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Sombre   Listen
noun
Sombre, Somber  n.  Gloom; obscurity; duskiness; somberness. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sombre" Quotes from Famous Books



... themselves, could be riding to battle with nobles and talking with princes; but I think they will understand better, when they see you. You look almost too fine for such simple people as we are, Philip; though I do not say your clothes are not of sombre hues, as might be expected from one fighting in the ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... outlined in light, up to the last high line of roof against the dark starlit sky; and upon the spaces in between lay the soft glow from the tens of thousands of torches that the crowds carried beneath. Above the grotto the precipitous face of the cliff showed black and sombre, except where the zigzag paths shone out in liquid wandering lines, where the folks stood packed together, unseeing, yet content to be present. In front, at the foot, over the lake of fire where the main body of worshippers stood, glowed softly the cavern ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... very sombre in the shadow of the wooded hill—I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse. Thence I reached the deep and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to Roc-Amadour, when the after-light ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... cluster thickly in hollow and on bank has a brilliance and delicacy which I have never seen in valley primroses, and I cannot describe the exquisite clear rose of apple-blossom, above the gnarled and twisted grey trunk, seen against this background of sombre brown and dun, and the penetrating ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... a stern, wild figure with his flowing beard, his long hair falling straight and unkempt about his brown throat; and his sombre monk's garment was wrought on breast and shoulders with a salient cross of natural thorns—the symbol of those monks of Troodos—the Mountain of the Holy Cross; and the Lady Beata trembled for the interview that was to be, as he answered ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... pursuing his own thoughts with a sombre intensity of passion that rendered him almost unconscious of her presence—"Ah! I said to myself, 'Oh, she believes that she has been so mourned and missed that my soul would spring back to her false smile; that I could be so base a slave to my senses ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I almost despair, Thou comest to me and I'm cheered again; Thine own bright smile illuminates my way, And one by one the gathered clouds depart, Till not a shadow lies upon my path. Night, with its long and sombre shadows, treads Upon the steps that morn and noon have trod; And, as our children gather round my knee, And lisp those evening prayers thy lips have taught, I cannot but believe that thou art near. But when they speak of "mother," when they say "'T ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... sea, which is one and indivisible, we perceive that the comparison is not inapt. Round the edge are the ever-restless waves; on the surface the foam blown by fitful gusts of wind, the translucent play of sunbeams, and the clamour of storms lashing up the billows; but down in the sombre depths broods the resistless, immovable force which tinges with its reflection the dancing and play above, and is the genius and fascination, the mystery and tragedy of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... hidden by a belt of haze, through which at length the brighter lamps struggled. It was like the gradual resolution of a nebula into stars. As the intervening depth became gradually less, the mist vanished more and more, and finally all the lamps shone through it They formed a bright foil to the sombre mass of rock above them. The sea was so calm and the scene so lovely that Mr. Huggins and myself stayed on deck till near midnight, when the ship was moored. During our walking to and fro a striking enlargement of the disk of Jupiter was observed, whenever the heated air of the funnel came between ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... in, the market assumed an aspect of half-subdued brilliancy with the many sombre and high-colored varieties of that fungus. The poorer people indulge in numerous kinds which the rich do not eat, and they furnish precious sustenance during fasts, when so many viands are forbidden by the Russian ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... form. Small groups of gownsmen were scattered along the bank in Christchurch meadow, chiefly dons, who were really interested in the races, but, at that time of day, seldom liked to display enthusiasm enough to cross the water and go down to the starting-place. These sombre groups lighted up here and there by the dresses of a few ladies, who were walking up and down, and watching the boats. At the mouth of the Cherwell were moored two punts, in which reclined at their ease some dozen young gentlemen, smoking; several of these were ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... once created, the history of the Jewish people unfolded itself with an irresistible force. The great empires which followed each other in Western Asia, in destroying its hope of a terrestrial kingdom, threw it into religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the national dynasty or political independence, it accepted all governments which permitted it to practise freely its worship and follow its usages. Israel will henceforward have no other guidance than that of its religious enthusiasts, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... was not a cold night, though a winter storm was at large; but it was a night of blind agonies and struggles, in which a mad wind lashed the sea and a maddened sea assailed the shore, while a flying rain and a drenching spray dimmed the sombre colors of the scene. It was a night for the sea to talk in its travail and yield up ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... unrestrained by discipline, who have many grievous wrongs to redress, and who look on their enemies with a mixture of contempt and loathing, of dread and intense hatred. When the clash comes between these men and their sombre foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous, of incredible, of indescribable horror. It is impossible to dwell without a shudder on the monstrous woe and misery ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... of various disguises was always kept ready for the use of the numerous sleuth-hounds employed by the Committee of Public Safety. Here the two men had exchanged their official garments for suits of sombre cloth, which gave them the appearance of a couple of humble bourgeois going quietly about their business. Tournefort had donned an old blouse, tattered stockings, and shoes down at heel. With his hands buried in his breeches' pockets, he, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... a certain sombre satisfaction in reflecting that her traits of frailty should call forth such enthrallingly sinister comments. "Lets any wild enthusiasm carry her off her feet"—"before, it's too late"—"must ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... had fallen away into pine-clad slopes, and vari-colored rocks flung notes of scarlet and gold through the sombre green of the pines—like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking the sullen murmur of the bass. So still were the clean waters that we ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... Verbruggen.[A] Perhaps the King found them an interesting lot, perhaps he merely regarded them with the same good-natured curiosity he might have exhibited for a pack of mountebanks, but in either case he was determined, with that sombre seriousness so typical of him, to do his duty in the premises. So he listened patiently to their complaints, and the result of it all was that by the advice of the Earl of Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain, a royal licence, allowing ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... a quiet, dull nook on the east side of the Temple, to the south of that sombre Grecian temple where the Master resides, was the scene of a very horrible crime. Sarah Malcolm, a laundress, aged twenty-two, employed by a young barrister named Kerrol in the same court, gaining access to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Amyntas: there we lay Half-buried in a couch of fragrant reed And fresh-cut vineleaves, who so glad as we? A wealth of elm and poplar shook o'erhead; Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on From the Nymphs' grot, and in the sombre boughs The sweet cicada chirped laboriously. Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away The treefrog's note was heard; the crested lark Sang with the goldfinch; turtles made their moan, And o'er the fountain hung the gilded bee. All of rich summer smacked, of autumn all: Pears at our ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... King Street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterward, of another encounter between the troops of Britain, and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the pilgrims came, this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions. There were the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech, and the confidence ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... a stately room packed with masterpieces of art; gleaming marbles and sombre bronze in groups of bewildering beauty, with every inch of wall-space crowded with canvases in massive gold frames glowing with the soft ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... And he fell into sombre silence, out of which David could hardly rouse him. Except that he said once, 'And we that had kep' it so long. I'd better never ha gien it tha.' And clearly that was the bitter thought in his mind. The sacrifice that had taxed all his moral power, and, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... again, but received no answer. He paced a little up and down the sombre roam. Then he sat on the edge of the table and watched his clever friend draw within the square a circle, and within the circle a square, and inside that another circle, and inside that ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... which only is overturned can rise up again, but the enemy reconciled is truly vanquished. In the moral philosophy of Kant the idea of duty is proposed with a harshness enough to ruffle the Graces, and one which could easily tempt a feeble mind to seek for moral perfection in the sombre paths of an ascetic and monastic life. Whatever precautions the great philosopher has been able to take in order to shelter himself against this false interpretation, which must be repugnant more than all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the swarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. And then the gap filled, and he began to ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought, as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which overtopped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found, belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the high lights and Mr. Pillsbury the deep darks. In fact, the new journal's real editors are Hope and Despair. Beaumont and Fletcher were intellectually something alike; but Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury are totally different. The lady is a gay Greek, come forth from Athens; the gentleman is a sombre Hebrew, bound back to Jerusalem. We know of no two more striking, original, and piquant writers. What keen criticisms, what knife-blade repartees, what lacerating sarcasms we shall expect from the one! What solemn, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... a sea of rusting corpses of space ships, and worn-out mining machinery, and of those of my race whose power packs burned out, or who simply gave up, retiring into this endless, corroding limbo of the barrens. A more sombre sight was ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns

... youths faced each other. Larry was still white, and his sombre eyes blazed with half subdued fires. He looked anything but hospitable ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... a circle around some altar to Dionysus, and singing to the strange lilt of those unequal measures. We can imagine the scheme of colour to be white and gold, framed by the deep-blue arch of the sky, the amethyst sea flecked with glittering silver foam, and the dark, sombre rocks of the Cretan coast bringing a suggestion of fate into this dancing, soulless vision. Turning now to Rome, we see that this same music has fallen to a wretched slave's estate, cowering in some corner until the screams of Nero's living torches need to be drowned; ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... and then at Aniela, who remained with the Suiatynskis. Clara was in rapture with the woods, which are indeed at their best now, the fresh green of the leafy trees forming a perfect canopy over the more sombre looking pines. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... who wore that look of wanting lunch which characterizes all picture-gallery-goers at home and abroad, stood faint before a certain large Venetian subject which Ferris abhorred, and the very name of which he spat out of his mouth with loathing for its unreality. He passed them with a sombre glance, as he took his way toward the retired spot where his ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... the trail, he scanned the ground very carefully. It was still flat, notwithstanding some rocky patches. The shade was deep, and as far as the eye reached, nothing moved; nothing suspicious was seen, nay, nothing that bore life, except the sombre vegetation. The wind increased in force; the pines faintly murmured from time to time; a blast penetrated beneath them to the surface of the soil, chasing the dry needles in fitful whirls or playing with the tall bunch-grasses that were growing ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... prophetic of rain. Amid the general joy and the sweet assurance of things, I love to listen to this strange clairvoyant call. Heard a quarter of a mile away, coming up from the dark bosom of the forest or out from the sombre recesses of the mountain, like the voice of a muezzin calling to prayer in the Oriental twilight, it has a peculiar fascination. He wanders ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... place was the lady, 'Trusty, dusky, vivid, and true,' to whom Robert Louis Stevenson inscribed the most beautiful love song of our time. Mrs. Osbourne could not have been at that time more than thirty-five years of age—a grave and remarkable type of womanhood, with eyes of a depth and sombre beauty that I have never seen equalled—eyes, nevertheless, that upon occasion could sparkle with humor and brim over with laughter. Yet upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed me as first of all a woman of profound character and serious judgment, who could, if occasion called, have been the ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... kindled to affright them away. Watching the whole night in the surrounding hills, they keep up a concert which truly "renders night hideous;" and bullfrogs in countless numbers from adjacent swamps, with an occasional "To-whit, to-whoo!" from the sombre owl, altogether make a native choir anything but conducive to calm repose. And yet, amid such a serenade, with a few boughs for a bed, and the gnarled root of a tree for a pillow, did many of our fathers spend their first nights ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... a great calm settled on Jeanne's face. The lamp cast a sunny light upon it, and it regained its exquisite though somewhat lengthy oval. Jeanne's fine eyes, now closed, had large, bluish, transparent lids, which veiled—one could divine it—a sombre, flashing glance. A light breathing came from her slender nose, while round her somewhat large mouth played a vague smile. She slept thus, amidst her outspread tresses, which were ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... had studied them with some care, trying to imagine what sort of personage he might be. I knew that he was twenty-four, but the man who came towards us I would have taken to be forty. His face was sombre, with large features and strongly marked lines about the mouth; he was tall and thin, and moved with decision, betraying no emotion even in this moment of surprise. "What are you doing here?" were his first ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... but proper to show his sorrow at the death of the old chaplain he had loved so much, Grafton came to the Hall drest entirely in black. He would have had his lady and Philip, a lad near my own age, clad likewise in sombre colours. But my Aunt Caroline would none of them, holding it to be the right of her sex to dress as became its charms. Her silks and laces went but ill with the low estate my uncle claimed for his purse, and Master Philip's wardrobe was twice the size of mine. And the family ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... as a missionary. A longing to convert the uncivilized heathen succeeded his frivolous earthly passion, and a desire to explore and develop unknown fastnesses continually possessed him. In his flashing eye and sombre exterior was detected a singular commingling of the discreet Las ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... house was of the type which, having from the first been massive and richly sombre, had mellowed into a darker sombreness and richness as it had stood unmoved amid London years and fogs. The grandeur of decoration and furnishing had been too solid to depreciate through decay, and its owner ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... shouted her welcome into London, has seemed always at flood-tide. Faithful to her experience and convictions, the Queen smiled gladly on the marriage of affection between this gentle princess and the heir to the throne, and was present as a spectator, though still wearing her sombre weeds, at the splendid show of her son's wedding on March 10th, 1863. "Two things have struck me much," writes Dr. Macleod, from whose Journal we again quote: "one was the whole of the royal princesses weeping, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... took out his etui and lit another cigarette, sinking his sombre gaze meanwhile deep into the stream below. His companion leaned upon the ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... 18, 1855, that the reign of the Iron Czar actually came to an end. But the news of his death was made public in Moscow only two days later. For forty-eight hours the sudden closing of that rule, which had been as sombre, as turbulent, as tyrannical as that of any Borgia or Medici, was concealed from the nation. But the morning of the twenty-first found the petty-official world, risen early from sleepless unrest, pushing aside its early tea to re-read the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... the melancholy note. With Petrarch o'er Vaucluse you strayed, When death snatched his long-loved maid; You taught the rocks her loss to mourn, Ye strewed with flowers her virgin urn. And late in Hagley you were seen, With bloodshot eyes, and sombre mien, Hymen his yellow vestment tore, And Dirge a wreath of cypress wore. But chief your own the solemn lay That wept Narcissa young and gay, Darkness clapped her sable wing, While you touched the mournful string, Anguish ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... or Rhone duck, is a large and handsome variety, of French extraction. The plumage of the Rouen duck is somewhat sombre; its flesh is also much darker, and, though of higher flavour, not near so delicate as that of our own Aylesbury. It is with this latter breed that the Rouen duck is generally mated; and the result is said to be increase of size and strength. In Normandy and Brittany these ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... tranquil lakes; fertile lands and savage wastes; sunny plains and frigid plateaux. There were the most rugged forms and the most graceful outlines; low perpendicular cliffs and gentle undulating slopes; rocky mountains and snowy mountains, sombre and solemn, or glittering and white, with walls, turrets, pinnacles, pyramids, domes, cones, and spires. There was every combination that the world can give, and every contrast that the heart ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... side ways and a gloomy one by night that backs up north of Les Halles: old Paris, taciturn and sombre, steeped in its memories of grim romance. But for infrequent, flickering, corner lamps, the street that welcomed them from the doors of the warm and cosy restaurant was as dismal as an alley in some city of the dead. Its houses with their mansard ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad moon. The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo?—or is it the Corso?—or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street—Poetry ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... good friend," said Ellieslaw to the sombre baronet; "I have something for your private ear, with which I know you ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... to paternal despotism is unfortunately even commoner in real life than in fiction; and when the lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, to some extent, one of the ordinary criticisms upon Balzac, that he showed a special subtlety in describing the sufferings of women. The question as to the general propriety ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the first and last time in my entire prison life, I laughed. In that laugh was all the scorn of all the world. Prince Fleur de lys! I saw that nothing that had happened had made you realise a single thing. You were, in your own eyes, still the graceful prince of a trivial comedy, not the sombre figure ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the most famous painters—Francis Hals, Jordaens, Rembrandt, Metsu, Van Mieris—all belong to this time, and in some of the fine interiors represented by these Old Masters, in which embroidered curtains and rich coverings relieve the sombre colors of the dark carved oak furniture, there is a richness of effect which the artist could scarcely have imagined, but which he must have observed in the houses of the rich burghers of ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... exclaimed Black, a gleam of joy lighting up his sombre visage. "Eh, but I am gled to see that ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... parus. Dieu tient le coeur des rois entre ses mains puissantes. Il fait que tout prospre aux mes innocentes, Tandis qu'en ses projets l'orgueilleux est tromp. De mes faibles attraits le Roi parut frapp. 70 Il m'observa longtemps dans un sombre silence; Et le Ciel, qui pour moi fit pencher la balance, Dans ce temps-l sans doute agissait sur son coeur. Enfin, avec des yeux o rgnait la douceur: Soyez reine, dit-il; et ds ce moment mme 75 De sa main sur mon front posa son diadme. Pour mieux faire clater ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... romantic fantasy." Because, like all her other stories, The Cheats (COLLINS) moves with such an air of truth, its personages are so human, that I could delightfully persuade myself that it was all true, and that I had really shared, with a sometimes quickened pulse, the strange fortunes of the sombre young hero. But—fantasy! That is to show the strings and give away the whole game. However, if you can forget that, the coils of an admirably woven intrigue will grip your attention and sympathy throughout. The central figure is one Jaques, who comes to town ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... left wall along which the current dashed. We must pull fast enough to get across in the very short time it would take the river to sweep us down to the crucial point. The gorge by this time was quite sombre; even the clouds above were losing their evening colour. We must act quickly. Our boat as usual made the first trial. As we shot out, Jack and I bent to our oars with every muscle we possessed, the boat headed slightly upstream, and in a few seconds we were flying along the base of ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... Not in the old, sombre, Etruscan streets of ancient Rome, not where the Roman market-place, joined the Capitoline hill and began to ascend it, crossed the road from Palatinus thither, and began to obstruct it, not in the courts and colonnades ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... grander every moment; the brook was working its way deeper below the level of the road, while here and there in this sombre defile a splash of yellow aspen gleamed like living gold on the face of the precipice. The wild and beautiful gorge interested him in spite of himself; it disengaged his thoughts alike from his personal grievance, and from his dissatisfied contemplation of his own lack of proper vindictiveness. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... kind cricket fluttered, Perched upon the place Vacant left, and duly uttered 'Love, Love, Love', whene'er the bass Asked the treble to atone For its somewhat sombre drone." ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... and oppressed me. I needed all the time until the next Saturday to think the question through, to decide what should be done. But the matter was taken out of my hands. After our latest expedition Keene's dark mood returned upon him with sombre intensity. Dull, restless, indifferent, half-contemptuous, he seemed to withdraw into himself, observing those around him with half-veiled glances, as if he had nothing better to do and yet found it a tiresome pastime. He was like a man waiting wearily at a railway station for his ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... enjoy but little sun, and we know ourselves, in its absence, how sombre existence becomes. Their complexions too, were very sallow, and their deportment struck us as sadly sober. A few of the women might possibly have been called pretty, notably two of their number, who possessed clear pale skins, good features, blue ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... There, too, was Bradley, the boyish, red-cheeked chief of the artillery; and Stilton, the rough, old, bearded regular, who headed the cavalry. The staff was at hand, also, including Fitz Hugh, who sat his horse a little apart, downcast and sombre and silent, but nevertheless keenly interested. It is worthy of remark, by the way, that Waldron took no special note of him, and did not seem conscious of any disturbing presence. Evil as the man may ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... borrower from many sources. In the Roman, the Bolognese, the Venetian, Flemish, and Dutch schools, he found something to appropriate and make his own. From Rembrandt he took suggestions