The rhyme has entailed the use of the word 'stain,' which is otherwise a little arbitrary in this connexion.

But, more than that, my conscience would not permit me to call on the law to punish a household treason, where household authority is so strong and so arbitrary as here.

MANUFACTURES.The distinction between hair and wool is rather arbitrary than natural, consisting in the greater or less degrees of fineness, softness and pliability of the fibres.

Had all, however, who delight in symbols, a power, like George Herbert's, of setting even within the horn-lanterns of the more arbitrary of them, such a light of poetry and devotion that their dull sides vanish in its piercing shine, and we forget the symbol utterly in the truth which it cannot obscure, then indeed our part would be to take and be thankful.

In his memorable quarrel with Rome he appeared to the least advantage,at first rigid, severe, and arbitrary with the Catholic clergy, even to persecution, driving away the Jesuits (1872), shutting up schools and churches, imprisoning and fining ecclesiastical dignitaries, intolerant in some cases as the Inquisition itself.

Time, we know, smooths the surface or rounds off the corners of past events that seemed rather arbitrary at the time of their occurrence.

There was a numerous concourse of the commons also: but they by no means looked on Quinctius with the same satisfaction, as they considered both that he was vested with excessive authority, and was likely to prove still more arbitrary by the exercise of that same authority.

He had made powerful enemies, especially in Jackson and his partisans, and politicians dreaded his ascendency, and feared that as President he would be dictatorial, though not perhaps arbitrary like Jackson.