"Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to go to Reims and take the King to his anointing.[1315] She did not stay to consider whether it would be better to wage war in Champagne than in Normandy. She did not know enough of the configuration of the country to decide such a question, and it is not likely that her saints and angels knew more of geography than she did. She was in haste to take the King to Reims for his anointing, because she believed it impossible ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... continental Portugal was divided for administrative purposes into six provinces, delimited in a large measure in accordance with the physical configuration of the country. In 1836 the province ceased to be an administrative unit and, after a period of readjustment, there was established by law of March 18, 1842, an administrative hierarchy which in its more ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Portland was at this period singularly sharp and rugged. Nothing remains at this date of its past configuration. Since the idea of manufacturing Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the whole rock has been subjected to an alteration which has completely changed its original appearance. Calcareous lias, slate, and trap are still to be found ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... that our instincts and consciousness dwell in the "sensory ganglia," that "an idea is a contradiction, a motion, a configuration of the intermediate organ of sense," that "memory is the organic registration of their effects of impressions," and that the "cerebrum" is the seat of ideas, the home of thought and reason. But when "grey-matter" that composes this thinking mechanism becomes diseased, and the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... city of Sirmium on the Save, the ruins of which may still be seen about eighty miles west of Belgrade, had once belonged to the Western Empire and had been rightly looked upon as one of the bulwarks of Italy. To anyone who studies the configuration of the great Alpine chain, which parts off the Italian peninsula from the rest of Europe, it will be manifest that it is in the north-east that that mountain barrier is the weakest. The Maritime, Pennine, and Cottian Alps, which soar above the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the island to the destination. It is now an all-rail run of twenty-four hours. The project for a "spinal railway" from one end of the island to the other had been under consideration for many years. The configuration lent itself excellently to such a system, and not at all well to any other. A railway map of such a system shows a line, generally, through the middle of the island along its length, with numerous branch lines running north and south to ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... come to on the spot (see note p. 512 [footnote to Chapter 24 Paragraph 7]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the man who had foretold ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... says: "It is a fascinating guess that the electrons constitute the fundamental substratum of which all matter is composed. That a grouping of say 700 electrons, 350 positive and 350 negative, interleaved or interlocked in a state of violent motion so as to produce a stable configuration under the influence of their centrifugal inertia and their electric forces, constitutes an atom of hydrogen. That sixteen times as many, in another stable grouping, constitute an atom of oxygen. That some 16,000 of them go to form an atom of sodium; about 100,000 ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the progress of scientific knowledge has enabled man to measure the depths of the ocean, which were formerly believed to be as unfathomable as boundless in extent. From soundings which have been taken, it is ascertained that the configuration of the earth at the bottom of the sea, is similar to that portion which rises above the surface, undulating, and interspersed with hills, and valleys, and plains, and mountain ranges, and abrupt precipices. The greatest depth of water at which soundings have been obtained, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... urged against the promiscuous use of this word in general. It has in fact become customary to designate all morbid manifestations not of traumatic or infectious origin as degenerative. Indeed, Magnan's classification of degenerates makes it possible that the highest general configuration of nervous accomplishment need not exclude the application of the concept of degeneration. Under the circumstances, it is a question what use and what new content the judgment of "degeneration" still possesses. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... acquainted with the character which the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus, the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these occult and starry mysteries;—all are bestowed on thee by this new ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty— and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... initial hydrographic meridians, Greenwich and Paris, a prime meridian has been taken, the reign (practical influence) of which is principally over the sea; and this meridian, instead of being chosen with reference to the configuration of the continents, is borrowed from an observatory; that is to say, that it is placed on the globe in a hap-hazard manner, and is very inconveniently situated for the function that it is to perform. Finally, instead of profiting by the lessons of the past, national ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... defence. The Chinese massed there a force of seventeen thousand men, and made preparations for a decisive contest, building parapets, mounting guns, and strengthening the position by every device of modern warfare. Their infantry had the advantage of being armed with repeating rifles, and the configuration of the ground offered little cover for an attacking army. Against this strong position the Japanese moved in two columns; one marching northward from Seoul, the other striking westward from Yuensan. Forty days elapsed before the Japanese forces came into action, and one ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... that it looks as though Providence had just planned the configuration of the country ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... literature, and he had known many of the famous people of the Victorian era. True to my plan of asking questions, I asked him whether he had ever seen Cardinal Newman. He replied by a story which was revealing as to a certain fierceness in Newman's character and mental configuration. In any case, it had both rhetorically and intellectually a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... marked every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... from dark horizons. Under such circumstances, how could they distinguish the shape of the ground, the extent of the seas, the position of the islands? How could they recognize the hydrographic network of the country or the orographic configuration, and distinguish the hills and mountains ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... track—even Felix could scarcely have told—for the dew and the wind had made the faint traces of the elephants quite indiscernible now to civilized eyes; and Berselius never once looked at the ground under his feet, he was led entirely by the configuration of the land. That to the eyes of Adams was hopeless. For the great elephant country is all alike, and one ridge is the counterpart of another ridge, and one grassy plain of another grassy plain, and the scattered trees tell you nothing when you are lost, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the oldest civilizations of the West concentrated themselves along the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, so the most ancient Chinese civilization is found concentrated along the south bank of the Yellow River. The configuration of the land as shown on a modern map assists us to understand how the industrious cultivators and weavers, finding the flat and so-called loess territory too confined for their ever-increasing numbers, threw out colonies ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the wizardry of dividing storm ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... cried, pointing to it, "this is evidently water, and all this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scientific speculation has done in the effort to explain these mysteries. Laplace's hypothesis can certainly find no standing ground either in the Orion Nebula or in those of a spiral configuration, whatever may be its situation with respect to the grand Nebula of Andromeda, or the "ring'' and "planetary'' nebul. Some other hypothesis more consonant with the appearances must be found. Among the many that have been proposed the most elaborate ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... his master soon called him back, for the time had not come to commence hunting; that would be attended to later. The engineer was not a man who would allow himself to be diverted from his fixed idea. It might even have been said that he did not observe the country at all, either in its configuration or in its natural productions, his great aim being to climb the mountain before him, and therefore straight towards it he went. At ten o'clock a halt of a few minutes was made. On leaving the forest, the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... copied from some preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from without can we have received an impression from which this particular idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter, no study of its external configuration or internal structure could, previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could enable us to guess, for instance, that ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... made us acquainted with the interior configuration of bodies; or has shown the existence of a vegetation and of plants, the existence of which we ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... sees the configuration of the country as on a map; the high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the significance ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... may be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, the mule, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... only with all the forces of my mind; my father and grandfather being known to have served thy illustrious sire in camp with loyal endurance of the toils of war. Relying therefore on thy guidance and regard, I have resolved to begin with the position and configuration of our own country; for I shall relate all things as they come more vividly, if the course of this history first traverse the places to which the events belong, and take their situation as ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in the case ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... new and original impression being formed in marble or other material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known or used by ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Europe—where should the ballad draw pith and sap and colour if not on such a soil and among such a people? If Mr. Buckle was able to trace the complexion and form of Scottish religion in the climate and configuration of Scotland, much more easily should we be able to find the atmosphere and scenery of Scotland ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances no longer allowed him to await ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unreasonably shocked by such vulgarities. But we should at least endeavour to correct the rash judgments which we may be disposed to form on these occasions, and should learn to recognize and to prize a sound texture and just configuration, though disguised beneath a homely or uncouth drapery. It was an Apostle who declared that he had come (to the learned and accomplished Grecians too) "not with excellency of speech, or the wisdom of words." From these he had studiously abstained, lest he should have seemed to owe ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... general configuration of the earth's surface as permanent a continuous and progressive dispersal of species from the centre to the circumference, i.e. southwards, seems inevitable. If an observer were placed above a point ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... island in the Mediterranean, lying off the SW. extremity of Italy, to which it belongs, and from which it is separated by the narrow strait of Messina, 2 m. broad; the three extremities of its triangular configuration form Capes Faro (NE.), Passaro (S.), and Boco (W.); its mountainous interior culminates in the volcanic Etna, and numerous streams rush swiftly down the thickly-wooded valleys; the coast-lands are exceptionally fertile, growing (although agricultural methods are extremely primitive) ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Standing in the midst of this frightful eruption from the heart of the mountains, one sees, as far as the eye can reach, a landscape utterly forbidding. North for sixty miles lie the high chains of the Mission range, and a cuplike configuration of the mountains close to the valley affords a resting-place for the deepest snows of winter and a precipitous escape for the torrents of June. Here, when the sun reaches its summer height or a sweet-grass wind blows soft or a cloudburst above the peaks ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... of one character, it seldom is so on any one farm in this country, but it is all good class. Most of it is a rich black humus, resting on clay and mountain limestone. In configuration it is of the roughest, like the country generally, being an abrupt succession of ranges, gullies, and basins, in every variety of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... dark, and consolidated. And now the successive flashes of chain lightning caused the whole cloud to appear like a sort of irregular network, and displayed a thousand fantastic images. The driver bespoke my attention to a remarkable configuration in the cloud; he said every flash of lightning near its centre discovered to him distinctly the form of a man sitting in an open carriage drawn by a black horse. But in truth I saw no such thing. The man's fancy was doubtless at ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... properly a voice [Greek omitted] is an articulate sound, which illustrates [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they fan or blow ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Peggy in my eye for you; by the same token, as the night's could, warm your tooth, avick; there's waker wather nor this in Lough Mecall. Sorra sup of it over I keep for my own use at all, barrin' when I take a touch o' configuration in my bowels, or, may be, when I'm too long at my prayers; for, God help me, sure I'm but sthrivin', wid the help o' one thing an' another, to work out my salvation as well as I can! Your health, any how, an' a merry Chris'mas to you!—not forgettin' ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Paris, as our American belles and dandies? The newest cut in garments which was hatched in Paris beneath the crescent-moon, her waning rays see carried to its utmost verge in our bustling marts. We follow the revolutions in the configuration of coats, from square to round, and from round to angular, with as scrupulous and painful a precision as if our national honor depended on the issue. Nay, we are usually a little too faithful, and fairly 'out-Herod Herod.' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... other State by mountains, or valleys, or gulfs, political liberty was engendered. The difficulties of cultivating a barren soil on the highlands inured the inhabitants to industry and economy, as in Scotland and New England, while the configuration of the country strengthened the powers of defense, and shut the people up from those invasions which have so often subjugated a plain and level country. These natural divisions also kept the States from political union, and fostered a principle of repulsion, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... interwoven with a grid of carbon-linked atoms. Now the trick was to produce that stuff. Calculation revealed what elements would be needed, and what spatial arrangement—only how did you get the atoms to assume the required configuration and hook up ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... animal and vegetable life would perish. It draws from the ocean a current of wind laden with moisture which blows steadily for two months toward the northwest and causes what is called the rainy season. That wind is called the southwest monsoon. The quantity of rain that falls depends upon the configuration of the land. Any cause which cools the winds from the sea and leads to the condensation of the vapor they carry—any obstacle which blocks their course—causes precipitation. Through all the northern part of India there is a heavy rainfall during April, May and June, the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... inland sea, and intersected by a few long or easily navigable rivers; all its known chains of mountains are of moderate height, rising in terraces, down which the waters find their way in cataracts, not through deep ravines and fertile valleys. Owing to this configuration, its high table lands are without streams, a phenomenon unknown in any other part of the world; while, in the lower countries, the rivers, when swelled with the rains, spread into floods and periodical lakes, or lose themselves in marshes. According ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... effort bring to mind examples of independent societies in tropical regions, where, these things being neglected, the resultant government is a mockery. Have we any reason to believe that the Filipino, untrained, inexperienced, occupying an undeveloped area of special configuration in a region where continuous effort is disagreeable and initiative distressing, will achieve success where others of greater original fitness have made ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked together by short flights of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... reposing in an immense armchair, covered with Hungary leather. His two elbows rested on the arms and enabled him to support in his hands the largest, the reddest, the fattest face that had ever ornamented the configuration of a Dutch functionary before. Mr Jansen Pyl wore at that moment the radiant look of satisfaction which only a magistrate can assume who feels conscious that he is in the full sunshine of the approbation of his sovereign. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. Within his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... were relieved over one fact: they had come upon no broad stream or river. Indeed, they had seen but the one stream which proved such a means of enjoyment to them, and the configuration of the country rendered it unlikely that they would meet any thing of the kind, until after passing the ridge where they expected to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... studying a paper with the signs of the Zodiac in the usual formulary of a nativity. At the coming of the cry, he arose, and observed the heavens intently; then he shouted, 'There is no God but God! Lo, Mars, Lord of the Ascendant—Mars, with his friends, Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter in happy configuration, and the moon nowhere visible. Hail the Prince!' And while his answer was passing below, the man on the roof marked the planets in their Houses exactly as they were that midnight between Monday and Tuesday in the year 1430. Have I in aught erred, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... showed, The same is true. And if the reason be Unable to unravel us the cause Why objects, which at hand were square, afar Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us, Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause For each configuration, than to let From out our hands escape the obvious things And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck All those foundations upon which do rest Our life and safety. For not only reason Would topple down; but even our very life Would straightaway collapse, unless we dared ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the way, point out this valley," said the Emir as to a dog, when they were near enough to observe the configuration of those heights. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... rises in the Argonne, southwest of Verdun. Through the Champagne region its banks are of gradual slope, but shortly after it passes Rethel, on its westerly course, the configuration changes sharply, and at Craonne the bluffs overlooking the river are 450 feet high. It is easy to see what an inaccessible barrier is made by such a line of cliffs. For forty miles this line of bluffs ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... which are mellow with the golden calm of his discovered peace, he tells how, having reached the climacteric which he had set at forty years, he went apart into the solitude of the Ermitage to inquire into the configuration of his own soul, and to fix once for all his opinions and his principles. In the exquisite third Reverie two phrases occur continually. His purpose was 'to find firm ground'—'prendre une assiette,'—and his means to this discovery was 'spiritual honesty'—'bonne foi.' Rousseau's deep concern ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... obvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmounted by an old disused light-house, you see the little com- pact rectangular town, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneath you, and follow the plain configuration of its defences. You take possession of it, and you feel that you ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to 100 feet perpendicularly from the water. It is really difficult to describe the appearance of the banks at this place; so singular were they in character, and so varied in form. Here they had the most beautiful columnar regularity, with capitals somewhat resembling the Corinthian order in configuration; there they showed like falls of muddy water that had suddenly been petrified; and in another place they resembled the time-worn battlements of a feudal castle. It will naturally be asked, of what could these cliffs have been composed to assume so many different forms? and what could have operated ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops. Vegetation is limited to a scanty growth of ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... surrounded, the skies that overshadow them,—all these exert a powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... satisfaction. And Gianni, taking note that the place was lonely, made up to her, and had such speech of her as he might, and being taught by her after what fashion he must proceed, if he would have further speech of her, he departed, but not till he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the configuration of the place; and having waited until night was come and indeed far spent, he returned thither, and though the ascent was such that 'twould scarce have afforded lodgment to a woodpecker, won his way up and entered the garden, where, finding a pole, he set ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... work have been photographed from a globe of Mars specially made for the purpose from various charts. In all the maps the south is at the top and the north at the bottom; and the series shows the general surface configuration all round the planet, together with the principal canal lines which have been observed; but many other canal lines exist, especially on the dark areas near the south pole. These lines are usually straight and uniform in width throughout their whole length: indeed it ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the absence of any marked changes in the physical configuration of the district since the same grotto was a place of sepulture, we must remember that it is the normal state of the earth's surface to be undergoing great alterations in one place, while other areas, often in close proximity, remain for ages without any modification. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... to detect in the configuration of the district a certain identity with our own county of Essex, in England, where a cousin of Bill's had a cottage, and where, some day, we were to have a cottage too. Our home is called Wigboro' House, after the cousin's, and we have settled it that, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... stared hard at the low ridge of an outlying island where a cow had been put to pasture. The hillocky back of that lone ruminant grew black as ink in the glow of sunset. The creature exhibited a strange fixity of outline, as if it had been a chance configuration of rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even detain him with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... particular attributes which we may select for the purposes of definition. There is no assignable reason why a rational animal should have hair on its head or a nose on its face, and yet man, as a matter of fact, has both; and generally the particular bodily configuration of man can only be regarded as an inseparable accident of his nature ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... celebrity on the names of the naturalists and astronomers who have been appointed by various governments to share the dangers of those undertakings; but though these eminent men have given us precise notions of the external configuration of countries, of the natural history of the ocean, and of the productions of islands and coasts, it must be admitted that maritime expeditions are less fitted to advance the progress of geology and other parts of physical science, than travels ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... infancy, should have become imbued with the spirit of this belief, is no more than might have been expected; and hence arose the at one time powerful and generally-accepted doctrine of "Catastrophism." That the succession of phenomena upon the globe, whereby the earth's crust had assumed the configuration and composition which we find it to possess, had been a discontinuous and broken succession, was the almost inevitable conclusion of the older geologists. Everywhere in their study of the rocks they met with apparently impassable gaps, and breaches of continuity that could not be ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... Kaffir has the makings of a politician, and therefore it was no wonder that so many of the well-organised military schemes in this unlucky war came to grief. But in the case at Stormberg there were other difficulties to contend with. The map of the ground was utterly unreliable. The configuration of the hills was incorrectly presented and the distances badly judged. The general knowledge of the direction was so imperfect that none was sufficiently well informed to put a check upon the movements of the guide, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... A strange, shrivelled creature seemed to have taken possession of it. He raised his head, and peered about him. He and three soldiers—youngsters, like himself, who had never before been under fire—appeared to be utterly alone in that hell. They were the end men of the regiment, and the configuration of the ground completely hid them from ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said, giving them absolution with faint damns, "but it will entail a great deal of extra labor. A hundred and nine miles is a great distance to carry equipment, and, actually, the distance is a great deal more, considering the configuration of the terrain. The...." ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... understood, namely, that by a chain or ridge of mountains we do not necessarily intend a continuous elevation, the term may be conveniently used in order to express the configuration of mountains. These chains surround or border upon greater or less basins, which are each distinguished by the name of the principal stream that conveys its surface waters to the ocean, or they may, as has been stated, envelop a table land, whence there is no issue for the waters, or no ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the unfettered use of the natural materials of wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her geographical position—if her interests were protected by a Parliament sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive haemorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... such stations, you get an insight into the configuration of the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson |
