"Dilapidation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not now be regarded as by any means a novel one, I had thought out for myself, and which possessed for me, in consequence, the charm of originality. In these poor creatures, I thus argued, we find, amid much general dilapidation and brokenness of mind, certain instincts and peculiarities remaining entire. Here, in Angus, for instance, there is that instinctive cunning which some of the lower animals, such as the fox, possess, existing in a wonderful ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Rodin. Arrived at the landing-place she ascended another ruinous staircase, steep as a ladder, and with nothing but an old rope for a rail. She at length reached the half-rotten door of a garret, situated in the roof. The house was in such a state of dilapidation, that, in many places the roof gave admission to the rain, and allowed it to penetrate into this cell, which was not above ten feet square, and lighted by an attic window. All the furniture consisted of an old straw mattress, laid upon the ground, with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a seminary for education, which is now suppressed. The building is immense, and admirably calculated for the purpose, but is already in a state of dilapidation; so that, I fear, by the time the legislature has determined what system of instruction shall be substituted for that which has been abolished, the children (as the French are fond of examples from the ancients) will take their lessons, like the Greeks, in the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... old maid-servant, opened the door, and in the spacious, dusky entrance-hall, where the bales of leather were packed closely together, did not notice the dilapidation of his outer man. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and suggested long disuse. Its air was less of dilapidation than desertion, and lichen and fungus played a large part in such an aspect. The walls were low, and the heavy roof was flat and sloping. As the man drew near a flight of birds streamed from its eaves, screaming ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... much further, when they drew near to the ruinous walls of a considerable town, situated in a fertile and delightful region, and retaining amidst its dilapidation many marks of grandeur. Entering through a ruinous gateway, they paused in the grand praca. "This," said L'Isle, "is Ville Vicosa, 'the delightful city.' What a pity we have but time to take a hasty glance at this ducal seat of the house ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... which has been transformed by time. It is now known as the 'Talbot,' but the inscription above the doorway contradicts the modern signboard and proclaims the house to be 'The Ancient Tabard Inn.' The whole yard is redolent of dilapidation. Facing the visitor on entering is an interesting block of old buildings, forming part of the left side, and the bottom of what once was an ample courtyard. This part of the building contains not improbably the shell of the corresponding ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... ranching failures in the West. The MacDavid establishment bore a well-ordered aspect, unlike many of the unthrifty, ramshackle ranches, of his neighbours. The fencing was of the best, and there were no signs of decay or dilapidation in any of the buildings. Dwarf pines were planted about and a Morning Glory vine over-ran the house, giving the place an air of restful domesticity. As they entered the store the trio noticed a saddle-horse tied to ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... hands. I got Uncle George to follow along with hammer and nails to mend the chaise, as the floor was so broken I could not put my feet on it, and the bag of oats had dropped through on the way. I had tied the halter to the dasher and wound it round the bag, so there was no loss. The dilapidation was a pleasing reminiscence of old times, and George was pleased enough to earn a quarter by patching it up. Then I drove on to the house, where are only a Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair left in charge. Mrs. S. was very polite, and asked me up into our old parlor, which did not look as pleasant ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... pictures—which, though not in his regular line of study, interested Somerset more than the architecture, because of their singular dilapidation, it occurred to his mind that he had in his youth been schoolfellow for a very short time with a pleasant boy bearing a surname attached to one of the paintings—the name of Ravensbury. The boy had vanished he knew not how—he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... "approached" on the subject, the "Fontaine de Massacre" was established at the foot of the belfry, and is drawn by Lelieur as a Gothic pyramid with five sides, as tall as the arcade. It showed signs of extreme dilapidation by the eighteenth century, and the wags wrote squibs about the broken statues of the Virgin and bishops by Pol Mansellement (or Mosselmen, see Chap. X.), in elegiacs as imperfect as their subject. So the Duke of Montmorency-Luxemburg, the Governor of Rouen and ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... stunted shrubs, among which an outrageously prickly variety of the cactus made itself conspicuously apparent to the touch; while, more than half hidden by the undergrowth, there were dotted here and there a few sepulchral stones and monuments in the very last stage of irretrievable dilapidation. Add to these sombre surroundings the melancholy sighing of the night-wind through the branches of the trees overhead, and the occasional weird cry of some nocturnal bird, and it will not be wondered at if I confess I felt a strong desire to get beyond the precincts of the eerie place ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... alchemy.* Such was its lavish splendor that even at the present day the stranger, wandering through its silent courts and deserted halls, gazes with astonishment at gilded ceilings and fretted domes, the brilliancy and beauty of which have survived the vicissitudes of war and the silent dilapidation ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... set on foot in 1864, and Sir Gilbert Scott reported that L15,000 was necessary to make good the dilapidation and decay which extended, in his opinion, from the foundations to the roof. The necessary amount was not forthcoming for several years. Then a new committee was appointed, with Sir Edmund Lechmere as its chairman. In 1875 the restoration began, the choir being undertaken ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... following a vocation which, if less agreeable, is certainly more profitable to himself. Occasionally one of these professional bookstallers blossoms into a shopkeeper in some court or alley off Holborn; but more generally they are too far gone in drink and dilapidation to get ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... which Norton and his wife had removed after the death of the elder Hollis), the stable, and one other building for the storing of miscellaneous articles. Hollis inspected them all and was not quite convinced that they had reached the stage of dilapidation ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... become offensive to every sense and sentiment of reasonable man. It had been built in the Spanish style,—a massive, dark, grim, huge, four-sided block, the fissure-like windows of its cells looking down into the four public streets which ran immediately under its walls. Dilapidation had followed hard behind ill-building contractors. Down its frowning masonry ran grimy streaks of leakage over peeling stucco and mould-covered brick. Weeds bloomed high aloft in the broken gutters under the scant and ragged eaves. Here and there ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... in getting a shop in which to carry on your business in this district cannot say that I had. I was offered this place by the Busta trustees. It was in a state of dilapidation when I took it, and they offered it to me on condition that I would make the necessary repairs ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... said Steve, removing the hand from his face and revealing an eye which for spectacular dilapidation must have rivalled the epoch-making one which had so excited his mother on a ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... led the way around behind a barn that was skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with excitement vibrating his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... which it formed a part. The whitewash was peeling from the walls, the stairs were patched, and the door-step long since worn entirely away. It was hard to be decent in such a place, but the widow did the best she could. Her rooms were as neat as the general dilapidation would permit. On the shelf where the old clock stood, flanked by the best crockery, most of it cracked and yellow with age, there was red and green paper cut in scallops very nicely. Garlic and onions hung in strings over the stove, and the red peppers that grew ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... order of the Scottish Council, and shipped to be sold in Holland. He continues:—'Let us not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... and Clarke were from Westminster School (Campbell's Chancellors, v. 176). The schoolhouse, famous though it was, was allowed to fall into decay. A writer in the Gent. Mag. in 1794 (p. 413) says that 'it is now in a state of dilapidation, and unfit for the use of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... office of the editor of "The Financial Pilot" had fallen into a state of sordid dilapidation. If the janitor had received orders never to use a broom or a duster there, he obeyed them strictly. Disorder and dirt reigned supreme. Papers and manuscripts lay in all directions; and on the broad sofas the mud from the boots of all those who ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... lazily in the high-grown grass, dappled yellow with sunlight, you will find in every orchard a boy, idly beating a monotonous tattoo to scare away the birds. A collection of tin pots in various stages of dilapidation, each one emitting a different hollow note, are spread around him, and there he lies the day through till nightfall, eating the meals that are brought him, humming a tune between them to pass away the time; but ceaselessly beating a discordant dominant upon his sounding drums of tin. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... with two colonnades in the form of a cross; the roofs of these are vaulted. Four rows of square columns, each still hewn from a single block, extend along the sides of the temple. These are covered with statues and bass-reliefs, many of the former being in a state of dilapidation which, considering the extreme hardness of the stone, indicates great age, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... grumbling all the while to himself as he surveyed the condition of each bird, and blaming alternately the carelessness of the under-falconer, and the situation of the building, and the weather, and the wind, and all things around him, for the dilapidation which time and disease had made in the neglected hawking establishment of the Garde Doloureuse. While in these unpleasing meditations, he was surprised by the voice of his beloved Dame Gillian, who ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... under those conditions, and with that amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere with his perception of the art of the building, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot aforementioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of Simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the highest of the hills, at the base of which is spread the town. It is precisely in the state most agreeable to antiquaries, as its extreme dilapidation permits them to indulge those various conjectures and hypotheses relative to its original destination, in which they delight. They see in their "mind's eye" all these interesting works of antiquity, not as they really are, but as ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... this dreary scene was, as I have before said, the old labourer, Daniel Thorpe, who slept in one corner of the house, partly to prevent its total dilapidation, and to preserve the valuable hayricks and the tumble-down farm buildings from the pillage to which unprotected property is necessarily exposed, and partly to keep in repair the long line of boundary fence, to clean the graffages, clear out the moat-like ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... small, neglected garden; in front of him, to the right, a wretched, weather-stained house, bearing every mark of poverty and dilapidation, while to the left there stretched out from the house a long glass structure, also in miserable condition—a sculptor's studio, as ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... why—it was the very same village in which I was born. How astonished I was! How the tears of joy ran down my cheeks as a thousand strange memories came back to me! There were a great many changes; new houses had been built, others, which had then only recently been erected, were now in a state of dilapidation. I came across places where there had been a fire. Everything was a great deal smaller and more crowded than I had expected. I took infinite delight in the thought of seeing my parents again after so many years. I found the little house and the well-known threshold—the handle on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... been presented to parliament, setting forth the general mismanagement, misapplication of money, dilapidation of property, and various grievances sustained in consequence of the usurped authority of certain self-elected magistrates in the royal burgs of Scotland. On the 18th of April Mr. Sheridan made a motion for an inquiry into the grievances thus ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... placed in a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible, from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent those strongholds, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the town they soon came in sight of a deserted house. It evidently had been abandoned, for it was in a bad state of dilapidation. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... hand of fellowship to the new-comers, and wrapped the folds of the social blanket cordially around them. The worldly affairs of the Virginians, like their surroundings, were in a more or less perceptible state of dilapidation, and their means frequently failed to match their hospitality. But their intentions were the best, and the Smiths (well-bred people, neither arrogant, nor purse-proud) speedily became reconciled to informality and lack of system, and learned to overlook deficiencies, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... if not the very first, of the South Australian Company was on Kangaroo Island, on the shores of Nepean Bay. Here the town of Kingscote was laid out, and some very good houses built, which are now falling to dilapidation and decay, since it has been abandoned by the Company's servants for some years. Nevertheless Kingscote is a very pretty sea-port town, and the harbour is undoubtedly good. The bay is large enough to hold a number of ships, and is secure from all winds, being almost completely land-locked. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... start in business was in the year 1797, in a small workshop and smithy situated in Wells Street, Oxford Street. It was in an awful state of dirt and dilapidation when he became its tenant. He entered the place on a Friday, but by the Saturday evening, with the help of his excellent wife, he had the shop thoroughly cleaned, whitewashed, and put in readiness for beginning work on the next Monday morning. He had ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... side no small degree of haste and consternation prevailed. Colonel Gansevoort had been placed in command at the fort with a garrison of seven hundred and fifty men. But he found it in a state of perilous dilapidation. Originally a strong square fortification, with bomb-proof bastions, glacis, covered way, and ditch outside the ramparts, it had been allowed to fall into decay, and strenuous efforts were needed to bring ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... small room that was library and everything by turns. There were trophies of hunting expeditions, some rare birds stuffed and mounted, looking so alive Hanny would not have been surprised if they had suddenly begun to warble; books in every stage of dilapidation, some of them quite rare copies, Ben found; portfolios of old engravings; curious weapons; foreign wraps; Grecian and Turkish bits of pottery; and the odd things we call ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... serpents. The remnant of an sitar, or high place, occupies the centre of the cloistered quadrangle. The rest of the edifice is taken up with courts, palaces, detached temples, open divans, baths, and streets of priestly cells, or houses, in a greater or less degree of dilapidation." ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the demesne," I say, "when I noticed a rather serious item of dilapidation," or "A word with you about the messuage; it looks a trifle off colour to-day. Have you had it blistered lately?" And this worries him a good deal, because he is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... great paved kitchen, which was destitute of the customary furniture; and as the party proceeded to ascend from thence by a flight of winding stairs, a prodigious noise of rats testified still more plainly to the dilapidation ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before it will be accepted. Sooner or later, indeed, it will be accepted. For though most of our buildings seem even in decay to resist the harmonizing hand of Nature, and to grow only ghastly and not venerable in dilapidation, yet leave them long enough and what of beauty was possible to them will appear, though it be only a crumbling heap of bricks where the chimney stood, or the grassy slope where the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... field' is a grand legacy, so far as dilapidation, alas, will let it be, of the old painters. Originally a place of burial, though no longer used as such, it is enclosed by high walls and an arcade, something like the cloisters of a cathedral or college running round, and having ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... serious predicament, and so, riding out of town, traveled a little way and then tearing his clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosity of White and ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures—an original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided in this country; and an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library exhibiting marks of dilapidation. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the nearest village. The "Tribunal," which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dak Bungalow for wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others, which had been decent buildings generations gone by, lapsed into a wretched state of dilapidation. In some villages there was no Tribunal at all, and the official business had to be transacted in the municipal Governor's house. I first visited Calamba (La Laguna) in 1880, and for 14 years, to my knowledge, the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... roof. They stood upon a gentle slope; a group of pines formed a shelter from the north, the moorland rose behind them, and the river sang through a contiguous glen. My first glance told me that they had not long been out of occupation. They showed no marks of dilapidation, and the little gardens, though weed-grown, gave signs of recent care. A woman whom I met told me their history. They had long been inhabited by two families, father and son. A few months previously these families had sailed for Canada. No one had applied for the cottages, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... in 1853, had to borrow chairs from an adjoining office as the sheriff had walked away with their own for debt. Even a railroad with such a territory as the Hudson River Valley, and extending from New York to Albany existed in a state of chronic dilapidation; and the New York and Harlem, which had an entrance into New York City as an asset of incalculable value, was looked upon merely as a vehicle for ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... declivity of one of the ridges that form the valley to the left, as you go southward, and its site would have been a good one for a fortress, intended to defend the lower entrance of this mountain defile. At a proper distance, it looks not unlike the gray dilapidation of a Gothic castle, which has been crumbling and crumbling away for ages, until Time might be supposed to have imperceptibly stolen its massive pile from man, and given it back to Nature; its towers and battlements and arched entrances being so much defaced and decayed that all the marks ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... considerable public expense; its dangling non-descript ornaments, and tiresome acclivity and descent of forty steps each. "What," said he, "notwithstanding the protection by centinels of this precious memento of vitiated taste, has it become the prey of dilapidation?" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... yet to stand, Dilapidation's wasting hand Shall tear thy pond'rous walls, to guard The slumb'ring steed, or fence the yard; Or wheels shall grind thy pride away Along the turnpike road to HAY, Where fierce GLENDOW'R'S rude mountaineers Left ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... visions that had come to her the first day she and her father had come to the farm, and through all its dilapidation and neglect, she had seen that it could be made into a home of comfort and prosperity, and now the dream had come true. The Watson family were thriving; their farm had not failed them; comforts, and even a few luxuries were theirs, and Pearl's ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... fresh in my mind. I was yet thinking of Willy Hammond's dreadful death, and of his broken-hearted mother, whose life went out with his, when the stage rolled by their old homestead. Oh, what a change was here! Neglect, decay, and dilapidation were visible, let the eye fall where it would. The fences were down, here and there; the hedges, once so green and nicely trimmed, had grown rankly in some places, but were stunted and dying in others; all the beautiful walks were weedy and grass-grown, ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... copy, 398; of the Vision of Alberico, preserved in the king's library at Paris, 422: of Galileo's annotations on Tasso, 444; destruction of Hugh Broughton's, by Speed, 445; destruction of Leland's, by Polydore Vergil, ib.; dilapidation of the Harleian, 446; suppression of one relating to Sixtus IV. by Fabroni, ib.; of the Marquis of Halifax suppressed, 447; Earl of Pulteney's and Earl of Anglesea's MS. Memoirs suppressed, ib.; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... his finger, and the instant he touched her all dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she became so beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so young that she seemed but sixteen years ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... into a condition to be mounted with artillery. On each side commodious pathways were made, and along the inner side powder magazines were constructed. At present these fortifications are in a state of complete dilapidation. The paths, which are obstructed by rubbish, are almost impassable, and the powder magazines are destroyed. The city wall of Lima has nine gates (Portadas). Of these, six only are now open, viz., the Portadas of Maravillas, Barbones, Cocharcas, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... corner only could I stand upright; long sooty cobwebs graced the black wood beams overhead, hanging as thick as icicles in a mountain valley; each step I took in fear and trembling (the slightest move threatened to collapse the whole dilapidation). Four planks, four inches wide at the widest part and of varying lengths and thicknesses, placed on a pile of loose firewood at the head and foot, comprised the bedstead on which I tremulously sat down. Upon this improvised apology for a bed, under my mosquito curtains (no traveler should ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... extraordinary state of filth and slovenliness in which the area of ruin where it stands is left. To look on either side of the path which leads to the facade would cause feelings of disgust almost fatal to even antiquarian zeal, and the wretched dilapidation of the space formerly occupied by the immense convent once flourishing here cannot be described. The Saracens, it seems, destroyed great part of the church and convent, which dates from the seventh century, or earlier, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse. As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the master to that of the mistress a ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... suddenly, as rats are seen to issue from a rick when the ferret is in it, Johnny Darbyshire was seen ascending hurriedly a broken staircase, that was partly exposed to the open day by the progress of dilapidation, and terminated ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... time passed on the paternal home began to present an air of neglect and even dilapidation, which occasionally attracted my attention and caused, as I incidentally discovered, a great deal of unfavorable comment among my neighbors, who thought that I should go to work and at least earn money enough to put ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... had fallen into decay. The rose covered trellis of the porch lay rotting on the ground. All about the building hung an air of dilapidation and decay that forbade the thought of cheer. One part of the tumbled down structure looked as though it might serve as a shelter, and the girl hastened to the door ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder, and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax—the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles—the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles—that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... estimate is true, I know too feelingly. Would that it were not! would that it were false! Were it so, I might the better justify to myself that commerce with fraudulent Jews which led me so early to commence the dilapidation of my small fortune. It is true; and true for a period (1804-8) far dearer than this. And to any man who questions its accuracy I address this particular request—that he will lay his hand upon the special item which he disputes. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... hand is always cropping up. It pervades the volume like a Leitmotif. It is "a most invaluable article" for protecting the head against the sun's rays; so constantly is it used that after a single month's wear we find it already in "a sad state of dilapidation." Still, he clings to it. As a defence against brigands it might prove useful, and on one occasion, indeed, he seizes it in his hand "prepared to show fight." This happened, be it remembered, in 1828. Vainly one conjectures what the mountain folk of South Italy thought of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... conclude that something had happened. So would the doctor, who would hear the summons from his bed. What would they all say to him, Guthrie Carey, with his good seaman's record behind him, when he brought his wife home in such a state of dilapidation? However, all's well that ends well. Let him only have her safely there, and he would not mind what anybody said; and he'd take precious good care not to run any risks ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the theory of partial sleep has come into play; but the characteristics of the sleeping state have been found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its desire to sleep. The withdrawal from the outer world retains its significance also for our conception; ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... figure under my arm, I followed him into what he called "the office"—a small and dirty room, crowded with old furniture in the last stage of dilapidation. From a desk in one corner he took a large tome labelled "Stock Book," to which he referred, after glancing at a hieroglyphical device pasted on the figure which I held under ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... old building with anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from any influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would the jewels of a crown. Set watchers about it, as if at the gate of a besieged city; bind it together with iron when it loosens; stay it with timber when it declines. Do not care about the unsightliness of the aid—better a crutch than a lost limb; and ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... women, in garments of universal dirt colour, stood at the doors; ragged children ran and shrieked after the coach, the church had a hole in the roof, and stood tottering in spite of rude repairs; the churchyard was trodden down by cattle, and the whole place only resembled the pictures of Irish dilapidation. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which he found her was a small ruinous building, sagged and jutting forward, as if struggling to sustain itself against time and dilapidation. The windows were broken; the doors and shutters unhung, except a solitary one of the latter, which creaked as it flapped to and fro in the wind; and this was the home of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... this consisted of various tools, an iron ladle, a chafing-pan and small bellows, sundry pans and kettles, the latter being of tin, with the exception of one which was of copper, all in a state of considerable dilapidation—if I may use the term; of these first Slingsby had spoken in particular, advising me to mend them as soon as possible, and to endeavour to sell them, in order that I might have the satisfaction of receiving some return upon the outlay which I had ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... worm covers thee. There are the mats and the carpets that lie under, and there are the state and the canopy that hang over the greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that were the temples of the Holy Ghost come to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust; even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself, hath no other specification, no other denomination, but that vermis Jacob, thou worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death, this death after burial, that after God (with whom are ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... slowly in dozens and half dozens straggling along, no great enthusiasm apparent at all. The great majority wore corduroys of a great many varieties of color and states of preservation or dilapidation. The irrepressible small boys were clustering over the slight fence that surrounded the platform, crawling under it, roosting on top of it, squatting round my chair and smiling up at me as if they expected a ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... door, and as soon as his eyes became, accustomed to the tobacco smoke, he surveyed the room. There was a bowl on the floor, the chair where it belonged being occupied. There was a very inhospitable looking bed, two shake-downs, and four Windsor chairs in more or less state of dilapidation—all occupied likewise. A country glass lamp was balanced on a rough shelf, and under it a young man sat absorbed in making notes, and apparently oblivious to the noise around him. Every gentleman in the room was collarless, coatless, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was descending into the clammy soil of a grave. She felt quite disheartened, and shivered with fear. She looked at the dirty, damp gallery, visited the shop, and ascending to the first floor, walked round each room. These bare apartments, without furniture, looked frightful in their solitude and dilapidation. The young woman could not make a gesture, or utter a word. She was as if frozen. Her aunt and husband having come downstairs, she seated herself on a trunk, her hands rigid, her throat full of sobs, and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... Trahoir was a small irregularly shaped space, surrounded by miserable hovels, with high pointed roofs, most of which were in a state of dangerous dilapidation; the broken casements in every instance replaced by rags or straw; the doors ill-hung and swinging upon their rusty hinges, and the whole of the buildings lost in dirt and wretchedness. The inhabitants ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... way to it. It stood, as I have already observed, in a meadow, and was on almost every side surrounded by majestic hills. To give any clear description of this ruined pile would be impossible, the dilapidation is so great, dilapidation evidently less the effect of time than of awful violence, perhaps that of gunpowder. The southern is by far the most perfect portion of the building; there you see not only walls but roofs. Fronting you full ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... place in which all Washingtons took great and proper pride, that it was "the lodestone which draws the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts," I was greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the shameful state of dilapidation into which it has been allowed to pass. The porches and steps have fallen down, the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the graves in the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about which the cattle graze. The only parts of the building in good ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... a state of physical dilapidation little removed from destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in partial repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost by capture, by destruction to prevent capture, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones from fruit-stains and fire-scorchings; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... days—houses with porte-cocheres, exaggerated iron knockers, and queer old lamps; dreary balconies on the first floor, with here and there a plaster vase containing some withered member of the palm tribe, or a faded orange-tree; everywhere and in everything an air of dilapidation and decay; faded curtains, that had once been fine, flapping in the open windows; Venetian shutters going to ruin; and the only glimpse of brightness or domestic comfort confined to the humble parlour of the portress, who kept watch and ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and formative years; how I sometimes remained away for months at a time, and how once an office boy mis-addressed me to a lady in New Jersey who very graciously herself forwarded me to my parent; how my poor parent was obliged at length by the increasing dilapidation of my appearance to go to the expense of having me completely re-typed by a public typist, and how directly after this he entirely re-wrote, expanded, and elaborated me at the instigation of one firm of publishers; how I was ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... skins of bears and wolves were on the floor, and there was a general air of the room being lived in—though magnificence and dilapidation mingled everywhere. The very rich brocade on one of the sofas had the traces of great rents. And while one table held cigarette cases and cigar boxes in the most exquisitely fine enamel set with jewels, on another would be things of the roughest ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... of the work of at least three epochs, a not unusual feature in some of the smaller cathedrals. It has a mean little house built into its northwest corner, a crude and ugly clock-face stuck unmeaningly on its facade, and a general air of dilapidation, with respect to the statues originally contained in its archivolts and niches, which, to say the least, is not creditable to those who have been responsible for its care. It would seem that so lively and important a centre of local activity ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others, though broken and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with disastrous results. The ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... No. 5. We met nobody the whole way except a man with a cartload of wood, who greeted the Oberforster with immense respect, and some dilapidated little children picking wild strawberries. I wanted to remark on their dilapidation, which seemed very irregular in this well-conducted country, but thought I had best leave reasoned conversation alone till I've had time to learn more German, which I'm going to do diligently here, and till the Oberforster has discovered he needn't shout in order to make me understand. Sitting ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... he turned his eyes, in or out of his home, damp dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, finishing—all were wanting. The backyard and even the front lawn round the windows of the house were filled with loungers, followers, and petitioners; tenants, undertenants, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... paid to polishing and beautifying the outer case of the machine, and the outer surface generally of the city of Grindwell. Where any portion of the framework has fallen into dilapidation and decay, the gaunt skeleton bones of the ruined structure are decked and covered with leaves and flowers. Old rusty boilers that are on the verge of bursting are newly painted, varnished, and labelled with letters of gold. The main-spring, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... any bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster Cove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. There is the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its floors ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and the southern counties even the smallest hamlets have often a good church, with a conspicuous tower or spire; but in how many villages in this riding do you find no church at all, as in the case of Staithes and Runswick? Many of the old churches of Yorkshire were in a state of great dilapidation at the beginning of last century, and a great effort having been initiated by the then Archbishop, a fund was instituted to help the various parishes to restore their buildings. It was a period when architecture was at a low ebb, and the desire to sweep away ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... a seat in cortes, possessed by every city which had once been represented there, and this equally whether summoned or not, if we may credit Capmany, [51] must have gone far to preserve the popular branch from the melancholy state of dilapidation to which it was reduced in Castile by the arts of despotic princes. Indeed, the kings of Aragon, notwithstanding occasional excesses, seem never to have attempted any systematic invasion of the constitutional ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... flags stuck on long poles, which fluttered about in the breeze. According to the account of our interpreter, which had to pass from Thibetian into Hindostanee before it could clothe itself in English, the cause of this dilapidation was the state of wealth and ambition at which the Lamas had arrived, and the consequent interposition of Gulab Singh to take down their pride and ease them of a little of their wealth, both of which he accomplished in the style to which he was so partial, by slaughtering some hundreds of them ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... say that a more complete effacement is nowhere else to be seen. The whole ground, over a space five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins, which at first view, make no impression, so complete is their dilapidation." ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... civility; but the old man was in no humour of compliance. He guided the new-comer across the courtyard, looking sharply and quickly in his face, and grumbling all the time about the cold, and the discomfort and dilapidation of the castle. He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would like it; but in truth he could not think what brought him there. Doubtless he had a good reason—this with a look of cunning scrutiny—but, indeed, the place ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was so strange and shocking to her eyes that she felt a chill creep to her heart. She had never imagined anything so forlorn and squalid, so wretched and comfortless. Miserable little hovels, many of them no better than pig-styes, and hardly cleaner within, were crowded together in all stages of dilapidation. Windows with scarcely a pane of glass, the chilly air kept out by old hats, bits of carpet or wads of newspaper, could be seen on all sides, with here and there, showing some remains of an orderly habit, ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... ramparts under a night-blue sky sprinkled with stars; ahead, over gardens still deep in shadow, the walls of Sale were passing from drab to peach-colour in the eastern glow. Dawn is the romantic hour in Africa. Dirt and dilapidation disappear under a pearly haze, and a breeze from the sea blows away the memory of fetid markets and sordid heaps of humanity. At that hour the old Moroccan cities look like the ivory citadels in a Persian miniature, and the fat shopkeepers riding out to their vegetable-gardens like Princes ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... close under the semicircular battery, to the northward of the lighthouse, and exploding, committed great damage to the enemy. At length, the fire from most of the forts being silenced, and the batteries on the mole being in a state of dilapidation, the ammunition of the attacking ships falling short, Lord Exmouth took advantage of a light air of wind off the land to cut his cables, and stand out of fire, ordering the other ships to follow his example. Severe as had been the punishment inflicted on the Algerines, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... was an old barn on my father's farm. It was almost a ruin. One end of the roof had fallen in, pretty much all the windows were gone, and there was a general air of dilapidation about the place. A dwelling-house, to which it was an appendage, had been burned and not rebuilt, and the barn had been left to fight a battle with the elements and other foes in pretty ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... to breathe even in the inmost recesses of the Court. There the fronts of the houses were fresh white-washed; in the Lane they were new-painted. Even the pavement and the road-way exhibited an improvement. If you penetrated into garrets and cellars you no longer found squalor and dilapidation; poverty in plenty, but at all events an attempt at cleanliness everywhere, as far, that is to say, as a landlord's care could ensure it. The stair-cases had ceased to be rotten pit-falls; the ceilings showed traces of recent ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... about three miles from Carmarthen, at a place called New Church, a stone about eight feet long and two broad. The only distinguishable words upon it were "Severus filius Severi." The remainder of the inscription, by dilapidation and time, was defaced. It is supposed that there had been a battle fought here, and that Severus fell. About a quarter of a mile from this was another with the name of some other individual. The above stone was removed by the owner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... with greene trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood, the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural, notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in Southern dwellings that the inhabitants seem to be unconscious of it. Adjacent, beyond the short avenue of orange trees by which we had approached, was a double row of negro huts, with little gardens between them, forming a rustic lane; farther on, corn and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... It was of a good size and divided into several compartments. But it was in a state of dilapidation and littered with a jumble of odds and ends which looked like the ruins of a barroom. As he turned to ascend to the deck again, after possibly five minutes, intending to take a look at the forecastle next, he heard the ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you enter the long shadowy street, where red and green vegetables and fruits, purple grapes, and honey-coloured nespoli and yellow ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... to be transferred to an insane asylum. Here they show nothing characteristic of the well-known dementing processes, as hebephrenia, for example; but very frequently, although quite young, their entire manner and behavior suggest a certain dilapidation and deterioration. ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... in a highly picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens, at the verge of the county of Lincoln, had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire. This gentleman was naturally of an atrabilarious temperament, ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... should be the stamp of an order in council. Having found such a volume it was left about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the kitchen, and even in what the clerks called the "chamber of deliberations"; and thus it obtained a mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were made. The following extracts will show to the most obtuse ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... passer by, without the possibility of concealment. The Whipping Post is hard by, but its occupation is gone. Indeed, all these appendages of slavery have gone into entire disuse, and Time is doing his work of dilapidation upon them. We fancied we could see in the marketers, as they walked in and out at the doorless entrance of the Lock-up House, or leaned against the Whipping Post, in careless chat, that harmless defiance which would prompt one to beard ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... property of Lord Byron's family, which, amongst other matters, contain some severe remarks on the conduct of one of its proprietors, the great uncle and predecessor of our great poet, and having reference to dilapidation. Mr. Pettigrew, in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... was remarkable chiefly for the extent of the gardens attached to the house, and for the singularly advanced state of dilapidation in which everything was allowed to remain. Beyond the gardens the woods stretched down to the sea, unpruned and thick with a heavy undergrowth; from the road the gardens were hidden by thick hedges, and by ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... ground as Shiraz, but more than half the city is in ruins, the Afghans having destroyed it in 1722. The principal buildings are mainly composed of mosques and sepulchres (for Koom is second only to Meshed in sanctity), but most of them are in a state of decay and dilapidation. The mosque containing the Tomb of Fatima is the finest, its dome being covered with plates of silver-gilt—the natives say of pure gold. The sacred character of this city is mainly derived from the fact that Fatima, surnamed "El Masouna" ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, we saw Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco of the Last Supper. It is on the wall of a large, bare, whitewashed room, this celebrated work being almost the only furniture and decoration. Although in a very bad state of decay and dilapidation, it is yet sufficient to draw hither artists from all quarters of the world, who are always busily copying the great work, aspiring to fill up the flaws of decay and age in the best way they can imagine the master's ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... weather-cocks that surmounted the towers and chimneys were so rusted that they could no longer budge an inch, and pointed persistently in various directions. The high dormer windows were partially closed by old wooden shutters, warped, split, and in every stage of dilapidation; broken stones filled up the loop-holes and openings in the towers; of the twelve large windows in the front of the house, eight were boarded up; the remaining four had small diamond-shaped panes of thick, greenish glass, fitting so loosely ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... be feared, sometimes irreparable injury has already been done in the various processes by which man seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and many provinces, first trodden by the homo sapiens Europae within the last two centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe from their native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great moment, not only to the population of the states where these symptoms are manifesting themselves, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Matignon, where a demand is stated to have been made for thirty men to garrison it. In all probability, the change produced in the art of warfare, by the introduction of cannon, caused it silently to pass into insignificance, and then gradually to sink into its present wretched state of dilapidation. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, an hospital was established within its walls; and the same still subsists, but in great poverty, in consequence of the funds having been alienated, or ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Councillors of State on mission in the year IX.) Report by Lacuee on the first military division. Three central schools at Paris, one called the Quatre-Nations. "This school must be visited in order to form any idea of the state of destruction and dilapidation which all the national buildings are in. No repairs have been made since the reopening of the schools; everything is going to ruin.... Walls are down and the floors fallen in. To preserve the pupils from the risks which the occupation of these buildings hourly presents, it is necessary to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... little town of Galipoli, situate on an eminence near the Hellespont. A few fragments of ruins in the last stage of dilapidation cause us to think of the ages that have fled, as we speed rapidly on. We waited here a quarter of an hour to increase the motley assemblage on deck by ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... castle looked down upon the house and church. The house, built of pebbles and mortar, had but one story surmounted by an enormous sloping roof with gable ends, in which were attics, no doubt empty, considering the dilapidation of their windows. The ground-floor had two rooms parted by a corridor, at the farther end of which was a wooden staircase leading to the second floor, which also had two rooms. A little kitchen was at the back of the building in a yard, where were the stable and ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... preserve her dignity, which would have been endangered had she reduced herself to the necessity of having frequent recourse to parliamentary supplies. In consequence of this motive, the queen, though engaged in successful and necessary wars, thought it more prudent to make a continual dilapidation of the royal demesnes,[*] than demand the most moderate supplies from the commons. As she lived unmarried, and had no posterity, she was content to serve her present turn, though at the expense of her successors; who, by reason of this policy, joined to other circumstances, found ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... pity, Miss Vervain," said the painter, "that the blessings of this world should be so unequally divided! Why should all this sketchable adversity be lavished upon the neighborhood of a city that is so rich as Venice in picturesque dilapidation? It's pretty hard on us Americans, and forces people of sensibility into exile. What wouldn't cultivated persons give for a stretch of this street in the suburbs of Boston, or of your own Providence? I suppose the New Yorkers will be setting up something of the kind one of these ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... turned off from a busy street toward the quarter in which she lived. It had been dark for some time, but the street was well lighted and Evelyn had no difficulty in recognizing him. Indeed, she watched him for a few moments while he passed on into a more shadowy region, where the gloom and dilapidation of the first small frame houses were noticeable. Beyond them there was scarcely a light at all; the neighborhood looked mysterious, and she wondered what kind of people inhabited it. She did not think that Mrs. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... reflection. I have half a mind thus to spend one of my three remaining days. True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an absurd fable—its fatal leap the daily sport of infants—but in all ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern altitudes is presented, and especially, we hear, at Jerusalem. The Seven Hills whereon Rome ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... its dilapidation, which you will observe includes the total loss of the date, signature and stamp, I am forced to the reluctant conclusion that your bankers will show a marked disinclination to honour what was once a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates |
