"Grotto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw before them the flower-beds designed by Le Notre, the green carpet, the fountain; then the grotto with its five rustic arcades crowned by the tall trees on which autumn had already begun ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... The prudent Lakshman thus replied: "Come, though our labour yet be vain, And search through Janasthan again,— A realm where giant foes abound, And trees and creepers hide the ground. For there are caverns deep and dread, By deer and wild birds tenanted, And hills with many a dark abyss, Grotto and rock and precipice. There bright Gandharvas love to dwell, And Kinnars in each bosky dell. With me thy eager search to aid Be every hill and cave surveyed. Great chiefs like thee, the best of men, Endowed with sense and piercing ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... they had been washed so carefully. And the pattern was something I really could not describe if I tried—it was the most delicious muddle of flowers, and trailing leaves and birds, and here and there a sort of little basket-work pattern that looked like a summer-house or the entrance to a grotto. ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... profound agitation with which this was spoken, the knight retired into the inner cell; but casting back his eye as he left the exterior grotto, he beheld the anchorite stripping his shoulders with frantic haste of their shaggy mantle, and ere he could shut the frail door which separated the two compartments of the cavern, he heard the clang of the scourge and the groans of the penitent under his self-inflicted ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... orchard, in t' garden, an' t' grotto, Where sweet vegetation anon will adorn; Tha smiles on the lord no more than the cottar, For thi meanest o' subjects tha nivver ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... River we pass into the Upper Basin, a section the most popular with the majority of tourists. Among the geysers in this basin we shall find Grotto, Castle, Giant, Giantess, Bee Hive, Splendid, Grand, and Old Faithful. Each of them has an interest peculiarly its own, but Old Faithful is always true to its name and is perhaps best ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... make a collection, and I should like to class them all, and, by the time La Luna comes back, I want to have hundreds and hundreds, and I will take them to ornament my garden, or they will look lovely arranged all round the big hall; or, Mama, dear, we might make a grotto, think how lovely it would be! So let us little girls do nothing but pick up shells. Do, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... building in the middle of the block, between Trounce Alley and Fort Street, is the Hotel de France, kept by P. Manciet, and one of the two principal hotels of that day. Next was McNiff's grotto, Mon's Laundry, The Star and Garter, Thomas Wilson & Co., drapers, and farther on the two-story brick building, now Hibben & Co., and farther on south J. H. Turner & Co. Of course all will recognize the name as ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... to the musing Godolphin), led his steps in an opposite direction. Scarcely conscious whither he was wandering, he did not pause till he found himself in that green and still valley in which the pilgrim beholds the grotto of Egeria. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dwarfs and fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the peasantry:—Grotte aux fees, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... its mere name would at once cast a spell upon the spirit, even if one were ignorant of the place itself. The hypostyle of the temple of the God Amen—that could be no other thing but one. For this hall is unique in the world, in the same way as the Grotto of Fingal and the Himalayas ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... an enormous pillar suspended from the roof and ending abruptly some distance from the ground; stalactites were seen, but the sound of a water-fall was heard from the further end. The French also visited the ruins of an ancient building near a grotto, containing an idol, and with a passage opening out of one corner. This passage Bougainville followed. It led him into an "immense rotunda lighted from the top, and ending in an arched vault, at least sixty feet high. Imagine the effect of a series ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... vouchsafing no reply, walked toward the house with her eyes fixed on the ground; but just as they reached the door she flashed over him a look that scorched him from head to foot, and sent his spirits down through the soles of his boots to excavate a grotto in the depths of the earth, so charged it was with wrathful pity ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Protestants, Agnostics, Atheists, who come from all over the world to investigate these cures from the standpoint of a religion or pure science. What sights I have seen! Men and women of all ages and walks of life testifying that the waters of the sacred grotto have freed them from this or that malady, from tumors, lameness, deafness, blindness, tuberculosis, nervous trouble and numerous other afflictions. By thousands and tens of thousands these unfortunates crowd here from the four corners of the earth, an endless procession ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... greatest miracle of the night was little Jacob, who ate oysters as if he had been born and bred to the business—sprinkled the pepper and the vinegar with a discretion beyond his years—and afterwards built a grotto on the table with the shells. There was the baby too, who had never closed an eye all night, but had sat as good as gold, trying to force a large orange into his mouth, and gazing intently at the lights in the chandelier—there he ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the maid came in and invited Lady Bassett to follow her. She opened the glass folding-doors and took them into a small conservatory, walled like a grotto, with ferns sprouting out of rocky fissures, and spars sparkling, water dripping. Then she opened two more glass folding-doors, and ushered them into an empty room, the like of which Lady Bassett had never seen; it was large in itself, and multiplied ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... away and walked round to the stables, in which stood ten fine horses. These, the count ordered to be removed at once to a place which he called the Elfin Grotto, giving instructions that the three which were considered to be the fleetest were to be saddled and bridled ready for instant use, Francesca's saddle being required for one of them. He also hunted out Giaccomo—who looked ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... "I wish you'd give up this grotto-making till to-morrow. Mrs. Kavanagh, Mrs. Lorraine and Lord Arthur Redmond are coming here to luncheon at two. I suppose you can get something decent for them. What is the matter? What is the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Colonel Nairne's garden and grotto. Here was a fine old plane tree. Unluckily the colonel said, there was but this and another large tree in the county. This assertion was an excellent cue for Dr Johnson, who laughed enormously, calling to me to ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... xii., p. 974). The chain of miracles extends right down to the present day. At Lourdes, in this year (1876), the Virgin was crowned by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris in the presence of thirty-five prelates and one hundred thousand people. During the mass performed at the Grotto by the Nuncio, Madeleine Lancereau, of Poictiers, aged 61, known by a large number of the pilgrims as having been unable to walk without crutches for nineteen years, was radically cured. Here is a better ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... bungalow after bungalow, each in its own little paradise, and look upon the green lawn successfully defying an unkind climate, the islands of mingled foliage in profuse, confused beauty, the gay flower beds, the clean gravel paths with their trim borders, the grotto in a shady corner, where fern and moss mingle, all dripping as if from recent showers and make you feel cool in spite of all thermometers, and I say to myself, "Without the Malee all this would not be." Neither ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... leg being fearfully twisted. She came to Lourdes with the pilgrimage from Picardy, and was radically cured at the moment the Papal Nuncio sent to crown the Holy Virgin was saying the paternoster in the mass he was celebrating in the grotto. She told the crowd that, having walked into the little pool, a lively internal emotion took possession of her, and she cried out, 'I am cured! I am cured!' Her companions wept with joy and admiration at the miracle. When they asked her what she had done for that great ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... a cold and even violent wind. From the opening one could go down a stone staircase of at least a hundred steps, and at the bottom was a grotto where was the source of a stream of water as cold as ice. Donna Lucrezia told me it would be a great risk to go down the steps ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The grotto of La Scala may have been the spot from which he looked out upon the AEgean Sea, and upward into the heavens, communing in solitude with his own thoughts, or with his Lord for whom he was there. Patmos was for this a fitting place, whether he ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... do if you whaled yourself From eight to ten or from one to three? Or if 'More' is your motto, pray hire a grotto; I know of one you can have ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... 'Royal Middy,' entered the conservatory, and strolled leisurely along a gravelled walk which led to a little grotto composed of rare minerals and shells. Entering this picturesque retreat, she placed herself upon a seat exquisitely sculptured from marble, and listened to the beautiful strains of music which ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... they devoted to Capri and the Blue Grotto, and afterward they lunched at the Quisisana and passed the afternoon in the town. But the charms of Sorrento were too great for Capri to win their allegiance, and they were glad to get back to their quaint town and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... the ground at each end of this passage two wooden plugs which were fitted into holes in the basement. I then began to realize that what I had hitherto regarded as solid walls were in reality sliding panels of wood. These panels when opened revealed a kind of grotto. There were no windows, but in the roof was a skylight. At one end of this room or grotto was a large rock, on the top of which was a seat with a yellow cushion, and beside the cushion an incense burner. Everything had the appearance of being very old. The room contained no furniture ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... the end of the line, there was a deeper grotto in the rock, which was used only when the nearer stalls were full. Beside the entrance of this cave an ass was tethered, and a man of middle age stood ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... to a dark yew-tree walk, leading to a labyrinth, and tracking it swiftly, as well as the overarched and intricate path to which it conducted, they entered a grotto, whence a flight of steps descended to a subterranean passage, hewn out of the rock. Along this passage, which was of some extent, the monk ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... remembered ever having received a parcel which caused me greater pleasure. I opened one end of it and took out each article in turn and each article was simply delightful. It was really like an unexpected Christmas, or a visit to the perfect grotto. There is only one thing, mother, that you really must not do, it is simply spoiling one as it is impossible to realise that one is supposed to be on active service, when we are billeted in extremely comfortable billets, and given all the luxuries one could possibly desire. I thought that ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... the centre of the terrace there is a Jet d'eau, in form of a large palm-tree, made of copper, which at pleasure may be made to spout water from the extremity of all the leaves. This tree stands on a well disposed grotto, which rises from the gravel walk below to the level of the terrace, and terminates the view of the principal walk. Near the foot of the grotto two large aligators, made of copper, are continually discharging water into a handsome bason ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... ornamented with figures which fanaticism has dislodged,—the slender shafts supporting a higher apartment, probably the rood-loft, in the inside of the fabric, from whence half-figures of angels are seen to issue,—the pendants dropping, like congelations in a grotto, from a roof adorned with the most delicate tracery spread over it like a web,—these and a countless multitude of minuter beauties, almost distract attention, and overwhelm the judgment with their ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... abode of Miss Flaw. There was a porch at her door, both for shelter and shade, and it was covered with jasmine; but the charm of the place was a summer-house close by, containing a table, encrusted with cowry-shells, and seats from which one saw the distant waters of the bay. At the entrance to this grotto there was always set a 'snug elbow-chair', destined, I suppose, for the Rev. Mr. Flaw, or else left there in pious memory of him, since I cannot recollect whether he was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... from that. You'd expect, probably a cipher, certainly abbreviations; most certainly scientific and strictly professional terms. But this thing's elaborately simple, like a penny dreadful: 'In the purple grotto you will find the golden casket.' It looks as if... as if it were meant to ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... said Cam, leading his obese charge stumbling and falling out of the Caribbean grotto, past the Michael Mouse shrine and the framed Exceptional T & E Vouchers (to which no exception had been taken, thus attesting to the achievement of ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... disappointment, for he was never introduced to the fascinating Senorita; but he fairly pined upon it. I told him the best way to drive off the blue devils would be to go with me and a few friends to the Grotta Azzura. So off we started to Naples, and thence to Capri. The grotto was one of the few novelties remaining for me in Italy. I had heard much of it, but the reality exceeded all descriptions. We seemed to be actually under the sea in a palace of gems. Our boat glided over a lake of glowing sapphire, and our oars dropped rubies. High ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... hear how you got on with Billy. Did they take him in at once? and what sort of place is the Grotto? You see I am naturally anxious to know, because it was a terrible thing to send a poor boy away from his only friend among strangers at such an age, and just after recovering from a bad illness; but ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... composed for his friend Nordraak. The burial place is as romantic as his music. Near his home there is a steep cliff, about fifty feet high, projecting into the fjord. Half way up there is a natural grotto, which can only be reached by water. In this spot, chosen by Grieg himself, the urn containing his ashes was deposited some weeks after the funeral. Then the grotto was closed and a stone slab with the words "Edward Grieg" cut upon it, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... there are certain parts of the Park not open to the public. The grotto and the playgrounds and the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Four Regions, which represents the utmost extent of its development during the period which gave rise to the genuine Roman religion. All these stages have left their mark on the customs of religion. Roma quadrata comes to the fore in the Lupercalia: not merely is the site of the ceremony a grotto on the Palatine (Lupercal), but when the Luperci run their purificatory course around the boundaries, it is the circuit of the Palatine hill which marks its limits. Annually on the 11th of December the festival of the Septimontium was celebrated, not by the ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... golf-course, good hotels, etc. It was the English season; the Spanish season being in summer. On King Edward's arrival with his entourage and fashionable followers golf became impossible, so I went on to Pau and played there. From Pau a short run took me to Lourdes, with its grotto, chapel, etc. From Pau to Bordeaux, a handsome, busy town. Then Paris ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Can you picture, as I picture now, that dark and lonesome cavern, with the sea beating upon its roof and the air coming salt and humid to the tongue, and the echo of distant breakers in your ears, and always the night and the doubt of it? Can you follow me from grotto to grotto and labyrinth to labyrinth, stumbling often by the way, catching at the lantern's dancing rays, calling one to the other, "All's well—lead on"? Aye, I doubt that you can. These things must ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... which extended to the roots of the Atlas. Just now, the persecution growing, many deacons, other ecclesiastics, and prominent laymen from all parts of the country had fallen back upon this cavern or grotto; and in no place could Caecilius have better means than here of learning the general state of affairs, and of communicating with countries beyond the seas. He was indeed on his way thither, when the illness of Agellius made it a duty for him to stop and restore him, and attend to his ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... juts out from the centre of the lake, on which the Indians centuries ago etched and painted great warlike figures, whose significance is now known to no one. It is said that Hawthorne frequently sailed or rowed to Indian Rock, and to a sort of grotto there which was large enough for his boat to enter. Both the rock and the Manning house are now difficult of access. Longfellow wrote a pretty descriptive poem of a voyage on Sebago, and it is remarkable how he ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... that down;" and went on to say to Dr. Johnson, "Pope, Sir, would have said the same of you, if he had seen you distilling." JOHNSON. "Sir, if Pope had told me of my distilling, I would have told him of his grotto."' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... church, Ambrosio bent his steps towards a grotto in the abbey garden, formed in imitation of a hermitage. On reaching the grotto, he found it already occupied. Extended upon one of the seats, lay a man in a melancholy posture, lost in meditation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... hilarity of the people round us chafed with bitter contrast on my depressed spirits. I inquired from the post-boy what was the origin of so great a commotion, and understood him to say in reply that it was a religious festival held annually in honour of "Our Lady of the Grotto." I cannot, however, conceive of any truly religious person countenancing such a gathering, which seemed to me rather like the unclean orgies of a heathen deity than an act of faith of Christian people. This disturbance occasioned us so serious a delay, that as we were climbing the steep slope ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... of doing anything if anyone did come. Now it is warm enough for me to pick off the outer layer of dew-wet leaves from whatever heaps of dead leaves are hereabouts. I can gather the dry leaves into that little grotto. We can lie on a bed of them, wrapped up in them we can cower under them, we can even pull our heads under and be invisible if we hear footsteps ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... wall, cork mats on the floor, and one enormous central water supply, hot and cold, which you diverted to whichever bath you chose by means of a long flexible rubber pipe. Soap, sponges, towels, ad lib. You can imagine what this palatial water grotto meant to us, when, at other times, our best bath was of saucepan capacity, taken on the cold stone floor of a farm room. We lay and boiled the trenches out of our systems in that palatial asylum. Glorious! lying back in a long white enamel bath in a warm foggy atmosphere of steam, watching ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... walked to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain, and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us with their eternal simper; then through ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was in was a most delightful cavity, or grotto, of its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of small loose gravel upon it; so that there was no nauseous creature to be seen; neither was there any damp or wet on the sides of the roof: the only difficulty in it was the entrance, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... two lateral ramifications which reach to the distance of about a mile and a half from the entrance. The river Poik enters the cavern 60 ft. below its mouth, and is heard murmuring in its recesses. In the Kaiser-Ferdinand grotto, the third of the chain, a great ball is annually held on Whit-Monday, when the chamber is brilliantly illuminated. The Franz-Joseph-Elisabeth grotto, the largest of the four, and the farthest from the entrance, is 665 ft. in length, 640 ft. in breadth and more than 100 ft. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... view of what Phonny called a cavern. It was a place where two immense fragments of rock leaned over toward each other, so as to form a sort of roof, beneath which was an inclosure which Phonny called a cavern. He might perhaps have more properly called it a grotto. There was a great flat stone at the bottom of the cavern, which made an excellent floor, and there was an open place in the top behind, where Phonny thought that the smoke would go out if he should make ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... undergoes a preparation and purification for the fulfilment of her holy office—the culling of the flower. It consists mainly in the study of our sacred writings, the eating of a certain food, and bathing in the waters of a holy fountain, which issues from the rock in a sacred grotto of the island. When the ceremony of cutting the lily is over, and the holy month has expired, that is to say in ten days from now, she will leave the temple and return to her family. Another girl will take her place—the priestess appointed for the coming year—in fact, the maiden ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... occupy the valleys plunge into dark tunnels to reappear some miles away. Ground water stands so far below the surface that it cannot be reached by wells, and the inhabitants depend on rain water stored for household uses. The finest cavern of Europe, the Adelsberg Grotto, is in this region. Karst, the name of a part of this country, is now used to designate any region or landscape thus sculptured by the chemical action of surface and ground water. We must remember that Karst regions are rare, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... it—Chester Johnson. She had met him at dances and danced with him in the days before she was married. He had always been kind and good natured. She remembered the Friday night, after a City Hall band concert, when he had taken her and two other girls to Tony's Tamale Grotto on Thirteenth street. And after that they had all gone to Pabst's Cafe and drunk a glass of beer before they went home. It was impossible that this could be the same Chester Johnson. And as she looked, she saw the round-bellied leader, still ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... old-fashioned excrescences which we profess to despise. He admired mock classical temples and obelisks erected judiciously at the ends of vistas. His most famous piece of handiwork, the grotto at Twickenham, still remains, and is in fact a short tunnel under the high road to connect his grounds with the lawn which slopes to the river. He describes in a letter to one of his friends, his "temple wholly comprised of shells ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... architecture, and the fairy-tale picture should certainly be drawn with architectural lines. The normal fairy-tale is a sort of tiny informal child's religion, the baby's secular temple, and it should have for the most part that touch of delicate sublimity that we see in the mountain chapel or grotto, or fancy in the dwellings of Aucassin and Nicolette. When such lines are drawn by the truly sophisticated producer, there lies in them the secret of a more than ritualistic power. Good fairy architecture amounts ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Was loud, and roared the woods among: From rustling leaves, and crashing boughs, The sound of woe and war arose. The hares, distracted, scour the grove, As terror and amazement drove; But danger, wheresoe'er they fled, Still seemed impending o'er their head. Now crowded in a grotto's gloom, All hope extinct, they wait their doom: Dire was the silence, till, at length, Even from despair deriving strength, With bloody eye, and furious look, A daring youth arose, and spoke. "O wretched ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... gorge or canyon. 'Black Canyon,' they all cry. 'Stop,' says the Indian. He pushes a stone aside. It uncovers the mouth of a small cave. The Indian struck a light with two sticks. They follow him into this cave for about a mile when the cave opens into an immense Grotto. The Indian whistled, a bear and dog appeared. "Bring ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expression. When I lowered the match, its flame dwindled and turned blue, and at eighteen inches from the floor it went out as if dipped in water. At that height the heavy gas must have been nearly pure. The room was a veritable Grotto del Cane. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... under the great branches of the trees. Here, in the gray of the narrow streets, the choristers' gowns were startling in their richness. Yonder, in full sunlight, the brightness on the maidens' robes made the shadows in their white skirts as blue as light caught in a grotto's depth. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... daylight was hateful to me, and the thought of the great, innocent, bold sunrise unendurable. Here there was no well to cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of that grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All the creatures spoke a language of ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... S. Maria de Anima, by the side-door that leads to the Pace, a S. Christopher in fresco, eight braccia high, which is a very good figure; and in this work is a hermit with a lantern in his hand, in a grotto, executed with good draughtsmanship, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... in Europe. It has a length, together with its ramifications, of over 5 miles, and is formed of two caverns—one known for several centuries, and another discovered by the naturalist Adolf Schmidl in 1856. Two entrances give access to the grotto, an old one extremely narrow, and a new one, made in 1890, through which the exploration of the cavern can be made in about 8 hours, half the time it took before. The cavern is composed of a labyrinth of passages and large and small halls, and is traversed by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... rock caves, many of them having been used as dwellings in prehistoric times. The best known are those of Lamouroux, excavated in stages in a vertical wall of rock, and four grotto-chapels resorted to by pilgrims in memory of St Anthony of Padua, who founded a Franciscan monastery at Brive in 1226. Under the Romans Brive was known as Briva Curretiae (bridge of the Correze). In the middle ages it was the capital ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... character, the island was used, under the Roman Empire, as a place of banishment; and here the Apostle St. John, during the persecution of Domitian, was banished, and wrote the book of the Revelations. The island now bears the name of Patino and Palmosa, but a natural grotto in the rock is still shown as the place where St. John resided. "In and around it," says Mr. Turner, "the Greeks have dressed up one of their tawdry churches; and on the same site is a school attached to the church, in which a few children are ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... write the motto NOSCE TEIPSUM o'er your grotto; For he must daily wiser grow, Determined his own scope to know. He never launches from the shore Without the compass, sail, and oar. He, ere he builds, computes the costs; And, ere he fights, reviews the hosts. He safely walks within the fence, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... come for the voice of Omnipotence to give the mandate. The group have gathered around the sepulchral grotto—the Redeemer stands in meek majesty in front—the teardrop still glistening in His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing on His countenance in dumb emotion, while the eager bystanders bend over the removed stone to see if the dead be still there. Yes! there the captive ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... poetic genius appeared to as much advantage in the disposition of these romantic materials as in any of his best-contrived poems.' And the loved toil which formed the quincunx, which perforated and extended the grotto until it extended across the road to a garden on the opposite side—the toil which showed the gentler parts of Pope's better nature—has been respected, and its effects preserved. The enamelled lawn, green as no other grass save that by the Thames ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... visitor that he is standing in a wintry scene, ice above and ice on the ground, with here and there patches of snow, the appearance being caused by the excessive whiteness of the gypsum. Farther on, there is a beautiful grotto, called "Serena's Arbour," the walls of which are covered with a drapery resembling yellow satin, falling in graceful folds, while through it murmurs a rivulet, which makes its way to one of the many rivers running through the cavern. In another, on ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... you run along; you'll find 'em. [She walks away slowly, baffled. He glances at her over his paper, slightly puzzled.] Have you seen the grotto? ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... voices and a chatter of some foreign speech; and I saw, pursuing the coach with its load of Hebridean fishers - as they had pursued VETTURINI up the passes of the Apennines or perhaps along the grotto under Virgil's tomb - two little dark-eyed, white-toothed Italian vagabonds, of twelve to fourteen years of age, one with a hurdy- gurdy, the other with a cage of white mice. The coach passed on, and their small Italian chatter died in the distance; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inscriptions, which Mr. Camden hath set down, and by the West Gate a piece of a delicate Corinthian freeze, which he calls wreathed leaves, not understanding architecture; and by in a bass relieve of an optriouch. At Bethford, about 1663, was found a grotto paved with Mosaic work, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... shadow of prosperity. He that was cast naked upon the shore, bereft of all his companions, has now a goddess to attend upon him, and his companions are the nymphs which never die. Who has not heard of Calypso? her grove crowned with alders and poplars; her grotto, against which the luxuriant vine laid forth his purple grapes; her ever new delights, crystal fountains, running brooks, meadows flowering with sweet balm- gentle and with violet; blue violets which like veins enamelled the smooth breasts of each fragrant mead! It were useless ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... sand lying between the wall of the cavern and the racing waters of the mysterious river, and found that the glow came from a magnificent lantern studded with emeralds, topazes, amethysts, and rubies, which hung by a chain from the roof of the grotto. Directly under this lantern, drawn up on the sand, lay a little boat with a lantern fastened to the bow. The Prince pushed the boat into the river, and got into it, and the swift current seized him and ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... and staggering steps went toward the grotto, Peter cried, looking after him, "Ah, dear good master," and John exclaimed, "My soul is ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... tell,' said the new housemaid. 'Quite a big gardens, it was. The gent as owned it was as rich as rich, kep' his carriage and butlers and all. But when his son come into the property he sold the gardens for building on, and only kep' the gate-house—the Grotto they calls it. An' there 'e's lived ever since in quite a poor way. Nasty old miser, that's what ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... there are many such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as much as the copy-book would hold; and I got through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his own story, and left them at once; in a hurry (I suppose) to set out upon his mission to Saintonge in the pays de d'Aunis, where the king ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... grotto of their own, With boughs above them closing, The Seven are laid, and in the shade 25 They lie like fawns reposing. But now, upstarting with affright At noise of man and steed, Away they fly to left, to right— Of your fair household, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... English gentleman at Macao, the rock, under which, as the tradition there goes, the poet Camoens used lo sit and compose his Lusiad. It is a lofty arch, of one solid stone, and forms the entrance of a grotto, dug out of the rising ground behind it. The rock is overshadowed by large spreading trees, and commands an extensive and magnificent view of the sea, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... of the vagrants' time was spent in play. They ascended the cliff towards the grotto of Saint John. They shared in many a contest. They dared each other to do things—possible and impossible. There were climbings of rocks, and daring leaps, with many perils and escapades, according to the nature of boys at play. At length, after becoming tired, there was the return home an ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... garden here belonging to some man of fashion, whose name I know not; it was cut in a rock, yet the grotto disappointed me: they had not taken such advantages of the situation as Lomellino would have done, and I recollected the tasteful creations in my own country, Pains Hill ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the golden key to glitter in the air. It came near to him, and he took it into his hand from where it lay on a pillow of mist. When he held it, the rocky door, though still fastened, no longer hid from view the loveliness of the grotto. He saw walls bedecked with gleaming jewels, marvellous flowers, and countless silver lamps, whilst everywhere were traced in precious gems the sayings of the Wise of all ages. Winged creatures, whose looks ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... aristocratic insolence, the guardian of the young Gonzaga, Carlo Malatesta, caused it to be pulled down in 1392, and was afterwards forced, when he found the fame of the old poet too strong for him, to set it up again. Even then, perhaps, the grotto, a couple of miles from the town, where Virgil was said to have meditated, was shown to strangers, like the 'Scuola di Virgilio' at Naples. Como claimed both the Plinys for its own, and at the end of the fifteenth century erected statues in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... to Montanvert, and thence on foot over the Mer de Glace, clambered up the steep mountain side to Chapeau, went down to the crystal Grotto and rode from there back to Chamounix. The ride up in the early hours of the morning was perfect, the mountain air so light; the mists parted; the pine-trees round the fresh mountain path exhaled a penetrating fragrance. An American family with whom I had become acquainted took three ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the place where she would have been setting that night—you may see it to-day. The Roman soldiers were recruited from the Teutonic and the Celtic portions of Gaul; of the latter many did know of that grotto under Chartres which is among the chief historical interests of Europe. The tide was, as I have said, on the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... remove the potatoes, the plums, the honey and the head of the dragon and manufacture a grotto in which the Fairy Bluebell reclines with closed eyes. It appears to be a suitable moment for returning to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... might have one foot in the grave. When he fust comed to live here he hated to have to cross the road to get to that there garden t'other side, so what do'e do but have a way dug under the road. It be a sort o' grotto, they say, with all kinds o' coloured stones and glasses stuck about an' must ha' cost a pile o' money. I s'pose rich folk must have their whims and vapours an' must gratify 'em too, or what be the good o' being rich, eh? Thank 'ee ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... city they went, through the crowded streets; past the palaces, cathedrals, gardens; past the towers, castles, and quays; till at last there arose before them the mighty Grotto of Posilipo. Through this they drove, looking in astonishment at its vast dimensions, and also at the crowds of people who were passing through it, on foot, on horseback, and on wheels. Then they came to Pozzuoli, the place where St. Paul once landed, and which ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the bay. They gained the cliff, and five minutes after, rubbed up against it to avoid a big pool of water which was advancing like a gulf stream in the middle of the sea-shore. Then they saw an archway which opened above a deep grotto; it was sonorous and very bright, like a church, with descending columns and a carpet of sea-wrack ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and on this lay a few candles, a stone bottle of water, a blasting fuse, and part of his lunch, which he had been unable to consume, wrapped in a piece of paper. A small wooden box on the floor, and a couple of pick-hilts, leaning against the wall, completed the furniture of this subterranean grotto. ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... cascades or fountains of water on both sides. Ladies also wear these in their hats sometimes when they want to be very grand. Near them is one of the birds with the queerest habits of any bird. It builds a little bower or grotto, and decorates it with shells and whatever else it can pick up—it really seems to like to make it pretty; and then it runs about in and out of its bower for amusement. So it is called the bower bird. These birds live in Australia, and their bowers are made of bits of strong ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... excellent pea, an abundant cropper, and considerably earlier than the Auvergne and Shillings Grotto; to both of which it ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... long pole, that we might not fall unexpectedly into any great hole or chasm, Silently we marched—-the mother, the boys, and even the dogs seeming overawed with the grandeur and beauty of the scene. We were in a grotto of diamonds—a vast cave of glittering crystal; the candles reflected on the wall a golden light, bright as the stars of heaven, while great crystal pillars rose from the floor like mighty trees, mingling their branches high above us and drooping in hundreds of stalactites, which sparkled and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dearest signorina," answered the young Italian, "I am apt to be fearful in old, gloomy houses, and in the dark. I love no dark or dusky corners, except it be in a grotto, or among the thick green leaves of an arbor, or in some nook of the woods, such as I know many in the neighborhood of my home. Even there, if a stray sunbeam steal in, the shadow is all the better for its ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... place to them, that overgrown old garden; for no gardener looked askance when they dug holes in the gravel paths, or turned the rockery into a grotto large enough to get into themselves and play at elves and witches and mermaids and other delightful games; and no one said them nay when they built a hut upon the lawn—with willow branches and rushes from beside ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... portion a structure of dressed stone, terminating in one tapering piece, has been erected, making the whole height of the monument forty-eight feet. The Jews have a custom of pelting it with stones on account of Absalom's misconduct, and the front side shows the effect of their stone-throwing. The Grotto of St. James is the traditional place of his concealment from the time Jesus was arrested till his resurrection. The Pyramid of Zachariah is a cube about thirty feet square and sixteen feet high, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... pen toward the individual by the window. Carmichael read on. Grumbach had assimilated some Americanisms. He went boldly over and seated himself in the chair at the side of the desk. With a sigh Carmichael left Porthos in the grotto of Locmaria. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... plain. Down in a vale with pine and cypress clad, Refreshed with gentle winds, and brown with shade, The chaste Diana's private haunt, there stood Full in the centre of the darksome wood A spacious grotto, all around o'ergrown 20 With hoary moss, and arched with pumice-stone. From out its rocky clefts the waters flow, And trickling swell into a lake below. Nature had everywhere so played her part, That ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... revisiting the sea on whose waves the cab had swum; but now she was under the sea, in a watery gulf, terribly deep; and the sounds of the world came to her through the water, sudden and strange. Hands seized her and forced her from the subaqueous grotto where she had hidden into new alarms. And she briefly perceived that there was a large bath by the side of the bed, and that she was being pushed into it. The water was icy cold. After that her outlook ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... now began to widen out, and we found ourselves, on passing over the plain which we had seen from above, entering a vast grotto from the roof of which long crystal prisms hung, while here and there natural pillars of limestone seemed to give their support to the roof above. Our strange guide now fastened a torch of some resinous material to the butt ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... built on the site of the tarven where our Lord wuz born. Goin' down the windin' staircase we come to the Grotto of the Nativity, which is a cave in the rock. There are several holy chapels here, but this one where they say Christ wuz born is about thirty-eight feet long and ten or eleven feet wide, and covered inside with costly ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... came to a moss-hag, where a group of Covenanters were worshiping God. A moss-hag is a cut on the hillside, formed by frost and rain; and overhung with moss, heather, and other growths. In such places the pursued Covenanters often hid themselves. The cold grotto was their house; the damp earth their bed; the hole cut out of the hill without hands their sanctuary. Andrew listened with breathless interest. They were singing a Psalm of David. Then followed an earnest prayer. Tie could not endure the suspense, but revealed himself to the little ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... began to wiggle her bottom. For some time she played with the hair which thickly covered my mount of Venus—twisting it around her fingers, she then gently divided the folding lips and endeavored to penetrate the interior of the mystical grotto—but she could not effect an entrance but was obliged to satisfy herself with titillating the inside of the lips. Suddenly flows of pleasure shot through my entire body—for her finger had come in contact with the peeping ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... was Sunday, and the sun shone into the canyon with dazzling brilliancy, all being tranquil except the foaming rapid. The locality was so fascinating that we lingered to explore, finding especial interest in a delightful grotto carved out of the red sandstone by the waters of a small brook. The entrance was narrow, barely 20 feet, a mere cleft in the beginning, but as one proceeded up it between walls 1500 feet high, the cleft widened, till at 15 rods it ended ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc, with ten persons—eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale and Mr. Randall. We reached the summit at half past 2. Immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which I visited was the grotto, in which the celebrated Portuguese poet, Camoens, is said to have composed the Lusiade. He had been banished, A.D. 1556, to Macao, on account of a satirical poem he had written, Disperates no India, and remained ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... instance poems, and they remain poems at the last. The imaginary scene of the death of the Evangelist John is rendered with the finest art; its dignity is that of a certain noble bareness; in the dim-lighted grotto are the aged disciple and the little group of witnesses to whom he utters his legacy of words; at the cave's edge is the Bactrian crying from time to time his ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the plains of Mount Oliphant began to whiten, and Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing scenes that surrounded the grotto of Calypso, and armed with a sickle, to seek glory by signalising himself in the fields of Ceres; and so he did, for although but about fifteen, I was told that he performed ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... boyhood, and to fish in the clear streams that tumbled down through narrow gorges and wound amid wide meadows, or in the lily-dotted mill pond, his pastime. He had the artist's nature in him also, and loved dearly to sketch a pretty bit of natural scenery, a cascade in the brook or a shady grotto in the woods. He loved books, flowers, music, green meadows, shady woods, and fields white with daisies. He had been reared among kind-hearted, honest, God-fearing people who seldom locked their doors at night and who believed in and lived by the Golden Rule. The selfish and distrustful life ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... artistic tastes and love of colour like myself, the interior of an ormer shell is a veritable fairy grotto. One discovery I made regarding them and that is, that they form a dainty dish for the huge conger eels which abound among the rocks, and about this bait I must presently ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... Scotland. The Circle is of 12 Stones. On each of the sides, east, west, and south, are three. In the centre was the image of the Deity; and on the north an avenue of twice nineteen stones, and one at the entrance. The Supernal Pagoda at Benares is in the form of a Cross; and the Druidical subterranean grotto at New Grange ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... treat; and she elected to go to the Island of Capri, which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with sea and wind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the famous "Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular conditions of tide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the island's end, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked emperor Tiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... yet the soldiers were armed with sticks and staves. They were about to arrest One who would make no attempt at flight or concealment, and the moon was full; yet, lest He should make His escape to some limestone grotto, or amid the deep shadows, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... is that, but still, after all, such an adventure would not be very unpleasant to me. I should begin a new life; I should hunt and fish; I should choose a grotto for my domicile in Winter and a tree in Summer. I should make storehouses for my harvests: in one word, I should ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... L'Isle, an island village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume and an arrow-like rapidity that communicate the feeling of exuberance and life. In passing, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... buildings that had evidently been prepared for the veneering process, and never been completed. Many of the mosaic floors are in fine preservation, as are also the paintings and frescoes on the walls. One beautiful little shrine or grotto made of mosaics and shells is singularly ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... than seventy years before, returned to the descendant of its old lords. But the manor-house was a ruin; and the grounds round it had, during many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto; and, before he was dismissed from the bar of the House of Lords, he had expended more than forty thousand ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
