Dr. Johnson talked of the proportions of charcoal and salt-petre in making gunpowder, of granulating it, and of giving it a gloss.

He "spent his time, his life, his energy," says a severe, but just critic, "in putting a polished gloss on human tumult, a sneering gloss on human piety."

It would scarcely be possible to fix upon any individual writer as its author, for it has been edited over and over again by Arabian scribes, each adding his own glosses and enriching it with incidents.

He therefore takes the thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not) out of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic inveteracy of purpose.

And he told himself that he rather liked that gloss.)

The oraculous glasses have deceived their votaries; shower has succeeded shower, though they predicted sunshine and dry skies; and, by fatal confidence in these fallacious promises, many coats have lost their gloss, and many curls been moistened to flaccidity.

His first glance lighted on Elinor and Ormsby, and he needed no gloss on the love-text.

Still at the slowly spreading leaves She glanced up ever and anon, If yet the shadow of the eaves Had paled the dark gloss they put on.

Ladies' religion, like their love, we know, Requires a gloss of verbal exaltation, Lest the sweet souls should understand themselves; And clergymen must talk up to the mark.

Another stifled glance passed between the seniors, but this time Miss Maria made no effort to restore the gloss of the surface.

It was not grayit was silver-white; and as it retained all the silken gloss which had made it so beautiful the shining of it was marvelous.

But I, whose soul consented to thy cause, Who felt thy genius stamp its own applause, Who saw the spirits of each glorious age Move in thy bosom, and direct thy rage, I scorned the ungenerous gloss of slavish minds, The owl-eyed race, whom Virtue's lustre blinds.

" "Yes, you are; and you are taking the gloss all off 'em, too, and I want 'em to look new when I wear 'em in Boston.

The city of Kano, the great emporium of the kingdom of Houssa, in Africa, is celebrated for the art of dyeing cotton cloth, which is afterwards beaten with wooden mallets until it acquires a japan gloss.

Sisal, also sisal-hemp, or, as it is sometimes known, Mexican grass, has for some years past been used in the trade in increasing quantities as a substitute for abacá, which it somewhat resembles in appearance, though wanting that fine gloss which the latter possesses.

Here Marsilio Ficino's Platonic Academy used to meet, in the loggia and in the little temple which one gains from the cloisters, and here Pico della Mirandola composed his curious gloss on Genesis.

No inconsiderable portion of the oldest English vocabulary has been recovered entirely from these interlinear glosses; and we may anticipate important additions to that vocabulary when Professor Napier gives us the volume in which he has been gathering up all the unpublished glosses that yet remain in MSS.

The city of Canfu is built of wood and canes interwoven, just like our lattice-work of split canes, the whole washed over with a kind of varnish made of hempseed, which becomes as white as milk, having a wonderfully fine gloss.