"Picturesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mosaic was the visitation of this sterling race. The lovely valleys and the picturesque hills of their ancestral sires I have often roamed since then, but never have I seen the Scottish character in its homely beauty as it appeared to me in their happy Canadian life among the cozy farmhouses of this fruitful countryside. The traditions ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Norah always regarded "burning-off" as an immense picnic, and used to beg her father to take her out. Night after night found them down on the flats, getting rid of old dead trees, which up to the present had refused obstinately to burn. It was picturesque work, and Norah loved it, though she would have been somewhat embarrassed had you hinted that the picturesqueness had anything to do ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... members of the different embassies, or missions of the various Governments to whose infant existence Premium is foster father. There were two striking figures in Oriental costume, who were shown to me as the Greek Deputies; not that you are to imagine that they always appear in this picturesque dress. It was only as a particular favour, and to please Miss Premium (there, Grey, my boy! there is a quarry!), that the illustrious envoys appeared habited this day in ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... writer; his ideas are entangled in his style, and he has no brilliant condensations, no jewels, no crystals. While he proceeds by streams and sheets of thought which have no definite or individual outline, Schopenhauer breaks the current of his speculation with islands, striking, original, and picturesque, which engrave themselves in the memory. It is the same difference as there is between Nicole and Pascal, between ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ritual merely led up to the medico-magical use of the mistletoe. Possibly, of course, the rite was an attenuated survival of something which had once been more important, but it is more likely that Pliny gives only a few picturesque details and passes by the rationale of the ritual. He does not tell us who the "God" of whom he speaks was, perhaps the sun-god or the god of vegetation. As to the "gift," it was probably in his mind the mistletoe, but it may quite well have meant the gift of growth in field and fold. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Babylonian, either mediately through the Canaanites (for the Babylonians had occupied Canaan before the sixteenth century B.C.), or immediately during the exile in the sixth century. The Babylonian account is more picturesque, the Hebrew more restrained and solemn. The early polytheistic features have been excluded by the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... enthusiastic time on board the steamer Vanderbilt. Wednesday was spent at 648 Broadway, Regimental Headquarters of the "Harris Light Cavalry;" and on that night we came by train to our present camp: or, rather, as near it as we could, for it is two miles from the nearest station. The spot is picturesque enough to be described. An old farm, surrounded by stone fences that look like ramparts, constitutes the camp. The Hudson and Harlem rivers are in full view, and the country around is full of beauty. On the first night we bivouacked upon the bare sod, with no covering for our bodies but the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... with the finest of his fish in a basket at his back, set off along the shores of the bay towards Kilfinnan Castle. The approach to it was wild and picturesque. A narrow estuary, having to be crossed by a bridge, almost isolated the castle from the mainland, for the ground on which the old fortress stood was merely joined to it by a rugged and nearly impassable ledge of rocks. The castle itself was of considerable size and strongly ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... From Coblentz, where a ball was given them, Napoleon and Josephine went to Mayence, each by a different route. The Emperor followed the highway on the edge of the Rhine; the Empress ascended the river in a yacht which the Prince of Nassau Weilburg had placed at her disposal. It was a picturesque voyage. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... them to the Messina Gate, a quaint archway through which they passed into the narrow streets of one of the oldest towns in Sicily. Doorways and windows of Saracen or Norman construction faced them on every side, and every inch of the ancient buildings was picturesque and charming. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... doubtless immediately suspected that Frank might have some new, daring scheme in view, looking to showing his friend from the East the wonders of this grand country, where the distances were so great, the deserts so furiously hot, the mountains so lofty, and the prairies so picturesque. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... It was a picturesque-looking building and there were a number of Germans in and about it, many of them evidently sight-seers like our friends. It was furnished in truly German style, with quaint old-fashioned mantels, holding old pieces of bric-a-brac, and quaint dishes ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... Mohammedan territory NE. of Afghanistan, a picturesque hill country, rich in minerals; it is 200 m. from E. to W. and 150 from N. to S.; it has been often visited by travellers, from Marco Polo onwards; the inhabitants, called Badakhshans, are of the Aryan ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of gay woods crowning a rising ground, or a knot of the everlasting pines looking sedately and steadfastly upon the fleeting glories of the world around them; these were mingled and interchanged, and succeeded each other in ever- varying fresh combinations. With its high picturesque beauty, the whole scene had a look of thrift, and plenty, and promise, which made it eminently cheerful. So Mr. Ringgan and his little granddaughter both felt it to be. For some distance, the grounds on ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... he published a translation of the Eunuch of Terence of small worth, and not long after was favoured with the patronage of Fouquet, the superintendant of finance. To him La Fontaine presented his Adonis, a narrative poem, graceful, picturesque, harmonious, expressing a delicate feeling for external nature rarely to be found in poetry of the time, and reviving some of the bright Renaissance sense of antiquity. The genius of France is united in La Fontaine's writings with the genius of Greece. But the verses written by command ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the living rooms against the glare of the sun in summer, and shelters them from snow and rain in winter. These wooden verandahs are in a greater or lesser state of repair and smartness, and under the roof of every verandah hang rows of the same quaintly-decorated and picturesque ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Captain the Honourable Geoffrey Barrington and Miss Asako Fujinami was an outstanding event in the season of 1913. It was bizarre, it was picturesque, it was charming, it was socially and politically important, it was everything that could appeal to the taste of London society, which, as the season advances, is apt to become jaded by the monotonous process of Hymen in High ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the range, now brilliant in the morning light, has filled his heart with the first real dread it has yet known. In three places, not more than four or five miles apart, down along the sunlit side of this wild and picturesque mountain-chain, signal-smokes have been puffing straight up skyward, the nearest only a couple of miles from this lone picket post, but all on the same side of ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... In this condensed, picturesque fashion Mr. Zangwill expresses sententiously a number of mistaken ideas. He thinks that the game of war is like the game of chess, and that the future world conqueror will be a great chess player, using men as pawns and the ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Nobody laughed, nobody even chuckled, and yet it was a jolly letter that they read first, full of spirit and life and fun. High-hearted adventure rollicked through it, and the humor that makes light of hardship, and the latest slang of the front adorned its pages with grotesquely picturesque phrases. The Cameron boys were obviously getting a good time out of the war. Bob had got something else, too. The letter had been delayed in transmission and near the end was a sentence, "Brought down my first Hun to-day—great fight! I'll tell you about it ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... the ruins of Pollanarrua, the most picturesque in Ceylon, attest the care which he lavished on his capital. He surrounded it with ramparts, raised a fortress within them, and built a palace for his own residence, containing four thousand apartments. He founded schools and libraries; built halls for music and dancing; formed ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... size, enlarged his landscape, and handled it with extreme care. He was very far from grasping it as a whole, but his method was synthetical; his river valleys, with masses of tree and bush and romantic rocks, fantastic and picturesque, with fortresses on the ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... located. Rossetti saw her at the theater, ascertained her name and called on her the next day and asked for sittings. Her name was Miss Burden. She was very much like Miss Siddal, only her face was pale and her hair wavy and black. She was statuesque, picturesque, of good family, and had a wondrous poise. Rossetti straightway sent for William Morris to come and admire her. William Morris came, and married her in what Rossetti resentfully called "an unbecoming and insufficiently short space ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... must have waited till the sun was up. Two or three large fires were kindled with the ruins, so that the scene of the disaster was entirely visible. And the light shining in the midst of the thick darkness, near the river, with the crowd of people standing around, was not very romantic, perhaps not picturesque— but it was quite novel; and the novelty of the scene enabled us to bear with greater patience the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... century saw a passion develop for Scotch poetry, which speedily became the fashion. Henry the Minstrel, or Blind Harry, wrote his "Wallace," which is full of picturesque ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... Virginia so many hogshead of tobacco, and buying with the proceeds a certain amount of English manufactures. The story of our early colonization had a certain moral interest, to be sure, but was altogether inferior in picturesque fascination to that of Mexico or Peru. The lives of our worthies, like that of our nation, are bare of those foregone and far-reaching associations with names, the divining-rods of fancy, which the soldiers and civilians of the Old World get for nothing by the mere accident of birth. Their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... made to pass from one to another of those personages of whom he thought it most desirable for the young reader to have vivid and familiar ideas, and whose lives and actions would best enable him to give picturesque sketches of the times. On its sturdy oaken legs it trudges diligently from one scene to another, and seems always to thrust itself in the way, with most benign complacency, whenever an historical personage happens to be looking ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... face, upturned to the canopy of the bed, was one upon which the years of his age had found slight foothold. It had the smooth pallor of a man whose chief activities are indoors: it was wary, nervous, and faintly sinister, with strong, dark eyebrows standing in picturesque contrast to the white hair. The figure he was accustomed to present was that of a man established in life ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the Forum. Notwithstanding his fiery, rapid style, he is regular in his connection of thought,— logical in his sequence of ideas, thereby he is always alluring and attractive, while crisp, clear and comprehensible, he dazzles and delights with his picturesque images and glittering beauties. It is otherwise with the author of the Annals, whose style is occasionally enveloped in such Cimmerian obscurities from deficiencies of expression as to beset his work with ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... speaking of Hawthorne in a tone of veneration; but later in life she preferred Emerson, even to Whittier. There was formerly a portrait of Goethe in her parlor with Emerson's lines about him underneath it, copied in her own picturesque hand-writing. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... winding in the most romantic manner imaginable among the hills, and preserving, a smooth and unruffled surface for a distance of three or four miles that we traced it to the southwest above the fall. What added extremely to the beauty of this picturesque river, which Captain Lyon and myself named after our friend Mr. BARROW, Secretary to the Admiralty, was the richness of the vegetation on its banks, the enlivening brilliancy of a cloudless sky, and ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... masses have accepted the fact that, in certain of the virtues on which Englishmen have most peculiarly prided themselves in the past, the Japanese are their superiors, has been curiously un-British. There should be no greater difficulty in believing that another revolution, much more gradual and less picturesque, and by so much the more easily credible, has taken place in the American character. The evidence in favour of the one is, rightly viewed, no less strong than that in favour of the other. It would have been impossible for the Japanese to have carried on the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the eastward of the ancient town of Arbroath the shore abruptly changes its character, from a flat beach to a range of, perhaps, the wildest and most picturesque cliffs on the east coast of Scotland. Inland the country is rather flat, but elevated several hundred feet above the level of the sea, towards which it slopes gently until it reaches the shore, where it terminates in abrupt, perpendicular precipices, varying from a hundred ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... heard tales of them; but he invested them with a delicate and graceful fancy that has held the popular imagination ever since. Thanks to him, the modern English conception of the fairies is different from the conceptions prevalent in other countries, and infinitely more picturesque and pleasant. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... rescued Salemina from the voluble thanks of an old woman to whom she had thoughtlessly given a three-penny bit. This mother of a 'long wake family' was wishing that Salemina might live to 'ate the hin' that scratched over her grave, and invoking many other uncommon and picturesque blessings, but we were obliged to ask her to desist and let us attend to our ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of themselves, or be thrice refined in the crucible by the careful alchemist before they could appear in the drawing-room. Nature has an art of its own, and the natural emotions in their natural and passionate expression have that kind of picturesque beauty which Marcus Aurelius, tired, perhaps, of the severe orthodoxies of Greek and Roman art, referred to when he spoke of the foam on the jaws of the wild boar and the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... cheering. She kept up half a dozen establishments, and had a hundred thousand acres of game preserves in Scotland. She made a speciality of collecting jewels which had belonged to the romantic and picturesque queens of history. She appeared at the dance in a breastplate of diamonds covering the entire front of her bodice, so that she was literally clothed in light; and with her was her English friend, Mrs. Percy, who had accompanied her in ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... some hours previous, but had contented themselves with halting one and a half miles from the stockades. The whole flotilla—some eighty boats, with their large white sails and decorated with the usual amount of various-coloured flags, with the Hyson in the middle—presented a very picturesque sight, and must have made the garrison of Quinsan feel uncomfortable, as they could see the smallest move from the high hill inside the city, and knew, of course, more than we did of the importance of the stockades ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... includes the North-east view, a picturesque if not important point. The reader will remember, if he has not enjoyed, the splendid terrace on the north; this is now continued on the eastern side. The fine tower at the eastern end of the north terrace, (at the angle,) is Brunswick Tower, with a projecting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... an emotion stronger than himself, his acquired Englishisms went by the board. He was all Pole in the picturesque ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... India to Paris. And then, how could these charming exquisites, with their small hats, their scanty frock-coats, and their huge cravats, compare with the Indian prince, whose graceful and manly beauty was still heightened by the splendor of a costume, at once so rich and so picturesque? ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Nick, large and picturesque, sat tailor-fashion on his blankets, facing the glowing stove with the unblinking, thoughtful stare of a large dog. Ralph was less luxurious. He was propped upon his upturned bucket, near enough to the fire to dispense the coffee ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... slide over the ground. In the feminine game of ball, which is something like "shinny," the ball is driven with curved sticks between two goals. It is played with from two or three to a hundred on a side, and a game between two bands or villages is a picturesque event. ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... Junction the roads are excellent, and everything is satisfactory; but an hour's ride east of that city I am shocked at the gross misconduct of a vigorous and vociferous young mule who is confined alone in a pasture, presumably to be weaned. He evidently mistakes the picturesque combination of man and machine for his mother, as, on seeing us approach, he assumes a thirsty, anxious expression, raises his unmusical, undignified voice, and endeavors to jump the fence. He follows along the whole ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of steel bit their way up through the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the great white North. It is still Iskwatam—the "door" which opens to the lower reaches of the Athabasca, the Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is somewhat difficult to find on the map, yet it ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... his book contain his denunciations of idolatry; the other three, his symbolical vision of the overthrow of the people of Israel, and a promise of their restoration. The style is remarkable for clearness and strength, and for its picturesque use of images drawn from the rural and pastoral life which the prophet had led ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... several occasions when she was a little child. He was usually tramping across country with his sturdy father, Dick Neeland of Neeland's Mills—an odd, picturesque pair with their setter dogs and burnished guns, and old Dick's face as red as a wrinkled winter apple, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... back! the upward slanting floor,— The masters' thrones that flank the central door,— The long, outstretching alleys that divide The rows of desks that stand on either side,— The staring boys, a face to every desk, Bright, dull, pale, blooming, common, picturesque. Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares; Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule, His most of all whose kingdom is a school. Supreme he sits; before the awful frown That bends his brows the boldest eye goes down; Not ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... my own course, as far as the bridge which spans the Weare near a most picturesque mill, and then I stopped a kindly- looking workman and asked him whether he thought I could find a fly or cab anywhere near that would take me into the town. He answered, briefly but consistently with his looks, "Ah doot," and as he owned that it was ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... marched up-stairs into the galleries. The sofas were to be their beds. With their white cross-belts and bright breastplates, they made a very picturesque body of spectators for whatever happened in the Hall, and never failed to applaud in the right or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... perfect order was maintained. Several minstrels, mummers, and merry-makers, in various fantastic habits, swelled the throng, enlivening it with their strains or feats; and amongst other privileged characters admitted was a Tom o' Bedlam, a half-crazed licensed beggar, in a singular and picturesque garb, with a plate of tin engraved with his name attached to his left arm, and a great ox's horn, which he was continually blowing, suspended by a leathern baldric ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to her husband. The pretty daughter had been looking at the picturesque "inn" between the heads of this lady and ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... to his own gifts and graces) about its excellence as such. There is character—not much, but enough to make it more than a mere story of adventure—and adventure enough for anything; there is by no means ineffectual speech—even dialogue—of a kind: and there is some effective and picturesque description. The same faculties reappear in such mere fragments as that of Waldhere and the "Finnsburgh" fight: but they are shown much more fully in the Saints' Lives—best of all in the Andreas, no doubt, but remarkably also (especially considering the slender ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... founded on fact and will be recognized by the dear but fast dwindling fraternity of good old-timers. The mother of the boy still lives her steadfast beautiful creed on the Upper Missouri; and the old frontiersman still lives on the Saskatchewan, one of the most picturesque and heroic figures in the West to-day. I may say that both missionaries support their schools as incidentally revealed here, without Government aid through their own efforts. Also, it was the stalwart man from ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and wide the gross, the ghastly, the extravagant stories, the oddities of speech, the fantastic jests which emerged from the clash of diverse and oddly-assorted types. The jarring contrasts, the incongruities and surprises daily furnished by the picturesque river life unquestionably stimulated and fertilized the latent germs of humour in the young cub-pilot, Sam Clemens. Through Mark Twain's greatest works flows the stately Mississippi, magically imparting to them some indefinable ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... a deeper understanding of his attitude than she had been able to guess until now. Spontaneously he had leaned toward Kid Rickard because the Kid was a "killer" and Elmer was a boy; in other words, because young Page's imagination made of Rickard a truly picturesque figure. Since Rickard admired Jim Galloway as he had never known how to admire aught else that breathed and walked, Elmer's eyes had from the first rested approvingly upon the massive figure of Casa Blanca's owner. That both Galloway and Rickard were fighting against ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... connection is artistic and theological at once; they have unity. The windows of Chartres have no sequence, and their charm is in variety, in individuality, and sometimes even in downright hostility to each other, reflecting the picturesque society that gave them. They have, too, the charm that the world has made no attempt to popularize them for its modern uses, so that, except for the useful little guide- book of the Abbe Clerval, one can see no clue ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... and swore, while he applied the whip to his horse's flanks, and pursued the route indicated by May until they came to the very verge of the city limits, where grand old oaks still waved their broad limbs in primeval vigor over sloping hills and picturesque declivities. Near a rustic bridge, which spanned a frozen stream, stood a few scattered huts, or cottages, towards the poorest of which she directed her footsteps. Standing on one of the broken flags, which formed a rude sort of pathway to the door, she waited until the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... themselves be led away by high-wrought and fallacious descriptions of things which do not exist." The maxim is a valuable one, and we hope that the rebuke will save the reading public from a heap of those "picturesque" labours, which really much more resemble the heaviest brush of the scene-painter, than the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... discouraged some people, but Nature had equipped Monk with a tough skin, which hints never pierced. He dropped into a chair, crossed his legs, and coughed. Danvers and Waterford leaned in picturesque attitudes against the door and mantelpiece. There was a silence for a minute, during which Reece continued ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... vertical of a single figure pierces the unlimited sky, and the only consideration to the artist is that the mass looks well from any point of view. The group by Carpeaux is a sample of plastic art unusually picturesque, and would easily fit a frame, because in it the vertical figure is supported by horizontals, both of lines and in the idea of lateral movement. It is, therefore, solid and complete and sets forth in its structure the thought of Alexander the Great ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... for a little, and when he turned back to Bob a bright scarlet reefer had been pulled on over his blouse, and a wide sailor hat with a scarlet ribbon crowned his black curls. The result was engagingly picturesque. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... me, O Rakshasa woman! Truly do I make this engagement with thee that I will stay with thee, O thou of slender waist, until thou obtainest a son.' Then Hidimva, saying, 'So be it,' took Bhima upon her body and sped through the skies. On mountain peaks of picturesque scenery and regions sacred to the gods, abounding with dappled herds and echoing with the melodies of feathered tribes, herself assuming the handsomest form decked with every ornament and pouring forth at times mellifluous strains, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... is picturesque, but neither large nor good. It has before it a high Greek colonnade, which seems to be almost bigger than the house itself. Had such been built in a city— and many such a portico does stand in cities through the States—it would be neither ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... as any man in the country; and it culminated in a description of the fall of Sumter. This was an elaborate picture in words of a perfectly neutral tint. There was not a single one which was peculiarly picturesque or vivid; no electric phrase that sent the whole striking scene shuddering home to every hearer; no sudden light of burning epithet, no sad elegiac music. The passage was purely academic. Each word was choice; each detail ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... fight was not a Parliamentary success and Waller was forced to retire before the King's men under Lord Wilmot. The Down was in consequence renamed "Runaway" by the jubilant Cavaliers. Below the face of the hill to the south-west is the picturesque village of Rowde, famous for its quaint old inn. If the Roundway route is chosen a descent should be made to Bishop's Cannings lying snugly under the steep side of Tan Hill. Here is a magnificent church of much interest and beauty. The cruciform ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... were very favourable: "It is a pretty little castle in the old Scottish style. There is a picturesque tower and garden in front, with a high wooded hill; at the back there is wood down to the Dee; and ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... away to die. And so I might go on and on. At every step there is the memorial of some great man's life, or some noted man's death. And with all that, there are also the most exquisite bits of material antiquity. Old picturesque houses; old crypts of former churches, over which stands now a modern representative of the name; old monuments many; old doorways, and courts, and corners, and gateways. Come over to London, and I will ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... watchtower, against which the "Gull's Nest" leaned. Perched on this remarkable spot, and nestling close to the mouldering but still sturdy walls, the very stones of which disputed with the blast, the hut formed no inappropriate dwelling for withered age, and, if we may be allowed the term, picturesque deformity. Robin could run up and down every cliff in the neighbourhood like a monkey—could lie on the waters, and sport amid the breakers, with the activity of a cub-seal—dive like an otter; and, as nature generally makes up ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... "I am very glad that I did not do as I was advised to do and go on to the Cheltenham. I do not know anything about that hotel, but I am sure it is not so charming as this delightful little inn with its picturesque surroundings." ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... Hannibal defeated Flaminius, the grape vines clung to each other with the friendly grasp of their green tendril fingers; while, by the wayside, lovely half-naked children were watching a herd of coal-black swine under the blossoms of fragrant laurel. Could we rightly describe this picturesque scene, our ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... CALVE being indisposed, Mlle. SIGRID ARNOLDSON appears as heroine. A most captivating Carmen, but so deftly does she dissemble her wickedness that the audience do not realise how heartless is this artful little cigarette-maker. Mons. ALVAREZ a fine Don Jose. The premieres danseuses lively and picturesque in Act II., with dresses long and dance short; but in Last Act, when reverse of this is the case, a pretty general feeling that skirts might have been longer, and dance shorter. Chorus and Orchestra all that could be desired; absence of the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... enters on the glacial state, and its conditions undergo a great revolution, the consequences of which are so momentous that we shall have to trace them in some detail. Fortunately, the considerations which are necessary are not recondite, and all the facts are of an extremely picturesque nature. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... anybody else can be said in any definite sense to understand, and which accordingly offer peculiar temptations to enucleating sagacity. These last are naturally deemed the most valuable by intelligent antiquaries, and to this class the stone now in my possession fortunately belongs. Such give a picturesque variety to ancient events, because susceptible oftentimes of as many interpretations as there are individual archaeologists; and since facts are only the pulp in which the Idea or event-seed is softly imbedded till it ripen, it is of little consequence what colour or flavour we attribute ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... done?" she echoed—"No,—not quite! I love talking—and it's a new and amusing sensation for me to talk to a man in his shirt-sleeves on a hill in California by the light of the moon! So wild and picturesque you know! All the men I've ever met have been dressed to death! Have ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... upon the wing—the artificial stream, the brook taught to wind in natural meanderings, or expand into the glassy lake, with the yellow leaf sleeping upon its bright waters, and occasionally a rustic temple or sylvan statue grown green and dark with age, give an air of sanctity and picturesque beauty to English scenery that is unknown in the United States. The very labourer with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground-plot before the door, the little flower-bed, the woodbine trimmed against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the windows, and the peasant seen trudging ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... dwelt at picturesque length upon her shining place upon the Viennese stage; she recounted her triumphs, she prophesied the joy of the playgoers at her return to them. Darkly she expatiated upon the villainy of the Turkish Captain, who had lured her to such incarceration. Gleefully she displayed the diamonds ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... where three ways met. Pepita wanted to ascend the hill, by a path she knew, to stable and supper. Amy wished to follow a descending road, which she did not know, into the depths of the forest. Neither inclined toward the safe middle course, straight onward through the village, now picturesque in the coloring ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... qualities. Naturally kind-hearted, yet full of self and its poor importance, he had an admiration of certain easy and showy virtues. He was himself not incapable of an unthinking generosity; felt pity for picturesque suffering; was tempted to kindness by the prospect of a responsive devotion. Unable to bear the sight of suffering, he was yet careless of causing it where he would not see it; incapable of thwarting himself, he was full of weak indignation at ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... as a nursery-hospital for the royal little ones. It was a square three-storied building of red brick, much beaten and stained by the weather, with an ivied side, up which the ivy grew stoutly, topping the roof in triumphant lumps. The house could hardly be termed picturesque. Its aspect had struck many eyes as being very much that of a red-coat sentinel grenadier, battered with service, and standing firmly enough, though not at ease. Surrounding it was a high wall, built partly of flint and partly of brick, and ringed all over with grey lichen and brown spots of bearded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... us, and offer welcome to France. He said, he desired to make our acquaintance because we came from England, where he had found 'rest for twenty years, and received much kindness.' He was a rich man, had a pretty little church, a picturesque house in a sort of park, which he had stocked with pigs instead of sheep; and every day that was not one of fasting or abstinence, he had pork for dinner. He took a great fancy to us, and wanted us to give up our cottage, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... controlled by the Clark estates is managed from the offices of the Singer Building in New York, which when it was erected in 1909 was the tallest office building in the world. But a large part of the interests of the estates is centered in the picturesque old building, originally built for a bank, which stands near the entrance of the Cooper Grounds in Cooperstown. The Cooper Grounds themselves were rescued from a condition of desolation in which they had lain for many years after the death of Fenimore ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Town Clerk now and then grew faint, and their faces faded away, and little 'fyttes' and fragments of those light and pleasant dreams, like fairy tales, which visit such stolen naps, superseded with their picturesque and musical illusions the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... picturesque phrases, such as "the heavens rent" (i. 10) and "devour houses" (xii. 40). There are little redundancies in which the author repeats his thoughts with a fresh shade of meaning, as "at even, when the sun did set" (i. 32); "he looked steadfastly, and ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... sat upon a broken ridge of the Hill, the stillness of the scene inspired me with melancholy ideas not altogether unpleasing. The Castle which stood full in my sight, formed an object equally awful and picturesque. Its ponderous Walls tinged by the moon with solemn brightness, its old and partly-ruined Towers lifting themselves into the clouds and seeming to frown on the plains around them, its lofty battlements oergrown with ivy, and folding Gates ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... built many years. It was irregular in its form, and certainly belonged to no particular order of architecture. There was a large dining-room, and doors that opened upon the green, and plenty of small rooms; in short, it was just such a house as Frances fancied; it was picturesque, and looked, she said, "as if it had grown and shot out here and there like the old ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... long and tiresome journey Merrit found something inexpressibly charming in the quiet, picturesque place, and in the silent young girl who sat so demurely in the shadow. He tactfully ignored her timidity by talking cheerful nonsense about impersonal things, treating her as a bashful child who wanted to ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... have already referred to the use of flame projectors by the enemy, and a picturesque account of their development and use in the later stages of the campaign is found in an extract from the Hamburger Nachrichten of ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... there vas really not much more than an armistice, and great armies lay in the Netherlands, as after a battle, sleeping face to face with arms in their hands. The politics of Christendom were at issue in the open, elegant, and picturesque village which was the social capital of the United Provinces. The gentry from Spain, Italy, the south of Europe, Catholic Germany, had clustered about Spinola at Brussels, to learn the art of war in his constant ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... smoke. One day she made up her mind to go and see for herself. She had a fancy not to ask anyone about it. The place was a little item of mystery; and as such to be treasured and exploited, and in due course explored. The mill itself was picturesque, and the detail at closer acquaintance sustained the far-off impression. The roadway forked on the near side of the mill, reuniting again the further side, so that the place made a sort of island—mill, out-offices and garden. As the mill was on the very top of the ridge the garden ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... pale-green waters, surrounded by low-lying hills, storms have scarcely any effect, and the birds which float over it and the fishing-boats which skim across its surface are reflected as in a mirror. At Passignano and Torricella picturesque villages, chiefly occupied by fishermen, jut out into the water, but otherwise the reedy shore is perfectly desolate on this side, though beyond the lake convents and villages crown the hills which rise between ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... written in support of the Mission to Fishermen. He produced but one novel, "Grace Balmaign's Sweetheart"; but his latest work, "Joints in our Social Armour," returned once more to that happier vein of picturesque description which sat most ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... How picturesque! What is a chantry? And why do you want to see it unveiled? Are you after copy—doing something in the Huysmans manner? ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... difficult to get up sympathy for an animal so little able to take care of himself, or to suppose that panthers could have furnished a particularly high-spiced ingredient to the enjoyments of the Roman arena. An English bull-dog, if less picturesque, would have been far more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... It is picturesque to see a long string of carts enter a deposit to the sound of pistol cracks from long whips, and to watch the cartmen ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... courtyard of the Temple. The moon shone down above from among the fronds of tall coco-palms, on a dense crowd of native worshipers—men and a few women—the men for the most part clad in little more than a loin-cloth, the women picturesque in their colored saris and jewelled ear and nose rings. The images of Siva and two other gods were carried in procession round and round the temple—three or four times; nautch girls danced before the images, musicians, blowing horns and huge shells, or piping on flageolets ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... benefit of attending the school of worthy Jeremiah Sinclair, kept over the marketplace in that far-famed maritime town. I still love the recollection of the old place, with its steep streets, its broad quays, and its bridge of many arches; to my mind a more picturesque bridge does not exist in all the world, nor, when the tide is in, a prettier river. On the bosom of that river I gained my first practical experience of affairs nautical, and many a trip I made down ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Puye, along whose base the numerous cave-dwellings are burrowed out of a very friable and almost snow-white tufa, is situated about ten miles west of the Rio Grande, and not two miles south of the picturesque canon of Santa Clara. The cliff is over one half mile long, and it dominates the mesa on which it stands. For many miles there are groves of timber surrounding the foot of the high and rugged slope that leads up to the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... from a scene so fair as that of the charming homes of Richmond, with their well-kept lawns amid their settings of vines, flowers and shrubs, doubly picturesque, lying broad and warm amid their encircling hills. It was a happy fortune for the city that White Water river, with its sinuous course crowned with sycamore trees, passes it. If we are a part of all we have ever ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... striking recollections of The Castle of Otranto, brought to mind by "the deep shade in which some of his antique portraits were placed and the lone sort of look of the unusually shaped apartments in which they were hung."[19] We know how in idle moments Walpole loved to brood on the picturesque past, and we can imagine his falling asleep, after the arrival of a piece of armour for his collection, with his head full of plans for the adornment of his cherished castle. His story is but an expansion of this dilettante's ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... surmounted by a coronet of scarlet plumes—such was the head that I saw rising above the green frondage of the cotton-woods! The body was yet hidden behind the leaves; but the girl just then stepped from out the bushes, and her whole form was exhibited to my view—equally striking and picturesque. I need not say that it was of perfect shape—bust, body, and limbs all symmetrical. A face like that described, could not belong to an ungainly form. When nature designs beauty, it is rare that she does her work by halves. Unlike the artists of the anatomic school, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as one having authority, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... if not the glittering vision Kitty had anticipated, Ydo was a sufficiently vivid and picturesque figure. Her short corduroy skirt had faded with wear and washing to a pale fawn-tint with a velvety bloom upon it; her brown boots were high and laced, her blue blouse had faded like her skirt to a soft and lovely hue. A red sash confined her waist, a ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... be still in the land of the living) I hope you will be able to come and see our little estate, which is to be called by the descriptive name of "Old Orchard." I have got a good architect to make the working drawings and he has designed a very picturesque ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... overlooking the picturesque valley of the St. Charles, was the residence proper of the Bourgeois Philibert, but the shadow that in time falls over every hearth had fallen upon his when the last of his children, his beloved son Pierre, left home to pursue his military ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Penzance Library by the late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, who has written, under date December 24, 1867, the following note: 'This is a favourite book of mine. I like to read of London as it was, with the bright Thames crowded with fish, and its picturesque architecture. . . . I should not have discarded this volume for any library, had I not this day picked up a beautiful large paper copy of it, the only one in that condition I ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... a head-dress peculiar to the Indian women among the Crees. It was preferred by the little wearer to all other styles of bonnet, on account of the ease with which it could be thrown off and on. She also wore ornamented leggings and moccasins. Altogether, with her graceful figure, flaxen curls, and picturesque costume, she presented a strong contrast to the fat, dark, hairy little creatures who followed her by brook and bush and precipice the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the present day can keep a seat on a high horse when he speaks of that most detestable of cities. How may it fitly be described? May we not say that it has all the filth of the East, without any of that picturesque beauty with which the East abounds; and that it has also the eternal, grasping, solemn love of lucre which pervades our western marts, but wholly unredeemed by the society, the science, and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... log-houses which bordered this enclosure there came a group of people to welcome us,—officers and soldiers, women neatly dressed and with bright intelligent faces, women of rougher mould attired in calico or deerskin, hardy-looking men in rude hunter's garb, picturesque French voyageurs wiry of limb and dark of skin, an Indian or two, silent, grave, emotionless, a single negro, and trailing behind them a number of dirty, delighted children, and dogs of every breed and degree. It was a motley gathering, and appeared almost like a multitude ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... either of us had been on the West Coast. When not in the conference sessions, we had spent our time wandering the length of Telegraph Avenue, which (like Harvard Square in Cambridge) was lined with picturesque street vendors and interesting little shops. On that street we discovered Uncle Gaylord's Berkeley store. The ice cream there was very good. During that August visit JONL went absolutely bananas (so to speak) over one ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... and goes on round the base of the promontory, with the lofty declivities of the mountain on one hand, and a mass of dense forests on the other, lying between the road and the shore. As he passes on, the road, picturesque and romantic from the beginning becomes gradually wild, solitary, and desolate. It leads him sometimes through tangled thickets, sometimes under shelving rocks, and sometimes it brings him out unexpectedly to the shore of the sea, where he sees the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... examined at Belem Castle. The salutes of ships of war are, in like manner, answered by its guns. Proceeding onward, we pass the Convent of St. Geronymo, a splendid pile of Moorish architecture, "the picturesque appearance of the scene being heightened by groups of boats peculiar in their construction to the Tagus." From Belem we trace a range of buildings, connecting it with Alcantara and Buenos Ayres, and finally with the ancient city of Lisbon. Alcantara ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... the valleys are not so narrow nor the sides so steep as the valleys of Sikkim, nor are the forests anything like so dense. The scenery is, indeed, much more Swiss in appearance with open pine forests, picturesque hamlets, grassy pasture-lands, flowery meadows, and clear, rushing rivers; and with the rocky crests or snow-capped summits of the engirdling mountains ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... luxuriant vegetation. In the course of an hour we arrived at Ribeira Grande, and were surprised at the sight of a large ruined fort and cathedral. This little town, before its harbour was filled up, was the principal place in the island: it now presents a melancholy, but very picturesque appearance. Having procured a black Padre for a guide, and a Spaniard who had served in the Peninsular war as an interpreter, we visited a collection of buildings, of which an ancient church formed the principal ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... came forward from his sweeping to look on this degradation of the desperados, mocking them, returning them curse for curse, voluble in picturesque combinations of damning sentences as if he had practiced excommunication longer than the oldest pope who ever lived. In the excess of his scorn for their fallen might he smeared his filthy broom across their faces, paying back insult for insult, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... peculiarity; they are fond of pursuing their occupations in the open air. The old men are often seen sitting round tables placed before their doors sipping tea, while the children play before them, and the young people are at their work. These groups have a very picturesque effect, and convey a gratifying idea of the happiness of the people. On seeing the worthy citizens of Hamburg assembled round their doors I could not help thinking of a beautiful remark of Montesquieu. When he went to Florence with a letter of recommendation to the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... also, of course, the advantage of a picturesque personality and of a high repute acquired in arms. The populace called him "Old Hickory"—a nickname originally invented by the soldiers who followed him in the frontier wars of Tennessee. They loved ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for information to the patriotic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... grains of coffee being inclosed in one berry. These were dried and cleaned of the husk by hand or by machinery. A short, steep ascent from this place carried us to the summit, from which is beheld one of the most picturesque views on earth. The Organ Mountains to the west and north, the ocean to the east, the city of Rio with its red-tiled houses at our feet, and the entire harbor like a map spread out, with innumerable bright valleys, make up a landscape ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the Middle Ages, has literary skill, a vivid though prolix style, a keen eye for the picturesque, bold and independent judgment, wonderful breadth and range, and an insatiable curiosity. He was a man of the world, a courtier and a scholar; he took immense pains to collect his facts from documents and eye-witnesses, and had great advantages in this respect ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... centuries old. It was granted to the Welsh congregation by the Bishop of London in 1890. Not far from this, up another narrow opening, is an old brick house with quaint red-tiled roof. This is Claremont House. It is picturesque, but has no authentic history. Opening out of St. Mary's Terrace on the east side, Howley and Fulham Places and Porteus Road recall the ownership of the Bishops ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... either, for weeks were spent in Rio, the Pampas, Chili and Japan, and sufficient stoppages made at many other places. The slow passage through the stormy Straits makes us acquainted with the savages of the Land of Fire and their picturesque country, decidedly more damp than fiery. Japan was reached in the season of ice and snow, and the author, wrapped in furs and ulsters, was puzzled by the native contempt of the thermometer as shown in their wooden-walled houses ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... came up through the darkness of the drive to her home, she was already regretting very deeply that she had not been content to talk to Mr. Brumley in Kensington Gardens instead of accepting his picturesque suggestion of Hampton Court. There was an unpleasant waif-like feeling about this return. She was reminded of pictures published in the interests of Doctor Barnardo's philanthropies,—Dr. Barnardo her favourite hero in real life,—in which wistful little outcasts creep longingly towards ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... their parlour windows; while they were eagerly conversing together, Ellen sat alone at the other window, looking out upon the curious Old Town. There was all the fascination of novelty and beauty about that singular picturesque mass of buildings, in its sober colouring, growing more sober as the twilight fell; and just before outlines were lost in the dusk, lights began feebly to twinkle here and there, and grew brighter and more as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... think round the general problem of politics at all. It has taken the new empire for granted as a child takes its home for granted, and its state of mind to-day must be rather like that of an intelligent boy who suddenly discovers that his father's picturesque and wonderful speculations have led to his arrest and brought the brokers into the house, and that there is nothing for it but to turn to and take control of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells |
