Word: aristocratic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Long before Italians ever heard the name of Benito Mussolini, they had begun to know Benedetto Croce. He was the wealthy aristocrat with the bristly hair who was to become not only Italy's most noted 20th Century philosopher, but a senator and a cabinet minister as well...
...Aristocrat in Politics. A witness of this riot was a tall, fair-haired young lawyer who, it was generally agreed, had a brilliant career before him. Wendell Phillips, shocked by the mob violence, became interested in Garrison's movement. His family thought him mad. When he threw himself into the abolition crusade they tried to have him committed as a lunatic...
Phillips' career testified to the truth of Dostoevsky's remark that "an aristocrat is irresistible when he goes in for democracy." He risked his life repeatedly, faced mobs with the hauteur of a nobleman awaiting the guillotine, and dissipated his fortune in charities. In an age of florid oratory he stirred his listeners with a lean, precise, deadly effective style. When Emerson heard him, he felt as if "the whole air was full of splendors." A Virginia paper called him "an infernal machine set to music...