Once, I glanced back to the stars, and saw them shift, as it were, in my wake, against the mighty background of night, so vast was the speed of my passing spirit.

How the lights and shadows of its arches, the dim, faint-tinted windows, the carvings and tracings, the atmosphere and coloring, all sink into the heart, and make a background for memories that never pass away!

The towers of Baeza, the walls of Granada, the green vegas that spread outside every city, the valley of the Guadalquivir, and the rushing waters of the Tagus, the high cliffs of Cadiz, the Pillars of Hercules, and the blue waves of the Mediterranean make a life-like background to every incident.

The picture was dim, but the startled look upon this man's face, and the sorrow on the angel's, appeared out of the misty background with such truth that the tears came into the little Pilgrim's eyes, and she said in her heart, "Oh that I could go to him and help him!"

Player Number One, even though he sits patiently in the background in seeming stolidity, is big-boned, brawny, hairy, thirsty Russia.

It is our object to make this background as rich and full and orderly as possible, so that whatever is brought to the focus of consciousness shall be set in a relational background, which shall give it meaning; and so that our pupils may be able to feel the truth which Browning puts into the mouth of Fra Lippo Lippi: This world's no blot for us Nor blank; it means intensely and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

Even in "Sin and Sorrow" and "A Protégée" whole passages merely illustrate the background against which the plot is set rather than help forward the action itself.

I promise that I will write one more at least, and have a heroine in it whom your mother will both admire and love," answered Randal, surprised to find how grateful he was for the girl's approval, and how rapidly his trained fancy began to paint the background on which he hoped to copy this fresh, human daisy.

He must have seen Nero always honoured, promoted, paraded before the eyes of the populace as the future hope of Rome, whilst Britannicus, like the young Edward V. under the regency of his uncle, was neglected, surrounded with spies, kept as much as possible out of his father's sight, and so completely thrust into the background from all observation that the populace began seriously to doubt whether he were alive or dead.

I got the girl to stand in the middle of the cellar whilst Parsket and the Captain held out the background behind her.

But the very curses of those that hate her make a kind of superhuman atmosphere about Helen in this play; she fills the background like a great well-spring of pain.

The Germans had found them especially useful; for the German field uniform, which has the merit of merging into the natural background at a short distance, becomes, through that very protective coloration, a disadvantage when its wearer drops wounded and unconscious on the open field.

He loved her, had loved her since Thimble Island, when she had spoiled his foreground by eliminating every detail of foreground and background by becoming both.

Finally, he was seen to gather himself a little farther in the background than usual, evidently to prepare for a better start.

These ladies, who had their full share of common sense, took care to keep the twins in the background until such time as the Widow McCarty had become Mrs. Gann.

"Can't you see Master Piers isn't here?" "Very good, sir," murmured David, and retired decorously, fading into the background without the faintest sound, while Caesar the Dalmatian who had entered with him lay sedately down in well-bred silence at Sir Beverley's feet.

As a scene of oriental pomp, heightened by mysterious shadows and flashing lights, I know nothing equal to the Rembrandt in the Queen's Gallery; the procession of attendants seen emerging from the background through the transparent gloom is quite awful; but in this miraculous picture, the lovely Virgin Mother is metamorphosed into a coarse Dutch vrow, and the divine Child looks like a changeling imp.

Reading it I realized that the memory of Jack had been so pushed into the background during the past six months that I never had thought to tell Dicky about him.

Pietro della Francesca was the father of perspective; Domenico painted in oil, discovered by Van Eyck in Flanders, in 1410; Masaccio studied anatomy; gilding disappeared as a background around pictures.

Bellini, indeed, before him had studied nature and introduced landscape backgrounds into his pictures, but more for picturesqueness of setting than as an integral part of the whole; they are far less suggestive of the mood appropriate to the moment, less calculated to stir the imagination than to please the eye.

They think of internationalism with greedy Great Powers in the background outside the internationalized area, intriguing to create disorder and mischief with ideas of an ultimate annexation.

"The man who robbed me of my promised wife is the man whom I introduced to her; the man who has come between me and all my hopes, who hides himself from my just anger, and skulks in the background under a feigned name, is the one friend whom I have loved above all other menJohn Saltram!" Sir David faced him without flinching.