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Vane   /veɪn/   Listen
Vane

noun
1.
Mechanical device attached to an elevated structure; rotates freely to show the direction of the wind.  Synonyms: weather vane, weathervane, wind vane.
2.
A fin attached to the tail of an arrow, bomb or missile in order to stabilize or guide it.
3.
Flat surface that rotates and pushes against air or water.  Synonym: blade.
4.
The flattened weblike part of a feather consisting of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft.  Synonym: web.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Vane" Quotes from Famous Books



... been spared from bombardment and protected from pillage and fire by the Geneva flag; it was a small cottage which realized the dream of every shopkeeper after he has made his fortune. Nothing was lacking, not even the earthen lions at the steps, or the little garden with its glittering weather-vane, or the rock-work basin for goldfish. On warm days the past summer passers-by might have seen very often, under the green arbor, bourgeoisie in their shirt-sleeves and women in light dresses eating melons together. The poet's imagination fancied at once this picture ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... points and sub-divisions and into 360 deg.. This dial is capable of being moved around, but can also be clamped to the outside ring. Pivoted with the glass dial and flat ring is a horizontal bar carrying at both of its extremes a sight vane. This sight vane can be clamped in any position independently of the ground glass dial, which can be moved freely beneath it. An indicator showing the direction the sight vane points can be read upon the compass card on the glass dial. If the glass dial be ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... went on to say, "what would be the use of tantalizing the poor chaps? Hear 'em disputing right now whether that shining thing they see far away in the distance is the brass hand on the top of the church steeple in Stanhope, or the wind vane on the court house cupola? Anyhow, it stands for Stanhope; and if they were where they could stare out yonder by the hour some of 'em would skip ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... painted sticks In Vane's and Winthrop's places, To see your spirit of Seventy-Six Drag humbly in the traces, With slavery's lash upon her back, And herds, of office-holders To shout applause, as, with a crack, 119 It peels her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... there will always be. The very exercise of emotion tends to its extinction. Varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. Only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. The vane which never points but to south is rusty ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... is in all respects like others of its period, but has a curious spire added later. This has been described as "two hogsheads placed crosswise, in the ends of which are the dials of the clock," and above is a kind of pyramid, ending in a vane. ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... subtle and eloquent exposition of the characters of Eliot and Strafford, in the Lives of Eminent British Statesmen now in the course of publication in Lardner's Cyclopaedia, by a writer [John Forster] whom I am proud to call my friend; and whose biographies of Hampden, Pym, and Vane, will, I am sure, fitly illustrate the present year—the Second Centenary of the Trial concerning Ship-money. My Carlisle, however, is purely imaginary: I at first sketched her singular likeness roughly in, as suggested by Matthew ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... surmounted by a glittering vane, turning and flashing with every shift of the wind, stood near the Chateau. It was the home of a whole colony of snow-white pigeons, which fluttered in and out of it, wheeled in circles round the tall chimney-stacks, or strutted, cooing and bowing ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... these questions. The door-bell rang, and the sound of a whispered conference between the visitor and the servant at the threshold penetrated to the dining-room. Some one softly entered, and then Mrs. Sewell called out, "Yes, yes! Come in! Come in, Miss Vane!" She jumped from her chair and ran out into the hall, where she was heard to kiss her visitor; she reappeared, still holding her by the hand, and then Miss Vane shook hands with Sewell, saying in a tone of cordial liking, "How d'ye do?" ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... Deity he massacred the Irish garrisons. In the name of the Deity he sent dragoons to overturn parliaments. He believed neither in the sovereignty of the people, nor the sovereignty of the laws, and it made little difference whether his opponent was Charles I. or Sir Harry Vane, provided he were an opponent. In regard to the inmost essence of tyranny, that of exalting the individual will over every thing else, and of meeting opposition and obstacles by pure force, Charles I. was a weakling in comparison with Cromwell. Now if, in respect to human governments, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... feet high behind us was soon named Wind Vane Hill, and there were other meteorological instruments there besides. A snow-drift or ice-drift always forms to leeward of any such projection, and that beneath this hill was large enough for us to drive ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... crime of Mr. Scobell's did come within the act of indemnity or no. Thence into the Hall, where I heard for certain that Monk was coming to London, and that Bradshaw's lodgings were preparing for him. [John Bradshaw, Serjeant-at-Law, President of the High Court of Justice.] I heard Sir H. Vane was this day voted out of the House, and to sit no more there; and that he would retire himself to his house at Raby, [Son of a statesman of both his names, and one, of the most turbulent enthusiasts produced by the Rebellion, and an inflexible republican. His execution, in ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... and the command was prostrated by an epidemic of diarrhoea which spared no one. They now thought they saw their end, but the contrary appeared to be the case. The diarrhoea seemed to relieve the scurvy, and the swollen limbs of the sufferers began to be less painful. They named the camp Vane de los Soldados de los Cursos, and Crespi applied the name of Santo Domingo to it. Unable to travel on the 25th and 26th, but resuming the march October 27th, they pressed forward. The next stop was Purisima ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera

... beauties of the evening, and of Queen Victoria's earlier reign, were Lady Clementina Villiers as Vittoria Colonna; Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope as her ancestress, Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset; Lady Frances and Lady Alexandrina Vane as Rowena and Queen Berengaria; and the Ladies Paget in the Greek quadrille led by the Duchess of Leinster. Another group of lovely sisters who took part in three different quadrilles, were the Countess of Chesterfield, Donna Florinda in the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through the middle—for the other side belonged to the brother, whose ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... was so unexpected that the governor, like a vane which suddenly receives an impulsion opposed to that of the wind, was quite dumfounded at it. "Diversions," said he, "but I take them ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... known John Esten Cooke, was born in Martinsburg, Virginia, and spent his short life happily in his native county, engaged in field sports and in writing stories and poems for the "Southern Literary Messenger" and other magazines. His lyric, "Florence Vane," has been very popular and has been translated into many languages. He was said to be stately and impressive in manner and a brilliant talker. Philip Pendleton and John Esten Cooke were first cousins of John Pendleton Kennedy, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... o' suffocate to be alone,— I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are nigh, An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky; Now the wind's full ez shifty in the mind Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, My innard vane pints east for weeks together, My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins Come drizzlin' on my conscience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... Massachusetts Company were builders of the British, as well as of the New England, commonwealth. Some ten or twelve of them, including Cradock, the Governor, served in the Long Parliament. Of the four commoners of that Parliament distinguished by Lord Clarendon as first in influence, Vane had been governor of the company, and Hampden, Pym, and Fiennes—all patentees of Connecticut—if not members, were constantly consulted upon its affairs. The latter statement is also true of the Earl of Warwick, the Parliament's ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... England was from the accession of James I. to the abdication of James II., a period of eighty-five years. Shakspeare, Raleigh, Coke, Bacon, Cecil, Selden, Pym, Wentworth, Hollis, Leighton, Taylor, Baxter, Howe, Cromwell, Hampden, Blake, Vane, Milton, Clarendon, Burnet, Shaftesbury, are some of the luminaries which have shed a light down to our own times, and will continue to shine through all future ages. They were not all contemporaneous, but they all took part, more or less, on one side or the other, in ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... among huckleberry-bushes and black berry-vines. But the little boys had their india-rubber boots. At last they discovered the little old woman. They knew her by her hat. It was steeple-crowned, without any vane. They saw her digging with her trowel round a sassafras bush. They told her their story,—-how their mother had put salt in her coffee, and how the chemist had made it worse instead of better, and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... which he disfranchised small boroughs was emulously applauded, by royalists, who hated him for having pulled down one dynasty, and by republicans, who hated him for having founded another. Take Sir Harry Vane and Lord Clarendon, both wise men, both, I believe, in the main, honest men, but as much opposed to each other in politics as wise and honest men could be. Both detested Oliver; yet both approved of Oliver's plan of parliamentary ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... garrisoned at York. Here Monk, entering England 2 January, 1660, joined them with his forces. Lambert, deprived of his followers, was obliged to return to London. His prompt arrest by order of Parliament followed, and he, Sir Harry Vane and other members of the Committee of Safety were placed in strict confinement. On 5 March Lambert was imprisoned in the Tower, whence he escaped on 10 April, only to be recaptured a fortnight later. There are vivid pictures in Aubrey, Pepys, and other writers, of the wild enthusiasm ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... Solomon's Point, which was covered with brush-wood, we found ourselves nearer than agreeable to a newly constructed battery. A column of smoke was poured along the blue water, and it was followed by the whizzing of a shot, which passed through our boom main sail, first cutting away the dog-vane, which was close to old Swinburne's head, as he stood on the carronade, conning the brig. I was at dinner in the cabin with O'Brien and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... a quaintly harsh blend of discords. Whatsoever ship this might be, it was not the Sao Geronimo. And in that thrilling instant there was a coldness on one side of their faces that was not on the other. Moist skin is a weather-vane in its way. A breeze was springing up. Soon the fog would be rolled from off the sea and the sun would peer ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... others were ready, so she stepped aside among the gravestones, and looked up to where the white, slender spire of the old church towered against the blue. She was trying to make out the Episcopal mitre surmounted by the gilded weather-vane, when Mrs. Gray ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... it very hard for me to be quite sure how to conduct myself, without father and mother to help me, and with Mistress Pring, who had always been such a landmark, becoming no more than a vane for the wind to blow upon as it listed; or, perhaps, as she listed to go with it. And remembering how she used to speak of the people who had ousted us, I told her that I could not make it out. Things were in this condition, and Captain Purvis, as it seemed to me, quite fit to ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore

... Veruntamen vane conturbatur omnis homo Be the day never so long at last it ringeth to even-song. Vita salillum. Non possumus aliquid contra veritatem sed pro veritate. Sapie[n]tia quoque perseueravit mecum Magnorum fluuiorum navigabiles fontes. ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... Baptists; thither went Quakers and Ranters; thither went Ann Hutchinson, that extraordinary woman, who divided the whole politics of the country by her Antinomian doctrines, denouncing the formalisms around her, and converting the strongest men, like Cotton and Vane, to her opinions. Thither went also Samuel Gorton, a man of no ordinary power, who proclaimed a mystical union with God in love, thought that heaven and hell were in the mind alone, but esteemed little the clergy and the ordinances. The colony was protected also by the thoughtful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... at the dog-vane, and perceived that the wind was foul for sailing, and moreover, it would be dark in two hours, so he determined upon not starting till the next morning, and then he thought that he would punish ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... PEACOCK was the owner of large estates in Cumberland, and a great game preserver. His tenantry were bound to protect all the hares, partridges, and pheasants that fed on their young corn; and, in return, Sir Vane entertained them once a-year with a dinner of roast mutton and potatoes, when good luck enabled them to bring their rents on Old Michaelmas-day. A great personage was Sir Vane Peacock. He was the possessor of two thousand acres of the richest arable land in the county, besides his own park and ...
— Comical People • Unknown

... hollow, aluminium globe, from which a tall steel flag-post projected upward to a considerable height, bearing a light weather-vane, which, when the buoy should be in its intended position, would always point southward, no matter which way the wind might blow. This great buoy contained various appropriate articles, which had been hermetically sealed up in it before it left Sardis, where it was manufactured. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... both Vane and Harrington are more profound. Harrington is the author of what Americans have called the greatest discovery since the printing-press. For he has given the reason why the great Rebellion failed, and was followed by the reaction under Charles II. He says that it failed because it ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... been With starry Galileo in his cell, That wise magician with the brow serene, Who fathomed space; and I have seen him tell The wonders of the planetary sphere, And trace the ramparts of heaven's citadel On the cold flag-stones of his dungeon drear. And I have walked with Hampden and with Vane— Names once so gracious to an English ear— In days that never may return again. My voice, though not the loudest, hath been heard Whenever freedom raised her cry of pain, And the faint effort of the humble bard Hath roused up thousands from their lethargy, To speak in words of ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... veered and came again so that a weather-vane could not have shown which way it blew. At one moment the ship was jumping from wave to wave before the wind with a single tiny storms'l out. At another I had thought we must scud under ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... amount of care in the matter. Captain Worsley constructed an apparatus which gave a good idea of the direction of drift at any time. This consisted of an iron rod, which passed through an iron tube, frozen vertically into the ice, into the water below. At the lower end of the rod, in the water, was a vane. The rod being free to turn, the vane took up the direction of the current, the direction being shown by an indicator attached to the top of the rod. The direction shown depended, of course, on the drift of the ice relative to the water, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... rode beside us And brought us evil luck; The witch-fire climbed our channels, And flared on vane and truck: Till, through the red tornado, That lashed us nigh to blind, We saw The Dutchman plunging, Full ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... go about the youngster I went after: all researches in vane. Paris develish expensive. Never mind, I have sene the other—the young B—; different sort of fellow from his father—very ill—frightened out of his wits—will go off to the governor, take me with him as far as Bullone. I think we shall settel it now. Mind as I saide before, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I pine away, Cursing separation drear; You, who love by force of wont, Took another for your dear. Never vane all lightly hung, To the wind more swiftly swung. We shall see, oh vain Rosette, Which of us will ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... features of his old "Nichols' Mills" with none of their defects. This is the only balanced mill without a vane. It is the only mill balanced on its center. It is the only mill built on correct scientific principles so ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... quickened and led in harmless directions by an adult of any resource. Those who have not imagination themselves must seek the aid of the Kindergarten guides, where will be found arranged to music the labors of the peasant, and cooper, and sawyer, the wind-mill, the watermill, the weather-vane, the clock, the pigeon-house, the hares, the bees, and the cuckoo. Children delight to personate animals, and a fine genius could not better employ itself than in inventing a great many more plays, setting them to rhythmical words, describing what is to be done. Every variety of bodily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... silhouette against the sky. An odd figure, clad in a skimpy green petticoat, with a scarlet shawl held about her shoulders, wisps of frowsy red hair standing out round her head, she balanced herself on the slippery earth, spinning her arm like the vane of a windmill, and crying at the top of her voice: "Joe, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... the lichened statues of that garden; and from the roof of the house still floats, creaking in the wind, regardless of the triumph of the Hanoverians, unconscious of the many banners which have been thrown, mere heaps of obsolete coloured tatters, on the dust-heap, a rusty metal weather-vane, bearing the initials of Carolus Rex, the last successor of the standard that was raised ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... today as a friend of Cromwell, Milton, and Sir Harry Vane, had been exiled from Massachusetts for maintaining that the civil power had no jurisdiction over conscience. This doctrine was fatal to the existence of a theocratic state dominated by the church. John Cotton was perfectly logical in "enlarging" ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... on, past the White Horse Inn and the Lamb Tavern. A little farther, and he beheld the Province House, a building with a cupola surmounted by a spire. The weather-vane was an Indian with bow and arrow. The king's arms, carved and gilded, were upon the balcony above the doorway. Chestnut trees shaded the green plot of ground between the building and the street. A soldier with ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... and you know it and then Swane went away and father came in and said that someone had ridden horseback over the concreek sidewalk and they tride to lay it on me. Then it was bedtime and Mister Robinson he prayed some more and he prayed for those who took the name of the lord in vane, and ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute

... the world as it has been and to the example of those who have fought the good fight. To Socrates, to Savonarola, to John Ball, Wat the Tyler, and Jack Cade, in our land the first forerunners of Socialism; to Bruno and Vanini, to Cromwell, Milton, Hampden, and Pym, to John Eliot, Harry Vane; to Defoe, Mure, and Thomas Spence; to Ernest Jones, Bronterre O'Brien, and Robert Owen; to Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet; to Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien; to Vera Sassoulitch, Marie Spiridonova, Sophia Perovsky; ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... In a short time La Touche came back, and reported, as I knew he would, that the frigate didn't appear to be preparing to sail. Scarcely had he come on board than the wind began to drop, till it became a stark calm. I saw the officers exchange looks with each other as they observed the dog vane hanging right up and down. It was very certain that we could not move, for we had not boats sufficient to tow the brig out of the harbour. There was every prospect of the calm continuing for many hours. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... the yards and stays; a faint rustle aloft now and again, with an accompanying rippling patter of reef-points, betraying rather some subtle heave of the glassy sea than any sign that the breeze still lingered. Yet there must have been a light draught of air aloft, for the vane at our main-royal-masthead occasionally fluttered languidly out along the course we were steering, and our royals exhibited an occasional tendency to fill, albeit they as often collapsed again softly rustling to the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... showed the same lift for all angles from 7 1/2 to 45 degrees. This seemed so anomalous that we were almost ready to doubt our own measurements, when a simple test was suggested. A weather vane, with two planes attached to the pointer at an angle of 80 degrees with each other, was made. According to our table, such a vane would be in unstable equilibrium when pointing directly into the wind, for if by chance the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... way to the meeting, he glanced at the weather-vane, and, to his surprise, the wind had changed, and it was blowing landward. On entering his crowded vestry, he soon observed John, sitting upon the front seat. The young man seemed to drink in every word, rose to be prayed for, and attended the inquiry meeting. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... water, and a bellowing wave was rolling over the deck crushing everything beneath its roller of foam. On the other hand, the poop was climbing higher and higher, becoming almost vertical. It was soon a cliff, a mountain steep, on whose peak the white flagstaff was sticking up like a weather-vane. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... over that bench yet," she said at last; and we rode out past the ideal stable—its natty weather vane forever pointing the wind to the profit of no man—through another gate of superb cunning, and so once more to an understandable landscape, where sane cattle grazed. Here I threw off the depression that comes ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the great quarrel forward as the ground on which the drama is to be wrought. An attempt is made to represent the various elements of the popular storm in the characters of Pym, Hampden, the younger Vane and others, and especially in the relations between Pym and Strafford, who are set over, one against the other, with some literary power. But the lines on which the action is wrought are not simple. No audience could follow the elaborate network of intrigue which, in Browning's effort to represent ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... dormer without some such playful leaping up into the air. Every salient point attacks the sky with its long iron spindle, wrought with strange device and bearing a hospitable cup where the bird makes his nest; and every spindle sings and shrieks with a shifting vane,—so that the wind never sweeps idly over a Belgian town. This innocent and happy people did not frown through the ages from grim battlements, and awe posterity with stern and massive walls. But they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... VANE, SIR HENRY, a notability of the Civil War period in England; was a Puritan of the republican type, born in Kent; studied at Oxford; emigrated for a time to New England, but returned, entered Parliament, took an active part against the Royalists, withstood Cromwell, and was openly rebuked by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... sentry duty carried on his shoulders most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried treasure, the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really asking a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... her put the bucket through a hole in this wall, and empty the ashes on the other side. This problem was given to all the children and grown up persons in the family. One of the children invented the shelf, which, they said, should be like part of the vane of a winnowing machine which they had lately seen; the manner of placing this vane, another of the children suggested: both these ideas joined together, produced the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... women that I have ever seen have been small, bright, and perfect in their proportions. It is very rare that a tall woman has a perfect figure." Julie's own figure was quite perfect. "Do you remember Constance Vane? Nothing ever exceeded her beauty." Now Constance Vane—she, at least, who had in those days been Constance Vane, but who now was the stout mother of two or three children—had been a waxen doll of a girl, whom Harry had known, but had neither liked nor admired. But she ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... frequent rain showers accompanied by lightning and heavy squalls. In such unfavourable weather on the 31st August the mainmast of the Vega was struck by lightning, the flash and the report being of excessive violence. The vane was broken loose and thrown into the sea along with some inches of the pole. The pole itself was split pretty far down, and all on board felt a more or less violent shaking, the man who felt it most standing at the time near the hawse-hole. The incident was ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... think our selves blamless in that behalf. Of one other [thing] we mon foirwarne the discreat Readaris, which is, that thei be not offended that the sempill treuth be spokin without partialitie; for seing that of men we neyther hunt for reward, nor yitt for vane[21] glorie, we litill pass by the approbatioun of such as seldome judge weill of God and of his workis. Lett not thairfoir the Readar wonder, albeit that our style vary and speik diverslie of men, according as thei have declared thame selves ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... Glandeville, Mr. VANE TEMPEST, most admirable of buffoons, must have longed to be allowed to make us laugh, but solemnity was his order of the day and he carried it out like a hero. As for Mr. WENMAN, who played the partner that introduced Lord Glandeville to the rest of the "Lotus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... Miss VANE FEATHERSTON, as Lady Lushington, had too little to do, and did it most humanly; and Mr. OTHO STUART illustrated with a very natural ease the kind of simple friendship, as between a man and a woman, which it takes an Anglo-Saxon intelligence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? Aeris et lingua sum filia; Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antick, Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out, And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... phyllotaxis to illustrate his idea, we fancy that a pertinent illustration may be drawn from it in this way. There are two species of phyllotaxis, perfectly distinct, and we suppose, not mathematically reducible the one to the other, viz.: (1.) That of alternate leaves, with its vane ties and (2.) That of verticillate leaves, of which opposite leaves present the simplest case That although generally constant a change from one variety of alternate phyllotaxis to an other should occur on the same axis, or on successive axes, is not surprising, the different sorts ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... in the Records of his Life, states that the memoirs of Lady Vane, as they appear in "Peregrine Pickle," were actually written by an Irish gentleman of wealth, a Mr. Denis McKerchier, who at the time entertained relations with that abandoned, shameless woman; so that, if, as was probably the case, she paid Smollett ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... and the downfall of the party which he had served with such desperate fidelity, were likely to aggravate enthusiasm into temporary insanity. It was, indeed, no uncommon circumstance in those singular times that men like Sir Harry Vane, Harrison, Overton, and others, themselves slaves to the wildest and most enthusiastic dreams, could, when mingling with the world, conduct themselves not only with good sense in difficulties, and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... beautiful garden. Though now sadly curtailed and overlooked, enough is left to show what it must have been like in former days. Beside the main path is a tall and well-cut sundial of stone, with a weather-vane at the top pierced with the initials of Robert Cookes, and the date 1720. At the end of the garden is a break in the wall, formerly railed across, and flanked on either side by tapering columns. This was a favourite device ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New

... curious glazed galleries, supported by colonnades, with the central block. These wings plainly contained the stables and offices of the house. Each was surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded vane. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... Do not repeat that. Vane has been clacking it in my ear. I tell you, as I told young Sidney, that we are beyond courts and lawyer's quibbles, and that if England requires it I will cut off the King's head with the crown ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... Atheist, the leading article of which contains an insult to the Virgin Mary. MacIan thereupon puts his stick through the window. Turnbull comes out, there is a scuffle, and both are arrested and taken before a Dickensian magistrate. The sketch of Mr. Cumberland Vane is very pleasing: it is clear that the author knew what he was copying. Lord Melbourne is alleged to have said, "No one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into private life. . . ." Mr. Vane felt much the same ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... definite limit can be assigned to the duration of the attack or of the disease. It may last but a few minutes, may endure for hours, or with slight remission continue for days. The condition of the patient may be for years as changeable as the pointings of the weather-vane. In fact, the atmosphere has much to do with the disease. With every approaching storm, with every cloud of dust, even the dust from sweeping a room, with every foul odor, and, in some more sensitive organizations, with even the perfume of flowers, a paroxysm is provoked. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... intercepted from flight." Sir Frederick Vane granted a warrant to apprehend him on the charge of forcing franks. Hatfield ordered dinner at the Queen's Head, Keswick, to be ready at three; took a boat, and did not return. This was on October 6: he was married to Mary on the 2nd. In November he was apprehended ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... rascals "goin' a-hoppin.'" From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see, above the tree tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... "Oh, Vane, I'm so glad you've won. You haven't quite killed him, have you? I suppose the captain would hang you if you did. I'm so sorry it was all about me. I'll never let any one else but you kiss me again. Really I won't. You may kiss me now if you ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... swow!" ejaculated the Cap'n, rubbing his knurly forefinger under his nose, and glancing first at the parrots and then at the lady. "If that ain't as much of an astonisher as when the scuttle-butt danced a jig on the dog-vane! Them two us'ly cusses strangers, no matter what age or sect. They was learnt to do it." He gazed doubtfully at the birds, as though they might possibly be deteriorating in ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... a breathing-space, while the mare plunged wildly and staggered, and her head almost touched the ground and dragged the man's hands on the turf; then as his weight wrenched her neck back, her violent speed threw her hind quarters round, as a vane is blown from the gale. At the same instant the great Hungarian horse was upon her, tried to leap her in his stride, struck her empty saddle with his brown chest, and fell against her and upon her with ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... beacon with a big B on the vane?" he said, pointing to the beacon, which was within fifty yards of the steamer's bow. "That is the Eastern Sambo, about a dozen sea miles ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... of rejoicing, had come. The church of the village Stood gleaming white in the morning's sheen. On the spire of the belfry, Tipped with a vane of metal, the friendly frames of the Spring-sun Glanced like the tongues of fire, beheld by Apostles aforetime. Clear was the heaven and blue, and May, with her cap crowned with roses, Stood in her holiday dress in the fields, and the wind and the brooklet ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... intoxication." Such, I feel sure, was not the state of my most valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... brought with him into Germany. You may imagine how soon those of the other side declared that he had brought 'death' and 'hell' in his train. There were two not inconsiderable persons in the time of our Civil Wars, Vane (not the 'young Vane' of Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets), and Sterry; and one of these, Sterry, was chaplain to the other. Baxter, having occasion to mention them in his profoundly instructive Narrative of his Life and Times, and liking neither, cannot forbear ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... with scarlet cushions, and ornamented with a parti-coloured floor of alternate diamonds of black and white marble. From the centre of the roof of the mansion, which was always covered with pigeons, rose the clock-tower of the chapel, surmounted by a vane; and before the mansion itself was a large plot of grass, with a fountain in the centre, surrounded by a hedge ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... on the after-masts, as well as on the stays between the main and mizen masts. Their effect is to balance the head-sails, in the manner that a weather-cock or vane is moved, of which the main-mast must be considered the pivot or centre. The reverse of head-sails. "Square the after-yards," refers to the yards on the main ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... Mrs. Clarke dined alone downstairs in the restaurant. The cooking at the Hotel de Paris was famous, and attracted many men from the Embassies. Presently Cyril Vane, one of the secretaries at the British Embassy, came in to dine. He had with him a young Turkish gentleman, who was called away by an agent from the Palace in the middle of dinner. Vane, thus left alone, presently got up and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... chosen moderator to the general assembly anno 1643, and when the English commissioners, viz. Sir William Armyn, Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Hatcher and Mr. Darly from the parliament, and two ministers, Mr. Stephen Marshal a presbyterian, and Philip Nye an independent, from the general assembly of divines at Edinburgh, where the general assembly ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... irreconcilable factions. The good woman had a great following in Boston, including not a few in high places. Wheelwright was her avowed defender; John Cotton was half convinced. The credit of the party was raised by the accession of the brilliant Sir Harry Vane, lately come from England, and destined to return hither to vex a greater than Winthrop. Vane was as radical in politics as Mistress Anne was in religion; and the two made common cause against the magistrates and clergy. Had the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... thee long and dearly, Florence Vane; My life's bright dream, and early, Hath come again; I renew, in my fond vision, My heart's dear pain, My hope, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... inches on the lesser; the longest primaries are twenty inches in length, and upwards of one inch in circumference where they enter the skin; the broadest secondaries are three inches in breadth across the vane; the scapulars are very large and broad, spreading from the back to the wing, to prevent the air from passing through; another range of broad flat feathers, from three to ten inches in length, also extend from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... had succeeded, even after the lapse of fourteen days, in arousing in her that which is most dear to the masculine soul, a preference—although it be a mild, a shamming or an evanescent preference—for one of them above another. Sir Vane Masham set her down over his third dinner's sherry as "an iceberg," in which kind opinion the little viscount joined, with the amendment of "polar refrigerator." Young Arthur French, who was very hard hit indeed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... conduct, his only reply was, 'There!' pointing to a small Confederate flag of about fifteen inches long and six inches broad, which I had inadvertently left flying at the gaff; the gaff being lowered down, the little flag having been used as a dog-vane, in order to tell the direction of the wind, &c. No sooner did the men perceive it than they redoubled their exertions to gain the shore; one of the masters calling out that they had spoken a ship a week ago, from whom they had obtained news of peace. No credence, however, could be, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... 'John Vane Tempest: a Romance,' 'Herbert and Henrietta: or the Nemesis of Sentiment,' 'The Life and Adventures of Colonel Bludyer Fortescue,' 'Happy Homes and Hairy Faces,' 'A Pound of Feathers and a Pound of Lead,' part author of 'Minn's Complete Capricious Correspondent: ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her race, Begs, for each birth, the fortune of a face: Yet VANE could tell, what ills from beauty spring; And SEDLEY curs'd the charms ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... Charles's lifetime, declared treason; and it was required, that the prosecution should be commenced within six months after the crime was committed. But notwithstanding this statute, the lawyers had persevered, as they still do persevere, in the old form of indictment; and both Sir Harry Vane and Oliver Plunket, titular primate of Ireland, had been tried by it. Such was the general horror entertained against the old republicans and the Popish conspirators, that no one had murmured against this interpretation of the statute; and the lawyers thought that they might follow the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... never tell you 'bout de chicken hawk as busted his knuckles all up tryin' to fly off wid de weather-vane ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... stood across the wide road. Farther along were two small old-fashioned houses and the old white church, with its pretty belfry of four arched sides and a tiny dome at the top. The large cockerel on the vane was pointing a little south of west, and there was still light enough to make it shine bravely against the deep blue eastern sky. On the western side of the road, near the store, were the parsonage and the storekeeper's ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Ammeter, Magnetic Vane. A fixed plate of soft iron is placed within a coil. Facing it is a second disc free to move or swing on an axis. When the field is excited the two repel each other because like polarity is induced in each, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... addressing himself to his mother, to support his assertion by a comparison of the height out of the water of the schooner's hull and of the corvette's, by assuring her that the vane at her mast-head had not reached higher than the man-of-war's mainyard, &c., but he was interrupted ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... and the tower finished in a conical roof, with becoming aerial gaillardise, with pretty dormer-windows for the inmates to pass in and out, little balconies for brooding in the sun, little awnings to protect them from rough breezes, and a great weather-vane, on which the birds crowded for the chance of a ride. If the peasants of that day, whose small fields they plundered, noting all this, perhaps [160] envied the birds dumbly, for the brethren, on the other hand, it was a constant delight to watch the feathered brotherhood, which supplied ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... moment; the deity of it unbent and smiled. Her heart beat in her throat between the words of her thought; yet she recalled, for support, all the romances she had read, and their eloquent portraitures of love, and, remembering that just as Rebecca loved Ivanhoe, as Paolo loved Francesca, so Hazel and Vane loved each other, "I must! I must!" she kept saying chokingly to herself. Mr. St. George had taken up a book. How should she dare disturb him? At last a hesitating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... refreshment. Marguerite was enjoying that repose which is so agreeable to the mind after the sensation of strong happiness; Dumiger, with his head resting on his hand, was gazing on the lofty tower of the Dom, and the light fleecy clouds, which appeared to be almost attracted by the glittering vane. At that moment a rude ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... turned and smiled such a welcome of him from her shining eyes, that the weather-vane of Mr. Harrison's volatile affections veered to point ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... all my bein', and the heat of hart and brane, And ev'ry livin' drop of blood in artery and vane, I love you and respect you, and I venerate your name, Fer the name of William Leachman and True Manhood's ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley

... the Maypole, which I had already seen, in the midst of the Strand, he spoke to me of how it had been carried there and set up with great rejoicing, after the Restoration. It was a great structure, hung about by a crown and a vane; and he said that it stood as a kind of ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... head. Only a year before as she had stood beside the bed of her father, fighting what seemed like a hopeless battle with death, she, too, had felt that despairing helplessness. "If only Dr. Vane ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... Hamilton, whom they considered that Gustavus had treated ungenerously; and still more concerning Lieutenant Colonel Douglas, whom Gustavus had committed to a common prison for a slight breach of etiquette, a punishment at which the English ambassador, Sir Harry Vane, remonstrated, and which the whole Scottish officers considered an insult to them and ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... was doing no figuring. Pain welled behind his eyes, his left arm was limp, and a broken stanchion jammed his feet so they couldn't move. The vane motor stuttered and stopped, the plane floor dropped away from beneath him, then thudded against something. The jar jolted Allan into a gray land where there ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat

... Mrs. Hutchinson was a person of great importance in Boston. Sir Harry Vane, then governor of the colony and the idol of the people, was pleased, with Mr. Cotton, to take much notice of the gifted newcomer, and their example was followed by the leading and influential people ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... the round section of the quill, the flat barbs, their short, hooked barbules which, in the flight-feathers, hook into one another with just sufficient firmness to resist the pressure of the air at each wing-beat, the lightness and firmness of the whole apparatus, the elasticity of the vane, and so on. And yet all this belongs to an organ which is only passively functional, and therefore can have nothing to do with the Lamarckian principle. Nor can the feather have arisen through some magical effect of temperature, moisture, electricity, or specific nutrition, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... a less concrete form. The mysterious artisan who had laid the cabin, log by log, had pegged a wind-vane to the ridgepole. Cuthfert noticed it always pointed south, and one day, irritated by its steadfastness of purpose, he turned it toward the east. He watched eagerly, but never a breath came by to disturb it. Then he turned the vane to the north, swearing ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... us; hands that penn'd And tongues that utter'd wisdom—better none: The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, Young Vane, and others who call'd Milton friend. These moralists could act and comprehend: They knew how genuine glory was put on; Taught us how rightfully a nation shone In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend But in magnanimous meekness. France, 'tis strange, Hath brought forth no such souls ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... There was the pond, which in her youth had been full of carp and where no one dared fish, because it was father's wish that the carp should be left in peace. Over there were the men-servants' quarters, the larder and barn, with the farm yard bell over one gable and the weather-vane over the other. The house yard was like a circular room, with no outlook in any direction, as it had been in her father's time—for he had not the heart to cut down as much ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... to think of the rascally knave or the rabble either. My thoughts are on yonder pretty little jade. Look for yourself, Bolingbroke. You're not so insensible to beauty as Lance Vane is at ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... of the lower animals are as automatic as those of the tin rooster that serves as a weather-vane. See how intelligently the rooster acts, always pointing the direction of the wind without a moment's hesitation. Or behold the vessel anchored in the harbor, how intelligently it adjusts itself to the winds and the tides! I have seen a log, caught in an eddy in a flooded stream, apparently make ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... where to run except into the huts, an' those our round-shot plowed through like so much grass—which was what they was, mostly. Then old Johnny Buck piped the longboat overside and on shore we went, firin' all the time. Cap'n Vane himself, with a dirk in his teeth and sword an' pistol out, goes swearin' up the roadway an' we behind him, our feet stickin' in blood. A few come out shootin' their little arrers at us, but we herded 'em an' drove 'em, yellin' all the time. At close quarters their knives was no match ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... to have slightly injured the astronomical instruments. The morning before we anchored at Porto Praya, I collected a little packet of this brown-coloured fine dust, which appeared to have been filtered from the wind by the gauze of the vane at the mast-head. Mr. Lyell has also given me four packets of dust which fell on a vessel a few hundred miles northward of these islands. Professor Ehrenberg [3] finds that this dust consists in great part of infusoria with siliceous shields, and of the siliceous tissue ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... work of Sir Harry Vane (who was an associate of Sterry's), entitled Love to God, &c.[1] I should also be glad to know where that work may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... gray blinds, and slender iron balconies decorated with rosettes painted yellow. Above the ground floor and the first floor were three dormer windows projecting from a slate roof; on the peak of the central one was a new weather-vane. This modern innovation represented a hunter in the attitude of shooting a hare. The front door was reached by three stone steps. On one side of this door a leaden pipe discharged the sink-water into a small street-gutter, showing the whereabouts of the kitchen. On the other side ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... This woman's name was Vane. Who her father was no one knew but her mother. When a child, she had lived with the latter in what was at that time the remains of a wooden hut, that must have been among the very first buildings erected in the forest which covered the northwestern portion of what is now the suburbs of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... stars. The sun dropped nearer and nearer the horizon every evening, and it was growing uncomfortably warm at mid-day. As I was now getting some information from the sun as to the points of the compass, I set up a vane on the deck, in order to find out, from day to day, the direction of the wind. This put another idea into my head. Couldn't I do something to help the old berg along? Why couldn't the spare masts and sails, that lay along the sides of the deck, be put to some ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark

... church! its lowly tower, Beneath the loftier spire, Is shadowed when the sunset hour Clothes the tall shaft in fire; It sinks beyond the distant eye Long ere the glittering vane, High wheeling in the western sky, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... on the sill for a glimpse of the wide expanse of blue and silver, the cotton rag that served as a curtain flapped in my face. I pushed it aside and craned my neck north and south. The curtain had acted as a weather vane,—the wind had ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and let his keen glance run along every shore just once. His head, with its bright yellow eye and long yellow beak glistening in the morning light, veered and swung over his long neck like a gilded weather-vane on a steeple. As the vane swung up the shore toward me I held my breath, so as to be perfectly motionless, thinking I was hidden so well that no eye could find me at that distance. As it swung past me slowly I chuckled, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... of Plantagenet extraction would like to correspond with healthy Coal Miner with view to cross-transfusion. Would sell soul for two shillings.—A. VANE-BLUDYER, 135, Down (and Out) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various

... had interested me personally for the reason that I was acquainted with Sir Howard Hepwell, one of whose gamekeepers was the stepfather of the missing Molly Clayton. Moreover, it was hinted that she had gone away in the company of Captain Ronald Vane, at that time a guest of Sir Howard's at ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... holiness when they decline, So Law, in the name of law once outraged, demon-divine, Swoops back as Anarchy arm'd, and maddens her lovers of yore, Changed from their former selves, and clothed in the chrisom of gore. Then Falkland and Hampden are gone; and darker counsels arise; Vane with his tortuous soul, through over-wisdom unwise; Pym, deep stately designer, the subtle in simple disguised, Artist in plots, projector of panics he used, and despised! —But as, in the mountain world, where the giants ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... insolito onore, non so, che cosa si volesse negli estremi anni della sua vita: la calamita di lui diviene sempre piu grave, perche dalla sentenza contra di esso promulgata apparira, che egli fu non solo misero, ma insano, e demente, e che con vane arti si usurpo per tanti anni una falsa fama di sapienza. Ammonisco i dogi, i quali gli succederanno, che questo e un' esempio posto innanzi ai loro occhi, quale specchio, nel quale veggano d' essere non ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... these one was The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, so oddly foisted by Smollett into the third volume of his Peregrine Pickle. This was recognised at once as being the work of the frail and adventurous Lady Vane, about whom so many strange stories were already current in society. The other puzzled the gossips much longer, and it seems to have been the poet Gray who first discovered the authorship of Pompey the Little. Gray wrote to tell Horace Walpole ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... lieutenant, who was a tall figure, and would have been a handsome and commanding-looking man but for his very great paleness and his stooping, walked briskly to the gate, and holding himself a little more erect than usual, glanced first at the vane, noticing with a sailor's instinct the quarter in which the wind sat; and then turning, gazed anxiously up the village in the direction of the postman's approach, till that functionary appeared in sight. Then he would lay his hand nervously on the top of the little garden-gate, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... extraordinary relief in the perspective view of the building. The upper part consists of a circular peristyle of six columns; the example apparently taken from the portico of the octagon tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, or tower of the winds, from the summit of which rises a conical dome, surmounted by the Vane. The more minute detail may be seen by the annexed drawing. The prevailing ornament is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... Fervous digging. Shan't go in for that sort of garden, ma'am. No! Too much backache for me. My garden will be just a patch of 'sturtiums and sweet pea. Red brick yard, clothes' line. Trellis put up in odd time. Humorous wind vane. Creeper up ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... off a man's legs and then bids him walk!" cried one from his pulpit. "Let believers sin as fast as they will, they have a fountain open to wash them;" declared another teacher. We had the Brownists, from Robert Brown, the Vaneists, from Sir Harry Vane, then we sink down to Mr. Traske, Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Robinson, and H. N., or Henry Nicholas, of the Family of Love, besides Mrs. Hutchinson, and the Grindletonian family, who preferred "motions to motives," and conveniently assumed that "their spirit ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... sun-blonde splendor, To reap the harvest that Springtime sows; And Fall lead in her old defender, Winter, all huddled up in snows: Ever a-south the love-wind blows Into my heart, like a vane asway From face to face of the girls it knows— But who is the fairest it's ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... Oh, Ellery Vane! you little thought An hour ago, when you besought This country lass to walk with you, After the sun had dried the dew, What perilous danger you'd be in As she tied her bonnet ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... repelled ball was of pith, gilt, and was 0.3 of an inch in diameter. The horizontal stem or lever supporting it was of shell-lac, according to Coulomb's direction, the arm carrying the ball being 2.4 inches long, and the other only 1.2 inches: to this was attached the vane, also described by Coulomb, which I found to answer admirably its purpose of quickly destroying vibrations. That the inductive action within the electrometer might be uniform in all positions of the repelled ball and in all states of the apparatus, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... large circular opening in five divisions, surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver's shuttle threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something like steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where the rain ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... to Rance Vane. I know'd that chap onct, and I found him not a man, but a scamp. I never liked the Vanes, father'n son. The old ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton

... vane of a cross-staff, made to slide along it by means of a square socket; it may be set to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... assist thee to thy heart's desire as soon as thou hast found what its desire is; and I insist thou dost examine the weather-vane of thy mind and discern its bent. I am by thy side, groping in darkness for that thou wouldst have. I am bound ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... round about among them, some mending nets some stooping over a boat turned bottom upwards, upon which a patch is being placed. It needs at least three or four men to manage this patch properly. These tan frocks vary from a dull yellow to a copperish red colour. A golden vane high overhead points to the westward, and the dolphin, with open mouth, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... whose wisdom is from heav'n, [e] Who over sands and seas directs the stray, And, as with God's own finger, points the way, He turn'd; but what strange thoughts perplex'd his soul, When, lo, no more attracted to the Pole, The Compass, faithless as the circling vane, Flutter'd and fix'd, flutter'd and fix'd again; And still, as by some unseen Hand imprest, Explor'd, with trembling energy, the West! [Footnote 2] "Ah no!" he cried, and calm'd his anxious brow. "Ill, nor the ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... players converse about the word, but instead of mentioning it, say "Tea-pot" in its place. Suppose the word chosen is "vain." No. 1 may say: "She is altogether too tea-pot for me." (vain) No. 2 says: "The tea-pot pointed North yesterday." (vane) No. 3: "The tea-pot is blue." (vein), and so on, each in turn making some remark about the chosen word until the player has guessed it correctly. The person who gave the broadest hint about the hidden word must ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann

... maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage something mediaeval and Gothic, in the details of her person and dress, this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn't it a beautiful name?) is deeply, delightfully picturesque. She is much a woman—elle est bien femme, as they say here; simpler, softer, rounder, richer than the young girls I spoke of ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James



Words linked to "Vane" :   plume, mechanical device, rotating mechanism, feather, propellor, wind generator, paddle, missile, oar, fan blade, arrow, eggbeater, helicopter, wind tee, aerogenerator, fin, wind vane, weathercock, windmill, plumage, whirlybird, rudder blade, propeller, barb, turbine, impeller, chopper



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