no pounding of the boy's backmade no pretense that he did not hug him.

On the 4th of July, 1859, John Brown, under an assumed name, with two sons and another follower, appeared near Harper's Ferry, and soon after rented the Kennedy Farm, in Maryland, five miles from town, where he made a pretense of cattle-dealing and mining; but in reality collected secretly his rifles, revolvers, ammunition, pikes, blankets, tents, and miscellaneous articles for a campaign.

That a United States Senator, a Secretary of War, an Assistant Secretary of State, and no doubt sundry minor functionaries, were already then, from six to eight weeks before any pretense of secession, with, "malice aforethought" organizing armed resistance to the Constitution and laws they had sworn to support, stands forth in the following correspondence too plainly to be misunderstood.

The rebellion was indeed abandoned upon pretense of compromise; but had a conflict occurred at that time the flag of the Union would probably not have been the first to be lowered in defeat.

It may be, and I apprehend it will be, Mr. President, that the attempt to coerce South Carolina will be made under the pretense of protecting the property of the United States within the limits of South Carolina.

Can a classwhatever its pretense to culture may becan a class, that, in story and picture and music and play, counts greatest in art those who most effectively arouse the basest passions of which the human being is capable, be rightly judged sane?

" The Supreme Court of the State of Illinois decided that the American Constitution was never intended to shield manufacturers in their willingness to poison women under pretense of giving them work.

But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him but shames him not.

" "They are especially alike in their vile pretense of being dissimilar and enemies.