When they leave the Souris valley the hills are blue with distance and seem to promise wooded slopes, and maybe leaping streams, but a half-day's journey dispels the illusion, for when the traveller comes near enough to see the elevation as it is, it is only a rugged bluff, bald and bare, and blotched with clumps of mangy grass, with a fringe of stunted poplar at the base.

She was still strong in her combinations, but they were combinations that had the vicious error of being formed for the benefit of the minority, and which, like the mimic fortresses and moats of a scenic representation, needed only a strong light to destroy the illusion.

Careful backing and steering to starboard brought merely the disclosure that the Doctor's eye-strain had developed to the point where it produced optical illusions.

For an instant it gave me the illusion of a hill on fire: for the late sun shone full on the thick ripe stalks of the buckwheat, giving forth an abundant red glory that blessed the eye.

Maybe the Wicked Witch has created an illusion and ... and it's really her castle...."

Here and there we passed a still uncultivated spot; a desolate reedy swamp, with pools, and stunted alder-like trees, reminding us again of the Deep Fens, while the tall chimneys of the sugar-works, and the high woods beyond, completed the illusion.

He was in that hard age between thirty and thirty-five when people are still young, but have lost the illusions of youth.

Such was the origin of many of our later superstitions, which "grew with their growth, and strengthened with their strength," till the more extensive introduction of the art of printing partly dissipated the illusion.

" Denis, however, entertained no illusions.

It is the Emperor William and the Czar Ferdinand who have betrayed not only humanity but their own strange caste by shattering all these pleasant illusions.

We must not cherish illusions; the chances, of civil war have been increasing for a few weeks past with fearful rapidity.

Should she leave him the illusion he loved so well?

He shared the illusion that a language might be "fixed" by making a catalogue of its words.

"Some day, perhaps, you'll see you're indulging a blamed extravagant illusion and I'm going to wait.

Only Italian gunners coming and going, for several of their Battery positions were close to ours, and the Castello di Rubbia across the water, slightly but not greatly damaged, broke this occasional illusion.

He has the art, as no man but himself ever had, of sustaining the illusion of an awful or solemn narrative through a long poem, to be closed in a catastrophe that is at once unexpected and ludicrous.

The native population, largely mixed with Arabs, carries out the illusion, and bright-coloured garments, white "bournouses," and green turbans throng the streets, in striking contrast to the sombre, rook-like garments affected by the natives of Iran.

He saw little good in any cultivation of the feelings, and none at all in cultivating them through the imagination, which he thought was only cultivating illusions.

He held these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only half-believed illusions.

It is especially Prince Caetani and Father Lammens who have disturbed this illusion.

Madame de Maintenon was like the genius of this reaction towards regularity, propriety, order; all the responsibility for it had been thrown upon her; the good she did has disappeared beneath the evil she allowed or encouraged; the regard lavished upon her by the king has caused illusions as to the discreet care she was continually taking to please him.

I am glad to state that I was right, and that, maybe through the uncertainties and the lessons of those who had spread the illusions, the Italian Socialists returned from Russia were bound to recognize that the communist experiment was the complete ruin of the Russian people.

It was there formerlyfive years ago, quite an abysshe had dreamed of a future embroidered with gold and silk, but it was there also that he had seen his first illusions and his inmost beliefs flee away.

I contrasted these with the difficulties and dangers I might have to encounter from hordes of ferocious savages, who, now flushed with conquest, were plotting murder and destruction against each other: even a glance at my companions banished all peaceful illusions.

I kept up the illusion as long as I could; used to go off alone to read your letters, look at your picture, and fancy I felt just as at first.