In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as
pellucid as a piece of crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the appalling numbers of our helpless company, even to those who in more normal conditions would have remained invisible, sails down under the horizon.
"Moreover, while a writer who deals with [48] easy themes has no excuse if he is not
pellucid to a glance, one who employs his intellect and imagination on high and hard questions has a right to demand a corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say with Bishop Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be acknowledged that some of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that those alone are judges whether or no, and how far this is a fault, who are judges whether or no, and how far it might have been avoided--those only who will be at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to see how far the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might have been put in a plainer manner.'"
Some came rushing down gullies and ravines; others tumbled in crystal cascades from inaccessible clefts and rocks, and others winding their way in rapid and
pellucid currents across the valley, to throw themselves into the main river.
The isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the
pellucid smokelessness of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines.
"Well, monsieur," said the king, fixing his
pellucid eyes on D'Artagnan, "what have you to say to me?"
Our voices rang around him joyously in the still air, and above his head the sky,
pellucid, pure, stainless, arched its tender blue from shore to shore and over the bay, as if to envelop the water, the earth, and the man in the caress of its light.
The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden twilight flowed the green,
pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above filtered and tempered in its fall.
She cast her eyes down in irritation, and read again her mother's musical sentences about the silver gulls, and the roots of little pink flowers washed by
pellucid streams, and the blue mists of hyacinths, until she was struck by her mother's silence.
Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and
pellucid as ever.
The water in the fountain,
pellucid as crystal, was alive with myriads of gold and silver fishes, twinkling and darting through it like so many living jewels.
Dame Webber resumed her knitting to hide her distress, which betrayed itself, however, in a
pellucid tear, which trickled silently down, and hung at the end of her peaked nose; while the cat, the only unconcerned member of the family, played with the good dame's ball of worsted as it rolled about the floor.
"I suppose," he said, the mockery of his eyes giving a
pellucid quality to his tone, "that you think it's high time I told you something definite.