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verb
Gradation  v. t.  To form with gradations. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gradation" Quotes from Famous Books



... reflection, as they emerge from the cell in which they are hatched. Plainly, an eternal and immutable principle, innate in each bee, can alone account for the phenomena. On the other hand, the biologist, who traces out all the extant stages of gradation between solitary and hive bees, as clearly sees in the latter, simply the perfection of an automatic mechanism, hammered out by the blows of the struggle for existence upon the progeny of the former, during ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... coolness to pause for metaphor, nor has metaphor ardor enough to keep pace with passion."—Nothing can be less true. Metaphoric strength of expression will burst even from vulgar and illiterate minds when they are agitated. It is a natural effort of roused sensibility in every gradation, from unlettered simplicity to the highest refinement. Passion has no occasion to pause for metaphors, they rush upon the mind which it has heated. Similies, it is true, are not natural to strong emotion. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... one instant renounced all our errors, we cannot at one stroke acquire knowledge of all our rights. France has had the honour of adding to the word Liberty that of Equality; and this word signifies essentially a principal that admits of no gradation in the things to which it applies. But equality is often misunderstood, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... by Prayer and Fasting.—The Savior's statement concerning the evil spirit that the apostles were unable to subdue—"Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting"—indicates gradation in the malignity and evil power of demons, and gradation also in the results of varying degrees of faith. The apostles who failed on the occasion referred to had been able to cast out demons at other ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... remaining immovable. With the break of day, however, a gray light spread over the scene, and the travellers found themselves surrounded by a circle of lofty mountains, rising one above the other in magnificent gradation, and superbly dominated by one ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... Henry, and Mr. and Mrs. James Pendleton;" and so Mrs. Smith kept on in continuous nomenclature for a considerable time. It was only as she came down into the lower ranks of fashion, after a regular gradation, that she hesitated for a moment—and then her pauses grew longer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... very beautiful Gradation of Thoughts to shew how amiable Virtue is. We love a virtuous Man, says he, who lives in the remotest Parts of the Earth, though we are altogether out of the Reach of his Virtue, and can receive from it no Manner of Benefit; nay, one who died several Ages ago, raises a secret Fondness and Benevolence ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Consequently the composer felt that he had done his duty if, even in situations of the most tragic import, he provided his executant with a broad, even melody. Into this the consummate art of the singer could infuse every gradation of feeling. The composer presented a blank canvas, upon which the artist ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... worthy it was of being adorned and heightened by such a profusion of splendid images and beautiful machinery. We must also observe how much this moral feeling increases as we approach the close; how the poem rises in dignity; and by what a fine gradation the solemnity of the subject ascends. The Bard commenced his song with feelings of sorrow for his departed brethren and his desolate country. This despondence, however, has given way to emotions of a nobler and more exalted nature. What can be more magnificent than the vision which opens ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... in point exists in Viscum, or Loranthus, in which no point is ready prepared for the reception of the male influence; showing how universal the law is, that in no one point or place is there an absolute want of gradation. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... Mason might persuade or compel her to desist, or, perhaps, she could not easily find accomplices wicked enough to concur in so cruel an action; for it may be conceived, that those who had, by a long gradation of guilt, hardened their hearts against the sense of common wickedness, would yet be shocked at the design of a mother to expose her son to slavery and want, to expose him without interest, and without provocation; and Savage might, on this occasion, find protectors and advocates ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. Lamarck seems to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the gradual change of species, by the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic productions. With respect to the means of modification, he attributed something to the direct action of the physical conditions of life, something to the crossing of already existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to the effects ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... that, with the help of the Omdeh, be became familiar with the remarkable peculiarity in the Arab system of music—its division of tones into thirds. Egyptian musicians consider that the European system of music is deficient in sounds. This small and delicate gradation of sound gives a peculiar softness to the performance of good ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... that all the misunderstandings and dissensions of lovers arise from the fatal habit of employing words on a subject to which words are inapplicable; that love, beginning with looks, that is to say, with the physiognomical expression of congenial mental dispositions, tends through a regular gradation of signs and symbols of affection, to that consummation which is most devoutly to be wished; and that it neither is necessary that there should be, nor probable that there would be, a single word spoken from first to last between ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... occurrence; many of the gipsies do not even know their own language; and their number is rapidly diminishing. Intellectually they are talented, but lazy. Many of the men, and still more of the women, are very handsome. Although every gradation of shade is to be found amongst their faces, pretty much as one sees in the negro race in the United States, the features of the Roumanian gipsies are generally well-formed Indo-European. Nothing is more striking than to see two women pass ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... society, may degrade, but, at the same time, it elevates. Where this caste was distinguished by master and slave, the distinction was most marked, because there was no intermediate gradation. It was the highest and the lowest. It was between the highest and purest of the races of the human family, and the lowest and most degraded; and this relation was free from the debasing influences of caste in the same race. An improper appreciation of this fact has gone far to create ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... the Roman style; the recurrence of the same motive in music; the use of a single hue to color the different objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of Whistler: these are simple illustrations of harmony. An almost equally simple case is gradation or lawful change of quality in space and time—the increase or decrease of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting, the gentle change of direction of a curved line. In these cases there is, of course, a dynamic or dramatic ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... question. He says:[202] "In the distant future I see open fields for {189} far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It may not be amiss then to glance slightly at the question, so much disputed, concerning the origin of ethical conceptions and its bearing on the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... simplicity and right gradation, the text has been prepared to suit the different ages of readers. Care has been given to the illustration, print, and binding of the series, for it is believed that this is the best way to secure from the children that careful handling of the ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne

... number are only inferred to be spouting springs from the form of their basins and the character of the surrounding deposits. Of this vast collection of still and eruptive springs, between which there seems every gradation, those which do not send water into the air are, owing to the magnificent cascades which they form, often quite as remarkable as those which take the shape of geysers. The more striking of the latter ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however, on several occasions that persons of rank were driven to America by political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was entirely opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... division is always distinct between the injected part and that which is not penetrated by the fluid flint. In this case, the flinty matter has proceeded a certain length, which is marked, and no farther; and, beyond this boundary, there is no partial impregnation, nor a gradation of the flintifying operation, as must have been the case if siliceous matter had been deposited from a solution. 2dly, The termination of the flinty impregnation has assumed such a form, precisely, as would naturally happen from a fluid flint ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... of treatment, and on it, therefore, I propose to draw for the materials of the present course. It will be best to begin with the few simple facts regarding light which were known to the ancients, and to pass from them, in historic gradation, to the more abstruse discoveries of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... regard everything as right that his sisters did, before he went there; and was a languid, long-legged, indifferent cavalier, representing men to them: things made to be managed, snubbed, admired, but always virtually subservient and in the background. Now, without perceptible gradation, his superiority was suddenly manifest; so that, irritated and apprehensive as they were, they could not, by the aid of any of their intricate mental machinery, look down on him. They tried to; they tried hard to think him despicable as well as treacherous. His style was too good. When he informed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... marched off to the dens of the wild beasts: "Tell them off," said he, "from the bald man to the bald man." Yet these were prisoners committed, not for punishment, but trial. Nor, had it been otherwise, were the charges against them equal, but running through every gradation of guilt. But the elogia or records of their commitment, he would not so much as look at. With such inordinate capacities for cruelty, we cannot wonder that he should in his common conversation have deplored the tameness and insipidity of his own times and ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... themselves might judge all smaller matters, but all great and hard matters to be brought to Moses, Exod. xviii. 22, 26. And our Saviour seems to insinuate, that the Jews had their inferior courts for inferior causes, superior judicatories for greater, in that gradation of his, Matt. v. 22. Likewise they had lesser and greater ecclesiastical assemblies, (as after will appear.) Now, to what use are greater and lesser judicatories, civil or ecclesiastical, but that the lesser and lighter causes may be judged in the inferior, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... pressed Tai-y to sit down on the stove-couch; but, on perceiving near the edge of the couch two embroidered cushions, placed one opposite the other, she thought of the gradation of seats, and did not therefore place herself on the couch, but on a chair on the eastern side of the room; whereupon the waiting maids, in attendance in these quarters, hastened to serve ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... curious illustration of the feudal feelings of those times in respect to the gradation of ranks, or else of the extraordinary modesty and good sense of William's character, that he assumed no airs of superiority over his sovereign, and showed no signs of extravagant elation after this battle. He sent a respectful embassage to Henry, recognizing his own acknowledged subjection ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... footing, their sole chance of safety consisted in standing still. At daybreak, however, a grey light spread over the scene, and the travellers found themselves surrounded by a ring of lofty mountains, rising one above the other in grand gradation, and superbly dominated by one ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... was paddling, and it was a delight to see their bare feet and legs. The legs of those who had been longest on the spot—probably several weeks in some instances—were of a deep nutty brown hue suffused with pink; after these a gradation of colour, light brown tinged with buff, pinkish buff and cream, like the Gloire de Dijon rose; and so on to the delicate tender pink of the clover blossom; and, finally, the purest ivory white of the latest arrivals whose skins had not yet been caressed and coloured ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... competent observers that they have raised cowslips, primroses, and oxlips from seeds of the same plant; and, secondly, on the frequent occurrence in a state of nature of plants presenting every intermediate gradation between the cowslip ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... things, and in itself conditioned and necessitated, now presented itself to me in such clearness that I could see nothing either in nature or in life in which it was not made manifest, although varying greatly according to its several manifestations, in complexity and in gradation. Just at this time those great discoveries of the French and English philosophers became generally known through which the great manifold external world was seen to form a comprehensive outer unity. And the labours of ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... Djenboulat. Ammalat Bek, who had arrived with a letter from Sultan Akhmet Khan, was received with delight. They did not, indeed, assign him the command of any division; but this arose from the circumstance that with them there is no order of battle or gradation of command; an active horse and individual courage secures the most distinguished place in action. At first they deliberate how best to begin the attack—how to repel the enemy; but afterwards they pay no attention to plan or order, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... which is necessarily hydrostatic, and must be exerted equally in every direction. And this applies, not only to a fluid, but to a body which will yield viscously to an impressed force. There will be a gradation, according as viscosity gives place to rigidity, between the states in which the applied force resolves itself into a purely hydrostatic pressure, and in which it is transmitted through the material ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... chicken; their heads had a plucked, seedy appearance; and their long, strong, naked wings hung down by their sides till they touched the ground: power and ferocity in the first rude draught, shorn of everything but its sinister ugliness. Another curious thing was the gradation of the young in size; they tapered down regularly from the first to the fifth, as if there had been, as probably there was, an interval of a day or ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... action. Nor is there any such line to separate polyphonic from non-polyphonic methods of accompanying melody; and Bach's Orgelbuechlein and Brahms's posthumous organ-chorales show every conceivable gradation between plain harmony or arpeggio and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... ignorant beings, who refuse to admit the reality of the existence of invisible things." With all due deference to such an authority, we may still venture to ask, is there then no difference, no shade, no gradation, between an admission of possibilities and the proof of realities. Theology would then be the only science in which it is permitted to conclude that a thing is, as soon as it is possible to be. Will the assertion of either Clarke or Plato stand absolutely in place of all evidence? Would ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... literary mythology is found only in civilized peoples, and among these a gradation is recognizable. We have first the stage of culture represented by the Japanese, the Finns, the Mexicans, and the Peruvians, with fairly well-developed gods, who have emotions and histories. In this group Japan takes ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... reference to Harvard College, Professor Sidney Willard remarks: "For a long period fines constituted the punishment of undergraduates for negligence in attendance at the exercises and in the performance of the lessons assigned to them. A fine was the lowest degree in the gradation of punishment. This mode of punishment or disapprobation was liable to objections, as a tax on the father rather than a rebuke of the son, (except it might be, in some cases, for the indirect moral influence ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Newtons who stay to meditate over the fall of an apple, too trivial for the attention of the clown. It is by this noble slowness that the highest minds faintly emulate that inconceivable deliberateness and delicacy of gradation with which solar systems are built and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... horses, made its entry. It was like the shell of a vessel reversed—the keel for a roof, the deck for a floor, placed on four wheels. The wheels were all of the same size, and high as wagon wheels. Wheels, pole, and van were all painted green, with a rhythmical gradation of shades, which ranged from bottle green for the wheels to apple green for the roofing. This green colour had succeeded in drawing attention to the carriage, which was known in all the fair grounds as The Green Box. The Green Box had but two windows, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... grotesque circle round the spreading boughs of the banyan grove, mahogany and sandal-wood, ebony and cork, ginger-tree and cardamom, mingle their varied foliage, the translucency of sun-smitten green shading through deepening tones into the sombre tints of ilex and pine with exquisite gradation. Flamboyant trees flaunt fiery pyramids of blossom high in the air, and the golden bouquets of the salacca light up dusky avenues, where large-leaved lianas rope themselves from tree to tree in cables of vivid green. Bare stems, except ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... to the eyes of the travellers that original aspect of the lunar landscapes, raw in tone, without gradation of colours, only white and black, for diffused light was wanting. Still the sight of this desolate world was very curious on account of its very strangeness. They were moving above this chaotic region as if carried along by the breath of a tempest, seeing the summits fly under their feet, looking ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... manner of treatment of most of their contemporaries; the lyric passion in line and tint; the same originality which often became waywardness in the conception of subject in itself; the same revolt from all precedent; and the same passion for subtle gradation and infinite space, air, and light—and some of Rousseau's skies were the most vaporous I have ever seen. These are the fundamental agreements of the art of the two great masters, and in those qualities no other man of their countries and epoch has equaled them, but outside of these the contrasts ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... have also mandarins of lesser rank in charge, besides a host of revenue collectors, the bureau of government works and other departments, with several hundred thousand officials, who all rank as gods beyond the grave. These deities are civilians; the military having a similar gradation for the armies of Hades, whose captains are gods, and ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... transgressions of morality, we need, perhaps, to have no hesitation in yielding our assent to the position of the poet. But, if he intends to include in the category those flagrant crimes which stand first in the gradation of human offences, we must be permitted to dissent from that part of the view; and not only dissent, but claim that truth will generally require the very reversal of the picture, for of such crimes we believe ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... side was a gradation of buildings, from the two-story brick grocery on the west corner to the grandest of the stone mansions on the east. With the exception of two or three houses built in the early history of the block, and occupied ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... right shoulder, casting one side of the face in shadow. The modulations of light on the chin and neck, and the gradation in the shadow cast by the book on the hand, show Correggio's mastery ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... feather-work was shown at Strasbourg: "Never," says one admirer, "did I behold anything so exquisite for brilliancy and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. No European artist could ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... really any gradation in crimes, or whether we do not mistake in supposing the transgression of one Law of God more heinous than that of another, would be a point too difficult and too abstract for us to enter into, but as human nature is more shocked at the shedding ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... of Assent, 1870, is pervaded by the intensest philosophical scepticism. Scepticism supplies its motives, determines its problems, necessitates its distinctions, rules over the succession and gradation of its arguments. The whole aim of the work is to withdraw religion and the proofs of it, from the region of reason into the realm of conscience and imagination, where the arguments which reign may satisfy personal experience without alleging objective validity or being ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... the shrine of this god, the fine valley of Monlova ascends with a gentle gradation, hardly perceptible; but upon turning round toward the water, one is surprised to find himself high elevated above its surface. Pass on, and the same silent ascent deceives you; and the valley contracts; and on both sides the cliffs advance; till at ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... carry up the more Fixt ones, as I have often Try'd in Dulcify'd Colcothar, Sublim'd by Sal Armoniack Blended with it) are carried Up together, but may afterwards be Separated by other Degrees of Fire, whose orderly Gradation allowes the Disparity of their Volatileness to Discover it self. Besides, if Differing Bodies United into one Mass be both sufficiently Fixt, the Fire finding no Parts Volatile enough to be Expell'd or carried up, makes no Separation at all; as may appear ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... painted—leaving it not quite completed,—a 'Pieta;' showing that his hand owned the weight of years,[16] but the conception of the subject is still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while, Titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every gradation of tone. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... respect due to deities. In these exorbitant pretensions they were greatly strengthened by the institution of taboo, which lent the sanction of religion to every exertion of arbitrary power.[648] Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king downwards through chiefs, warriors, and landholders, to slaves. The resulting political constitution has been compared to the old feudal ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... he repeated them entire to himself, the old woman still muttering them, he could not help laughing, and the noise, though repressed, yet roused her. She woke, not, like most young people, with slow gradation of consciousness, but all at once was wide awake. She sat ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... one of the most striking features is the great and sudden depth which you look down, the effect of which we know the pencil cannot at all convey. The side on which we stand, however, though steep, is not absolutely precipitous; on the contrary, the gradation of crag and projection, by which it descends to the bottom, is one of the finest things in the view. Close on our right a lofty peak presents its rocky face to the valley, to which it bears down in a magnificent mass, shouldering its way, as it seemed, half across it. The opposite sides appear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various

... heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called 'The Voyage of Life,' representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; 'Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness,' a picture that has an horizon, and an aerial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a visit; 'The Past and the Present,' two most effective scenes, especially the second, which is overflowing ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... from one gradation to another, they entered Cologne with Severne seated between the two girls, each with a hand in his, and a great disposition to pet him and spoil him; more than once, indeed, a delicate head just grazed each of his square shoulders; but candor compels me to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... cataloguing vision. Everything is crowded in together, like a row of houses in forty-foot lots. The mere things themselves are here in profusion and wonder, but the appropriate spacing, the approach, the surrounding of subordinate detail which should lead in artistic gradation to the supreme feature—these things, which are a real and essential part of esthetic effect, are lacking utterly for want of room. The place is not natural scenery; it is a junk-shop, a storehouse, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... in the different forms of diet as enumerated herein is to be found in the mechanical gradation of the substances in accordance with the progressive condition of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... the appearance of understanding each other, and of working for a common aim; and the observer, therefore, is apt to endow them with reasons and intellect that they truly are far from possessing. He will pretend to account for each action, show a reason behind every movement; and from thence the gradation is easy to proclaiming them marvels, or monsters, of innumerable ideas. Whereas the truth is that these ten thousand individuals, that have been produced simultaneously, that have lived together, and undergone metamorphosis at more or less ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... important to consider well this gradation of punishment (which, starting with sensuous physical pain, passes through the external teleology of temporary isolation up to the idealism of the sense of honor), both in relation to the different ages at which they are appropriate and to the training ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... in connexion with the intellectual and spiritual condition of its age, the completeness of the projection. These two aims form the positive, or concrete, side of criticism; their direction is not towards a metaphysical definition of the universal element in an artistic effort, but towards a subtle gradation of the shades of difference between one artistic gift and another. This side of criticism is infinitely varied; and it is what French culture more ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... each man's several relation, I have drawn a brief description of the Newfoundland, with the commodities by sea or land already made, and such also as are in possibility and great likelihood to be made. Nevertheless the cards and plots that were drawn, with the due gradation of the harbours, bays, and capes, did perish with the Admiral: wherefore in the description following, I must omit the particulars ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes

... determine the limit in the gradation of size at which this animal merges from the leopard into the wild cat. The varieties of cats are so numerous that I do not pretend to describe them; some are of sufficient importance to be classed among the smaller leopards, while others are no ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... him who wishes to look into human nature, whilst adapting itself to the circumstances through which it passes. When this couple began life, their friends and acquaintancess were as poor as themselves; as they advanced from one gradation to another, and rose up from a lower to a higher state, their former friends, who remained in their original poverty, found themselves left behind in cordiality and intimacy, as well as in circumstances; ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... before. At the base it was of a full green, the colour of emerald without, of course, its gleam. It was not by any means dull, however, either in colour or substance, and was of infinite hardness and fineness of texture. The surface was almost that of a jewel. The colour grew lighter as it rose, with gradation so fine as to be imperceptible, changing to a fine yellow almost of the colour of "mandarin" china. It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen, and did not resemble any stone or gem that I knew. I took it to be some unique mother-stone, or matrix of some gem. It was wrought all over, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. A bell and a plough have each their use, and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, and what is not ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Biography, especially in a Cyclopaedia which admits lives of the living as well as the dead, and to whose biographical department a great variety of authors contribute, there is an inherent difficulty of preserving the proper gradation of reputations. Doubtless, many an American gentleman will find that this Cyclopaedia gives him an importance, in comparison with the rest of the world, which time will not sanction; and doubtless, some of the dead As, if rapped into utterance by the modern process of spiritual communication, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... Every possible gradation of colour can be effected in this way, and it applies to every form of design—floral or arabesque. Natural flowers have mostly ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... present day succeeds to the art of past centuries not immediately nor by an insensible gradation. It is preceded by an interval of absolute deadness in matters artistic. Sixty years ago art in almost every branch was a sealed book to the majority of even well-educated persons, and contentedly contemplated by them as such. All love for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... make this a very wild and very romantic retreat? On the right bank of the Rhine which stretches out under our eyes, it is another thing. Picture to yourself a landscape of infinite sweetness, a great cultivated plain, which rises by imperceptible gradation to the base of a distant chain of mountains, the undulating outlines of which are traced upon the sky ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... fiber of the hearer. Full, rich, and magnificent beyond any other voice ever heard, "it bore no resemblance," said one writer, "to any instrument, except we could imagine the tone of musical glasses to be magnified in volume to the same gradation of power." She could ascend at will—though she was ignorant of the rules of art—from the smallest perceptible sound to the loudest and most magnificent crescendo, exactly as she pleased. One of her favorite caprices of ornament was to imitate the swell and fall of a bell, making ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... and handling the great engine, Wall street, in masterly style—the Washington government simply collected and sifted the varied mass of opinion and material—to form from it a composite amalgam-policy that proved its only salvation. Through every change in that policy—through every gradation of animus that affected the complexion of the war—the masses of the North really believed they were fighting for the Constitution—for the flag, and for ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... the case with the scheme of emanation in Plotinus. God is made a first and consequently a comparative intensity, and matter the last; the whole thence finite; and thence its conceivability. But we must admit a gradation ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... universal range of possible scientific precision. There is, I allege, a not too clearly recognised order in the sciences which forms the gist of my case against this scientific pretension. There is a gradation in the importance of the individual instance as one passes from mechanics and physics and chemistry through the biological sciences to economics and sociology, a gradation whose correlations and implications have not yet received adequate ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... and in his old provinces, and his proclamations from Polotsk to his army, to Moscow, to his great nation, it was admitted that they were singularly adapted to persons and places. It appears, in fact, that in the political means which he employed there was a very striking gradation of energy. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... do the very streets of your capital daily present to the Christianity and morality of the nation? A race of slaves, or at least colored persons, of every hue from the jet black African, in regular gradation, up to the almost pure Anglo-Saxon color. During the short time official duty has called me here, I have seen the really red haired, the freckled, and the almost white negro; and I have been astonished at the numbers of the mixed race, when compared with those of full color, and I have deeply deplored ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... there waiting in the darkness, ignorant of what was going to happen. He felt her hand clasping his. Without perceiving any gradation, he lost all consciousness of his body; he was no longer able to feel his limbs or internal organs. His mind remained active and alert. Nothing particular appeared ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... were more than I had expected, and occasioned me some alarm. At this juncture, very imprudently, and without consideration, I threw out from the car three five-pound pieces of ballast. The accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained, carried me too rapidly, and without sufficient gradation, into a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had nearly proved fatal to my expedition and to myself. I was suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than five minutes, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... on an issue of currency, when they could not venture on an additional loan or tax, because the real operation of such issue is not understood by the people, and the pressure of it is irregularly distributed, and with an unperceived gradation. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... while the lower portion of the mountain, evidently accumulated at a later period, and slanting at an angle of 45 deg., displayed distinct strata of light brown, a deep band of grey, then dark brown, light brown, a thin layer of grey, and then a gradation of beautiful warm burnt sienna colour, getting richer and richer in tone towards the base. Here at the bottom, all round the mountain, and in appearance not unlike the waves of a choppy sea in shallow water, rose hundreds of broken-up, pointed hillocks, the point of each hillock being ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... from by the thought that there are species innumerable, passing into each other by regular gradations, out of which we choose what we must love or dread, and say they were indeed prepared for us. Species are not innumerable; neither are they now connected by consistent gradation. They touch at certain points only; and even then are connected, when we examine them deeply, in a kind of reticulated way, not in chains, but in chequers; also, however connected, it is but by a touch of the extremities, as it were, and the characteristic ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... in a very few months she had toned down her Scotch to a rich Ionic coloring, which her womanly instinct will never let her exchange for the thin, vinegar accents that are too prevalent in English and French society; and in other respects she caught, by easy gradation, the tone of the new society to which her marriage introduced her, without, however, losing ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... no wilful stain! PRINCES! and PEERS! once more on you I call— Save! save your tottering glory ere it fall! If truth, if virtue, to your hearts be dear; If sounds of sweet content you love to hear; If generous sons, and daughters chaste, you prize, And all a happy home's delightful ties; If just gradation on the social scale Be worth your care; if rank can aught avail: If rev'rence for the altar and the throne, Be yours, and GEORGE the lawful king, you own: If rights your fathers were combin'd to save, When Britain's sceptre to his race they gave, Be justly claim'd, as justly ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous

... of the farmhouse have one great and rare merit—they are people whom you can make friends with at once. Between not knowing them at all, and knowing them well enough to shake hands at first sight, there is no ceremonious interval or formal gradation whatever. They received us, on our arrival, exactly as if we were old friends returned from some long traveling expedition. Before we had been ten minutes in the hall, William had the easiest chair and the snuggest corner; the children were eating bread-and-jam ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... in poetic use of imagery and phrase, is the gradation from the bare and grand Lucretian simplicity of silentia noctis, through the "favour and prettiness" (slightly tautological though) of the Virgilian tacitae per amica silentia lunae, to the recovery ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... well-known "Last Supper," in the refectory of the Dominicans at Milan, best known, however, from the copies which remain of it, and the studies which remain. Fra Bartolomeo, "the last master of this period, first gave gradation to colour, form and masses to drapery, and a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution." His was the merit of having weaned Raffaelle "from the meanness of Pietro Perugino, and prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo Buonarotti." Mr ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... Sanscrit, or Indian language, now extinct, are the Hebrew, the Chaldaic, the Greek, and many others of the most ancient tongues, derived; and from the wisdom and learning of the East "was the whole earth overspread." Undoubtedly it is difficult to imagine by what gradation language could have proceeded, from the howl of savages, and the cries of nature, till it reached the eloquent music, the heart-stirring oratory of the Greek; and besides this, and other considerations, Schlegel is supported by the opinions of Adelung, the learned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... correspondent music or simphany. And so of all the other passions, whether of fear, revenge, joy, hatred, which have all their subdivisions expressible, by the quick shift and succession of steps, gestures, attitudes, and looks, respectively adapted to each gradation. ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... thought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess. It was a full deep barytone, capable of easy modulation, and with undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwards found, with almost illimitable compass, and with every gradation of tone at command, for the recitation or reading of poetry. The studio was a large room probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, and structurally as puzzling as the other parts of the house. A series of columns and arches on one side ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... white and yellow flowers, like a broidery of pearls and gold. The whole scene was bathed in the exquisite light, and rich with the delicate perfumes of a glorious evening, which filled the sky over his head with every perfect gradation of rose and amber and amethyst, and breathed over the quiet landscape a sensation of unbroken peace. But peace did not remain long in Eric's heart; each well-remembered landmark filled his soul with recollections of the days ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... citizen; and his frankness, conciliatory disposition, and elevated demeanour, an estimable one. The expressions of regret as general as he was known, and not uttered by friends and acquaintance only, but by every gradation of class, not only by grown persons, but young children, are the test of his worth. Such too is the only eulogium worthy of the good and brave, and the citizens of Quebec have, with solemn emotions, pronounced it on his ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... the Charge confided to his management. For, not only was it the strongest, and susceptible of the highest charge of coloring, but it had also the advantage of grouping together all the principal delinquents of the trial, and affording a gradation of hue, from the showy and prominent enormities of the Governor-General and Sir Elijah Impey in the front of the picture, to the subordinate and half-tint iniquity of the Middletons and Bristows in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... It was impossible with paper to establish the nice gradation necessary to equalize the pressure. And then, also, too much paper made too ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... skeleton in the foreground, the pelvis has scarcely the shape, and none of the variety of line, of the bone itself, but is merely a coarsely-drawn girdle. Compared to the extreme delicacy with which he models flesh, and his minute appreciation of every gradation of curve in the muscles, this carelessness in the treatment ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... a two-fold good; first I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind to a state which would be a proper gradation between abject slavery and perfect liberty, and besides I would reinforce the defenders of liberty with a number of gallant soldiers. Men, who have the habit of subordination almost indelibly impressed on them, would have one very essential qualification ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... in the month of December. The first day at sea was fine. No fear or anxious moments were ours. We sped swiftly over the peaceful water that glittered with a dazzling metallic luster. In the level rays of the morning sun we beheld a gradation of rare tints 'infinitely harmonious and yet superlatively rich.' A short distance away from us the ocean was deep blue; nearer it was light green, while far out toward the horizon it attained that iridescence which is indescribable. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... existed in the early Quaternary period. The existence of a period before the Glacial epoch or between different glacial epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution even in the history of that period. It was found that this ancient Stone epoch showed progress and development. In the upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who, although he ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... a beautiful ease of assurance. From his height he looks forth, takes in the effect with his sweeping vision, possesses himself of the gradation of its tone; then, stooping nearer, he seizes the detail that renders it. But the sense of the broad survey is first in his thought. When he reflects upon Becky's life in London and all that came of her attempt to establish ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... valid Colonial analogy for the introduction of a federal system of "Home Rule all round" if such a scheme had been honestly contemplated. The first thing to keep in mind is that the internal constitution of the Dominions presents a whole gradation of constitutional types. There is the loose federal system of Australia, in which the Commonwealth powers are strictly limited and defined, and all residuary powers left to the States. There is the close confederation of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... was very pleasing. We saw before us a beautiful bay, well defended by a rocky coast; a good family mansion; a fine verdure about it, with a considerable number of trees; and beyond it hills and mountains in gradation of wildness. Our boatmen sung with great spirit. Dr Johnson observed, that naval musick was very ancient. As we came near the shore, the singing of our rowers was succeeded by that of reapers, who were busy at work, and who seemed to shout as much as to sing, while they worked with ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... the Kumhar ranks not much below the Barhai and Lohar, that is in what I have designated the grade of village menials above the impure and below the cultivating castes. In Bengal the Kumhars have a much higher status and Brahmans will take water from their hands. But the gradation of caste in Bengal differs very greatly from that of other parts ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... by reason, and by the Constitution; and the consciousness, on the opposite side, of contending against the force of all these solemn considerations. It is farther to be considered, that in the gradation between the smallest and largest States, there are several, which, though most likely in general to arrange themselves among the former are too little removed in extent and population from the latter, to second an opposition to their just and legitimate pretensions. Hence it ...
— The Federalist Papers

... mythological personification Gravitation, its causes Grief, its luxury described Greatness, how best sustained Grammars of Philosophy, &c. their merits Great buildings, no standard of locality —— men, their opinions no test of truth Griffiths, Dr. anecdote of Gradation of organized beings ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... Swedish, and Irish pirates, all comprised under the name of Northmen; and doubtless many other incursions of less gravity have left no trace in history. "The Northmen," says Fauriel, "descended from the north to the south by a sort of natural gradation or ladder. The Scheldt was the first river by the mouth of which they penetrated inland; the Seine was the second; the Loire the third. The advance was threatening for the countries traversed by the Garonne; and it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... nations of Europe, I know of none, save Italy, in which the characters are the same in every class and gradation. The appeal you would make to the Italian noble must be the same you would address to the humble peasant on his property. The point of view is invariably identical; the sympathies are always alike. No matter what differences education may have ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... sold. And yet this critical analysis was such an admirable and demonstrative criticism, that the author assures us that it proved the absolute impossibility, "and the most absolute too," that his piece could not suffer the slightest curtailment. It demonstrated more—that the gradation and the development of interest required necessarily seven acts! but, from dread of carrying this innovation too far, the author omitted one act, which passed behind the scenes![170] but which ought to have come in between the fifth and sixth! Another point is proved, that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... complete trust in men and spendthrift generosity. If there was ever a man who gave so lavishly as Timon, if there was ever one so senseless blind in trusting, then he deserved his fate. There is no gradation in his giving, and none in his fall; no artistic crescendo. The whole drama is, as I have said, a scream of suffering, or rather, a long curse upon all the ordinary conditions of life. The highest qualities of Shakespeare ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... By this gradation of exorbitant claims and oppressive measures, have they at length arrived, my lords, at the summit of insolence; by these steps have they ascended once more the towering throne of universal monarchy; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... shade, as dark as, with due reference to other things, you can have it, but no darker. Mark that for your extreme dark on the object, and between those limits get as much drawing as you can, by subtlety of gradation. That will tax your powers of drawing indeed; and you will find this, which seems a childish and simple way of going to work, requires verily a thousandfold more power to carry out than all the pseudo-scientific ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... primitive simplicity of her tropical home had not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering about little Simiti had hurled her through the forest, down the scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness that, as ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of hybridisation which are exhibited by many species when crossed with other species. On the other hand, not only is it not proved that all species give rise to hybrids infertile inter se, but there is much reason to believe that, in crossing, species exhibit every gradation from perfect sterility to ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship of board and bed, and the sharing of every ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... following a student through the several departments. After the preliminary examination a student who is to take the regular course of study enters the initiatory room. Here he begins with the rudiments of bookkeeping, the study which marks his gradation. The time not given to the practice of writing, and to recitations in other subjects, is devoted to the study of accounts. He is required, first, to write up in "skeleton" form—that is, to place the dates and amounts of the ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... when you can breathe with her breath for hours together; feel every little warming of the colour on her cheek marking its own changes on the temperature of yours; follow every slight fluttering of her bosom, every faint gradation of her sighs, as if her heart was beating, her life glowing, within yours. Surely it is then—if ever—that we realize, almost revive, in ourselves, the love of the first two of our race, when angels walked with them on the same garden paths, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... and stay, upholding all creation: Who ever dost Thyself unmoved abide, Yet, day by day, the light, in due gradation, From hour to hour, through all ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... system in gradation roll Alike essential to th' amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole must fall. Let earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky; Let ruling angels from their spheres ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... meeting of strange dogs, who bristle on sight, and often fly at one another's throats to settle the question of supremacy. Their big-caliber revolvers spat streams of fire in the roadways and bellowed in the dance-halls. And gradually among the ranks of the survivors there came a gradation in ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... physical properties which distinguish it from the liquid portions of petroleum. It consists of a mixture of homologous hydrocarbons, which form a solid under ordinary conditions. The hydrocarbons of this mixture show a gradation in their properties, and gradually approximate to those which are liquid at ordinary temperatures. It is a well known fact that a separation of these homologues is entirely impossible by distillation. It has also been ascertained that the liquid constituents of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... city of London, but the whole nation, through every gradation of rank, from the sovereign on the throne to the occupier of the humblest hut gratefully regarded the hero of the Nile as the person to whom they were chiefly indebted for the security and comfort they ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... been chiefly auxiliary to the war, at present absorb the visible wealth of the nation. Amongst them are many respectable persons. The lower orders of the people have been taught, by restless visionaries, to consider the destinations of Providence, which had before, by an imperceptible gradation of social colouring, united the russet brown to the magisterial purple, as usurpations over those natural rights which have been impressed without illustration, and magnified by a mischievous mystery. In the fierce pursuit of these imaginary immunities, which they ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... broken by the so-called spots, lies like a great smooth sea, with no parts which lie above the general line, shows that it has a very different structure from the envelope which lies upon it. If they were both vaporous, there would be a gradation between them. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... globe, than it is to the human body itself, the acme and perfection of animal organization. I admit that there are certain great powers, such as magnetism, electricity, and chemistry, whose action may be traced, even by the limited means which science at present possesses, in admirable gradation, from purely unorganized to the most highly organized matter: and, I think, that Mr. Coleridge has done this with great ingenuity and striking effect; but what I object to is, that he applies to the ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... ultimate chances of success, but already what is being done there is having the effect of suggesting a similar experiment near Resht. The conditions of the soil on many of the wooded hill-slopes in the Persian Caspian provinces, where every gradation of climate and atmosphere can be met with, appear to be well adapted for the tea-plant. The cart-road to Kasvin, now being constructed by a Russian company, will pass through some of these well-favoured parts, and this will help to draw attention to natural resources which have hitherto ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... history we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... sense;" and the other connected with our moral nature, and regulated by our "moral sense," or conscience. In both of these departments, however, the methods which Nature employs in guiding to the practical application of the pupil's knowledge are precisely the same, consisting of a regular gradation of three distinct steps, or stages. These steps we have found to follow each other in the following order. There is always first, some fundamental truth, or idea—some definite part of our knowledge of which use is to be made;—there is next an inference, or lesson, drawn from that ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... on the one hand he demands the Perfections of the Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the Brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable, v.173, etc. VII. That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which cause is a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason alone countervails ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... would, no doubt, be homicidal. Probably no one would argue that they ought to be left at liberty. But there are no sharp lines in nature; from the homicidal lunatic to the sane man of violent passions there is a continuous gradation. Even in the most perfect community there will be men and women, otherwise sane, who will feel an impulse to commit murder from jealousy. These are now usually restrained by the fear of punishment, but if this fear were removed, such murders would probably become much ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... site of his palace at some distance from the stronghold; where the river bent suddenly round a spur of the mountain, and watered a wider extent of land. The spur of the hill ran down, by an easy gradation, into the valley; and beyond it the hills separated into the wide plain of Merodasht that stretched southward many farsangs to the southern pass. Upon this promontory the king had caused to be built a huge ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... was limited to their own affairs. By the beginning of the tenth century the Barbarian invasions ended, and as the populations settled down a new system appeared, based partly on the Barbarians' love of independence, partly on their plans of military gradation—the system of feudalism. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies; been twice out campaigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been on embassy; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... and sterile ground of the lower districts. The males of all, or certainly of the greater number, are jet black; and the females (with perhaps one or two exceptions) are brown. The most curious fact is the perfect gradation in the size of the beaks in the different species of Geospiza, from one as large as that of a hawfinch to that of a chaffinch, and (if Mr. Gould is right in including his sub-group, Certhidea, in the main group) even to that of a warbler. The largest beak ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... might mean more. It might be a part of the possible impulse that had driven him into the Vermont woods, or the natural and rational step he would have taken had he never seen her. At any rate, she felt that he was daily growing more remote, and that by a nice gradation of effort he was consciously withdrawing himself. And yet she could scarcely dwell on a single word or act, and say: "This proves it." His manner toward her was most cordial. When they conversed he looked at her steadily and directly, and would respond in kind to ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... takes his place. The hottest contests are always between dogs that are well matched; neither will give place to the other and so they fight it out; but from the foremost in power down to the weakest there is a gradation of authority; each one knows just how far he can go, which companion he can bully when he is in a bad temper or wishes to assert himself, and to which he must humbly yield in his turn. In such a state the weakest one must yield to all the others and cast himself down, seeming to call himself ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... by all{65}. Gladiolus, Crinum, Calceolaria{66} must be species if there be such a thing. Races of dogs and oxen: but certainly very general; indeed a gradation of sterility most perfect{67} very general. Some nearest species will not cross (crocus, some heath ), some genera cross readily (fowls{68} and grouse, peacock &c.). Hybrids no ways monstrous quite perfect except secretions{69} hence ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... past, though not in the least more extraordinary; and adds, that he is persuaded that when Caligula made his horse a Consul, the people of Rome, at that time, were not greatly surprised at it, having necessarily been in some degree prepared for it, by an insensible gradation of extravagances from the same quarter. This is so true that we read every day, with astonishment, things which we see every day without surprise. We wonder at the intrepidity of a Leonidas, a Codrus, and a Curtius; and are not the least surprised to hear of a sea-captain, who has blown up his ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... distinct rays proceeding from the sun, but they were shorter than on the evening of the 3d. These are caused by the tops of the great cumuli of the storm, when sunk below the horizon, intercepting the sun's rays, which still shine on the upper atmosphere. The gradation was very marked, and accorded with the different distances of the central vortex on the 3d and 4th—although, on the 4th, the nearest distance must have been over four hundred miles to the southern boundary of ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... to be honoured in the gradation following,—in respect of learning, conduct, years, family, property. Even a Sudra, if he excel in these respects, is in old age worthy ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... strains becoming longer, thinner, and clearer, until they dwindle to the finest threads of sound and faintest tinklings, as from a cithern touched by fairy fingers. The great charm of the song is in this slow gradation from the somewhat throaty notes emitted by the bird when ascendino-to the excessively ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... fluctuations in weight, if any, to be recorded on a revolving drum. Means ought also to be provided for studying the temperature, pulse, muscular exertion, breathing, etc., etc. The lighting of the room should be carefully attended to and capable of the slightest gradation. Means should be provided for obtaining moving pictures of the seance from without the room, unknown to the medium. Were the sittings held in complete darkness, these photographs could be obtained by means of ultra-violet light, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... certainly, to treat ever as an affix, and to mistake the first two words of "What ever are you doing?" for the one word "whatever;" but to suppose the "ever" meaningless and inert, is to overlook a clearly marked and very useful gradation of emphasis. "What are you doing?" expresses simple curiosity; "What ever are you doing?" expresses surprise; "What the devil are you doing?" expresses anger—we need not run farther up the scale. Nor is this use of "ever" an innovation, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... was extremely weak, but still his playing—by reason of that remarkable quality which he possessed of gradation in touch—betrayed none of the impress of weakness which some attributed to piano playing or softness of touch; and he possessed in a greater degree than any pianoforte- player he [Mr. Goldschmidt] had ever heard, the faculty of passing upwards from piano through all gradations of tone...It ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... had a seat in the military councils, and his office was very lucrative. To his charge was intrusted the eagle of the legion. [Footnote: Liv. xxv. 5; Caes. B.C., vi. 6.] As the centurion could rise from the ranks, and rose by regular gradation through the different maniples of the Hastati, Principes, and Triarii, there was great inducement held out to the soldiers. In the Roman legion it would seem that there was a regular gradation of rank although ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... mortal mind, the universe is liquid, solid, and aeri- 511:24 form. Spiritually interpreted, rocks and mountains stand for solid and grand ideas. Animals and mor- tals metaphorically present the gradation of 511:27 mortal thought, rising in the scale of intelligence, taking form in masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament 512:1 of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... authority; but in all other respects, except where the act and other subsequent acts have not broken in upon it, the whole course of the service remains upon the ancient footing, that is, the commercial footing, as to the gradation and ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... degree, but retaining distinctly its woody texture. Dr. MacCulloch, On Rocks, p. 636., observes: "In its chemical properties, lignite holds a station intermediate between peat and coal; while among the varieties a gradation in this respect may be traced; the brown and more organised kinds approaching very near to peat, while the more compact kinds, such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various

... said they, "be a bracelet of our own hair;" and instantly their shining scissors were procured, and each contributed a lock of her hair. They formed the most beautiful gradation of colours, from the palest auburn to the brightest black. Who was to have the honour of plaiting ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth

... moreover, the earliest fishes partake of the character of the lower sub-kingdom, the articulata. Afterwards come land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universally allowed to be the type next in advance from fishes, and to be connected with these by the links of an insensible gradation. From reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class. That there is thus a progress of some kind, the most superficial glance at the geological history ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... never come to be their own women after. He exasperates men's enormities in public view, and tells them their faults on the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still he might find more occasions to work on. He is the general corrupter of spirits yet untainted, inducing them by gradation to much lascivious depravity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices as otherwise they had haply ne'er heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and is indeed ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... language begin, or the French, or the German? Was there a first English word spoken? From the first animal sound, if we can conceive of such, up to the human speech of to-day, there is an infinite gradation of sounds and words. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... only, but all those other ways in which man and woman mutually make each other happy—by sympathy, by admiration, by the atmosphere they bear about them—down to the mere impersonal pleasure of passing happy faces in the street. For, through all this gradation, the difference of sex makes itself pleasurably felt. Down to the most lukewarm courtesies of life, there is a special chivalry due and a special pleasure received, when the two sexes are brought ever so lightly into contact. We love our mothers otherwise than we love our fathers; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Gradation" :   quantification, gradate, ablaut, cut, graduation, gradational, blending, shading, step, grade



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