"Moat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from Paris, remote from any common road, and far distant from the bustling world. In the midst of a luxuriant wilderness, rising above prolific orchards and antiquated woods, appears the five towers of La Grange, tinged with the golden rays of the declining sun. The deep moat, the draw bridge; the ivied tower and arched portals, opening into a large square court, has a feudal and picturesque character; and the associations which occur, on entering the residence of a man so heroic, so disinterested, ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... memorials and the sumptuous tasteless column and image recently erected at Rome there is a very wide margin of disputable ground, of which I shall say no more in this place. But to return to the antique conception of the "Donna orante" or so-called Virgin Mother, I will mention here only the moat remarkable examples; for to enter fully into the subject would occupy a ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... mail had reached that city from Marseilles. The next noticeable enterprise of The Times was the sending out commissioners to investigate the condition of the poor and laboring population of London in 1847, an enterprise which was crowned with the moat satisfactory results. The Times has always been the firm friend of the poor, and its columns are always open to the tale of distress. No case is advocated until it has been thoroughly investigated; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... than report hath it," he said as he entered the apartment where Francis awaited him. "Chartley is as much a prison for Mary as the tower itself would be. When I sought admission to its gates I was refused and threatened, forsooth. The manor is surrounded by a moat and is well defended. The walls can be scaled only by birds. Methinks that there is cause for Babington's ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... some gunboats with rockets were directed to try their powers; at last flames burst forth from several parts of the works, and at one o'clock the magazine in the principal fort exploding cast destruction around. The batteries having been now silenced, the squadron stood closer in and destroyed moat of the vessels which had taken shelter behind the mole. Soon after the fleet retired from before Odessa, the Tiger, which had been stationed off the coast, ran on shore. While attempts were being made to get her off ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the exact date of its erection cannot be ascertained. It was probably put up for the decoration of a pageant, and, being found useful, was kept up. The gate has been often taken to have been part of the defences of the City, which it certainly was not, being protected or strengthened with neither moat nor drawbridge, nor being strong enough for the mounting of cannon. The Bar, a simple arrangement of chain and rails, is mentioned as early as 1301, but it cannot be ascertained that there was any building upon it. In 1502 the custody of the Bar, together with that of Newgate and Ludgate, is ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... old castle, with a tall tower and many turrets, and broad halls and high battlements; and in the light of the setting sun every thing was as green as emerald or as the fresh grass of early spring. And a pale flickering light gleamed on the castle-walls, and the moat seemed filled with a ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... the flies were gone, Sat faithful on his horse, upon the lawn That skirts the castle moat; and thought the dame, For want of pluck, could never give him blame. He sat a week. She grew so blazing mad, She raved, and called three other knights she had; And cried, "That fool will drive me wild, I fear! Go bind ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the ground is such that a trench can be opened up to the wall, which has no terreplein. The wall is seven palmos high; the redoubts are very small and irregular—on the contrary, being in the way of the casements. Of the three cavaliers which the wall has, the moat is so filled up that there is hardly a sign that there was one. Considering the great importance of that post, and the fact that building can be done very cheaply, at less cost than in any other part, he resolved to build a royal cavalier, by gathering up the remains ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... that, Sir Balin climbed with eager haste by wall and tower, and leaped into the castle moat, and rushed towards the damsel and her enemies, with his sword drawn, to fight and slay them. But they cried out, "Put up thy sword, Sir knight, we will not fight thee in this quarrel, for we do nothing but an ancient ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... constituted the house, barn, and cowbyre were arranged in a hollow square around a brick courtyard, the centre of which was graced by a large pile of manure in an advanced stage of decomposition. Outside the square of buildings was a moat full of green slime and mosquito larvae. Here the men washed, and here, too, our buckets were filled each morning for the "lick and a promise" that served as a substitute ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... Hotel, once a palatial mansion of the Buccleuchs. There the Duchess of Monmouth used to hold her drawing-rooms in an apartment which many a New England journeyman mechanic would hardly think ample and comfortable enough for his parlor. There is a curious conical mound in the town, called the Moat-hill, which looks like a great, green carbuncle. It is thought by some to be a Druidical monument, but is quite involved in a mystery which no one has satisfactorily solved. It is strange that no persistent and successful effort has been made to let day- light through it. Some workmen ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... emerged from the woods he saw that the road led through the remains of an ancient wall, and across a bridge over a moat which was partly filled up. In the cleared space in front of the wall several soldiers were standing and near them were two hussars. The hussars rode forward, as if they would prevent the flight of the horse, but John urged ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... little daunted by this all-enveloping stillness, I skirted the terraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found an old-world drawbridge—now naturally in disuse—spanning a ditch fed from the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the bridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the same silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... upon it by a winding ledge of road, which clung to the bare side of the hill like the battlements of some huge castle. Some two hundred feet below, a brawling upland stream stood for the moat, and for the enemy there was on the opposite side of the valley a great green company of trees, settled like a cloud slope upon slope, making all haste to cross the river and ascend the heights where ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... palace, if it deserves the appellation, is a very rude and uncouth piece of architecture, designed to resist the attacks of internal enemies, and surrounded for that purpose with a moat and strong walls, but without any regular plan, or view to the modern system ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of too near a footfall. Thus insuperably guarded was the truth about the girl's own conception of her validity; thus was a wondering pitying sister condemned wistfully to look at her from the far side of the moat she had dug round her tower. Certain aspects of the connexion of these young women show for us, such is the twilight that gathers about them, in the likeness of some dim scene in a Maeterlinck play; we ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... and row with speed, For now 's the time, and the hour of need! To oars, to oars, and trim the bark, Nor Scotland's queen be a warder's mark! Yon light that plays round the castle's moat Is only the warder's random shot! Put off, put off, and row with speed, For now is the time, and the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... by the castle moat the lord of that burg and many of his folk with him; when he had dismounted on the turf he greeted them courteously, and the lord answered "God ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... miles upon a broad macadamized avenue, laid straight as an arrow's flight through the forest; and then the sound of the sea came to them, and before them was a mighty granite pile, looming grim in the twilight, with a draw-bridge and moat, and four great castellated towers. "Black Forest" was built in imitation of a famous old fortress in Provence—only the fortress had forty small rooms, and its modern prototype had seventy large ones, and now every window was blazing with lights. A man does not let himself be caught twice ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of the chambers one day found for us a large chateau, situated in a woody ravine, old-fashioned in structure, and surrounded by a moat. There was only one drawbridge, flanked by two tall towers, surmounted by turrets and culverins. Its owner was in residence at the time. He came to the King and the Queen, and greeting them in French, placed his entire property at ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... directly) at the Carrefour de la Table, where twelve roads met in an open circular space surrounding a great stone table. From there I took one leading straight to the Grille d'Honneur. We crossed a little bridge that spanned the moat, and looking down into its waters, we heard the splash of the ancient carp that filled it. Then through the Grille d'Honneur and between two stone dogs at the foot of the slope that led up to the ruins of the Grande ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the knights at the bottom of the dry moat at the back of the ruined castle. First they had stripped them and, when they took account of the spoils of the combat, they found themselves richer by three horses with full trappings, many pieces of gold and silver money, ornaments and jewels, as ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... around him and perceived a creature larger than a child, not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers of dust-colored cotton velvet, who was jumping over the parapet and who slipped into the moat of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... l'Imperatrice. What has been done there to render it impregnable to attack will consequently give an idea what has been done everywhere. At the Bois de Boulogne end of the avenue the gate has been closed up by a wall and a moat; behind them there is a redoubt. Between this and the Arc de Triomphe there are three barricades made of masonry and earth, and three ditches. Along the grass on each side of the roadway, the ground has been honey-combed, and in each hole there are pointed stakes. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Athens," but here were, in this southern and unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated anterior to the filling up of the town moat ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... nightfall, Father Coiffe, Nicholas Rolfo, and five or six other veterans, loading their cannon for the evening salute of twenty-one guns, while half of Pfalzbourg stand on the opposite bastion looking at the red light, and smoke, and watching the wads as they fall into the moat; then the illuminations at night and the crackers and rockets, I hear the children cry Vive l'Empereur, and then some days after, the death notices and the conscription. Under Louis XVIII. I see the altars and the peasants with their carts ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... Christ will give you in your work; and that is better than giving it to you after your work, and the very work which is blessed by Him, and furthered and prospered by Him, the very work itself will come to be moat and nourishment. 'Out of the eater will come forth meat,' and the slain 'lions' of past struggles and sorrows, the next time we come to them, will be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... it is only recently that thousands were swept away by famine. Fruit is abundant and little meat is necessary in hot countries. Before the morning meal was partaken of Jack Everson asked Dr. Marlowe to explain the cause of the low moaning noise that had been in his ears for moat of the night. The elder listened ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... broad alluvial plains, so that the long-surviving, crescent-shaped lake, the remnant of the river bed, may be seen far from the present course of the ever-changing stream. Gradually the accumulations of vegetable matter and the silt brought in by floods efface this moat or oxbow cut-off, as it is ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... they would afford no shelter to an enemy who had obtained possession of the first defences and was making an attack against the second line. The outer wall was twelve feet in thickness, and thirty feet above the court; outside the height was considerably greater, as there was a moat faced with stone fifteen feet deep entirely surrounding it, and containing seven or eight ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... you remember a young lady who arrived by an earlier train, the 12.50 from London? She'd probably ask you the way to the Moat House." ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... permission from the King to build castles. Such permission was extended to many other lay barons. The accustomed manor-house of the land proprietor, in which he dwelt amid the churls and serfs of his demesne, was now replaced by a stone tower, surrounded by a moat and a wall. The wooden one-storied homestead, with its thatched roof, shaded by the "toft" of ash and elm and maple, was pulled down, and a square fortress with loopholes and battlement stood in solitary nakedness upon some bleak hill, ugly and defiant. There with a band of armed men—sometimes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... tents were pitched upon the old ground, and the marks of our cattle were around us. In the evening, the men went out with their guns, and M'Leay and I walked to the rear of the camp, to consult undisturbed as to the moat prudent measures to be adopted, under our embarrassing circumstances. The men were completely sunk. We were still between eighty and ninety miles from Pondebadgery, in a direct line, and nearly treble that distance by water. The task was greater than we could perform, and our ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Alice. "Really we should have a moat and drawbridge to make the thing perfect. Constance and I are the best protected women ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... after the birth of Champlain, the town was fortified, and distinguished Italian engineers were employed to design and execute the work. [2] To prevent a sudden attack, it was surrounded by a capacious moat. At the four angles formed by the moat were elevated structures of earth and wood planted upon piles, with bastions and projecting angles, and the usual devices of military architecture for the attainment of strength ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... meadow where deep trenches could be traced, green now, but clearly once a moat, but there was not even a tradition about it. On the Downs overlooking the Idovers was an earthwork or entrenchment, of which no one knew anything. Hilary believed there was an old book—a history of Overboro' town—which might perhaps contain some ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... too. A wondrous Boat, In which they cross a magic Moat, That's smooth as glass to row on— A Cat that brings all kinds of things; And see, the Queen has angel wings— Then OGRE ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... free-booters, as Manila, like old Panama, offered a tempting prize to pirates. Into the wall was built old Fort Santiago, which still stands. The wall varies in thickness from three to forty feet, and in it were built many chambers used as places of confinement and torture. Until six years ago a wide moat surrounded the wall, but the stagnant water bred disease and the moat was filled with the silt dredged up from the bay. Fort Santiago forms the northwest corner of the wall. Its predecessor was a palisade of bags, built in 1571, behind which the Spaniards defended themselves against the warlike ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... as Torksey's lord Attends that bannered host; But the lover is deaf to the omen-bird— The fatal moat is crossed! ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... the knight's house was in a small island encompassed with a vast moat thirty feet deep, and twenty feet wide, over which lay a drawbridge. Wherefore Jack employed two men to cut it on both sides, and then dressing himself in his Coat of darkness, putting on his Shoes of swiftness, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... you what,—the idea of the professions' digging a moat round their close corporations, like that Japanese one at Jeddo, on the bottom of which, if travellers do not lie, you could put Park Street Church and look over the vane from its side, and try to stretch another such spire across ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... period of which there is any record. The explanation is simple. The name of the borough supplies the clue. Southwark is really the south-work of London, that is, the southern defence or fortification of the city. The Thames is here a moat of spacious breadth and formidable depth, yet the Romans did not trust to that defence alone, but threw up further obstacles for any enemy approaching the city from the south. It was from that direction assault was most ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... uniforms. A German company had, as a result of criminal stupidity, been awarded the contract for wiring the forts defending the city—and when the need arose it was found that the wiring was all but worthless. A wealthy German had a magnificent country estate the gardens of which ran down to the moat of one of the outlying forts. One day he suggested to the military authorities that if they would permit him to obtain the necessary water from the moat, he would build a swimming-pool in his garden for the use of ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... paradise, persuaded, Yield her moat of pearl, Would the Eden be an Eden, Or the earl ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... of October 1800 that Chesnel brought the Marquis back to the old feudal castle, and saw with deep emotion, almost beyond his control, his patron standing in the midst of the empty courtyard, gazing round upon the moat, now filled up with rubbish, and the castle towers razed to the level of the roof. The descendant of the Franks looked for the missing Gothic turrets and the picturesque weather vanes which used to rise above them; and his eyes turned to the sky, as if asking of heaven ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... as I said to Mr. Somerled, I may never come back to Carlisle once I begin to live with mother and go about with her. It was a blow to be told at the entrance gate where the public enters (and where there ought to be a moat, but isn't) that the Castle was closed for repairs. Even a grown-up man like Mr. Somerled, who has seen everything, looked disappointed; but I suppose he couldn't fight his way in against the power of England; and we should have turned ignominiously away ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... aisle will be seen a black marble effigy of a knight in plate armour. This is Sir John Arundell, an ancestor of the Lords Arundell of Wardour in Wiltshire. The de Chideocks were the original owners of the countryside and in a field beyond the church to the north-east is the moat which once surrounded their castle, dismantled soon after the close of the Civil War as a punishment for the annoyance it caused the army of the Parliament in interfering with the communications of Lyme. It changed hands several times during the war, but while held by the Royalists ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... too late. Before he was answered by his followers, we heard the creaking of the hinges and the rattle of the running chains, ending in a thud that told us the drawbridge had dropped across the moat. Then came the loud continuous thunder of many hoofs upon its timbers. Paralysed by fear Ramiro stood where he had halted, turning his eyes wildly in this direction and in that, but never moving one way or ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... The form in which the city was built was that of a Macedonian chlamys, or cloak; the two ports, one of which only was built by Alexander, though both (as has been already observed) were projected by him, were formed and divided from each other by a moat a mile long, which stretched from the isle of Pharos to the continent: that harbour which lay to the north was called the Great Harbour, and the other, to the west, was called Eunostus, or the Safe Return. In order to secure the vessels ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... smiled with roses in this wilderness) was surrounded by a moat (fed by a spring), which was full of aquatic plants, Nymphaea, Damasonium, Villarsia cristata, Aponogeton, three species of Potamogeton, two of Naias, Chara and Zannichellia (the two latter indifferently, and often ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... one," laughed Nell, reprovingly. "Satan is my warmest friend. Besides, they cannot cross the moat. The ramparts are ours. The ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Rosa and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow... ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... as to guard the city against a land attack from that side. It was a strong place but, as it was situated in a flat country, it presented no natural obstacle to an escape. It was surrounded by a broad moat, fed by a cut from the river. On the other side of the moat were two small redoubts, facing west. The fort contained ample barracks for the garrison of three hundred men who occupied it, with bomb proofs in which they could take refuge, in the ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the habit of paying nightly visits to a servant living in the castle, by means of a rope attached to her window, and who then admitted his companions, who were lying concealed in the moat. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in for the night. The houses are filthy, stinking, and out of repair. The Corso is like a street in an English town, broad, long, the houses low, and with a trottoir on both sides. The Castle, surrounded by a moat, stands in the middle of the town, a gloomy place. In it lives the Cardinal Legate. I went to see the dungeon in which Tasso was confined; and the library, where they show Ariosto's chair and inkstand, a medal found upon his body when ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... dashed by, and then the sound of a splash and splutter reached us as we disappeared in the darkness. On the morrow we learned that the spirits of Hassan and Hussein were seen skimming the earth in their flight toward the Holy City. We reached the bridge, and crossed the moat, but the gates were closed. We knocked and pounded, but a hollow echo was our only response. At last the light of a lantern illumined the crevices in the weather-beaten doors, and a weird-looking face appeared through the midway opening. "Who's there?" said a voice, whose ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... waiters who had waited in vain and the wanderers who had wandered fruitlessly, began to realize that the situation was serious. Billie grew desperately impatient. At last she succeeded in engaging a carry-all and two horses from a man at the moat house and soon she and Nancy, seated face to face, were hurrying along the road. Dr. Hume had met Percy. Ben had discovered Elinor and Mary standing fearfully on the edge of the forest. By the time that Richard Hook had got anywhere at all with his old nag, the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... was of the poorest and meanest description, frequented by muleteers and other rude wayfarers; but to his perverted fancy it seemed a turreted castle, with battlements of silver, drawbridge, and moat, and all that belonged to a feudal fortress. Before the door were standing two women, vagabonds of the lowest class, who were traveling in the company of certain mule-drivers; but for him they were instantly ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... moment; nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an impassable river, bristling with chevaux-de-frise it is impossible to get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may be surely calculated upon. In the present instance, this formulary is not omitted, for Wilhelm jumps into the river from a bridge which he has contrived to reach. Though several shots are fired into the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... wooded bluff rose to a great height in our front, and a mill pond lying at the foot of the bluff and newly dammed by the rebels, served as a moat. Spanning the pond near the dam, was a bridge of logs which they had neglected to destroy. Across this bridge and up a road winding along the side of the bluff, the general led his troops, finding the enemy upon the plateau above, occupying strong redoubts. Artillery was brought to bear upon them ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... his bad breakfasts, nor too well of his good ones. I won't say that the excellent man I speak of is the ideal cure, but I suspect he is an approach to it; he has a grain of epicureanism to an ounce of stoicism. In the garden path, beside the moat, while he puffed his cigarette, he told me how he had held up his head to the Prussians; for, hard as it seemed to believe it, that pastoral valley had been occupied by ravaging Teutons. According to this recital, he had spoken his mind civilly, but ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... throne of kings, this sceptred isle.... This fortress, built by nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands: This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... is known apart from the plot. His residence was at Norbrook, a few miles south of Warwick,—a walled and moated house, of which nothing remains save a few fragments of massive stone walls, and the line of the moat may be distinctly traced, while "an ancient hall, of large dimensions, is also apparent among the partitions of a modern farmer's kitchen." Before May, 1602, he married Dorothy Winter, the sister of two of the conspirators. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... time, straight to Rome's first and greatest humiliation; to the coming of the Gauls, sweeping everything before them, Etruscans, Italians, Romans, up to the gates of the city and over the great moat and wall of Servius, burning, destroying, killing everything, to the foot of the central rock; baffled at the last stronghold on a dark night by a flock of cackling geese, but not caring for so small a thing when they had ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the representation of a siege. On the rising of the curtain there appeared three ranges of ramparts, one above the other, having salient angles and a moat, like a regularly-constructed fortification. In the centre of the fortress arose a tower, on which a flag was flying; while in the distance behind appeared the buildings and steeples of a town. The ramparts were guarded by ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... of a piece of stone, which, however you afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reach the level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, and defined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a mere trench, then a moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally salient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect protection to its surface from any transverse blow, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... were crowded with a motley throng up to the very gates of the citadel, where, within the first moat, stand all the yashgis, or residences of the Daimios. Each yashgi is surrounded by a blank wall, loopholed, and with a tower at each of the four corners. Within this outer wall is the court of the retainers, all of them 'two-sworded' ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Demetrius Fannius, play-dresser and plagiary. That you (not having the fear of Phoebus, or his shafts, before your eyes) contrary to the peace of our liege lord, Augustus Caesar, his crown and dignity, and against the form of a statute, in that case made and provided, have moat ignorantly, foolishly, and, more like yourselves, maliciously, gone about to deprave, and calumniate the person and writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, here present, poet, and priest to the Muses, and to that end have mutually conspired and plotted, at sundry times, as by several ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... thus: "The minarets already, Sir! There certes in the valley I descry, Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire Had issu'd." He replied: "Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum'd; as in this nether hell thou seest." We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region comfortless. The walls appear'd As they were fram'd of iron. We had made Wide circuit, ere a place we reach'd, where loud The mariner cried vehement: "Go forth! The' entrance is here!" Upon the gates I spied More than a thousand, who of ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... him a woman's answer: "I do not care if you are the greatest lord in the kingdom or the most sunken knave that steals ducks from Paris Moat. I only know ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... in the old place where my father, and his father, and all his predecessors had been born, beyond the memory of man. It is a very old house, and the greater part of it was originally a castle, strongly fortified, and surrounded by a deep moat supplied with abundant water from the hills by a hidden aqueduct. Many of the fortifications have been destroyed, and the moat has been filled up. The water from the aqueduct supplies great fountains, and runs down into huge oblong basins in the terraced gardens, one below ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... placing a garrison in the palace of a prince of the blood. Nay, he had arrested a spy caught in the very act of measuring the height of the fortifications of Noyers, and sounding the depth of the moat, with a view to a subsequent assault, and the capture not only of the prince, but of the admiral, who frequently came there to see him. He rehearsed the grounds of just alarm which the Protestants had in the threats their indiscreet enemies ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... remarked the police sergeant, whose slow, bucolic common sense was still pondering the open window. "It's all very well your saying that a man escaped by wading this moat, but what I ask you is, how did he ever get into the house at all if the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of an ancient castle. Very slight indeed are these relics, one window and some shapeless masses of defaced masonry being alone exposed; but a hill close beside them is supposed to cover more of the fabric, though history tells not how or when the earth was so heaped up. The circle of the moat is still complete, and generally contains water. Pendal Castle Hill, as the locality is called, is approached by a rustic lane leading from the village; it is enclosed like an ordinary meadow, and shadowed here and there with trees. On Sundays and holidays it ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... originally built by Dud, the Saxon. The castle is situated on a finely wooded hill; it is so extensive that it more resembles the ruins of a town than of a single building. You enter through a treble gateway, and see the remnants of the moat, the court, and the keep. Here are the central hall, the guard, rooms, and the chapel. It must have been a magnificent structure. In the Midlands it was known as the "Castle of the Woods" Now it is abandoned ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... brick, with slots for firing, and it drops straightway into the evil moat, where offal floats and nameless things are thrown. Within, the wall is earth; it slants more gently down, covered with grass and stubbly with cut weeds. Below it in straw lairs the beggars herd, patiently whining, stretching out their sores. And on ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and thickets and a moat within ten ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with that share which they call sword. Caesar crossed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... was situated, a splendid wide avenue, planted with rows of majestic oaks, their branches meeting overhead. This extends over one mile; on one side of it is the Governor's Palace and grounds, cut off from vulgar feet by a moat, or walled ditch, and accessible by a small drawbridge from the avenue. Opposite is ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... board the Susquehanna. Officers and sailors forgot the terrible danger they had just been in—the danger of being crushed and sunk. They only thought of the catastrophe which terminated the journey. Thus, therefore, the moat audacious enterprise of ancient and modern times lost the life of the bold adventurers who had ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Knowing the way of such places, I hunted for the side entrance and found a muddy road which led to the back of the house. The front was evidently towards a kind of park; at the back was a nest of outbuildings and a section of moat which looked very deep and black in the winter twilight. This was crossed by a stone bridge with a door at the end ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the Baron. "Am I to be everlastingly plagued with bodies? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the moat!" ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Castle of Rest was reached it justified all that Senorita Estacardo had said of it, though it lacked moat and drawbridge and the other feudal accessories. It was of massive rock and stone, sixty or more feet in length and almost as broad. The lowest floor consisted of two large rooms, with broad openings instead of doors, rough and unfurnished ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... not, but said there was an old tradition that the Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the moat defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief in the story, for which, indeed, there seemed ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... else, with arched doors leading to dark insides. They were all built of tiny stones, such as lay on the beach. Beyond the huts or houses towered the castle, a vast rough structure with towers and arches and buttresses and bastions and glacis and bridges and a great moat all round it. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... here; the sky a lovely lavender, a promise of coming morning in it, and a gold-spangled curtain of stars out yonder on the horizon. Not a soul moved. Below appeared a sheer drop of a hundred feet into a moat winding through thickets of heavy-scented convolvulus flowers to the waterways beyond. And as I looked a skiff with half a dozen rowers came swiftly out of the darkness of the wall and passed like a shadow ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... it looks as if it still stood in all its splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with poudre insecticide ... "mort ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... occasion to the tale that Alexander the Great was begotten by Jupiter under the form of a serpent. The prophet bought the largest and finest serpent he could find, and conveyed it secretly with him into Asia. When he came to Abonotica, he found the temple that was built surrounded with a moat; and he took an opportunity privately of sinking a goose-egg, which he had first emptied of its contents, inserting instead a young serpent just hatched, and closing it again with great care. He then told his fellow-citizens that the God was arrived, and ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the ruins from the road is by upwards of a hundred rough hardwood steps, and the castle must have been a well-nigh impregnable stronghold in former times, protected as it was on three sides by the water of the loch and by a moat on the fourth, the position of the drawbridge ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... judged? Why then should the present trouble our vanity so greatly? And if our play is of so little importance, why should we care whether the scenery is romantic instead of commonplace, or why should we make furious efforts to shift a Gothic castle, a drawbridge, a moat and a waterfall into the slides occupied by the four walls ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... this fine historical monument cannot be of that class of Americans whose delight is to travel thousands of miles, at great expense, only to glance at antiquities not more interesting, in the possession of others, and who would fain transport Shakespeare's house bodily to American soil. The moat surrounding the Walled City is already being filled up, but posterity will be grateful for the preservation of those ancient bulwarks—landmarks of a decadent but once glorious civilization. Most of the Spanish feast-days have been abolished, including the St. Andrew's day (vide Li-ma-hong, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Black lay in a plain. For as much as a mile in every direction the forest had been sacrificed against the loving advances of his cousin Charles. Also about the castle was a moat in which swam noisy ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a moat fervent embrace. A voice in the distance was heard saying, 'Little fool. I ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... night take I horse to find the truth, And where my quest will end yet know I not. Save that it shall not end until I find. Therefore to-night, good steed, be fierce and bold! Let nothing stay thee, though a thousand blades Deny the road! Let neither wall nor moat Forbid our flight! Look! If I touch thy flank And cry, "On, Kantaka!" let whirlwinds lag Behind thy course! Be fire and air, my horse! To stead thy lord, so shalt thou share with him The greatness of this deed which helps ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... In the moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent. Maduron offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that some fine night it could be lifted ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line from maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then another of the four ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... set us all laughing (we smile here when still the tears are close at hand; indeed, we must smile, or we could not live): the prelude being something about a lonely castle in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, and a prattling golden-haired babe stretching its arms across a ruined moat in the direction of its absent father. This was in the nature of an absurd prologue, but when she finally came to the Solitary she grew serious; for she made him in the bygone days a sensitive child and a dreamy, impetuous youth, with a domineering, ill-tempered father who was utterly unable and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de Montgomeri was proud and gay; since the village idlers gathered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... fortress of defence to the city, by order of Charles V., between 1369 and 1382, but used as a place of imprisonment from the first; a square structure, with towers and dungeons for the incarceration of the prisoners, the whole surrounded by a moat, and accessible only by drawbridges; "tyranny's stronghold"; attacked by a mob on 14th July 1789; taken chiefly by noise; overturned, as "the city of Jericho, by miraculous sound"; demolished, and the key of it sent to Washington; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... romancers, adapting it to their own age, had often more or less fully rationalized it; transforming, for instance, the black river of Death which the original heroes often had to cross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moat about the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other World itself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant to such treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, whose devotion to his story was earnest ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... floor above the ground-floor toward the courtyard (where Queen Catherine was lodged) is the third floor on the garden side, and the king's apartments were four storeys above the garden, which at the time of which we write was separated from the base of the castle by a deep moat. The chateau, already colossal as viewed from the courtyard, appears gigantic when seen from below, as La Fontaine saw it. He mentions particularly that he did not enter either the courtyard or the apartments, and it is to be remarked that from the place des Jesuites ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... of his, a draper at Holloway, had built himself a moated grange. The moat was supplied from the water-works under special arrangement, and all the electric lights were imitation candles. He had done the thing thoroughly. He had even designed a haunted chamber in blue, and a miniature chapel, which he used as a telephone closet. Young Bute ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... havoc of his own Tirynthian folk by hiding in the valleys of Elis. And not long after the guest-betraying king of the Epeans saw his rich native land, his own city, beneath fierce fire and iron blows sink down into the deep moat of calamity. Of strife against stronger powers it is hard to be rid. Likewise Augeas last of all in his perplexity fell into captivity and escaped not ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... ran along the wall to a deep breach which had been left unrepaired. Over the sharp rocks I clambered, and at the risk of breaking my neck I jumped off the wall into the moat, which was almost dry. Dawn was breaking when I found a place to ascend from the moat, and I hastened to the fields and forests, where all day and all night long I wandered without food or drink. Two hours before sunrise next morning I reached Craig's Ferry. The horse sent by Douglas ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... subsequent fighting which occurred when they reached the six-sided stockade of the Senekas (a strong fortification which faced a large pond on one side, and was surrounded by a moat everywhere else except at the entrance), the Hurons and Algonkins showed a great lack of discipline. Champlain and the few Frenchmen with him, by using their arquebuses, drove the enemy back into the fort, but not without having some of their Indian allies wounded or killed. Champlain proposed to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the Jesuits built on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed. At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by assault. A handful of men could hold it against a ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... HAD got a moat and drawbridge," said Roberta; "then, when we didn't want people, we could just pull up the drawbridge and no one else could get in. I expect Father will have forgotten about when he was a boy if ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... have made any place lively; but since his death the Park has relapsed into its natural solemnity, and I am quite sure that if ever I do go into a convent my sensations will be exactly like those which I have always experienced when visiting Aunt Horsingham. The moat alone is enough to give one the "blues;" but in addition to that, the thick horse-chestnuts grow up to the very windows, and dark Scotch firs shed a gloom all over the Park. Dangerfield is one of those places that seem always ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... entire until the middle of the 17th century, when, from having given shelter to the Royalists, it became a heap of ruins, and the present palace was erected in its stead. It is approached by a noble avenue of limes, and is surrounded by pleasure-gardens, fashioned out of its ancient moat, one portion of which is still a quiet lake. It has a park with well-timbered tracts adjoining, one of which is called the Bishop's Wood, and near which is the ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... made their assault, and carried the outworks one by one. Then the castle of Chapultepec was stormed. First the outer works were scaled, which made them much more desirable, and the moat was removed by means of a stomach-pump and blotting-pad, and then the escarpment was up-ended, the Don John tower was knocked silly by a solid shot, and the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... if we were at the bottom of a moat, one of whose sides is perpendicular and the other sloping. When I say sloping, that is simply a figure of speech, for in order to reach the summit of the peak, one must more than once hang suspended by ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... individual ownership of the land. The Watauga forts or palisaded villages were of the usual kind, the cabins and blockhouses connected by a heavy loop-holed picket. They were admirably adapted for defence with the rifle. As there was no moat, there was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was stored within; and it was of course necessary to guard carefully against surprise. But to open assault they were practically impregnable, and they therefore offered a sure haven of refuge to the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... There is a very tall cherry tree; how shall we gather the cherries? Will the ladder in the barn be big enough? There is a wide stream; how shall we get to the other side? Would one of the wooden planks in the yard reach from bank to bank? From our windows we want to fish in the moat; how many yards of line are required? I want to make a swing between two trees; will two fathoms of cord be enough? They tell me our room in the new house will be twenty-five feet square; do you think it will be big enough for us? Will it be larger than this? We are ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... bitterly; and he sank upon the couch to try and think whether he was to blame for not searching more for the passage leading out beyond the moat. ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... about thirty years ago, I strolled to the neighbouring village of Heilo, on the road to Limmen, where I saw, surrounded by a moat, the foundations of the castle of Ypenstein. A view of this once noble pile is to be found in the well-known work of Rademaker, Kabinet van Nederlandsche en Kleefsche Oudheden. This place, as tradition tells, once witnessed the perpetration of a violent deed. When ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... all took up with this, and said "how he would love to have a moat round our house." Sez he, "Jest let some folks that I know try to git in, wouldn't I jest hist up the drawbridge ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley |
