"Basset" Quotes from Famous Books
... fortunes of the academy. The labours of the academicians were diverted from the pursuit of pure science to such works as the construction of fountains and cascades at Versailles, and the mathematicians were employed to calculate the odds of the games of lansquenet and basset. In 1699 the academy was reconstituted by Louis Phelypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, under whose department as secretary of state the academies came. By its new constitution it consisted of twenty-five members, ... — Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Passover night. It has, however, been shown that this does not occur in early MSS. or editions, and was only added at the end to amuse the children after the service, and was therefore only a translation or adaptation of a current German form of the jingle; (2) M. Basset, in the Revue des Traditions populaires, 1890, t. v. p. 549, has suggested that it is a survival of the old Greek custom at the sacrifice of the Bouphonia for the priest to contend that he had not slain the sacred beast, the axe declares ... — Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... garden was a well of never-failing water held in high repute by pilgrims, and which now supplies a fish-pond. The priory and its estates have passed in regular succession through females from its founder, Gilbert Basset, to the Stanleys, and it is now one of the possessions of the Earl of Derby. Bicester is an excellent specimen of an ancient English market-town, and its curious block of market-buildings, occupied by at least twenty-five tenements, stands alone and clear in the ... — England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of his subtlety. "Here is a really bad man, a foreigner too," Smollett seems to say, "do not be misled, oh maidens, by the wiles of such a Count! Impetuous youth, play not with him at billiards, basset, or gleek. Fathers, on such a rogue shut your doors: collectors, handle not his nefarious antiques. Let all avoid the path and shun the ... — Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... XL-XLI, Paris, 1900), has connected these usages with the old Semitic prostitution, but his thesis has been attacked and the historical circumstances of the arrival of the Ouled-Nail in Algeria in the eleventh century render it very doubtful (Note by Basset).—It seems certain (I do not know whether this explanation has ever been offered) {248} that this strange practice is a modified utilitarian form of an ancient exogamy. Besides it had certain favorable results, since it protected the girl ... — The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont |