"Picturesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [A.D. 84], somewhere near Inverness, is described in minute and picturesque detail by Tacitus, who was present. He shows us the slopes of the Grampians alive with the Highland host, some on foot, some in chariots, armed with claymore, dirk, and targe as in later ages. He puts into the mouth of the leader, Galgacus, an eloquent summary of the motives which did really ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... an opening in the mangroves, a tiny village of a few houses became visible, mere huts, but pretty enough to look at with their highly-pitched, palm-thatched roofs, showing picturesque gables and ornamentally woven sides, the whole raised on bamboo piles, so as to place them six or eight feet above the level of the river. A few cocoa-nut trees grew close at hand, and a couple of good-sized boats were drawn up and tied to posts, while a group of the occupants stood gazing ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... seemed to offer him every chance of attaining a prominent position. The matter had grown in importance every day. Pendragon had divided into two separate and sharply-distinguished camps, one standing valiantly by its standard of picturesque tradition and its hatred of modern noise and materialism, the other asserting loudly its love of utility and progress, derisively pointing the finger of scorn at old-world Conservatism run mad and an incredible affection for defective drainage. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... mountain, stands the beautiful temple of the Sybil—a building of the most perfect and graceful proportion. It crests the "rocky brow" like a fairy dwelling, and looks all the lovelier for the wild caverns below. Gazing downward from the bridge, one sees the waters of the Anio tumbling into the picturesque grotto of the Sirens; around a rugged corner, a cloud of white spray whirls up continually, while the boom of a cataract rumbles down the glen. All these we marked in the deepening dusk, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... extremely wild and picturesque, combining hills, glens, and occasional short glimpses of the sea between the gorges which cleft the precipitous range upon our right. The rounded and sparkling tops of gypsum hills were common for the first ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... water, unnoted on most maps, though covering an area as large as all the Cumberland Lakes put together. In the smaller lake were several wooded islands, and there were promontories, and bays, and inlets, with hills of some height near it, adding to its picturesque beauty. A wood-crowned height separated the smaller from the larger expanse of water, except in one place, where a river, or an inlet it might be called, formed a junction, which settlers on the shores of the former ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... of many nights in camp together, the four now unpacked the needful articles, not putting up any tent, but spreading it down on the floor of the cave. Their fire lit up the rocks in a wild and picturesque manner as they sat near, cooking and eating their first meal of the actual voyage up the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... heads, and the rest of the procession moves by; first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gables, small mullioned windows, and a collection of moulded and twisted red-brick chimneys of wonderfully varied designs. The entrance through the gatehouse, flanked by two towers, is under a massive Tudor gateway, and leads into an inner quadrangle and thence into a second court, both of the same picturesque character. In these inner courts are the suites of rooms given as residences by royal favour, and on the left-hand side is Wolsey's great banqueting-hall, with a magnificent ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... visions—where he would have been now, at this moment, had his marriage indeed taken place this morning. He saw himself, on this beautiful starlit, moonless night, standing, along with his dear love, on the platform of a medieval tower, which, together with the picturesque farmhouse which had been tacked on to the tower about a hundred years ago, rose, close to the seashore, on a lonely stretch of the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... apotheosis of democratic independence. This was not a squalid district, nor a tough one. Goose Island, the stock yards, the Bohemian district, the lumber yards, the factories,—all the aspects of the city monstrous by right, were miles away. But Halsted Street, with its picturesque mutations of poverty and its foreign air, was infinitely worthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of Cottage Grove Avenue and its like Chicago contained,—not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... others. Basile wrote independently of Straparola, though a few tales are common to both. He was very careful not to alter the tale as he took it down from the people. He told his stories with allusions to manners and customs, to old stories and mythology. He abounds in picturesque, proverbial expressions, with turns and many similes, and displays a delightful exuberance of fancy. A valuable translation, with notes, was written by Felix Liebrecht, in 1842, and an English one by John Edward Taylor, in 1848. Keightley, in Fairy Mythology, has translated three of these tales ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... part with it? It was made for me; I was made for it. It moulded itself to all the turns and outlines of my body without fretting me. I was picturesque and beautiful; its successor, so stiff, so heavy, makes a mere mannikin of me. There was no want to which, its complaisance did not lend itself, for indigence is ever obsequious. Was a book covered with dust, one of the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... station, where I was waiting for him. He was in his most even and mellow humour. We walked in a leisurely way and through roundabout tracks for some four hours along the ancient green road which you know, over the high grassy downs, into old chalk pits picturesque with juniper and yew, across heaths and commons, and so up to our windy promontory, where the majestic prospect stirred him with lively delight. You know he is a fervent botanist, and every ten minutes he stooped to look at this or that on the path. Unluckily I am ignorant of the very ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... lay behind them. That Hardcastle, who had won such credit for his department and earned the applause of two continents, should have thus been lost, in a manner so mean and futile, exasperated not only his personal colleagues, but the larger public interested in his picturesque successes and achievements. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... still popular, of the Grand Canal of Cairo, whose banks, by-the-by, are quaint and picturesque as anything of the kind ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a happy smile on her fair face, and good-will in her sweet heart to all mankind—womankind included, which says a good deal for her—was busy with a beautiful sketch of a picturesque watermill, meditating on the stirring scene she had so recently witnessed, when ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... obscure wretchedness laid open before him with the distinctness of a picture. For, strange as it may seem, our friend had under his plain garb—unchanged in form since the days of Franklin, to go no further back—a fine dramatic talent, and could not relate the humblest incident without giving it a picturesque or dramatic turn, speaking now for one character, now for another, with a variety and discrimination very remarkable. This made his company greatly sought, and as his strongly social nature readily responded, his acquaintance was very ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Many of those picturesque features of the older England, that stir us by their beauty and by the sense of stability and permanence they convey, will no doubt disappear or be transformed. I am thinking of the great estates, some of which date from Norman times; I am thinking of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... breathe a little fresh air and look on at the sport. One pretty, Jewish-looking girl, wrapped in a red and white shawl, was sitting on the big anchor near the bows, and three or four others looked quite picturesque, as they reclined on the heavy coils of the great cable. More central to the picture than was at all advantageous to it sat our friend Raw Material, with his head jammed recklessly into the capstan, abandoning himself to his misery. For the inevitable malady had fallen ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... his wanderings began, more puffs than speech at the commencement. He was alternately picturesque and sententious until he reached Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a revelation of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ground traversed by the army first in their attempted flight and then in their return as captives to Syracuse. Few, perhaps, who visit the spot, think as much of that last act in a world-historical tragedy, as of the picturesque compositions made by arundo donax, castor-oil plant, yellow flags, and papyrus, on the river-banks and promontories. Like miniature palm-groves these water-weeds stand green and golden against the bright blue sky, feathering above the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... bought of the Crown for L1,500. The gardens at Oakley Park are very pretty and admirably laid out and kept, and the park is full of fine oaks. Yesterday I walked and rode over the hills above Ludlow, commanding a panoramic prospect of the country round, and anything more grand and picturesque I never beheld. But above all, the hills and woods of Downton Castle, with the mountains of Radnorshire in the distance, present a scene of matchless beauty well worth ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the Churches of our country that are most interesting, either from their association or from the picturesque beauty of their situations; each Illustration being accompanied by a full descriptive account of the History, Architecture, and Antiquities of the Church, together with information on subjects ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... he would indulge himself in longer excursions among the wild and romantic scenery of that neighbourhood, to which he was fondly and almost enthusiastically attached. [Footnote: The situation of Fowlshiels on the banks of the Yarrow is said to be picturesque and striking. It is in the immediate vicinity of Bow-hill, a beautiful summer-residence of the Duke of Buccleugh; and at no great distance from the ruins of Newark Castle, and other scenes celebrated in the ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... was true, was picturesque, everything had colour and form, everything made a picture. But it was all too obvious; everything was all there ready for one's amusement, ready for one's pleasure. People were too obliging, too willing. And the men! Well, Nigel was far more of a viveur, of a ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... stream and diverting it into currents which flow east and west, north and south, smoothly and without collision. In guiding the stream of traffic and directing its orderly flow, the statue of Claude Chappe is greatly assisted by the presence of an agent de police, with a picturesque cape and a picturesque sword, and who controls the flow of vehicles with as much precision as a London policeman, although there are those who profess that a London policeman is the only one who understands ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... much admired him both for his own gifts and because he had known Lyman. As other people were listening, I felt no delicacy about doing the same, for the conversation was an eloquent one, and well worth catching. So interested did I become that I forgot the great rafts floating by, the picturesque shores, the splendid river, and leaned nearer and nearer that no word might be lost, till my book slid out of my lap and fell straight down upon the head of one of the gentlemen, giving him a smart blow, and ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... the top of Rainbow Hill, a position sufficiently elevated to ensure its distribution over the upper stories of the highest houses. The "Old Waterworks" remain, and, as will be seen from our sketch, form a picturesque object in the landscape. The Severn is, however, no longer the fast-flowing stream poets have described it, but what it has lost in speed it has gained in depth, breadth, and majesty; the locks and weirs at Diglis—the former two ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... importance in the time of the Roman occupation, but now a scattered hamlet, of not more than five hundred souls. It is situated on rising ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a large and picturesque forest. ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... with beautiful and fantastic forms by men whose names were long ago forgotten. Common dwellings are adorned with picturesque dormer windows. Even the narrow crooked streets hold their share of beauty, for here are fountains so exquisite in their workmanship that their like is not to be found elsewhere. Here it is the Beautiful Fountain, gay with sculptures of heroes ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... man has no time nor inclination to follow the sporting duchess and the fictitious earl who accompanies her in their picturesque wanderings around the world. He is busy inside the confines of his own country. Parents or children may disappear, but the mere seeking of oblivion on their part is no crime and does not concern him except by special dispensation on the part of his superiors. Divorced ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... friend was an eccentric Eastern man, well known in the locality for his fastidiousness and his habits as a recluse. A misanthrope, of ample family and ample means, he had chosen a secluded but picturesque valley in the Sierras where he could rail against the world without opposition. "Lone Valley," or "Boston Ranch," as it was familiarly called, was the one spot that the average miner both respected and feared. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... fellow-travellers, and observing of the country. The country offered nothing very remarkable. After the Sound was lost sight of, the road ran on among farms and fields and villages; now and then crossing a stream; with nothing specially picturesque in land or water. Mrs. Barclay went back to thoughts that led her far away, and forgot both the fact of her travelling and the reason why. Till the civil conductor said at her ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... on a rising ground, with a very wild country all about it. The road from Badajoz to Madrid passes through it; and about two leagues distant, in the direction of Madrid, is the famous mountain pass of Mirabete, from the top of which you enjoy a most picturesque view across the Tagus, which flows below, as far as the huge mountains of Plasencia, the tops of which are generally covered ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... occasion, as he had worded it. There were some fifty men in it; but not one of them now effecting either the garb or the behaviour of the monk. Soldiers all; or at least in warlike guise; a few wearing regular though undress uniforms, but the majority habited as "guerilleros," in the picturesque costumes of their country. They were booted, and belted, swords by their sides, with pistols in holsters hanging against the walls, and spurs ready for buckling on. Standing in corners were stacks of carbines, and lances freshly ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... images upon his mind, excluding such literature as is in the nature of psychological or moral research. Recitations and dialogues should be more generally and more frequently required. In history emphasis should be given to what is picturesque, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... tedious and wearing it is! We have an unusually fine October for England, but gray skies and almost daily rains now. But the Surrey country is beautiful, full of quaint old villages and objects of picturesque interest. I am longing for the time and the weather to explore it. I could write all day about my gradually growing desire to be "up and doing." But time and space do not admit. Let me say in one ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... the picture, in each case it arises by natural association, and is SEEN, not SOUGHT. The inferior poet is dissatisfied with what he sees, and casts about in search after something more striking. He does not wait till an image is borne in upon the tide of memory, he seeks for an image that will be picturesque; and being without the delicate selective instinct which guides the fine artist, he generally chooses something which we feel to be not exactly in its right place. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... in a position where they interfere with no feeling of life, I see not why they should be neglected, as they have hitherto been, unless that the difficulty of reconciling the brilliancy of snow with a picturesque light and shade, is so great that most good artists disguise or avoid the greater part of upper Alpine scenery, and hint at the glacier so slightly, that they do not feel the necessity of careful study of its forms. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... mouth, fallen jaw, indifferent eyes, and face lacking even a flickering gleam of intelligent interest, could doubt that the fewer who saw this the better. Yet the ceremony, even when robbed of much of its ancient pomp and all its dignity, was unique and picturesque. ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... terminated in precipitous cascades. A great portion of this afternoon was spent up to our middles in water as we waded about the flooded valley; and the only thing we had to compensate us for the fatigue and suffering we underwent was the wild beauty of the scenery, which was as lovely and picturesque as impetuous torrents, foaming cascades, lofty rocks, and a rich tropical vegetation ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... quite likely to use college slang and know which fork to use first. Not on the Zone, but proper to be mentioned here, are the Blackfoot Indians brought to the Exposition from Glacier Park by the Great Northern Railroad. Eagle Calf is a real chief of the old days, and his band is a picturesque group. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... be imagined that Naples at this time presented a most picturesque appearance, for there was a Babel of tongues and a mixture of nationalities which was quite unusual. After the native Neapolitans, dark-eyed and swarthy, there were countless Greeks and Saracens of somewhat fairer hue, and over them all were the fierce Normans, strangers from a northern ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... include it in his designs. He was apt to look upon mountains as a background to parks, as Telford thought that rivers were created to supply canals. The excellent Gilpin, who became an expounder of what he calls 'the theory of the picturesque,' travelled on the Wye in the same year as Gray; and amusingly criticises nature from this point of view. Nature, he says, works in a cold and singular style of composition, but has the merit of never falling into 'mannerism.' Nature, that is, is a sublime landscape ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... The man waited—hoping that it would begin again. But it did not; and he was about to take up his book, once more, when Czar arose, stretched himself, stood for a moment in a picturesque, listening attitude, then trotted off among the roses; leaving the novelist with an odd feeling of uneasy expectancy—half resolved to stay, half determined to go. The thought of Louise in the house decided him, and he kept his place, hidden as he was, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... statue, and almost as helpless, he was standing in the middle of the road, with his left hand holding the flag and a drawn sword in his right. Yet a school nickname bridged five years so rapidly that the man who had just been reviling Fate smiled at the picturesque officer of the Guards in the old, tolerant way, the way in which the hero of the eleven or fifteen ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... a small silver town before they reached the field where the kites were to be flown, and the Scarecrow was delighted with its picturesque and quaint appearance. The streets were narrow and full of queer shops. Silver lanterns and little pennants hung from each door, the merchants and maidens in their gay sedans and the people afoot made a bright and ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... narrowed, the forest-crested hills, the terraced ravines, the picturesque grey villages, the quiet beach life, and the pale blue masses of the mountains of the interior, became more visible. Fuji retired into the mist in which he enfolds his grandeur for most of the summer; we passed Reception Bay, Perry Island, Webster Island, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... proceeded partly to dress his master in bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly on his side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down the road, through the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun-gold, flinging free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his noble crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love- call echoing through the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... broiling jerked beef upon the points of their sabres. Some mended their saddles, or were wiping out an old carbine or a clumsy escopette. Some strutted around the yard, swinging their bright mangas, or trailing after them the picturesque serape. Women in rebozos and coloured skirts walked to ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... embracing the area which stretches from the Alleghany Mountains to Lake Erie, is celebrated for the wild, picturesque beauty of its scenery. Among its wooded hills the head waters of the Ohio have their source. At Fort Duquesne, or Pittsburgh, where the river takes a sudden northerly bend before finally settling in swelling volume on its southwesterly course to the Mississippi, the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... relics are but a short journey from the celebrated ruins of Persepolis. Mr. Buckingham describes them in his usual picturesque language: "Having several villages in sight, as the sun rose, with cultivated land, flocks, trees, and water, we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which forms the northern boundary of the plain of Merdusht. The first object we saw on the west was a small rock, on which stood ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... in the straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is nominally 2-1/2 per cent, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... convalescent, comfortably installed in the private ward of a small hospital in the picturesque New Mexican town. Laura almost at once established herself by ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Calais," a very large oil painting, which is what he saw in broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the French side. It is a careful study of French fishing boats running for the shore before the wind, with the picturesque old city in the distance. Then there is the "Calais Harbor" in the Liber Studiorum: that is what he saw just as he was going into the harbor,—a heavy brig warping out, and very likely to get in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... disorder and disgrace. With the same rough humor of the soldier, half in grim jest, half in sad earnest, yet always with a grain of hard sense lying at the bottom, the Union veterans had re-named as Harper's Weekly the picturesque landscape that appeared to them so regularly; and Lee's annual invasion of the country beyond the Potomac had come to be known among them as the Summer Excursion and Picnic ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... across our track, I have hitherto refrained from saying much about them. They are constructed very sharp forward and very broad aft, with high, rising sterns something after the manner of the Chinese junk, but far more picturesque and compact than the sister country's vessel; and, so far as looks go, a far more seaworthy craft than the latter. They carry an immense sail of pure white canvas, save where a black cloth is let in—for contrast perhaps—on the huge characters ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... and laughed again, and gathering up her habit—she hadn't to raise it much—she went through an open door-way into a wild, but pretty garden, and so to the back of one of the most picturesque houses in this land of the picturesque. It was built of grey stone which age had coloured with a tender and an appreciative hand; a rich growth of ivy and clematis clung lovingly over a greater portion of it ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... found anything more airily, chastely dainty than the all-white bed with its plain or fringed Marseilles spread and its ruffled pillows. Though drapery has a picturesque effect, it interferes to a certain extent with the free circulation of air, and affords a lurking place for our insidious enemy—the microbe. If used at all, it should only be in a large, well-ventilated room, and sparingly, for a fussy, overloaded bed looks anything but restful. If considerable ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... There was nothing picturesque about it all, nothing heroic. It was unlike any pictures he had seen of lifeboat rescues, unlike anything he had ever imagined. It was all sordid, miserable, and the sight of the half-clad women, dirty, sodden, unkempt, stirred him rather ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the older, more picturesque part of the town, a portion Esther loved, finding in its steep winding streets and irregular architecture the charm that was missing from the modern cities of her knowledge. Here, she thought, one could imagine anything happening—intrigues, romantic incident, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... founding the so-called Brescian school, Andrea Amati (1520-1580), a viol and rebec maker of picturesque Cremona, began to make violins, doubtless to fill the orders of his patrons. He must have believed the pinnacle of fame reached when King Charles IX. of France, in 1566, commissioned him to construct twenty-four violins, twelve large and twelve small pattern. They were kept in ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... "How extraordinary that I'm living up here on a mountain and looking at the smoke from Etna, and that there's no English-speaking person here but me!" He looked at Gaspare and at Lucrezia, and thought: "What a queer trio of companions we are! How strange and picturesque those two would look in England, how different they are from the English, and yet how at home with them I feel! By Jove, it's wonderful!" And then he was thrilled by a sense of romance, of adventure, that had never been his when his English wife was there beside him, calling his mind to walk ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... hundred yards, are the grounds of the Dutch Trading Company, which has been established here for more than fifty years and ships many of the products of the country. The wooden sheds painted white are very picturesque amid the vivid green foliage. Beyond this area is the house of Dr. Carre, the Commissaire of the District of Banana, which like all the other houses in the town is raised on piles above the level of the sand, for the double purpose of ensuring a current of air beneath and of ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... are comparatively narrow, and the mountain-sides are steep, but the valleys are not so narrow nor the sides so steep as the valleys of Sikkim, nor are the forests anything like so dense. The scenery is, indeed, much more Swiss in appearance with open pine forests, picturesque hamlets, grassy pasture-lands, flowery meadows, and clear, rushing rivers; and with the rocky crests or snow-capped summits of the engirdling mountains ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... arrayed in their best. Several wore necklaces of the claws of the grizzly bear, of which they are extremely proud; and a gaudily picturesque group they were. The chief, however, had undergone a transformation that well-nigh upset the gravity of our hunters, and rendered Dick's efforts to look solemn quite abortive. San-it-sa-rish had once been to the trading-forts of the Pale-faces, and while ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Norridgewock now stands, the Kennebec curved round a broad tongue of meadow land, in the midst of a picturesque wilderness of hills and forests. On this tongue of land, on ground a few feet above the general level, stood the village of the Norridgewocks, fenced with a stockade of round logs nine feet high. The enclosure was square; each of its four sides measured ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... poet, who presented his Roman de Rou to Henry II, is the most picturesque and animated of the old writers, and from him we can obtain a more vivid and full description of the conflict than even the most brilliant romance-writer of the present time can supply. We have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... speculation, no commerce; "nothing venture, nothing have," is as true for the development of organic wealth as for that of any other kind, and neither Erasmus Darwin nor Lamarck hesitated about admitting that highly picturesque and romantic incidents of developmental venture do from time to time occur in the race histories even of the dullest and most dead-level organisms under the name of "sports;" but they would hold that even these occur most often and most happily ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... friends almost at once. Both were fond of walking, and to Lilian the beautiful aspect of the town, the woods and the picturesque river with its many windings and suggestive nooks where she always found a new touch of beauty stirred her with ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... where we had a standing camp, at which Prince Albert Victor did us the honour of being our guest for the final manoeuvres. I think His Royal Highness enjoyed the novelty of camp life, and was greatly attracted by the picturesque and soldier-like appearance of the Native troops. The Native officers were very proud at being presented to the grandson of their Empress, and at His Royal Highness being appointed Honorary Colonel of the 1st ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... des Vases Grecs, expliquee et publiee par La Borde, 2 vols., a beautiful and interesting work; La Borde, Voyage Pittoresque en Autriche, 3 vols., plates finely coloured; La Borde, Descripcion de un Pavimento de Mosayco, with coloured plates; the Fine Picturesque Works of Coney, Neale, Haghe, Lawis, Mueller, Nash, and Wilkie, all fine and picked sets, complete; an Interesting Collection of Illustrious and Noble Foreigners, arranged in 5 vols.; Genealogical Illustrations of the Ancient Family of Gruee, a splendid ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... abroad without some urchin with a smirched face—a tattered coat, whose skirts swept the dust, showing, evidently, its paternal descent, and pantaloons patched in the most conspicuous places, more picturesque than decent—thrusting a basket of the rich fruit into your very face, with an impudent yell of "huckleberries, sir?" or some little girl, the edges of whose scanty frock were irregularly scalloped, making a timid courtesy, saying meekly, "Don't ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... made a rather dramatic and picturesque exit there in the square at Cuzco, on that sunny morning in April, 1548. His head was exhibited at Lima with that of Carvajal. To it was ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... rank of the owner, but commodious, with no pretence to architectural beauty—dark-red brick, a century and a half old—irregular; jutting forth here, receding there, so as to produce that depth of light and shadow which lends a certain picturesque charm even to the least ornate buildings—a charm to which the Gothic architecture owes half its beauty. Jessamine, roses, wooodbine, ivy, trained up the angles and between the windows. Altogether the house had that air of HOME which had been wanting ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in Miles City, in addition to the big stockmen, there were always hundreds of cowboys galloping up and down the wide dusty streets at every hour of the day and night. It was a picturesque sight during the three days the meetings lasted. There was always at least one big dance at the hotel. There were few dress suits, but there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square dances most of the men knew the figures far better than I did. With such ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Bass seize upon any picturesque features of scenery, though they are not lacking in the region that he traversed. If he was moved by a sense of the oppressiveness of vast, silent solitudes, or by any sensation of strangeness at feeling his ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... was the brilliant and picturesque hall I have before described to you. It looked more picture-like and dreamy than ever. The piano was on the flat stairway just below the broad central landing. It was a grand piano, standing end outward, and perfectly banked up among hot-house flowers, so that only its gilded top ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... three girls were leaning against the rail, gazing dreamily out over the boundless expanse of ocean. They wore natty white middy suits and, with floppy little sailor hats shading flushed cheeks and laughing eyes, they made an alluringly picturesque little group that had attracted much attention ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Canal in the silence of the night was deeply interesting, and were I not obliged to restrict myself severely to the naked outline of such facts as bear directly on the catastrophe, I should like to attempt a description of the weird and picturesque scene. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... state of things in Red River one beautiful morning in April, when a band of voyageurs lounged in scattered groups about the front gate of Fort Garry. They were as fine a set of picturesque, manly fellows as one could desire to see. Their mode of life rendered them healthy, hardy, arid good-humoured, with a strong dash of recklessness—perhaps too much of it—in some of the younger men. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... head with difficulty and glanced furtively about the room, then filled with those picturesque effects which are the despair of language and seem to belong exclusively to the painters of genre. What words can picture the alarming zig-zags produced by falling shadows, the fantastic appearance of curtains bulged out by the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... with that wonderful winter scene in the forest, with hundreds of people scattered about under the great trees, with horses and sleighs and the frozen river in the background where the skaters came gliding on. The grouping was picturesque and artistic; the scale of the scene was immense; there was a vast concourse of people on the stage; the dances were beautiful; the merry skaters graceful; the music ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... pity that this horse-dealer, having specimens of the fairy coin, of a quality more permanent than usual, had not favoured us with an account of an impress so valuable to medalists. It is not the less edifying, as we are deprived of the more picturesque parts of the story, to learn that Thomas's payment was as faithful as his prophecies. The beautiful lady who bore the purse must have been undoubtedly the Fairy Queen, whose affection, though, like that of his own heroine Yseult, we cannot term it altogether laudable, seems ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... and the thousand and one beauties of the country fascinated us both. We were the guests of a burly farmer, who lived in a queer old house, half timber and half brick, with low-ceilinged rooms. The general living-room was the capacious kitchen, which looked mighty picturesque. Oak panels ran half-way up to the ceiling; the pots and pans were ranged neatly in an open cupboard, pleasantly suggestive of good fare and plenty of it. There were flowers in red pots in the windows, and my bedroom was a ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... to Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my way to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow deer these mostly uninhabited regions are.(19) Two years later I was travelling up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the lower end of that picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the Dousse-alin (Little Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where it joins the Sungari. I found the Cossacks in the villages of that gorge in the greatest excitement, because thousands and thousands of fallow deer were ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... situated just where you would have expected to find it—far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... rebels were sentenced to crucifixion. Such a rebel was the robber Barabbas, whom Pilate wished to substitute for Jesus as the victim of popular fury. The "robber" episode of the Crucifixion is treated by Farrar with a picturesque effect which heightens the vivid coloring in his account of the supreme event that marks "the central ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... extends from north-western Montana to the head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in the interior or in the Yukon valley. Whenever man decides that the species has lived long enough, he can quickly and easily exterminate it. It is one of the most picturesque and interesting wild animals on this continent, and there is not the slightest excuse for shooting it, save as a specimen of natural history. Like the antelope, it is so unique as a natural curiosity that it deserves to be taken out of the ranks of animals that are ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... made a picturesque fisherman, whether he looked much like the native breed or not. An open-air studio had been arranged on the beach below the Bozewell bungalow, and Louise could see a director trying to give a number of actors his idea ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... neither the beauty of nature nor that given by the hand of man, but the people will point importantly to the square wooden hotel of only two stories, and tell you that there occurred the great crisis in the most famous and picturesque Presidential campaign ever waged in the United States; they will even lead you to the very room in which the big talk occurred, and say, in lowered voices, that the furniture is exactly the same, and arranged just as it was on that momentous night when the history of the world might have ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... picturesque old building at the other side of Carlingford, standing in pretty grounds with some fine trees, under which the old men sat and amused themselves in the summer mornings. On this chilly wintry day none of them were visible, except the cheerful old soul bent almost double, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the valley of the Sarno, the shady mountains that close its perspective, the cultivated checker-work of the country side, green tufts of the woodlands, and then the gently curving coast-line where Stabiae wound in and out, with the picturesque heights of Sorrento, the deep blue of the sea, the transparent azure of the heavens, the infinite limpidity of the distant horizon, the brilliant clearness and the antique color. Those who have not beheld this scenery, can ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... bright moonlight, and the general view was interesting and picturesque. Ahead and behind a seemingly interminable caravan ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... picturesque and Rembrandtish in the whole scene, for the smoke of the lamps, combined with the deep shadows of the rotund and hairy figures, formed a background out of which the animated oily faces shone with ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... Unknown," by pointing out coincidences in the pieces and poems, known to be the productions of Scott, in such matters as the correct morals, the refined manners, the Scotch words and idioms, the descriptive power, the picturesque and dramatic fancy, the neat, colloquial turns in dialogue, the quaint similes, the sprinkle of metaphors, the love of dogs, the eloquent touches with regard to the pure and tender relations of father and daughter; and clinched the investigation ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... far too loyal, far too enthusiastic and fearless, far too much a woman to yield her convictions to the popular feeling of the moment; and she looked so young and so pretty, clinging to the arm of her father, who looked a picturesque and harmless representative of the fallen regime, that with the exception of a few rough words, a threat here and there, they had so far escaped ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and sincerity and in a language of almost classical restraint, as a rule, but engagingly piquant and picturesque and fantastic even upon occasions."—Boston ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... it a factitious importance. Had it succeeded it would have opened opportunities of disaster to the American arms, although it would not have affected the final outcome of the Revolution. As it was it failed, and had no result whatever. It has passed into history simply as a picturesque episode, charged with possibilities which attract the imagination, but having, in itself, neither meaning nor consequences beyond the two conspirators. To us it is of interest, because it shows Washington in one of the sharpest and bitterest ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of whom we have next to speak, Weber, in spite of Vogler's teaching, was not a strong contrapuntist; he relied chiefly upon melody, harmonic effects, and strong contrasts. His romantic themes, his picturesque colouring, enchant the ear, and the poetry and passion of his pianoforte music, both intensified by grand technique, stir one's soul to its very depths; yet the works are of the fantasia, rather than of the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I think. Do you suppose ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge |
