[Sidenote: Gradual acquisition by the plebs of political equality with the patres.]

It had been a gradual change, peaceably brought about, and the larger number having absorbed the smaller, the term 'nobiles,' which specifically meant those who had themselves filled a curule office, or whose fathers had done so, comprehended in common usage the old nobility and the new.

The cheeks, starting from the ears proportionately with the skull, have a gradual taper towards the muzzle, which is deep and strongly made, and measures about three inches in length, or in proportion to skull as three is to five.

BODYLong, strong, and flexible; ribs well sprung and round, chest well developed and let well down between the fore-legs; the back rather low at the shoulder, having a slight downward curve and a corresponding arch over the loins, with a very slight gradual drop from top of loins to root of tail; both sides of backbone well supplied with muscle.

Among toy dogs this particular breed has enjoyed an unprecedented popularity; the growth in the public favour among all classes has been gradual and permanent during the last fifteen years, and there are no signs that it is losing its hold on the love and affection of a large section of the English people.

The steel shell was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added in Fifth Avenue; and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, as unlike the gradual homogeneous growth which flowers into what other countries know as society, as that between the Blois gargoyles on Peter Van Degen's roof and the skeleton walls supporting them.

These bills are accompanied by Mr. Clay's Law of Compromise, providing for the gradual reduction of duties to a revenue standard.

The transfer from old to new Mackinack seems to have been gradual with the inhabitants.

He was deep in thought, and the result of his meditation became evident from that day in a gradual broadening of his nature and purposes.

Its main features were, a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending through twelve or fourteen years,the arrival of the serf at personal freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it,the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs,and after this advance to personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political liberty.

The Tzar offers gradual indemnity; the nobles seem to prefer fire and blood.

The building material is, as it were, provided by the process which divides the yolk into innumerable cells, and by the gradual assimilation and modification of this material the organs arise.

Another circumstance which marks the progress of constitutional liberty, is the gradual diminution in the number of our northern serviles.

"Resolved, that the committee of the District of Columbia be instructed to inquire into the expediency of providing by law, for the gradual abolition of Slavery in the District, in such manner that no individual shall be injured thereby."

" When the petition on the abolition of the slave trade was under discussion in the Congress of '89, Mr. Brown, of North Carolina, said, "The emancipation of the slaves will be effected in time; it ought to be a gradual business, but he hoped that Congress would not precipitate it to the great injury of the southern States."

" WASHINGTON, in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, says, "There are, in Pennsylvania, laws for the gradual abolition of slavery which neither Maryland nor Virginia have at present, but which nothing is more certain than that they must have, and at a period NOT REMOTE."

It is much to be lamented that having done so much in this way, a provision had not been made for the gradual abolition of slavery.

Sir, it was a committee composed of those five illustrious men, who, in 1777, submitted to the general assembly of this state, then in session, a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves of this commonwealth.

In Rhode Island and Connecticut gradual abolition laws were passed which provided that all children born of slave parents after a certain day should be free at a certain age, and that their children should never be slaves.

It must not be supposed that the whole of what I am describing was visible to the persons about him; nor, indeed, was I acquainted with it in the extent here stated but after a considerable time, and in gradual succession.

But his disposition, always brutal, had acquired a gradual accession of ferocity since the settlement of Mr. Falkland in his neighbourhood.

In his novels you can trace a gradual realization of the defects of natural laws and the quandary men are put to by their operation.

The Church of the First Three Centuries; or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, with Special Reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity; illustrating its Late Origin and Gradual Formation.

But, all these things have, since, by the gradual improvement of our organization, undergone many alterations; and Entered Apprentices seem now, by universal consent, to be restricted to a very few rights.

Now that change was not gradual or insidious nor was it progressive.