"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain speech.

Less abstract, more nearly an utterance of personal feeling, was Joseph Warton's Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature, historically a remarkable poem, which, through its expression of the author's tastes and preferences, indicated briefly some of the most important touchstones of the sentimentalism (videlicet, "romanticism") of the future.

The way in which the most important muftî places are filled and above all the position which the head-muftî of the Turkish Empire, the Sheikh-ul-Islâm, holds at any particular period, may well serve as a touchstone of the influence of the canonists on public life.

The Fainalls, etc. Fainall in Congreve's "Way of the World," Mirabel in Farquhar's "Inconstant," Dorimant in Etheredge's "Man of Mode," and Lady Touchstone in Congreve's "Double Dealer.

Certainly his expectations had not been very exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school; or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour here and there.

The vain incapacity of a self-constituted critic will make him regard his poorest fancy as an emendation; seldom has he the insight of Touchstone to recognize, or his modesty to acknowledge, that although his own, it is none the less an ill-favoured thing.

Shakespeare found suggestions for As You Like It in Thomas Lodge's contemporary novel Rosalynde, but Touchstone and Adam are original creations.

There is no harm here, but the harm comes, and the odium also, and justly, when an aristocratic government degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege without responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the touchstones to recognition and acceptance.

We shall probably not arrive at any definition which can be applied as an infallible touchstone to distinguish the dramatic from the undramatic.

The third law, the law of opinion or reputation, called also philosophical, coincides on the whole, though not throughout, with the first, the divine law of nature, which is best expressed in Christianity, and which is the true touchstone of the moral character of actions.

They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

The sternest of all touchstones of the genuineness of our better feelings is the fashion in which they stand the wear of years.

You have proved yourself to be pure refined gold when tried by the black touchstone of death.

LOVE'S TOUCHSTONE XVII.

It was cunningly interwoven with the texture of the play, sometimes loosely, and by way of variety or relief, as in the episode of Touchstone and Audrey, in As You Like It; sometimes closely, as in the case of Dogberry and Verges, in Much Ado about Nothing, where the blundering of the watch is made to bring about the denouement of the main action.

The Fool in Lear, Touchstone in As You Like It, and Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, are a sort of parody of the function of the Greek chorus, commenting the action of the drama with scraps of bitter, or half-crazy, philosophy, and wonderful gleams of insight into the depths of man's nature.

There is no way of attaining a vital catholic taste in literature so good as to begin by mastering some difficult beautiful classic, by devoting ourselves in the ardent receptive period of youth to one or two masterpieces which will serve as touchstones for us in all our subsequent reading.

J.M. Barrie long ago made a criticism on Rudyard Kipling which has always stayed by me as one of the most useful of critical touchstones.

So, Touchstone's philosophy hath legal warrant: "Is the single man blessed?

to, ii. 136, n. 6; style, i. 439; Swift's style, ii. 191, n. 3; Tory by chance, iv. 194; v. 272; Toryism, growth of his, iv. 194, n. 1; touchstones of party-men, i. 354, n. 1; tragedy, anecdote of a, iii. 238, n. 2; Treatise of Human Nature, i. 127, n. 1; Tytler, attacked by, v. 274; 'Voltaire, an echo of,' ii. 53; mentioned, ii. 160, n. 2.

"I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you use as touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham.

Florence Talpey Williams (W); 2Apr57; R189004. Touchstone.

This gift has been regarded as a kind of side show, something for occasional exhibition; wherein it is the touchstone, it is the magic thing, it is that by which the Negro can bridge all chasms.

We may seek it in the fanciful mingling of ideals and idealizationsof courtly masking, of the conventional naturalism of polished dreamers, and of a rusticity more genuine at once and more sympathetic than that of Lorenzo, all of which act by their very natures as touchstones to one another.

In money matters (this is the weakest side of a Tartar) a ducat is the touchstone of his fidelity; and it is difficult to imagine the extent of their greediness for profit!