He got the Galoshes, and he was soon below in a little
duodecimo garden, where between two immense walls a plumtree and an apple-tree were standing.
Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family, in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome
duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto:--"Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset," and Sir Walter's handwriting again in this finale:--
They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of setting up a "Little Icaria" --
duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem -- and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois.
Miss Morland has been talking of nothing more dreadful than a new publication which is shortly to come out, in three
duodecimo volumes, two hundred and seventy-six pages in each, with a frontispiece to the first, of two tombstones and a lantern -- do you understand?
A light bookcase contained
duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf, completing the furniture.
But the creatures set down above as
Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition of what a whale is --i.
There were huge, ponderous folios, and quartos, and little
duodecimos, in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and all other languages that either originated at the confusion of Babel or have since come into use.
Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered
duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr.
During the three months voyage to India he 'devoured' and in many cases copiously annotated a vast number of books in 'Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, and English; folios, quartos, octavos, and
duodecimos.' Under the pressure of actual necessity he now mastered the law, and the most important parts of the astonishing mass of work that he performed during his three and a half years in India consisted in redrafting the penal code and in helping to organize education.
But the story would include a chain of events extending over the better part of two centuries, and, written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill a bigger folio volume, or a longer series of
duodecimos, than could prudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during a similar period.
But the most interesting object of all was, perhaps, the open scrapbook, displayed in the midst of some theatrical
duodecimos that were strewn upon the table; and pasted into which scrapbook were various critical notices of Miss Snevellicci's acting, extracted from different provincial journals, together with one poetic address in her honour, commencing--