Of course, the wretched sufferer’s temper was not improved by this calamity—in fact, I suspect it was well nigh insupportable, though his kind nurse did not complain; but she said she had been obliged at last to give her son in charge to Esther Hargrave, as her presence was so constantly required in the sick-room that she could not possibly attend to him herself; and though the child had begged to be allowed to continue with her there, and to help her to nurse his papa, and though she had no doubt he would have been very good and quiet, she could not think of subjecting his young and tender feelings to the sight of so much suffering, or of allowing him to witness his father’s impatience, or hear the dreadful language he was wont to use in his paroxysms of pain or irritation.
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

He felt clearly, and suddenly realised that he might escape, but that he was by now utterly incapable of deciding whether he ought to make off before or after Shatov’s death; that he was simply a lifeless body, a crude inert mass; that he was being moved by an awful outside power; and that, though he had a passport to go abroad, that though he could run away from Shatov (otherwise what need was there of such haste?), yet he would run away, not from Shatov, not before his murder, but after it, and that that was determined, signed, and sealed.
— from The Possessed (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So was it with the Oxford six hundred years ago.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

The same may be said of the colour: white when newly taken from the head; yellow, like that lately in the Tower, of some hundred years' seniority; but whether or no it will soon turn black, as that of Plinie's description, let others decide.'
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

Not knowing how to make them, and having no academics to mislead them, the earliest sculptors of this period thought things out for themselves, and again produced works that were full of interest, so that in three or four generations they reached a perfection hardly if at all inferior to that of several hundred years earlier.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is the only Salopian house; yet be it known to thee, reader—if thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact—he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pavement.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

Some years ago a prominent professor of literature, ancient and modern, in a leading American university, hearing me say one day that Daphnis and Chloe was one of the most immoral stories ever written, asked in a tone of surprise: "Have you read it in the original?"
— from Primitive Love and Love-Stories by Henry T. Finck

"The house of Frezelière, which ascends," says Lord [Pg 276] Lovat, "in an uninterrupted line, and without any unequal alliance, to the year 1030, with its sixty-four quarterings in its armorial bearings, and all noble, its titles of seven hundred years standing in the Abbey of Nôtre Dame de Noyers in Touraine, and its many other circumstances of inherent dignity," was, as we have seen, derived from the same blood with the family of Frezel, or Fraser.
— from Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume II. by Thomson, A. T., Mrs.

Two days after their liberation one of the principal men of the place sent for them and employed them in digging the foundations for a fountain, and a deep trench of some hundred yards in length for the pipe for bringing water to it.
— from By England's Aid; Or, the Freeing of the Netherlands, 1585-1604 by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

The standard edition of Marco Polo is that of Sir Henry Yule (2 vols., 1871).
— from The American Nation: A History — Volume 1: European Background of American History, 1300-1600 by Edward Potts Cheyney

Then he said: "How he loves you, this offer shows: how you love him, your radiant eyes betray.
— from A Captive of the Roman Eagles by Felix Dahn

"'What sort of a chap are you?' asked Boots, 'and why in the world do you stand here holding your throat?' "'Oh!' said he, 'you must know I have got seven summers and fifteen winters inside me, so I've good need to hold my gullet, for if they all slipped out at once they'd freeze the whole world in a trice.'
— from Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

You have thought of something, have you?”
— from The River of Darkness; Or, Under Africa by William Murray Graydon