Madame Thompson elevated a pair of glasses which were no detraction from her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity of a reconnoitring general.

" This seems not to be accurately conceived or expressed: an alexandrine, with the addition of two syllables, is no more an alexandrine, than with the detraction of two syllables.

The worst Evil I ever observed this Man's Falsehood occasion, has been that he turned Detraction into Flattery.

She has no good will towards us and we must not be duped by her soft speeches and fair words, on the one side, nor by her contemptible detraction on the other.

In highly figurative language, this stanza pictures the passage of Urania from 'her secret paradise' to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rome, as if the spiritual essence and external form of the goddess were wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and detraction through which she has to pass.