Long before the final quarrel (Hudge v. Gudge and Another), Gudge has succeeded in persuading himself that slums and stinks are really very nice things; that the habit of sleeping fourteen in a room is what has made our England great; and that the smell of open drains is absolutely essential to the rearing of a viking breed.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Probably the former was written out from memory alone, while the Petyt, if not a transcript direct from the original is, at any rate, very near to it.
— from The Choise of Valentines; Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo by Thomas Nash

Still experience seems to show that a state at any rate very nearly approximating to it is even common: and we certainly experience continual transi
— from The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick

In the same manner, and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania borrowed the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty-four pieces of gold 50 on the credit of the holy crown: they failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their impatient creditors, on condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute property, if it were not redeemed within a short and definite term.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

A Mississippi of horses and rich vehicles, not by dozens and scores, but hundreds and thousands—the broad avenue filled and cramm'd with them—a moving, sparkling, hurrying crush, for more than two miles.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

"We crawled past Mudie's, and there a tall woman with five or six yellow-labelled books hailed my cab, and I sprang out just in time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

erved the memory of the ambition and revenge (Villehardouin, No. 136) of the count of St. Giles.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

CHAPTER LXIII Steel and Iron George's Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain hand with which he guides his horse.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

He did not succeed in securing an army of any real value nor in getting an expenditure for triremes, because the honors accorded to his prowess had made him an object of jealousy.
— from Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek during the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio Cocceianus

Moreover, where stone implements are found they are, as a rule, very near, even actually on, the surface of the earth; nothing occurs resembling the regular stratification of Europe, and consequently no argument based on geological grounds is possible.
— from The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg

Child as I was, the idea took root, and I was able to conquer my fears of bulls or savage dogs, or mysterious noises at night, or at any rate very nearly so.”
— from Golden Face: A Tale of the Wild West by Bertram Mitford

"Silence, slaves!" cried a rough voice near by, and the next instant the burly form of a keeper stood between them.
— from The Boy Nihilist or, Young America in Russia by Allan Arnold

Au reste vouz n'avez besoin d'autre recommendation près de ces Messieurs que votre propre mérite, la nation Corse etant naturellement si accueillante et si hospitaliére, que tous les etrangers y sont bien venus et caressés.
— from Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica by James Boswell

Gemmules small (0.2 × 0.18 mm.), as a rule very numerous and scattered throughout the sponge, flask-shaped, clothed when mature with a thin microcell coat in which the birotulates are arranged with overlapping rotulæ, their outer rotulæ level with the surface; foraminal aperture circular, situated on an eminence.
— from Freshwater Sponges, Hydroids & Polyzoa by Nelson Annandale

If he be spared to complete it, future generations will see the Alhambra restored very nearly to its pristine beauty.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867 by Various

minor with even cap with both gills and ring very narrow.
— from Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc. by Charles McIlvaine

It rose again gradually, as the hole was choked with stones, and again fell; but presently sprang out almost to its first elevation (the water being by this time in much less body), and retained very nearly the form it had yesterday, until I got tired of looking at it, and went down to the little châlet, and sat down before its door.
— from Modern Painters, Volume 4 (of 5) by John Ruskin

Madame de Fischtaminel, whom Madame de ——- has made her friend (nearly all pious women patronize a woman who is considered worldly, on the pretext of converting her),—Madame de Fischtaminel asserts that these qualities, in this Caroline of the Pious Sort, are a victory of religion over a rather violent natural temper.
— from Analytical Studies by Honoré de Balzac