"Gothic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house, it is a plain one; indeed, very like the house a child draws on a slate, and therefore pleasing even externally to me, who prefer the classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why so many strangers mistake it with its modest dimensions for a hotel, I cannot tell you. I found one in the pantry the other day searching for a brandy-and-soda; another rang the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from the grey, smoke-grimed repetition of one endlessly repeated design. The same foolish ornamentation on every house reiterates the same suggestion. Their places of worship, the blank chapels and pseudo-Gothic churches rear themselves head and shoulders above the dull level, only to repeat the same threat of obedience to a gloomy law.... The thought of Gospel Oak and its like is the thought of imitation, of imitation ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... afterwards found ourselves in the sacred edifice. The moon was at her full, and by the pale light which was diffused through the south windows the architecture of the interior could be faintly seen. The Gothic arches that flanked the centre aisle with their quaint pillars, each with a carved figure of one of the saints, were quite visible, and further in the darkness of the chancel the dim outlines of the choir and altar-table with its white marble ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that is left of "Roman" Rouen is not Roman at all, but a type of that strong, naive, and sincere Christianity which invigorated the Gothic captains who overthrew Rome. It is but fitting that there should be so little left. For the Romans were not so much a nation as an empire. They were not so much a people, as the embodiment of a power. When their ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever stands ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... then called Comedies, as old things are now called Novels. Then there are all the titles of early Romance itself at your disposal—'Theagenes and Chariclea,' or 'The Ass' of Longus, or 'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as 'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of Perceforest, King of Great Britain.'"—And therewith my father ran over a list of names as long as the Directory, and about ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... came to this serious conclusion, they entered the steep straggling street of the little town of Rocksand, and presently were within the gates of the sweep which led to the door of the verandahed Gothic cottage, which looked very tempting for summer's lodging, but was little ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there was added at its eastern end the Nieuwerck, an exquisite Renaissance structure supported entirely on a row of slim columns, with tiers of narrow oblong windows, and with elaborate gables of carved stone. The contrast between the strength and simplicity of the Gothic and the rich decoration of Spain is as delightful as it is bold. The upper part of this vast building formed one great hall, covered overhead by the towering roof. The walls were decorated by painted panels representing the history of the town, and so large ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... power of tradition. It could break away more readily than any other form of art, because of the great variety which existed in different parts of the Roman Empire—the Byzantine in the south of Italy, the Gothic in the north, and Romanesque in Rome and the provinces. There was no conventional law for architectural style, hence innovations could be made with very little opposition. In the search for classical remains, a large number ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... clerkship he knew little of the law, but he was well versed in languages, being not only a good Greek and Latin scholar, but acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic dialects, and likewise with the peculiar language of the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... F-sharp Minor Sonata, with its wondrous introduction like the vast, somber portals to some fantastic Gothic pile. The Fantasiestuecke opus 12, still remain Schumann at his happiest, and easiest comprehended. The Symphonic Variations are the greatest of all, greater than the Concerto or the Fantasie in C. These almost persuade one that their author is a fit companion for ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... towers and painted domes, the Gothic turret and Moorish minaret, impressed us with the idea of the antique; while here and there the tamarind, nourished on some azotea, or the fringed fronds of the palm-tree, drooping over the notched parapet, lent to the city an aspect at once ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... upon the mullioned frame of the open Gothic window, raised himself on tiptoe to obtain as complete a view as was possible, and pushed his head out to reconnoitre the grave-yard. Mr. Ketch shuffled on; the keys, held somewhat loosely in his hand by the string, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... any lady," he continued, "he must commonly answer by a grimace; and if he is seated next to one, he must take the utmost pains to shew by his listlessness, yawning, and inattention, that he is sick of his situation; for what he holds of all things to be most gothic, is gallantry to the women. To avoid this is, indeed, the principal solicitude of his life. If he sees a lady in distress for her carriage, he is to enquire of her what is the matter, and then, with a shrug, wish her ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Blake perceived, besides the hair like dripping honey, deep blue eyes—the blue not of a turquoise but of a sapphire—and an oval face a little too narrow in the jaw, so that the chin pointed a delicate Gothic arch. He noted a good forehead, which inclined him to the belief that she "did" something—some subtle addition which he could not formulate confirmed that observation. He saw that her hands were long and ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... bloom upon a howling wilderness; holding up the light of science over a stormy sea; treasuring in convents and crypts the few fossils of antique learning which become visible, as the extinct Megatherium of an elder world reappears after the gothic deluge; and now, careering in helm and hauberk with the other ruffians, bandying blows in the thickest of the fight, blasting with bell, book, and candle its trembling enemies, while sovereigns, at the head of armies, grovel in the dust and offer abject submission ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "History of Gothic Art in England" tells us that two types of east end were to be found in the Anglo-Norman churches, both brought from the Continent, one the chevet prevalent in Northern France, the other derived originally ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... already, like these pages, a tale that is told to a memory that retaineth not! Where are thy quips and cranks; where thy stately coxcombries and thy regal gauds? Thine house and thy pagoda, thy Gothic chimney and thy Chinese sign-post,—these yet ask the concluding hand. Thy hand is cold; their completion, and the enjoyment the completion yields, are for another! Thou sowest, and thy follower reaps; thou buildest, thy successor holds; thou plantest, and thine heir sits beneath ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was not great; my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss. But I had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore King Childeric's Gothic locks. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... question of case endings. Russia has retained a high degree of inflection in her language, having seven cases with distinct endings. These seven cases are common to the Slav languages in general; two of them (Sorbish and Slovenish) have, like Gothic and Greek, a dual number, a feature which has long passed away from the languages of Western Europe. Again, the Slav tongues decline many more of the numerals than most Aryan languages. Germany, which, until the recent formation of the German Empire, was undoubtedly a century slow by West European ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... of ignoble midnight streets He came at last to shelter in a porch Where gothic saints and warriors made a shield To cover him, and tortured gargoyles spat One long continuous stream of silver rain That clattered down from myriad roofs and spires Into a darkness, loud with rushing sound Of water ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... without canopies. The places of the dignitaries and the names of the prebends have fortunately been allowed to survive, and are inscribed on small brass plates affixed to the stalls. The organ is in the triforium, and what is seen of the case is Gothic. The reredos and its surroundings are ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... concerning his death had he not fortunately become acquainted with an aged physician, who had in his custody a leaden box, found, as he said, under the ruins of an ancient hermitage then rebuilding: in which box was found a manuscript of parchment written in Gothic characters, but in Castilian verse, containing many of his exploits, and giving an account of the beauty of Dulcinea del Toboso, the figure of Rozinante, the fidelity of Sancho Panza, and the burial of Don Quixote himself, with ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... eighty-six miles without meeting house or cottage or human soul until he found himself at the gates of Dijon, chief town of the Cote-d'Or, where he might and would, no doubt, have been able to refresh himself with a bottle of Beaune and inspect the Gothic tombs of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... of the Roman Emperor Va'lens some of the Goths joined a conspiracy against him. Valens punished them for this by crossing the Danube and laying waste their country. At last the Goths had to beg for mercy. The Gothic chief was afraid to set foot on Roman soil, so he and Valens met on their boats in the middle of the Danube and made a ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... to reproduce in the cathedral a pure type of the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, without its ruder and less refined characteristics. The strained and coarse images designed to illustrate "the world, the flesh, and the devil," which seem so strange and unapt to American ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Reed's head for a study. Ted seldom condescended to enter any church of later date than the fifteenth century, and, architecturally speaking, he feared the worst from St. Teresa's. Indeed, smoke, fog, and modern Gothic genius have made the outside of that building one with the grimy street it stands in, and Ted was not prepared for the golden beauty of the interior. His judgment halted as if some magic effect of colour had blinded it to stunted form and pitiful perspective. But the glory of St. ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light enough, however, for one to read, easily, from the opposite sidewalk, "Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not far from the gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and whose long, shadowy white hair, lifted like an airy weft in the streaming wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time, without any other than a shuddering ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... the unspoken defiance, and wound up by saying: "When I married an Archduchess I tried to weld the new with the old, Gothic prejudices with the institutions of my century: I deceived myself, and this day I see the whole extent of my error. It may cost me my throne, but I will bury the world beneath its ruins." In dismissing ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the meantime another Gothic assault was being made at the Aurelian Gate[109] in the following manner. The tomb of the Roman Emperor Hadrian[110] stands outside the Aurelian Gate, removed about a stone's throw from the fortifications, a very noteworthy ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... hillside being cut into slopes and terrace-walks, with an artificial canal fed by an ever-flowing stream at the bottom of it. In accordance with the taste of the day, these terraces were ornamented with statues; and at one end was a fine arch, part of the ruin of an ancient Gothic chapel. At the other end was an aviary filled with numerous feathered songsters, several species of gay plumage. Further round the hill was an enclosure stocked with various kinds of deer, and a white doe, an especial favourite of the fair mistress ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... of the notes and alterations in the Devonshire folio [Mr. Collier's] is of a mixed character, varying even in the same page, from the stiff, labored Gothic hand of the sixteenth century to the round text-hand of the nineteenth, a fact most perceptible in the capital letters. It bears unequivocal marks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... was a small but pretty Gothic structure, and its sacred quiet did seem to Lottie somewhat like a refuge. With an interest such as she had never felt in the elegant city temple, she waited for the service to begin, honestly hoping that there might be something that ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Italy,—object of your secret dreams and most ardent longing. Happy man! arming yourself with the white staff of the pilgrim, you will shake the dust of Geierfels from your feet, and go far away to forget, before the facades of Venetian palaces, the dark mysteries of the old Gothic castle ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... weaves the enchantment of her trills and runs about them; as the whole circumstance of the divinely impossible thing which defies nature and triumphs over prostrate probability. What does a little Swiss Gothic matter? The thing is always opera, and it is always Italy. I was thinking, as we crowded in there from the outside, with our lives in our hands, through all those trolleys and autos and carriages and cabs and sidewalk ticket-brokers, of the first time I saw this piece. It was ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... go nigh to see you clapt into the State's prison, or at least into that Gothic cottage ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... arrived, he imprudently engaged the Goths near Adrianople, and with the greater part of his army fell on the field. 19. This was the most disastrous defeat which the Romans had sustained for several centuries; and there was reason to dread that it would encourage a revolt of the Gothic slaves in the eastern provinces, which must terminate in the ruin of the empire. To prevent such a catastrophe, the senate of Constantinople ordered a general massacre of these helpless mortals, and their atrocious edict was put into immediate execution. 20. The Goths attempted to besiege both ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the villagers were all agog over elaborate preparations to celebrate the golden wedding anniversary of the present proprietor. The climb is a wearisome one, and we saw little of the castle, being admitted only to the entrance-hall and the small Gothic chapel, which was undergoing restoration; but the fine view from the battlements alone is worth the effort. The castle never figured in history and is remarkable chiefly for its unique location. By the time of our ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... the washing department only brought with it its insignia and badge of office. This was an enormous smoothing-iron, highly ornamented with brass, decorated with Gothic apertures, and made to contain an amount of charcoal that would have kept an entire family warm in the coldest depths of winter. Being of great weight, we rather objected to such an addition to our stores — the more so ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... in whom he has already detected the Almamen of the Alhambra, was of no character common to his tribe. Of a lineage that shrouded itself in the darkness of his mysterious people, in their day of power, and possessed of immense wealth, which threw into poverty the resources of Gothic princes,—the youth of that remarkable man had been spent, not in traffic and merchandise but ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... further, that it was drawn by an American? No. He would suppose it the production of some jaundiced foreigner, who had never visited us, and who set down every thing out of his own country as rude and Gothic. Now I recollect Morse gives a description something like this of North Carolina; and I suspect your "friends" stole their account, with a little exaggeration, from him, but mistook the state. I have now replied to the fable of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... which stood on the same site as the present one, must have been a curious little structure, if one may judge from the illustrations still extant—a low-pitched Gothic building with wooden belfry. This was dedicated to St. Mary, and the date of its origin is unknown. In 1745 it was taken down, and services were held in the chapel in Well Walk for two years, while the new church was being built. ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... were left alone, while pointed arches were placed over them in the triforium. Even in the Early English clustered pillars there were differences marking different dates, some of the time of the Transition (1222), and some thirty years later. And here let us note that the "Gothic" church, as it is shown in our illustrations, does not indicate that the Norman work had been replaced by it. The clustered pillars really encased the Norman, as they have done in other cathedrals similarly treated. At Winchester, William ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... her work-basket, and went upstairs to get her bonnet and wrappings, and make other arrangements; then drawing on her walking-boots, and twisting a nubae around her throat, she went out, with a bundle in her hand, and walked with a brisk pace down the street. She soon approached a gothic church—a church of the Liguorian Missions, and at the distance of half a square, heard the solemn and heavenly appeals of the organ, rolling in soft aerial billows past her. She quickened her steps, and pushing gently against the massive door, went in. A solemn mass was being offered, and a requiem ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... perpetual violence within our own distracted kingdom, you would now behold cultivated and smiling with plenty. Instead of the castles, which every baron was compelled to erect for the defence of his family, and where he lived in the barbarism of Gothic pride, among miserable vassals oppressed by the abuse of his feudal powers, your eyes would be charmed with elegant country houses, adorned with fine plantations and beautiful gardens, while happy villages or gay towns are rising about them and enlivening the prospect with ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... printed account of the Chinese system of writing, extracted from authors of the most established reputation. These things I print, principally with the hope of, in some degree, removing the worse than Gothic ignorance prevalent amongst natives of these parts. I am from London myself. With respect to all that relates to the Chinese real imperial tea, I assure you sir, that—' Well, to make short of what you doubtless consider a very tiresome story, I purchased the tea and carried it home. The ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Great Seal, Owyn is represented with a bifid beard, very similar to Richard II, seated under a canopy of Gothic tracery; the half-body of a wolf forming the arms of his chair on each side; the back-ground is ornamented with a mantle semee of lions, held up by angels. At his feet are two lions. A sceptre is in his right hand; but he has no crown. The inscription, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... S. Mark's receives less attention than it should, although one cannot leave Cook's office without seeing it. The north has a lovely Gothic doorway and much sculpture, including on the west wall of the transept a rather nice group of sheep, and beneath it a pretty little saint; while the Evangelists are again here—S. Luke painting, S. Matthew looking up from his book, S. John brooding, and S. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... merchants reside in quintas, surrounded by pretty gardens. They are very fantastic in their ideas of architectural style, and appear to bestow their patronage impartially, not to say indiscriminately, upon Gothic cathedrals, Alhambra palaces, Swiss cottages, Italian villas, and Turkish mosques. Except for this variety, the suburb has somewhat the appearance of the outskirts of many of the towns on the Riviera, with the same sub-tropical ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... mass relieved by its quaint dormer windows was softened from its primal ugliness by the Boston ivy that had clambered to the eaves and lay draped about the windows like a soft green mantle. Built in the early days, it stood with the little church, a gem of Gothic architecture, within spacious grounds bought when land was cheap. Behind the house stood the stable, built also of grey limestone, and at one side a cherry and apple orchard formed a charming background to the grey buildings ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... next proceeds to let himself out by enlarging the proposed doorway into the form of a Gothic arch three feet high, and two feet and a half wide at the bottom, communicating with which they construct two passages, each from ten to twelve feet long and from four to five feet in height, the lowest being that next the hut. The roofs of these passages are sometimes arched, but more generally ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... entirely on account of the inmate it screened. Though for that matter the architecture deserved admiration, or at least study, on its own account. It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since the Gothic age was a compilation rather than a design. But its reasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich, but rich enough. A timely consciousness of the ultimate vanity of human architecture, no less than of other human things, had prevented ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... resolved on the reduction of Carthage, the most important of those cities, and indeed the capital of North Africa. His general, Hassan, carried it by escalade; but reenforcements from Constantinople, aided by some Sicilian and Gothic troops, compelled him to retreat. The relief was, however, only temporary. Hassan, in the course of a few months renewed his attack. It proved successful, and he delivered Carthage to ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... and pointed arches, were brilliant with the colors of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The window-panes were stained with roses and with the figures of saints having pale profiles and wearing bright robes. On one of the tables was a bronze pulpit in the form of a Gothic chapel; in another place was a lamp-support, which represented the Triumph of Death; Death was a woman with the wings of a bat; she was in a flowing robe; she had curved talons on her feet, and a scythe in her hand. This was a sculptured copy of Orcagna, from the Campo Santo of Pisa. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Beaufort owns Chelsea, which contains two Gothic buildings, and a Florentine one; he has also Badminton, in Gloucestershire, a residence from which a number of avenues branch out like rays from a star. The most noble and puissant Prince Henry, Duke of Beaufort, is also Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, Viscount Grosmont, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of the Roman Empire of the West, and the rise into importance of the great Gothic monarchies. The Christian emperors of the East put down paganism with a strong hand, conferring state offices on Christians only, and forbidding pagan ceremonies [unless under Christian names]. The sons of Constantine ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... therefore, there is less of the massiveness and immobility of nature, and more of the grace and dignity of man. It adds to the idea of permanence a vital expression. "The Doric column," says Vitruvius, "has the proportion, strength, and beauty of man." The Gothic architecture had its birthplace among a people who had lived and worshipped for ages amidst the dense forests of the north, and was no doubt an imitation of the interlacing of the overshadowing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... journey begin. Now," the spirit continued, "you shall all use my sight instead of your own." The walls of the cave seemed to expand, till they resembled those of a great cathedral, while the stalactites appeared to be metamorphosed into Gothic columns. They found themselves among a large congregation that had come to attend the last sad rites, while the great organ played Chopin's "Funeral March." The high vault and arches received the organ's ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Book, a Religion, and a God; what she has done with the Arabic people, who gave her culture, who were tolerant with her religious beliefs, and who awoke her lethargic national spirit, so nearly destroyed during the Roman and Gothic dominations. You say that she snatched us from error and gave us the true faith: do you call faith these outward forms, do you call religion this traffic in girdles and scapularies, truth these miracles and wonderful tales that we hear daily? Is this the law of Jesus Christ? ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... may concern, it may, in conclusion, be mentioned that this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fashioned, non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our first prayers to heaven, our dead father ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Viol kind came first in use." "But as to the invention which is so perfectly novel as not to have been heard of before Augustulus, the last of the Roman Emperors, I cannot but esteem it perfectly Gothic." "I suppose that at first it was like its native country, rude and gross, and at the early importation it was of the lesser kind which they called Viola da Bracchia, and since the Violin." He concludes by expressing his belief that the Hebrews did not sound their "lutes and guitars with the scratch ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... driven out after von Kluck's retreat. On September 20, 1914, they were reported as first shelling the Cathedral of Rheims and the civilized world stood aghast, for the edifice, begun in 1212, is one of the chief glories of Gothic ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... most part, have been long inaccessible. For two years Mr. Wilde devoted himself with indefatigable ardor to explore the records of the republic during the time of Dante. These being written in barbarous Latin and semi-Gothic characters, on parchment more or less discolored and mutilated, with ink sometimes faded, were rendered still more illegible by the arbitrary abbreviations of the notaries. They require, in fact, an especial study; few even of the officers employed in the "Archivio ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of Gothic and Renaissance and Perpendicular, and Early English and Norman. The words ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the churches of the Austin Canons, it is likely that it rose but little above the roofs. Another and remarkable erection of this period was the charnel-house at the east end, known as "Purgatory," which was constructed with some attempt to give it a Gothic appearance, and was attached to the reredos wall. This is shown in fig. 7, which illustrates the eastern ambulatory, as it existed before ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... glass. The walls were completely hidden by tapestries of rare beauty, woven into the semblance of gardens, palaces, arcades and bowers of clipped hedges and pleached trees with slender fountains set meetly in green shade; while some again were crowded with swaying Gothic figures of saints and kings and warriors and angels, all far too beautiful, thought Austin, to have ever lived. Yet surely there must be some prototypes of all these wonderful conceptions somewhere. There must be a world—if we could only ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... made sure of water now for the rest of our journey; and that we might say of the river "Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum." The hills overhanging it surpassed any I had ever seen in picturesque outline. Some resembled gothic cathedrals in ruins; others forts; other masses were perforated, and being mixed and contrasted with the flowing outlines of evergreen woods, and having a fine stream in the foreground, gave a charming appearance to the whole country. It was ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... painted glass which I have seen in any country; and I have seen a great deal of all the manufactures, English, Belgian and Bavarian, which have recently been competing for the approval of the artistic world. The window in question in the cathedral at Perugia fills a plain Gothic arch seven metres in height by one metre eighty-five centimetres in width, and it is divided into two parts by a slender column of stone eighteen centimetres broad. The window which fills this space is occupied by a representation of one subject only, the Virgin and Child in—or rather ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... acclamations, all similar to those of the evening before. Every one wore an air of rejoicing which delighted me, and contrasted strangely, I thought, with the dreadful wooden houses, narrow, filthy streets, and Gothic buildings which then distinguished the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... ability for original thinking and his action in embracing the cause of Turner, the ridiculed, won the heart of Morris. In Ruskin he found a writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read "The Nature of Gothic," and then they went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various points to recommend them which modern ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of the musical impressionists, from the style of "Pelleas et Melisande" in particular. Men as disparate as Schoenberg and Magnard and Igor Strawinsky have been seeking, in their own fashion, the one through a sort of mathematical harshness, the second through a Gothic severity, the third through a machine-like regularity, to give their work a new boldness, a new power and incisiveness of design. Something of the same sharpness and sheerness was attained by Berlioz, if not precisely by their means, at ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... adjoining Mr. Parkman's, with its lovely water-front, its unique Gothic buildings, its vine-covered lodge, and its deer-park, was, in our early days, one of the most charming of our ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... Ducange has connected this expression with morgingab; but I have looked in vain for such connection in my edition of the Glossary (Paris, 1733). The truth most probably is, that morganatic, in the phrase "matrimonium ad morganaticam," {126} was akin to the Gothic maurgjan, signifying, "to procrastinate," "to bring to an end," "to shorten," "to limit." This application of the word would naturally rise out of the restrictions imposed upon the wife and children of a ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... that building yonder? That's Gothic. They've got the finest bowling-alleys in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... stone base, rose a gypsum throne with a high back, and originally covered with decorative designs. Its lower part was adorned with a curiously carved arch, with crocketed mouldings, showing an extraordinary anticipation of some most characteristic features of Gothic architecture. Opposite the throne was a finely wrought tank of gypsum slabs—a feature borrowed perhaps from an Egyptian palace—approached by a descending flight of steps, and originally surmounted by cypress-wood columns, supporting ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... delights to trace? Thus, with the manly glow of honest pride, O'er his dead son the gallant ORMOND sigh'd. [b] Thus, thro' the gloom of SHENSTONE'S fairy grove, MARIA'S urn still breathes the voice of love. As the stern grandeur of a Gothic tower Awes us less deeply in its morning hour, Than when the shades of Time serenely fall On every broken arch and ivy'd wall; The tender images we love to trace, Steal from each year a melancholy grace! And as the sparks of social love expand, As the heart opens in a foreign land; And, with a brother's ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... framed upon that model. However, they did not simply copy each other: they framed their own charters in accordance with the concessions they had obtained from their lords; and the result was that, as remarked by an historian, the charters of the medieval communes offer the same variety as the Gothic architecture of their churches and cathedrals. The same leading ideas in all of them—the cathedral symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the, city—and the same infinitely ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... this half-Gothic, half-modern palace of the Ruricks and the Romanoffs, of their throne still standing, of the cross of the great Ivan, and of the finest part of the city, which is overlooked by the Kremlin, and which the flames, as yet confined to the bazaar, seemed disposed to spare, his former ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Latin subdued all these different tongues, and became the every-day speech of these different peoples, will be recognized as one of the marvels of history. In fact, so firmly did it establish itself, that it withstood the assaults of the invading Gothic, Lombardic, Frankish, and Burgundian, and has continued to hold to our own day a very large part of the territory which it acquired some two ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... whose trunk one might say, that it agonized in despair because of the lack of harmony between its fresh yellowish foliage and its black and gnarled branches; they resembled most of all grossly misdrawn old gothic arabesques. Behind the oak was a luxuriant thicket of hazel with dark sheenless leaves, which were so dense, that neither trunk nor branches could be seen. Above the hazel rose two straight, joyous maple-trees with gayly indented leaves, red ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... Gothic architecture, the taste of the age is largely in favor of the pointed styles. Our churches and our books must bristle all over with points, or they are not so much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... interpolation where it stands. All considerations of external evidence are against it. It is wanting in all Greek MSS before the sixth century; it was originally absent in all the oldest versions—Latin, Syriac, Egyptian, Gothic; it is not referred to, as part of St John's Gospel, before the latter half of the fourth century. Nor is the internal evidence less fatal. It is expressed in language quite foreign to St John's style, and it interrupts the tenor of his narrative. The Evangelist is here relating Christ's discourses ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... gothic order: on the right side of it was a beautiful conservatory, filled with the choicest plants; on the left a colonnade and terrace, shaded by a group of acacia trees. In front a piazza and large portico, around which honeysuckle, clematis and roses, shed their ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... inhabitants of milder climates, who, severely of Tartar or Sclavonian descent, are said to inherit an attachment to furred clothing. Such are the inhabitants of Poland, of Southern Russia, of China, of Persia, of Turkey, and all the nations of Gothic origin in the middle and western parts of Europe. Under the burning suns of Syria and Egypt, and the mild climes of Bucharia and Independent Tartary, there is also a constant demand, and a great consumption, where there exists no physical necessity. In our own temperate latitudes, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... fact the Anglo-Saxon gerad, which is both substantive and adjective. As a substantive it means condition, arrangement, plan, reason, &c. As an adjective, it means prudent, well-prepared, expert, exact, &c. The ge (Gothic ga) is merely the intensive prefix; the root being rad or rath. The form in ly (adjective or adverb), without the prefix g, appears in the Anglo-Saxon raedlic, prudent, expert; raedlice, expertly. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... imperceptibly we had entered the new canyon and at this camp (33) we were fairly within the embrace of its rugged cliffs which, devoid of all vegetation, rose up four hundred feet, sombre in colour, but picturesque from a tendency to columnar weathering that imparted to them a Gothic character suggestive of cathedrals, castles, and turrets. The next day was Sunday and as Beaman felt sick and we were not in a hurry, no advance was made but instead Prof. accompanied by Steward, Cap., and Jones climbed out for notes and observations. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... farming villages, glad in the glorious sunshine which succeeded four days of rain. There were hundreds of horses, wonderful- looking animals in bravery of scarlet cloth and lacquer and fringed nets of leather, and many straw wisps and ropes, with Gothic roofs for saddles, and dependent panniers on each side, carrying two grave and stately-looking children in each, and sometimes a father or a fifth child on the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... and when one considers the possible lengths to which an official, representing the President, might go if instigated by private or party revenge, Edward Livingston's declaration that they "would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity" does not seem too strong.[87] Under the Alien Act persons not citizens of the United States could be summarily banished at the sole discretion of the President, without guilt or even accusation, thus jeopardising the liberty and ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... showed dim at the further end, as through a mist. Full-length figures of county worthies hung around, in all varieties of costume, from the days of Holbein to the present time. The lofty roof was indistinct, for the lamps were not fully lighted yet; while through the richly-painted Gothic window at one end the moonbeams fell, many-tinted, on the floor, and mocked with their vividness the struggles of the artificial light to ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all the new buildings that cover your once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills and mansions and I notice also that the churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... narrow street leading east from the Ducal Palace is the Cathedral, agood specimen of Italian Gothic, built in the 13th and 14th cents. The portals are adorned with lions, by B. da Bisoni, 1281. In the interior, along the top of clustered articulated columns, runs an elegant triforium, and over it extends a lofty elliptical roof, painted ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... in this country. Manners, habits, political institutions, and religion, of course, are interesting in all; and to those whose studies and enquiries lead them to investigate the differences in the different families of the human race, the opportunities afforded them by the Gothic Nations of Scandinavia; the Slavonic nations of Russia and Poland; and the totally distinct and singular races which inhabit Lapland and Finland, must ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... correctly that the name used here is a varied form of that by which the yew is known in at least five of the Gothic languages, and which appears in Marlow and other Elizabethan writers, as "hebon." "This tree," says Lyte, "is altogether venomous and against man's nature; such as do but only sleepe under the shadow thereof, become sicke, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... years and a-half old, he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages exactly. He had, before the fifth year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; learned out Puerilis, got by heart ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... designed to receive memorials of all the great names of Germany. The idea is kingly, and so is the temple; but it is built on the model of the Parthenon—evidently a formidable blunder in a land whose history, habits, and genius, are of the north. A Gothic temple or palace would have been a much more suitable, and therefore a finer conception. The combination of the palatial, the cathedral, and the fortress style, would have given scope to superb invention, if invention was to be found in the land; and in such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... that truth could have been conveyed only through the medium of legends, that justice could have been established only by force, that religion was obliged to assume the sacerdotal form, that the State necessarily took a military form, and that the Gothic edifice possessed, as well as other structures, its own architecture, proportions, balance of parts, solidity, and even beauty, never entered their heads.—Furthermore, unable to comprehend the past, they could not comprehend the present. They knew nothing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... at the summit like an ostrich wing; or as the smaller ones at their base, spreading out into fans of emerald green. Again, as the forest giants which far overhead were the arches of a watercourse, like the nave of a Gothic cathedral. And even the parasite vines were of the same Titan designing, for they bound the girders of the vault in a dense mat of leaves and woven twigs, while underfoot the carpet was soft inches deep with fern and moss. As for the flowers—Jacqueline ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... kept on cautiously descending till he stood upon a broad patch of barnacle-crusted rock, beside what looked like a great rough Gothic archway, forming the entrance to a cave whose floor was the sea, but alongside which there was a rugged continuation of the great stone upon ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... equality in all circumstances, and an exact practical definition of the supreme rights in every case, is the most dangerous and chimerical of all enterprises. The old building stands well enough, though part Gothic, part Grecian, and part Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it into uniformity. Then it may come down upon our heads altogether, in much uniformity of ruin; and great will ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... consciousness which reinforces their own in the extent to which they surrender to it; which surrounds them with favourable suggestions and gives the precision of habit to their instinct for Eternity. The special atmosphere, the hoarded beauty, the evocative yet often archaic symbolism, of a Gothic Cathedral, with its constant reminiscences of past civilizations and old levels of culture, its broken fragments and abandoned altars, its conservation of eternal truths—the intimate union in it of the sublime and homely, the successive and abiding aspects of reality—make it the most ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... and flesh of her flesh what she hath taken for her own. And herein lies her true greatness. But Gaelic or British gods would never unite with Roman gods; it was an alien creed, with no single point in common. Gothic gods would so unite,—mark you that,—for Gothic religion differed from Roman only in the names of its gods and in a coarser fibre which with us had been refined away. What did we, therefore,—we, that is the Romans our fathers,—for the furthering of our purposes and for ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... of our client opened by a long, low, latticed window on to the ancient lichen-tinted court of the old college. A Gothic arched door led to a worn stone staircase. On the ground floor was the tutor's room. Above were three students, one on each story. It was already twilight when we reached the scene of our problem. Holmes halted and looked earnestly at the window. Then he approached it, and, standing on tiptoe ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Honorius was holding the imperial power in the West, barbarians took possession of his land; and I shall tell who they were and in what manner they did so. [395-423 A.D.] There were many Gothic nations in earlier times, just as also at the present, but the greatest and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaedes. In ancient times, however, they were named Sauromatae and Melanchlaeni;[14] and there were some too who called these nations Getic. All these, while ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... the old "Island of France." Once a Roman camp whose stout masonry walls can still be seen for considerable distances, it had a mediaeval castle, and, until the greater grandeur of Beauvais stole the honor, was a bishopric with a lovely small Gothic cathedral. Its lofty gray spire dominates the green fields and thick woods in the midst of which Senlis sleeps away the modern day. There are other curious and beautiful examples of Gothic building in Senlis: indeed, just here, the experts find the first workings of the principles ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... at the outer gate, where Cowperwood shook the warden finally by the hand. Then entering a carriage outside the large, impressive, Gothic entrance, the gates were locked behind them and they ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... were plenty of pretty country places close by; a comfortable country town, with good houses of gentlefolks; a beautiful old parsonage, close to the church whither we went (and where the Carabas family have their ancestral carved and monumented Gothic pew), and every appearance of good society in the neighbourhood, I rather wondered we were not enlivened by the appearance of some of the neighbours at the Evergreens, and asked ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,—will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of Colour: if the Cut betoken Intellect ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
