"Church tower" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of brown and yellow tiles, and the narrow streets, winding in unexpected directions, narrower than ever from such a height and dark with shade, so that they seem black rivulets gliding stealthily through the whiteness. Looking at a northern city from a tall church tower all things are confused with one another, the slate roofs join together till it is like a huge uneven sea of grey; but in Seville the atmosphere is so limpid, the colour so brilliant, that every house is clearly separated from its neighbour, and sometimes there appears to be between them a preternatural ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... down a white bridge spans the river: on the shore red-tiled and gabled houses crowd to the very edge; and behind them a church tower stands out clear against the sky. There are barges everywhere. By the towing-path colliers are waiting to be drawn up stream, black as their freight, by the horses that are nibbling the hawthorn hedge; while by the wharf, labourers are wheeling barrows over bending planks from ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... whose name is an art glory in the mouths of scholars, and never will have seen it, never once perhaps, from their birth down to their grave. A few miles of vine-bordered roads, a breadth of corn-land, a rounded hill, a little red roof under a mulberry tree, a church tower with a saint upon the roof, and a bell that sounds over the walnut-trees—these are their world: they know and want to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... A church tower loomed up, and then a blaze of light issued from its arched doors. Two by two, in white array, came forth the elves, and from the floating veils Leo saw that it was meant to represent a bridal procession. Garlands were on their ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... clock in Bingley church tower recalled her to the necessity of going back to her companions. It was four o'clock, the time they had fixed for starting homewards. It was not with any pleasure that she thought of the long drive. She suspected that Pauline and Rose had had a serious quarrel, ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... always been known that the island in the 17th century was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus extending to Glasshouse Point, where a glassmaking venture took place in 1608. Over this isthmus the "Greate Road" ran, and its traces have been discovered on the island as far as the brick church tower. As the isthmus disappeared at the close of the 17th century, the river continued to erode the island headward and build it up at its downstream end, so that the western and southern shores where the first settlement had been built, were partly destroyed. Thus, the first fort site of 1607, ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... almost exhausted Grisell, and halts in exceedingly uncomfortable hostels, where she could hardly obtain tolerable seclusion, brought her at last within reach of home. There was a tall church tower and some wretched hovels round it. The Lord of Whitburn halted, and blew his bugle with the peculiar note that signified his own return, then all rode down to the old peel, the outline of which Grisell saw with a sense of remembrance, against the gray sea-line, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little square or court-yard that had a great church tower rising above it, and a packer's warehouse, and a bottle-maker's warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinder delivered the white-legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable at the corner; ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... made to awaken the City every Sunday morning when the bells begin to ring, and there is as great and joyful a ringing from every church tower or steeple as if the bells were calling the faithful, as of old, by the hundred thousand; they go on ringing because it is their duty; they were hung up there for no other purpose; hidden away in the towers, they do not know that the people have all gone away, and ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... seen through the archway of the handsome stone bridge. The church tower and picturesque village were set off by the frame that closed them in; and though they lost somewhat of the enchantment when the boat shot from under the arch, they were still a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we reached the road leading to Barcy, there was a rift in the clouds, and a long golden ray shot through an enormous breach in the church tower, flickered a moment upon a group of roofless houses, and was gone. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... spent a month in the country, wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins. Several times, taking a walk from his inn into meadows and parks, he stopped by a well-worn stile, looked across through the early evening at a gray church tower, with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling swallows, and remembered that this might have been part of the entertainment of his honeymoon. He had never been so much alone or indulged so little in accidental dialogue. The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at last ...
— The American • Henry James
... leaving the car's driver and his wife aghast at their slight margin of safety. Dexter vanished to the right up shaded Spruce Street on a Sabbath evening as the first call to evening worship pealed from a neighbouring church tower. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... remembered ever the gentle airs and the high-bred, stately grace of Mary Robertson,—for though married to Captain Cameron of Erracht, Mary Robertson she continued to be to the Glen folk,—the lady of her ancestral manor, now for five years lain under the birch trees yonder by the church tower that looked out from its clustering firs and birches on the slope beyond the loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed from them, but like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... always sat by the door on a tree-stump that was there, and often Stineli and Rico stood by her side while she told them stories. But when the prayer-bell sounded from the little church tower she always said, "Now say, 'Our Father;' and be sure, children, that you never forget to say that prayer every evening; the prayer-bells ring to remind you of that." "Now remember, little ones," she would now and then repeat, "I have lived for a long, long ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... Hist., A. D. 788; MS. Chronicle quoted by Mr. Sharon Turner in the History of the Anglo-Saxons, book IV. chap. xix; Drayton's Polyolbion, iii; Leland's Itinerary; Oldmixon, 703. Oldmixon was then at Bridgewater, and probably saw the Duke on the church tower. The dish mentioned in the text is the property of Mr. Stradling, who has taken laudable pain's to preserve the relics and traditions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... simple device of interesting May in a certain sketch which she undertook at his suggestion. The subject was a common enough one in Venice; a tranquil rio between ruinous walls,—here, a bit of quaint mediaeval sculpture,—there, a splash of verdure over the arch of a gateway,—a pointed church tower in remote perspective. The clever craftsman found no difficulty in inventing reasons why a similar combination of advantages was not to be found elsewhere. In his own mind he was perfectly well aware that he chose it because the proper point of view was only to be obtained by disembarking ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... misty. The two labourers and the girls went about their work—raising their heads now and then to listen. And at eleven came the signal. Out rang the bells from Ipscombe Church tower. Labourers and girls threw down what they were doing, and gathered in the farm-yard round Janet and Rachel, who were waving flags on the steps of the farm-house. Then Rachel gave them all a holiday for the rest of the day, and ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long-superannuated Rotary tandem tricycle riding along winding roads and lanes, between the hedgerows and under the elms English prose and verse had long since made familiar, in and out of little grey or red villages clustered round the old church tower, passing through great towns of many factories and high smoke-belching chimneys, halting for months under the shadow of some old castle or cathedral that had been appointed one of our stations by the way. Or I see us both trudging ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... though it has a notable church tower in which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither, perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and the chatelaine of which answers your lame and halting French ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... there, as in a bower Of shrubs, unknown to LINDLEY, she reposes, See her own ALFRED to the old church tower Led on by CUPID, in a chain of roses; Or let the wreath, when raised, a cage reveal, Wherein two doves their little bills entwine; (A vile device, which always makes me feel Marriage would only ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of June at noon we made the island of Fernando de Noronha, bearing S.W. by W. 1/2 W., distant six or seven leagues, as we afterwards found by the log. It appeared in detached and peaked hills, the largest of which looked like a church tower or steeple. As we drew near the S.E. part of the isle, we perceived several unconnected sunken rocks lying near a league from the shore, on which the sea broke in a great surf. After standing very near these rocks, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... and two soldiers were shot by the enemy. They alleged that one of the latter was found on the church tower in the village, from which he would have been able to ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... work of restoring the church tower at Cheriton Bishop has been completed, and Mr. Leach has been completed, and Mr. W. Leach has entertained the men engaged on the work ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... not lofty compared with the range of giants that lies behind them in the distance, Coniston Old Man, Sca Fell, Skiddaw, Helvellyn, and their brethren. But the fells are high enough to make the tall old Church tower of Ulverston look small and toy-like as it rises under their shadow above the thatched roofs of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... smiling indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling comes upon us in a strange city, when we have no map of its streets. Hence you hear of practised travellers, when they first come into a place, mounting some high hill or church tower, by way of reconnoitring its neighbourhood. In like manner, you must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you; and the more you have of it, the greater will be the load. The learning of a ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... young giant just springing into vigorous life and preparing to put forth its might, majesty and strength, in Trade, Commerce, and Enterprise. The man of 1801 can scarcely believe his eyes in 1862. The distant view is still there, from the top of Everton church tower, but how wonderfully ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Plundered Goods with my two eldest brothers. When the war was ended the triumphant Parliamentarians attempted to revenge themselves on their sturdy enemy, and searched the country for 'Bishop Lane, the Traytor,' who was driven to hide in his church tower. For three or four months his people secretly brought him food, and he was then able to make his escape, and in the end reached France ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... weltering silver of the river, never quiet and yet never tiresome. Beyond was the reedy bank, a broad stretch of meadow land, and then a dark line of trees ending in a group of poplars at the distant bend of the river, and, upstanding behind them, a square church tower. ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... day the boys ascend to the upper part of the church tower, which is beautified by moss and creeping plants, they break out into joyful exclamations at the beauty of the scene spread out before them. In the midst of the clustering roofs of nipa, tiles, corrugated iron, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... May read the service without a tremor, but his eyes blazed out of his lean head, and there lacked not other signs to indicate the depth of emotion he concealed. Then the bluejackets who had drawn the gun-carriage fired a volley, and the rattle of their musketry echoed sharply from the church tower. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... doctor spoke he pressed his fingers against the edge of the table, leaned forward, and looked keenly at Ormiston. He was extremely ugly just then, ugly as the weather-worn gargoyle on some mediaeval church tower; but his eyes were ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... our windows is certainly charming," said Annabel; "those cherry orchards and green meadows, and the river winding along the valley, and the church tower peeping out among the elms, they all make a most effective picture. There's something dreadfully sleepy and languorous about it, though; stagnation seems to be the dominant note. Nothing ever happens ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... The countryside is more beautiful than the finest parts of New York or Pennsylvania. In almost every valley sleeps a little French hamlet, with its red tiled roofs and its neat stone cottages, clustered about the village church tower. It is a picture of calm and peace and plenty under the summer sun. But the sound of distant guns on the neighboring drill grounds, a bugle call down the village street, the sight of the broad cowboy hats and the khaki uniforms of the American soldiers, arouse us to the realization ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... thought for this. Now and again, at a corner, he would glance back, his mind on Julie in the following car, while every church tower gave him pause for thought. He tried to draw the man beside him on religion, but without any success, though he talked freely enough of other things. He was for the Colonies after the war, he said. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... before him were mist-filled valleys and beyond other ranges of long hills, with reddish-violet patches of woodland, glowing faintly in the sunlight. In the valley at his feet he could see, in the shadow of the hill he stood on, a church tower and a few roofs rising out of the mist, ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... sat that night, The noise of bells went sweeping by; I marked the lofty beacon light Stream from the church tower, red and high— A lurid mark and dread to see; And awesome bells they were to me, That in ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Hotel Dieudonne, which, although within a stone's throw, is in another village and another department. Behind us lies the Lozere, in front the Aveyron, and perched most picturesquely on a pyramidal green hill, crowned with a fine old church tower, rises the little Aveyronnais village of Peyreleau. Travellers have therefore a choice of inns and of prospects, the twin townlings being both most advantageously placed between the three Causses, and ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... came in sight of Valenciennes, from whose church tower eight o'clock was sounding, he perceived that they were about to close the gates. He pushed on, and nearly overturned, on the drawbridge, a man who was fastening the girths of his horse. Henri stopped to make excuses to the man, who turned at the ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... stone churches, of which there are forty dotting the plain here and there, built without regard to any adjacent population. Two lesser pyramids are visible near the main elevation. Farther away, small villages, each with its church tower, add interest to the scene, while the mellow notes of distant bells mingle and float upon the air. The multiplicity of these churches shows how dense must have been the population in the time of Cortez, as it was the practice of the invading Spaniards to compel the natives not ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... enough for stating the shape, style and posture of this strange steeple. It is difficult even to assist the imagination to form an idea of it. I will essay a few words in that direction. Suppose, then, a plain spire, 100 feet high, in the form of an attenuated cone, planted upon a heavy church tower. Now, in imagination, plough this cone all around into deep ridges from top to bottom. Then mount to the top, and, with a great iron wrench, give it an even twist clear down to the base, so that each ridge shall wind entirely around ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... fat young ox had been spitted, and the pile of fagots underneath him was ready for the torch. Hard by, on a stout trestle, rested a barrel of wine. In front of the inn a gypsy band were tuning their instruments, while at the window of the church tower might have been seen two or three child faces; they were on the lookout for the new lady of the manor, in order that they might be ready to ring the bells the moment she came in sight. There was only that one tower in the village, and there was a cross on it; but it was not a Romish church, for all ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... sun came up over the sea. It was a beautiful morning. The town awoke; people hailed each other cheerfully in the streets, and joy-bells rang from the big church tower for the first court-day of the new Deemster. But the Deemster himself still lay on the floor, with damp forehead and matted hair, behind the blind of the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... was sailing along over rocks and rivers and trees and towns and farms and fields. It reminded everybody of a certain time when all of them had had wings, and had flown up to the top of a church tower, and had had a feast there of chicken and tongue and new bread and soda-water. And this again reminded them how hungry they were. And just as they were all being reminded of this very strongly indeed, they saw ahead of them some ruined ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... him hear when he is found, and of most time for him to find the key when he hears. But time is not money to the merchant just now, and he watches the western sky patiently, and is made sleepy by the breeze. When at last they saunter under the shadow of the gray church tower, his eye is caught by the mass of color, out of which springs a high cross of white marble, whose top is just flushed by the setting sun. It is of fine design and workmanship, and marks the grave where the great man's schoolmaster sleeps near his wife and child. Hard by, Master Chuter ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and exclaiming in a trance of delight, as one beauty after another revealed itself-the castellated remnant of the old tower, the gabled house with stone balconies and terraces, with parapets and vases below, the little white spire of the church tower of the English colony, looking out of the chestnut and olive groves above, and the three noble stone pines that ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... church tower at Utrera—ancient home of outlaws—we came upon a dusty white line diverging to Ecija. Pausing to question a road-mender, I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's story of the Seven Men of Ecija, and the curious bond between them and the Dukes of Carmona. But what brought the tale to my mind—unless ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of sand had been passed. There was a view of a group of European houses rising along a promontory, with a church tower in the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... o'clock sounded from the bell in the church tower, dinner was on the table at Mrs. Hawkins's boarding house. By five minutes past twelve there were fourteen seated at the table, with one vacant chair. Professor Strout sat at the head of the table. At his left was Abner Stiles, while Robert ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... forgotten Farnham's painter. He was Stephen Elmer, and a picture of his, "The Last Supper," hangs in the church tower. But his forte was painting fish and game, dead and alive. In a curious old pamphlet, "The Earwig, or An Old Woman's Remarks on the present Exhibition of Pictures of the Royal Academy—a critical pamphlet ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... dream sense dispelled, he found long-forgotten memories awaken within him, memories of early boyhood, aroused by the sight of some old church tower, of some wood lying on a hillside, of some amber stream rippling past rush-grown banks. He hugged the memories to his soul, rejoicing in them. They brought a dozen trivial little incidents to his mind. He could hear his old nurse's voice warning him not to lean against the door of the carriage. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... deeply buried in snow, and looked like great white feather beds, shaken up unequally against the hedges. The road was covered so deeply that she could hardly have traced it, if she had not known where it was. How dark the old church tower ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... restlessness. But there remains a fear that it will not be a question of the better sort of Jew, or of the better sort of British influence. The same ignominious inversion which reproduces everywhere the factory chimney without the church tower, which spreads a cockney commerce but not a Christian culture, has given many men a vague feeling that the influence of modern civilisation will surround these ragged but coloured groups with something as dreary ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... little village about six miles away, a typical north-country hamlet with its stone cottages, with mullioned windows and flagged stone roofs, its grey turreted church tower, and its quick-flowing, brawling river. It was well wooded, but it stood high, and at this early season of the year the trees were still bare, and only a few green buds showed here and there on the hedges. The gardens were full of golden daffodils ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... surrounded by a crowd, which took possession of his telescope, and detained him for several hours until their curiosity was satisfied. Eager inquiries having been made as to where he lodged, Sirturi, fearing a repetition of his experience in the church tower, decided to quit Venice early next morning, and betake himself to a quieter ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... whole scene, in fact—though I can't say he's half as distinct. I can't tell you in the least, for instance, what his features are like. I've said that the upper part of the dream is vague to me; at the end of the foreshore, that is, where the cottage stands; the church tower I can see plainly enough to the very top. But over by the cottage— above the porch, as you may say—everything seems to swim in a mist: and it's up in that mist the fellow's head and shoulders appear and vanish. Sometimes I think he's looking out of the window at me, and draws back into the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round at the vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning rock—"if you think this spot quiet enough, you can speak to him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the way—each perhaps of a slightly different way; the description should make it necessary to go to each spot in turn; and prevent any "cutting" in the following way: "Go to the tallest tree in a certain field, from there go one hundred yards north, and then walk straight toward a church tower which will be on your left," etc. All the descriptions should lead by an equal journey to a certain spot where the treasure is hidden. The first to arrive at that spot should not let the others know it is the spot, but should search ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... shining high over a nearby church tower, caught her eye and brought a throb of comfort to ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... tree enlivened the black waste, and even the road was marked on each side by high poles, to direct the traveller in winter. We were glad when at length the green fields came again in sight, and the little village of Whelpington Knowes, with its old ivy-grown church tower, welcomed us after ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... shrieks and pistol shots could be heard, as the wretched people who had hidden themselves in closets and cellars were discovered and murdered. No further assault was made upon the church tower, nor was there any renewal of it next morning. As hour after hour passed on Harry concluded that, deterred by the great loss which his men had already sustained in endeavoring to capture the post, Cromwell had determined to reduce it ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... sunshine felt as though suddenly and without preparation he had wandered out of the light we know into some dim Hades such as the old Greek fancy painted, where strengthless ghosts flit aimlessly, mourning the lost light. Everywhere the giant boles of trees shooting the height of a church tower into the air without a branch; great rib-rooted trees, and beneath them a fierce and hungry growth of creepers. Where a tree had fallen within the last century or so, these creepers ramped upwards in luxuriance, their stems thick as the body of a man, drinking the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... top of the turrets, and so out upon the leads of the house, from which there was the most beautiful view of the Ocean you ever saw; and, as the top of the house was battlemented, like the top of your church tower, people could walk about quite safely and comfortably, without any fear of falling over. Then, though it is a very unusual thing near the Sea, there were delightful gardens at the place, and a few very fine old elm trees near the house, in ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... was enormous. Yet, even when the country was groaning under horrible anarchy, and grinding taxation, and war and poverty, the building went on as if men lived only to glorify the great house, and to raise its church tower, or beautify the west front, or fill the windows with stained glass, or erect the splendid pulpit in the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... that there was no one with her in the house, and if there was it would be but an old woman, to whom I could pass as a stranger in my disguise, and ask my way to some house in the village. So I lay still and munched a piece of bread, and heard the clock in the church tower strike eight and afterwards nine, but saw no one move in the house. The wood was all alive with singing-birds, and with the calling of cuckoo and wood-pigeon. There were deep patches of green shade and lighter patches of yellow sunlight, in which the iris leaves gleamed with a sheeny white, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... valley, over which it commands a view of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a house, never a church, and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty miles away. There is but one spur—a vast buttress of fertile land thrown against the mountain, as a buttress may be thrown against a church tower. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... old crone gave each shoe a smart tap, repeating each time this spell: "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nail the Devil to this post, one for God and one for Wod and one for Lok. . . . Yon's a sure charm," said she, "that will hold the Old One as fast as t' church tower, when next he comes to shake un." The chronicler of this curious incantation calls attention to the association of the name of God with two heathen personages: Wodan, the chief ruler, and Loki, the spirit of evil, in the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... him with some especial claim. For ten years he had had the same bedroom, an old low-ceilinged room with queer bulges in the wall, a crooked fireplace and a slanting floor. For years now he had had a wall-paper with an ever-recurrent scene of a church tower, a snowy hill, and a large crimson robin. The robins were faded, and the snowy hill a dingy yellow. There were School groups and Oxford groups on the walls, and the book-case near the door had his old school prizes and Henty and a set ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... demonstration of trumpet blowing occurs at an eclipse of the moon; and, to draw the theory out to a thin thread, anyone who has lived in a small German Protestant town will remember the chorals which are so often played before sunrise by a band of trumpets, horns, and trombones from the belfry of some church tower. Almost up to the end of the last century trombones were intimately connected with the church service; and if we look back to Zoroaster we find the sacerdotal character of this species of instrument very ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... had passed, leaving behind nothing but a memory and a regret. Why should she herself be more blessed than others? She looked forward and saw a vision of herself ten years hence still hurrying along the well-known street looking up at the clock in the church tower to assure herself that she was in time, still mounting the same bare staircase, still hanging up her hat on the same peg. The prose of it in contradistinction with the poetry of the present was terrifying to Claire's ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Anthony's death were to Barbara as a bad dream. Like one in a dream she saw that open, wintry grave beneath the tall church tower about whose battlements the wind-blown rooks wheeled on their homeward way. She noted a little yellow aconite that had opened its bloom prematurely in the shadow of the wall, and the sight of it brought her some kind of ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... de Born with my fifty men seized and occupied a village at the foot of the scarp one night. In the morning there were his defences thrown up man-high, and my standard on the church tower. Renny was furious, and despatched a stronger force than he could afford to re-take the village. Salomon, counting upon this, had left two men in it to be killed; with the rest he scaled the scaur and waited in hiding to see what force Renny took out. He knew to a nicety the strength of the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... upon the causeway began the business of the day; for the village was still sound asleep. The church tower looked very airy in the sunlight; a few birds that turned about it seemed to swim in an atmosphere of more than usual rarity; and the Doctor, walking in long transparent shadows, filled his lungs amply, and proclaimed himself well contented with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of very ancient origin, and is said to have been founded by two maiden ladies. The bequest was in the form of land, though the name of the donors and the date of the gift are unknown. With the rents of the land bread and cheese were purchased, and thrown from the church tower to poor people on the Sunday before Christmas. The annual income arising from this source is now divided, being expended partly upon education, partly upon apprenticeship, and a certain amount upon coals and blankets to be distributed ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... beauty, and the clergyman's house at Hogglestock was not placed on a green slopy bank of land, retired from the road, with its windows opening on to a lawn, surrounded by shrubs, with a view of the small church tower seen through them; it had none of that beauty which is so common to the cosy houses of our spiritual pastors in the agricultural parts of England. Hogglestock parsonage stood bleak beside the road, with no pretty paling lined inside by hollies and laburnum, Portugal laurels and rose-trees. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... what a noise! Methinks some church tower has collapsed. St. Lawrence, Poultney, belike. St. Mary's, Bush Lane, will be the next. Would I were there to see. I will to the roof of the house to obtain a better view. Zounds, but this is worth a hundred plagues! I had never thought to live to see ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard—it was a large churchyard that they were in—looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... right shoulder rise the spires of Rouen; away to the left is the church tower of Darnetal; in the opposite horizon the great slope of St. Catherine rises to the sky. Within this quiet square Archbishop Guillaume de l'Estrange built the Chartreuse de Notre Dame de la Rose, in 1386, rather more than a mile from the Porte St. Hilaire, in that cool valley between St. Catherine ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... gargoyle on the church tower,' said Ethel, gaping into as complete a model of that worthy as flesh ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed away. A loud summons sounded from the church tower and from the drums of the soldiers. The men thronged to the church leaving the women outside in the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a pretty drive, through rich meadows, shut in by the sloping wooded hills which gradually closed nearer; and by and by over the shoulder of one looked a very tall church tower, whereat Felix started with a thrill of responsive recognition, and suddenly faltered in the political discussion Mr. Staples had started, but dropped at once, looking at the young man's face ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... water, but no Brownie, and so out on to the moor. The air was fresh, not to say chilly; but it was a glorious night, though everything but the wind and Tommy seemed asleep. The stones, the walls, the gleaming lanes, were so intensely still; the church tower in the valley seemed awake and watching, but silent; the houses in the village round it had all their eyes shut, that is, their window-blinds down; and it seemed to Tommy as if the very moors had drawn white sheets over ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... even proposed to ring the church bells and fire the cannon at the harbour's mouth; but the ringers and artillerymen preferred to come and see the sight. As it was, the "George" floated proudly from the church tower, and the Fife and Drum Temperance Band stood ready at the corner of East Street. All Troy, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... picture of all would be Mr. Britling writing in a little circle of orange lamplight, with the blinds of his room open for the sake of the moonlight, but the window shut to keep out the moths that beat against it. Outside would be the moon and the high summer sky and the old church tower dim above the black trees half a mile away, with its clock—which Mr. Britling heard at night but never noted by day—beating its way round the slow semicircle of the nocturnal hours. He had always ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on his personal qualities ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hope alive; and indeed it seemed impossible that I should be left to die on the shores of my own country, and within view of a church tower and the smoke of men's houses. But the second day passed; and though as long as the light lasted I kept a bright lookout for boats on the sound or men passing on the Ross, no help came near me. It still rained; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... until the creaking of one of the boards reminded her that she must make no noise. She went and curled herself up on the window-seat in the small, deeply-recessed window. That morning when she had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the bright clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine and sunny day. This evening—sixteen hours at most had past by—she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with a dull cold pain, which seemed to have pressed the youth and buoyancy ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that the story justifies the passion that Dickens threw into its composition. The supernatural machinery is weak as compared with that of the "Carol." Little Trotty Veck, dreaming to the sound of the bells in the old church tower, is a bad substitute for Scrooge on his midnight rambles. Nor are his dreams at all equal, for humour or pathos, to Scrooge's visions and experiences. And the moral itself is not clearly brought out. I confess to being a little doubtful ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Lambton, of the British cruiser Powerful, then lying in Manila Bay, exacted a promise from me that I would tell him if I found out when the advance was to begin, so that we might go to Caloocan together and watch the fighting from the church tower, which commanded a magnificent view of ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it, used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... end of Sir Martin Schenk of Niddegem, knight, colonel, and brigand; save that ultimately his dissevered limbs were packed in a chest, and kept in a church tower, until Maurice of Nassau, in course of time becoming master of Nymegen, honoured the valiant and on the whole faithful freebooter with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... joy-bells rang out from the neighbouring church tower, the summer sun shone into the windows, the bees hummed among the flowers on the lawn. Sir Peter roused himself and looked forth, "After all," said he, cheerily, "the vale of tears is not ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... crossed themselves, and the lad rang a little silver bell. Then the two passed on, the lad still ringing. When they were out of sight the sound of the bell came softly, softly up the road, while the bell in the church tower still called to prayer. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... She cautioned me on the way to put something in my hat to keep the crown up, and said in a lower tone, "You'll be noticed." But not knowing at what she hinted, I took no notice and made no reply. At length she pointed to a small church tower, which she called Shefford Church, and advised me to go on a footway, which would take me direct to it, and would shorten my journey fifteen (!) miles by doing so. I would gladly have taken the young woman's advice, feeling that it was honest, and a nigh guess towards the truth; but fearing ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... existed here as early as the time of David I. A new church is said to have been erected in 1242, and probably some parts of this are incorporated in the present edifice. In 1384 Robert II. contributed to the erection or repair of the church tower, and in 1424 the church was injured and considerably destroyed by the fire that reduced the town to ashes. The reconstruction of the edifice probably progressed, under the Jameses, simultaneously with that ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... wild-rose clustering round the windows. They are lying asleep on the doorsteps, they gather themselves into knots as if to gossip and to talk in the language of flowers by the doorways—utterly beautiful! You look at the city with wonder and astonishment—with desire. How wonderful, you say, that church tower covered with its flowers; that altar covered with flowers not gathered and placed in vases, but with Nature's own hand arranging an offering to the living God. These streets that sound no footfall of an angry multitude, but that listen to the footfall of a quiet ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... dusky vapor veils the sky, And darkens on the dewy slopes; Chill airs on rustling wings flit by, Sad as the sigh o'er buried hopes: I tread the cloistered walk alone, Between the shadow and the light, While from the church tower thronging down Pale phantoms ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lazily among the tree-tops; beyond lay the plain, with a long range of smooth downs behind, where the river broadened to the sea-pool, which narrowed again to the little harbour; and, across the clustered house-roofs and the lonely church tower of the port, we could see a glint ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Dancing was next in order. The first dance was the stately rigodon, which is almost the only square dance used here. When it was finished and a waltz had begun, I insisted on going home, for I was tired out. Somebody loaned us a victoria, and thus the trip was short. A deep-mouthed bell in the church tower rang out ten slow strokes as I threw back the shutters after putting out my light. The military bugles took up the sound with "taps," and the figure of the sentry on the bridge was a moving patch of black ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... proved to be a series of giant cascades, ten or twelve in number, in the words of Raleigh, "every one as high above the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain. And in some places we took it at first for a smoke that had risen over ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... church would become a northern rival to Lourdes for the working of miraculous cures during the September pilgrimage. A gilded statue of the Virgin and Child stood on an iron stalk on the summit of the church tower. During a bombardment of the town at a little after three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, January 15, 1915, a shell so bent the stalk that the statue bent down over the Place as though diving. Perhaps few of our soldiers will remember Albert ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... broad land lit golden by sunrise under a clear sky. He stared out upon hedgeless, well-cultivated fields intersected by roads, each lined with cable-bearing red poles. He had just passed over a compact, whitewashed, village with a straight church tower and steep red-tiled roofs. A number of peasants, men and women, in shiny blouses and lumpish footwear, stood regarding him, arrested on their way to work. He was so low that the end of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... The church tower of Poperinghe shimmered in the heat and seemed to beckon us on along the straight road that led through the miles of flat country, relieved here and there by stretches of great hop poles or by little red-roofed farms where lounged ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... Italian journey. This was when I accompanied him into the Isle of Man. We had been drinking tea with Mr. and Mrs. Cookson, and left them when the weather was dull. Very soon after leaving them we passed the church tower of Bala Sala. The upper part of the tower had a sort of frieze of yellow lichens. Mr. W. pointed it out to me, and said, 'It's a perpetual sunshine.' I thought no more of it, till I read ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... said the Warden, "had been lying in a rubbish chamber of the church tower for at least a century; when the clerk, who is a little of an antiquarian, unearthed it, and I advised him to set it here, where it used to stand;—not with any idea of its being used (though there is as much need ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... carriages, the hire of which went down in Mr. Philpot's account, whenever we wanted them for expeditions; and we would often drive out in the warm after-dinner twilights to a tea garden three miles away, where we lingered among the scent of roses till the bell of some remote church tower sounded, through the dewy quiet, its nine notes to the stars. We had boats on the Arun, a stream on which our oars would take us sometimes beyond Amberly, and not bring us back till midnight. On other occasions ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... precipice must be on the other side of that slope and that, if so, it was rather too near the house for his taste. Mr. Heard thoroughly understood the feelings of the French poetess. He, too, was not fond of precipices. It was as much as he could do to look down from a church tower without ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... you are as strong as the church tower, and will live till you are a hundred at least; you will no doubt see ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... repose succeed those of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church tower, white through the storm-light, proclaims a renewed appeal to His protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There is no loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is just where "the mountain ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... splendor of the sky Repeats its glory in the river's flow; And sculptured angels, on the gray church tower, ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... can sit at my open window and think, think, think as much as I like. What a lovely night it is! The mist has cleared off, and the moat is glistening in the moonlight, and the old trees are silvered over and blackened alternately by its beams; the church tower stands out massively against the sky. How dark the old belfry looks on such a night as this, contrasting with the white tombstones in the churchyard, and the slated roof shimmering above the aisle! There is a faint breeze sighing amongst the few remaining leaves, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... yellow tract, a misty blue fringe on the horizon heralds the presence of the North Country; whilst beyond the nearer beach a sprinkling of greenly ensconced homesteads cluster round some peaceful and paternal looking church tower. Near the salty shore a fishing village scatters its greystone cabins along the first ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... church tower, amid the shadows looming, Stands grim and sombre in the dying light; The trees with leafless branches shiver, moaning, As the sad winds sigh softly ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody, except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower, and they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude, secretly nourished ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... elderly lady who was most civil and told us stories of what the Germans had done when they passed through a week or two ago on their retreat eastwards. Amongst other abominations, they had, on arrival, demanded of the old cure the key of the church tower, on which they wished to put a Maxim. The old man, not having the key, had hobbled off to get it from the garde champetre, who happened to be in possession of it for the time being. He could not, however, find him, and the officer in command, being in a diabolical temper, put the poor old priest ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... his friend—"If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North-Church tower, as a signal-light— One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... train the boy a little.' The sexton therefore took him into his house, and he had to ring the church bell. After a day or two, the sexton awoke him at midnight, and bade him arise and go up into the church tower and ring the bell. 'You shall soon learn what shuddering is,' thought he, and secretly went there before him; and when the boy was at the top of the tower and turned round, and was just going to take hold of the bell rope, he saw a white figure standing on the stairs opposite ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... said, desperately, as they passed a lighted church tower. "It is nine o'clock." And she leaned back in her corner again, with her heart beating strongly. Her disappointment was so keen that she could have burst into a passion of tears. Her happy evening was gone, and her dream of simple pleasure had fled with its sacrificed ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... evident she did not need to pay any attention to what her fingers were doing. Her eyes,—soft, old, blue eyes, with the rather sad look those clear blue eyes often get in old age,—gazed now and then out of the window—for from where she sat a corner of the ivy-covered church tower was to be seen making a pleasant object against the sky—and now and then turned anxiously ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... a girl of the village, was as interested as any of them in this military investment. Her father's home stood somewhat apart, and on the highest point of ground to which the lane ascended, so that it was almost level with the top of the church tower in the lower part of the parish. Immediately from the outside of the garden- wall the grass spread away to a great distance, and it was crossed by a path which came close to the wall. Ever since her childhood it had been Phyllis's pleasure to clamber up this fence ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... clock belonging to the Anglo-Norman church tower of the village struck six. Both the engineer and his subordinate wiped their dewy foreheads with their blackened hands, and ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various |
