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[…]tapers put into lanterns or sconces of several-coloured, oiled paper, that the wind might not annoy them.
1847, John Dryden, The Works of John Dryden in Verse and Prose, volume 1, Harper, The Beginning of the Second Book of Lucretius, page 183, line 28:
Golden sconces hang not on the walls.
A candlestick (holder for a candle, especially a circular tube, with a brim, into which a candle is inserted), either with a handle for carrying, or with a bracket for attaching to a wall.
1858, Mrs. Oliphant, Laird of Norlaw, I. v. 55:
Taking the candle […] she stood with the little flat brass sconce in her hand.
1859, W. Collins, Queen of Hearts, published 1875, page 41:
This strange scene was lightd up by candles in high and havy brass sconces.
Novv as I am a Chriſtian anſvver me, / In vvhat ſafe place you haue beſtovv'd my monie; / Or I ſhall breake that merrie ſconce of yours / That ſtands on tricks, vvhen I am vndiſpos'd: / VVhere is the thouſand Markes thou hadſt of me?
Why does he suffer this rude knave now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?
1818, John Keats, On Some Skulls in Beauly Abbey, near Inverness:
Long time this sconce a helmet wore, / But sickness smites the conscience sore; / He broke his sword, and hither bore / His gear and plunder, / Took to the cowl,—then rav’d and swore / At his damn’d blunder!
1824, Galignani's magazine and Paris monthly review, page 129:
[…] roll the rider and his horse in the dust, or endeavour to drive their lance through the bars of the visor into the bull's eye of their friend's sconce, […]
1867, Benjamin Brierley, Marlocks of Merriton, page 56:
[…]; an old blue jacket, that at one time had been a coat, looped over a red plush “singlet” of perhaps twenty or even forty years' wear : his almost hairless sconce bared to the sun, from which it had received an imperishable coating of tan, he was an object that few would pass without hailing with observations,[…] he wiped his shining sconce [...] and raised his visor […]
1898, Rev. A. Clark, University of Oxford, College Histories: Lincoln, page 73:
The Rector sconced him in the buttery-book, but Webberly “wiped it off, with irreverent and unbeseeming language.” For this, he had to apologise, and go without his commons for three months.
Just then, a broad sconce-piece or low water-washed berg came driving up from the southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Melville Bay; and as the sconce moved rapidly close alongside us, McGary managed to plant an anchor on its slope and hold on to it by a whale-line.