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Gradual   Listen
noun
Gradual  n.  
1.
(R. C. Ch.)
(a)
An antiphon or responsory after the epistle, in the Mass, which was sung on the steps, or while the deacon ascended the steps.
(b)
A service book containing the musical portions of the Mass.
2.
A series of steps. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gradual" Quotes from Famous Books



... was yet wholly to be done, and there was no prospect that she would give him the least encouragement in advance, if she did not utterly refuse him at the end. He saw that he must not count on an easy victory, but prepare for it by a slow and gradual approach. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... forty-six; has lately refused the fine Russian post of "Tutor to the Czarowitsh" (Czarowitsh Paul, poor little Boy of eight or nine, whom we, or Herr Busching for us, saw galloping about, not long since, "in his dressing-gown," under Panin's Tutorage); refuses now, in a delicate gradual manner, the fine Prussian post of Perpetual President, or Successor to Maupertuis;—definitely preferring his frugal pensions at Paris, and garret all his own there. Continues, especially after this two months' visit of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the chief factor in fixing the type, in the absence of selection and repression, the race appears doomed to remain at the dead level of mediocrity. The tremendous significance of this fact is that the welfare of the race—the gradual substitution of a superior for the present mediocre type—rests absolutely upon the willingness and ability of the superior class to do their full share in propagating ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... had the African hills, illuminated by the moon. Gibraltar Rock at length became visible, but the town remained long hidden by a belt of haze, through which at length the brighter lamps struggled. It was like the gradual resolution of a nebula into stars. As the intervening depth became gradually less, the mist vanished more and more, and finally all the lamps shone through it They formed a bright foil to the sombre mass of rock above them. The sea was so calm and the scene so lovely that Mr. Huggins ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... soup was delicious and bravely swallowed another mouthful. In reality his thoughts were centred upon his companion, whose manners were giving evidence of a gradual and curious change. There was a decided difference in his demeanour, a difference that the secretary felt at first, rather than saw. Garvey's quiet self-possession was giving place to a degree of suppressed excitement that seemed so far ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... till you get the feel of it." Bland leaned to shout in his ear. "You can over-control, if yuh don't watch out. You feel my control. Don't try to do anything yourself at first. You'll come into it gradual." ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... near mid-day, and since the early morning there had been a gradual swarming of the people at every coign of vantage or disadvantage offered by the facades and roofs of the houses, and such spaces of the pavement as were free to the public. Men were seated on iron rods that made a sharp ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... assaults of the Norwegian and Danish rovers by whom those seas were infested, and by them it was repeatedly pillaged, its dwellings burned, and its peaceful inhabitants put to the sword. These unfavorable circumstances led to its gradual decline, which was expedited by the supervision of the Culdees throughout Scotland. Under the reign of Popery the island became the seat of a nunnery, the ruins of which are still seen. At the Reformation, the nuns were allowed to remain, living ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... of abolishing slavery was agitated in Virginia. Some of the most eloquent speeches were made in favor of the abolition movement that I ever read. The act providing for gradual abolition, was, I believe, lost by a single vote. I thought then that the result was an unfortunate one. But there is something to be said on both sides of the question. Had the act passed, the negroes would have been sent South, and we should have ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... villages in Canada are never selected at random. In England, a concurrence of circumstances has generally led to the gradual formation of hamlets, villages, and towns. In many instances, towns have grown up in barbarous ages around a place of refuge during war; around a fortalice or castle, and more frequently around the ford over a river, where the detention of travellers has led to the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... There is something in the modern conditions of labour which act magnetically upon American girls, impelling them to work not for bread alone, but for clothes and finery as well. Each class in modern society knows a menace to its homes: sport, college education, machinery—each is a factor in the gradual transformation of family life from a united domestic group to a collection of individuals with separate interests and ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... were sheltered from the direct violence of the gale by the canvas, the wind somehow managed to penetrate beneath, creating quite a formidable little scuffle there, and easily frustrating all our efforts to obtain a light. And very soon we had another annoyance to contend with, in the shape of a gradual accumulation of water in the boat, whether caused by a leak in the hull, or by the drainage of the water through the canvas we knew not; but it obliged us to have recourse to baling, which proved to be a singularly awkward operation in such cramped ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... alarming signs of nervous exhaustion. A summer in Peterboro brought no improvement. That autumn his ailment was seen to be far more deeply seated than had been supposed. There were indications of an obscure brain lesion, baffling but sinister. Then began a very gradual, progressive, and infinitely pathetic decline—the slow beginning of the end. He suffered little pain, and until the last months he preserved in an astonishing degree his physical well-being. It was clear almost from the start ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... protected by the configuration of the ground from enemy fire. An Italian drilling machine was at work here, operated by compressed air, drilling holes in the rock for the insertion of dynamite charges, and, by means of gradual blasting, gun pits and cartridge recesses and dug-outs were being created in the stubborn rock. Here a heavy thunderstorm broke and we sheltered in the Headquarters of an Italian Field Artillery Brigade, likewise blasted out ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... the queen, on hearing these dreadful songs, broke out into lamentations, cries, and loud threats against those who were destroying the soul of her child. Then a gradual paralysis crept over her heart, and when, on the 3d of August, she was taken from the Temple to the prison, the pale lips of the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... they had not been greatly superior, their surroundings would probably have made them stand relatively high in the scale of civilization. Southward from the Haidas, around Puget Sound and in Washington and Oregon, there was a gradual decline in civilization. The Chinook Indians of the lower Columbia, beyond the limits of the great northern archipelago, had large communal houses occupied by three or four families of twenty or more individuals. Their villages were ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... and varied distribution, in place and in climate, of the colonial or foreign posts occupied by the British army at the present time, and the extensive character of its operations abroad, during war and peace, for two centuries have occasioned a gradual elaboration of regulation in the transport system, to which, by the necessity of frequent changes of troops, are added an extent and a continuity of practical experience that has no parallel in other nations. These ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... Rose recalled that haymaking party and her gradual friendship, as the years went by, with the unsociable young Sales, a friendship which had been tacitly recognized by them both when, meeting her soon after his mother's death, he had laid his arms and head on the low stone wall by which they were standing, and wept without restraint. It ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... never shine upon the uncertain aspects of the future. The burning sense of regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization to a new world,—these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild companionship,—all ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... ostrich, so far as I can remember, in my Noah's ark, whence I derive my conviction that the species cannot have existed at the time of the Deluge, but has been evolved, in the succeeding centuries, by a gradual approach and assimilation of the several characteristics of the camel and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... way to Greenville, Georgia, to take charge of a school, he spent a few days in Charleston, South Carolina. This was in 1833, and the speech of Mr. Calhoun was in vindication of his course in the Senate in voting for the Compromise Bill of Mr. Clay, which provided for the gradual reduction of the tariff. The alleged injustice of the tariff law then in force had been the prime cause of the "nullification" excitement precipitated by South Carolina at that eventful period. The proclamation of President Jackson, it will be remembered, proved the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour, His silent, shining sorcery winged with power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep. But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... dwell on the early life and springtide of our Anglican Christian art, which in many points preceded and surpassed that of other northern nations, as we arose from that period commonly called the Dark Ages. Ours was a gradual development, adding to itself from outer sources new strength and grace. The better perfection of details and patterns was succeeded by Anglo-Saxon ingenuity and refinement in drawing the human figure. The art, which was native to England, may be judged by the rare examples ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... veil was cast over the infancy of the church, which, till the faith of the Christians was matured, and their numbers were multiplied, served to protect them not only from the malice but even from the knowledge of the Pagan world. The slow and gradual abolition of the Mosaic ceremonies afforded a safe and innocent disguise to the more early proselytes of the gospel. As they were, for the greater part, of the race of Abraham, they were distinguished by the peculiar mark ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the faithful river, only the ringing of ships' bells is heard, mysterious and muffled in the white vapour from London Bridge right down to the Nore, for miles and miles in a decrescendo tinkling, to where the estuary broadens out ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that city, and of the adjacent territory, was not very long ago among the most flourishing in Asia. But since the establishment of the British power it has wasted away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch that in the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in the whole country.[5] During this period of decay, about six hundred thousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen on their private ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... asylum of my declining years—a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... around at all." He meditatively stroked the knuckles of his right hand, which were badly bruised. "But the balance will be here to-morrow. These are just the mildest-mannered ones—the family men, you might say. The others will show up gradual. You see, if there had been any fighting going on here, I'd have got most of them right off the bat, but there wasn't any inducement to offer except hard work, so they wasn't quite ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... young man's amazement, Clark began to laugh, not riotously but with a gradual abandonment that shook his thickset body with successive convulsions of mirth. Presently ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... which God forbid, the unprincipled, reckless man, the ruffian you pretend to think him"—(here he spoke very slowly, as if he intended that every word which escaped him should be registered in my memory, while at the same time the expression of his countenance underwent a gradual but horrible change, and the eyes which he fixed upon me became so darkly vivid, that I almost lost sight of everything else)—"if he were what you have described him, do you think, child, he would ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... very large extent, if not entirely, cut him off from the general operation of that process of Natural Selection and survival of the fittest which up to their appearance had been the law of the living world. They justify the view that Man forms a new departure in the gradual unfolding of Nature's predestined scheme. Knowledge, reason, self-consciousness, will, are the attributes of Man."(1) It has been a slow and gradual growth, and not until within the past century has science organized knowledge—so searched out the secrets of Nature, as ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... satisfy the cravings of an immortal soul. She began to feel that she was formed for higher purposes than the gratification of self in its most refined and plausible form, and in 1806, we note the gradual unfolding of that change of view, which through the operation of the Holy Spirit, led her to the unreserved surrender of her whole being to the service of her Lord;—a surrender that in so remarkable a manner marked her unwavering path through the ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous

... picture them as aiding evolution in changing their body chemistry. For thousands, and thousands of years there must have gone on the gradual adaptation of blood stream and tissue to more and more volatile liquids, and to lower and still lower temperatures. This must have continued until Titan arrived at the condition which has now obtained for ages—a ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... below the spur broke in easy steps to the long and gradual slope that terminated above the cleaver of rock and, anxious to reach the unfortunate train, Banks hurried on. Marcia and Elizabeth trailed quickly after, but Mrs. Weatherbee remained seated on the shelving ledge at the foot of the crag. Frederic sank heavily ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... understood it is essential to remember that the power of magnification by means of which these experiments are conducted is quite apart from the faculty of functioning upon one or other of the planes. The latter is the result of a slow and gradual unfoldment of the Self, while the former is merely a special development of one of the many powers latent in man. All the planes are round us here, just as much as any other point in space, and if a man sharpens his sight until he can see their tiniest ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... Jane never quite remembered. It was one long succession of excitement and fun. The unpacking of boxes and crates, the piling up of rubbish, the finding of cherished belongings and putting them where they belonged in the new home, and the gradual change of the living room from a mess of boxes to a place that might some day really look like home, all seemed thrillingly interesting to a little girl who had ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson

... day the captain had the launch lowered; he went to reconnoitre the icebergs about the basin, of which the diameter was hardly more than two hundred yards. He noticed that by the gradual pressure of the ice, this space threatened to grow smaller; hence it became necessary to make a breach somewhere, to save the ship from being crushed; by the means he employed, it was easy to see that John ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... have reached what is called the questionless age. This is not an indifferent age—quite the opposite—but spontaneous questions are less frequent. Possibly they are crowded out by other interests, possibly bits of desultory information satisfy for the moment; and there is always the gradual adoption of reticence which takes ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... to foresee a gradual change in ecclesiastical government in the land, though it might not be just yet. Even the most zealous of the church party, when they were shrewd and far-sighted men, and not immediately concerned with the present struggle, ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... of each of these many-celled animal-forms, brings this histological process of development so clearly and evidently before our eyes that we can but directly infer from it the truth of the phylogenesis, or gradual historical evolution of the soul-organs. The association of cells and the division of labour among them are the modes by which, in the first instance, the compound many-celled organism has originated, historically, from the simple one-celled organism. ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... was now before us; but instead of being conducted into its smiling bosom by the gradual descent of the deep watercourse we had thus far pursued, all our labours now appeared to have been rendered futile by its abrupt termination. But, bitterly disappointed, we did not ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... finding that the gradual cessation of the chopping of the mill was on her account, and still more when she saw all the cider-makers' eyes fixed upon her except Mr. Springrove's, whose natural delicacy restrained him. She neared the plot of grass, but instead of advancing further, hesitated ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but with Giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one, and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. It is also visibly gradual. "His face was bound about with a napkin." The nearest Apostle has withdrawn the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to living ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... sorrow, as I hear, Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear To all that has delighted them before, And lets us be what we were once no more. No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, By what of old pleased us, and will again. No, 'tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl'd Until they crumble, or else grow like steel— Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring— Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power—this can avail, By drying up ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... of the earth's crust and get down to the older rocks, the higher vertebrate animals—the quadrupeds, birds, and fishes—cease to be found; beneath them you find only the invertebrate animals; and in the deepest and lowest rocks those remains become scantier and scantier, not in any very gradual progression, however, until, at length, in what are supposed to be the oldest rocks, the animal remains which are found are almost always confined to four forms—'Oldhamia', whose precise nature is not known, whether plant or animal; 'Lingula', ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... funny how you and me made all that money? It's a proof of what industry and economy can do when they can't help theirselfs. When Tug Patterson wished this range on me forty years ago I hated him sinful. Yet we run the ditches in from year to year, gradual, and here we are! ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... But the most prudent are liable to be thrown back by sickness, cutting them off from labour, and causing to them expense: and who but has observed how distress creeps upon multitudes without misconduct of their own; and merely from a gradual fall in the price of labour, without a correspondent one in the price of provisions; so that men who may have ventured upon the marriage state with a fair prospect of maintaining their families in comfort and happiness, see them reduced ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... reasons why some classes of plants cannot be well grown continuously in the same piece of ground. One is the depletion of available plant food, the other the formation of injurious compounds by the plants, or the gradual increase of fungoid, bacterial or animate pests in the soil, which finally become abundant enough to seriously hinder growth. Different plants take the plant foods, as nitrogen, lime, potash, phosphates, ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... keep their heads moderately cool in the prevailing excitement. The wave of a wand may seem to effect marvels, but long and silent causes prepare the way for each event. Now what had been going on for years in the Roman States was not the process of gradual growth, but the process of rapid disintegration. The Temporal Power of the Popes had died without anyone noticing it, and there was nothing left but a body in the course of dissolution. Every foreigner ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah all united in declaring that the realization of Jehovah's purpose in history depended primarily upon the response of his people. They regarded the kingdom of God as a natural growth. It represented the gradual transformation of the characters of men under the influence of God's truth and spirit working in their minds. They hoped and labored to see the nation Israel living in full accord with the demands of justice, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... Society, to which he largely contributed. He left an ample fortune to his sons, the eldest of whom was created Baron Shelburne. His will was a curious document, singularly illustrative of his character; containing a detail of the principal events of his life, and the gradual advancement of his fortune. His sentiments on pauperism are characteristic: "As for legacies for the poor," said he, "I am at a stand; as for beggars by trade and election, I give them nothing; as for impotents by the hand of God, the public ought to maintain them; as for ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... the steady rise of this tide of opposition in which Cromwell saw the doom of his cause. That it could permanently be upheld by the sword he knew to be impossible. What he had hoped for was the gradual winning of England to a sense of its worth. But every day the current of opinion ran more strongly against it. The army stood alone in its purpose. Papist and sceptic, mystic and ceremonialist, latitudinarian and Presbyterian, all were hostile. The very pressure of Cromwell's system gave birth to ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... differs from the Caucasian in exactly those respects which when exaggerated produce the negro. They were darker, had thicker lips, lower foreheads, larger heads, more advancing jaws, a flatter foot, and a more attenuated frame. It is quite conceivable that the negro type was produced by a gradual degeneration from that which we find in Egypt. It is even conceivable that the Egyptian type was produced by gradual advance and amelioration from ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... Narses, during all the two hundred years of Lombard assault and Byzantine neglect and exaction, the Pope alone, watchful and unceasingly active, carried out the fabric of the Roman hierarchy.[175] Its gradual increase, its springing up out of the dust of the old Roman State under the most difficult circumstances, will ever claim the astonishment of the after-world as the greatest transformation ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... here covered with stones to which myriads of shell-fish were attached. The sight of these suggested the idea to him that on the opposite side there might be clams in the sand. He walked over there in search of them. Here the slope was so gradual that extensive flats were left uncovered ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... awakened a blank, distressful sense of personal loss in his many admirers as he was suddenly called away from incomplete work and faithful friendship. Contemporary literature has not benefited by the removal of these two men and the gradual diminishing of the influence they so strongly exerted while yet they "stood up and spoke." The work of Charlotte Bronte—produced under a fervent admiration for "the satirist of Vanity Fair," whom she deemed "the first social regenerator of his day"—is, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... added to juvenile literature by SOPHIE MAY. They have received the unqualified praise of many of the most practical scholars of New England for their charming simplicity and purity of sentiment. The delightful story shows the gradual improvement of dear little Flaxie's character under the various disciplines of child-life and the sweet influence of a good and happy home. The ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May

... justify their husbands' confidence that they would never pay a percentage of profits on drop-cakes, instead of making their own, or get up a hollow show of liberal housekeeping by purchasing slices of collared meat when a neighbour came in for supper. But it is my task to narrate the gradual corruption of Grimworth manners from their primitive simplicity—a melancholy task, if it were not cheered by the prospect of the fine peripateia or downfall by which the progress of the corruption was ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... to the narrative. One exception must be made to this rule. In stories whose purpose is to portray a change of character, a long time is necessary; for the transformation is not usually the result of a day's experience, but a gradual process of years. "Silas Marner" and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" demand time to make naturally the great changes recounted. In general, however, the time ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... Shakespeare has been over-influenced by Daniel in the adoption of the quatrain and couplet structure. The whole period from Wyatt to Shakespeare shows a slow and steady mastery of the native over the foreign tendency. The change was not a sudden leap on the part of Daniel and Shakespeare, but a gradual growth occupying a half century and culminating in the English form. But if we should feel convinced that Shakespeare's memory was influenced by the sound of Daniel's cadences, this need not be considered discreditable to Shakespeare. Daniel's ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable

... agreeable, and crowning his audacity by asking permission to call. Fanny, who went along with them, tattled of this, and it produced a considerable sensation among the girls, for it was the wont of Newville wooers to make very gradual approaches. Laura warmly expressed to Madeline her indignation at the impudence of the proceeding, but that young lady was sure she did not see any harm in it; whereupon Laura lost her temper a little, and hinted that it might be more to her credit if she did. Madeline ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy

... and two deep, with holes at one end to let out the water. In this box the bags must be laid, one upon another, until it is full, upon which a plank must be laid, fitted to go within the box, and upon all a sufficient number of weights to squeeze out the water entirely by a constant and gradual pressure, so that the indigo may become a fine stiff paste; which is then taken out and cut into small pieces, each about two inches square, and laid out to dry. A house made of logs must be prepared on purpose ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... told Pep, the minister's son, after a long preparation by story and other gradual approach, and a Socratic questioning cleverly winning damning admissions from Pep, he looked up in his ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... were pursuing was a gradual long ascent, which brought them in sight of the sea and of a vast expanse of rolling heath and woodland. When they reached the top of the hill they breathed their horses a few minutes and admired the view, then struck into a bridle-track across the heath, and regained ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual hill, descended on the other side through the houses of a country village, and came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading to the Pentlands and my destination. I was some way up when the fog began to lighten; a little farther, and I stepped by degrees into a clear starry night, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... A slow and gradual rise is likely to prove a permanent one; but a rapid or sudden one merely temporary; or, as the Irishman said, "Up like a rocket, and ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... west to east amounting to roughly $80 billion. The former government of Chancellor Gerhard SCHROEDER launched a comprehensive set of reforms of labor market and welfare-related institutions. The current government of Chancellor Angela MERKEL has initiated other reform measures, such as a gradual increase in the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 67 and measures to increase female participation in the labor market. Germany's aging population, combined with high chronic unemployment, has pushed social security outlays to a level exceeding ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... thoughtfully down the slope in front. It was smooth and unbroken, a long, gradual descent, and he knew the farm stood on the flat at its foot. A straggling poplar bluff grew close up to the back of the buildings, but there was nothing that would cover the approach of the police, and he had no doubt that a watch was ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... constitution of our earth, which has been now investigated. This great body being formed of different mixed masses, having various degrees of hardness and solubility, proper soil for plants is supplied from the gradual resolution of the solid parts; fertility in those soils arises from the mixture of different elementary substances; and stability is procured to that vegetable world, by the induration of certain bodies, those rocks and stones, which protect the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... civilising power. At first there was a halt in this man's life. He cursed the North and he cursed the Negro. Then there was despair, almost utter hopelessness, over his weak and childlike condition. The temptation was to forget all in drink, and to this temptation there was a gradual yielding. With the loss of physical vigour came the loss of mental grasp and pride in surroundings. There was the falling off of a piece of plaster from the walls of the house which was not replaced, then another and still another. Gradually, the ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington

... ground, and these first attracted my attention. I did not notice in which generation the original colour began to change and to become uniform, but I have every reason to believe that the change was gradual. The flowers on the intercrossed plants were mostly of the same tint, but not nearly so uniform as those on the self-fertilised plants, and many of them were pale, approaching almost to white. The flowers ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... da Volterra, Stefano Fiorentino, the grandson of Giotto, Giottino, and Spinello Aretino, all of whom were painting about the middle of the fourteenth century in Giotto's manner but without his genius, or any true understanding of his art. The gradual passing of this derivative work, the prophecy of such painters as Masolino, Masaccio, and Fra Angelico may be found in the work of Orcagna, of Antonio Veneziano, and Starnina, and possibly too in the better-preserved paintings of Lorenzo Monaco of the order of S. Romuald ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... I had a long and interesting talk with John about the different forms of religious faith into which the gradual development of the human mind has successively expanded; each, of course, being the result of that very development, acting on the original necessity to believe in and worship and obey something higher and better than itself, implanted in our nature. It seems strange ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... on the beach watched these proceedings with a gradual diminution of their alarm, with the admiration that Honey in the water always excited, with the amusement that Lulu's fearless ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... and ascertain as he went along the relation that each portion bore to the other. When, therefore, in 1913, the president of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association asked him to become a member of its Board of Directors, his acceptance was a natural step in the gradual development of his interest in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... Then came gradual changes in the government; they culminated in 1846 when Captain Mervin, at the head of two hundred and fifty men, raised the Stars and Stripes over Monterey, and a proclamation was read declaring California a portion of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... holding a cigar in your mouth when it requires no effort at all to smoke a cigarette? Why, I got it all figured out scientifically. With the same amount of energy you expend in smokin' one cigar you could smoke between thirty and forty cigarettes, and being sort of gradual, you wouldn't begin to feel half as fatigued ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... imperial delegates, Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus, and the freedom and purity of the Antonines were incrusted with the coarser materials of a degenerate age. The same volume which introduced the youth of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus to the gradual study of the Code and Pandects is still precious to the historian, the philosopher, and the magistrate. The Institutes of Justinian are divided into four books: they proceed, with no contemptible method, from (1), Persons, to (2) Things, and from things to (3) Actions; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the ancient burying ground was on the north end of the island, and so Braxton Wyatt and Yellow Panther led the way to the south end, intending to make a gradual ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... blade is generally sharp and pointed, acute or acuminate, or sometimes it may be drawn to a very fine point by gradual tapering. Blunt or obtuse tips are not altogether absent, but it is not a common feature. The leaf-blades in Panicum colonum and in some species of Andropogon are rounded ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... to its original condition, the current of action will gradually disappear.[3] The movement of the galvanometer needle during excitation of the tissue thus indicates a molecular upset by the stimulus; and the gradual creeping back of the galvanometer deflection exhibits ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... you never would love me, I had to cease striving for it, and give up the hope of seeing, perhaps, one day my heart awake in love for you, and the wondrous flower of a tenderness after marriage unfold itself, the gradual budding of which had been denied to us by the arbitrary action of our parents, who had not consulted our wishes, but only our fortunes. I became your wife with the full conviction that I should have to lead a life cold, dreary, and devoid of love, and that I could not be for you but an ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... as she lay at the bottom of the car, and covered her with wrappings. Although it still wanted some hours of the time fixed for my ascent, I could not trust myself one moment from the car, so I got into it at once, and watched the gradual inflation of the balloon. Luggage I had none, save the provisions hidden in the ballast bags, the books of mythology, and the treatises on the machines, with my own ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... so, Fiesco? You, who have watched the soul-convulsing game, which some call pastime? Have you not seen the sly deceiver, Fortune, how she leads on her votary with gradual favors, till, heated with success, he rushes headlong and stakes his all upon a single cast? Then in the decisive moment she forsakes him, a victim of his rashness—and stood you then unmoved? Oh, my husband, think not that thou hast but to show thyself among the people to be adored. 'Tis no slight ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... self-accusation, of self-torment! Her plans once fixed she proceeded to carry them out with unswerving ease and spontaneity. She refused to hurry, her only criterion of personal conduct being success; and success, so she believed, if sound, being a plant of gradual growth. Therefore she gave both herself and others time. Once fairly in the saddle, she never ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... first place, I believe that an advance in our knowledge of the sexual life of the child will indirectly enrich our knowledge also of the sexual life of the adult. In order to understand the sexual life, the gradual development of that life must be recognised, and for this purpose it is essential that we should study the sexual life of the child. Moreover, the modern movement in favour of the sexual enlightenment of young ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... magnificent trees, sitting on the ground, or standing in groups beneath the tall arches made by the overlapping boughs; the level rays of the declining sun, bringing out, in broad relief, their grotesque varieties of costume; the gradual creeping on of the sobering twilight; the alternating expressions of emotions visible on the countenances of the listeners, made the scene striking ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... tidal wave of improvements and discoveries which had burst upon the world at the end of the nineteenth century there had been a gradual subsidence of the waters of human progress, and year by year they sank lower and lower, until, when the twentieth century was yet young, it was a common thing to say that the human race seemed to have gone backward fifty or even a ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... have quoted points out the relevancy, to the question at issue, of the principle of degeneration and gradual decay in historical organisms or institutions. "Our scientists who bother themselves and others about the descent of man have favored with a keen interest the Bushmen of Australia and other types of savage humanity, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... and the close relationship of the fossils in closely consecutive formations and within the same country; extinct marsupials having preceded living marsupials in Australia, and armadillo-like animals having preceded and generated armadilloes in South America,—and many other phenomena, such as the gradual extinction of old forms and their gradual replacement by new forms better fitted for their new conditions in the struggle for life. When the advocate of Heterogeny can thus connect large classes of facts, and not until then, he will have respectful and patient listeners.") ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... Edgeware Road; the gradual emergence from the brick and mortar of London being marked as well by the telling out of passengers as by the increasing distances between the houses. First, it is all close huddle with both. Austere iron railings guard the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... watched the gradual decay of the country, he said. Its burden of taxation grew greater each year. The masses sweated and toiled, to carry on their backs the dead weight of the aristocracy and the throne. The iron hand of the Chancellor held everything; an old King who would die, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... which the mind unhindered feeds upon its own delusions, was the assignable cause of her gradual mental disruption ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... institutions and more conservative management upon the part of everyone, and this is a quality we need. It will not long depress our wonderful spirit of initiative. The country's resources have not been cut down nor injured by financial distrust. A gradual recovery will only tend to make the future all the more secure, and patience is a virtue in business affairs as ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... of all the sure depressing influences on exchange, none is more sure than a rise in the money market. More gradual usually than a decline caused by such an influence as the sale of American bonds abroad, the influence of a rising level of money rates is nevertheless far ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher

... greatest known rivers, each of which drained a vast range of territory. This narrative reveals the gradual dawning upon Columbus of the fact that he had discovered a hitherto unknown continental mass. In his letter to the sovereigns his conviction is settled and his efforts to adjust it with previous knowledge and the geographical traditions of the ages are most ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... variation in the susceptibility to infection in the different races of man. If a race be confined to one habitat with close intercourse between the people, such a race may acquire a high degree of immunity to local diseases by a gradual weeding out of the individuals who are most susceptible. A degree of comparative harmony may be gradually established between host and parasite, as is the case in wild animals. These have few diseases, the weak die, the resistant ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... right. 'Change,' says Hooker, 'is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.' There is in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction. Much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or copy that which every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and imitate those changes, which will again be changed, while imitation is employed ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... is very gradual, and you need have no fear of getting out of your depth suddenly. We will be ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... therefore, though they are thoroughly oceanic in character, especially on the north, are not oceanic in depth; we have to pass far beyond Scilly to cross the hundred-fathom line. From the Dover strait westward there is a gradual lowering of the incline, though of course with such variations and undulations as we find on the emerged plains; but the existence of this vast submarine basis must cause us to think of our island, naturally and geologically, as a true part of the great European continent, rendered ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... history were there any special schools apart from the everyday experiences of life, or any man whose special work was that of teaching. But in the centuries following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and its gradual restoration, the people came more and more to see the importance of education. And in the course of these three or four centuries before the coming of Christ there grew up two kinds of schools and two kinds of teachers, first, ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... on the water, in order to face him. "That's typical of Ifdawn. Nature is all hammer blows with us. Nothing soft and gradual." ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... reforms secured blurred the main issue, have we lost sight of the goal? The objective of the New Zealand Labour Party to-day is the 'securing to all of the full value of their labour power by the gradual public ownership of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange.' Contrary to your critic's opinion, what has already been done has but whetted the appetite for more, and to-day New Zealand labour is marshaling its forces for further assaults on the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... manufacture where it was necessary to soak the willow bark in water, so as to cause it to swell. He thereupon distributed the remaining gumdrops impartially between his mouth and his trousers pocket and filled the empty jar with water, dropping his handiwork into it. Thus by gradual stages and without any sensational "closing out sales" the refreshment business was steadily going into a state of liquidation, even the lemon sticks being reduced to a liquid. There was no stock on hand now but two peppermint sticks and some ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... used to go to them by road, riding a bicycle. If you go by train you miss the gradual approach, you do not cast off London like an old forgiven sin, nor pass by little villages on the way that must have some rumour of the hills; nor, wondering if they are still the same, come at last upon the ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... grand climacteric of a story's development, were now merely traversed, so to speak, on their outskirts, or were only approached near enough to throw a glowing sidelight on certain groups and situations. The gradual adoption of these limitations may be traced back to the naval and military novels that reflect the traditions of the great French war. No one even then thought of writing a romance with Nelson or Bonaparte as the hero, or of finishing off in the full blaze of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... the exclusion of narrative and description. This tendency culminated in the novelas dialogadas, El abuelo and Realidad, and, later, in Casandra and La razn de la sinrazn. The inner reason for the gradual shift toward dialog was increasing interest in human motives and character, and a corresponding distaste for colorful description. Galds had never, like Pereda, taken great delight in word pictures per se, though his early novels contain ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... that, as idle as to ask could mankind have prevented the decay that turned Assyria and Babylon to empty deserts or the slow decline and fall, the gradual social disorganisation, phase by phase, that closed the chapter of the Empire of the West! They could not, because they did not, they had not the will to arrest it. What mankind could achieve with a different will is a speculation as idle as it ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... lands. Like so many of the treaties since 1259, it was a truce rather than a peace. Many details still remained for settlement, and it was pretty clear that the French, having the whip hand, would drive Gascony towards the goal of gradual absorption which had been so clearly marked out ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... prevailing facial expression is the result of a long process of innumerable, fleeting and characteristic contractions of the features is just the reason why intellectual countenances are of gradual formation. It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it. But on the other hand, what ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... with frequent veins of quartz. The strata, which are often flexuous, or slightly contorted, have a westerly dip of 60 degrees, and the strike is North-North-West and South-South-East. On the windward side there is a long gradual slope, covered with tall coarse grass, among which many quail were found. The shore is fringed with the usual maritime trees and bushes, and an extensive mangrove bed runs out upon the reef in one place. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... getting beside the rule was gradual and insensible. Singing-schools and singing-books being laid aside, there was no way to learn, but only by hearing of tunes sung or by taking the run of the tunes, as it is phrased. The rules of singing not being taught or learnt, every one sang as best pleased himself; and every leading-singer ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... stream, we clambered up the steep bank on the opposite side, and, after a ride of about a mile and a half, we gained the water-shed, and commenced a gradual ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... and the self to whom it was an acknowledged thing of long standing. If life consisted of sudden steps, how easily could they be avoided, she thought, as she went again through the bitter waters to which she had never succeeded in growing indifferent. It was these gradual slopes.... She could not even say, "It was that moment I first ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... best comforter. At the end the blow came swiftly and suddenly, as he would have wished it. It was a terrible shock to us who had vainly hoped to keep him a few years longer, but at least he was spared what he had dreaded with a great dread, a gradual failure of mental or bodily power. The mind was never clouded, the affections never weakened, and after a few hours of unconscious physical struggle he lay at rest, his face beautiful and calm, without a trace ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Ordinal of Alchemy, says: "Metals are generated in the earth, for above ground they are subject to rust; hence above ground is the place of corruption of metals, and of their gradual destruction. The cause which we assign to this fact is that above ground they are not in their proper element, and an unnatural position is destructive to natural objects, as we see, for instance, that fishes die when they are taken out of the water; ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... unanswered. The acid and its isomer are both insoluble in water; they are, on the other hand, very readily dissolved in hop oil; they also furnish a tolerably bitter solution, if boiled for a long time in water, probably on their account of their gradual decomposition. I will not for the present go further into the subject, as I hope soon to be in a position to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... system, which so well accommodated its doctrines to the wants and wishes of a barbarous age, had, since the art of printing, and the gradual diffusion of knowledge, lain floating like some huge Leviathan, into which ten thousand reforming fishers were darting their harpoons. The Roman Church of Scotland, in particular, was at her last gasp, actually blowing blood and water, yet still with unremitted, though animal ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... the gold chamber. When he looked out of the round opening to which he had come he saw that beyond ran a deep gully, or canyon. At the point where the opening cut the wall of the canyon, however, there was a gradual descent for perhaps 400 feet to the bottom of the break in ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... by an unsuspected word of calm judgment or fertile energy, a fresh interest or an added sympathy, by the disappearance of some crudity or the assimilation of some new and richer quality. Of such gradual rise into full maturity we have here nothing to record. As a student Turgot had already formed the list of a number of works which he designed to execute; poems, tragedies, philosophic romances, vast treatises on physics, history, geography, politics, morals, metaphysics, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... acknowledged and adored the Eternal Cause of the universe, to whom he ascribed all the perfections of an infinite nature, invisible to the eyes and inaccessible to the understanding, of feeble mortals. The Supreme God had created, or rather, in the Platonic language, had generated, the gradual succession of dependent spirits, of gods, of daemons, of heroes, and of men; and every being which derived its existence immediately from the First Cause, received the inherent gift of immortality. That so precious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... would soon be too well known. So it will be, and the reason is this, that the very low pass at one end of it will soon be crossed by a railway. It is the only low pass in the Pyrenees, and it is so gradual and even (upon the Spanish side) that the railway will everywhere be above ground. Within perhaps five years it will be for the Pyrenees what the Brenner is for the Alps, and when that is done any one who has read this ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... But there is one difference. He sees; he knows. And he knows his one freedom: he may anticipate the day of his death. All of which is not good for a man who is made to live and love and be loved. Yet suicide, quick or slow, a sudden spill or a gradual oozing away through the years, is the price John Barleycorn exacts. No friend of his ever escapes ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... her husband and venerated by her brother-in-law. At the end of the Empire probably commenced her sorrows and the faithlessness of Hector, notwithstanding the two children born of their union, Victorin and Hortense. Had it not been for her maternal solicitude the baroness could have condoned the gradual degradation of her husband. The honor of the name and the future of her daughter gave her concern. No sacrifice was too great for her. She vainly offered herself to Celestin Crevel, whom she had formerly scorned, and underwent the parvenu's insults; she besought Josepha Mirah's ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... in art as well as in all other things. So the abuse of Nature's laws and the lack of common sense in the training of the singing voice has led, through a gradual evolution, to "The New Movement." This movement is the outgrowth of the best or advanced thought of the profession ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... the American Revolution made it possible for the different states to take measures for the gradual abolition of slavery and the immediate abolition of the foreign slave-trade. On this great question the state of public opinion in America was more advanced than in England. So great a thinker as Edmund ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... overpowered respect for tradition—in the first volume of "Modern Painters;" then the historical tendency won the day, in the second volume. Since that time, the critical side had been gathering strength, by his alliance with liberal movements and by his gradual detachment from associations that held him to the older order of thought. As in his lonely journey of 1845 he first took independent ground upon questions of religion and social life, so in 1858, once more travelling alone, he was led by his meditations,—freed ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said of him as he says of himself, that he is a man not easily jealous, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... incontinently kill her prey with her delicate bite; she poisons it so as to produce a gradual weakness, which gives the blood-sucker ample time to drain her victim, without the least risk, before the rigor mortis stops the flow ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... at this party that her acquaintance with the young Southerner had commenced, and it is needless to trace the gradual rise of an attachment which similarity of tastes had engendered. Naturally of an ardent disposition, the youth had, as we have remarked on a previous occasion, hitherto loved to indulge in the excitement of the wild sports of the forest and the prairie, as the only present means of giving ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... transfer might perfectly well have been brought about by steady and systematic means without shaking the foundations of property and of order. We might then have seen throughout France what we see in England—the gradual and pacific evolution of a great industrial and commercial society on lines not contradicting, but conforming to, the traditions ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... return to Troy and Troilus within ten days. The Fifth Book (1869 lines) sets out by describing the court which Diomedes, appointed to escort her, pays to Cressida on the way to the camp; it traces her gradual progress from indifference to her new suitor, to incontinence with him, and it leaves the deserted Troilus dead on the field of battle, where he has sought an eternal refuge from the new grief provoked by clear proof of his mistress's ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... As the gradual separation of the land and sea went on, foreign countries were formed by the congealing of the foam of the sea. The god of fire was then born of Izanami, his mother. This god often got very angry at any one who ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... conversation was entirely military, and chiefly related to the probable conquest or subjugation of Great Britain, and the probable consequence to mankind in general of such a great event. No difference of opinion was heard with regard to its immediate benefit to France and gradual utility to all other nations; but Berthier seemed to apprehend that, before France could have time to organize this valuable conquest, she would be obliged to support another war, with a formidable league, perhaps, of all other European nations. The issue, however, he ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... increase, therefore, must have been owing to the | natural progress of industry and adventure extending themselves to that farthest line or limit beyond which they will not be able to advance: when the tide of traffic has flowed to its highest mark, it will then begin to recede in a gradual ebb, until it is shrunk within the narrow limits of its original channel. War, which naturally impedes the traffic of other nations, had opened new sources to the merchants of Great Britain. The superiority of her naval power had crushed the navigation of France, her ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... were desirable to analyze all the inventions which have been brought forward, we should find that in scarcely any instance were they the offspring of the brain of a single individual, but that all progress is gradual only; each worker follows in the track of his predecessor, and eventually, perhaps, advances a step beyond him." And concerning the relative value of inventions in musical instruments, it appears, from an essay of his which has been recently published, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... civilization, and in being left free to work out her own development by original and more peaceful methods. No doubt the great majority of thinking people feel the necessity for some large measures of reform and look forward to the establishment of a constitutional system and the gradual extension of political freedom to the mass of the nation. But there is no evidence that the revolutionary spirit has spread or excited sympathy in any such degree as its audacity, its resoluteness, and the terror created by its sinister achievements have seemed at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... their recent experiences, will perhaps be slow to believe us when we say that the Portland choir sang this new work even better, in many respects, than the Handel and Haydn Society sing the old and familiar "Elijah"; but it is true. In their command of the pianissimo and the gradual crescendo, and in the precision of their attack, the Portland singers can easily teach the Handel and Haydn a quarter's lessons. And, besides all this, they know how to preserve their equanimity under the gravest persecutions ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... associate with any one who will not climb up to your plane, you are destined to a lonely life, and your sphere of influence is limited. You will do far more good by taking your place with other human beings, and by gradual, sane efforts leading the thoughts of your associates to turn to your wholesome ideas of life. You are making morality unpopular by your present aggressive methods. And you are missing many sweet friendships and experiences ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... to take hold of the pattern after which it is shaped. Its edge bears numerous incisions of varying depths which, however, do not disturb the roundness of the leaf as a whole. If we re-create in our imagination the 'becoming' of such a leaf, that is, its gradual growth in all directions, we receive an impression of these incisions as 'negative' forms, because, at the points where they occur, the multiplication of the cells resulting from the general growth has been retarded. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... villages, and the cultivation is a stony plain extending for sixteen miles, a gradual upward slant to a range of mountains. At the base of the mountains an area of dark-green coloring denotes the presence of fields and orchards and the whereabouts of the important village of Kakh. Beautifully terraced wheat-fields ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... was not required." Required or not, there it was in perfection, of which Dryden, with all his endowments, had no idea. The question is not as he puts it, were those "audiences incapable of receiving the delights which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story, the just dependence of its parts upon each other, the minute beauties of language, and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?" They may have been so, though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... consists of a gently rolling to nearly level plain, and there are no steep slopes or rough areas. Drainage in this type is excellent, the easy slopes allowing a gradual flow of water from the surface without undue erosion, except with very heavy rains on the steeper slopes. The loamy subsoil allows a ready but not too rapid percolation of surplus soil moisture, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... transformed the town into a huge museum for the delight and instruction of future generations. Pompeii therefore preserves the marks of more than half a thousand years of civilization, so that those who will take the necessary trouble can trace within its area the gradual progress of its social and political life from the far-off days of Greeks and Oscans to the reign of the Emperor Titus. The case of a ruined Exeter or Shrewsbury could not be widely different. The students of ensuing ages would be able to find in the dead town ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... victory by the use of physical force. Like his master he too hesitated at first, and opposed the use of severe measures against the Zwickau prophets; but when he saw the development of that early germ of dissent, and the gradual dissolution of Lutheran unity, he repented of his ill-timed clemency.[235] He was not deterred from asserting the duty of persecution by the risk of putting arms into the hands of the enemies of the Reformation. He acknowledged the danger, but he denied the right. Catholic ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... fact that a moderate use of alcoholic liquors, continued over a number of years, produces a gradual deterioriation of the tissues of the body, and hastens the changes which old age brings, thus increasing the average liability to disease (especially to infectious disease,) and shortening the ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... new or untrained troops, the process of hardening the men to this work must be gradual. Immediately after being mustered into the service the physical exercises and marching should be begun. Ten-minute periods of vigorous setting-up exercises should be given three times a day to loosen and develop the muscles. One march should be made each day, with full equipment, beginning with a ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department

... and water, essentials for camp comfort, were to be found in abundance. While the little parleying between the Commander of the Right Grand Division and the civil authorities of Fredericksburg continued, matters were somewhat in suspense. But a gradual quiet crept over the army, and in a few short weeks that heavily timbered country was one vast field of stumps, with here and there clusters of pine trees left standing for the comfort of different Head-quarters. As the timber disappeared, the tents and huts of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... The gradual increase or decrease continually going on in many species about us is little remarked; but the sudden infrequent appearance in vast numbers of large and comparatively rare species is regarded by most people as a very wonderful ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson



Words linked to "Gradual" :   slow, in small stages, antiphon, antiphony, gradualness, gentle, gradatory, bit-by-bit, sudden, stepwise, Western Church, graduated, Roman Church



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