of lighting, and such sombre color harmonies as are seen in the portrait of Mrs. Siddons. Something of bloom and splendor he caught from the florid Rubens; something of the decorative effectiveness of such pictures as Lady Cockburn may be traced ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... time he first met Jenny he was clear of Wagner, had glanced a little patronisingly at Beethoven, turned aside and enwrapped himself in the sombre splendour of Bach, right away from the world; then, harking back, with a fresh vision, a sudden sense of the inevitable, had anchored himself in the solemn, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... night alone at his new parsonage, and it was the first night that he had so passed. It had been dull and sombre enough. Mrs. Grantly had been right in saying that a priestess would be wanting at St. Ewold's. He had sat there alone with his glass before him, and then with his tea-pot, thinking about Eleanor Bold. As ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... of this engagement was sombre, magnificent, and unique. The day was perfectly clear, and you could see right down the coast as far as Sedd-ul-Bahr. There the warships of the first division were blazing away at Aki Baba and the hills around ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Court has ever recovered from the shock it then received, and, considered from this point of view, the careless attitude of the American people toward General Grant's administration, when in 1871 it obtained the reversal of Hepburn v. Griswold by appointments to the bench, assumes a sombre aspect. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... the lifeboat put off with its last load for the shore. The young ladies, almost before nurse was gone, began to run along the rows of chairs, falling down once in twelve, and rapidly toning down the pretty pink of their frocks to a sombre brick hue. I was thankful when the crowd began to drop in, and I was able, by threats of taking them home before the races began, to reduce them at least to the nine seats for which I was responsible. How I wished I had ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... regions which were once supposed to be seas apparently lie at practically the same level as the other parts, since the "canals'' in many cases run uninterruptedly across them. Lowell's idea is that these sombre areas may be expanses of vegetation covering ground of a more or less marshy character, for while the largest of them appear to be permanent, there are some which vary coincidently with the variations of ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... was mounting high into the murky gloom. A right merry and social gathering it was round the bright glow of this Yule log in a far-off land. The flames danced on the wide circle of bearded faces, on the tangled fleeces of the postheens, on the gold braid of the forage caps, on the sombre hoods of beshliks.... The songs ranged from gay to grave; the former mood in the ascendency. But occasionally there was sung a ditty, the associations with which brought it about that there came something strangely like a tear into the voice of the singer, and that a yearning ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... basement story, for the whole length and breadth of the building, of which more than one half is taken up by piers and pillars, dimly lighted in aisles and transepts from above, though it strikes the spectator most impressively, has an aspect weird and sombre to a degree. We feel we are in the company of the dead. The pavement of the dome area is supported by eight larger and four smaller piers, forming externally a square and internally an octagon; and within the octagon eight columns describe ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... charm to the thousand and one stories which the mother recounted for the child's edification, and I doubt not that Jack's wonderful bean-stalk is still associated in Master Reggie's mind with that cosy little room with its blended atmosphere of cheerful twilight and sombre shadow. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... popular etymology into Manes, the good and beautiful, was looked upon as the giver of good luck, who protects men after death as well as in life. This religion, evolved from so many diverse elements, possessed a character of sombre poetry and sensual fanaticism which appealed strongly to the Greek imagination: they quickly adopted even its most barbarous mysteries, those celebrated in honour of the goddess and Atys, or of Sauazios. They tell us but little ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... palazzo; and then all was dark, rendered still darker from the contrast with the flood of light which poured to a certain distance from the scene of festivity. Groups of characters and dominos were walking to and fro in every direction; most of them retracing their steps when they arrived at the sombre walks and alleys, some few pairs only continuing their route where no ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... outcast, forgetting that I had deserted my natural relatives, run from my master, and thrown off many friends who were disposed to serve me in everything in which I could be served. I have a cheerful temperament by nature, and I make no doubt that the sombre view I now began to take of things, was the effects of drink. It was necessary for me to get to sea, for there I was shut out from all ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... and in mind, it seems as if in giving up hope on earth, he tolled the knell of all the enchantments that were passed and gone; that creative head fermenting with the ardor of discovery seems to doubt the future and bow beneath the burden of a sombre submission. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... swinging pendulum, or put his ear to the hidden works. Soft-footed and discreet, she tripped along at his back, and at each pause he made, paused herself and turned her ear his way. The extreme darkness of the halls, which were more sombre by night than by day, favoured this attempt, and she was able, after a failure or two, to catch the No! no! no! no! which fell from his lips in seeming repetition of what he heard the ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... from time to time a great many funerals, to which he is formally invited, and to which he formally goes, as returning a call for the last time. Here his deportment is of the most faultless description; he knows the exact pitch of voice it is proper to assume, the sombre look he ought to wear, the melancholy tread which should be his gait for the day. He is perfectly acquainted with all the dreary courtesies to be observed in a mourning-coach; knows when to sigh, and when to hide ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... sink she seems beneath the afflictive weight Of gloomy cares portentous of her fate;— Yet on her brow still soft Affection beams, Tho' Desperation prompts her sombre dreams. Parental feelings thrill her tortur'd breast, And all the frantic mother stands confest— A very Niobe—sad, hapless name! In figure, features, and in all the same: The same in all as Vengeance fierce pursued Far to a wild and cheerless solitude. For Salmo's bard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... be needing the tonic of outside visitations, the stimulus of contacts alien to his daily cares, the sympathetic comradeship of an individual able to arouse him from the alternate contemplation of his official duties at the college and of the sombre cloud hanging above his home. All at once, it came to Brenton that the professor himself might also be a candidate for sympathy, a grateful recipient of diverting conversations which did not focus themselves entirely upon Reed. The first experimental visit to the private laboratory proved to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... the sombre room, and appeared from the motion of her lips to repeat the words to herself, as calling it to witness how little of either it ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... is out of fashion at the moment. He must also have dark striped gray trousers. At many smart weddings, especially in the spring, a groom (also his best man) wears a white pique high double-breasted waistcoat, because the more white that can be got into an otherwise sombre costume the more wedding-like it looks; conventionally he wears a black one to match his coat, like the ushers. The white edge to a black waistcoat is not, at present, very good form. As to his tie, he may choose an "Ascot" of black and white or gray patterned silk. Or he may ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... Florence smile cheerfully in the sunshine, clapping their hands and skipping like lambs, if little hills ever did make such a demonstration. These environs of the town are like a frame of golden filigree, almost too fantastic a one for so shadowy and sombre a city. The green hill-sides and plains are sown thickly with palaces and villas glancing whitely through silvery forests of olives and myrtle; while the distant Apennines, like guardian giants, lift their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... deep in animated discussion of the great meeting of the afternoon he had been sitting silent against the edge of the table—a short-bearded sombre figure, ready at any moment to make a ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and impressive a spot as one could find anywhere out of a picture by Dore. The sombre pines crowded in on the little stream, elbowing and whispering, leaving overhead but a gap of clear sky; on either hand the rugged sides of the canon sloped steeply up amongst the timber and thick undergrowth, and never the note of a bird ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... fate; for was it not that which lured him, by its irresistible power, towards the icy steppes where his power and glory sank beneath the snow? If at times a swift and sombre anticipation of evil crowned his mind, what was that presentiment by the side of the terrible reality? What would the conqueror have said if, in the misty future, he had seen anything of his own fate? Among the courtiers ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... hers, stolen from envious contraltos, turned in our ears to a mourning purple; a sombre, tender gloom haunted us, and the sorrow of life, that alone binds us together who live, hung like a lifting cloud over all who came within the magic radius of her voice. The people gathered like bees to a honeycomb ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... which did them good, for the wind was keen and inspiriting and the landscape wintry white and blue and gold. She succeeded in provoking her playwright to a smile now and then by some audacious sally against the sombre silence ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... named, is about 45 or 50 miles—to the latter, some 50 or 55 miles. The traveler, who for the first time in his life embarks on a South American river like the Chagres, cannot fail to experience a singular depression of spirits at the dark and sombre aspect of the scene. In the first place, he finds himself in a canoe, so small that he is forced to lay quietly in the very centre of the stern portion, in order to prevent it upsetting. The palm leaf thatch (or toldo, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... metempsychosis, and that to him who is remarkable for hostility to the phocal race some fatal retribution will ensue. I can easily conceive the feeling of awe with which a fisherman would be impressed when, in the sombre magnificence of some rocky solitude, a great seal suddenly presented himself, for an interview of this kind ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... This description has all the relief of an antique figure. Another time, George Sand tells how she has seen Phoebus throw off her robe of clouds and rush along radiant into the pure sky. The following day she writes: "She was eaten by the evil spirits. The dark sprites from Erebus, riding on sombre-looking clouds, threw themselves on her, and it was in vain that she struggled." We might compare these passages with a letter of July 10, 1836, in which she tells how she throws herself, all dressed as she is, into the Indre, and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... includes Austria, Germany, and to a minor degree France, where are settled approximately three millions of Jews. Save in Galicia, where political and racial turmoil is constantly giving the Jewish situation the sombre tinge of a problem, the Jews are finding themselves, for the most part, in a precarious position. Nationalism demands that they surrender their racial identity and proclivities; anti-Semitism declares upon the verdict ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... he loved; and he said to himself; "It were fitting that this man should lay his head to mine and become my comrade in this my strangerhood." Then he hailed the speaker and cried out to him, saying "O thou that goest in the sombre night, draw near to me and tell me thy history. Haply thou shalt find in me one who will succour thee in shine affliction." "O thou that answerest my complaint and wouldst know my history," rejoined the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... answered, with sombre looks, to his wife's inquiry. Phoebe busied herself with her grandmother, and did not ask what it was. It was only when he had searched everywhere that some chance movement directed his eyes to her. She was trembling in spite of herself. He came up to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... Absorption; Solutions and Dyed Fabrics; Dichroic Coloured Fabrics in Gaslight.—V., Colour Primaries of the Scientist versus the Dyer and Artist; Colour Mixing by Rotation and Lye Dyeing: Hue, Purity, Brightness; Tints: Shades, Scales, Tones, Sad and Sombre Colours.—VI., Colour Mixing: Pure and Impure Greens, Orange and Violets; Large Variety of Shades from few Colours; Consideration of the Practical Primaries: Red, Yellow and Blue.—VII., Secondary Colours; Nomenclature of Violet and Purple ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... making the circuit of the hall with a noiseless step, like a bird of night flying in a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her bandeaux of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast a last glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eye of a vulture seeking ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... dropped down behind a range of hills, covered with pines, furs, and cedars, that were growing into a compact dark wall, the interstices being black. The edge of the river took on these sombre hues, but a little beyond there were long strips of rose and tawny gold, between zones of purple and green. The current tossed them hither and thither, like some weird thing winding about. Destournier was strangely ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... who proclaimed his virtues and power in loud voices. He was seated in a chair carried by sixteen men; his guards, the officers of his household, standard and umbrella bearers, and musicians accompanied him. He was clothed in a robe of sombre-coloured silk, and wore a velvet cap, very similar in shape to that of Scotch mountaineers. A large pearl was conspicuous on his forehead, and was the only ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... tower of St. Giles' had chimed three-quarters; and now it chimed the hour, and wearily struck "Two." Then other clocks also awoke to their duties, and, not possessing chimes, repeated the latter information in various keys, from far and near. It was all very sombre; and the smell ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... friends, becomes really dreadful. Indeed, it would seem to have been reserved for the European nations to put the final touches of gloom and horror upon the canvas. It may be sufficient to refer this to the more sombre imagination of Western peoples. But we ought not to overlook the influence of the Catholic Church in darkening the general tone of the imagination, and particularly the tone of the fairy sagas, by the absolute and unquestioned supremacy she demanded, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... and awful at night, was deliciously cool and sombre in the dog-days. The trees were spires; and their great stems stood serried like infantry in column, and flung a grand canopy of sombre plumes overhead. A strange, antique, and classic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... of rocks, heaped up in terrible disorder. Arrived at the culminating point, Count Abel felt the necessity of taking breath. He clambered up a little hillock, where he seated himself. At his feet were wide open the yawning jaws of a cavern, obstructed by great tufts of aconite (wolf's-bane), with sombre foliage; one would have said that they kept guard over some crime in which they had been accomplices. Count Abel contemplated the awful silence that surrounded him; everywhere enormous boulders, heaped together, or scattered about in isolated grandeur; some pitched on their sides, others standing ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... light church with fine sombre choir stalls. Next to S. Stefano, it is the most cheerful church in Venice, and one should often be there. Nothing is easier than to frequent it, for it is close to the S. Toma steamboat station, and every visit will discover ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... her hand on his arm and gazed, with round-eyed simplicity, into his sombre countenance. For an instant her witchery had ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... of this house was a little garden, full of gay flowers: so that if the garb of the young Mitchells was rather sombre, the setting was bright and cheerful, and the life in the home was healthy and wide-awake. When the hilarity became excessive the mother would put in her little check, from time to time, and the father would ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... two stories are thus variations upon the same sombre theme, if each starts from the same place and arrives at the same dark goal, if each shows a woman heartened by the same hopes and tortured by the same agonies, there is still a vast difference between them, and that difference is the measure of the author's progress in his craft ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... hair hung down on either side of her colourless face, from which beamed forth a pair of wild eyes, glowing with the fire of madness. Her dress being of the same sombre hue as was everything in the hut, had as Algernon entered prevented him from observing her till she turned ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... that the weather about the line was often calm, but had pictured to ourselves a gorgeous sun, golden sunsets, cloudless sky, and sea of the deepest blue. On the contrary, such weather is never known there, or only by mistake. It is a gloomy region. Sombre sky and sombre sea. Large cauliflower-headed masses of dazzling cumulus tower in front of a background of lavender-coloured satin. There are clouds of every shape and size. The sails idly flap as ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... clefts and gullies of the hills; made it very beautiful. The great height of these, too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they had all the charm of elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the olive-tree; and the puny size, and little slow walk of the Lilliputian men and women on the bank; made a charming picture. There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont d'Esprit, with I don't know how many arches; towns where memorable wines ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... governess. Hence the year 1843 was passed by her at the Pensionnat Heger in that capacity, and in this period she undoubtedly widened her intellectual sphere by reading the many books in French literature that her friend M. Heger lent her. But life took on a very sombre shade in the lonely environment in which she found herself. She became so depressed that on one occasion she took refuge in the confessional precisely as did her heroine Lucy Snowe in Villette. In ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... as the night was clear though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open[779]—and went forth Into a gallery of a sombre hue, Long, furnished with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth; But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have something ghastly, desolate, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... truth. Evariste at twenty had had a grave and charming cast of countenance, a beauty at once austere and feminine, the countenance of a Minerva. Now his sombre eyes and pale cheeks revealed a melancholy and passionate soul. But his gaze, when it fell on his mother, recovered for a ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to the sombre beauty of that old gray town of the North? "Gray! why, it is gray, or gray and gold, or gray and gold and blue, or gray and gold and blue and green, or gray and gold and blue and green and purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take it when it ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... of doom, my blood turned to tears by its sights, and my spirit attuned to sorrow, pity, and despair, I had happened in some glade upon a merry party of roisterers. I sat in silence until Edith began to rally me upon my sombre looks, What ailed me? The others presently joined in the playful assault, and I became a target for quips and jests. Where had I been, and what had I seen to make such a dull fellow ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... its various avenues in twos or threes, according to taste. The strains of the Garrison band, too, invite us to linger yet, as the sweet airs of the reminiscences of Scotland whisper among the branches. Sombre-clad priests, in long togas and shovel hats, bustle about here and there, now talking cheerfully to one lady, now looking correction at another; but all enjoying themselves with as much evident pleasure as their more ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... ambulances in the midnight hours haunt me now when the name of Ypres is mentioned. I hear the rattle of lorries and motorcycles and the tramp of horses on the cobblestones. The grim ruins on either side of the road stand out hard and sombre in the dim light of the starry sky. There is the passing of innumerable men and the danger of the traffic-crowded streets. But Ypres, as I saw it then, was full of beauty touched with the sadness of the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... everything I needed. The room was a huge four windowed affair, furnished with a canopied bed and a mahogany wardrobe as big as a small house. The nights still being chilly, a roaring wood fire had been built, adding a note of cheerfulness to an otherwise sombre apartment. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... seen, became lost, so to speak, in charities. Her work lay chiefly with children, She was active in mission-schools and in two or three homes for friendless little ones, and did much to extend their sphere of usefulness. Her garments were plain and sombre, her fair young face almost colorless, and her aspect so nun-like as often to ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And, moreover—? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... unseen, a single warrior, In sombre harness mailed, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, The rampart wall ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... papers Blow along the side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, And white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... When the sombre night is dumb, Hushed the loud chrysanthemum, Sister, sleep! Sleep, the lissom lily saith, Sleep, the poplar ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... said to the birch one day when the Summer and her patience with her sombre neighbor were on the wane—one day when there was a gleam of golden pumpkins in the tawny corn stubble beyond the wood, and the purpling grapes hung ripening over the old stone wall that lay between, and the maple had brightened its summer dress with ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... interior of which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their trades. The word "subdued" describes the effect at which those artists have aimed. The woods employed are costly and rich, but usually of a sombre hue, and, though elaborately carved, are frequently unpolished. The light which comes through the stained windows, or through the small diamond panes, is of that description which is eminently the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... that made him hard to recognise. In the old days, an imitation fur coat had seemed to be as integral a part of him as were his ill-shorn lantern jaws. But now his costume was a model of rich and sombre moderation, drawing, not calling, attention to itself. He looked like a banker. Any one would have been proud to be ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... a Titan among artists. He once boasted that "Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt are my masters." It was an excellent self-criticism. He not only played the Velasquez gambit in his portraits, the gambit of Rembrandt in his sombre imaginative pieces, but he boldly annexed all Spain for his sinister and turbulent art. He was more truly Spanish in the range and variety of his performances than any Spanish-born painter since Velasquez. Without the sanity, solidity, nobility of Velasquez, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... hero would steal away to indulge the fancies they excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by which past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre, tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening," given in New York in the spring of 1917, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... sombre wings O'er this world his shadow flings And thou, dear love, doth sleep, Then do I send my soul to thee Thy guardian till the dawn to be And thy ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol

... As a literary artist of the "dark and touching mode of painting," which Carleton has set down as the chief characteristic of his brother novelist, Griffin has few equals and no superior. To depict the more sombre tints of human nature, to trace the unbroken events linked together in a career of crime, from the first commission of evil till its last expiation in the felon ship, or on the gallows, he especially delights. He does ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various



Words linked to "Sombre" :   cheerless, drab, melancholy, colorless, sober



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