"Heraldic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apple of discord to your heraldic, genealogical, and antiquarian, readers. Was there originally more than one family of Courtnay, Courtney, Courtenay, Courteney, Courtnaye, Courtenaye, &c. Which is right, and when did the family commence in England, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... drink and dissipation are rapidly thinning them out. Shamanism exists here, but not to such an extent as amongst the Siberian races, and the totem poles, which are met with at every turn in Wrangell, are not objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but they are only brought out on the occasion of a feast, when a chief and his crew appear in the gaudy panoply of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... bastioned rock, and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart—very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. And above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring the wine in autumn ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... of scroll iron. They were of a flamboyant Italian period, and more arrestive than distinguished. Panelled upon them, and belonging to a later day than they, had been imposed two iron coats of arms, with crest above and motto beneath—the heraldic bearings of the present owner of Chadlands. He set store upon such things, but was not responsible for the work. A survival himself, and steeped in ancient opinions, his coat, won in a forgotten age, interested him only less than his Mutiny ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... With her title and heraldic honours complete, plus a generous allowance on which to support them, and a palace in which to live, Lola Montez cut a very considerable dash in Munich. Two sentries marched up and down in front of her gate, and two mounted orderlies (instead ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies, save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the golden beams traced out as with a pencil of light the arms of the old French knight with the faded rose and blue of his shield and motto illumining with curiously marked distinctness the words he himself had carved beneath his own heraldic emblems: ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... as their emblem, to be cut out of the city standard, as an idol, and a Thistle to be inserted, "emblematical (as a recent writer remarks) of rude reform, but leaving the Hind which accompanied St. Giles, as one of the heraldic supporters of the city arms."—(Caledonia, vol. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... metal rim and metal boss in the center. On the inside are two handles so that it can be conveniently wielded on the left arm.[*] These shields are brilliantly painted, and although the Greeks have no heraldic devices, there are all manner of badges and distinguishing marks in vogue. Thus all Theban shields are blazoned with a club; Sicyonian shields are marked with the initial "Sigma" (S), and we note that the Athenian shields are all marked ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... short-hand writer to take minutes, which, after some delay, was allowed. One Schield, that was the first Witness called, deposing that Lord Lovat made one of a company of gentlemen who in 1740 drank healths and sang catches, such as "Confusion to the White Horse" (meaning the heraldic cognizance of Hanover) "and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... into obscurity overleaf. The column headed "Distinguished Scientist says Comet will Strike our Earth. Does it Matter?" went unread. "Germany"—I usually figured this mythical malignant creature as a corseted stiff-mustached Emperor enhanced by heraldic black wings and a large sword—had insulted our flag. That was the message of the New Paper, and the monster towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... parables, another point attracts attention. Men vary a great deal in this. To take two of the Old Testament prophets, we find a marked difference here between Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Ezekiel "puts forth a riddle and speaks a parable" about an eagle—a frankly heraldic eagle, that plants a tree-top in a city of merchants (Ezek. 17:2-5). Jeremiah is obviously country-bred. He might have been surprised, if he had been told how often he illustrates his thought from bird and beast and country life—and always with ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... that there was a pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson, the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his hands in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and looking towards a piece of unenclosed ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... on this memorable occasion was in the heraldic and ancestral honors of the city. Historic Rome then went to wreck for ever. Then perished the domus priscorum ducum hostilibus adhuc spoliis adornat; the "rostral" palace; the mansion of the Pompeys; the Blenheims and the Strathfieldsays of ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 'it only is when he is out he is acting,' let him make the fools stare, but give others something worth looking at. Good Mr. Carver and Gilder, good Mr. Printer's Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, 'do me your offices' unmolested! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a great many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. Lay on, and do not spare. No man's merit can be fairly judged of if he is not known; and how can he be known if he keeps entirely in the background?(4) A great name in art goes but a little ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... I might hunt M. Michelet into delirium tremens. Two strong angels stand by the side of History, whether French History or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel of Research on the left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages blotted with lies; the angel of Meditation on the right hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of asbestos were cleansed, and ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Alden raising something which lay beneath the mat. Brushing away the mould that clung to it, this proved to be a piece of plank some twenty-seven inches in length, carefully smoothed upon one side, and painted with what seemed an heraldic achievement, while the top was cut into something of the fashion of a crest consisting of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Henry's own flagship on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. She had a gala suit of sails and pennants, all made of damasked cloth of gold. Her quarters, sides, and tops were emblazoned with heraldic targets. Court artists painted her to show His Majesty on board wearing cloth of gold, edged with the royal ermine; as well as bright crimson jacket, sleeves, and breeches, with a long white feather in his cap. Doubtless, ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... then," said Tom, seating himself on an heraldic stone griffin which flanked the big stone steps before the house. And in this way Mr. Tozer gained his purpose. Sowerby was still contesting the county, and it behoved him not to let his enemies say that he was hiding himself. It ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... education. We rise again in status, though probably not in wealth, and certainly not in education, when we come to Wolfram von Eschenbach. He was of a family of Northern Bavaria or Middle Franconia; he bore (for there are diversities on this heraldic point) two axe-blades argent on a field gules, or a bunch of five flowers argent springing from a water-bouget gules; and he is said by witnesses in 1608 to have been described on his tombstone as a knight. But he was certainly poor, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... band; similar to the flag of Yemen, which has a plain white band, and of Iraq, which has three green stars (plus an Arabic inscription) in a horizontal line centered in the white band; also similar to the flag of Egypt, which has a heraldic eagle centered ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to Nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance. Toil, I repeat toil—either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... companion appeared very suspicious. Was she the duenna, the mother or an old relative? At any rate she was very ugly, not because her head was like a stone mask with spiral eyebrows, and lips slashed like the fossa of a heraldic dolphin, but vulgarity had stamped the mask, making its features common, coarse and dull. The habit of servile compliance had deprived them of all true expression; she squinted, her smile was vaguely stupid, and she wore an air of spurious good-nature, indicative ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... and then decorated the ward-room with all our sledging flags. These flags are carried by officers on Arctic expeditions, and are formed of the St. George's Cross with a continuation ending in a swallow-tail in the heraldic colours to which the individual is entitled, and upon this is embroidered his crest. The men forrard had their Christmas dinner of fresh mutton at mid-day; there was plenty of penguin for them, but curiously enough they did not think it ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... stood for knightly prowess, and pitiless Time had taken up the challenge. I found it fine work to rumble through the narrow single street of Irun and Renteria, between the strange-colored houses, the striped awnings, the universal balconies, and the heraldic doorways. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... frequent visits; the more I saw him the more he interested me. He was kind and benevolent, a good old Church of England Christian, was well versed in several dialects of the Celtic, and possessed an astonishing deal of Welsh heraldic and antiquarian lore. Often whilst discoursing with him I almost fancied that I was with Master Salisburie, Vaughan of Hengwrt, or some other worthy of old, deeply skilled in everything remarkable connected with wild ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Heraldic Decalcomanie is an extended application of this art, the arms and crests of persons or families being emblazoned in their proper colours according to the rules of heraldry, and prepared for Decalcomanie. Armorial bearings, thus embellished, serve admirably to ornament and identify the books ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the page, the Major disclosed a most grievous grizzly bear, grizzly and bearish beyond conception, heraldic, regardant, expectant, not collared, fanged and clawed proper, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... form, with fact by suggestion, with color in mass. It substitutes light and dark for nature's light and shade. Conceptions evolved upon the flat vertical plane deal with pictorial data as material for heraldic quartering, with natural fact as secondary to the happy adjustment of spaces. Nature to the decorative mind presents a variegated pattern from which to clip any shape ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... there is some history connected with this singular tableau—that it is the commemoration of some deed done by a Grodonoff, entitling him to use the bear as his heraldic device. This is quite true; and if you enter the picture-gallery of the palace, you will there behold the deed more explicitly represented, in a large oil-painting hung conspicuously in the centre of the wall. The scene of this painting is a forest of old trees, whose grey, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... in evening dress, signed by Ingres, was the only picture in the room. Through the open windows could be seen a pool of water, and near it a stork, the only creature that M. Bourjot would tolerate in his park, and that on account of its heraldic form. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... adventure, for the road runs between the open heath on one side and an old yew hedge upon the other, surrounding a park which is studded with magnificent trees. There was a main gateway of lichen-studded stone, each side pillar surmounted by mouldering heraldic emblems, but besides this central carriage drive I observed several points where there were gaps in the hedge and paths leading through them. The house was invisible from the road, but the surroundings all spoke ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... extraordinary that so little should have been accurately known and recorded of a dog which at one time must have been a familiar figure in the halls of the Irish kings. It was no mere mythical animal like the heraldic griffin, but an actual sporting dog which was accepted as a national emblem of the Emerald Isle, associated with ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... ground, their garments being enriched with gold embroidery. Later the patterns became more barbaric and of great scale, lions trampled across the stuff, and in large circles were displayed eagles, griffins and the like in a fine heraldic style. From the origin of the raw material in China and India and the ease of transport, such figured stuffs gathered up and distributed patterns over both Europe and Asia. The Persian influence is marked. There is, for example, a pattern of a curious dragon having front feet and a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... green sod from a large slab which had been entirely hidden under the soil, and in a brief space revealed to us a tombstone fully six feet long, upon which we were able to read, in plainly chiselled letters, an inscription surmounted by a carved heraldic shield with its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... that he would iron and goffer his cuffs and collars himself rather than see their pleats limp and out of shape. The pattern-books also gave a great impulse to the art. M. Lefebure mentions German books with patterns of eagles, heraldic emblems, hunting scenes, and plants and leaves belonging to Northern vegetation; and Italian books, in which the motifs consist of oleander blossoms, and elegant wreaths and scrolls, landscapes with mythological scenes, and hunting episodes, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... prefer the modern napery, so exquisitely embroidered in gold thread, which affords an opportunity to show the family coat of arms, or the heraldic animals—the lion and the two-headed eagle and the griffin—intertwined in graceful shapes around the whole edge of the table ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... a church. The walls were panelled with oak to a height of about eight feet, and above that were decorated with elaborate designs in plaster relief, representing lions, wild boars, stags, unicorns, and other heraldic devices from the coat-of-arms of the original owner of the estate. A narrow winding staircase led to a minstrels' gallery, from which was suspended a wooden shield emblazoned with the Welsh dragon and the national motto, "Cymru am byth" ("Wales ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... would annex them. One of the earliest sensations of the Flag was a correspondence exposing the misdeeds of some communal officials; but in the end the very persons who made the allegations ate humble pie. Evidently official pressure had been brought to bear, for red tape rampant might have been the heraldic device of Jewish officialdom. In no department did Jews exhibit more strikingly their marvellous powers of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the remaining difficulty occurred, and explained how they were completely at a stand from their inability to decipher the word Gassoc, or to decide who or what it could mean. All the conjectures of the commissioner, the cassock, and the bishop, and the gosshawk, and the heraldic researches, and the French misnomers, and the puns upon the coats of arms, and the notes from Wilkins on universal language, and an old book on deciphering, which had been lent to the commissioner, and the private and public letters which Cunningham had written since he went abroad, were ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... (portrait painter), William Tyre (architect), Nathaniel Dance (portrait painter), Richard Wilson, G. Michael Moser (Swiss, gold-chaser and enameller), Samuel Wale (sign painter and book illustrator), Peter Toms (portrait and heraldic painter), Angelica Kauffman (Swiss), Richard Yeo (sculptor of medallions, engraver to the Mint), Mary Moser (Swiss, flower painter), William Chambers (architect), Joseph Wilton (sculptor), George Barrett (landscape painter), Edward Penny (portrait painter chiefly), ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... arrived before the place with all his victorious army early in August, his good knights and squires arrayed in glittering steel armor, covered with surcoats richly embroidered with their heraldic bearings; his stout men-at-arms, each of whom was attended by three bold followers; and his archers, with their cross-bows to shoot bolts, and long-bows to shoot arrows of a yard long, so that it used to be said that each went ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of Amminadab, was Prince of the Tribe of Judah. This tribe, again, like all the others, was divided into several families; the term being used here not in its ordinary acceptation, to signify a mere household, but rather in the heraldic sense, to denote a lineage or kindred descended from a common ancestor, and constituting the main branches of an original stock. In this respect the Israelites were guided by the same principle which regulates precedency ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... one of the proscribed of the clan MacGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-side sheep-pen—'Son of my love,' a heraldic bar sinister, but history reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other than the sinister aspect of the name": these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo Innes; but history or tradition, being ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this "immense" but unamiable amateur. Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book-plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile may have his own engraved, and may formulate his own anathemas ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... pen line with some steadiness (the geometrical exercises for this purpose being properly school, not University work), you shall have a series of studies from the plants which are of chief importance in the history of art; first from their real forms, and then from the conventional and heraldic expressions of them; then we will take examples of the filling of ornamental forms with flat colour in Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic design; and then we will advance to animal forms treated in the same severe way, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... by a white cross dividing the rectangle into four sections; the middle part has a white background with an ermine pattern; the third part has a red background with two stylized yellow lions outlined in black, one above the other; these three heraldic arms represent settlement by colonists from the Basque Country (top), Brittany, and Normandy; the flag of France is used ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing no other that will express what I mean,—the division of the picture into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... the family, according to Dugdale and others, had a chapel of their own, the hamlet appertained to the parish of Aston, to the mother church of which one Henry de Erdington added an isle, and the family arms long appeared in the heraldic tracery of its windows. Erdington Church (St. Barnabas) was built in 1823, as a chapel of ease to Aston, and it was not until 1858 that the district was formed into a separate and distinct ecclesiastical parish, the vicar of Aston ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... were but bartizans, their interiors forming recesses in rooms. They gave the house something of the air of a French chateau, only it looked stronger and far grimmer. Carved around some of the windows, in ancient characters, were Scripture texts and antique proverbs. Two time worn specimens of heraldic zoology, in a state of fearful and everlasting excitement, stood rampant and gaping, one on each side of the hall door, contrasting strangely with the repose of the ancient house, which looked very like what the oldest part of it was said to have been—a monastery. It had ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... dahlias, lilies of the valley; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages): pleasure of the eye, and pride of life! So rolls and dances the Procession: steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment,—under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written: The wages ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... through the chinks. The roof was poor and thatched; but in strange contrast to it there ran all along under the eaves a line of wooden shields, most gorgeously painted with chevron, bend, and saltire, and every heraldic device. By the door a horse stood tethered, the ruddy glow beating strongly upon his brown head and patient eyes, while his body stood ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the letter, which he crumpled up and put in his pocket, Emilio ran to communicate this great news to the Duchess, forgetting his heraldic honors. ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house, gave three raps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach- door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day examined the shield ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ground. Christ stands up to His waist in the clear waters of the Jordan, the god of which river waits upon Him. S. John high up on the bank, his staff, topped with a cross, in his hand, pours the water from a shell upon Our Lord's head while the Dove, an almost heraldic figure, is seen above About this circular mosaic is set a greater circle in which we see, upon a blue ground, the twelve Apostles in procession, each bearing his crown. Nothing left to us of that age is finer or more gravely splendid than these mosaics, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... p.0491] The origin of the name and family has not yet been explained. It undoubtedly stands in close connexion with the name of the province of Bessarabia, which oriental chroniclers gave in olden times to the whole of Walachia. The heraldic sign, three heads of negroes in the Bassarab shield, seems to be of late western origin and to rest on a popular etymology connecting the second half of the word with Arabs, who were taken to signify Moors (blacks). The other heraldic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... exterior cup bent downwards whilst the stalk is coloured and shining. The plant-leaves have jagged edges which resemble the angular jaw of a lion fully supplied with teeth; or, some writers say, the herb has been named from the heraldic lion which is vividly yellow, with teeth of gold-in fact, a dandy lion! Again, the flower closely resembles the sun, which a lion represents. It is called by some Blowball, Time Table, and Milk ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... comparatively little of seignorial dignity, but it was as though generation after generation had employed upon its perfecting the craft of its most delicate fingers, the love of its most fanciful and ingenious spirits. Overhead, the stucco-work ceiling, covered with stags and birds and strange heraldic creatures unknown to science, had the deep creamy tint, the consistency and surface of antique ivory. From the white and gilt frieze beneath, untouched, so Robert explained, since the Jacobean days when it was first executed, hung Renaissance tapestries which would have made the heart's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the accurate jointing of a chimneypiece. The storm bellowed and blazed outside, the rain strummed richly on the patio roof which the lightning illumined, and as we descended that stately stair, with its walls ramped and foliaged over with heraldic fauna and flora, I felt as never before the disadvantage of not being still fourteen ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Catti (pronounced Toom Shone Catti), alias Thomas Jones, Esq., is very romantic. He was a natural son of John ap David Moethe, by Catharine, natural daughter of Meredydd ap Ivan ap Robert, grandfather of Sir John Wynne, of Gwydir (see The Heraldic Visitations of Wales, published by the Welsh MSS. Society), and is said to have died in 1630, at the age of 61. In early life, 'he was a notorious freebooter and highwayman,' and levied black mail on the ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... the Virtues, variously supporting or administering its authority. Now, observe what work is given to each of these virtues. Three winged ones—Faith, Hope, and Charity—surround the head of the figure; not in mere compliance with the common and heraldic laws of precedence among Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitually, but with peculiar purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thus represented ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not mean merely religious faith, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Scots College at Douay to Prince Edward Stuart, from whom it had, in some unspecified but doubtless extremely romantic manner (probably sewn in the swaddling clothes in which the Jolair Dhearg was consigned to Admiral O'Haloran) descended to Mr. John Sobieski Stuart. This venerable heraldic document appears, if one may judge by the review in the Quarterly, to have been well-deserving of publication, owing to the extremely new and unexpected information which it contained upon Scottish archaeology. Among such information may ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid with ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... and knight-baronry, wherein all oppressed persons shall have republics, and all nice people shall wear armor, and live in castles, and strew the floors of their rooms with rushes and their garments with the anatomic monstrosities of heraldic blazon. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... a more ingenious and more dramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in person, (vera incessa patuit dea) presented herself to them, clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of the ship of the city of Paris. She had come herself to claim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful. Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room, supported her claim, and Venus was on the point of carrying it off,—that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of embroidering heraldic devices on the long gowns of the ladies of rank. In one of the illuminations of a famous psalter, executed for Sir Geoffery Loutterell, who died in 1345, that nobleman is represented armed at all points, receiving from the ladies of his family his tilting helmet, shield, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and groins, the ceiling is decorated with heraldic insignia, displaying the arms of Edward the Confessor, Edward the Third, Edward the Black Prince, Henry the Sixth, Edward the Fourth, Henry the Seventh, and Henry the Eighth; with the arms of England and France quartered, the holy cross, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... entertained her new guest, as, stumbling at every obstacle which the devotion of his guide, Richard, had left in the path, he at last, by ascending some stone steps decorated on the side with griffins, or some such heraldic anomalies, attained a terrace extending in front of the Place of Fairladies; an old-fashioned gentleman's house of some consequence, with its range of notched gable-ends and narrow windows, relieved by here and there an old turret about the size of a pepper-box. The door was locked during ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the young draughtsman, then aged twenty-six, to become a regular contributor. Mr. Furniss's first sketch (published on p. 204, Vol. LXXIX., 1880) was a skit on what is ignorantly called the Temple Bar Griffin—(it is really an heraldic dragon, designed by Horace Jones)—executed by his friend C. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... triangular space of a steep pitch (about 60°), in which was inserted a frontispiece carved on a single stone representing two lions standing up on either side of an archaic column supporting a fragment of a rudimentary architrave.[129] The heraldic pose of the lions and the technique of their sculpture, so suggestive of Assyrian reliefs with their splendid sense of muscular form and energy, are far ahead of an architecture that is still barbaric, scarcely architecture at all. There is here nothing to suggest ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... study the insect because we are his inferiors. The old moralists merely took the virtues of man and distributed them quite decoratively and arbitrarily among the animals. The ant was an almost heraldic symbol of industry, as the lion was of courage, or, for the matter of that, the pelican of charity. But if the mediaevals had been convinced that a lion was not courageous, they would have dropped the lion and kept the courage; if the pelican ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Morris, "it is a capital idea to have all ready in case we want to go horse backing, but don't you think that one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a byway of Walworth or Mile End would attract too much attention for our purpose? It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east. And even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been during the late baronet's reign. The black outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind it, where hothouse plants ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the sites of trees, are detached villas, houses, lodges, and cottages, named, or not named, after the taste of their respective proprietors; one of which, on the left hand, some fourteen houses distant from the main Fulham Road, was for many years the residence of Mr. John Burke, whose laborious heraldic and genealogical inquiries induced him to arrange and publish various important collections relative to the peerage and family history of the United Kingdom, in which may be found, condensed for immediate reference, an ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... the old house of the Moretons had been burned 'by soldiers from Tewkesbury and Gloucester,' as said the old chronicles dear to the heart of Clara. And on the wall he sat him down. Above, in the uncut grass, he could see the burning blue of a peacock's breast, where the heraldic bird stood digesting grain in the repose of perfect breeding, and below him gardeners were busy with the gooseberries. 'Gardeners and the gooseberries of the great!' he thought. 'Such is the future of our Land.' And he watched them. How methodically ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... your correspondents W. W. and H. G. in error when they consider that the name of Baron Fairfax ought not to be retained in the Peerage. The able heraldic editors of the Peerages are likely to be better versed in such matters than to have perpetrated and perpetuated so frequently the blunder; or what is to be said of Sir Bernard Burke's elevation to be a king of arms? Not to omit the instance of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... the secular escutcheons, the heraldic deportment of this antique caste had disappeared. The land no longer yielding anything was put up for sale, money being needed to procure the venereal witchcraft for the besotted descendants of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... continental princes. There were living witnesses (more than one) of his aberrations as of theirs; but he, with better feelings than they, did not choose, by placing these witnesses upon a pedestal of honor, surmounted by heraldic trophies, to emblazon his own transgressions to coming generations, and to force back the gaze of a remote posterity upon his own infirmities. It was his ambition to be the father of his people in a sense not quite so literal. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... rode in great state, for the Duke of Somerset, his descendant, still has a very imposing red velvet saddle, elaborately embroidered with heraldic and other designs in silver, that 'Mr Speaker Seymour' used on ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver's Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings. Examples are in South Kensington Museum. But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism. Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... surface, and over the glowing red of its Venetian leather binding, lambs, lions, eagles, doves, and pelicans stood lucently embossed, bearing upon their well-drilled shoulders the sacred emblems and mottoes of the ecclesiastical party. More important and more central than these showed the proud heraldic bearings of the metropolitan see of Ebury, crowned with a miter which its occupant never wore, and a Cardinal's hat for which he was ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... eve it chanced High feast was holden in the chieftain's tower To solemnise his birthday. In they flocked, Each after each, the warriors of the clan, Not without pomp heraldic and fair state Barbaric, yet beseeming. Unto each Seat was assigned for deeds or lineage old, And to the chiefs allied. Where each had place Above him waved his banner. Not for this Unhonoured were the pilgrim ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... officer the armies of Europe—and as for judges!... There are enough badges, fraternity pins, cockades, and association medals to keep second-hand jewelers busy for their lifetimes! My countrymen are the most passionate collectors of heraldic certificates and genealogical maps in the world. The instinct for decoration is prevalent—the more obscure the family, the more plentiful the framed diplomas of aristocratic origin ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... in their veins; it had come to them by way of Virginia, in their eyes the last medium of refinement. The final touch of sanguinary indigo is given only at Virginia's hands, the Virginian aristocracy being a blessed union of the English chivalric and the American intrinsic, the heraldic of the old world blended with the romantic of the new—which might make the Duke of Devonshire proud to ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By the time he was twenty-one he had made himself, almost unconsciously, an expert paleographer and antiquarian, whose assistance was sought by professional workers ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... days can we imagine a lawsuit, costing contestants thousands of pounds, over the right to a certain heraldic charge? In the fourteenth century Sir Robert Grosvenor was the defendant in such a suit, and we read of Chaucer, John of Gaunt, Owen Glendower, and Hotspur being witnesses before the High Court of Chivalry. Sir Robert established his defence, ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... covered by his raiment of camel's hair; bearing a gentle aspect, because the herald of a gentle Lord; and pointing to his quite legibly written message concerning the Lamb which is that gentle Lord's heraldic symbol. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... literature. His father had been sexton of the ancient Church of St. Mary Redcliff, in Bristol, and the boy's sensitive imagination took the stamp of his surroundings. He taught himself to read from a black-letter Bible. He drew charcoal sketches of churches, castles, knightly tombs, and heraldic blazonry. When only eleven years old, he began the fabrication of documents in prose and verse, which he ascribed to a fictitious Thomas Rowley, a secular priest at Bristol in the 15th century. Chatterton pretended ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... mounted, and in complete armour, was an elderly and stately knight, whose raised visor and beaver depressed, showed a beard already grizzled. Beside him appeared the pursuivant on horseback, the royal arms embroidered on his heraldic dress of office, and all the importance of offended consequence on his countenance, which was shaded by his barret-cap and triple plume. They were attended by a body of about fifty soldiers, arranged ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... out of you in exchange as dexterously as any commoner could do. It is a comfort to be able to gratify such grandees with a farthing or two; it makes the poorest man feel that he can do good. 'The Polonias have intermarried with the greatest and most ancient families of Rome, and you see their heraldic cognizance (a mushroom or on an azure field) quartered in a hundred places in the city with the arms of the Colonnas ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gate, and steadying himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them from ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... customs, and daily life and speech of his own time, in "The Canterbury Tales," are sweepingly advanced against his works at large. In an allegory — rendered perhaps somewhat cumbrous by the detail of chivalric ceremonial, and the heraldic minuteness, which entered so liberally into poetry, as into the daily life of the classes for whom poetry was then written — Chaucer beautifully enforces the lasting advantages of purity, valour, and faithful love, and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... warmth: "I have in my genealogical standard," said he, "four escutcheons of Van Horn, and of course have four ancestors of that house. I must have them erased and effaced, and there would be so many blank spaces, like holes, in my heraldic ensigns. There is not a sovereign family which would not suffer, through the rigor of your Royal Highness; nay, all the world knows, that in the thirty-two quarterings of Madame, your mother, there is an escutcheon of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... of the tower, of seeing the carved work which had never been seen close at hand since its erection except by the jackdaws and pigeons. I was moved and touched by observing how fine and delicate all the sculpture was. There were rows and rows of little heraldic devices, which from below could appear only as tiny fretted points; yet every petal of rose or fleur-de-lys was as scrupulously and cleanly cut as if it had been meant to be seen close at hand; a waste of power, I suppose; but what a pretty and delicate waste! ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... decoration. The windows of the aisles are late Decorated in style; they are of three lights, the traceries elegant and richly moulded. The east window is Perpendicular and is much sub-divided by mullions and transoms; in the upper portions are some heraldic coats of arms, which appear to have formed part of a much earlier window. The chancel is divided from the nave by a fine open oak screen, coeval with the larger part of the building. It is richly carved and gilded, and in the right-hand side of the chancel ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. They blazoned the shields of their paladins with the purple and gold of many heraldic sunsets. The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... built of outlayer granite, and, though the plainest cathedral in Scotland, its stately simplicity and severe symmetry lend it unique distinction. On the flat panelled ceiling of the nave are the heraldic shields of the princes, noblemen and bishops who shared in its erection, and the great west window contains modern painted glass of excellent colour and design. The cemeteries are St Peter's in Old Aberdeen, Trinity near the links, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tablet is prepared, upon which is inscribed the totem or heraldic emblem of the injured man's gens, and a picture-writing setting ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... bears the stationer's as well as printer's name. This is the first edition of the first volume of the collected works, and the only one published during the author's life. It was reprinted when the second volume was collected in 1640. The present copy has an elaborate heraldic bookplate of ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... custom in some towns, both prefixes being sometimes used, and more frequently none at all. It seems desirable, however, that some rule should be laid down, if possible, by common consent, that it may be understood in future what the appropriate Prefix is. I shall be glad if some of your heraldic or antiquarian readers will give their opinions, and if they know of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... introduction of heraldic symbols,—the motto of this house has been 'Suum cuique'—to every man his own. By your own intrepidly frank confession, my lord, it is become a sarcasm: If ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as she laid the packet on it, stirring it down into a red hollow, so that not a flickering fragment should be left unconsumed, were four letters—only four—written on dainty paper, in a man's hand, sealed with a man's large heraldic seal. When they ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... heaven hung above the broad world, and from this Homer works out, round and round, to the river Oceanus, which forms the border of the whole; the subjects answering to, or supporting each other, in a sort of heraldic order—the city at peace set over against the city besieged- -spring, summer, and autumn balancing each other—quite congruously with a certain heraldic turn common in contemporary Assyrian art, which delights in [203] this sort ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... cornice, with their whole surface covered with coloured sculptures, representing one of the great dramas in the reign of a victorious monarch. Above them would rise the tall masts of coloured cedar-wood, inserted in sinkings chased into the wall, surmounted by the expanded banners of the king, or the heraldic bearings of the temple floating in the breeze. Between the huge propylons opened up the great gateway of the temple, sixty feet high, which led into a vast court, surrounded by columns and open to the sky. Beyond were walls whose roofs ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... mechanical contrivance; also a pattern or design, particularly an heraldic design or emblem, often combined with a motto or legend. "Device" and its doublet "devise" come from the two Old French forms devis and devise of the Latin divisa, things divided, from dividere, to separate, used in the sense of to arrange, set out, apportion. "Devise," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... probably by some herald-at-arms as an appropriate legend for signifying the peculiar attributes of the family. Now, however, unfortunately, men were not of one mind as to the exact idea signified. Some declared, with much heraldic warmth, that it was an address to the savages, calling on them to take care of their patron; while others, with whom I myself am inclined to agree, averred with equal certainty that it was an advice to the people at large, especially to those inclined to rebel against ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... useless furniture, whose doom it was ever to drag behind him the irony of his imperial state: cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, and vans, sweeping, as it were, the blood and mire from the roads of his defeat with the magnificence of his court mantle, embroidered with the heraldic bees! ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sunset. They quarrelled among themselves in a liverish way over cards and politics, and agreed only on the subject of such titled acquaintances as they had in common, all of whom seemed to be perfectly charming. But these heraldic conversations bored Mary even more intensely than the squabbles. There came a time when desperation got the upper hand of that prudence so earnestly recommended by Lord Dauntrey. She could not endure the long evenings in the villa, and felt ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and long Spanish inscriptions. It was claimed that this made the genuineness of the canvases doubtful, for Stuart signed few of his paintings—possibly none except the standing Washington in the Philadelphia Academy; he was not an R. A. (Royal Academician); nor was he a heraldic illuminator. Furthermore, the painting of the male portrait and the dress and accessories in the companion piece did not seem to the critic to agree with Stuart's handling. To make his impressions fit with the pictures, the critic supposed that Stuart painted a smaller portrait of Jaudenes and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... it is only saved by a kind of good fortune from failure. It is without energy and without life, but in its monumental weight and a certain splendour of design it impresses us with a sort of majesty as no merely naturalistic study of a lion could do. If we compare it for a moment with the heraldic shield in Casa Martelli, where Donato has carved in relief a winged griffin rampant, cruel and savage, with all the beauty and vigour of Verrocchio, we shall understand something of his failure in the Marzocco, and something, too, of his success. In that heavy grotesque and fantastic Lion ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... strength and repose as a church should have. Then there is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house, with battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and colors, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... stood on little easels, and were carven out of oak; a blotting book of vellum; a Dante of the same material; cheap mosaic brooches, which the maids, next Christmas, would never tell from real; pins, pots, heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros and Psyche in alabaster; St. Peter to match—all of which would have ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... expressions of storm; hail, or the Trinacrian limbs, being put on the giant's shields also. It is connected besides with the Cretan labyrinth, and the circles of the Inferno. 3. Parted per fesse, gules and vai (I don't know if vai means grey—not a proper heraldic colour—or vaire). ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... acquaintance altogether. One is possessed by a strange sort of uneasiness in his house; the very comfort is distasteful to one, and every evening when a befrizzed valet makes his appearance in a blue livery with heraldic buttons, and begins, with cringing servility, drawing off one's boots, one feels that if his pale, lean figure could suddenly be replaced by the amazingly broad cheeks and incredibly thick nose of a stalwart young labourer fresh from the plough, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... with foliated capitals, plinths and bases: on the top of each is a boy habited like a soldier, with a spear and shield bending forwards; alarge cartouche German shield is supported by three boys. The ninth Mark of this printer was a large and handsome one, being a royal and heraldic device which Wynkyn de Worde used as a frontispiece to the Acts of Parliament, in the form of an upright parallelogram which encloses a species of arched panel or doorway, formed of three lines, imitating clustered columns and Gothic mouldings, and two large square shields, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... of the 1862 Exhibition, and were afterwards presented to the Prince by the County of Norwich. On the top is the golden crown, supported by the Prince's feathers. Underneath, held by bronzed griffins, are heraldic shields representing the various titles of the Prince, while the remainder is composed of flowers, sprays, and creeping vines. They are connected with the palisading by rose, shamrock and thistle. The maker was ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... rampant, with a sprig in right paw, and above the legend JUGE D'AUREGNY. The heraldic tinctures are not indicated ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... a vague tradition, the Simoni drew their blood from the high and puissant Counts of Canossa. Michelangelo himself believed in this pedigree, for which there is, however, no foundation in fact, and no heraldic corroboration. According to his friend and biographer Condivi, the sculptor's first Florentine ancestor was a Messer Simone dei Conti di Canossa, who came in 1250 as Podesta to Florence. "The eminent qualities of this man gained for him admission ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... advance of his time: he was a socialist. One day he assembled his friends, relatives and retainers in the castle yard and appeared among them armed and on horseback. He dismounted and commenced proceedings by scraping off his shield the heraldic emblems with which it was charged. Lions and bears, rampant, couchant, gardant, and other fauna in becoming attitudes, bends, bars, engrailed, dancetty, raguly, gules, azure, argent or otherwise—all these things of beauty vanished from Dalibor's scutcheon ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... being gentlemen, although they have been told in every conceivable tone that it was a foolish pride,—foolish in itself, foolish in that it did not have the heraldic backing that was claimed for it; the utmost concession being that a number of "deboshed" younger sons of decayed gentry had been shipped to Virginia in the early settlement of that colony. But the very pride played its part in ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... to have risen above the heraldic horizon till John Shakespeare applied for his coat of arms. Into the contest over that application it is well to plunge at once, and thence work backwards and forwards. Four classes of writers wage war over the facts: the Baconians, like the late Mr. Donnelly, who deny everything; ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... forgotten it. I used to find myself in a spacious salon, its appointments and fashion those of Louis Treize, with ghostly moonlight pouring in at lofty church-like windows and painting distorted shadowgraphs of heraldic devices upon the floor. My costume was that of a Cavalier and I held a long sword in my hand. I was conscious of pain and great weakness. Creeping stealthily from recess to recess, window to window, I would approach the double doors at the end ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... to have such a thing, but to tell you the truth, I don't think much of such matters. Besants d'or and such heraldic moneys are not currency in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The heraldic crest (p. 67) forming part of a mutilated brass of the fifteenth century, within the Clearwell Chapel of Newland Church, gives a graphic representation of the iron miner equipped for his work, if not actually engaged in it. He is represented ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... precipitate a name. We can hardly imagine the Tribe scratching its congregated head in the deliberate effort to think out a suitable emblem for itself. That is not the way in which nicknames are invented in a school or anywhere else to-day. At the same time the heraldic appeal of a certain object of nature, animate or inanimate, would be deeply and widely felt. The strength of the lion, the fleetness of the deer, the food-value of a bear, the flight of a bird, the awful jaws of a crocodile, might easily mesmerize a whole tribe. Reinach ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... divisional sign, for instance, is an iddy-umpty plain on a field plainer. We vary the heraldry by ringing changes on the colours. On our brigade arm-band it becomes an iddy-umpty gules on a field azure. If I could be quite sure of the heraldic slang for puce I would tell you what it is on our Army Corps arm-band. On a waggon it used to be an iddy-umpty blank on a field muddy. But administrative genius has changed all that. A routine order, the other day, ordered a pink border ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... never missed them. And they have the dusty courtyards, the massive portals, where portcullises still threaten, of Fosdinovo to themselves. Over the gate, and here and there on corbels, are carved the arms of Malaspina—a barren thorn-tree, gnarled with the geometrical precision of heraldic irony. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... systematic arrangement of all those known, with their definitions, it would be a very valuable work of reference,—a work in which one might pounce upon all the sacred symbols, classic types, signs, heraldic zoology, conventional botany, monograms, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... with the inscription, "Producat { terra animam viventem" (Gen. i. 24). The four Roof { heraldic shields on the borders have the arms of the { four London Companies who are donors to the decorations. { N.: Merchant Taylors. S.: Mercers. E.: Fishmongers. { ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... number of sharply contrasting and contradictory forms together in design satisfactorily— at least we cannot do so without recourse to other elements to harmonize and to bring them into relation. For instance, we might get a great deal of ornamental variety by means of a number of heraldic devices upon shields, full in themselves of quaintness and contrasts, but brought into harmony by the boundary lines of the shields and the divisions; or, still further, by throwing them upon a background of leaves and stems, the meandering lines and recurring forms of which would ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... between plants and heraldic badges is often close, and although we do not find rue frequent in heraldry, one curious instance of it is interesting. In 809 an Order was created whereof the collar was made of a design in thistles and rue—the thistle because 'being full of prickles is not to be ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... doctor into his study, where he found him with the sword in his hand, which he had taken from over the mantel-piece, and was holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with great minuteness; the hilt being wrought in openwork, with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belonging to the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... points;' an heraldic term, expressive of the exact position of the various bearing on the shield—a scrupulous or superstitious niceness as to points ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from the floor to the cornice, their topmost panes were of very old stained glass, so that the brightest sunshine only filtered, as it were, through the deeply-encrusted hues of rose and amber and amethyst squares, painted with the arms of the Vancourts, and heraldic emblems of bygone days. Grateful and beautiful indeed was this mysteriously softened light to the ladies round the table,—and for a brief space they almost LOVED Maryllia. For HER face was flushed, and quite uncooled by powder—'like a dairymaid's—she ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... with no claimant clearly in line, and with the heraldic branch still sifting records, it is far more practical and sensible to recognize the need for a continued regency." He took a step back and propped himself ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... absurdity is the banner of some high and mighty prince, hanging over his stall in Windsor Chapel, when you think of the purpose for which men are supposed to assemble there! The Church of the Knights of St. John is paved over with sprawling heraldic devices of the dead gentlemen of the dead Order; as if, in the next world, they expected to take rank in conformity with their pedigrees, and would be marshalled into heaven according to the orders of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rope steeped in resin; wicks which burned doggedly, and which no wind extinguished; and from top to bottom the tower was covered by a complication of sea-standards, banderoles, banners, flags, pennons, colours which rose from stage to stage, from story to story, a medley of all hues, all shapes, all heraldic devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the light chamber, making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters about the blaze. That insolent light on the brink of the abyss showed like a defiance, and inspired shipwrecked men with a spirit of daring. But the Caskets ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... in a heraldic design and was whistling through his teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of professional courtesy,—for he was denoting or at the moment, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his pictures—a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft red leather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthday book, or ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the cross originated in the wars of the Cross, the crusaders in their eastward wanderings engrafting many variations upon the original Greek cross. Many of these heraldic crosses tell some story of religious feeling. In their varied and fanciful forms the simple faith and holy purpose out of which they sprang may ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... (San Giovanni), by far the finest building in Malta. The interior is very gorgeous, with gilded vaulted roof, finely carved pulpits, rare old crimson tapestries and monumental floor, resembling one enormous heraldic shield. Beneath, lie the mouldering remains of the defunct knights, the arms of each being represented on the slabs above them, in the most delicate and accurate designs, in some cases stones more rare and costly than marble ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... unofficially, certain foreign ambassadors and noblemen of repute in the Throne-room. A fine band was playing military music in the great open quadrangle in front of the palace, where pillars of rose-marble, straight as the stems of pine-trees, held up fabulous heraldic griffins, clasping between their paws the country's shield. Flags were flying,—fountains flashing,—gay costumes gleamed here and there,—and the atmosphere was full of brilliancy and gaiety, —yet the Marquis, on his way to the audience-chamber, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... employed for the storing of valuables. In the early middle ages the rich possessed them in profusion, used them as portmanteaux, and carried them about from castle to castle. These portable receptacles were often covered with leather and emblazoned with heraldic designs. As houses gradually became less sparsely furnished, chests and beds and other movables were allowed to remain stationary, and the chest lost its covered top, and took the shape in which we best know it—that of an oblong box standing upon raised ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... miniatures might well be claimed as the work of Van Eyck. The frontispiece consists of the portrait of the lady for whose devotions the book was prepared. She kneels before the Madonna, while her patron saint stands beside her. Beneath this celestial vision is the heraldic shield of the lady's family, thus throwing in a glimpse of visible worldly grandeur. The borders and arabesques of this manuscript are equal in execution to the miniatures, and the missal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... it seems that the conquered enemies belonged to the country of Is-ban-ki. There is also mention of a city of Ur, allied with Sirpula. The pillar was sculptured on both faces. On the reverse is a royal or divine figure, of large size, holding in one hand the heraldic design of Sirpula (an eagle with the head of a lion), while the other brandishes a war-club over a crowd of prisoners, who are tumbling one over another in a sort of net or cage. In illustration of this scene, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... in battle,—a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, and remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adornment of his tomb; and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now, especially in Cromwell's time, when knightly tombs were little respected, and when armor was in request. However, it is needless to dispute with the dead ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... wolf, the inference is obvious to the mythopoeic mind that men may become wolves, at least after death. And to the uncivilized thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer has shown, by evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate descendants of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by a beast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; and ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the authority for placing the national arms (which are by royal proclamations ordered to be borne quarterly in ratification of the respective unions, and to be borne under one imperial crown) in separate shields? They surely cannot with any heraldic propriety be so arranged. The absurdity was remarked in the reign of the Georges, for by the separation of the coats the arms of the German Dominions of George I. obtained the second place, viz. the dexter side, with France ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... great mass of hair, reddening under the blow, was disheveled in golden, undulating tangles. Something black was winding through it making streaks upon the silk of the cushion. It was the blood that was dribbling between the heraldic flowers of the embroidery,—blood flowing from the hidden forehead, being absorbed by the dryness of the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown, but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the present dowager's included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... as there advanced into the room a being like Lucy, but covered with streams and spatters of flowing sable tears, like a heraldic decoration, over face, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent, otherwise—if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the development of heraldic ornament—dragons would hardly figure as the supporters of the arms of the City of London, and as the symbol of many of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House of Tudor is included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... languages, is clearer, but still not exact, as a definition of the thing, signifying simply "out of books." A book-plate is the owner's or the library's distinctive mark of ownership, pasted upon the inside cover, whether it be a simple name-label, or an elaborately engraved heraldic or pictorial device. The earliest known book-plates date back to the fifteenth century, and are of German origin, though English plates are known as early as 1700. In France, specimens appear for the first ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... stretches his forepaws and yawns, darting forth a heraldic tongue with curly end) I don't know ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... woven in miniature imitation of feudal metal armor plates, heraldic devices, diamonds, birdseye, and ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith." The great seal was made in conformity with the alterations made in the titles and arms. In the new heraldic arrangement the fleur de lis was omitted, and the title of the King of France wisely expunged. The arms or ensigns armorial were ordered to be quarterly:—first and fourth England, second Scotland, third Ireland. In honour of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... brushed up on his forehead in a butcher-boy's curl. His teeth glittered with dentist's gold. He wore a tweed suit of bright pea-soup colour, a rainbow tie and yellow boots. Over the bulge of an egg-shaped stomach hung a massive gold watch-chain blossoming into a semi-heraldic charm, which might be a masonic emblem or a cycling club badge. His breastpocket appeared to hold a ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... bands of dark red velvet with ornamented designs cut from the green silk, and upon which are small pieces of white silk representing berries. Also, another handsome specimen of Spanish applied work of the seventeenth century is a linen curtain richly embellished with heraldic emblems couched with gold thread. Horse trappings and reposters, loaded with applique flowers cut from gold and silver cloth, were much in evidence among the Spanish nobility ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... their precedency, their rights of exemption and of preeminence, their voice potential in the councils of the state, and their claim to be foremost in its defence in the hour of its danger. Some ray of imagination there is, which, falling on the knightly shields and heraldic devices that symbolize their conceded superiority, at least dazzles the eyes and delights the fancy of the crowd, so as to blind them to the inhering vices and essential fallacies of the Order to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... thereof was utterly changed. The Pisani, for instance, carved lions and lionesses under all their pulpits; some of them are merely looking dignified, others devouring their prey, but they are conceived by a semi-heraldic decorator or an intelligent naturalist; nay, the spirit of St. Francis has entered into the sculptors, the feeling for animal piety and happiness, to the extent of representing the lionesses as suckling and tenderly licking their whelps. The men of that time cannot ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... beautifully chased ring and elegantly painted snuff-box lid; nor can the hour of the day be ascertained without discovering his engine-turned repeater, and hearing its fascinating music: then the fanciful chain, the precious stones in golden robes, and last of all, the family pride described in true heraldic taste and naivete. Of Peter ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... argent, a bend gules, with four escallops of the field,—the ancient coat of my house. They were painted in a shield about as big as my hat, on a smart chariot handsomely gilded, surmounted with a coronet, and supported by eight or nine Cupids, cornucopias, and flower-baskets, according to the queer heraldic fashion of those days. It must be he! I felt quite feint as I went up the stairs. I was going to present myself before my uncle in the character ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray |
