"Cowl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 heard of him, and sent him ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... 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, a fair girl, the weeping orphan of a neighbouring squire, who had buckled ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... greatest in the variety, number, and splendour of his pictures, is represented in the Pitti, happily enough by one of the most lovely of all Italian paintings, the Concert (185), so long given to Giorgone. A monk in cowl and tonsure touches the keys of a harpsichord, while beside him stands an older man, a clerk and perhaps a monk too, who grasps the handle of a viol; in the background, a youthful, ambiguous figure, with a cap and plume, waits, perhaps on some interval, to begin a song. Yet, indeed, that ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... pencil of a Domenichino, perhaps, could have done justice to. The fierce features and wild dress of the condottieri, bending with their torches over the grave, into which the corpse was descending, were contrasted by the venerable figure of the monk, wrapt in long black garments, his cowl thrown back from his pale face, on which the light gleaming strongly shewed the lines of affliction softened by piety, and the few grey locks, which time had spared on his temples: while, beside ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... 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 was fetched from his ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Red Friar!" he said, "Up, and away, right speedilie; An it were not for that cowl of thine, Avenged on thy ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... with Agnes and Don Philip in their own 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 ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a long serge gown, with a cowl, like a mendicant monk, and as they approached he put out his ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... roofless theatre or circus, he might put 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 his identity as he moved abroad, commonly issuing in such cases from his side door. But on ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... stepped out, to see by the headlights of the car that she was apparently in a mountain gorge, and to see a group of masked and armed men standing beside some mules. She turned to look at her captor as she reached the front of the car, and found that Cojuelo was wearing what looked like a monk's cowl which completely covered his face, and which accounted for his muffled voice. She saw that he was ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... like a Rugby ball into which tin tacks had been driven head first, the sharp ends pointing outwards and backwards. Its head was the small end, and much lower than its back. Its eyes, little and pig-like, set in a black cowl, gleamed red in the tired moonlight; and its face was the face of a pig, nothing else—just pure pig; insolent, cunning, vulgar, and blatant. Occasionally men name a wild beast correctly, and this little beast could only have one ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 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 fury of this visit and advice, and threatened ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... little pool between his 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 shadow of his ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... things stood looking up, enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging bell. Descending, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... still lay crouched upon her knees, a partly-concealed door, which led towards the monastery, and was almost in disuse, slowly opened, and a figure, enveloped in a monk's robe and cowl, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... renouncing the world for themselves; with 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 ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... laces, cameos, and lovely coral ornaments. Beyond the walls there were the gardens full of orange-trees, bright with their fruit, and the burying-place of the old monks, each body standing in a niche, dressed in his gown and cowl ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... 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 in their hands from Rome, and all the church-bells ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... arrayed In cowl and beads, and dusky garb, appeared, Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade, With steps that trod ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Jeremy, come hither—closer—that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news; Angelica is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat by a fountain weeping for her lover. At this spot they had bidden farewell to each other, and here she was awaiting his return. One day a pilgrim arrived, and she at once asked for news of her knight. The pilgrim knew him and had a message for her. After a short conversation he threw back his cowl and drew the delighted maiden into his arms, for it was he himself, her lover, who after many years of absence had returned and was first visiting the spot where, years ago, he had said good-bye ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... then endure having anything to do with monks, against whom he was ever railing, and belonged to the party that was opposed to the faction of Fra Girolamo of Ferrara, his love for Baccio would have wrought upon him so strongly, that it would have forced him to don the cowl in the same convent as his companion. However, he was besought by Gerozzo Dini, who had given the commission for the Judgment that Baccio had left unfinished in the Ossa, that he, having a manner similar ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... sinners were thus leaning against him, the Baron de Shurland was quietly eating his breakfast. He had passed a tranquil night, undisturbed by dreams of cowl or capuchin; nor was his appetite more affected than his conscience. On the contrary, he sat rather longer over his meal than usual; luncheon-time came, and he was ready as ever for his oysters: but scarcely had Dame Martin opened his ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... 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 ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... had given place to a dull persistent rain, and a peevish wind was complaining in area and chimney cowl. Philip turned to the street with a pleasantly haunting vision of Patty's vivacious face outlined against the warmth and brightness of the hall. The touch of her good-night kiss lingered on his lips like live velvet, ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the brim of the cup, served as a 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... drew his cowl over his head, and, putting his portfolio of drawings under his arm, began to wend his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of 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 ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... dropped his head upon his bosom; and Paolina gazed at him with a feeling of awe, mingled with a suddenly rising fear, that the tall and emaciated old man, whose light-blue eyes gleamed out from beneath his cowl, was not wholly right in his mind. She would have been more alarmed had she been aware that the old Padre Fabiano of St. Apollinare was generally considered in Ravenna to be crazed by all those who did not, instead of that, deem ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... lady, prince, and people. In vain the unfortunate Guilhem, throwing back his cowl and imploring to be heard, proclaims aloud that he is not the father of the noble knight; that Raymond does not belong to their unhappy race, and calls the Redeemer to witness that he speaks the truth; he ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... and was advancing rapidly toward the mysterious closet, when—holy God!—was it reality or imagination? Was it a human being or a specter from another world? For a tall, dark form, muffled apparently in a long cowl—or it might be a cloak, but Nisida was too bewildered to discriminate aright—glided from the middle of the room where her eyes first beheld it, and was lost to view almost as soon as seen. Strong minded as Nisida ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Neo-Platonists; and again, in the Middle Age, as a finer shade of Christian experience, in the mystic doctrines of Eckhart and Tauler concerning that union with God which can only be attained by the literal negation of self, by a kind of moral suicide; of which something also may be found, under the cowl of the monk, in the clear, cold, inaccessible, impossible heights of the book of the Imitation. It presents itself once more, now altogether beyond Christian influence, in the hard and ambitious intellectualism of Spinoza; a doctrine of pure repellent substance—substance ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... pine cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-scented grass which the children loved to keep in their desks, entwined with the pompon-like plumes of the buckeye and syringa, the wood anemone, and here and there the master noticed the dark blue cowl of the monk's-hood or deadly aconite. One day, during a walk, in crossing a wooded ridge, he came upon M'liss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine, on a fantastic throne, formed by the hanging ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... expression painted on the countenances of the attendant monks and friars. The procession arrived at the chapel of the convent; the sun gleamed for the last time upon the chaplet of the poor novice, as she crossed the fatal threshold and disappeared within the building. The throng poured in with cowl, and cross, and minstrelsy; the lover paused for a moment at the door. I could divine the tumult of his feelings; but he mastered them, and entered. There was a long interval. I pictured to myself the scene passing within: the poor novice despoiled of her transient finery, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the little town of Frosinone, which lies at the skirts of the Abruzzi. My father had made a little property in trade, and gave me some education, as he intended me for the church, but I had kept gay company too much to relish the cowl, so I grew up a loiterer about the place. I was a heedless fellow, a little quarrelsome on occasions, but good-humored in the main, so I made my way very well for a time, until I fell in love. There lived in our ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... sleep, giving audience to memories of her early childhood, she passed the night at her window, watching the constellations go down behind the dark, frowning mass of rock that lifted its parapets to the midnight sky, and in the morning light saw the cold, misty cowl drawn over the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... clothes, removed his beard, and then walked about the town, looking up at every window to see if he could perceive Amine. At a corner of one of the streets, he thought he recognised Father Mathias, and ran up to him; but the monk had drawn his cowl over his head, and when addressed by ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the shade your palace throws Like a cowl about the singer at your gilded porticos, A moan goes with the music that may vex the high repose Of a heart that fades and crumbles as the crimson ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... when these two women entered the suburb of San Lazaro, a man, clad in the robe of a monk, and with his head covered with a cowl, passed near them and looked at them attentively. This man, of tall stature, possessed a countenance expressive of gentleness and benevolence; it was Padre Joachim de Camarones; he threw a glance of intelligence on Sarah, who immediately looked at ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... then 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
... unfinished canvasses were leaning against the walls; the portrait of an exceedingly cadaverous-looking old man was conspicuous upon the artist's easel; the lay figure was draped like a monk, and had a cowl drawn over its stiff, wooden head. Percival shrugged ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... proem you hear the slow, measured wing of death; and after you have read the volume, forever, for you, will the smoke of martyr-fires hover about the Piazza Signoria, and from the gates of San Marco you will see emerge that little man in black robe and cowl—that homely, repulsive man with the curved nose, the protruding lower lip, the dark, leathery skin—that man who lured and fascinated by his poise and power, whose words were whips of scorpions that stung his enemies until they had to silence him with a rope; and as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the little man did scowl, The rosy Friar, sly-smiling 'neath his cowl, His visage meek, spake thus in dulcet tone: "Sir Fool, our Reeve is something mixed, I'll own, Though he by divers colours is bemused, Learn ye this truth, so shall he stand excused: Our Duchess Benedicta, be it known, Hath this ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Let's meet in a throng Here of tinkers; And quaff up a bowl As big as a cowl To beer drinkers. The pole of the hop Place in the aleshop To bethwack us, If ever we think So much as to drink Unto Bacchus. Who frolic will be For little cost, he Must not vary From beer-broth at all, So much as to call ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... thick black wood Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood; Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein,— But the viewless rider rode to win, Out of the wood to the highway's light Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright; The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried, And the weight of the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... been too much engrossed in their talk to take much heed of external impressions—was an elderly monk, clad in the same gown and hood as Brother Emmanuel, betokening that he too was of the Benedictine order; and his face, shrouded in its cowl, was turned towards the pair with a very peculiar expression upon it. A sinister smile was in the narrow beady eyes; the features, which were coarse and somewhat bloated from luxurious living, were set in a look of ill-concealed malice; and the salutation addressed to the pair ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Hilarius pushed back his cowl and stood bareheaded in the scorching sun of that windless day; it came to his mind that ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... nails until his beak became crossed. He could listen for ever to the tale of St. Cuthbert who was fed by ravens, of St. Martin who cut off his cloak and gave it to a beggar, of St. Anthony who preached to the fishes, of St. Raymond who put up his cowl and floated from Spain to Africa like a nautilus, of St. Nicolas who raised three boys from the dead after they had been killed and cut up and salted in a tub by a cruel man that wanted to eat them, and of that strange insect ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... sun was setting, and vespers done; From chapel the monks came one by one, And down they went thro' the garden trim, In cassock and cowl, to the river's brim. Ev'ry brother his rod he took; Ev'ry rod had a line and a hook; Ev'ry hook had a bait so fine, And thus they sang in the even shine: "Oh, to-morrow will be Friday, so we'll fish the stream to-day! Oh, to-morrow will be Friday, so we'll ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... learned old man, called Genius, who had already figured as confessor in the "Roman de la Rose"[627]: "Benedicite," says the priest; "Dominus," answers the lover; and a miniature shows the lover in a pink gown, kneeling in a meadow at the feet of Genius, a tonsured monk in frock and cowl.[628] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Ross pulled 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 here, ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... drawer in which I had espied the rough monks' habits, and pulling one out I held it for her to don. She sat there now, in that garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her shoulder, the fairest postulate that ever entered ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... designed the Pieta for his own monument. In the person of Nicodemus, it is he who sustains his dead Lord in the gloom of the sombre Duomo. His old sad face, surrounded by the heavy cowl, looks down for ever with a tenderness beyond expression, repeating mutely through the years how much of anguish and of blood divine the redemption of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... be quite orthodox To say so in society, And yet I think the hollyhocks, Of every known variety, That bloom and bless the humble home, Are sisters sweet of charity,— Fair nuns that wear a beauteous cowl,— God's priestesses unto the soul That lives ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... with monks, close pent within The cloister's precincts, when I first began 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
... years the secret search for his person, at 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 ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... round a bird's ears, that however ruffled or wet, they can't get in—and possibly they conduct sound. Birds have no need of ears with a movable cowl over them, to turn and twist for the catching of stray sounds, as foxes have, and hares, and other four-footed things; for a bird can turn his whole head so as to put his ear wherever he pleases in the twinkling of an eye; and he has too ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... princes, watchmen, moonshees, milestones, devils, and Quakers are all very well in their way as they pass in the review before us, but when we come to mix in the crowd, we discover that, except the turban and the cowl, the crook and the broad-brim, no further disguise is attempted or thought of. The nun, forgetting her vow and her vestments, is flirting with the devil; the watchman, a very fastidious elegant, is ogling the fishwomen through ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... their vile drugs; why then, I say again, glory to the metaphysician's all-perfect theory! and fare you well, sweet world, and you, my merry masters, whom, perhaps, I have studied somewhat too cunningly: nosce teipsum shall be my motto. I will doff my travelling cap, and on with the monk's cowl. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... old friend Intellectual Tyranny come back in another form, not with cowl and cape, but tricked out with feminine finery and jewelry and gems that lure and dazzle. There is one thing quite as valuable as health, and that is intellectual integrity. To say, "Oh, 'Science and Health' is certainly inspired—just see ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... his splendid gifts I share, Or soon this youthful head A solemn monk's dark cowl shall wear, To ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... the use of linen in Egypt, where it was a cheap and domestic manufacture; but in the West they rejected such an expensive article of foreign luxury. [42] It was the practice of the monks either to cut or shave their hair; they wrapped their heads in a cowl to escape the sight of profane objects; their legs and feet were naked, except in the extreme cold of winter; and their slow and feeble steps were supported by a long staff. The aspect of a genuine anachoret ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... leading to the cellar steps, seemed to lead to affrighting matters. He was in the earth, in 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 amid the fundamental mysteries of the universe. He reached ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... exactly mimics it. All the Tropidorhynchi have a patch of bare black skin round the eyes, and a ruff of curious pale recurved feathers on the nape, whence their name of Friar-birds, the ruff being supposed to resemble the cowl of a friar. These peculiarities are imitated in the orioles by patches of feathers of corresponding colours; while the different tints of the two species in each island are exactly the same. Thus in Bouru both are ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Bute, took his seat as judge. Noble and comely he looked, holding his great glittering sword, point upward, waiting for the prisoner and his accuser. At his right stood Godfrey Thurstan, the good abbot of St. Blane's, with his cowl drawn over his reverend head to shield him from the warm sun. At his left Dovenald, most learned in the laws of the land, ready to explain and discuss the ancient legal customs; and round them in a circle were the others of the twelve ruthmen. The witnesses or compurgators ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... the edge of a great hay-rack, and we followed the farmer's man through a door into the dark interior of one of the oast-houses, where we looked up to see the light coming in through the opening at the side of the cowl, and then followed Jem up some steps into a broad loft, at one corner of which was a short ladder leading up to a trap-door in the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... the tenseness 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
... 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 ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... approached, was dressed like the trunk of a tree in winter when it is clothed in the rough fustian of moss. He wore a cowl on his head and sandals on his feet. He carried no stick. His hands were clasped inside the sleeves of his robe, and a cord served as girdle. He kept his bony face turned toward the moon, and the moon was less pale than it. One could ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... company, what one calls 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 in another room, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... to be out a-gadding, the cowl and scapulary might have found some hindrance over the moors from Kirkstall. With my hawk and bearing-pole, I can follow on to the sport without let or question." The latter part of this speech seemed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that old Nicodemus with a hood, who lowers the Christ from the cross in the Deposition, while Milanesi, asserting that Nicodemus has a saint's aureole not a cowl, holds that the portrait of Michelozzo is to be seen in the figure with a black hood who speaks with the disciple beneath him as he gives the body of the Lord into his hands. Certainly Milanesi has good reason ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... the Middle Ages, man 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, to tell his beads and pray." Before the Renaissance, the tendency was to regard with contempt mere questions of earthly progress ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... lines marked out the town, Before me stretched the noble Roadstead's tide: And there I saw the Evening sun go down Casting a parting glory far and wide— As King who for the cowl puts off his crown— So went the sun: and left a wealth of light Ere hidden by the ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... why, we've come to let you out," said the foremost of the group, and he flung back the cowl of his Moorish cloak, thereby revealing to Mole the startling fact, that instead of a murderous Arab, it ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... while the moon wove wan harmonies of ebony and silver into Newtake. A wind woke, proclaiming morning, as yet invisible; and when it rustled dead leaves or turned a chimney-cowl, the dog at the gate stirred and growled and grated his chain ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... sight almost beyond imagination. Through the darkness none had been able or had cared to see the city save in fragmentary glimpses, caught by the fierce light that flared and fell. Now, in the gray dawn, the city as a whole appeared beneath a smoky cowl, looking mightier and more austere than ever under the shadow of this dreadful visitation. All sectional sights aforetime had been of single streets, of squares, of stray purlieus—but now appeared the wide, sweeping stretch of the myriad roofs, the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... schemes of worldly aggrandisement to be the wings which will waft the soul over the gulph of purgatory, and securely lodge it in Abraham's bosom. Not content with becoming a convert to the Romish church, the young Baronet determined upon expiating his unintentional parricide, by taking the cowl, and entering into its strictest order of monachism. Eustace and his friends, when they travelled over the Alps, were lodged one night at this convent, and in the midnight service De Vallance recognized the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the question. It was agreed that the matter should be decided by lot. Dice were called for. Count Egmont won. A few days afterwards his retainers appeared in doublet and hose of the coarsest grey, long hanging sleeves, such as were worn by the humblest classes, the only ornament being a monk's cowl, or a fool's cap and bells, embroidered on the sleeves. The other nobles, who had been present at the dinner, ordered all their servants to appear in the same costume, which now became so popular, that all the tailors in Brussels could scarcely ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... respects the mode of life was to be simple without extreme rigor, and confined to strictly necessary things. Clothing consisted of a tunic with a black cowl (whence the name Black Friars); the material to be determined by the climate and season. On the two weekly fast days, and from the middle of September to Easter, one meal was to suffice for the day. Each monk is allowed ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... same moment the 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 ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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
... well as if his long coat had been a cowl. She would not, could not feel it yet. She must keep up appearances, so she fixed her eyes steadily on the drawing her idle hands were perpetrating on the back of a letter, and appeared absorbed in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Comedie Humaine." One of these was a very genial 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 which the old priest, who had done the same, presented ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 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 or prunella. Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings, That ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... time, the character of those with whom I was destined to companion on the long journey. There were but four of us in that first group, which included Pere Allouez, a silent man, fingering his cross, and barely touching food. His face under the black cowl was drawn, and creased by strange lines, and his eyes burned with fanaticism. If I had ever dreamed of him as one to whom I might turn for counsel, the thought instantly vanished as our ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... and rebellions, this Saxon war continued at intervals for the space of thirty-three years. Thassillon, duke of Bavaria, for treasonable practices, was attacked by Charlemagne in 788, vanquished, and obliged to put on a monk's cowl to save his life: from which time Bavaria was annexed to Charlemagne's dominions. To punish the Abares for their inroads, he crossed the Inns into their territories, sacked Vienna, and marched to the mouth of the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... monks constantly walking about the streets, and even entering the hotels. They live chiefly upon alms. They are usually bare-headed, and bare-footed—with the exception of sandals. Their dress is a thick brown cloak, with a cowl hanging behind in a peaked point: the whole made of the coarsest materials. They have no beards—and yet, altogether, they have a very squalid and dirty appearance. It was towards eight o'clock, when I walked for the first time, in the cloisters; and there viewed, amongst other mural ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Richard's son rushed into the outlaw's camp, breathlessly crying the king had left Nottingham and was scouring the forest to arrest them. Throwing back his cowl Richard sternly demanded how one of his nobles dared reveal his plans to his foes, whereupon the young knight, kneeling before his monarch, explained how Robin had ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... 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 Fathers of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the cowl, but his mother, a widow, at his own wish, let him make choice of the flat cap. He was the best 'prentice ever I had. By the blood of Saint Thomas, he will push his way in good time; he has a head, Master Stokton,—a head, and an ear; and a great big pair ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shifted, Chris began to find that the external world could not be banished, and that the annoyances from the clash of characters discordant with his own were as positive as those which had distressed him before. Dom Anselm Bowden's way of walking and the patch of grease at the shoulder of his cowl, never removed, and visible as he went before him into the church was as distractingly irritating as Ralph's contempt; the buzz in the voice of a cantor who seemed always to sing on great days was as distressing ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... pleasure of kneeling for their pardon. Here's sanctity—to shame your cousin and me— Spurn rank and proper pride, and decency;— If God has made you noble, use your rank, If you but know how. You Landgravine? You mated With gentle Lewis? Why, belike you'll cowl him, As that stern prude, your aunt, cowled her poor spouse; No—one Hedwiga at a time's enough,— My son shall ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... his articles on 'The Blue-Grass Region,' he had studied the Trappist Monastery and the Convent of Loretto, as well as the records of the Catholic Church in Kentucky; and his first stories, 'The White Cowl' and 'Sister Dolorosa,' which appeared in the Century Magazine, were the first fruits of this labor. A controversy arose as to the fairness of these portraitures; but however opinions may differ as to his characterization, there can be no question of the truthfulness ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thee from that wild arise, Where Sherwood's outlaws, once, were wont to prowl; And Superstition's crimes, of various dyes, Sought shelter in the Priest's protecting cowl. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... cause of many quarrels, and much bloodshed." Guianerius cap. 36. de aegritud. matr. speaks of a silly jealous fellow, that seeing his child new-born included in a caul, thought sure a [6165]Franciscan that used to come to his house, was the father of it, it was so like the friar's cowl, and thereupon threatened the friar to kill him: Fulgosus of a woman in Narbonne, that cut off her husband's privities in the night, because she thought he played false with her. The story of Jonuses Bassa, and fair Manto his wife, is well known to such as have read the Turkish history; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Dick, keeping his cowl about his face, signed to Sir Oliver to move a pace or two aside from the archers; and, so soon as the priest had done so, "I cannot hope to deceive you, sir," he said. "My ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it—now, beneath the half-raised visor of Sir Malise, surnamed Poing-de-fer, who went up the breach at Ascalon shoulder to shoulder with strong King Richard—now, yet more grimly shadowed forth, under the cowl of Prior Bernard, the ambitious ascetic, whom, they say, the great Earl of Warwick trusted as his own right hand—now, softened a little, but still distinctly visible, under the long love-locks of Prince Rupert's aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness—now, contrasting ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... how things go with him at the Percys' castle. At any rate it will be better, by far, than if he had carried out that silly fancy of his, for putting himself in the hands of the monks and learning to read and write; which would, perchance, have ended in his shaving his crown and taking to a cowl, and there would have been an end of the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... were beautiful from the effects of the volcanic soil, did not amount to much; and as the inhabitants are all Portuguese, whom we did not tackle to much, the ladies all wearing long cloaks with cowl-like hoods, the same as monks, which prevented us from seeing their faces, I can't say we enjoyed our visit to the town as greatly as we thought we would when we ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson |
