"Picturesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "the deep shade in which some of his antique portraits were placed and the lone sort of look of the unusually shaped apartments in which they were hung."[19] We know how in idle moments Walpole loved to brood on the picturesque past, and we can imagine his falling asleep, after the arrival of a piece of armour for his collection, with his head full of plans for the adornment of his cherished castle. His story is but an expansion of this dilettante's nightmare. His interest in things ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... had after that! What happy hours trotting gayly through the green woods, galloping over the breezy hills, or pacing slowly along quiet lanes, where I often lunched luxuriously on clover-tops, while Miss Merry took a sketch of some picturesque bit ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... by the cow-boy, so much abused with sensational or picturesque intentions, and by the small farmers with irrigation patches in the vicinity. It was likewise the resort of Encarnacion and Tomas, and others their brethren, from the Mexican village a few miles up the creek, or from isolated abiding-places round about. Here they would come, and, rolling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... acknowledged that the Foreign Office was bound to behave to Italy, one of the Great Powers, with a certain deference. They also recognize that the Foreign Office is not actuated by malevolence if she treats Belgrade as she did Morocco, when in place of the strikingly appropriate and picturesque appointment of Sir Richard Burton our Legation there was occupied by one of a series of diplomatic automata. After all, these automata, who have spent more or less laborious years in the service, have to be deposited somewhere. But if one does not demand of the Foreign Office that she should ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... see Ferdie, all gussied up in yellow gloves, throwin' his whole one hundred and twenty-three pounds onto a rope. Say, about all the yachtin' Ferdie and me had ever done before was to stand around and look picturesque. But this was the real thing, and it comes mighty near bein' reg'lar work, take ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... skirting at moderate distance westward, to reach the principal anchorage, Johanna Town, on the north. The island is lofty—five thousand feet—and of volcanic origin; bearing the family likeness which I have found in all such that I have seen. On a bright day, which we had, they are very picturesque to look on from the sea, with their deep gullies, ragged precipices, and varied hues; especially striking from the effects of light and shadow produced by the exaggerated inequalities of the ground. It is hard to say which are the more attractive, these or the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on this occasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful combination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringed trousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing and picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply. Mr. Hamlin's pride in his usual ascendency over women, children, horses, and all unreasoning animals was deeply nettled. He ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... arms and shoulders which arose ivory-like in whiteness. Instead of the customary feathers and other ornaments of the period, specified in the text of the play, roses alone softened the effect of her dark hair. Very different she appeared in this picturesque Spanish attire from the lady of the lane, with the coquettish cap of muslin and its "brides," ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... clear days, which changed our mood entirely. The cutter rolled confidingly in the morning breeze, and the sun glowed warm and golden. In picturesque cascades the green forest seemed to rush down the slopes to the bright coral beach, on which the sea broke playfully. Once in a while a bird called far off in the depths of the woods. It was delicious to lie on the warm beach and be dried and roasted by the sun, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... a belt round his waist, and carried with the cool bravado of the bowie knife of a cowboy. But in spite of this backwoodsman's simplicity, or perhaps rather because of it, he eyed with rising relish the picturesque plan and sky line of the antiquated village, and especially the wooden square of the old inn sign that hung over his head; a shield, of which the charges seemed to him a mere medley of blue dolphins, gold crosses, and scarlet birds. The colors and cubic corners of that painted board pleased ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... the convoy when at last the exhausted lady was helped over the stone stile that led to the churchyard. Highly picturesque was the grey structure outside, but within modernism had not done much; the chancel was feebly fitted after the ideas of the "fifties," but the faded woodwork of the nave was intact, and Magdalen still had to sit in the grim pew of ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... townspeople—young men and women who have shown an aptitude for the art; they have been trained at the cost of the town, and are paid a small stipend for their services once a week. How the lights shine! How sweet is the music! What a beautiful scene! And what lovely figures are these, clad in the picturesque garb of some far-away country or some past age. And listen! They are telling the old, old story; old as the wooing of Eve in Eden; the story of human love, always so dear, so precious to ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... locomotive driving to admire the life of an engine-man, and to imagine how very pleasant it must be to travel on the engine. But they do not think of the gradations by which alone the higher positions are reached; they see only on the express engine the picturesque side of the result of many years ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... and gone to-morrow, for its territory is the mind of men, and in extent it is as boundless as thought. Natives of every clime are enrolled among its freemen, and all lands contain its representatives, but it is in the picturesque streets of the older continental cities of Europe, where rambling lodgings and cheap apartments are many, that the invisible mother-country founds her colonies. I will tell you how I went and what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... crowded and presented a picturesque aspect. Inside the stockade the chemin du ronde extended nearly around the town and this had been widened by the necessity of military operations. Soldiers were pouring out of the Citadel and the Fort but the colonial costume looked queer to eyes accustomed to the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... is J. Soane, Esq. There is a pleasing originality in this gentleman's productions; the result of extensive research among the architectural beauties of the ancients, together with a peculiar happy mode of distributing his lights and shadows; producing in the greatest degree picturesque effect: these are peculiarities essentially his own, and forming in no part a copy of the works of any other architect in the present day. The church in question by no means detracts from his merit in these particulars. The principal front consists of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... the highest point in the pass before darkness had overtaken them completely. They camped for the night beside a picturesque and cold mountain lake, at an altitude of six thousand five ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... front' had been done over into a picturesque but useless boudoir, a wood floor polished like glass was dotted by white fur islands; the rich velvet carpets, put down a few years before, had in fact disappeared from the entire house. A maid, anything but cordial, removed my wrap, looking me and it over very deliberately ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... think? You are still alive, then?" The old man bowed without speaking, and ran off for the keys. While he went, the coachman sat motionless, sitting sideways and staring at the closed door, but Lavretsky's groom stood as he had leaped down in a picturesque pose with one arm thrown back on the box. The old man brought the keys, and, quite needlessly, twisting about like a snake, with his elbows raised high, he opened the door, stood on one side, and ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... birds" sings Gwalchmai "and their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the wood"; he watches at night beside the fords "among the untrodden grass" to hear the nightingale and watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism takes the same picturesque form. The Welsh poet hates the flat and sluggish land of the Saxon; as he dwells on his own he tells of "its sea-coast and its mountains, its towns on the forest border, its fair landscape, its dales, its waters, and its valleys, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Miss tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least) who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by the river's brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The Hit or Miss was not more antique ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... somebody coming up these stairs. It was a party of visitors that had been down, and were now coming up. There were eight or ten of them, and the appearance of them as they came up, following each other in a long line, each carrying his candle in his hand, produced a very strange and picturesque effect. ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... his desk, and those of the audience who had left their places returned. Stephen Linton slipped into his chair; his wife took up her lorgnette as the first jingle of the tambourines was heard, and the curtain rose upon the picturesque tawdriness of the company assembled at the Senor Lois ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... fire is very pretty," said the young man, glancing at it a moment. "Those little blue tongues, dancing on top of the crimson embers, are extremely picturesque. They are like a ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Zoof cut obliquely across the plain. Making their progress with the unwonted rapidity which was attributable to their specific lightness, Servadac and his companions soon found themselves near a grove of sycamores and eucalyptus massed in picturesque confusion at the base of a ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... as Chinkiang, sea-going papicoes from Ningpo are to be seen in great numbers. These gaily-painted vessels of from twenty to eighty tons, with their high freeboards, wide sterns, raking masts, tanned sails and gaudy vanes, are extremely quaint and picturesque. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... is brisker. The emigrants (principally by this line Scandinavians, in their picturesque peasant dress, the Germans of course preferring to go by their own line, the North German Lloyd) are fitting on Tam o' Shanters of the crudest colours, scarves of hues that would cause the steamer's danger signals ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... cup,—if you will hold the flowers. They are beautiful, Mademoiselle. No nation has such hills and lakes and flowers as the Iroquois. The Hurons boast of their lake country,—and the Sacs and Foxes, too, though they have a duller eye for the picturesque. See—the valley yonder—" He pointed through a rift in the foliage to the league-long glimpse of green, bound in by the gentle hills that rose beyond—"even to the tired old soldier there is nothing more ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... more opposed than the state of society, the modes of thinking, the standards of reference on all points of morality, manners, and even politics and religion, in such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in the north, and any stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the south. Yet the aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness, if not picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform and enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... went to Lymington, a quaint and ancient town, with a picturesque port. Everything there looked happy and sleepy, except the postillions on the Bournemouth coach, which was stopping at the hotel where we had an early lunch. They were wide awake and jolly, under their old-fashioned, broad-brimmed ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... early history of the dragon-story and all the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making of it have been preserved in American pictures and legends in a bewildering variety of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a god, who was either ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the picturesque rags of the English poor, and the shrivelled flesh of the women, ravaged by work and poverty; children lying in dirt; and the stunted creatures produced by overwork in the one-sided processes of the factories! And the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... business was going on very well: that your purchases of rice, prunes, raw sugar, dried apples and pears, and treacle, were advantageous. You were always very picturesque in your notions and ideas, Planchet; and I was not in the slightest degree surprised to find you had selected grocery as an occupation, which is of all trades the most varied, and the very pleasantest, as far as character is concerned; inasmuch as one handles so many natural ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... animated nature—all these are what make up to me the rapture I derive from woodcraft! Why, such a scene as this—a scene which how few, save the vagrant sportsman, or the countryman who but rarely appreciates the picturesque, have ever witnessed—is enough, with the pure and tranquil thoughts it calls up in the heart, to plead a trumpet-tongued apology, for all the vanity, and uselessness, and cruelty, and what not, so constantly alleged against ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... she could remember Prue's words only too plainly: "You must not ask questions however much you want to." It is true that she had broken the rule once, but it had been in forgetfulness, not deliberately. Dick and Jerry were perhaps less picturesque in the manner of their vows, but they certainly had no intention of breaking them. It was Aunt Mary who unconsciously ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... "Oh, yes, picturesque—like a hair-dresser's young man!" she shrugged her shoulders. "He looks as if he had never been out of ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... distance; its tall chimneys giving forth lazy curls of smoke, as though pausing to rest after the ceaseless labours of a vigorous working week. The noble railway viaduct, spanning the wide valley, was rendered doubly picturesque by its nearest neighbours of houses being hidden on one side by a projecting hill; while the greater part of the old church was visible, seeming as though its weather-beaten tower were looking down half sternly, half kindly on the eager thousands, ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... saw a pretty girl, dressed in picturesque Italian costume, holding a basket filled with roses, pinks, and other cut flowers. Mr. Isburn was passionately fond of flowers and kept a vase filled with them upon his desk. He selected a large bunch of flowers made up of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... wore the antiquated Queen Anne Court suit, now superseded by modern garments, perhaps more convenient but certainly not so picturesque. Bagwig and flowered waistcoat, and hanging cast-steel rapier, and silken calves and buckled shoes,—and above all the abundant real point lace (upon which Lord Houghton more than once has commented with me as to the comparative superiority of his or mine,—both being of ancestral dinginess, and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Massachusetts till January, 1747, in Rhode Island after that date) was one of the most noted and successful of the privateers of his time. His raid on French Guiana in November, 1744, though not enormously profitable nor of much military importance, makes a very picturesque story, chiefly because of the vivid account we have of it from one of its victims, Father Elzear Fauque, an intelligent Jesuit, who was serving the mission at Oyapoc, and was carried away as a prisoner by Potter when he sacked and destroyed that settlement. Father Fauque's narrative, a letter to ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... be identified with the doves which rest on the walls and make their nests in the shrine. The Sumerian poets did not adorn their poems with meaningless picturesque imagery; their images were stern facts; they had a magical or religious significance like the imagery of magical incantations; the worshipper invoked the deity by naming his or her ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... of the heaven there are many other interesting features connected with a drive or walk by the light of the stars or the moon. A Cotswold village seen by moonlight is even more picturesque than it is by day. The old, gabled manor houses are a delightful picture on a cold, frosty night in winter; if most of the rooms are lit up, they give one the idea of endless hospitality and cheerfulness when viewed from without. To walk by a stream such as the Coln on such a night is for the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... their protective dress of streaky brown, freeze into most unbird-like attitudes, drawing the feathers close to the body and stretching the neck stiffly upward,—almost bittern-like. Undoubtedly other interesting habits which these strangely picturesque birds may possess are still awaiting discovery by some enthusiastic observer with a pair of opera-glasses and a stock ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... several playgrounds. The one we liked best perhaps was along the "Bulwark," at the point where the side street branched off from our house. The whole surroundings were very picturesque, especially in the winter time, when the ships, stripped of their topmasts, lay at their moorings, often in three rows, the last pretty far out in the river. We were allowed to play along the "Bulwark" and practice our rope-walking art on the stretched ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... had delivered himself of some unhallowed hopes concerning the rival house, and Jim, as he passed the opposition Inn on a certain evening, had the picturesque devastations vividly in mind. It so happened that a masting team of oxen was standing patiently outside awaiting the driver who was refreshing himself at the bar. A masting team consists of six to twelve strong, selected oxen, yoked two and two to a mighty chain with ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to find that his chief emotion was one of bitter annoyance. The swift solution of such an apparently insoluble problem would reflect the highest credit on the Agency, and there were picturesque circumstances connected with the case which would make it popular with the newspapers and lead to its being given a great deal ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... twisted, gum-embossed cherry tree survived every other distinguishing feature of what was once the most picturesque and romantic place in Vincennes. Just north of it stood, in the early French days, a low, rambling cabin surrounded by rude verandas overgrown with grapevines. This was the Roussillon place, the most pretentious ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... A picturesque, as well as pathetic figure, was Henry Clay, the little "Mill Boy of the Slashes," as he rode along on the old family horse to Mrs. Darricott's mill. Blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and bare-footed, clothed in coarse shirt and trousers, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... archaeologists and lovers of old Paris, whom these new transformations displease and who regret the picturesque past, the authorities have had the forethought to paint or photograph before demolition the quarters which to-day have disappeared, or are on the point of disappearing; and as a consolation such persons have very pretty pictures by M. Pansyer, representing St. Julien le Pauvre, the Rue ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... strongly-pronounced character of its own and is rich in fine and interesting buildings, among which are most prominent the magnificent Cathedral, the elegant Exchange (la lonja), the stately Town-Hall, and the picturesque Royal Palace (palacio real). Indeed, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Flushing in two hours! We are a special!" We were. We left the Maas station at one o'clock, and we travelled until three. Then we drew up . . . and found we were back at the Maas station. Where we had been I don't know, but it was the biggest mystery of my life. Well, we crawled along past picturesque villages where women with white caps and red arms smiled on us and gave us water to drink. And at eight o'clock we reached Flushing all very weary and extremely dirty. The kiddies had a good meal set out on white tablecloths, and the doctor and I had the best Pilsener of our lives. We handed over ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... stir in him a knowledge of evil and chose the picturesque as being the least unpleasant. But he couldn't believe that old John Silver and the Squire and Benn Gunn hadn't been real people. The tale dwelt in his mind for days, but the final defeat of the mutineers seemed to satisfy him as to the intention of ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Tsin marquess (628-635), second of the Five Protectors, only lasted eight years, and nothing is recorded to have happened during this period at all commensurate with his picturesque figure in history while yet a mere wanderer. But it is very interesting to note that the Bamboo Annals or Books, i.e. the History of Tsin from 784 B.C., and incidentally also of China from 1500 years before that date, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... deadline had been banished over the Klondike, where, in a colony reached by a crazy rope bridge, their red lights gleamed like semaphores of sin. The dance-halls were still running, but the picturesque impunity of the old muckluck days was gone forever. You looked in vain for the crude scenes where the wilder passions were unleashed, and human nature revealed itself in primal nakedness. Heroism, brutality, splendid achievement, unbridled license, the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... O'Haru and old Saiki, the gardener, the four little maids, the grandmothers and the children remain picturesque figures in a picturesque land; and behind them, glistening In the sunlight, looms Fujiyama, sacred mountain of dazzling whiteness and ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... high-shouldered Tudor arch, they found themselves in a spacious court, closed by a facade on each of its three sides. The substantial portions of the existing building dated from the reign of Henry VIII.; but the picturesque and sheltered spot had been the site of an erection of a much earlier date. A licence to crenellate mansum infra manerium suum was granted by Edward II. to 'Hugo Luxellen chivaler;' but though the faint outline of the ditch and mound was visible at ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... picturesque cannot hold him for long, nor even the ardours of the chase. Po Chu-i is above all the poet of human love and sorrow, and beyond all the consoler. Those who profess to find pessimism in the Chinese character must leave him alone. At the end of the great tragedy of ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... Inn, extracted from "Picturesque Views and an Historical Account of the Inns of Court," by Samuel Ireland, published ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... left a widow. Was Mrs. Bilderdijk his daughter? The etchings are exceedingly clever and artistical; my copy has the artist's name in his own handwriting. If I am not mistaken, Schweickhardt lived, when my father knew him, at Lambeth, then a picturesque suburb very unlike the "base, common, and popular" region which it has since become. B.T. Pouncy, another clever artist of that day, and a friend of my father's, resided there also. Pouncy published some etchings which, although not ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... the windward tack. Only his fun, you know. But Helen never minded it. She said herself that it aimed so much around the corner that whenever she sneezed she blew down her back hair. There were rich depths of humor in that woman. Now, I don't mind if you work into the poem some picturesque allusion to the condition of her nose, so her friends will recognize her. And you might also spend a verse or two on ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... it. We turn out qualified gun crews in three months—and that is going some." A large majority of the new men of the fleet come from farms, especially from the Middle West. More than 90 per cent of the seamen are native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... picturesque passage referring to the warlike training of their children by the Irish, as recorded by a Roman writer in the third century of the Christian era, we take leave of Solinus, who we have no doubt was the author ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the road and drew up before a modern red-bricked mansion, by no means ostentatious or externally characteristic of the luxury for which its interior was famed. Just a trim garden surrounded the house and boasted trees sufficient to hide the picturesque gables from the eyes of the curious. There were stables in the northern wing and a great conservatory built out toward the south. Alban had but an instant to glance at the beautiful facade when a young ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... some fifteen feet down a rocky declivity, and fell into a circular basin a few yards in diameter. Overflowing this basin, it found its way into the lake by another descent of a few feet. Around the basin, and on both sides of the waterfall, were several curious columns of basalt, and irregular picturesque piles of basaltic rock. The plash of the water, falling into the rocky basin, was the only sound that broke the Sabbath-like silence that pervaded the valley. There was, or seemed to be, something unreal and dream-like ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... half a mile wide, inclosed by high walls of masonry, which are very picturesque, and with their portcullis gates and battlements recall vividly to one's mind the description of ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... keep a poor child on such dry food, don't mistake your own reason for doing so. It may be eminently proper, but it is very uncomfortable to him. If you want children to enjoy themselves, let them run about freely, and don't put them into a ring, in picturesque attitudes, and then throw bouquets of flowers at them. But, if you will do so, confess it is not for their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... considered a finished connoisseur in the arts of poetry and music; and if she preferred reclining to sitting how should she have done otherwise, since she was fully aware how well it became her to extend herself in a picturesque attitude on her cushions, and to support her head on her arm as it rested on the back of her couch; for that arm, though not strictly speaking beautiful, always displayed the finest specimens of Alexandrian workmanship in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who owned the parks, and of their families, "though I myself am only a newcomer here, being by rights a Devonshire man"; he talked of the local superstitions with indulgence, and a proper sense of the picturesque; and of the colliers who believed the superstitions he spoke in a tone of general good humour, tempered by regret that "agitators" should so often lead them into folly. The architecture of the district ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... termed, "Tonky." This is one of the show places of Missouri. The name includes a post office; a store; a school; an immense spring coming out at the foot of a cliff; the creek formed by this spring; a lake of several hundred acres, made by damming the creek; a picturesque ruined mill with the usual accessories of such a building; numerous caves; and a magnificent, but unfinished, residence crowning one of the hills. This has already called for an expenditure of half a million dollars; and at least double that sum, additional, will be required to ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... its every nook and corner, as if delineated on a map. The streets seemed innumerable, and crossed each other irregularly in all directions, but were rather long winding alleys than streets, and absolutely swarmed with inhabitants. The houses were wildly picturesque. On every hand was a wilderness of balconies, of verandas, of minarets, of shrines, and fantastically carved oriels. Bazaars abounded; and in these were displayed rich wares in infinite variety and profusion—silks, muslins, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... read for the poetry of his lines and picturesque word-grouping if for nothing else. For that matter, the songs of all the Elizabethan dramatists are worthy of study and restudy. They have a lilt and a lightness which make them live even now when so many literary fashions have ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... ingenuous enquirer with, I think, some capacity for religious feeling, but neither a prophet nor a saint. On the whole I should be inclined to classify myself as a bad man rather than a good; not indeed as any sort of picturesque scoundrel or non-moral expert, but as a person frequently irritable, ungenerous and forgetful, and intermittently and in small but definite ways bad. One thing I claim, I have got my beliefs and theories out of my life and not fitted them to its circumstances. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Green had observed an extensive marsh with a wide stream, which, unless there was a bridge over it, would have alone proved an effectual barrier to the progress of cavalry. To the right, on which the houses had been seen, were high and picturesque hills, some rising almost directly out of the water, with fertile valleys, groves, orchards, and vineyards. Had any number of armed men been in the neighbourhood, they might greatly have annoyed the boats as they went down. The tide, however, was with them, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... during the thirteenth century is a splendid tale of civic energy and resolute self-confidence. The little city was full of eager and vigorous life. Her story abounds in picturesque incident. She had her experience of the turn of the wheel of Fortune, being now at the summit of power in Tuscany, now in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... at the aspect of the place; for I had expected to see a good deal of ugliness and filth. On the contrary, I saw a multitude of neat dwellings, with pretty gardens about them, and pictures on the walls of the rooms. There were many trees; the village was green with shrubs and plants, and picturesque to an extreme degree; for, owing to the irregularity of the ground, the tiny streets climbed up and down hill at all sorts of angles,—the loftiest street being fifty or sixty feet above the lowermost. A ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... picturesque travel romance the author of "The Land of the Sky" takes her characters from New Orleans to fascinating Mexican cities like Guanajuato, Zacarecas, Aguas Calientes, Guadalajara, and of course the City of Mexico. What they see and what they ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... men's manners which followed the discovery of printing, slowly robbed it of its importance, till at last it was deserted by its owners, who transferred their residence to the more commodious, but far less picturesque mansion which they still continue to inhabit. Then began a new race of tenants to occupy the rock, in giving accommodation to whom the Graffs Kinsky doubtless believed that they were benefiting their own souls, and doing their Maker ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for this very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr. Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not preclude the consciousness of the many imaginative beauties which its unpopular ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and on past the Battery too; and are nosing up the North River. What a picturesque stream it is, to be sure! And how full of delightful rubbish! In twenty minutes or less we shall be at the dock. Folks we know are there ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... along whose left bank extended a beautifully formed mountain chain, whose declivity toward the river presented a rich variety to the eye, for sometimes it was clothed in budding groves, sometimes displayed picturesque bare cliffs, and again vineyards in which labourers were working. From the farthest distance the steeples of Ratisbon offered the first ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... higher, and we are on the road in Aislaby village. The steep climb from the river and railway has kept off those modern influences which have made Sleights and Grosmont architecturally depressing, and thus we find a simple village on the edge of the heather, with picturesque stone cottages and pretty gardens, free from companionship with the painfully ugly modern stone house, with its thin slate roof. The big house of the village stands on the very edge of the descent, surrounded by high trees now swept ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... matter. Thus, Charles Lamb's essay on Dream Children begins quite simply, in a calm, narrative manner, enlivened by a certain quippishness concerning the children. The style is grave when great-grandmother Field is the subject, and when the author passes to a rather elaborate impression of the picturesque old mansion it becomes as it were consciously beautiful. This beauty is intensified in the description of the still more beautiful garden. But the real dividing point of the essay occurs when Lamb approaches his elder brother. He unmistakably marks the point with the phrase: ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... Thursday.—K. of K. read brief paper on Military Situation in Flanders. In matter of picturesque detail it did not quite come up to pitch of "EYE-WITNESS'S" despatches from the Front, which in the main it resembled. But it was as comforting as it was concise. Summed up in sentence the position to-day of Expeditionary Force: "Reinforcements ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... two winters in Rome we spent the summer in Florence, to which we journeyed by carriage over a road that was hung like a rare gallery with landscapes of the most picturesque description, and bordered close at hand by many a blue or crimson or yellow Italian anemone with its black centre. This experience was all sunshine, all pastime. On the way, stopping at Lake Thrasymene, my ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... that our Lord definitely taught that He was the Son of God and Messiah quite early in His ministry, while in the earlier part of Mark our Lord's teaching about His Messiahship is far less definite. And the method of teaching is also different. In the Synoptists we find picturesque parables and pointed proverbs, while in John we find long discourses and arguments. In the Synoptists the teaching is generally practical, in John it is much more openly theological. This difference between ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... the courtyard was as noisy as it was picturesque. Marillac, seated upon a bench, was blowing upon a trumpet, trying to play the waltz from Robert-le-Diable in a true infernal manner. At his feet were seven or eight hunters and as many servants encouraging him by their shouts. The Baron's ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... different matter from whirling around in a city rink with half an inch of snow on the ice. The young men of Concord used to skate to Lowell, on favorable occasions, and back again, nearly thirty miles in all, and thought nothing of it. Concord River with its grassy banks, picturesque bridges and continual change of hill and meadow scenery is one of the prettiest that ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... frequent miracles of healing no doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It was largely the popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes." He ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... we again started. This stage was interesting, as we left the treeless expanse of prairie, and drove over highland through picturesque forests of spruce firs among rocks and canyons. About 20 miles of this scenery was passed; then we descended a long slope, and once more emerged upon the dreary, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... is couched. The Revised Version gives the literal rendering in its margin—'Behave as citizens'—though it adopts in its text a rendering which disregards the figure in the word, and contents itself with the less picturesque and vivid phrase—'let your manner of life be worthy.' But there seems no reason for leaving out the metaphor; it entirely fits in with the purpose of the Apostle and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Cassel is a picturesque little spot, with its glazed tiles and sprinkling of Spanish buildings, and the view from it is marvellous. On a clear day one could see practically the whole line from Nieuport to Armentieres and the coast from Nieuport ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... same collection, the Earl of Argyle gives a picturesque account of an embassy from 'the great M'Neil of Barra', as that insular chief used to be denominated. 'I received a letter yesterday from M'Neil of Barra, who lives very far off, sent by a gentleman in all formality, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Blodoza was an hidalgo—one of the highest dalgos of old Spain. He had a comfortably picturesque castle on the Guadalquiver, with towers, battlements, and mortages on it; but as it belonged, not to his own creditors, but to those of his bitterest enemy, who inhabited it, Don Hemstitch preferred the forest as a steady residence. He had that curse of Spanish pride which will not permit one ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... beyond which a thoughtless guest of the establishment was making her toilette in blissful ignorance of the fact that the flimsy curtains were not tightly drawn. Brock had gone to the Chatham for years just because Charles was a fixture there. Charles spoke the most execrably picturesque English, served with a punctiliousness that savoured almost of the overbearing, and boasted that he had acquired the art of making American cocktails in the Waldorf during a five weeks' residence in the ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... considerably more than five minutes. Gerald had stumbled on to the corpse, and had turned his discovery, we afterwards admitted, to remarkably good advantage. It was "Mr Standish's turn," as Miss Buncle, in the picturesque but mysterious vernacular of her race, remarked at luncheon, "to hold the baby ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... propinquity, lay a slaver, bound for the coast of Africa—a beautiful, graceful craft. Still farther out the crew of a clumsy French brig were chanting the evening hymn to the Virgin. Ships from every civilized country lay anchored, in picturesque groups, in all directions, and far down, her tall white spars standing in bold and graceful relief against the dark, gray walls of San Severino, I recognized my own beautiful craft, sitting like a swan in the water; and still farther, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... All around us was snow, and the view of the blue mountains, the tops of which were quite white, looked beautiful in the distance. There were some Indians on horseback drawn up in file as the train went by. They had all their war-paint on, were covered with picturesque blankets, and their feather head-dresses reached over their horses' backs; they had buckskin leggings covered with beads, which made them look very picturesque. They looked stolidly and indifferently at us while we stared at them admiringly from the ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... questions upon matters connected with his tribe. One night, as Lieutenant Brown and I sat by the campfire at Tael-la-haes-ke's lodge—the larger boys, two Seminole negresses, three pigs, and several dogs, together with Tael-la-haes-ke, forming a picturesque circle in the ashes around the bright light—I heard muffled moans from the little palmetto shelter on my right, under which the three smaller boys were bundled up in cotton cloth on deer skins for the night's sleep. Upon the moans followed immediately the frightened ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... commonplace of the commercial structures on either hand is the loveliness of Grace Church; but in the Strand and Fleet Street you have a succession of edifices which overwhelm you with the sense of a life in which trade is only one of the incidents. If the day is such as a lover of the picturesque would choose, or may rather often have without choosing, when the scene is rolled in vaporous smoke, and a lurid gloom hovers from the hidden sky, you have an effect of majesty and grandeur that no other city ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... when we went on again till near dawn, as it was thought better that Stephen should travel in the cool of the night. I remember that our cavalcade, escorted before, behind and on either flank by the Mazitu troops with their tall spears, looked picturesque and even imposing as it wound over those wide downs in the lovely and ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... generally are not what they were, and that in particular the romance of life has gone. But until it has gone it is never romance. To Sophia, though she was in a mood which usually stimulates the sense of the romantic, there was nothing of romance in this picturesque tented field. It was just the market. Holl's, the leading grocer's, was already open, at the extremity of the Square, and a boy apprentice was sweeping the pavement in front of it. The public-houses were open, several of them specializing in hot rum at 5.30 a.m. The ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was a hardness in his throat at the sight of the old man's tears. Where was the proud and stately man, the black-bearded shepherd in faded blue linen, in picturesque garters, with his reed-like pipe, that he, Hillard, had known in his boyhood days? Surely not here. Giovanni had known the great wrong, but Hillard could not in conscience's name foster the spirit ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... house." There was nothing, indeed; Allan's essentially superficial observation had not misled him for once. The mansion of Thorpe Ambrose (built after the pulling down of the dilapidated old manor-house) was barely fifty years old. Nothing picturesque, nothing in the slightest degree suggestive of mystery and romance, appeared in any part of it. It was a purely conventional country house—the product of the classical idea filtered judiciously through the commercial English mind. Viewed ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... beautiful sight, to behold the blue rippling sea, covered with nearly six hundred of these picturesque craft, all under sail, and darting through the water like dolphins in pursuit of prey; all crowded with natives, whose white dresses formed a lively contrast with the deep blue of the water. The large ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... (according to his precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth, with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded, and especially of those who fall within that most picturesque delineation— ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... thorough education, they effectually helped to make observant devotees of the Law of their children."[13] Five or six was the age at which Hebrew was begun to be taught to the child, and the occasion was usually celebrated by a picturesque ceremony full of poetic feeling. On the morning of the Pentecost, the festival which commemorates the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, or on the morning of the Rejoicing of the Law, the day devoted above all others to honoring the Law, the child, dressed in his holiday ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... Roman empire; Trafalgar was the first heavy blow dealt against a despotism that threatened to strangle Europe. Lepanto, however, saved Europe from a worse fate—the domination of the Turk. The name of this great victory is derived from the picturesque town, with its mediaeval defences still left, of Naupaktos which the modern Greek designates as Epokte, and the Italian as Lepanto. The engagement, however, was in reality fought at the entrance of the Gulf of Patras, ten ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... beheld at the further end of the plain a very fine city shining in the light. It was surrounded with lofty turreted walls flanked by square towers, and was built upon a gentle eminence, which gave it a very majestic appearance. Behind it rose a lofty range of purple mountains of very picturesque form, and the highest peaks capped with snow. A noble lake, from which troops of wild fowl occasionally rose, expanded like a sheet of silver on one side of the city. The green breast of the contiguous hills ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... at the tremendous pace to which Rodier had put the engine the aeroplane seemed to rush into the sunlight. Far below, the earth was spread out like a patchwork, greens and whites and browns set in picturesque haphazard patterns; men moving like ants, and horses ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... of statuary into the space provided for them. Michelangelo, as Heath Wilson has pointed out, very slowly acquired the sense of proportion on which technical architecture depends. His early sketches only show a feeling for mass and picturesque effect, and a strong inclination to subordinate the building ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... La Haye there is some more heathy ground, but it is higher than the country surrounding Lessay. A round windmill, much resembling the ruined structure that stands out conspicuously on the bare tableland of Alderney, is the first of these picturesque features that we have seen in this part of the country. It is worth mention also on account of the fact that it was at St Sauveur-le-Vicomte, only about seven miles distant, that the first recorded windmill was put up in France about the year 1180, almost the ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... of little commercial importance, but it has the over-abundance of churches always to be found in Spanish towns of its size, none of which, in this instance, are any way remarkable. But the place is picturesque and interesting; one would not like to have missed it. The church of Santiago has a tall, graceful, and slender spire, sure to attract an observant eye, recalling the pinnacle of St. Peter and St. Paul in the capital of Russia. We have said Silao is of little commercial importance, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... from canny New England and not less canny Pennsylvania. At times there came from the Old World men representative of an easier and more opulent life, who did not always trouble to suppress their smiles at us. Moving among these were ladies from every state of our Union, picturesque enough in their wide flowered skirts and their flaring bonnets and their silken mitts, each rivalling the other in the elegance of her mien, and all unconsciously outdone in charm, perhaps, by some demure Quakeress in white and dove color, herself looking askance ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Alison has been dead near twenty years. And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... sun. It seemed as if those rough, ragged posts were fit material wherewith to make the heavenly gates, each of which we are told is one pearl. It seems to be God's intention that this earth, even where it is least picturesque, should give us hints and tokens ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it. Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of Servox, through which I had just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries, but I saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the smoke ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the intervening atmosphere embellishes, shimmering contours which each spectator may interpret in his own fashion; no distinct, animated figure, but merely a mass of moving points, forming and dissolving in the midst of picturesque architecture. I was anxious to take a closer view of these vague points, and, accordingly, deported myself back to the last half of the eighteenth century. I have now been living with them for twelve years, and, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... embroidered and figured. A blanket thrown carelessly over the shoulder completed the costume, with the addition of mocassins made of rawhide. Their ponies were selected from the cream of their stock, and the gorgeous trappings of the saddles and harness made a most picturesque scene as the cavalcade ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more homebred, social, and joyous than at present. I regret to say that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture, which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages, and partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... the Justice Bell and Supplication Day comprised practically the entire list. Attractive yellow boxes containing seeds for the old-fashioned yellow flowers were offered for sale by the State association and the flower gardens furnished a picturesque form of propaganda and long continued publicity. In Pennsylvania a day in the spring is set aside by the department of highways when all residents along country roads are asked to contribute their services for their improvement. The local suffrage organizations ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... colouring, of the works with which it teemed. Besides the third Canto of Childe Harold and the Prisoner of Chillon, he produced also his two poems, "Darkness" and "The Dream," the latter of which cost him many a tear in writing,—being, indeed, the most mournful, as well as picturesque, "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and heart of man. Those verses, too, entitled "The Incantation," which he introduced afterwards, without any connection with the subject, into Manfred, were also (at ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... rude lifetimes for the beauty and poetry of it—when you consider, beauty and poetry can be thought of in this. Here was no Court aiding the transmutation of the middle class, no King spending money; here were no picturesque contacts of Royalty and the people, no pageantry, no blazonry of the past, nothing to lift the heart but an occasional telegram from the monarch expressing, upon an event of public importance, a suitable emotion. Yet the common love for the throne amounted to a half-ashamed enthusiasm ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... angles, which will add greatly to its order and magnificence when finished. The city rises on a quick incline from the rolling Mississippi, and as you stand near the Temple you may gaze on the picturesque scenery round. At your side is the Temple, the wonder of the world; round about and beneath you may behold handsome stores, large mansions, and fine cottages, interspersed with ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and he thought how he might best teach her to assist him in doing so,—how he might win her to help him in his cheating, especially in regard to her own father. For to himself, to his own thinking, that which we call cheating was not dishonesty. To his thinking there was something bold, grand, picturesque, and almost beautiful in the battle which such a one as himself must wage with the world before he could make his way up in it. He would not pick a pocket, or turn a false card, or, as he thought, forge a name. That which he did, and desired to do, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... neighborhood. David sat on the porch in a big chair, enjoying the soft breezes sweeping down over the plains, looking through half closed lids out upon the quiet shaded street. Carol crouched excitedly in another chair beside him, squeezing his hand to call attention to every sunburned picturesque son of the plains that galloped down that way. But Connie, with the lustful eyes of a fortune-hunter walked up and down the corridors, peering here and peeking there, listening avidly to every unaccustomed word ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... boulder lying on an upland moor stands indifferently the August sun and the January frost, flood and drought. It neither blooms in spring, nor fades in autumn. It is all one to the boulder whether it remain in the picturesque solitude where the glacier dropped it, or be laid in the gutter of a busy street. It has no growth nor development: it is not a subject of evolution: there is no goal of perfection to which it is tending by dint of inward germinal capacity seconded by favourable environment. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... coursed by a net-work of splendid drive-ways, equestrian roads and foot-paths running in all directions among the many little rocky hills and miniature lakes. Trees, flower-beds and shrubbery of various kinds have been cleverly arranged by skilled artists to form a delightfully picturesque effect. Chirping birds of many colors and tame squirrels in multitudinous numbers find this park a heavenly abiding place where the danger of annihilation is minimized. Playgrounds for the children are laid out in different parts ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... steady interest of story, or consistent development of character: and we shall find a most surprising succession of beautiful passages, unrivaled in sentiment and pathos, as well as in terseness, dignity, and picturesque vigor of language; in subtlety and power of passion, as well as in delicacy and strength of imagination; and as perfect and various, in modulation of verse, as the airy flights of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... the graves, huts of bark, or boughs, are generally erected to shelter the dead from the rain; they are also frequently wound round with netting. Many graves being usually in one vicinity, and an elevated dry place being selected, the cemeteries often present a picturesque appearance. Graves are frequently visited by the women at intervals, for some months, and at such times the wail is renewed, and their bodies lacerated as at the interment. At Boga Lake, I saw a grave with a very neat hut of reeds ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... more pre-eminently beautiful than now. Vineyards and olive-groves clothed the sides of that matchless bay, down to the very line where the bright blue waters seem to kiss with their ripples the many-coloured pebbles of the beach. Over all, with its sides dotted with picturesque villas and happy villages, towered the giant cone of the volcano which for centuries had appeared to be extinct, and which was clothed up to the very crater with luxurious vegetation. Such was the delicious home which Tiberius disgraced for ever by the seclusion of his old age. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... four indentations in the crown, such as one may see worn in the cinema dramas by cow-persons and other western-coast desperadoes. When they had strapped around my waist a large pistol in a leather jacket, I considered the effect picturesque in the extreme, and my friends were loud in ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... wagon-ruts revealed picturesque views at every turn. The path finally chosen by the sisters led to a hollow. Its sides, overgrown with bushes and weeds, looked wildly beautiful. From its depth came the sweet, warm odour of clover, and down below its white bosom grass was visible. A small ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... looked picturesque enough in the moonlight as he approached it. All the windows in the main building were lighted up, and there was a pleasant suggestion of revelry about the ivy-clad pile. Standing some dozen yards from the house, but connected with it by a covered way, was ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... of the professional reformer. For the little volume consists of a relentless exposure of the deformity and folly of vice. Here the foul souls of Wild and his associates, stripped of all the glamour of picturesque crime, stand displayed in their essential qualities, with the result that even the pestilential air of thieves' slums, of 'night cellars,' and of Newgate purlieus, an air which hangs so heavy over every page, falls back into insignificance before the loathsomeness of the central figure. A few ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... grabbed me roughly by the arms, but I made no resistance, cool enough by this time, although realizing fully the peril of my position. I was marched in through the open door, and stood up in the centre of the dining-room, Sims posted on one side of me, the guard on the other, the officers forming a picturesque background. Beauregard was on his feet, and Miss Hardy stood between the windows, her hands clasped, her ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... and the Fire Side, 1851; Birds of Passage, Flight the First, and Flight the Second; and Flower de Luce, 1866. Of these four examples of the picturesque and taking art of Longfellow, I need say no more than that all are printed in their integrity, with the exception of the first. This I leave the lighter by a moral and an application, both of which, superfluous or not, are remote from the general purpose ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... "Quite picturesque," observed Mrs. Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and much admired him both for his own gifts and because he had known Lyman. As other people were listening, I felt no delicacy about doing the same, for the conversation was an eloquent one, and well worth catching. So interested did I become that I forgot the great rafts floating by, the picturesque shores, the splendid river, and leaned nearer and nearer that no word might be lost, till my book slid out of my lap and fell straight down upon the head of one of the gentlemen, giving him a smart blow, and ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... must then suppose her throned on the ruins of paganism, an idea suggested by the old legends, which represent the temples and statues of the heathen gods as falling into ruin on the approach of the Virgin and her Child; and a more picturesque application of this idea afterwards became common in other subjects. In Garofalo's picture the throne is adorned with Sphinxes—a l'antique. Andrea del Sarto has placed harpies at the corner of the pedestal of the throne, in his famous Madonna di San Francesco (Florence Gal.),—a gross fault ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... gentlemen, walked out to Walnut Hills. The country around the city consists of a constant succession and variety of hills of all shapes and sizes, forming an extensive amphitheatre. The site of the seminary is very beautiful and picturesque, though I was disappointed to find that both river and city are hidden by intervening hills. I never saw a place so capable of being rendered a paradise by the improvements of taste as the environs of this city. Walnut Hills ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... yet, but only a deepening of color, like a flush on the cheek of beauty. As he was driving along the familiar road, farm-house and grove, and even tree, rock, and thicket, began to greet him as with the faces of old friends. At last he saw, nestling in a wild, picturesque valley, the quaint outline of his former home. His heart yearned toward it, and he felt that next to his mother's face no other object could be ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... would be willing to stand the boll weevil, the dropped bolls, the extra cultivations, and all the remainder of it, if he could only be sure that cotton which did mature would be picked when it should be picked, and picked with rapidity and care. Picking is the most laborious, as it is the most picturesque operation on the plantation. Many types of machine pickers have been introduced, but there are few planters who will admit that any of them suits his particular needs. Now, as a hundred years ago, the picking is done by hand. It is a simple operation, so simple that children ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... was the happiest of the lot. He shook hands with everyone who came in as the night grew older, and his description of the special car, and the green baize curtain, just like any first-class theatre in New York, Boston or Philadelphia, was glowing and picturesque. He was determined to show the people of Gotown and the remainder of the county that Gotown was in it with both feet, and when she started out to do things that she could do it and make no mistake ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... horn. This eland in his lifetime strode majestic on the hill-side, where he dwelt with his mates and their progeny, all English-born, like himself." Three pairs of the same species of deer were left to roam at large on the picturesque elopes throughout the day, and to return to their home at pleasure. "Here, during winter, they are assisted with roots and hay, but in summer they have nothing but the pasture of the park; so that, in point of expense, they cost no more than cattle of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to rat-hunting, and was as clever at it as a Scotch terrier. At that time I was living in that blind alley of the Doyenne, now destroyed, where Gerard de Nerval, Arsene Houssaye and Camille Rogier were the heads of a little picturesque and artistic Bohemia, the eccentric mode of life in which has been so well told by others that it is unnecessary to relate it over again. There we were, right in the centre of the Carrousel, as independent and solitary as on a desert island in Oceanica, under the shadow ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... SIR,—I have despatched to-day a parcel containing The Caxtons, Macaulay's Essays, Humboldt's Letters, and such other of the books as I have read, packed with a picturesque irregularity well calculated to excite the envy and admiration of your skilful functionary in Cornhill. By-the-bye, he ought to be careful of the few pins stuck in here and there, as he might find them useful at a future day, in case of having more bonnets to pack for the East Indies. Whenever ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... complete, at the same time picturesque, story of Beethoven and his "Fidelio" is told in "Musical Sketches," by Elise Polko, with all the sentimentality that a German writer can command. Whole paragraphs might be lifted from that book and included in this sketch, but the substance of the story shall be told ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... no way elaborate: a number of avenues have been cut out of an ancient wood; and that is all. There are no shrubs; just a patch of dahlias, with a ridiculous little iron railing round them. But its whole charm lies in its picturesque situation up above the town. In between the tall trees with their interlacing boughs, one can see the slopes of the hills, the plains, the meadows, the gleaming roofs and the church with its twin spires piercing the blue of the sky. Then, in the foreground, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... to decide just what sort of vine would thrive best on this sunny side of the house. His name is not nearly so picturesque as Bonfanti. It is Jonathan Scroggs. Not a fine name, surely, but his name has never hindered him in his profession. He is one of the best florists in the country, he knows all about beautiful vines and trees, and he is also a landscape gardener. He can take a plain little cottage, with ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... imposing sight, as the army of the nizam wound down the valley; the great masses of men with their gay flags, the elephants with the gold embroidery of their trappings glistening in the sun, the bands of horsemen careering here and there, the lines of artillery drawn by bullocks; and, less picturesque but far more menacing, the dark body of French infantry, who formed the nucleus and heart of the whole. The camp was pitched just out of range of the guns of the fort, and soon line after line of tents, gay with the flags that floated above them, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... colored men, cheerfully wending their way to labor on the fortifications, evidently holding it their especial right to put whatever impediments they could in the northward path of those whom they considered their own peculiar foe. But the pleasantest and most picturesque sight of those remarkable days was the almost endless stream of sturdy men who rushed to the rescue from the rural districts of the State. These were known as the "Squirrel-Hunters." They came in files numbering thousands upon thousands, in all kinds of costumes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... really M. Zola's walks; for, in his youth, when he vainly sought employment after failing in his examinations, he was wont, at times of great discouragement, to roam the Paris quays, studying their busy life and their picturesque vistas, whenever he was not poring over the second-hand books set out for sale upon their parapets. From a purely literary standpoint, the pictures of the quays and the Seine to be found in L'Oeuvre ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... possess," shuddered Judy. "I was as certain a moment ago that you were the murderous Jesuit as I am now that you are Philippe d'Ochte. But tell me: how did you get behind the altar without our seeing you; and where did you get that cloak? It is about the most picturesque ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... boots was his prospective landlord. He supposed him to be the hired man, and that he would find Mr. Pollard waiting for him in the little sitting-room with the windows full of geraniums that looked so inviting and picturesque. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his slightest movement. It was a brief walk down one of the narrow streets leading directly back from the river front, so that within less than five minutes I was being silently shown into the small reception room of a tasty cottage, whose picturesque front was half concealed by a brilliant mass of trailing vines. The heavy shades being closely drawn at the windows, the interior was in such gloom that for the moment after my entrance from the outside glare I was unable to distinguish one object from another. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... kermesse, or fair, where the inhabitants vied with each other in doing honour to their distinguished guests. Six thousand citizens, magnificently apparelled, were under arms during their stay; and from the galleries of the quaint and picturesque old houses hung draperies of damask, tapestry, and velvet, which blended their rich tints with those of the banners that waved above the summits of the public buildings, and from the masts of the shipping ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Circle was crossed at last; on the 30th of April, at midday, the Forward passed by Holsteinborg; picturesque mountains arose in the east. The sea appeared almost free of ice, or, more exactly, the ice could be avoided. The wind was from the southeast, and the brig, under foresail, staysail, and topsails, sailed up ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... thoroughly, as he himself said, thunder and lightning are necessary. Upon the whole, it may be said that history presents few greater characters—few that excite at once more love and admiration, and in which we see tenderness, humor, and a certain picturesque grace and poetic sensibility more happily combined with a lofty and magnanimous, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... bushes; once a pair of king vultures rested for a moment within gunshot, but flew out of sight as our canoe approached; and now and then an alligator showed his head above water. As we floated along through this picturesque channel, so characteristic of the wonderful region to which we were all more or less strangers,—for even Dr. Epaminondas and Senhor Tavares Bastos were here for the first time,—the conversation turned naturally enough upon the nature of this Amazonian Valley, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... that time," spoke Bud, in picturesque, western slang. "We'll have to let the bottle-breaker wait for a spell, until we size up this rustler question. We may have to get up a sheriff's posse and clean out ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... mother-house in Switzerland is at St. Loup, not far from Lausanne, standing on one of the beautiful heights of that picturesque region. It was founded by Pastor Germond in 1841, through the direct influence of the work at Kaiserswerth. There are now seventy-three deaconesses, mostly acting as nurses either in private homes ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... brilliant moonlight, bright as day almost, but softer, flooding every alley of that peaceful spot! It quieted even the noisy party who were bent on climbing the tower, to catch a view, such as is rarely equaled, of the picturesque old city ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... picturesque if an aimless pageant, the smart frocks sweeping the smooth sward, the pretty parasols with the prettier faces underneath, the well-set-up and well-dressed men, with the old gray manor rising upon an eminence in the background, and a dazzling splash ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... swiftness born of many nights in camp together, the four now unpacked the needful articles, not putting up any tent, but spreading it down on the floor of the cave. Their fire lit up the rocks in a wild and picturesque manner as they sat near, cooking and eating their first meal of the actual voyage ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... perennially incoherent Milly, "if it bores you we sha'n't expect you." The quick color came to Paul's careworn cheek. He telegraphed assent, and at sunset that afternoon stepped off the train at a little private woodland station—so abnormally rustic and picturesque in its brown-bark walls covered with scarlet Virginia creepers that it looked ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... herself pretty in the bluest of blue gowns, or turned livid under a gooseberry colored bonnet. Her hat-brims went up or down, were preposterously wide or dwindled to an inch, as the mode demanded. Her skirts were rampant with sixteen frills, or picturesque with landscapes down each side, and a Greek border or a plain hem. Her waists were as pointed as those of Queen Bess or as short as Diana's; and it was the opinion of those who knew her that if the autocrat who ruled her life decreed the wearing of black cats as well as ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott |
