"Medieval" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terminated. Her still watching eyes brought her a message so incongruous with her immediate surroundings as to shake her out of her waking dream. She became suddenly conscious of a nineteenth-century intruder amid her almost medieval surroundings. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... falls upon such great folk as Peter de Mauley, fifth Baron Mulgrave, whose castle at Mulgrave, near Whitby, is mentioned elsewhere; Lucy de Thweng, wife of Sir William le Latimer; Sir Nicholas de Meynyl; and Katherine, wife of Sir John Dentorp, whose conduct merely reflected the morals of medieval times. It was, indeed, no uncommon event for the congregation to hear some high-born culprit confessing his sins as he walked barefoot and scantily clothed in the procession in York Minster. An exceedingly beautiful crucifix ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... thought. What do we care what a man thought two hundred years ago, when we have what a man thinks to-day? What is to us the policy of a political party when the moss has commenced to grow over it. Who would attempt to enforce in this day the medieval creeds and religious practices and church government? What are we put here for, if it is not to learn, every year, every day, every hour if we can. And of what use is all this learning if we are not to advance by means of it? And how could we ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... and instead of approaching the object of their journey by the old-time way, along the beautiful hills of Surrey and Kent, they use the iron road which rushes them all unprepared into the city of the saint-martyr. But who will maintain that all those who formed the motley throng of the medieval pilgrimages came with their minds properly attuned, and who is prepared to say that because the majority of modern pilgrims consummate their aim by using the convenience of the railway they are less devout than Chaucer's merchant, serjeant-at-law, ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... to make peace with them, as representative of the uji, and (3) to establish or abolish uji, to nominate uji no Kami, and to adjudicate disputes between them. The first of these prerogatives remains unaltered to the present day. The second was partly delegated in medieval times to the military class, but has now been restored to the Throne. As for the third, its exercise is to-day limited to the office of the hereditary nobility, the Constitution having replaced ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... decisively that he will have none but young men in his sacred dance. But for that purpose they must put on the long tunic, and that spotted skin which only rustics wear, and assume the thyrsus and ivy-crown. Teiresias arrives and is seen knocking at the doors. And then, just as in the medieval mystery, comes the [66] inevitable grotesque, not unwelcome to our poet, who is wont in his plays, perhaps not altogether consciously, to intensify by its relief both the pity and the terror of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that dream seriously enough to make children the heroes and heroines of their most searching fictions. There had been no "children's literature" to speak of before, except for the oral and "popular" tradition, including lullabies and Mother Goose, some of which go back as far as Tudor and even medieval times. ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... must needs win her against uncertain odds and in the face of surprising opposition. In this day and age of the world, in affairs of the heart, an American does not look for rivalry that bears the suggestion of medieval romance. The situation savored too much of the story-books that are born of the days when knights held sway, to appeal natural in the eyes of an up-to-date, unromantic gentleman from New York, that city where love affairs adjust themselves without the aid ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... undoubtedly in an overwhelming majority would have gladly obeyed the call to arms, would have been equally ready to bear permanent and heavy burdens of taxation. Haggling about war contributions is as pronounced a characteristic of the German Reichstag in modern Berlin as it was in medieval Regensburg. These conditions have induced me to publish now the following pages, which were partly written ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on the fading leaves. 'They don't come to me,' he said softly again; with a tiny smile on his old face. 'It's that old medieval Craik: with a face like a last year's rookery!' And again he sat, with head a little sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds of life without, now to the thoughts within, and ever and again ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... is a quiet war with no blare of trumpets to keep the soldiers on the job, no flourish of flags or clinking of swords to stimulate flagging courage. It may not be as romantic a warfare, from the standpoint of our medieval ideas of romance, as the old way of sharpening up a battle axe, and spreading our enemy to the evening breeze, but the reward of victory is not seeing our brother man dead at our feet; but rather seeing him alive and ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... world of ghosts,—ghosts incomparably more numerous than the acknowledged millions of the higher Shinto Kami and that the spectral population of one grain of brain-matter more than realizes the wildest fancies of the medieval schoolmen about the number of angels able to stand on the point of a needle. Scientifically we know that within one tiny living cell may be stored up the whole life of a race,—the sum of all the ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... the market-place, and in the Rue de Vesle behind the church of St. Jacques. This church, originally built at the close of the twelfth century, is hemmed in on all sides by old houses, above which rises its tapering steeple surmounted by a medieval weathercock in the form of an angel. A life-size statue of the patron saint decorates the Gothic gateway leading to the church, from which a troop of Remish urchins in the charge of some Frres de la Doctrine Chrtienne emerge ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... coming toward the camp at a slow dogtrot; and as they approached it could be seen that save for a turban apiece they were stark naked; and save for a spear and a water gourd apiece they were without equipment. One held something straight upright before him, as medieval priests carried a cross. The turbans were formed from their blankets; mid-blade of each spear was wound with a strip of red cloth; the object one carried was a letter held in ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... or pole, having an iron or steel point, used in medieval warfare, now replaced by the bayonet. A half-pike was a similar weapon having a staff about ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... the introduction to his "Life of Charles the Fifth.'' Although superseded in many of its parts by modern investigation, very defective in several important matters, and in some things—as, for example, in its appreciation of medieval literature—entirely mistaken, it was, when written one hundred years ago, recognized as a classic, and it remains so to this day. It was a work of genius. Supplemented by elucidations and extensions, it served an admirable purpose in introducing my students to the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... know—it's a very fine medieval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs. Since it may be laid as a general principle that women always get what they want we must suppose they didn't want it. In addition they are devoid of decency. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Kaid, wondering, went to the great windows which looked on to the Palace square. There, drawn up, were a thousand mounted men as black as ebony, wearing shining white metal helmets and fine chain-armour and swords and lances like medieval crusaders. The horses, too, were black, and the mass made a barbaric display belonging more to another period in the world's history. This regiment of Nubians Kaid had recruited from the far south, and had maintained ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... system; we speak of the fortifications of a city. A citadel is a fortification within a city, or the fortified inner part of a city or fortress, within which a garrison may be placed to overawe the citizens, or to which the defenders may retire if the outer works are captured; the medieval castle was the fortified residence of a king or baron. Fort is the common military term for a detached fortified building or enclosure of moderate size occupied or designed to be occupied by troops. The fortifications of a modern city usually ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... medieval history cannot fail to be impressed with the suddenness with which the culmination of the Holy Roman Empire, in the thirteenth century, was followed by a swift decline. The imperial position of the Hapsburgs was far less splendid than that of the Hohenstauffen; it rapidly became more German and ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... medieval crafts and mysteries undoubtedly had embodied in their maxims, proverbs, traditional methods, and teachings, many economic principles suitable to their comparatively simple and unchanging conditions. The rapid ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... this because, with varying degrees of emphasis, that has been the conception of the church from medieval times almost to our own day. Indeed, I am not sure that it has entirely passed even at the present time. There are doubtless some people who continue thus to regard the church, and there is more than ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the pain?" The doctor looked shocked. "Well, of course I could do that, but that's not getting at the root of the trouble, is it? That's just treating symptoms. Medieval quackery. Medicine has advanced a long way since your last checkup, my friend. And even treatment has its dangers. Did you know that more people died last year of aspirin poisoning than ...
— An Ounce of Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... of water in the air. The lofty chateau of white stone had a broad front, with wings. Eagle bade me note the two dove-cotes or pigeon towers, distinctly separate structures, one flanking each wing, and demonstrating the antiquity of the house. For only nobles in medieval days were accorded the ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Japan to the frontiers of Persia, from Manchuria to Java, from Burma to Mongolia—is undoubted and the influence is one. You cannot separate Hinduism from Buddhism, for without it Hinduism could not have assumed its medieval shape and some forms of Buddhism, such as Lamaism, countenance Brahmanic deities and ceremonies, while in Java and Camboja the two religions were avowedly combined and declared to be the same. Neither is it convenient ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... this year are extensive. It has arranged a program of lectures, among which may be mentioned the following: "The Talmud," by Dr. Clifton H. Levy; "The Jew in English Literature," by Dean Archibald L. Bouton; "The Jews in Medieval Spain," by Dr. D. de Sola Pool; "Conservative Judaism," by Dr. Jacob Kohn; "Historical Beginnings of Christianity," by Dr. A. H. Limouze; "Reform Judaism," by Dr. Isaac Moses. Besides these lectures, some meetings are devoted to discussions by members of such subjects as Zangwill's "Melting ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the French Revolution; the third, which may be called the international idea, was raised by the Congress of Vienna. It was an old idea, of course, for it had been embodied in that shadowy "Holy Roman Empire" which was the medieval dream of Rome the Great; but its form was new, and now for the first time it became a dream of the future rather than a dream of the past. What men did not see then, and still for the most part fail to see, is that the human race can only work out these three ideas properly in ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... the sacred lamp, while our Jewish cicerone reached down the Book of the Law, and read to us in its ancient tongue—I felt a shuddering impression that this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision. Those darkened dusty Christian saints, with their loftier arches and their larger candles, needed the consolatory scorn with which they might point to a more ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason. This is so not merely in the sense of insanity but of suicide. It has lost its reason; that is its reason for existing. The old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. The modern realists summon all these million creatures to worship their god; and then have no god for them ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... contrary were sacerdotal in character. As in medieval Europe, the scholars of Asia and Egypt were priests. In the temples the nature of the gods and of man were not the only subjects of discussion; mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philology and history were also studied. The successors of Berosus, a priest from Babylonia, and {32} Manetho, a priest ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... unlike those of the thirteenth century. It was hardly till the seventeenth century that the presence of a new age, as different from the middle ages as from the ages of Greece and Rome, was fully realised. It was then that the triple division of ancient, medieval, and modern was first applied to the history of western civilisation. Whatever objections may be urged against this division, which has now become almost a category of thought, it marks a most significant advance in man's view of his own past. He has become conscious ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Fatherland is by no means unique, nor is it even strikingly peculiar, by contrast with the rest of western Europe, except in degree. It is of the same general kind as the rest of what has gone to make the historical advance of medieval and modern times; but it differs from the generality in a more sluggish movement and a more tenacious adherence to what would be rated as the untoward features of mediaevalism. The approach to a modern scheme of institutions and modern conceptions of life and of human ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... spelling, which does not correspond completely with that of Coplande's print. Hearne gives ae for e throughout, and expands contractions without notice. Had I had access to the original tract before Hearne's text was put into type, I should have retained the medieval spelling; but I did not think it worth while to make the change apres coup. The actual words of the text represent Blacman as faithfully as possible; and that is ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... see me for what I am. I shall not rob you, I shall not drug you, I shall not try to tear secrets out of your throat by any medieval methods. We are neither of us of the order of those who seek adventures in vulgar fashion and expect always a vulgar termination. Can't we be friends for a time—companions? Paris is an empty city for me just now. And for you—you must avoid those whom you know. It follows that you must be lonely. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eminently picturesque, with its relics of centuries, its mosaic pulpits and floor, its frescoes of Pinturicchio and Pesaro, its antique columns, its rich golden ceiling, its Gothic mausoleum to the Savelli, and its medieval tombs. A dim, dingy look is over all,—but it is the dimness of faded splendor; and one cannot stand there, knowing the history of the church, its exceeding antiquity, and the changes it has undergone since it was a Roman temple, without a peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... all human souls have been derived by heredity from that of Adam. This is a speculation found in medieval theology, and ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... misfortunes, if believed to be such as flow from fixed law, and especially if they can be predicted sometime before they arrive, do not excite religious feeling. As Bishop Hall quaintly observes, referring to a curious medieval superstition: "Crosses, after the nature of the cockatrice, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... to furnish a concise and connected account of human progress during ancient, medieval, and early modern times. It should meet the requirements of those high schools and preparatory schools where ancient history, as a separate discipline, is being supplanted by a more extended course introductory to the study of recent times and contemporary problems. Such ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... trace the history of the last two centuries of the Knights at Malta it will perhaps be advisable to examine the organisation of an Order which was the greatest and most long-lived of all the medieval Orders of Chivalry. The siege of 1565 was its last great struggle with its mortal foe; after that there is but little left for the historian but to trace its gradual decadence and fall. And, as might be expected ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... painted of all Dutch towns, and with reason; for certainly no other town sits with more calm dignity among the waters, nor has any other town so quaintly medieval a canal as that which extends from end to end, far below the level of the streets, crossed by a series of little bridges. Seen from these bridges it is the nearest thing to Venice in all Holland—nearer than anything ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... where he was. It was a big, fortresslike building on top of one of the highest hills at the northern end of Manhattan Island—an old building that had once been a museum and was built like a medieval castle. ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... these medieval castles the scenery along the Hudson loses none of its charm. But what a contrast! In place of low vineyard-clad hills, as you see along the Rhine, the majestic Hudson winds in leisurely fashion among its primeval forests, the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... one generation of textbooks to the next. In what follows, I can only hope that the adding of a strong new trail and the eradication of several false and weaker ones will lead us nearer to a balanced and integrated understanding of medieval invention and the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... infierno; the hell of Dante and the medieval theologians contained nine separate circles. On Menga's lips, however, from the fifth hell means no more than 'from a very remote region,' 'from the North Pole.' Cf. la quinta ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... him the feasibility of throwing the same vivid light upon the old Border life of his ancestors as Goethe had thrown upon that of the Rhine barons. This led him to subordinate the part played by the goblin page in the proposed story, which was now widened to include elaborate pictures of medieval life and manners, and to lay the scene in the castle of Branksome, formerly the stronghold of Scott's and the Duke of Buccleugh's ancestors. The verse form into which the story was thrown was due to a still more accidental circumstance, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... sensuality. The rude food, the scanty clothing, the violent exercise, the vagrant life, the military constraint, the imperfect pharmacy, which now are the trials of only particular classes of the community, were once the lot more or less of all. In the deep woods or the wild solitudes of the medieval era, feelings of religion or superstition were naturally present to the population, which in various ways co-operated with the missionary or pastor, in retaining it in a noble simplicity of manners. But, when in the advancement of society men ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... words. Thus from Homer we have 'mentor' for a monitor; 'stentorian', for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as with all of Hector's nobleness there is a certain amount of big talking about him, he has given us 'to hector'{99}; while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful ministry out of which his name has past into the words 'to pandar' and 'pandarism'. 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomont, a blustering and boasting hero ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... ashamed, even in a pantomime—the Caucasian darkie retained all his dignity while the African one dusted him; but, being dusted, he put on his obsequiousness, stepped forward, joined his palms together to Mrs. Beresford—like medieval knights and modern children at their devotions—and addressed ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... permanent phase of the deity. Saivas declare that in the guru who teaches the way of salvation Siva himself is manifested: Vaishnavas tell the same tale, and find a short road to salvation by surrendering their souls to him. We have seen cases of apotheosis of the guru in modern and medieval times; reasoning from the known to the unknown, we may be sure that it took place no less regularly in ancient ages, and brought about most of the surprising changes in the character of gods which we have noticed. Sometimes the gurus have only preached some new ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... the matter, of course; but he found that the author of the Nibelungenlied, a dramatist from head to foot, has so clearly presented the tragic aspects of the story that the modern dramatist need only make himself the interpreter of the medieval epic poet. Herewith Hebbel's trilogy is at once distinguished from such other modern treatments of the subject as Geibel's Brunhild or Wagner's Nibelungen Ring. Geibel eliminated everything supernatural; Wagner made use chiefly of the Old Norse versions ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... his temperament and intellect in this matter, his influence is unfavourable to the development of ardent religious feeling among the Chinese people generally; and he prepared the way for the speculations of the literati of medieval and modern times, which have exposed them to the charge of atheism. Secondly, Along with the worship of God there existed in China, from the earliest historical times, the worship of other spiritual beings,— especially, and to every individual, the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... not reply at once; instead, she glanced carefully around. The room was generally the rallying place of the McIntyres. It stretched across almost the entire width of the house; the diamond-paned and recessed windows gave it a medieval air in keeping with its antique furniture, and the seven doors opening from it led, respectively, to the large dining room beyond, a morning room, billiard room, the front and back halls, and the Italian loggia which over-looked the stretch of ground between the McIntyre residence ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... with the seeming intention of honoring her. Her faith that the trial by combat between Gauthier and Gismond must end in Gismond's victory and her vindication reflects most truly, as Arthur Symons has pointed out, the medieval atmosphere of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the historic crowns of the Cambodian kings, though a few of them wore masks, one representing the head of a fox, another a fish, a third a lion, which could be raised or lowered, like the visors of medieval helmets. The faces of all of the dancers were so heavily coated with powder and enamel that they would have been cracked by a smile. It was a performance which would have astonished and delighted the most blase audience on Broadway, but there in the heart of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... time to destroy, with small parties, the railroad from that point toward Lynchburg. Custer reached Charlottesville the 3d, in the afternoon, and was met at the outskirts by a deputation of its citizens, headed by the mayor, who surrendered the town with medieval ceremony, formally handing over the keys of the public buildings and of the University of Virginia. But this little scene did not delay Custer long enough to prevent his capturing, just beyond the village, a small body of cavalry ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... porticoes looked from their dizzy terraces across the stream to where soaring mosques and mystic domes of worship caught the sun. It was all like the visible dream of a master architect gone mad. Gaunt, sinister ruins of medieval castles sprawled down the slopes of unassailable summits. Grim brown towers, haughtily crenellated, scowled defiance on the unappearing foe. Titanic stools of stone dotted barren garden slopes, where surely gods had once strolled in that far time when the stars sang and the moon was young. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... and his retinue. Not only is he to be entertained and served by them, but any commercial value will also be exploited by him. The natural wonders of the laboratories have taken the place of the supernatural absurdities of the medieval mind as a fillip for the imagination of the man in the street. Even spiritualism apes the technique of the physicist. The credulity of reporters alone concerning developments in surgery, for example, is incredible. There is enough rot published daily for a brief to be ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... worked on the pick system, a method which medieval conspirators favoured, and which the Italian workmen probably imported from the land of their birth; a land which has given the world the Borgias and the Medicis and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the warlike kind, after Germany began to struggle with its medieval restrictions, was composed after the Battle of Sempach, where Arnold Struthalm of Winkelried opened a passage for the Swiss peasants through the ranks of Austrian spears. It is written in the Middle-High-German, by Halbsuter, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... neglected, neither is unduly prominent. This being the case, it has occurred to me that I may be so fortunate as to interest a Cambridge audience while I set before them some of the results at which I have arrived in investigating the position, the arrangement, and the fittings of libraries in the medieval and renaissance periods. It will, of course, be impossible to attempt more than a sketch of so extensive a subject, and I fear that I must omit the contents of the bookcases altogether; but I shall hope, by a selection of typical illustrations, ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... of the arrangements of the altar, eager to display the touch of an artist even in the least details. On a background of ancient tapestries he placed an old triptych, a medieval cross; all the articles of worship which filled his studio as decorations, cleaned now from dust and cobwebs, recovered for a few ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as I took the deadly thing in my hand I saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... in medieval days, when it was the residence of the Mikado. From 793 until 1868, when the court removed to Tokio, Kyoto remained the capital. Its importance, however, began to decline with the founding of Yedo, or Tokio, in 1590, and to-day many miles of its former streets ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... regard to sex, were huddled together in prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... truism that an accepted wit has only to say, 'Pass the butter,' and everyone will laugh. Professor McLeod, however, far from being an accepted wit, seems rather to be in the position of a medieval Court Fool, who was laughed at rather than with. As a consequence, all Earthmen have been branded ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... be so medieval, would we?" she laughed. "That would be a silly way to begin the evening. Now that I am here I am going to make the very, very best ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... World was the scene of many stupendous migrations. One after another, the Goths, the Huns, the Saracens, the Turks, and the Tatars, by the sheer tidal force of their numbers threatened to engulf the ancient and medieval civilization of Europe. But neither in the motives prompting them nor in the effect they produced, nor yet in the magnitude of their numbers, will such migrations bear comparison with the great exodus of European peoples which in the course of three centuries ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... often laughed over afterward. It happened that in the "On-looker" there was a quotation from some unnamed medieval writer; she and her father had a discussion as to whom it could be, Raeburn maintaining that it was Thomas a Kempis. Wishing to verify it, Erica went to a bookseller's and asked for the "Imitation of Christ." A rather prim-looking ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Reason and the Lover, he was equally anxious to display his freedom of criticism and his universality of knowledge, both scientific and anecdotical. His vein was pre-eminently satirical and abundantly allusive; and among the chief objects of his satire are the two favourite themes of medieval satire in general, religious hypocrisy (personified in "Faux-Semblant," who has been described as one of the ancestors of "Tartuffe"), and the foibles of women. To the gross salt of Jean de Meung, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... plain flowering broadly about it with its wide-spread beauties of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it might—though it is to be doubted—seem something less a marvel of medieval picturesqueness. But out of the plain rises the low hill, and surrounding it at a stately distance stands guard the giant majesty of Alps, with shoulders in the clouds and god-like heads above them, looking on—always looking ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... philosophy and astronomy at the feet of her great sages are gone, and the English have transformed the college itself into a warehouse. The hall, which served for the study of astronomy, and was filled with quaint, medieval apparatus, is now used for a depot of opium; and the hall of philosophy contains huge boxes of liqueurs, rum and champagne, which are prohibited by the Koran, as well as by ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... so old-fashioned and chival-rous about King and his love, she felt a strange melting within her heart. This element of romance she knew he had inherited from her own medieval, home-loving South which she loved. It appealed to her now with a peculiar force—this old-fashioned people and their ways, and a sense of alienation and hostility to Gordon and his radicalism swept once more the storm-clouds across her ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... imaginary; and a little below we find that it was close to Jinn land. China was very convenient for this purpose: the medieval-Moslems, who settled in considerable numbers at Canton and elsewhere, knew just enough of it to know their own ignorance of the vast empire. Hence the Druzes of the Libanus still hold that part of their nation is in the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... other Channel Islands represent the last remnants of the medieval Dukedom of Normandy, which held sway in both France and England. The islands were the only British soil occupied by German troops in World War II. Guernsey is a British crown dependency, but is not part of the UK. However, the UK Government is constitutionally responsible ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a familiarity with the best authors. More than this, her father had instilled into her mind a chivalrous sense of honor; and from natural instinct, as well as from his teachings, she loved all that was noble and pure. Medieval romance was most congenial to her taste; and of all the heroes who figure there she loved best the pure, the high-souled, the heavenly Sir Galahad. All the heroes of the Arthurian or of the Carlovingian epopee were adored by this wayward but generous girl. She would ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... reconsideration of the value of the reports of the travelers and adventurers on the West Coast from the fifteenth century on.[7] The combined result has been the bringing to light of objects and evidences of achievement which place the ancient and medieval African on a plane with, and in many cases above, his contemporaries ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... characters in a story already full of extraordinary personages—Gabriel Garcia Moreno, who became President of that republic in 1861. In some respects the counterpart of Francia of Paraguay, in others both a medieval mystic and an enlightened ruler of modern type, he was a man of remarkable intellect, constructive ability, earnest patriotism, and disinterested zeal for orderliness and progress. On his presidential sash were inscribed the words: "My Power in the Constitution"; but is real power lay in himself ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... name of this river seems to have passed through the machine of some medieval typewriter, for it is like no name in any language, and Montoya knew Guarani well, having written much ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... to the anarchistic argument, to the effect that this moment of panic revealed the truth of their theory of government; that the custodians of law and order have become the government itself quite as the armed men hired by the medieval guilds to protect them in the peaceful pursuit of their avocations, through sheer possession of arms finally made themselves rulers of the city. At that moment I was firmly convinced that the public could only be convicted of the blindness of its course, when a body of people with a hundred-fold ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the Binnenhof—that sinister theater of Dutch history—with its strangely grouped towers and palaces, and its huge squares, made me feel an insignificant insect with no right to opinions of any kind; and as I gazed up at the dark, medieval buildings, vague visions of Cornelis and John de Witt in their torture, of van Oldenbarneveld, and fair Adelaide de Poelgust stabbed and bleeding, flitted fearfully through my brain. I wanted to get out and look for the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... hands and went on talking fast and vehemently. "Listen! I love you—that is not a unique thing. You love me—that is the miracle. And because of a distorted idea of duty, our lives must go to wreck. Don't you see the situation is ludicrous—intolerable? You are trying to live a medieval life in a day of wireless telegraph ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... as trust. In the old Gothic language it was one of the words used for a covenant or treaty. In medieval Latin it was a pledge given that an agreement would be kept. It is a fine turn of a word that uses the very spirit of confidence in one's heart in another as the name for the appointment made with him. The trust in the heart gives the name to the appointment. It's an appointment with one who ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... irritation? Do not the same exercises occur in thousands of pieces but in such connection that the mind is interested? Is it necessary for the advanced pianist to punish himself with a kind of mental and physical penance more trying, perhaps, than the devices of the medieval ascetics or the oriental priests of to-day? No, technic is the Juggernaut which has ground to pieces more musicians than one can imagine. It produces a stiff, wooden touch and has a tendency to induce the pianist to believe that the art of pianoforte playing depends upon the continuance of technical ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... cities in Belgium of medieval loveliness, where the evening light lay in deep purple on canals seeping at foundations of castle and church, with the sacred towers tall in the sky, and a moon just over them, and ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... bushfighting[obs3]. free fight, stand up fight, hand to hand, running fight. conflict, skirmish; rencounter[obs3], encounter; rencontre[obs3], collision, affair, brush, fight; battle, battle royal; combat, action, engagement, joust, tournament; tilt, tilting [medieval times]; tournay[obs3], list; pitched battle. death struggle, struggle for life or death, life or death struggle, Armageddon[obs3]. hard knocks, sharp contest, tug of war. naval engagement, naumachia[obs3], sea fight. duel, duello[It]; single combat, monomachy[obs3], satisfaction, passage ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... such cases as the foregoing, we find the medieval writers report likely instances of terata, as, for instance, Rhodiginus, who speaks of a monster in Italy with two heads and two bodies; Lycosthenes saw a double monster, both components of which slept at the same time; he also says this creature ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... most curious traits of human nature, and Mr. Gryce would undoubtedly have expended a few cynical thoughts upon it if, upon entering the broad front corridor which he had hitherto avoided, he had not run upon Sweetwater pointing in a meaning way toward two huge cases which, stacked with medieval arms, occupied one of ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... These struggles [Platitude—but push on] fill the pages of history. History records the gradual triumph of the serf over the lord, the slave over the master. The master has continually tried to usurp unlimited powers. Power during the medieval ages accrued to the owner of the land with a spear and a strong castle; but the strong castle and spear were of little avail after the discovery of gunpowder. Gunpowder was the greatest boon ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and witnesses to it. The vague emotions aroused by the architectural forms are pointed and enriched by this spirit: the vastness, seclusion, magnificence, mystery, and aspiration of the Gothic cathedral become associated with the life of the medieval Catholic church; the fine balance, clarity, and simplicity of the Greek temple with the best in Greek culture. This interpretation of a building in terms of its purpose and history is necessary to ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... perceive that American enterprise and administration have transformed Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, from a medieval into a modern city. Its newly constructed streets and pavements, water-works and drainage, electricity and the trolley, have turned this old and dilapidated Spanish town into a place of order and beauty. Its parks and gardens, its municipal ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... a lady leaning from an oriel window in a medieval tower, listening in the moonlight, with love in her eyes and attitude, to the music of a guitar, touched by a gallant knight below, who looked as Arthur Merlin would have looked had Arthur Merlin ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... and fitted to it the sublime stanzas of his song. Lyon, a noted Jewish musician and vocalist, was chorister of this London Synagogue during the latter part of the 18th century and the Yigdal was a portion of the Hebrew Liturgy composed in medieval times, it is said, by Daniel Ben Judah. The fact that the Methodist leaders took Olivers from his bench to be one of their preachers answers any suggestion that the converted shoemaker copied the Jewish hymn ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... light blond strips of side-whiskers, a dress-coat shiny with age-, and rosettes on his noiseless shoes, led him up two flights to a room furnished neatly and patriarchally, whose window opened up in the twilight a picturesque and medieval prospect of courts, gables, and the bizarre masses of the church near which the hotel stood. Tonio Kroeger stood awhile at this window; then he seated himself with folded arms on the rambling sofa, drew his eyebrows ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with unfeigned regret that I found my fortnight over. I would gladly have lingered in the medieval cloisters of the Gin Palace, and sat for many mornings under the pistachio trees on the terrace sipping my verre of native wine. But duties recalled me to the beaten paths of travel, and once more I drove in the old-fashioned ambulance to catch ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... dream, Miss Lady followed Decherd to the entrance, near which stood a carriage in the narrow little street. She scarcely looked at his face, and did not note his hurried words to the driver. Silent and distraught, she took no note of their direction as the wheels rattled over the rude flags of the medieval passageway. The carriage turned corner after corner in its jolting progress, and finally trundled smoothly for a time, but Miss Lady, hoping only that this journey might soon end, scarce noticed where it had ended. She saw only that it was not at the gate of Madame Delchasse's house, and, startled ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... magniloquent, maladroit, malfeasance, malignity, malleable, mandate, matutinal, medieval, mephitic, mercenary, mercurial, meretricious, metamorphose, meticulous, microcosm, misanthropic, misogyny, misprision, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a town of Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Siena, 55 m. S.E. by rail from the town of Siena, and 26 m. N.N.W. of Orvieto. Pop. (1901) 6011. It is situated on a hill 1305 ft. above sea-level, and is surrounded by medieval walls, in which, in places, fragments of the Etruscan wall are incorporated. The cathedral of S. Mustiola is a basilica with a nave and two aisles, with eighteen columns of different kinds of marble, from ancient buildings. It has been restored and decorated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... with the aid of a pocketlite, and made a notation. The scene and the martial music faded out, to be replaced by stock footage from medieval epics: Peter the Hermit exhorting knights to smite the Saracen, the clash of Mediterranean men o' war, chivalric pageantry featuring ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... be considered either as a street of palaces—and in this respect not to be surpassed by any street in medieval Europe, not even Venice—or a street full of associations, connected chiefly with retail trade, taverns, shops, ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... the country side. In Inverkeithing, a Catholic priest gathered all the young girls of the village and made them dance around a statue of Priapus. He himself led the dance, carrying a large wooden image of the phallus, and excited these medieval bacchantes to licentious movements and actions by his own actions ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... megalithic monument? Strictly speaking, it is a building made of very large stones. This definition would, of course, include numbers of buildings of the present day and of the medieval and classical periods, while many of the Egyptian pyramids and temples would at once suggest themselves as excellent examples of this type of building. The archaeologist, however, uses the term in a much more limited sense. He confines it to a series of tombs and buildings constructed in ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... The medieval writer who declared women to be "capable of disturbing the air and exciting tempests" was not indulging a mere quip at the expense of that limited storm area, his own domestic circle. He expressed ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... liberalism on Luther and his theology, Delk wrote in the Lutheran Church Work and Observer of November 1, 1917: "We see now in the light of a fuller history of the man [Luther] that he was a child of his age and carried over into his Protestant thinking traits of medieval thinking.... Luther was not the end, but the beginning of new advances in the political and religious ideals of the world.... We are separated by a millennium of thought from the critical thought-standpoint ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... School of Dentistry at Fortieth and Spruce is a surprising place. Its grotesque gargoyles, showing (with true medieval humour) the sufferings of tooth patients, are the first thing one notices. Then one finds the museum, in which is housed Doctor Thomas W. Evans's collection of paintings and curios brought back from France. Unfortunately there seems to be no catalogue ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... that the verses were made to scan, aided by the advice of my friend Mr. Vernon Rendall, who is not responsible for the few doubtful lines I have conserved. This poem is at the base of all other treatises on the subject in medieval times, but I am unable to indicate ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... Inquisition,—the terrible symbol of the Holy Office. "It did not belong to me," he says, "but to one of our brethren who had left it by accident among my effects." He seems always prepared in some way to meet any possible emergency. No humble and timid monk this: he has the frame and temper of those medieval abbots who could don with equal indifference the helmet or the cowl. He is apparently even more of a soldier than a priest. When English corsairs attempt a descent on the Martinique coast at Sainte-Marie they find Pre Labat waiting for them with all the negroes ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that "Plinie saieth" with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common (vulgaris) Wild Loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with terminal clusters of good-sized, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... derived their plans and their finish from medieval English tradition. They were forced to utilize such materials as they were able to obtain, and step by step they bettered the construction and ornamentation of their homes. As increasing means and added material allowed, they planned and executed more elaborately, not only in size ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... have been brought to imitate the reckless medieval cavaliers. The example of Leonidas at Thermopyle was more commended than imitated. Outside of Sparta at least, few Greeks would have hesitated to flee from a battlefield, when the day (despite their proper exertions) had ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... domiciliary genius of the past. It is cruelly complete; its bended beams and joists, beneath the burden of its gables, seem to ache and groan with memories and regrets. The short, low windows, where lead and glass combine in equal proportions to hint to the wondering stranger of the medieval gloom within, still prefer their darksome office to the grace ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... I had a personal revelation from God Himself." The Fairie Queen was "the first poem I ever read," he says, and the bosky glades of Elmwood were often transformed into an enchanted forest where the Knight of the Red Cross, and Una and others in medieval costume passed up and down before his wondering eyes. This medieval romanticism was a perfectly natural accompaniment of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... conditions, offered to relieve the State of the entire burden. Two results followed—first, all grievances vanished; and secondly, the whole pauper population of England within ten years was Catholic in sympathies. And yet all this is only a reversion to medieval times—a reversion made absolutely necessary by the failure of every attempt to ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... rocking perceptibly on the uneven roadbed. It rounded the curve, the tail of the train flicked around, and it shot at full speed straight for the mouth of the pass. How could one man stop it? How could five men attack it after it was stopped? It was like trying to storm a medieval fortress with ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... presents a new theory of the origin of the poem. The notes are especially interesting because of the large body of quotations cited for literary comparison and for the light they throw on Old Germanic and medieval customs. ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... consisted of the vocal agitation serving between people who meet in drawing-rooms as the solvent of social disparities, the medium of transitions; but her appearance was—what shall I call it?—medieval. She was pale and angular, her long thin face was inhabited by sad dark eyes and her black hair intertwined with golden fillets and curious clasps. She wore a faded velvet robe which clung to her when she moved and was "cut," as to the neck and sleeves, like the garments of ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... crowned like an empress in some medieval palace, Stood the third in her place, with glances of sun-lighted splendour; Stately her height and tall as a queen in some antique story, With sheaves about her feet, and the tribute which nations render To her as the lady ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... mounds of debris are relieved in places by woodlands, an appearance of a hilly country is presented where the pit mounds have been planted with fir trees. Apart from its mining aspect, Mons is a city of historic importance. It contains a Gothic cathedral and town hall of medieval architectural note. It also, cherishes a special yearly fete of its own on Trinity Sunday, when in the parade of the Limacon, or snail, the spectacle of St. George and the Dragon is presented. With great pride the citizens of Mons showed the British ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... and myths concerning subterranean fires grew up the enormously important beliefs in Hell and Purgatory, which attained such abnormal proportions in medieval times, and which are by no means yet extinct. The most vivid picture of Hell, founded largely on ancient material, though with a Biblical basis, is found in Milton. In language which recalls the Titanomachy, the poet tells of Satan and his myrmidons ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... to pass right through the house on their way. A flash of his torch had shown him that the walls of the hall were decorated with all manner of armour, ancient swords of Eastern handiwork, barbaric weapons from central Africa, savage implements of medieval warfare; and an idea came to him. He took down a huge battle-axe and ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... I compared my lot with that of the medieval soldier who had done his fighting over these ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... Woman" Information Wanted Some Learned Fables, For Good Old Boys And Girls My Late Senatorial Secretaryship A Fashion Item Riley-Newspaper Correspondent A Fine Old Man Science Vs. Luck The Late Benjamin Franklin Mr. Bloke's Item A Medieval Romance Petition Concerning Copyright After-Dinner Speech Lionizing Murderers A New Crime A Curious Dream A True Story The Siamese Twins Speech At The Scottish Banquet In London A Ghost Story The Capitoline Venus Speech On Accident Insurance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or two other great figures of medieval times, of leprosy, after having founded the city of Santa Aguda in 1572. He left behind him a will in which he requested that no extravagant monument should be erected over his grave—a rather superfluous request as it turned out, since he also left debts to the value of 60,000 ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... thirty fixed in the face of a child. What else the Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He felt his inmost secrets plucked from him—his whole soul laid bare—his vanity, belligerency, gallantry—even his medieval chivalry, penetrated, and yet illuminated, in that single glance. And when the eyelids fell again, he felt that a greater part of himself had ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... alarm at a species of burlesque which is likely to render their compositions no better than a dissolving view, where every noble form is seen melting into its preposterous caricature. It used to be imagined of the unhappy medieval Jews that they parodied Calvary by crucifying dogs; if they had been guilty they would at least have had the excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecution. Are we on the way to a parody which shall have ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... world in the struggle against the surviving systems of medieval barbarism in Europe that have been permitted to exist under the veneer of civilization. She sees clearly what she has to destroy. So do we. No American and Englishman can meet but that they grip hands and thank God together that they are comrades in this Holy War. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... guidance and let him not stray into the paths of the rejected!' Altogether, something in Sheykh Yussuf reminds me of Worsley: there is the same look of Seelen reinheit, with far less thought and intelligence; indeed little thought, of course, and an additional childlike innocence. I suppose some medieval monks may have had the same look, but no Catholic I have ever seen looks so peaceful or so unpretending. I see in him, like in all people who don't know what doubt means, that easy familiarity with religion. I hear him joke with Omar about Ramadan, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... a pleasant suggestion of the cordial relation between the lord of the manor of the Middle Ages and his tenants and dependents, in this procession of the Yule log up to the great house. And Mr. Wedmore, full of his fancy for the grand old medieval Christmas festivities, hugged to his heart the thought of holding such revels as should make Christmas at The Beeches an ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... how an extensive publisher, speaking of the rapid strides which literature had made of late years, and referring to a certain old public library, celebrated for its affluence in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated how he had himself freighted for exportation, within the past month, as many books as that whole library consisted of. This was likely enough to be true, but the two collections were very different ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... ancient and medieval China has also been entirely changed since it has been realized that the sources on which reliance has always been placed were not objective, but deliberately and emphatically represented a particular philosophy. The reports on the emperors ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... had not thought of, before. It gave him an ugly start. He was still thinking about it as he turned into the side hall to the History Department offices and entered the cubicle he shared with a colleague. The colleague, old Pottgeiter, Medieval History, was emerging in a rush; short, rotund, gray-bearded, his arms full of books and papers, oblivious, as usual, to anything that had happened since the Battle of Bosworth or the Fall of Constantinople. Chalmers stepped quickly out of his way and entered behind him. Marjorie Fenner, the ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... two would almost be considered exceptional. Yet, this requires considerable skill as the Icelanders are the only nation that has preserved the ancient common Germanic alliteration (found in all Germanic poetry till late medieval times). We frequently find this device accompanied by highly complicated rhyme schemes. Despite this rather rigid form, restrictive perhaps, yet disciplinary in its effect, exquisite poetry has nevertheless been produced. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... of the scene, whatever they may be, put before us, and are more or less offended when we find a composition which we consider to be unreal even within its own covenanted limitations. The fault, however, rests greatly with ourselves, in forgetting that it must be the ideal of medieval Italians and not our own that we should look for, and that their ideas concerning the chief actors in the sacred dramas were not as ours are. For us, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] view of history has been gathered to its fathers, and [Greek ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... patron saints of cities should mould the temper of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous, is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral porch, so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted in fresco over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour gleams with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in the Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry struck any root, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... no affectation, least of all the kind that pretends to be ignorant of one's own popularity; but surely he cared little for popularity. Here again he puts us in mind of a medieval poem. In Gilbert de Metz, one of our oldest epics, the daughter of Anseis is described seated at the window, "fresh, slim, and white as a lily" when two knights, Garin and his cousin Gilbert, happen to ride near. "Look up, cousin ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... had evidently lost his way. For the last half hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieval dream. Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the steamship that carried him hither; and the accents of his own tongue, the idioms of his own people, and the sympathetic community of New ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the figure on the walls and ceiling produces an effect of richness in spite of the modern whitewash with which, if I remember rightly, they have been endued. The little streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill and are full of charming pictorial "bits:" an old town-gate, passing under a medieval tower, which is ornamented by Gothic windows and the empty niches of statues; a meagre but delicate hotel de ville of the Renaissance nestling close beside it; a curious chancellerie of the middle of the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... not let us have anything to do with them. I wanted poor dear Mr Sharnall not to go meddling with them, and now see what has happened. Perhaps it is a judgment"—and she uttered the word under her breath, having a medieval faith in the vengeful irritability of Providence, and seeing manifestations of it in any untoward event, from the overturning of an inkstand to the death of a lodger. "Perhaps it is a judgment, and he might have been alive now if he had refrained. What good would it do us if all dear ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... movements is not less than to the study of history. Does anybody pretend that we can understand Christianity without taking into account the Roman Empire; or that we can understand Catholicism without knowing something of the economic life of medieval Europe; or Methodism without knowing the social condition of England ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... must be careful of one predicament. I have studied the regulations about being admitted to the English Bar. They are very quaint and medieval or early Georgian. You mayn't be a Chartered Accountant or Actuary—the Lord alone knows why! I suppose some Lord Chancellor was done in the eye in Elizabeth's reign by an actuary and laid down that law. Equally you mayn't be a clergyman. As to that we needn't distress ourselves. It's rather ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... of his men, and the party of five began the difficult ascent of the cliffs, while far above them a little brown man with beady, black eyes set in narrow fleshy slits watched them from behind a clump of bushes. Strange, medieval armor and two wicked-looking swords gave him a most warlike appearance. His temples were shaved, and a broad strip on the top of his head to just beyond the crown. His remaining hair was drawn into an unbraided queue, tied tightly at the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... curtained recesses of dark-timbered halls whiled away the white hours of winter by the painful spelling out of runic characters and the practice of arts which they were destined to convey from the priests of Odin and Thor to the witches of medieval days. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... gloating over its prey. Sir Andrew nearly betrayed himself then. He had to dig his nails into his own flesh to prevent himself from springing then and there at the throat of that wretch whose monstrous ingenuity had invented torture for the fallen enemy far worse than any that the cruelties of medieval ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... said Mr. Malcolm; "but there are fashions everywhere. There was once a spouting club, perhaps it is in favour still; before it was the music-room. Once geology was all the rage; now it is theology; soon it will be architecture, or medieval antiquities, or editions and codices. Each wears out in its turn; all depends on one or two active men; but the secretary takes a wife, or the professor gets a stall; and then the meetings are called irregularly, and nothing ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Irish Breasail, was another name for land west of Ireland—where there is none short of America—on very many medieval maps, of which perhaps a dozen are older than the year 1400, the earliest yet found being that of Dalorto, 1325. Usually it appears as a nearly circular disc of land opposite Munster, at first altogether too ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... medieval belief that there were only four elements—fire, earth, air, and water—was widely accepted until about 1500 AD when the current atomic ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... elusive, untraceable Portia Person. They all searched ardently for him. They all knew that when they "made good" they would have to find some fellow who hadn't and help him. Already Octavia's motto was lettered under her lovely portrait over the drawing-room fireplace in the charming simulation of medieval script that the Poetry Girl loved ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden masses of castellated medieval ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him, at the faces of the women present. He scarcely knew any of them. Was she among them—the lady of Barron's tale? He thought of the story as he might have thought of the plot of a novel. When medieval charters were not to be had, it made an interesting subject of speculation. And Barron could not have confided it to any one in the diocese, so discreet—so absolutely ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... calculated to make it forget the truths which the preacher has declared; but more like the hymns and anthems of the son of Jesse, when sung by the whole synagogue, making the vaulted roof and lofty pillars of the Medieval church re-echo the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the portrait of a lady with soft, gray hair, and the expression of purity and love which medieval painters gave to their saints. It was a picture of Thorne's mother and it hurt him to see it there. He determined to have it removed ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... in ancient Egypt—had the historians ever seen a culture like it. It was an absolute monarchy that would have made any Medieval king except the most saintly look upon it in awe and envy. The Russians and the Germans never even approached it. The Japanese tried to approximate it at one time in ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... season, the excellent abbess and the nuns of Port Royal found a refuge. Some forty years ago, it came into the hands of M. Sommerard, a man devoted to antiquarian pursuits, and here he expended a large property in forming a vast collection of all sorts of relics he could gather belonging to the medieval ages. A few years ago, he died, and then the government wisely purchased the hotel and its unrivalled museum for half a million of francs; and additions are constantly made to it of every curiosity that can illustrate the habits and manners of the early history of France and Europe. The building ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... has been preserved at Bainbridge. It takes place at ten o'clock every night between Holy Rood (September 27) and Shrovetide, but somehow the reason for the observance has been forgotten. The medieval regulations as to the carrying of horns by foresters and those who passed through forests would undoubtedly associate the custom with early times, and this happy old village certainly gains our respect ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... monochrome which never could be forgotten—a long sierra of broken pinnacles and crags which had all the semblance of a weathered and dismantled castle. It stood out against the tender blue of the morning sky like the ancient stronghold of some grisly robber-baron of medieval days; towers of dark sublimity, battlements whence invaders might have been hurled a thousand feet to death, slender minarets, escarpments and rugged casements through which fleecy clouds peeped from the high horizon. I once saw along the Mediterranean in Italy or France the fastness ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... cleanly cut beauty, but an ugly headed monster with a savagely hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval baron in full panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to uphold the unarmored giant who ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... with a rude plainness of speech which made sorely necessary his proverbial patience under such harangues. "Our king," says Walter Map, "whose power all the world fears, ... does not presume to be haughty, nor speak with a proud tongue, nor exalt himself over any man." The feudal barons of medieval times had, indeed, few of the qualities that made the courtiers of later days, and Henry, violent as he was, could bear much rough counsel and plain reproof. No flatterer found favour at his court. His special friends were men of learning or of saintly life. Eager and eloquent in talk, ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... barbarian scheme, falls wholly on the hither side of this line. What falls within the range of economics falls below the proper level of solicitude of the priesthood in its best estate. Such apparent exceptions to this rule as are afforded, for instance, by some of the medieval orders of monks (the members of which actually labored to some useful end), scarcely impugn the rule. These outlying orders of the priestly class are not a sacerdotal element in the full sense of the term. And ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of the valley. From the east the red orb began its attack; out of the west rode the swift-moving zephyrs, and, vanquished, the wavering vapor stole off into thin air, or hung in isolated wreaths above the foliage on the hillside. Soon the conquering light brightly illumined a medieval castle commanding the surrounding country; the victorious breeze whispered loudly at its gloomy casements. A great Norman structure, somber, austere, it was, however brightened with many modern features that threatened gradually to sap ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... is also found in the Liber de Donis of Etienne de Bourbon (No. 246), a Dominican monk of the 14th century; in the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard, and several other medieval monkish collections of exempla, or stories designed for the use of preachers: in these the explanation is that nothing can be better and nothing ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston |
