"Old Italian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Richard Bagot's new novel is laid partly in England and partly in Italy. The story turns upon the double life led by a wealthy English landowner in consequence of the abduction in his more youthful days of the daughter of an old Italian house at a period when he had no prospect of succeeding to the position he subsequently attained. Incidentally, the novel deals with certain phases of Italian Spiritualism, and Mr. Bagot's readers will again resume their acquaintance with some ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Strad—dated 1722. I bought it of Willy Burmester in London. You see he did not care much for it. The German style of playing is not calculated to bring out the tone beauty, the quality of the old Italian fiddles. I think Burmester had forced the tone, and it took me some time to make it mellow and truly responsive again, but now...." Mr. Elman beamed. It was evident he was satisfied with his instrument. "As to strings," he continued, "I never use ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... Salt fish and fresh-water fish are what you get, and except the trout it is not interesting. A great deal of carp is eaten, cooked with vinegar to turn it blue, and served with horseradish or wine sauce. At a dinner party I have seen tench given, and they were extremely pretty, like fish in old Italian pictures, but they were not worth eating. At least a pound of fresh butter was put on each dish of them, handed round, and you took some of it as well as a sort of mustard sauce. Perch, pike, and eel ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... people probably crowded down on the docks, some of them sad and sorrowful, some of them restless and curious. Their fathers and brothers and sons and acquaintances were going—no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy old Italian sailor who thought there was land to be found somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place. They all knew he was wrong. They were certain that nothing but dreadful goblins and horrible monsters lived off there to the West, just waiting to devour or ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... conferred by Rome on her citizens. Men coming from all countries, without exception of race, were, so to speak, made partners of the Empire and collaborated in the grandeur of the Roman scheme. If the Proconsul who then occupied the Byrsa palace, the celebrated Symmachus, belonged to an old Italian family, he whom he represented, the Emperor Valentinian, was the son of a Pannonian soldier. The Count Theodosius, the general who suppressed the insurrection of Firmus in Mauretania, was a Spaniard, and the army he led into Africa was made up, for the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... pain was behind her heart. Like the painted billows of music that the old Italian masters loved to do, there wound and wreathed about ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... up and down took her into her sleeping-chamber, and there she lit a candle and looked at herself in the old Italian mirror. A little woe-begone creature gazed sorrowfully back at her from its shining surface, with brimming eyes and quivering lips, and hair all tossed loosely away from a small sad face as ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... had a trim wildness like nature in an old Italian picture; dappled fallow deer grouped close at hand and looked at the two men fearlessly; the path dropped through oak trees and some stunted bracken to a little loitering stream, that paused ever and again ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... hour is reckoned, according to the old Italian fashion, from sunset of one day to sunset ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... was established by her appearance at Covent Garden in 1847, and she had brilliant success all over Europe in the leading operatic roles; in 1853 she repeated these triumphs in the United States. Indeed, with the exception of Malibran, she had no compeer among the contraltos of the century, the old Italian school of singing finding in her a really great representative. She married first Count A. Pepoh, who died in 1866, and secondly (1877) a French officer, M. Zieger; she lived in Paris after her first marriage, and died at Ville d'Avray in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lacking in originality and initiative; and when they would represent mythology, they engendered an apotheosis of nakedness. His conclusion was that "there is something forced, if not feigned, in our taste for pictures of the old Italian school." Of the profane subjects, he instances the Fornarina, "with a deep bright glow on her face, naked below the waist, and well pleased to be so, for the sake of your admiration—ready for any extent of nudity, for love ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... neighborly fashion, they brought many joys to the people about them. Some of these were quite by chance, as once when an old Italian woman cried with pleasure over a bunch of red roses that she saw at a reception Miss Addams gave. She was surprised, she said, that they had been "brought so fresh all the way from Italy." No one could make her believe they had been grown in Chicago. She had lived there six years ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... to give twenty-five cents to an old Italian organ grinder, and worked him into her theme as she went on. Why should he look so grateful for her casual charity, he, seventy years old, Katrina and Mary averaging ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... at the piano and played a few tender chords and sang an old Italian song which somebody had left at their ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... old man began bowing himself out, when the Professor, winking mysteriously at Mrs. Frey and gesticulating animatedly, pointed first to the old Italian and then to Madame Coraline's vacant chair. Everybody understood, and smiling faces had already shown approval when Mrs. Frey said, quietly, "Let's put it to vote. All ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... probable because it's prosaic. It turns something romantic and legendary into something recent and ordinary. And that somehow makes it sound rational, though it is unsupported by reason. Of course some people would have the sense to remember having seen St. George in old Italian pictures and French romances, but a good many wouldn't think about it at all. They would just swallow the skepticism because it was skepticism. Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... deed of gift from Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse. It was renouncing, in fact, if not in law, the practical independence of the papacy to thus place it in the midst of the dominions and under the very thumb of the King of France. "I know the Gaseous," said the old Italian Cardinal Matthew Rosso, dean of the Sacred College, when he heard of this resolution; "it will be long ere the Church comes back to Italy." And, indeed, it was not until sixty years afterwards, under Pope Gregory XI., that Italy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on parallels to be found in the works of earlier poets. In many cases Tennyson deliberately reproduced passages from Greek, Latin, and old Italian writers, just as Virgil did in the case of Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, and others. There are, doubtless, instances in which a phrase is unconsciously reproduced by automatic memory, from an English poet. But I am less inclined than Mr Bradley to think that unconscious reminiscence ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... which stood in a corner of the apartment. It was an antique piece of furniture, made of some dark oriental wood, carved over with fantastic figures from Etruscan designs by the cunning hand of an old Italian workman, who knew well how to make secret drawers and invisible concealments for ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... be as well to explain to the reader the weights which are used in the silk trade. The weight of silk is estimated by deniers, an old Italian weight, of which twenty-four are equal to an ounce, used only in the silk trade, in the same manner as the weight called a carat is employed by those who deal in diamonds, and other precious stones. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... facts about them. Yet the romanticists are antinomian, too, sometimes, because the love of energy and beauty, of distinction in passion, tended naturally to become a little bizarre, plunging into the [255] Middle Age, into the secrets of old Italian story. Are we in the Inferno?—we are tempted to ask, wondering at something malign in so much beauty. For over all a care for the refreshment of the human spirit by fine art manifests itself, a predominant ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... is willing to become a grammarian, an old fellow sends her for her gracious acceptance these books tending to that purpose." I was made rich, indeed, by this generous donation, for there were a ponderous Latin Dictionary in Landor's handwriting, a curious old Italian and French Dictionary of 1692,—published at Paris, "per uso del Serenissimo Delfino,"—a Greek Grammar, and a delightfully rare and musty old Latin Grammar by Emmanuel Alvarus, the Jesuit, carefully annotated by Landor. Then, too, there was a valuable edition, in two volumes, of Annibal Caro's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... insignia; the carvings of Gibbons, in old English manor-houses, outrival all the luxurious charms of modern upholstery; Phidias is a more familiar element in Grecian history than Pericles; the moral energy of the old Italian republics is more impressively shadowed forth and conserved in the bold and vigorous creations of Michel Angelo than in the political annals of Macchiavelli; and it is the massive, uncouth sculptures, half-buried ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... cliff-coast was rounded, to catch the first glimpse of the low isles; and there came by a country boat-load of the peasants, and in the bows, as it neared and passed, I saw a dark, black-haired boy, bare breast, and dreaming eyes, motionless save for the dipping prow—a figure out of old Italian pictures, some young St. John, inexpressibly beautiful. I have forgotten how the isles of the Sirens looked, but that boy's face I shall never forget. It is such moments that give the Italy of the imagination its charm. Here, too, I have similar experiences. A day or two ago, when the bright weather ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa piu, meno sa—'Who ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... stools lengthwise on the floor, and squat along the sides. Bella, who'd worked in Detroit for seven dollars a day (her figures), a husky good-looking person; Rosie, the prettiest little sixteen-year-old Italian girl; and I. Such conversations! One day they unearthed Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit and redid their past, present, and probable future. We discussed whether Olive Thomas had really committed suicide or died of an overdose of something. How many nights a week could a girl dance ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Spelling-Book its legible; which Quality the Greek wants: And since the Introduction of Operas into this Nation, the Ladies are so charmed with Sounds abstracted from their Ideas, that they adore and honour the Sound of Latin as it is old Italian. I am a Sollicitor for the Fair Sex, and therefore think my self in that Character more likely to be prevalent in this Request, than if I should subscribe myself by ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... foreign education in these perilous times. As a student of political economy in 1592 he led a precarious existence, visiting Rome with the greatest secrecy, and in elaborate disguise. For years abroad he drank in tales of subtlety and craft from old Italian courtiers, till he was well able to hold his own in intrigue. By nature imaginative and ingenious, plots and counterplots appealed to his artistic ability, and as English Ambassador to Venice, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... she went to London, Giulio?" asked young Henfrey of the old Italian, after he had described to Brock exactly ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... that led to the library was winding, sweeping by the lofty staircase, and terminating in a kind of picture gallery. Some of these were relics of the old Italian masters, and their dark, rich coloring came out in the lamp light with gloomy splendor. I had seen them a hundred times, but never had they impressed me with such lurid grandeur as now. One by one, the dark lines started ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... people do say it is striking.' And he was drawn into describing the old Italian mansion, purchased on the extinction of an ancient family of nobles, perched up on the side of a mountain, whose feet the sea laved, with a terrace whence there was a splendid view of the Gulf of Genoa, and fine slopes above and below ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... endless vista of town and road and church-spire stretching away into the distance. She had never heard of that school of artists that painted the classic landscapes, but she belonged to them as surely as any of the old Italian masters. She was now drawing Mrs. Jarvis in a trained gown standing on the steps of the castle, while Elizabeth Joan of Arc Jarvis Gordon, blowing a bugle, came riding down a perpendicular mountain-path on a stiff-legged steed. Rosie had just housecleaned her ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... thing," and I assented mentally. It was extraordinary. The chain was never put up, but Therese was a thorough sort of person, and on this night she had put it up to keep no one out except myself. It was the old Italian and his daughters returning from the ball who ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... her husband's absence, with a brother Did often use to comfort one another, Till wide-mouthed Crop, who is an old Italian, Took his mare nappy, and surprised her stallion, Who, steal of entertainment from his mistress, Did meet a cudgelling not matched ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... or cheer her. Yet he could not see anything went wrong that depended on her. His comforts were so cared for, that he was often sorry she should have troubled herself about them; and though he could have little of her company, he never was allowed to feel himself deserted. Anne, Arnaud, the old Italian nurse, or Amy herself, were easily summoned, and gave ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... walls of the room contained what is usually there, the enlarged photograph, the coloured photograph, the amateur theatrical group, the group of His Excellency's Executive Council, the native dignitary with a diamond-tipped aigrette in the front of his turban. The copy in oils of some old Italian landscape, very black and yellow, also held its invariable place, and above it, very near the ceiling, a line of canvases which, had I not been led past them to inspect our ruler and his family, who sat transfixed ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... indisputable advantages to be gained by turning a suppressed religious house into a modern hotel, so a cunning old Italian inn-keeper once confided to us; that is, of course, provided one is not afraid of the proverbial curse that clings to the buying of any of the Church's sequestrated property. These three things are good air, good ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Servites. Here he did the allegory of Justice and the Sermon of S. John in monochrome. In these he took a fancy to retrograde his style, for they have the rugged force and angular form that recalls the more stern old Italian masters, or that Titan ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... opening on the garden. Green plush chairs stood against the wall; there was a heavy carved book-case, with glass doors, and a general impression of faded sofa covers, large spaces of pale green, and baskets with pieces of wool-work dropping out of them. Photographs from old Italian masterpieces hung on the walls, and views of Venetian bridges and Swedish waterfalls which members of the family had seen years ago. There were also one or two portraits of fathers and grandmothers, and an engraving of John Stuart Mill, after the picture by Watts. It was a room without definite ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... country people shows the influence of Turkish and Oriental relations, and suggests the possibility of many figures in Old Italian pictures being painted from Dalmatian models. The men are generally blonde, and wear great moustaches. They are fond of bright colours, and wear light-blue tight cloth hose, red-and-green stockings, the usual shoes, a broad red-leather girdle, which used ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... aright! I am not well: there is no hiding it. But tell her I would see her at her leisure— That is, at once! here in the library! The passage in that old Italian book We hunted for so long is found, say, found— And if I let it slip again... you see, That ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... Heights, the grimy laborer from the Potrero and the little newsboy with the badge of his profession slung over his shoulder. Flushed with excitement, the courted debutante drew back to give her place to a tired factory girl and close to the platform an old Italian, who had tramped all the way from Telegraph Hill, patiently waited to hear the sweet voice of his country woman. 'Tetrazzini is here,' they said to one another; Tetrazzini, who had been discovered and adored by the people of San Francisco ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... to their source. Their inventors can at least have no lack of imagination. The fact is, that there is unquestionably something strange and mysterious about the old man—but what does it amount to after all? He is an old Italian marquis, his foreign manners and appearance, and imposing title, work upon the imagination of us northerns, and at once make us suspect an adventurer in this worthy old nobleman. The mere presence of Natalie (that is his daughter's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Susanna Torrebianca. Is n't that a romantic name? A lady like the heroine of some splendid old Italian story,—like Pompilia, like Francesca,—like Kate the Queen, when her maiden was binding her tresses. Young, and dark, and beautiful, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... At Florence, where they arrived early in November, they met Fred Stowe and his friend, Samuel Scoville, and here they were also joined by their Brooklyn friends, the Howards. Thus it was a large and thoroughly congenial party that settled down in the old Italian city to spend the winter. From here Mrs. Stowe wrote weekly letters to her husband in Andover, and among them are the following, that not only throw light upon their mode of life, but illustrate a marked ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Innamorato,"—both of which are preserved to us. A later composer in the same field was Barbara Strozzi, whose opera, "Diporti d'Euterpe," was successfully received at Venice in 1659. In Ricordi's modern collection of old Italian songs are some charming examples of her ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... in the development of a soul: little else is worth study." Undoubtedly the history of a soul is central in the poem; but the drawings of Italian landscape, so sure in outline, so vivid in colour; the views of old Italian city life, rich in the tumult of townsfolk, military chieftains, men-at-arms; the pictures of sombre interiors, and southern gardens, the hillside castle amid its vines, the court of love with its contending minstrels, the midnight camp lit by its fires; and, added to these, the Titianesque ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... without receiving pay, and were subsisting, so to speak, without resources. The prudent Marquis of Pescara himself was for bringing on a battle, which was indispensable. "A hundred years in the field," said he, in the words of an old Italian proverb, "are better than one day of fighting, for one may lose in a doubtful melley what one was certain of winning by skilful manoeuvres; but when one can no longer keep the field, one must risk a battle, so as not to give the enemy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... very skies that smiled so sweetly over her,—amid the bloom of lemon and citron, and the perfume of jasmine and rose, the gentlest of old Italian souls had dreamed and wondered what might be the unknown future of the dead, and, learning his lesson from the glorious skies and gorgeous shores which witnessed how magnificent a Being had given existence to man, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... and especially Italian—all with a view of furthering his poetic ability: though no great reader, he has soaked himself in the atmosphere of old Italian tales, and the very spirit of mediaeval Florence breathes from the story, borrowed from Boccaccio, "an echo in the north-wind sung," which narrates how the hapless Isabelle bid away the head of her ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... of the circumstances and conditions, so different from those of our day, under which the old Italian art-workers of the palmy days of art lived and worked. We have read Vasari's naive gossiping, and have endeavored to picture to ourselves the life and surroundings of the craftsman of a time when the line which is now-a-days supposed to divide the artist from the artisan did not exist ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... back in the seventies. Old Man Bright was prospecting. He had come up from the foothills accompanied by a new but stolid Indian wife. After he had grubbed around a while on old Italian bar and had succeeded in washing out a little colour, she woke up and took a ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... dark walled and paved with silver. There was a lake with an island and a pavilion: Iona Island—too beautiful to pass as we did pass; a bridge over a steep rocky gorge, and a river-glimpse mysterious as the backgrounds of old Italian pictures. But we turned away from it into woods—deep forests of cedars fragrant as smoking incense, and at last—rather late because of side wanderings—we came to ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... it seemed almost intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all declamatory. She sang; and in her vocalization she showed the results of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been surpassed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times—as, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... cried Virginia. "The girls will love them so! I'm going to try to send some to Miss Wallace. She'll be in Chicago, so maybe they'll go safely that distance. She's always told me so much about that wonderful blue color in the old Italian pictures. She says that no one has been able to make exactly that shade since. I told her I just knew our mountain gentians were that blue, and I'd send her some. My! I wish she were coming, too! She's so lovely! I hope, when I grow to be ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... moon was in motion from the meri- dian; at which time an old Italian long ago would per- suade me that the greatest part of men died: but herein I confess I could never satisfy my curiosity; although from the time of tides in places upon or near the sea, there may be considerable deductions; and Pliny* hath an odd and remarkable ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... that the old Italian won her heart and even awakened something akin to affection before she had known him half an hour. There was a fascination in his admixture of childish simplicity and varied knowledge. None, indeed, could resist his gracious humor and old-world courtesies. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... more; she told me one day that one reason she liked sketching was, that looking into nature always made psalms and hymns sing in her ears, and so with her music and her beautiful copies from the old Italian devotional pictures. She says our papa taught her to look at them so as to see more than ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Rimane. The verb rimanere is constantly used by the old Italian writers in the sense of "to become," so that the proverb cited in the text may be read "The deceiver becometh (i.e. findeth himself in the end) at the feet (i.e. at the mercy) of the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... color is this story, so crowded with figures, it seems like a bit of old Italian wall painting, a piece of modern tapestry, rather than a modern fabric woven deftly from the threads of fact and fancy gathered up in this new and essentially practical country, and therein lies its distinctive value and ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... deluge of democratic mud, which swallows up so many beautiful and rare things, is likewise gradually engulfing that particular class of the old Italian nobility in which from generation to generation were kept alive certain family traditions of eminent culture, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... her knee, and she fell herself into thought as profound as her father's, but less gloomy. From her arrival in England, Violante had been taught a grateful interest in the name of Harley L'Estrange. Her father, preserving a silence that seemed disdain, of all his old Italian intimates, had been pleased to converse with open heart of the Englishman who had saved where countrymen had betrayed. He spoke of the soldier, then in the full bloom of youth, who, unconsoled by fame, had nursed the memory ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... is probably as old as music itself. It is in Bach, it was practised by the old Italian singers. Mikuli says that no matter how free Chopin was in his treatment of the right hand in melody or arabesque, the left kept strict time. Mozart and not Chopin it was who first said: "Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time." Halle, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... of the palace group becomes Old Italian, to harmonize with the Roman architecture of the Machinery Palace opposite. The portals suggest those of ancient Italian city walls. In the niches stands Albert Weinert's "Miner," here used because the Palace of Mines forms ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... masters who agree on every point, practical as well as theoretical. But this confusion of methods is only on the surface. All teachers draw the materials of their methods from the same sources. An outline of the history of Voice Culture, including the rise of the old Italian school and the development of Vocal Science, will render the present situation in the vocal ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... knew it, its interior was very plain, and rather bare. Lady Minto changed all this during her husband's Vice-royalty, and, with her wonderful taste, transformed it into a sort of Italian palace at a very small cost. She bought in Europe a few fine specimens of old Italian gilt furniture, and had them copied in Calcutta by native workmen. In the East, the Oriental point of view must be studied, and Easterns attach immense importance to external splendour. The throne-room at Calcutta, under Lady Minto's skilful treatment, became gorgeous enough for the most exacting ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow- traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses—both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly: notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... with bulky old Italian pieces of carved oak, not especially well selected, but suitable enough with one exception, a ponderous buffet, an exquisite bit of workmanship both in design and in detail but completely out of place in a room of that character. At least nine feet in length, it stood out four ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... table, and with it a flask of some old Italian wine, which looked to Dino as if it had come straight from the cellars of the monastery at San Stefano. "It is our wine," he said, with a smile. "It looks like ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... what eagerness I now scanned the house, with what minuteness I sought for a weak place. The longer I looked, however, the less comfort I derived from my inspection. I saw before me a gloomy stronghold of brick, four-square, and built in the old Italian manner, with battlements at the top, and a small machicolation, little more than a string-course, above each story; this serving at once to lessen the monotony of the dead-walls, and to add to the frowning weight of ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... for centuries at least—which opens on a wide terrace or balcony of white marble, extending right and left. From this a white marble stair lies straight in front of the window, and leads down to the garden. The balcony and staircase are quite ancient—of old Italian work, beautifully carved, and, of course, weather-worn through centuries. There is just that little tinging of green here and there which makes all outdoor marble so charming. It is hard to believe at times that it is a part of a fortified castle, it is so elegant and free and open. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... he could do was to procrastinate, he thought of the old Italian proverb, "Gain time, and you will pull through," and he determined to profit by the wisdom of it. Even procrastination would not be without difficulty. But something might be done in that way,- -some time might be gained. And then there was always that never- failing resource and consolation ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... each weighed and balanced the other, even as they talked aloud of the Academy School, and the pupils, and the dear old Professor whom they both loved. They discussed the prospect of its doors being opened the next winter. They talked of Mrs. Mulligan, and the old Italian who sold peanuts, and whose head Margaret had painted; and of Jack Bedford and Fred Stone—the dearest fellow in the world—and last year's pictures—especially Church's "Niagara," the sensation of the year, and Whittredge's "Mountain Brook," and every other ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that's a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very promising—favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other old masters—Andersen I'm pretty sure it is; he's going to half-sole some of our old Italian masterpieces. Been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... You're coming on Wednesday, aren't you, dear Mrs Ottley? Ah!'... She stopped and held up her small beaded fan, 'what's that the band's playing? I know it so well; everyone knows it; it's either Pagliacci or Boheme, or something. No, isn't it really? What is it? All the old Italian operas are coming in again, by the way, you know, my dear... Rigoletto, Lucia, Traviata—the bel canto—that sort of thing; there's nothing like it for showing off the voice. Wagner's practically gone out (at least what I call out), and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... with women at fifteen, yet remained sexually vigorous in old age, while he knew others who began intercourse late and were losing force at forty. Mantegazza, who knew a man who had intercourse fourteen times in one day, remarks that the stories of the old Italian novelists show that twelve times was regarded as a rare exception. Burchard, Alexander VI's secretary, states that the Florentine Ambassador's son, in Rome in 1489, "knew a girl seven times in one hour" (J. Burchard, Diarium, ed. Thuasne, vol. i, p. 329). Olivier, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... old Italian peasant woman, bowed beneath a bundle, who was the next he would have to confront, being out of the question, he resolved to side-step destiny by slipping out of the main path and following a branch one. Doing so, he came into less frequented regions, while his steps took him up a low hill ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... I spring from an old Italian family which has long been settled in Trieste. For many generations we have served in the Austrian Navy. With modern Italy, with the Italy above all which has thrown the Holy Father into captivity and stripped ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Florence on the 11th, and have been here these three days. Delightful old Italian town—but it lacks the charm ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... dolls. Heaven send her through French and Italian with better success than attended Mr. Caxton's lessons in Greek to Pisistratus! She has an ear for music which my mother, who is no bad judge, declares to be exquisite. Luckily there is an old Italian, settled in a town ten miles off, who is said to be an excellent music-master, and who comes the round of the neighboring squirearchy twice a week. I have taught her to draw,—an accomplishment in which I am not without skill,—and she has already ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was invariably addressed—looked exactly as though she had just stepped out of the early part of last century. She wore a gown of some soft, silky material, sprigged with heliotrope, and round her neck a fichu of cobwebby lace, fastened at the breast with a cameo brooch of old Italian workmanship. A coquettish little lace cap adorned the silver-grey hair, and the face beneath the cap was just what you would have expected to find it—soft and very gentle, its porcelain pink and white a little faded, the pretty old ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... old Italian ring. It was my great-grandmother's, first. It always goes to the wife of the eldest son. My Dad says it's supposed to mean love and marriage and—and everything—'the endless circle of creation,' he said, when I asked him what it meant, but first he just said, 'Give this to your ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... there. Under the cypresses lie three flat graves, two side by side, one across their feet, and over each lies a flat carved table of marble—rich carvings that once stretched under three heavy mullioned windows over the back doors of an old Italian palace. There are only initials on these tables, initials and the numerals of years, but they are not utterly unblest. Good Parson Elder read the most beautiful burial service in the world over them, broken by the tears of a trusty servant; the children and the children's ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... years ago one of the very few genuine Shakespeare signatures. Moreover, as Florio speaks of the Earl of Southampton as his steady patron, we may fairly presume that the great poet, who must have been constantly at Southampton's house, often met there the old Italian master. May not the bard in those conversations have perhaps gathered some hints for the details of Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and had his attention turned by the old scholar to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... holding it up to the light talked of what he would do with it. Sometimes he brought a violin and sitting in the open window tested the quality of its tone. One evening he took an hour of McGregor's time to talk of the varnish of Cremona and to read to him from a worn little book concerning the old Italian ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... words have apparently fallen by chance into that form and express nothing but a little negative praise of their subject, they say something more by implication. They conceal a mournful protest against the cruelty and injustice of his lot, and remind us of the old Italian folk-song, "O Barnaby, why did you die?" With plenty of wine in the house and salad in the garden, how wrong, how unreasonable of you to die! But even while blaming you in so many words, we know, O Barnaby, that the decision came not from you, and was an outrage, but dare ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... of Kings, in the divine right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief; or worst of all, mere Macchiavellic pretence-of-belief,—in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New Life discernible: the deep fixed ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... her way. She amused him day after day. He watched her, marvelling at the miracle that was woman. He heard her in the kitchen, interrogating the Chinese: "You show me picture your little boy!" He heard her inveigling Antone, the old Italian labourer, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... could go out he went to the Bergmanns' house, to thank Miss Fanny Lovelace and her father for the interest they had taken in his sorrow and his illness. For the first time since he had lodged with the Bergmanns the old Italian admitted a stranger to his room, where Rodolphe was received with the cordiality due to his misfortunes and to his being a Frenchman, which excluded all distrust of him. Francesca looked so lovely ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... and watch, the strong deep tide, And shrink already from the howls that soon must blast us, The world that sins unchidden, and the laws that would divide. "O Love, they rest in peace whom ocean covers!" One plunge, one clasp supernal, one long kiss! Then downward, like those old Italian lovers. Descend for ever through the long abyss, And float together, happy, all ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand |
