"Unicorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him ostrich and unicorn, Ape, lion, and tiger keen; And elephants wise roared 'Hail Kaiser!' As though ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... the junior officers in the Heralds' College, four in England, named respectively Rouge Croix, Blue Mantle, Rouge Dragon, and Portcullis; and three in Scotland, named respectively Bute, Carrick, and Unicorn. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... stuffs will be considered to be the honestest; and the more lasting the material, the more readily it will be taken. In sending cloths great care should be taken that every piece be of the same length, and always evenly divisible by cubits, or eighteen-inch measure. If the Lion and the Unicorn, figuring on the outside of each piece—Than or Gora, as it is called respectively in India and Africa—were security of its being English manufacture, and, by being so, sure to be of uniform quality and size, much respect would be given to it; and "Shukka ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Donald, raising himself on his elbow to look at the pile of sheets which Priscilla had placed in readiness on the grass. "A shield and an eagle and a lion and a unicorn all at once, to say nothing of Latin. What ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... can't do nothing without my staff—can I, William, and John, and Charles Jake? No; for there's the king's royal crown a-painted on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I raise en up and hit my prisoner't is made a lawful blow thereby. I wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff—no, not I. If I hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking him up he ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... justice with the help of three fellow-magistrates—Mr. Trask, Mr. Somershall, and our friend Mr. Wapshott. They sat at a long baize-covered table, with the Justices' Clerk to advise them. On the wall behind and above their heads hung a framed panel emblazoned with the royal escutcheon, the lion and unicorn for supporters, an inscription in old French to the effect that there is shame in evil-thinking, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a genius. At the corners of the chariot sat four grey-headed lawgivers, encircled by angels with banners; by its side rode standard-bearers in complete armor. It need hardly be added that the goddess and the genius did not suffer the Duke to pass by without an address. A second car, drawn by a unicorn, bore a Caritas with a burning torch; between the two came the classical spectacle of a car in the form of a ship, moved by men concealed within it. The whole procession now advanced before the Duke. In front ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... were drawn, with the courteous acquiescence of various publishers, from The Pageant, The Savoy, The Chap Book, and The Yellow Book. Internal evidence shows that Mr. Beerbohm took fragments of his writings from Vanity (of New York) and The Unicorn, that he might inlay them in the First Essay, of whose scheme they are really a part. The Third Essay he re-wrote. The rest he carefully revised, and to ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... against a tree; that Deer lived several hundred years; that the Badger had the legs of one side shorter than those of the other; that the Chameleon lived entirely on air, and the Salamander in fire; whilst the sphynx, satyr, unicorn, centaur, hypogriff, hydra, dragon, griffin, cockatrice, &c. &c. &c. were either the creations of fancy, or fabled accounts of creatures of whose real form, origin, nature, and qualities, but the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... as intelligent as the prowlers but just as dangerous—the unicorn. The unicorns are big and fast and they travel in herds. I haven't seen any here so far—I hope we don't. At the lower elevations are the swamp crawlers. They're unadulterated nightmares. I hope they ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... Tranquillity, and who imparts the religion of Moksha unto all creatures. Bow unto Him who is the Lord of Penances, of all kinds of energy, and of Fame, who is ever the Lord of Speech and the Lord of all the Rivers also. Bow unto Him who is called Kaparddin (Rudra), who is the Great Boar, who is Unicorn, and who is possessed of great intelligence, who is the Sun, who assumed the well-known form with the equine head; and who is always displayed in a four-fold form. Bow unto Him who is unrevealed, who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in his good sword. At that moment, when his perplexity was at its height, he saw issue from the city gate two young beauties, whose air and dress proclaimed their rank and gentle nurture. Each of them was mounted on a unicorn, whose whiteness surpassed that of ermine. They advanced to the meadow where Rogero was contending so valiantly against the hobgoblins, who all retired at their approach. They drew near, they extended their hands to the young warrior, whose cheeks glowed with ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Stood the old continentals, Yielding not, When the grenadiers were lunging, And like hail fell the plunging Cannon-shot; When the files Of the isles From the smoky night encampment, bore the banner of the rampant Unicorn, And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the roll of the drummer, Through the morn! Then with eyes to the front all, And with guns ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... powders, must have been difficult to obtain in New England, although I believe Governor Winthrop had one sent to him as a gift from England; and John Endicott, writing to him in 1634, said: "I have sent you Mrs Beggarly her Vnicorns horne & beza stone." Both the unicorn's horn and the bezoar stone were sovereign antidotes against poison. At another time Winthrop had sent to him "bezoar stone, mugwort, orgaine, and galingall root." Ambergris was also too rare and costly for American Puritans to use, though we find ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... would be better suited with a Tuscan portico. The steeple at the west is a very extraordinary structure; on a round pedestal at the top of a pyramid is placed a colossal statue of the late King [George I.], and at the corners near the base are alternately placed the lion and unicorn, the British supporters, with festoons between. These animals, being very large, are injudiciously placed over columns very small, which make them appear monsters." The lions and unicorns have now been removed. This steeple ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... ornamental vases, each with a jet in the center. Against the same side, are three colossal groups in lead. The central one represents Neptune and Amphitrite seated in an immense shell and surrounded by tritons, nymphs and sea-monsters. On the left is Oceanus resting upon a sea-unicorn, and on the right, Proteus, the son of Oceanus. There are several other groups; and from the jets of these, amounting to some 55 or 60 in all, issues a deluge of water, when the gates are opened. A quarter of an hour in advance of the appointed time, about ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... a unicorn, Father Noah," he heard in a voice of thunder, and turning round he saw the giant, Og. "But thou must agree to save me, too, from ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... Church, but from the Parthenon whose name means virginity, from the Roman Empire which went outwards from the virgin flame, from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from the lion who will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, and who make up together the bearers of your own national shield, from the most living and lawless of your own poets, from Massinger, who wrote the Virgin Martyr, from Shakespeare, who wrote Measure for Measure—if you in Fleet Street ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... observer of manners, must bear for ever the indelible imprint of the barrenness of his life,—to feel himself transformed into a creature foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his logical faculty, almost a fantastic unicorn, a chimaera-like creature conscious of the world through his two ears alone. And as, notwithstanding, he sought in the little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not descend, with what ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilised communities. They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no more be broken in to the offices of social man than the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered to their necessities. To assist them was impossible; and the most benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving relief ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that "a young unicorn, one day old, is as large as Mount Tabor." Consequently Noah had great difficulty in saving an old one alive. He could not get it into the ark, so he bound it by its horn to the side of the ark. At ...
— Hebrew Literature
... few dates here which will give you the career of the dead man, Captain Peter Carey. He was born in '45—fifty years of age. He was a most daring and successful seal and whale fisher. In 1883 he commanded the steam sealer SEA UNICORN, of Dundee. He had then had several successful voyages in succession, and in the following year, 1884, he retired. After that he travelled for some years, and finally he bought a small place called Woodman's Lee, near Forest Row, in Sussex. There he has lived for six ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grass, blackroot, blazing star, and unicorn root ) Bitter American herb of the Bloodwort family, with small yellow or white flowers in a long spike (Aletris farinosa ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... can of all the mere horror of the confusion, and the terror of death, but in a moment you will forget it, remembering only that heroic Republic which amid her enemies built her splendid city, her beautiful Duomo, her Tower like the horn of an unicorn, and this Campo Santo too, where the hours pass so softly, and the hottest days are cool and full of delight. The Victory of Abraham is a battle gay with the banners of Pisa, when the Gonfalons of Florence lay low in the dust. The Curse of Ham, with its multitude ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... of whose account of the unicorn most of the modern unicorns have been described and figured, records it as "a very ferocious beast, similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, a deep ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... symbolic meanings of the different animals. The lamb and unicorn were symbols of Christ; sheep, fish, and deer, of his followers; dragons, serpents, and bears, of the devil; swine, hares, hyenas, of gluttony; the disorderly luxuriance of snow meant death, the phoenix the resurrection, and so ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... resumed his place as the supporter of the dexter side of the shield, and the red dragon on the sinister. On the union of England with Scotland, the supporters of the royal arms were, on the dexter side a lion guardant, crowned or, on the sinister maned and unguled or, white unicorn, gorged and chained of the same. The supporters of the royal arms have continued the same to the present time; and, as an emblem of union and strength, ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... dress most of them had little, but their elders or leaders wore lion and leopard skins and some were clad in a kind of silken tunic belted about the middle. All were armed for war with long bows, short swords and small shields round in shape and made from the hide of the hippopotamus or of the unicorn. Gold was plentiful amongst them since even the humblest wore bracelets of that metal, while about the necks of the chieftains it was wound in great torques, also sometimes on their ankles. They wore sandals on their feet and some of them had ostrich ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... are of so stupendous a size, that when I was mounted on a large mule I could not reach with my hand within two spans of the top of their backs. In Abyssinia is likewise found the rhinoceros, a mortal enemy to the elephant. In the province of Agaus has been seen the unicorn, that beast so much talked of, and so little known: the prodigious swiftness with which this creature runs from one wood into another has given me no opportunity of examining it particularly, yet I have had so near a sight of it as to be able to give some description of it. The shape is the ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... The sea-unicorn is, when full grown, from thirteen to sixteen feet long, and has a long spiral horn or tusk growing rather on one side of its upper jaw, of from eight to ten feet in length. The eyes are very small, the blow-hole is directly over them, and the head ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown: The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town. Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown; Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... a little formed what are called "holes of water," and in these we soon observed a shoal of narwhales, or unicorn fish, to be blowing and enjoying themselves. By extraordinary luck, one of the officers of the "Intrepid," in firing at them, happened to hit one in a vital part, and the brute was captured; his horn forming a handsome ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... came soon afterwards, was forty-two men, who brought with them a considerable quantity of the Arctic fox skins, musk-ox, and deer skins, with those of the wolf and wolverine, together with sea-horse teeth, and the horn of a sea-unicorn about six feet long for barter at the Company's Post. In appearance they strongly resembled each other, and were all clothed with deer-skin jackets and lower garments of far larger than usually Dutch size, made of the same material. Their ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... in his letter to Catherine of Medicis, 'I have not delayed giving your Majesty timely notice of what was going on, though I doubt she will not allow them to escape her. The rest of the jewels are not near so valuable as the pearls. The only thing I have heard particularly described is a piece of unicorn richly carved and decorated.' Mary's royal mother-in-law of France, no whit more scrupulous than her good cousin of England, was eager to compete with the latter for the purchase of the pearls, knowing that they were worth nearly double ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... is it for him then to be a he-goat, or a stumpbuck, or a kid, or a chamois, a stag, or a brill, a unicorn, or an elephant so he may be safe, but how may that be, I pray ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... to preach the sermon on the Gunpowder Plot, (1684,) at the Rolls Chapel:—I chose for my text these words: "Save me from the lion's mouth, thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns." I made no reflection in my thoughts on the lion and unicorn, as being the two supporters of the King's scutcheon.—Swift. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Capitularies, Pragmatics, royal establishments, ordinances and institutions of the period. To be brief, the good man, putting his spectacles on his nose or his nose in his spectacles, looked about for a fine flying dragon or unicorn to whom the guard of this precious treasure could be committed. With this thought in his head he strolled about the gardens. He did not desire a Coquecigrue, because the Egyptians were afraid of them, as it appeared in the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... at that age you had already fought one of the proudest lords of the country. I have not forgotten that our arms are a unicorn ripping up a lion, and our motto. Onward! I do not wish the Kervers to blush for their ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... It was a white unicorn who lived in the cave. When it saw the hermit coming the unicorn knelt down and worshipped him. Many ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... the Prence Ragin' himself, mounted up upon his elegant throne, an' his crown, that was half a hundred weight ov goold, I suppose, on his head, an' his sceptre in his hand, an' his lion sittin' on one side ov him, an' his unicorn on the other.—'Morrow, Dan,' says he, 'you're welcome here.'—'Good morning, my Lord,' says I, 'plase your Reverence.'—'An' what do you think ov my place,' says he, 'Dan, now you're in it?'—'By Dad! your worship,' says I, 'it bates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... to this betrothal, and caused him to swear fealty to his uncle for Brittany as a fief of Normandy. Arthur was now thirteen, and had newly received the order of knighthood, adopting as his device the lion, unicorn, and griffin, which tradition declared to have been borne by his namesake, and this homage must have been sorely against his will. He was betrothed to Marie, one of the French King's daughters, and continued to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... in me! That battlemented hull, Tantallon o' the sea, Kicked in, as at Boston the taxed chests o' tea! Ay, spurned by the ram, once a tall, shapely craft, But lopped by the Rebs to an iron-beaked raft— A blacksmith's unicorn in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... The reins were secured by chain-work, and the front-stall of the bridle was a steel plate, with apertures for the eyes and nostrils, having in the midst a short, sharp pike, projecting from the forehead of the horse like the horn of the fabulous unicorn. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... greater degree of mysticism than was approved by the Arabian schools of the next generation, has not come down to us. This man identified the product which had defied Ibn Jasher's tests with a substance even then considered by most to be fabulous, or to be extracted only from the horn of the unicorn if that animal existed. That it had some of the properties of the fabled substance, he proceeded to prove to the satisfaction of Ibn Jasher by curing of a ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... law-case of James the First's time, in which a goldsmith sold a hundred pounds' worth of what he called bezoar, which was proved to be false, and the purchaser got a verdict against him. Governor Endicott also sends Winthrop a unicorn's horn, which was the property of a certain Mrs. Beggarly, who, in spite of her name, seems to have been rich in medical knowledge and possessions. The famous Thomas Bartholinus wrote a treatise on the virtues ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what were his principles? His principles were what they always had been. His principles were written in the countenances of the lion and unicorn; were stamped indelibly upon the royal shield which those grand animals supported, and upon the free words of fire which that shield bore. His principles were, Britannia and her sea-king trident! His principles were, commercial prosperity co-existently with perfect and profound agricultural contentment; ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... by the slaves of the noblemen in a space enclosed by stacked arms. Hlawa was amazed at the sight of the extraordinarily small shaggy chargers, with powerful necks, such strange brutes that the western knights took them to be quite another species of wild beast, more like a unicorn than ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... was the joyful intelligence conveyed to the inhabitants that Lord Cochrane, the long-expected deliverer of Greece, had actually arrived, than all the leading men who happened to be in Poros at the time hurried on board the Unicorn to welcome their champion and to give personal assurance of their devotion to him. The first to arrive was Jakomaki Tombazes, who was now acting with Dr. Gosse as superintendent of marine affairs, having surrendered the chief command of the fleet into ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... and the unicorn Were fighting for the crown; The lion beat the unicorn All round about the town. Some gave them white bread, Some gave them brown, Some gave them plum-cake, And sent ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... result of the consultation I, of course, remained in ignorance, but next morning Rayne sent for me and said he had decided to meet his friend Tracy at the Unicorn Hotel ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... some places, are ornamented with historical miniature paintings. In page 35, there is a representation of the birth of Trygvason; and, at the bottom of the leaf, there is a unicorn and a lion. 217. An archer shooting. 272. Orme Storolfson carrying off a hay-cock. 295. Haldan the Black beheading the Norwegian princes; one of them is represented on his knees, dressed in a red cap, a short doublet, and in red trousers reaching down to the middle of his legs. 310. Three men ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson
... I need not speak; use the same cordials as before. In this kind of melancholy, some prescribe [4398]treacle in winter, especially before or after purges, or in the spring, as Avicenna, [4399] Trincavellius mithridate, [4400]Montaltus paeony seed, unicorn's horn; os ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. Would be easier for him to tell what he hadn't seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would. What was the curiosest thing he'd seen? Well! He didn't know—couldn't name it momently—unless it was a Unicorn, and he see him over at a Fair. But"—and here came the golden retrospect, a fairy tale of love told by a tavern Boots, and told all through, moreover, as none but a Boots could tell it—"Supposing a young gentleman not eight year'old, was to run away with a fine young woman ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... such an essentially old-fashioned, English place. I like the animal names of the hotels in England. Already we have seen a lot; and they form into a quaint, colourful, Noah's Ark and heraldic procession across the country. The Black Bull; The Golden Unicorn; The Blue Boar; The Red Lion; The Piebald Horse; The Green Dragon; The White Hart. I am still longing for ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of the palace built by Wolsey is by a sort of outer court of great extent, the gates of which have their pillars surmounted by a large lion and unicorn as supporters of the crown royal, and each of the side gates by a military trophy. Along the left side of the area are barracks and such offices; the greater part of the right side is open toward the river, and there stand nine as lofty and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... some beautiful branches of coral, several large and rare shells, and two horns of the narwhal, or sea-unicorn, fixed against the wall, and above it was the picture of a ship under all sail, with boats hoisted up along her sides, and flags flying at her mastheads and peak. On the top of a bookcase stood the perfect model ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... Oldgate. Oldgate was a gate of London, which was entered by the Harwich road, and on which was displayed a statue of Charles II., with a painted angel on his head, and beneath his feet a carved lion and unicorn. From Hunkerville House, in an easterly wind, you heard the peals of St. Marylebone. Corleone Lodge was a Florentine palace of brick and stone, with a marble colonnade, built on pilework, at Windsor, at the head of the wooden bridge, and having one ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... were quite adequate in Boston during the British occupation. Sylvester Gardiner at "The Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar in Marlborow Street" reported that "all kinds of the best and freshest drugs and medicines ... are continued to be sold as usual." However a cautionary note was added that drugs and medicines had been "constantly imported every ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... roofed over, to make a ball-room, large as an opera-house, with a dais and a sofa in the centre of one long side, and another dais with a second sofa immediately opposite to it in the centre of the other long side. Each dais had a canopy of red velvet, one bearing the Lion and the Unicorn, the other the American Eagle. The Royal Standard was displayed above the Unicorn; the Stars-and-Stripes, not quite so effectively, waved above the Eagle. The Princess, being no longer quite a child, found gas trying to her complexion, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... chicken's-neck day (we dine alternately on poultry and—er—the joint) an old lady paused before my quarters and, her head on one side, murmured musingly: "Yet I always thought the Austrian eagle had two heads, but perhaps I'm thinking of the unicorn." Half an hour later a party stopped in front of me, and one of them says: "Them Jermins didn't deserve a noble-looking bird like 'im to represent 'em, did they, Hemelie? Something with scales and bat's wings 'ud be more appropriate, I don't think." "Yes, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... was no hurry. He could make deliberate and well-considered selections; he could consult his esthetic tastes. One comprehends how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off a unicorn's horn—a mere curiosity—which would not pass through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two —a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor. He continued to store up his treasures at home until his occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous; then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Gold-Commissioner-in-Chief prepares a quarterly exhibit, which he issues on a broad sheet in a so-called "Royal Gazette." The last of these documents issued was published by authority at Halifax, Wednesday, January 20th, 1864, and a copy thereof, ornamented at the head with the familiar lion and unicorn, is now lying with several of its predecessors on the table before us. If skeptics desire any better authority than this for the average yield of these mines, they must seek it elsewhere for themselves. By the majority of persons ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... glory of Christ and His saints. Perhaps if he had lived in our times he might have painted heads of fashionable courtesans or equivocal statesmen. But whether primitive or modern, realist or symbolist, he would always have been a painter of dramatic genius. He is the unicorn among artists. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the known and the unknown, gentle and simple, mingle their dust on a perfect equality now. The marble that once bore a haughty coat of arms is as smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless of heraldry. The lion and the unicorn, wherever they appear on some cracked slab, are very much tamed by time. The once fat-faced cherubs, with wing at either cheek, are the merest skeletons now. Pride, pomp, grief, and remembrance are all at end. No reverent feet come here, no tears ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... many good offices, and told them every circumstance before, related, which when the merchant heard he told him that he should venture that commodity and none else, and charged him to fetch her instantly (for the ship which was called the Unicorn) was fallen down as low as Blackwal and all their lading was already had aboard. Whittington although unwilling to part from so good a companion yet being forced by his masters command by whom he had his subsistence he brought her and (not without ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... human in form she was, with an unearthly beauty; but four-armed, with a forehead that went up and up and ended in a single tall horn, as on the fabled unicorn. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... pocket a paper, which he proceeded to nail up by the four corners to the trunk. He drew back, looked at it, and went on his way. Bob got his glass from indoors and levelled it at the placard, but after looking for a long time he could make out nothing but a lion and a unicorn at the top. Anne, who was ready for church, moved away from the door, though it was yet early, and showed her intention of going by way of the elm. The paper had been so impressively nailed up that she was curious to read it ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the Chaos out of which he was born. He had also to chisel out the earth which was to be his abode. Behind him through the clefts made by his chisel and mallet are sun and moon and stars, and at his right hand, as companions, may be seen the Dragon, the Tortoise and the Phoenix as well as the Unicorn. His labours extend over a period of eighteen thousand years. He grew in stature at the rate of six feet every day, and when his work was finished he died. The mountains were formed from his head, his breath produced the wind, and the moisture ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... take her to a dance,' said Dora quietly, 'if you would let her come. There's one at the Mechanics' Institute next week, given by the Unicorn benefit society. Mrs. Alderman Head said I might go with her, and Lucy too if you'll let her come. I've ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the black whale, porpoise, sea-horse, seal, and the narwal or sea unicorn; the horn of the latter, solid ivory, is a beautiful object. The largest I procured measured six feet and a half in length, four inches in diameter at the root, and a quarter of an inch at the point. It is of a spiral form, and projects ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... Ethiopians. In another the king on his throne as a dog, with a second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the sacred offerings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are seen playing at chess or checkers in the form of a lion playing with a unicorn ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... whole region. She contemplated the results of twelve years' patience, a work which might have made the fame of many a superior man, with a gentle modesty such as Pontorno has painted in the sublime face of his "Christian Chastity caressing the Celestial Unicorn." The mistress of the manor, whose silence was respected by her companions when they saw that her eyes were roving over those vast plains, once arid, and now fertile by her will, walked on, her arms ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... thoroughly acute in hearing, its tongue utters sincerity, its colour is luminous, its comb resembles uprightness, its spur is sharp and curved, its voice is sonorous, and its belly is the treasure of literature." Like the dragon, tortoise, and unicorn, it was considered to be a spiritual creature; but, unlike the Western phoenix, more than one Fung Hwang was, as I have pointed out, believed to exist. The birds were not always to be seen, but, according to Chinese records, they made their appearance ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... this time!) threw on his brakes. An exhibition of horsemanship followed, on Victoria's part, which Mr. Crewe beheld with admiration. The five-year-old swung about like a weathercock in a gust of wind, assuming an upright position, like the unicorn in the British coat of arms. Victoria cut him, and he came down on all fours and danced into the wire fence that encircled the Fairview domain, whereupon he got another stinging reminder that there was some one on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... windows. Swift's detestation, Bishop Burnet, the historian and friend of William of Orange, was preacher here for nine years, and here delivered his celebrated sermon, "Save me from the lion's mouth: thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn." Burnet was appointed by Sir Harbottle, who was Master of the Rolls; and in his "Own Times" he has inserted a warm eulogy of Sir Harbottle as a worthy and pious man. Atterbury, the Jacobite Bishop of Rochester, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of Abyssinia; the elephant, unicorn, their horses and cows; with a particular account ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... of watching Donald, as he stood in animated converse with his friends a few yards off, wearing round his young neck the official gold chain with great square links, like that round the Royal unicorn. Every trifling emotion that her husband showed as he talked had its reflex on her face and lips, which moved in little duplicates to his. She was living his part rather than her own, and cared for no one's ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... royal mark of the Sanoms, the same as the lion and the unicorn is the crest of your great Queen. The black vampire is the guardian fetish of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... columns having gilt Ionic capitals. Three round-headed windows are at the further end, above the Speaker's chair, which is backed by a huge pedimented structure in white and gilt, surmounted by the lion and the unicorn. The windows are uncurtained, one being open, through which some boughs are seen waving in the midnight gloom without. Wax candles, burnt low, wave and gutter in a brass chandelier which hangs ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... everywhere else, are what nature, education, and circumstances have made them. Once an age, once in half-a-dozen ages, nature may make a Brinvilliers, or art allow of a Zeluco; but, in general, monsters are mere fabulous creatures—mistakes often, from bad drawings, like the unicorn." "Yes, mamma, yes; now I feel much more comfortable. The unicorn has convinced me," said Lady ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... that there was an unicorn's horn found upon the coast of Tartary, which could not come (said he) thither by any other means than with the tides, through some strait in the north-east of the Frozen Sea, there being no unicorns in any part of Asia, saving in India and Cathay, which reason, in my simple judgment, ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... my recollection; and I believe it is the only instance of an imperfect or deformed progeny in the settlement. Previous to the death of this singular animal, an appearance of a horn was discovered sprouting from its forehead; assimilating it, in some degree, to the supposed unicorn. ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... on the cross was heard "from the horns of the unicorn" (Ps. xxii:21). Resurrection was the answer from God; the power of God raised Him from the dead. At once, after the great work had been accomplished, there follows the triumphant declaration of Him whose voice had ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... UNICORN.—What a fate is ours! Here have we, in our time, been compelled to give the patronage of our countenance to all sorts of rascality—have been forced to support robbery, swindling, extortion—but it won't do to think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the unicorn. Recently acquired at Cologne, and known to the writer only by photograph and description, but tentatively ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... however, repented of his promise, and again bethought himself how he could get rid of the hero. 'Before you receive my daughter, and the half of my kingdom,' said he to him, 'you must perform one more heroic deed. In the forest roams a unicorn which does great harm, and you must catch it first.' 'I fear one unicorn still less than two giants. Seven at one blow, is my kind of affair.' He took a rope and an axe with him, went forth into the forest, and again bade those who were sent with him to wait outside. He had not long ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... conveyances, such as tandems and randoms, and the great flower-beds in the lawn in front gave sign that some such equipage had been lately driven up not altogether with dexterity. It is difficult at all times to drive "unicorn," and more so if the horses are not used to that method of progression, and still more so if the charioteer is somewhat inebriated; and all these conditions had been fulfilled a few minutes previously in the case of Mr. Frederick Chandos, a young ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... productions of wonderful beauty are considered as among the most desirable in modern decorative art. Among these tapestries are "The Lover's Song," "Salome Dancing before Herod," "The Annunciation," "The Legend of the Unicorn," "The Lovers' Picnic," and "The Lovers." The tapestries were painted in Rome and in the Vedder villa, Torre Quattro Venti on Capri, where the artist and his wife and daughter pass their summers. The established English Church has two chapels in Rome, one the Holy Trinity, of which ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... beginning, and that there is no pole; and though Captain Ross will go further and fare worse, yet things are turning up now and then that our most benevolent scepticism cannot resist. But among other plunders of the imagination, they are going to rob us of the unicorn. For two thousand years and upwards, a short date in the history of human quarrel about nothings, the sages of this world have been doubting and deciding on the existence of this showy creature. Pliny would have sworn to his having all but seen it, and he would have sworn that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... the sage whose duty it will be to write the history of my achievements must have thought it proper that I should take some distinctive name as all knights of yore did; one being 'He of the Burning Sword,' another 'He of the Unicorn,' this one 'He of the Damsels,' that 'He of the Phoenix,' another 'The Knight of the Griffin,' and another 'He of the Death,' and by these names and designations they were known all the world round; and so I say that the sage aforesaid ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... are provided with a long and pliant proboscis for the purpose of acquiring this grateful food, as a variety of bees, moths, and butterflies: but the Sphinx Convolvuli, or unicorn moth, is furnished with the most remarkable proboscis in this climate. It carries it rolled up in concentric circles under its chin, and occasionally extends it to above three inches in length. This trunk consists of joints and muscles, and seems to have more versatile movements ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... desks. At the first desk a lion with a pen behind its ear was dictating to a unicorn, who was writing in a series of Blue-books with his horn. Billy noticed that the horn had been sharpened to a nice point, like a lead pencil when the drawing-master does it for you as ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... whose imperiall powre A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes, T' avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applyes, And when him ronning in full course he spyes, He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast His precious ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... vehicles of half one's knowledge; if one has no fancy for their lessons one may burn one's note-book. In Siena everything is Sienese. The inn has an English sign over the door—a little battered plate with a rusty representation of the lion and the unicorn; but advance hopefully into the mouldy stone alley which serves as vestibule and you will find local colour enough. The landlord, I was told, had been servant in an English family, and I was curious to see how he met the probable argument of the casual Anglo-Saxon ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... by learned men in the Bestiaries how the unicorn, which bears on its forehead a flaming sword, transfixes the hunter in his coat-of-mail, but falls to its knees before a pure virgin. Be ye gentle-hearted, therefore, and simple-souled; keep your heart pure, and ye ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... the little black-eyed Venetian boys and girls gaze on the brazen horses in St. Mark's Square with as much wonder and curiosity as ours when we look upon a griffin or a unicorn. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... alderman of Bishopsgate Ward, was one of those city princes whose wealth brought them into close relation with the Crown. A goldsmith by trade, he, like others of his class, took to keeping "running cashes" and transacting generally the business of a banker at his house known as the "Unicorn" in Lombard Street. Pepys mentions him frequently in his Diary. In the days of the Commonwealth he was paymaster of the garrison at Dunkirk, and continued to act as financial agent in all matters connected with that town until it was sold to the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... he told him about mines and treasures and geological formations, and about gnomes and fairies and dragons, and about glaciers and the Stone Age and the beginning of the world, and about the unicorn and the phoenix, and about Magic, black ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... often observed upon familiar objects, such as books, china and steelware, etc., the device of a lion and a horse (sometimes represented as a unicorn) supporting between them a shield, surmounted by a crown. On the shield are certain divisions called "quarterings," in one of which you will observe two lions and a horse. Attached to the whole is the motto, Dieu et mon droit,—French words, whose meaning ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... word he could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn, the other all this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to do. Thereat laughed ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... is also a Volucrary, a Herbary, and a Lapidary, that of Philippe de Thaon (before 1135), is versified from the Latin Physiologus, itself a translation from the work of an Alexandrian Greek of the second century. In its symbolic zoology the lion and the pelican are emblems of Christ; the unicorn is God; the crocodile is the devil; the stones "turrobolen," which blaze when they approach each other, are representative of man and woman. A Bestiaire d'Amour was written by Richard de Fournival, in which the emblems serve for the interpretation of human love. A Lapidary, with a medical—not ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... and breast, Silk housings swept the ground, With Scotland's arms, device, and crest, Embroidered round and round. The double tressure might you see, First by Achaius borne, The thistle and the fleur-de-lis, And gallant unicorn. So bright the king's armorial coat, That scarce the dazzled eye could note, In living colours, blazoned brave, The lion, which his title gave; A train, which well beseemed his state, But all unarmed, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... look like a unicorn, that star," Ravenswood Wimble said. But then nobody ever pleases Ravenswood Wimble completely. He is so — ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... Hindostan—the rein-deer from polar latitudes—the antelope from the Zaara—and the leigh, or gigantic stag, from Britain. Thither came the buffalo and the bison, the white bull of Northumberland and Galloway, the unicorn from the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of Ceylon or Siam. The ostrich and the cameleopard, the wild ass and the zebra, the chamois and the ibex of Angora,—all brought their tributes of beauty or deformity ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... education is not a true education. Life is real, life is earnest. One must face it with a practical education. The problems of Life, my dear fellow!—classical education completely ignores them! For example, how do you tell a true Unicorn ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... Evelyn relates that he accompanied Charles to see the preparation in 1662. But le Febre, Kenelm Digby, and Alexander Fraser tampered with the original. It is acknowledged that Fraser added the flesh, heart, and liver of vipers, and the mineral unicorn. Other liberties, it may be apprehended, were taken. The receipt as drawn up by le Febre reads like a botanist's catalogue interpolated with oriental pearls, ambergris, and bezoardic stones, to add mystery. The old London Pharmacopoeia ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Learned Judge, again expressed a hope that no one would interpret his last remark as being facetious. Nothing was at that moment further from his thoughts. To joke in a Court of Law, or even attempt to joke beneath the emblazoned sign of the Lion and Unicorn somewhere above his head, would be to mock that noble animal (he referred to the Lion, of course), whose other effigy in Court formed such a striking contrast to the undignified attitude of those who had preferred such fanciful charges against this nobly statured beast, whose presence there ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... Robert.—The History and Present State of Virginia, in Four Parts. Printed for R. Parker, at the Unicorn, under the Piazza's of the Royal-Exchange, 1705. One volume. The work consists of an outline of the history of the colony from 1607 to 1705; of a statement of the natural productions of Virginia; its industries and its facilities for trade; of an account of the Indians and a ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... are put to domestic uses by the Chinese, the olives, and butter shells, upon table 11; the magilus, whelks, and the needle shell upon table 10; the purple shell that emits the colour from which it is named, the mulberry shell, and the unicorn shell, distributed upon table 9; the tun shell, the harps, the harp helmets, and the helmets upon which cameos are carved, distributed about tables 8 and 7; the spindle shells, including the great tulip shells, and the turnip shells, occasionally ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... runs to Beaumont, hey? Flaming! painted red and gold to make Touchard burst with envy! It takes three horses! I have bought a mate for Rougeot, and Bichette will go finely in unicorn. Come, harness up!" added Pierrotin, glancing out towards the street, and stuffing the tobacco into his clay pipe. "I see a lady and lad over there with packages under their arms; they are coming to the Lion d'Argent, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... by Mr. Reynaud at Trincomalie. It occurs also off the coast of Java. Another Ceylon fish of the same group, a Clupea, is known as the "poisonous sprat," the bonito (Scomber pelamys?), the kangewena, or unicorn fish (Balistes?), and a number of others, are more or less in bad repute from the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the cliffs off Beechey's coast, Till the tidings, circling round Every bay of Norton Sound, Throw the vocal tide-wave back To the isles of Kodiac. Let the stately Polar bears Waltz around the pole in pairs, And the walrus, in his glee, Bare his tusk of ivory; While the bold sea-unicorn Calmly takes an extra horn; All ye Polar skies, reveal your Very rarest of parhelia; Trip it, all ye merry dancers, In the airiest of "Lancers;" Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide, One inch farther to the tide, Nor in rash precipitation Upset ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... himself at the desk, when somebody came, tap, tap, at the door. "Who's there?" said Mr. Fitzwarren. "A friend," answered the other. "What friend can come at this unseasonable time?" "A real friend is never unseasonable," answered the other. "I come to bring you good news of your ship Unicorn." The merchant bustled up in such a hurry that he forgot his gout; instantly opened the door, and who should be seen waiting but the captain and factor, with a cabinet of jewels, and a bill of lading, for which ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... some place to experiment with this," he suggested. He expected to be sent to the deepest, dankest cave of all the world as a laboratory, and to find it equipped with pedigreed bats, dried unicorn horns and whole rows of alembics that ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... which he never occupied, except when his sons were at home, was further provided with a stove—all the heating there was in the three aisles. There was also a two-decker pulpit at the east end and over the dim little altar hung an escutcheon of Royal George—the lion and the unicorn fighting for ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... pole chains was heard, and a cry was raised of "Here's Sir Wincent!" I looks out, and saw a werry neat, dark, chocolate-coloured coach, with narrow red-striped wheels, and a crest, either a heagle or a unicorn (I forgets which), on the door, and just the proprietors' names below the winder, and "The Age," in large gilt letters, below the gammon board, drawn by four blood-like, switch-tailed nags, in beautiful highly polished harness with brass furniture, without bearing reins—driven by ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... male Lolo, rich or poor, free or subject, may be instantly known by his horn. All his hair is gathered into a knot over his forehead and there twisted up in a cotton cloth so as to resemble the horn of a unicorn. The horn with its wrapper is sometimes a good nine inches long. They consider this coiffure sacred, so at least I was told, and even those who wear a short pig-tail for convenience in entering Chinese territory still conserve the indigenous horn, concealed for the occasion under the folds of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... beseech you, Entreat him mildly, let not your rough tongue Set us at louder variance; all my wrongs Are freely pardon'd; and I do not doubt, As men to try the precious unicorn's horn Make of the powder a preservative circle, And in it put a spider, so these arms Shall charm his poison, force it to obeying, And keep him chaste from an ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... Certainly, a great square board painted with the royal arms was then erected, for it bore the date 1698, and the initials "W. M." for William and Mary. There it was, on a beam, above the chancel arch, and the lion and unicorn on either side, the first with a huge tongue hanging out at the corner of his mouth, looking very complacent, as though he were displaying the royal arms, the unicorn slim and dapper with a chain hanging from ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time to spell at it," said he, "your lordship well knows I ken nought about it but the grand blazon at the tap—the lion has gotten a claught of our auld Scottish shield now, but it was as weel upheld when it had a unicorn on ilk ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... drove the dog-cart over the hills to York races. My brother had come down to Perth, and we went together, taking with us our friend the amiable and talented editor of one of the Perth journals. Attaching another horse to an outrigger, we drove unicorn, or ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Marigny, having on board near two hundred men, and mounted with twenty cannon, was taken by captain Parker, commander of his majesty's ship the Montague; who likewise made prize of a smaller armed vessel, from Dunkirk, of eight cannon and sixty men. About the same period, captain Graves, of the Unicorn, brought in the Moras privateer, of St. Maloes, carrying two hundred men, and two-and-twenty cannon. Two large merchant-ships, laden on the French king's account for Martinique, with provisions, clothing, and arms, for the troops on that island, were taken ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... that he must perform one task more; that yonder, in a rock, was a wild beast, a unicorn, of such a nature that he destroyed a great many of their people; if he cleared him out of the world he should obtain the damsel. So he took his people and went into the forest. They came to a firwood. There were three wild beasts, and three lairs had been formed ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... he was jauntily set up as a signboard; a short time after he was re-shipped to Halifax, packed in a box, with his extended arm sawn off lying by his side. Fearing, however, the anger of the Quebec authorities, the "General" was painted afresh and returned by the "Unicorn" steamer, "Cape Douglas," which plied between the Lower Ports,—with the "Inconstants'" best regards to their Quebec friends, and best wishes for ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Who hath loosed (says he) the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture. The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same book, is full of the same heightening circumstances: Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?—Canst thou draw out leviathan ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... flights of marble steps, so broad and easy that a procession on horseback could ascend them. By these you reach a landing, where stand as sentinels two colossal figures sculptured from great blocks of marble. The one horn in the forehead seems to Heeren to indicate the Unicorn; the mighty limbs, whose muscles are carved with the precision of the Grecian chisel, induced Sir Robert Porter to believe that they represented the sacred bulls of the Magian religion; while the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... with armlets, frontlets, bracelets, and girdles of shell, and almost all of them wore, not only nose-rings, but plugs of wood or mother-of-pearl in the tip of the nose. One man in particular had a shell eyelet-hole let into his nose, into which he inserted his unicorn decoration. The Bishop amused himself and Coley by saying, as he hung a fishhook on this man's nose-hook, 'Naso suspendis adunco.' Others had six or eight pieces of wood sticking out from either side of the nose, like a cat's whiskers. Two young ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... University, and mounted a broad stone staircase which ascends square, and with right-angular turns on one corner, on the outside of the edifices. It is very striking in appearance, being ornamented with a balustrade, on which are large globes of stone, and a great lion and unicorn curiously sculptured on the opposite side. While we waited here, staring about us, a man approached, and offered to show us the interior. He seemed to be in charge of the College buildings. We accepted his offer, and were led first up this ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... glasses, a little pewter, and some rare shells. A few high-backed chairs were ranged against the wall; there was a tall "armory," i.e. a linen-press of dark oak, guarded on each side by the twisted weapons of the sea unicorn, and in the middle of the room stood a large, solid-looking table, adorned with a brown earthenware beau-pot, containing a stiff posy of roses, southernwood, gillyflowers, pinks and pansies, of small dimensions. On hooks, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... history of cave research. The dread and awe which kept people away from caves during the Middle Ages preserved their contents for later discoverers. In the seventeenth century, some adventurous spirits began to search in them for what they called Unicorn horns, which were deemed a most efficacious remedy for various diseases. This search served the good purpose of bringing to light various fossil bones of animals, and calling the attention of scientific ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... gathering. Down the middle was a long table, with benches beside it, and a round-backed chair at each end; other seats were ranged along the walls. At the upper end of the room an arrangement of dirty red hangings—in the form of a canopy, surmounted by a lion and unicorn, of pasteboard—showed that festive meetings were regularly held here. Round about were pictures of hunting incidents, of racehorses, of politicians and pugilists, interspersed with advertisements of beverages. A piano ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... an architectural point of view. Close to it is the famous "Corner." What the Bourse is in Paris, Wall Street in New York, and the Exchange in London—that is the "Corner" at Ballarat. Under the verandah of the Unicorn Hotel, and close to the Exchange Buildings, there is a continual swarm of speculators, managers of companies, and mining men, standing about in groups, very like so many circles of betting-men on a race-course. Here all the mining swindles originate. Specimens of gold-bearing quartz are ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... withdrew into the desert as a Christian hermit. The story has been dramatized by the Spanish poet Calderon in his Magico Prodigioso, a part of which has been finely translated by Shelley. The beautiful picture of St. Justina by Moretto, where Cyprian is kneeling before her and a white unicorn, the symbol of chastity, is crouching in the foreground, is ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Irm, a beautiful girl, a white deer. The word is connected with the Heb. Reem (Deut. xxxiii. 17), which has been explained unicorn, rhinoceros, and aurochs. It is at the Ass. Rimu, the wild bull of the mountains, provided with a human face, and placed at the palace-entrance to frighten away foes, demon ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... name was painted, with the usual announcement of certain commodities in which he dealt, was another board of a very different description. On it were emblazoned the arms of his Majesty, with the supporters, a lion and a unicorn, as the country folks said, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... and his Tribune made huge beasts great in power and form, to dwell upon parts of the earth. The unicorn was larger than the elephant. He had horns as the horns of a bull. He was mighty in strength and was a ferocious beast. Mazaroth was much larger than the unicorn; he was a beast of the rivers, of the swamps, and glades. Arcturus ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... man was pursued by a unicorn, and while he tried to flee from it, he fell into a pit. In falling he stretched out both his arms, and laid hold of a small tree that was growing on one side of the pit. Having gained a firm footing, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... (Tyranny repulsed by virtue.) A unicorn (Great Britain), royally gorged, lies extended at the foot of a precipice, against which it has broken its horn; in the background a vast country (America), diversified by plains, rivers and mountains. Exergue: SUB GALLIAE AUSPICIIS (Under the auspices of France). On the platform: ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... thou art most great, most high; Such from all eternity. Perish shall thy enemies, Rebels that against thee rise. All who in their sins delight, Shall be scattered by thy might But thou shall exalt my horn Like a youthful unicorn, Fresh and fragrant odours shed On thy crowned prophet's head. I shall see my foes' defeat, Shortly hear of their retreat; But the just like palms shall flourish Which the plains of Judah nourish, Like tall cedars mounted on Cloud-ascending Lebanon. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... knew at once that she was a sorceress, for the caterpillar of the hawk-moth is green and yellow, and it, too, knows how to bewitch the eye. The lower end of its body looks as if it were its head and has a horn like a unicorn, so that it frightens away its enemies with its mock face, while it feeds in peace with that part of its body which looks ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... it just as you might say, 'I've taken up tennis.' He gives you the impression that if he remarked that he had taken up cathedral-building or unicorn-breeding, you would believe him. A ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... portraits drawn in lines of fire) to notice the naive admiration of one little Eve concealed in a group of women. Marie's curiosity—like that which would undoubtedly precipitate all Paris into the Jardin des Plantes to see a unicorn, if such an animal could be found in those mountains of the moon, still virgin of the tread of Europeans—intoxicates a secondary mind as much as it saddens great ones; but Raoul was enchanted by it; although ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... his colleagues, the little black plug of his hearingaid sticking out like a misplaced unicorn's horn, was the chairman, Senator Jones, his looseskinned old fingers resting lightly on the bright table, the nails square and ridged, the flesh brownspotted. He adjusted a pair of goldrimmed spectacles, quickly ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... like Sui-shih, who used to read a book repeatedly one hundred times." Then follows a remark, more intelligible in Chinese than in English: "The hairs of a bull are counted by thousands, the horn of a unicorn is ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... was short and roly-poly, with a little round mouth and big round eyes, and a curlicue of topknot that he wagged in emphasis as a unicorn might brandish his horn. Mr. Harnden considered that he was a good talker. He was considerably piqued by Britt's apparent failure to get interested, although the banker was making considerable of an ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... let one perceive in a marvellous forest a lady at the feet of whom a unicorn lay on the grass, extended above cabinets to the painted beams of the ceiling. He led her to a large and low divan, loaded with cushions covered with sumptuous fragments of Spanish and Byzantine cloaks; but she sat in an armchair. "You are here! You ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... as if an hundredweight had been attached to them. His squire, noting his fatigue, grew faint, and began to think the best thing for him would be to ride off, for the fight was likely to end badly for his master. The knight's knees were trembling under him, and as the monster, in the form of a unicorn, charged against his shield he fell ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... other beast. Moreover, he had not trained himself in the art of throwing himself upon his back, as the owl, who was like a cat in this particular also, had apparently done, and since he could not prance on his hindlegs, unicorn-fashion, forever, he had to come down again, belly and throat first, on that infernal battery of ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... about the year 1600. It has a fine oak staircase, the newels beautifully carved and enriched with pierced finials and pendants. The market-place has two good specimens of the same date, one of which is probably the front of the Unicorn Inn, and had a fine pair of wooden gates bearing the date 1684, but I am not sure whether they are still there. The Reindeer Inn is one of the chief architectural attractions of the town. We see the dates 1624 and 1637 inscribed on different parts of the building, but ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... glancing of lights, such a whispering of voices, such a smoking and sputtering of wood newly lighted in a damp chimney, such an airing of linen, such a scorching smell of hot warming-pans, such a domestic bustle and to-do, in short, as never dragon, griffin, unicorn, or other animal of that species presided over, since they first began to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... him the gods Bound in pliant traces; Harsh and stubborn hearts he bends, Breaks with blows of maces; Nay, the unicorn is ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Hodgsoni), of which the bucks are armed with long, slender and heavily-ridged horns of an altogether peculiar type, while the does are hornless. Possibly this handsome antelope may be the original of the mythical unicorn, a single buck when seen in profile looking exactly as if it had but one long straight horn. Although far from uncommon, chiru are very wary, and consequently difficult to approach. They are generally found in small parties, although occasionally in herds. They inhabit the desolate plateau ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... following, when some monsters arose from the bottom, near the shore, where he had been lurking, opposed his further progress, and a conflict instantly ensued. The daring assailant I distinguished to be a sword-fish, or sea-unicorn, the knight-errant of the sea, attacking every thing in its domain; his head is as hard and as rough as a rock, out of the centre of which grows horizontally an ivory spear, longer and far tougher than any warrior's lance; with this weapon he fights. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... pepper plant, the buffalo, the camelopard, the musk animal, &c.: the rhinoceros, he says, he saw only at a distance; he procured some teeth of the hippopotamus, but never saw the animal itself. In the palace of the king of Abyssinia, the unicorn was represented in brass, but he never saw it. It is extraordinary that he makes no mention of cinnamon, as ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of an hour afterwards, M. le Comte's travelling coach was once more ready for departure. Pierre had been given his orders to make due haste for Lyons, and to drive a unicorn team of three horses instead of a regulation four, whereupon he had muttered a string of oaths which would have caused a Paris ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Metallorum [gold] [ounce] ss. Pouder of a Lyon's heart [ounce] iv. Filings of a Unicorn's Horn [ounce] ss. Ashes of the whole Chameleon [ounce] iss. Bark of the Witch Hazle Two handfulls. Lumbrici [Earth-worms] A score. Dried Man's Brain [ounce] v. Bruisewort } Egyptian ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... phenomena would have been too much to expect. He seems to have believed, though not without some difficulty, that stones had in them "certaine proper vertues which are given them of a speciall influence of the planets." The unicorn's horn, he thought, had certain curative properties. And he had heard "by credible report" and the affirmation of "many grave authors" that "the wound of a man murthered reneweth bleeding at the presence of a deere freend, or of a ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... goats endure The mother-sorrow? how their offspring grow Healthful and strong, uncared for, and unstall'd? Who made the wild ass like the desert free, Scorning the rein, and from the city's bound Turning triumphant to the wilderness? Lead to thy crib the unicorn, and bind His unbow'd sinews to the furrowing plough, And trust him if thou canst to bring thy seed Home to the garner. Who the radiant plumes Gave to the peacock? or the winged speed That bears ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... flight towards the opposite shore of Africa. Sir Isumbras slowly returned to his child, whom he had no longer the means of feeding, but the wretched father only arrived m time to behold the boy snatched from him by a unicorn. The knight was now quite disheartened. But his last calamity was so evidently miraculous that even the grief of the father was nearly absorbed by the contrition of the sinner. He fell on his knees and uttered a most fervent prayer to Jesus and the Virgin, and then ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... saints alway, Good gentleman, give luck, - As never a cab may I find this day, For the cabman wights have struck: And now, I wis, at the Red Post Inn, Or else at the Dog and Duck, Or at Unicorn Blue, or at Green Griffin, The nut-brown ale and the fine old gin Right ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... a matter of fact there is a marked distinction between the heads of the animals of the east and west porticoes: those of the west are undoubtedly bulls, but those of the east are grotesque mythological creatures somewhat resembling the fabled unicorn. ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... seat two only, five or six persons were huddled. These and similar vehicles drew up in rows outside the public-houses, where the lean, long-legged colonial horses stood jerking at their tethers; and they were still there, still jerking, when he passed again toward evening. On a huge poster the "Unicorn" offered to lunch free all those "thinking men" who registered their vote for "the one and only true democrat, the miners' friend ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... knights of Knighton-Guild. Upon the top of it, to the eastward, is placed a golden sphere; and on the upper battlements, the figures of two soldiers as sentinels: beneath, in a large square, King James I. is represented standing in gilt armour, at whose feet are a lion and unicorn, both couchant, the first the supporter of England, and the other for Scotland. On the west side of the gate is the figure of Fortune, finely gilded and carved, with a prosperous sail over her head, standing on a globe, overlooking ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales |
