"Cowl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much stock in the clerical cowl," Robert explained to Desnoyers. "For some time I have not been on friendly terms with religion. But in every walk of life there must be good people, and the good people ought to understand each other in a crisis like this. Don't you ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... girls wear dingy colored stuffs, mostly of the society's own make, cut in the plainest style, and often short gowns, in the German peasant way. All, even to the very small girls, wear their hair in a kind of black cowl or cap, which covers only the back of the head, and is tied under the chin by a black ribbon. Also all, young as well as old, wear a small dark-colored shawl or handkerchief over the shoulders, and pinned very plainly across the breast. This peculiar uniform ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... persistent vitality and industry of this man. Only forty years of age when the Long Parliament released him from his second imprisonment and restored him to society, a ghoul-like creature with a scarred and mutilated face, hiding the loss of his twice-cropped ears under a woollen cowl or nightcap, and mostly sitting alone among his books and papers in his chamber in Lincoln's Inn, taking no regular meals, but occasionally munching bread and refreshing himself with ale, he had at once resumed his polemical habits and mixed himself up as a pamphleteer with all that was going ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... comfortable. Knee-buckles and shoe-buckles, and steel-hilted swords, do not rust here, and white cravats and embroidered waistcoats might almost return to the world! The Capucins themselves are disposed in niches, and each has a text from Scripture over his cowl. "Do you prepare these mummies?" we enquire "Nienti preparati, signor! We only lay them to dry in yonder room over a sink, and when they have lain four months, we take them out and complete the process ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... was the sign of humility, by the monks of our day is turned into a source of pride. We can hardly find in a whole province wherewithal we condescend to be clothed. The monk and the knight cut their garments, the one his cowl, the other his cloak, from the same piece. No secular person, however great, whether king or emperor, would be disgusted at our vestments if they were only cut and fitted to his requirements. But, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and left her standing there, her cowl drawn forward and her hands crossed on her breast. She stood for a moment, facing toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and posture. Then she turned back toward ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the day when she succeeded in restraining the Guises after the death of Francois II. Her black velvet cap, made with a point upon the forehead (for she never relinquished her widow's mourning) seemed a species of feminine cowl around the cold, imperious face, to which, however, she knew how to give, at the right moment, a seductive Italian charm. Catherine de' Medici was so well made that she was accused of inventing side-saddles to show the shape of her legs, which were absolutely perfect. Women followed her ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... lawn some young men were engaged in athletic exercises, and I stopped to look and admire the beautiful shade-trees and the imposing building. So at least it seems to me at this distance. An old monk in a cowl, whose noble face I sometimes recall in my dreams, came over and asked kindly if I was not hungry. I was in all conscience fearfully hungry, and I said so, though I did not mean to. I had never seen a real live monk before, and my Lutheran training had not exactly inclined me in ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... wind came from the street corner, it whistled through the cowl of the old lamp, and said to it, "What is it that I hear, are you going away to-morrow? Is it the last evening I shall meet you here? Then you shall have a present!—now I will blow up your brain-box so that you shall not only remember, clearly and distinctly, what ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... bring him up to a robber's life,—so was she pleased to style the bold career of Walter de Montreal. She offered to rear the child in her own dull halls, and fit him, no doubt, for a shaven pate and a monk's cowl. She chafed much that a mother would not part with her treasure! She alone, partly in revenge, partly in silly compassion for Adeline's child, partly, it may be, from some pious fanaticism, could, it so seemed to me, have robbed us of our boy. On inquiry, I learned from the nurse—who, but that ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a dree neet, a dree neet, for deeath to don his cowl, To staup(7) abroad wi' whimly(8) treead, to ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... generally. Active and intellectual, though not learned, they have infused new life into the fat indolence of the Spanish system. Men of this world rather than the next, they have adopted a purely mundane policy, abjured the gloomy cowl, raised gorgeous temples, and say, "He that cometh unto us shall in no wise lose heaven." Their chief merit, however, is the discovery of the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... it, with the smells of damp mortar and of bricks and of the earth itself about him, and above him rose the house, a room over him, and a room over that and another over that, and then the chimney-cowl up in the sky. He jumped from the stillage, and went quickly to the doorway and saw the cellar steps. His heart was beating. He trembled, he was afraid, exquisitely afraid, acutely conscious of himself ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... back his cowl and stood bareheaded in the scorching sun of that windless day; it came to his mind that he ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... humiliation at being guided by an ex-monk; but, on the other hand, as that ex-monk wore the three-cornered hat jauntily, and as his whole manner and appearance was that of a man who has completely forgotten that he formerly wore a cowl, they ended by accepting the humiliation, and reserved their final judgment on the sergeant until they could see how he handled the musket he carried on his arm, the pistols he wore in his belt, and the sword that ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... that the burgrave Hugh, surnamed Lupus, or the Wolf, when he was old, used to wear a cowl, which was a kind of knitted cap that covered in the crest of the knight's helmet when engaged in fighting. When the helmet tired him he would take it off and put on the knitted cowl, and its long cape fell ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... poop crowded with people gazing at us; indeed, we must have offered a singular spectacle to those on board, who, like my young American friend at Gibraltar, were visiting the Old World for the first time. At the helm stood the Jew; his whole figure enveloped in a gabardine, the cowl of which, raised above his head, gave him almost the appearance of a spectre in its shroud; whilst upon the deck, mixed with Europeans in various kinds of dresses, all of them picturesque with the exception of my own, trod the turbaned Moors, the haik of the hadji flapping loosely in the wind. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... following the direction of his eyes, I turned. In a dark recess in that part of the room stood a bronze statue, some six feet in height. It portrayed the great mystic in a long habit fashioned after a monkish cowl, and his hair and face reminded me of a bust of Nero I had once seen in the gallery of the Louvre. Ombos told me that the life of Albert Magnus had been written by Dr. Sighart. This Dominican, magnus in magia, major in philosophia, maximus in theologia, was distinguished alike for his knowledge ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the discovery, the friar drew his cowl over his head, laid aside his brushes, and went down among the sick and dying to minister to their needs. He wrought on, untiringly, until he himself was smitten with the fatal plague. Then he tottered back ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... drapes that mystic veil across that everbrooding sky? Who hues it with a soul of pearl? Who draws it to and fro? Who breathes upon it with the breath that makes it glow and die, Lighting that crystal river, those mountains cowl'd with snow? ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... the abbot ought to say mass, and say three prayers over the head of the novice; and for seven days he veils his head with his cowl, and on the seventh day the abbot ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... very swiftly, who, glancing about her, as if to see that there was none looking on or prying, came up to him, and prayed him in a sweet voice for instant passage down the water. Wrapped she was in a dark cloak and a cowl over her head, but as she put forth her hand to give him gold, he saw even by the light of his lantern that it was exceeding fair, and that great gems flashed from the finger-rings, and that there was a great gold ring ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... implored a dying pupil of his to come back and reveal his state in the other world. A few days after his death the scholar appeared in a cowl of flames covered with logical propositions. He told Silo that he was from purgatory, that the cowl weighed on him worse than a tower, and said he was doomed to wear it for the pride he took in sophisms. As he thus spoke he let fall a drop of sweat on ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... The cowl is drawn each ghastly skull around, Each fleshless form's arrayed in sable vest, About their hollow loins the cord is bound, Like living ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... respect, however, to pious frauds, he does not represent them as very conscientious. Such are the parts acted by the monk in Romeo and Juliet, and another in Much Ado about Nothing, and even by the Duke, whom, contrary to the well-known proverb, the cowl seems really to make ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... replied with a sudden turn of her masked face and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink a little in her chair with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... of the situation; she had talked about him so often that she seemed to have conjured him up. They could almost see his white habit gliding along the corridor, and his unsaintly eyes gleaming from under his cowl. They began to wish he had behaved better during his lifetime, or at any rate that he had not chosen to revisit the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... he up and drew his cowl upon his crown, And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown; To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit, Had winked upon a ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... in thine hour of need God help thee, guarded by the passive creed! As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl, When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl; As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow When the black corsair slants athwart her bow; As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien, Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green, When the dark plumage with the crimson beak Has rustled shadowy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... probable that neither doctor nor priest can do much if the patient is hit in earnest. He soon succumbs, and is laid out in his best clothes in an improvised chapel and duly sped on his way. The custom of burying the dead in the gown and cowl of monks has greatly passed into disuse. The mortal relics are treated with growing contempt, as the superstitions of the people gradually lose their concrete character. The soul is the important matter which the Church now looks to. So the cold clay is carted off to the cemetery with ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... hurled, - Ingots of ore from rich Potosi borne, Crowns by Caciques, aigrettes by Omrahs worn, Wrought of rare gems, but broken, rent, and foul; Idols of gold from heathen temples torn, Bedabbled all with blood.—With grisly scowl The Hermit marked the stains, and smiled beneath his cowl. ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... made I know not what unsafe rejoinder; but the cords that Elaine had wound about him naturally tightened as he puffed out, and seemed by their pressure to check his speech and bid him be wary. So he changed his note, and said haughtily, "Because thy cowl and thy gown shield thee, presume not to speak of one whose cause I took up in thy presence, and who is as high above thee in truth as she is in every other quality ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... for knowledge. It was the dawn of the Renaissance—the revival of learning. The discovery of printing was reopening to modern Europe the great literature of Greece and Rome, and the writings of the Christian fathers. For studies of this kind, Erasmus, notwithstanding the disadvantages of cowl and frock, displayed extraordinary aptitude. He taught himself Greek when Greek was the language which, in the opinion of the monks, only the devils spoke in the wrong place. His Latin was as polished as Cicero's; and at length the Archbishop of Cambray ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... substantial capitalists in high check neckties, double-breasted waistcoats, curly-rimmed hats, narrow trousers, and round-toed boots. Parties of thin, limp, damp-smelling women, come in with mouldy umbrellas and long, chimney-cowl-shaped bonnets, made of greasy black silk, or threadbare black velvet—the worn-out fashions of a past generation. Some go about their business in confidential pairs; some in company with a trusted maid-servant as fossilised as themselves; ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... from time to time a few drops of cold rain fell silently, portending a coming storm. In a few moments the transformation was complete, and Del Ferice stood by his servant's side in the shabby brown cowl and rope-girdle of a ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... To waken to a consciousness of self. My impetuous spirit chafed against the bars, And the high blood of princes began to course In strange unbidden moods along my veins. At length I flung the monkish cowl aside, And fled to Poland, where the noble Prince Of Sendomir, the generous, the good, Took me as guest into his princely house, And trained me up to ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... of defence beyond their reach; but at least it is a relief to the mind to find that all these men were not base, as appears on the face of things, but that pity and justice and human feeling sometimes existed under the priest's gown and the monk's cowl, if also treachery and falsehood of the blackest kind. The Bishop, who remained withdrawn, we know not why, from all these private sittings in the prison (probably busy with his ecclesiastical duties as Holy Week was approaching), heard with ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... something like terror when I suddenly perceived a figure approaching me,—that of a man, clothed in white garments fashioned somewhat after the monastic type, yet hardly to be called a monk's dress, though he wore a sort of hood or cowl pulled partially over his face. My heart almost stopped beating and I could scarcely breathe for nervous fear as he came towards me with an absolutely noiseless tread,—he appeared to be young, and his eyes, dark and luminous, looked at me kindly and, as I fancied, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... The common folk drew apart to let him pass, not quite sure but this was a new figure in the play. But Sir Walter Giffard rose to his feet after one swift glance at the newcomer, and as the latter threw back his cowl, the host quickly advanced to embrace him, crying, "Stephen! We ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... that he saw more of the man in the brief space of that interview than of others in many intromissions, and he used to depict him to me as a hale, black-avised carl, of an o'ersea look, with a long dark beard inclining to grey; his abundant hair, flowing down from his cowl, was also clouded and streaked with the kithings of the cranreuch of age. There was, however, a youthy and luscious twinkling in his eyes, that showed how little the passage of three-and-fifty winters had cooled the rampant sensuality of his nature. His right leg, which was ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... nose at the back of his head as to have his state-room on the port side of the ship. Powell forgot all about the direction on that point given him by the chief. He flew over as I said, stamped with his foot and then putting his face to the cowl of the big ventilator shouted down there: "Please come on deck, sir," in a voice which was not trembling or scared but which we may call fairly expressive. There could not be a mistake as to the urgence of the call. But instead of the expected ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... came to spill them, swore they stank; Who also by a princely deathbed cried, "Loose Florence, or God will not loose thy soul!" Then fell back the Magnificent and died Beneath the star-look shooting from the cowl, Which turned to wormwood-bitterness the wide Deep sea of his ambitions. It were foul To grudge Savonarola and the rest Their violets: rather pay them quick and fresh! The emphasis of death makes manifest The eloquence of action ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse of St. Bridget hither ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... the white earth around. Profound silence, the deaf silence of the snow, enveloped everything, and but two sounds could be heard; the dull sound made by the clods of earth and the heavy sound of regular footsteps; an old priest who was waiting there, his head enveloped in a black cowl, dressed in a black gown and stole, and with a dirty, yellow surplice, was trying to keep himself warm by stamping his great galoches on the pavement of the high road, in front of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... their hopes, their aspirations, and their fears, he had better be taking a healthy walk than poring over dusty documents. A paste-pot, a pair of scissors, the mechanical precision of a copying clerk, are all useful in their way; but they no more make an historian than a cowl makes a monk. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... terms which are mere verbal bridges over the gaps in that knowledge, and mark the lacunae and unsolved problems of the science. Yet it is just such terms that seem to clothe "Science" in its pontifical garb; the cowl is taken for the monk; and when a penetrating critic, like M. Henri Poincare, turned his subtle irony upon them, the public cried that he had announced the "bankruptcy of science," whereas it is merely the language ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... Church, to defy the wicked laws of its enemies. She is just as happy in her betrothal as any other innocent girl of her age. Even the secrecy is sweet to her. And then, some evening, they saunter down a side street to a strange house—or even to a back orchard where a man is waiting in a cowl under a tree (perhaps vulgarly disguised as a woman with a veil over his face)—and they are married in a mutter of ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... orders sunk in ignorance, and the upper classes illiterate, uncultivated, and corrupt, the mission of Giordano Bruno was impossible. "Altiora Peto" was Bruno's motto, and to realize it he had gone forth with the pilgrim's staff in his hand, sometimes covered with the cowl of the monk, at others wearing the simple habit of a schoolmaster, or, again, clothed with the doublet of the mechanic: he had found no resting-place—nowhere to lay his head, no one who could understand him, but always many ready to denounce him. He turned his back at last on his ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... fawning priests and courtiers foul, The losel swarm of crown and cowl, White-robed walked Francois Fenelon, Stainless as Uriel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... doing so, they humiliated the people by degrading things looked upon by them as holy. For instance, the Kaiser had a statue of himself, upturned moustache and all, placed upon the cathedral of Metz. He wore a Biblical cowl and was pointing impressively to a parchment scroll. He was supposed to represent the prophet Daniel. This statue was ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... metal spun to the fineness of a spider's thread. The garment buckled tightly at the throat, was girdled at the waist, and, below this cincture, fell to the floor, its folds being held together by a half-dozen looped cords; from the shoulders a hood resembling a monk's cowl. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... toward the road as though to halt him. Barney pretended to be fussing with some refractory piece of controlling mechanism beneath the cowl—apparently he did not see the officer. He was just opposite him when the latter shouted to him. Barney straightened up quickly and saluted, but did ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the cowl of his Foanna cloak up over his head. He had had days to accustom himself to the bulk of the robe, but still its swathings were sometimes a hindrance rather than a help. Slowly he turned. There were no Baldies ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... on a broad-brimmed hat, very much like that of the modern Italian priest. Instead of the hat it was common, when the weather so required, either to draw a fold of the toga over the head or to wear a hood closely resembling the monkish cowl. This might be either attached to a cloak or made separately for the purpose. The hood was also employed when, particularly in the evening, the wearer had either public or private reasons for concealing ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... perceptible a faint shining. Hand tight clasped in hand, the two moved forward over thick herbage, and still descended. They drew near to the light, and saw that it issued from a little cave. Within stood a man, bent as if with age and infirmities, his face half-hidden under a cowl. When the visitors were near, he stretched forth his arms, murmuring words of welcome, and the two ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... wallet are not, it is true, carried by the Platonic philosophers, but are the badges of the Cynic school. To Diogenes and Antisthenes they were what the crown is to the king, the cloak of purple to the general, the cowl to the priest, the trumpet to the augur. Indeed the Cynic Diogenes, when he disputed with Alexander the Great, as to which of the two was the true king, boasted of his staff as the true sceptre. The unconquered Hercules himself, since you despise my instances ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the two men came to a narrow stairway, and the Englishman gripped his revolver. A dark-eyed Spaniard was waiting on a landing, and held up two fingers when the guide passed. The Scorpion knocked at a greasy door, and an ugly fellow, with a cowl on, looked out and nodded. Hindhaugh stepped into a room that reeked with garlic and decay. Two men sat in the steamy dusk at the far side. An oily gentleman rose and bowed. "I'm the interpreter, Captain. You and this ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... at this; but the exertion had caused the abbot's cowl to slip away from his head. The strong face and light beard of the Black Knight showed plainly to them all. "Alas, your majesty," cried Sir Richard of the Lee, springing up; "you ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... much success. Here we find Massenet in a very different vein from that of 'Manon,' or indeed any of his earlier works. The voluptuous passion of his accustomed style is exchanged for the mystic raptures of monasticism. Cupid has doffed his bow and arrows and donned the conventual cowl. 'Le Jongleur' is an operatic version of one of the prettiest stories in Anatole France's 'Etui de Nacre.' Jean the juggler is persuaded by the Prior of the Abbey of Cluny to give up his godless life and turn monk. He enters the monastery, but ere long is distressed to find ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... a human figure, the figure, apparently, of a man, sitting crumpled up in a very uncomfortable sort of position on his haunches. It sat perfectly still. A black cloak, with loose sleeves, and a cowl or hood that completely concealed the face, covered it from head to foot. The material of the cloak could not have been very thick, for inside the hood he caught the gleam of eyes as they roamed about the room and followed ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... lark rose through the brightening air to greet the coming day, a woman in the tunic and cowl of a nun opened what was left of the wicket-gate in the one unbattered wall. A trace of the luxury that had dwelt under the gilded spires survived in her robes, which had been of a royal purple ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Irish wit of tongue. Near him the old Indian-fighter, Chaffee, with strong brow, deep eyes, long jaw, firm mouth, strong chin—the long, lean face of a thirteenth century monk who was quick to doff cowl for helmet. While they told war-stories, Crittenden sat in silence with the majors three, and Willings, the surgeon (whom he was to know better in Cuba), and listened. Every now and then a horse would loom from the darkness, and ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... of CASTILE I speak; Mid many an Arab, many a Greek, Old in the days of CHARLEMAIN; When minstrel-music wander' round, And Science, waking, bless' the sound. No earthly thought has here a place; The cowl let down on every face. Yet here, in consecrated dust, Here would I sleep, if sleep I must. From GENOA when COLUMBUS came, (At once her glory and her shame) 'Was here he caught the holy flame. 'Twas here the generous vow he made; His banners on the altar laid.— One ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... gaunt skeleton in a white blanket-robe with a heavy monkish cowl to it, and drew thick padded blanket-stockings over the ligament-tied, skin-covered bones that served the wasted wretch for legs, and wheeled in a high, narrow, rubber-wheeled, leather-cushioned stretcher, and laid him on it, light to lift, a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for a moment that the gray friar trembled and his shrunken cheek looked deadly pale; but he recovered himself presently: nor could you see his pallor for the cowl which covered his face. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Scottish lawyers. The pictures of the Lord Keeper's father and mother were also to be seen; the latter, sour, shrewish, and solemn, in her black hood and close pinners, with a book of devotion in her hand; the former, exhibiting beneath a black silk Geneva cowl, or skull-cap, which sate as close to the head as if it had been shaven, a pinched, peevish, Puritanical set of features, terminating in a hungry, reddish, peaked beard, forming on the whole a countenance in the expression of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... in England, always less tractable in the matter of rules than the Latin countries, Ben Jonson and his friends are in some sort another Pleiad, and the treatise possesses immense authority throughout the centuries. We turn the pages of Cowl's The Theory of Poetry in England, a book of critical extracts illustrating the development of poetry "in doctrines and ideas from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century," and note Ben Jonson and Wordsworth referring to or quoting Horace in the section on Poetic Creation; ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... Tower to repair all the glass windows of St. John's Chapel, also those of the great chamber towards the Thames, "J," and to make a great round turret in one corner of the said chamber, so that the drain from it may descend to the Thames, and to make a new cowl on the top of the kitchen of the great ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... to Philip de Malvoisin, begging him to send assistance with all the speed he could. He promised the friar a large reward for doing the errand, and as they parted at the postern door he thrust into Cedric's reluctant hand a piece of gold, adding, "Remember, I will flay off thy cowl and skin if thou ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... and now in addition to the thick cowl, a huge hand was placed upon her mouth, a threat of instant death came from the terrible voice behind her, the grip tightened round her form, and, making her darkness yet darker, at that moment the clouds, that had been lately gathering, covered the moon. ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... stood before the sisters, his cowl drawn over his face, his hands folded in his sleeves, took up the word again, which Freda's impulsive ejaculation ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... lies. Fortune in men has some small difference made, One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade; The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned, The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned, "What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl?" I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool. You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk, Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk, Worth makes the man, and want of it, the fellow; The rest is all but leather ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of the chariot is worthy of him in his presence: curly hair very black has he, broad-cut along his head. A cowl-dress is on him open; two very fine golden leaf-shaped switches in his hand, and a light grey mantle round him, and a goad of white silver in his hand, plying the goad on the horses, whichever way the champion of great deeds goes who was at hand ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... the verge Of monkhood: trick of cowl and taste of scourge He tried: then, kicked not at the pricks perverse, But took again, for better or for worse, The old way of the world, and, much the same Man o' the outside, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... travelling pedlars; or, on the other hand, we might be on our way to take service under the Catholic leaders. If so, we might carry steel caps and swords, which methinks would suit you better than either a priest's cowl ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... thought nothing of the inadequacy of light or of the glare in his eyes; he only knew that there, in the far corner beside the empty coffin, stood a white figure—very tall to his vision, very lank, with white drapery that clothed it round the head like a cowl and spread upon the floor around its feet. But all that was not what arrested his attention and chilled his strong courage, it was the eyes of the figure, which were clearly to be seen—large, frightened, fierce eyes, that met his own ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... blood, in spite of his mother's urging and his love to her. "Martin, you have no idea how hard it is to run caught in a sack; it costs a deal of trouble to keep oneself upright. If one does not twist about one falls into it. The cowl was such a sack for me.... Brother, I have unwittingly fallen into disgrace as a wild beast into a trap, and I am more ashamed of it perhaps than the worst sinner of that which he has done deliberately and maliciously. I would not have stayed in ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... procession's sluggish flow along the street. There were many flowers, so that the hearse made a blot of relief, beautiful enough. There were many people, too, and I turned round several times. Always I saw old Eudo, in his black cowl, hopping along in the mud, hunchbacked as a crow. Marie was walking among some women in the second half of the file, whose frail and streaming roof the hearse drew along irregularly with jerks and halts. Her gait was jaded; she was thinking only of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... first carried on so vigilantly that his enemies supposed nothing but death could have concealed him, gradually relaxed, and then subsided altogether. Foes and friends alike believed him dead, and when he did re-appear in the coarse robe, shrouding cowl, and hempen belt, of a wandering friar, he traversed the most populous towns in safety, unrecognized and unsuspected. It was with some difficulty he found his family, and a matter of no little skill to convey them, without exciting suspicion by their disappearance, to his retreat; but all ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... remarkably broad; but if you knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,—if you knew the trapezius, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a monk's cowl,—or the deltoid, which caps the shoulders like an epaulette,—or the triceps, which furnishes the calf of the upper arm,—or the hard-knotted biceps,—any of the great sculptural landmarks, in fact,—you would have said there was a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... not only with the chair which she had occupied all the week, but also with the heavy veil which she had but partially lifted during her brief sojourn in the witness-box, and never once in the dock. The veil was now flung back over the widow's bonnet, peaking and falling like a sable cowl, against which the unearthly pallor of her face was whiter far then that of the merely dead, just as mere death was the least part of the fate confronting her. Yet she had raised her veil to look it fairly in the face, and the packed assembly ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the wheels, flipped the plane on its nose so suddenly that Johnny never did know just how it happened. Bland had feared that sand, and braced himself. But Johnny did not know. His head had snapped forward against the rim of the cowl—a terrible blow that sent him sagging inertly against the strap that held him. Bland got out, took one look at Johnny, and sank down weakly ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... will, with your approbation, have our Gowns made as that of a Bachelor of Laws except the Cowl. ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... manner, when he turned to answer the question. He knew many in my Lord of York's house—as many as a man was like to know where there was a matter of two hundred folk between clerks and soldiers, he had often crushed a pottle with them. No; he had never heard of one called Randall, neither in hat nor cowl, but he knew more of them by face than by name, and more by byname than surname or christened name. He was certainly not the archer who had brought a token for Mistress Birkenholt, and his comrades all avouched equal ignorance ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... monotony—monotonous toil, monotonous amusements, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and mortar;—until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die." And then look at those other millions—the millions of Russia—look at the grand simple life they lead in the fields, a life of toil indeed, but of toil sweet and infinitely varied; Russia is their ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... of it was that both she and her father went down also, and there, sure enough, lay the remains of the old missionary in his cowl, with an ivory crucifix about his neck, and on his breast a scroll stating that he, Marco, born at Lisbon in 1438, had died at Bambatse in the year 1503, having laboured in the Empire of Monomotapa for seventeen years, and suffered great hardships and brought many souls to Christ. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... there was something ethereal too, a divine particle traceable in few other popular men; and such far shining diffusion of himself, tho all the world swore by it, would do nothing for the true life of him even while he lived; he had to creep into a convent, into a monk's cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow, that his blessedness had lain elsewhere; that when a man's life feels itself to be sick and an error, no voting of by-standers can make it well ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... red poll a redder cowl hung down; His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown; A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old; Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd; While at his side horn-handled steels and knives Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... serge gown, with a cowl, like a mendicant monk, and as they approached he put out his open ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... leered by his open gates. "He! he! They are all outside," he chuckled—"Magpies and Dusty-hoods, Parvuses, Minors and Minims, Benets, and Austins, every cowl in Verona! Come along, my handsome girl, you ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... but the first was the "tractor-pusher" (bottom of picture). Then came the "twin-tractor plus propeller" (at top). A development was the "triple-tractor" (on the right), with two 50 h.p. Gnomes, one immediately behind the other under the cowl, one driving the two chains, the other coupled direct. Later came the single-engined 80 h.p. tractor (on the left), the original ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... and dirty old priest, and the other was a reserved and concentrated young monk—the latter (by which I mean a monk of any kind) being a rare sight to-day in France. This young man indeed was mitigatedly monastic. He had a big brown frock and cowl, but he had also a shirt and a pair of shoes; he had, instead of a hempen scourge round his waist, a stout leather thong, and he carried with him a very profane little valise. He also read, from beginning to end, the Figaro ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... kept watch. Very still and pale she was in the light of the tall wax candles burning about her and the torches flaring from the funeral pyre, and strange to look upon in the coarse brown cape and cowl of the habit of St. Francis, with a hempen cord for girdle. But the Lady Margherita had tenderly folded the hood away from the beautiful face and head, and in the pale patrician hands a rose lay lightly clasped, and a wealth of floral tributes heaped her bier—which ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the arch of the Porta Romana this morning, on our way into the city, we saw a queer object. It was what we at first took for a living man, in a garb of light reddish or yellowish red color, of antique or priestly fashion, and with a cowl falling behind. His face was of the same hue, and seemed to have been powdered, as the faces of maskers sometimes are. He sat in a cart, which he seemed to be driving into the Deity with a load of earthen jars and pipkins, the color of which was precisely like his own. On closer inspection, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the world or had seen it only to cross himself, and turn aside and tell his beads and pray. Like S. Bernard traveling along the shores of the Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure of the waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... outspread feet. His face had the beery, bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was covered with a network of congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet, for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His cowl had half fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either side of his bull-neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half with the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... the monk, rising up from his seat, and casting back the cowl from his head, "Oh, God! oh, God! how ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... death or religion, or hatred of me, deprives me of Tita Monalda, I will die, where she commanded me, in the cowl. It is you who prepare her, then, to throw away her life ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... vacillating and weak Duke William was murdered by Arnoulf of Flanders at the conference held on the island of Pecquigny in the Somme, as William of Jumieges relates (III. cap. xi. et seq.). His courtiers found upon his body the silver key of the chest that guarded the monk's cowl he had always desired to wear. So upon a sixteenth of December 943 (in the year of the birth of Hugh Capet), the strengthless descendant of the Viking died and was buried in the Cathedral, and the Normans did homage to his young son Richard the Fearless who ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... ecclesiastical leaven penetrates it in every part. Wherever you go, either for business or for amusement, you find some representative of the Church. Whichever way you turn, you see keen eyes peering upon you from under a three-cornered hat or a cowl. And even when the path seems for a while to be leading you back to the world, through rows of shops, under the windows of bankers, within sight of sails and steam, or within sound of humming wheels, there are still shrines and oratories numberless by the way, and a church or ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the folk-tales used by Saxo. Woden disguises himself in a cowl on his earthly travels, and heroes do the same; a king disguises himself as a slave at his rival's court, to try and find occasion of slaying him; a hero wraps himself ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... name to the bright red of the feathers, and to a little cowl on the hind part of the head, which resembles that of the bishop's ornament, called a camail. It is as large as a black-bird, but not so long. Its bill and toes are {270} large, strong, and black. Its notes are so strong and piercing that they are only agreeable ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... we heard the rumble of wagons, and the crack of teamster's whips. The man in question wore dead black beard, and his eyebrows were of the same intense, lustreless hue. So were his eyes and his hair; but the latter formed a circle or cowl around his head. He had a pale skin, his fingers, were long and bony, and he rode dexterously in and out, among the tree boles, with his hat in his hand. His horse was as black as himself, and, together, they made a half-brigandish, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... inhabitants. He was educated by the Jesuits after the strictest manner of their religion. He became so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his monastic education, that he was anxious to assume the cowl of the monk, and enter the order of the Jesuits. His devotion to the papal church assumed the aspect of the most inflexible intolerance towards all dissent. In the administration of the government of his own duchy, he had given free swing to his bigotry. Marshaling his troops, he had ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... no mouse, but lo! a monk, array'd In cowl and beads and dusky garb, appear'd, Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade, With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard; His garments only a slight murmur made; He moved as shadowy as the sisters weird, But slowly; and as he pass'd Juan ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... lay! That ye shall meet with good ROBIN, In life if that he be: Or ye come to Nottingham With eyen ye shall him see!" Full hastily our King was dight, So were his Knightes five, Everych of them in monks' weed, And hasted them thither blithe. Our King was great above his cowl, A broad hat on his crown. Right as he were Abbot like, They rode up into the town. Stiff boots our King had on, For sooth as I you say, He rode singing to green wood, The convent was clothed in grey. His mail horse and his great somers Followed our ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... sign of a public-house on Monk's Heath may have arrested the attention of many travellers from London to Liverpool. This village hostel is known by the designation of the Iron Gates. The sign represents a pair of ponderous gates of that metal, opening at the bidding of a figure, enveloped in a cowl; before whom kneels another, more resembling a modern yeoman than one of the 12th or 13th century, to which period this legend is attributed. Behind this person is a white horse rearing, and in the back ground a view of Alderley Edge. The story is ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... discover also a sort of portrait-like resemblance in the Duke to King James the First. As the King was indeed a much better theologian than statesman or ruler, the fact of the Duke's appearing rather more at home in the cowl and hood than in his ducal robes certainly lends ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... marriage in the case; and when I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to be miraculous. I was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head was universally declared to be the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up, the monk took great pains with my education; and I learned Latin and psalmody as soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the holy man's care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Although vowed to poverty, he always contrived ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the cry, and shivering with dread, rushed to the door and gazed in terror at the figure which stood leaning over the bedside. As she watched, it slowly removed the cowl and the napkin and exposed the fell face of Tabitha, so strangely contorted between fear and triumph that she ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... room, a friar made his appearance at the door. They all started, for by his height they imagined him to be the Friar Thomaso, but no one addressed him. The friar shut the door without saying a word, and then lifting up his cowl, which had been drawn over it, discovered the black face of Mesty. Agnes screamed, and all sprang from their seats at this unusual and unexpected apparition. Mesty grinned, and there was that in his countenance which said that he had much ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... handle; its eyes were two diamonds. After Peter Kurtz had feasted his eyes upon this treasure for a long time, he arose suddenly, and, without saying a word, wrapped up the cup in a napkin, drew his cowl more closely around his face, and, taking his staff, prepared to leave ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... companion was her old maid-of-all-work, Assunta, commonly called Suntarella, without whom she rarely stirred abroad—a little old woman, in neat but dingy-coloured garments, with a grey woollen shawl drawn over her head like a cowl, instead of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... disposition or character were his— or hers—there were no sins against the pledges they had made, nor the bond into which they had entered. Life would need no sponge. Memory might still live on without a wound or a cowl of shame. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the valleys that lead from the Meeting of the Waters to Bray. He had not proceeded far on his march, when a Franciscan friar reached his camp as Ambassador from the Leinster King. This unnamed messenger, whose cowl history cannot raise, expressed the willingness of his lord to treat with the King, through some accredited agent—"some lord who might be relied upon"—"so that their anger (Richard's and his own), that had long been cruel, might now be extinguished." ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... a Portuguese standing near, and then said, "The cowl does not make the monk, nor must you infer from his dress that this man was a friar. He lived all his life a peasant in a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... splendid gifts I share, Or soon this youthful head A solemn monk's dark cowl shall wear, To love ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... his shoulders remarkably broad; but if you knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,—if you knew the trapezius, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a monk's cowl,—or the deltoid, which caps the shoulder like an epaulette,—or the triceps, which furnishes the calf of the upper arm,—or the hard-knotted biceps,—any of the great sculptural landmarks, in fact,—you would ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... needs are there, under the paper; but she also knows how frail are her grubs, how powerless to pierce their way through the strange obstacle which stops her as well and interferes with the work of her ovipositor. The cowl inspires her with profound distrust. Despite the tempting bait of the veiled head, not an egg is laid on the wrapper, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... capital m. sum of money at interest; f. capital (chief city). capitan captain. capitania captaincy, captain's office. capitulacion f. capitulation, agreement. capote m. cloak, rain coat. capricho caprice. caprichoso capricious. captura capture. capucha hood, cowl. cara face. carabo Moorish sail-and-row-boat. caracter character. carambano icicle. carbon m. charcoal. carbunclo carbuncle. carcajada burst of laughter. carcel f. prison. cardenal cardinal. cardenalicio pertaining to a cardinal. cardeno livid. carecer ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... clothes here, quickly; where's the cowl-staff? Look how you drumble! Carry them to the ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... arrangement, with combined mask and wig. It fitted neatly over the head, and was provided with a simple but ingenious piece of mechanism by means of which much could be done with the pigtail. Myself the doorkeeper hid from view under the cowl of a ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... for the most part well conducted men, punctual in their ceremonial duties, and altogether humble-minded Christians. Their humility is not at all misplaced, for you see at a glance (poor fellows!) that they belong to the lag remove of the human race. If the taking of the cowl does not imply a complete renouncement of the world, it is at least (in these days) a thorough farewell to every kind of useful and entertaining knowledge, and accordingly the low bestial brow and the animal caste of those almost Bourbon ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was deposited on one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood before her. A monk's black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the same color concealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person, neither face nor hands. It was a long, black shroud standing erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving. She gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of spectre. But neither ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... study, fascinated—as much unconsciously as consciously—by the thing which since its owner's death had grown every hour more mysterious and more formidable—the safe. It was a fine afternoon. The secondary but still grandiose enigma of the affair, Mr. Cowl, could be heard walking methodically on the gravel in the garden. Mr. Cowl was the secretary of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Ambrosio recognised him; it was Rosario, his favourite novice, a youth of whose origin none knew anything, save that his bearing, and such of his features as accident had discovered—for he seemed fearful of being recognised, and was continually muffled up in his cowl—proved him to be of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... one—both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite incredible? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our prior was once a good man—an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And wherefore melancholy? There was brought up with him, from the very nursery, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... stepped not the Rabbi he expected, but a tall, gaunt man, stooping slightly at the shoulders, dressed in the white habit and black cloak of the order of St. Dominic, his face lost in the shadows of a black cowl. Behind him stood two lay brothers of the order, two armed familiars of the Holy Office, displaying the white cross ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... top windows, and from behind blinds and shutters, priests are peeping out at the strange sight of a glad and a free people, with glances the reverse of friendly; but neither the black robe nor the brown serge cowl, nor the three-cornered, low-crowned hat, are to be seen amongst the crowd. Well, perhaps the scene looks none the less gay for their absence. The flags and flowers glitter beneath the blue, cloudless sky, and the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey |
