"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sinuous river, and broad, tranquil waters, stately ship and tiny boat, gentle hill and shady valley, bold headland and rich, fruitful fields, frowning battlement and cheerful villa, glittering dome and rural spire, flowery garden and sombre forest,—group them all into the choicest picture of ideal beauty your fancy can create; arch it over with a cloudless sky, light it up with a radiant sun, and lest the sheen should be too dazzling, hang a veil of lighted haze over all, to soften the lines ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... crosswise, with a fine spire, and might invite a traveller to survey it; but I, perhaps, wanted vigour, and thought I ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... How can the modern American Ritualistic Spire be here! The well-known tapering brown Spire, like a closed umbrella on end? How can that be here? There is no rusty rim of a shocking bad hat between the eye and that Spire in the real prospect. What is the rusty rim that now intervenes, and confuses the vision of at least one ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... elevated, but small platform above the dining place, looking down upon the great chestnut tree, and indeed upon all our possessions. Thus endeavouring to realize the scenes so often seen in England, where the pretty simple church, with its graceful spire, is seen on an elevated place, while the humble cottages, and rose-covered houses ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the world. Day and night, week in week out, the human writing-machines, and those other machines which are almost human (and better than human in some points) hurry through their allotted tasks, and ignore the saintly shadow cast upon them by the spire of St. Dunstan. This is indeed the centre of the world: the hub from whence spring the spokes of the vast wheel of life. For to this point all things over the world converge by a vast web of wire, railroad, coach road, and steamer track. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... top storey octagonal. The principal modern restorations are the upper part of the north-west tower, which copies the Early English work of that on the south-west; and the fine central tower and spire, which had been erected at different periods in the 14th century, but collapsed, doing little damage to the fabric, in 1861. Under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott and others they were reconstructed with scrupulous care in preserving the original plan. The Lady chapel at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the faces were new and strange; New figures sat in the oaken stalls, New voices chaunted in the choir, Yet the place was the same place, The same dusky walls Of cold, gray stone, The same cloisters and belfry and spire. ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... heavens above it bowed; The sun was radiant, large, and glowing; And, see, a minister's structure proud Stood in the rich light, golden showing. The clouds around it, sunny-clear, Seemed bearing it aloft like pinions; Its spire-point seemed to disappear, Slow vanishing ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... more leisurely fashion. Across the river, a quarter of a mile above the point at which they were lying, stretched London Bridge, with its narrow arches and the houses projecting beyond it on their supports of stout timbers. Beyond, on the right, rising high above the crowded roofs, was the lofty spire of St. Paul's. The boys were almost awed by this vast assemblage of buildings. That London was a great city they had known, but they were not prepared for so immense a difference between it and the place where they had lived all their lives. Only with the Tower were they somewhat disappointed. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Hocheim, Frankfort, and made an excursion to Hanau, then to Mayence, and another excursion to Rudesheim, and Johansberg; then by Oppenheim, Worms, and Manheim, making an excursion to Heidelberg, then by Spire, Carlsruhe, Rastadt, and Kelh, to Sfrasburg, where I arrived April the 16th, and proceeded again on the 18th, by Phalsbourg, Fenestrange, Dieuze, Moyenvie, Nancy, Toul, Ligny, Barleduc, St. Diziers, Vitry, Chalons sur Marne, Epernay, Chateau Thierri, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mareschal de Noailles to assemble sixty thousand men upon the Maine; while Coigny was sent into Alsace with a numerous army to defend that province, and oppose prince Charles should he attempt to pass the Rhine. The mareschal de Noailles, having secured the towns of Spire, Worms, and Oppenheim, passed the Rhine in the beginning of June, and posted himself on the east side of that river, above Franckfort. The earl of Stair advanced towards him, and encamped at Killen-bach, between the river Maine and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... cathedral platform upon the valley of the Arno, spread like a glowing picture at your feet, and see how immediately it resolves the doubt. Not, indeed, the valley of the Arno as it stands at present, thick set with tower and spire and palace. In order to arrive at the raison d'etre of Fiesole you must blot out mentally Arnolfo's vast pile, and Brunelleschi's dome, and Giotto's campanile, and Savonarola's monastery, and the tall and slender tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... moment. Presently, from the top of the hill, they looked down upon the long line of little homes lying along the banks of the river like peaceful watchmen in a pleasant land, with corn and wine and oil at hand. The tall cross on the spire of the Parish Church was itself a message of hope. He did not define it so; but the impression vaguely, perhaps superstitiously, possessed him. It was this vague influence, perhaps (for he was not a Catholic), which made him involuntarily lift his hat, as did Nicolas, when they passed a calvary; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... matter how much she strive to 'spire, Sis' Nannie Goat's measured 'g'inst some'h'n' higher; "First cousin to a sheep" an' "de po' man's cow," Is hol'-down luck, come when, come how. An' she ain't by 'erself helt down like dat— No, she ain't by ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... their wings; while beyond rose a range of smooth downs, the intermediate space being sprinkled over with neat farmhouses and labourers' cottages; and rising above the trees appeared the grey, ivy-covered tower of the parish church, with the taper spire pointing upwards to the clear blue sky—not more clear or bright, though, than his Mary's eyes; so True Blue thought, whether he said it ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... been erected as part of the original plan, and also that a new upper part was being added to this same tower about the middle of the thirteenth century. This new portion eventually rose above the roofs to the level of the top of the square parapet, about the base of the octagonal spire, the spire being a still later addition. Now the heightening of this tower—perhaps with already the idea of a future spire in view—would raise many questions. Experience would already have taught the builders that the early central towers of many other churches were incapable of carrying their ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... at first to become merely a little wart of pulp, which finds expression in skill and quickness and more of coveted leisure. There is the next higher terrace and another and another, until finally it becomes a pyramid, ever more fragile and symmetrical, the apex of which is a delicate spire, where the purest intellects are elevated to an ever increasing height in ever decreasing numbers, until in the dizzy altitude above the groveling base below they are wrapped little by little in the cold solitude of incarnate genius burning like suns ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... stands on the main street, with its tall spire and its two tiers of gray-blinded windows. Beside it is the mossy burial-ground, where prim old ladies walk on Sunday afternoons, with sprigs ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... gloves and tools, and went away, tugging her basket of weeds. Elliott, left behind, surveyed the borders critically. To cut without letting it appear that she had cut was evidently what Aunt Jessica wanted. She reached in and snipped off a spire of larkspur from the very back of the border, then stood back to see what had happened. No, if one hadn't known the stalk had been there, one wouldn't now know it was gone. The thing could be done, then. Cautiously she selected a head of white phlox. The result of that ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... it abroad, first thick, and afterwards thinner and thinner upon the said floor (as it combeth), and there it lieth (with turning every day four or five times) by the space of one and twenty days at the least, the workmen not suffering it in any wise to take any heat, whereby the bud end should spire, that bringeth forth the blade, and by which oversight or hurt of the stuff itself the malt would be spoiled and turn small commodity to the brewer. When it hath gone, or been turned, so long upon the floor, they carry it to a kiln covered with hair cloth, where they give it gentle heats (after ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Madam, had you scene with what a vehemency He did blaspheme the gods, Like to a man pearcht on some lofty Spire Amazed which way to relieve himselfe, You would have stood, as ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... gentry had something to do with it. They travelled about too much to be good men. Small though Thrums used to be, it had four kirks in all before the disruption, and then another, which split into two immediately afterward. The spire of the parish church, known as the auld kirk, commands a view of the square, from which the entrance to the kirk-yard would be visible, if it were not hidden by the town-house. The kirk-yard has long been crammed, and is not now in ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... as the train whirled rapidly through the scarcely-awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more beautiful—the sharp, clear picture, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the husks prick thy gums, but there is no other meat. Well may the hearers' ears go aching; for thy cry, man, proceedeth from thy aching belly. But now I will set the song again, and tell thee of a lady girdled with fine gold. Beneath the girdle beats a red heart; but her spirit is like a spire of blue smoke, that comes from a fire, indeed, but strains up to heaven. Warmed by that fire, like that smoke I fly up; and so I lie ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... fastened on the chief bowman's steel-shod pole, held high—there is silence but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are launched ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... made terror and victory the order of the day; and generals Brunswick and Wurmser were very soon driven from Haguenau on the lines of the Lauter, and not being able even to maintain that position, passed the Rhine at Philipsburg. Spire and Worms were retaken. The republican troops, everywhere victorious, occupied Belgium, that part of Holland situated on the left of the Meuse, and all the towns on the Rhine, except Mayence and Mannheim, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... the death of a tree that intercepted the view of the bridge, for which, too, I have drawn a white rail, and shall be absolute travelling Jupiter at Baucis and Philemon's; for I have persuaded him to transform a cottage into a church, by exalting a spire upon the end of it, as Talbot has done. By the way, I have dined at the Vineyard.(59) I dare not trust you with what I think, but I was a little disappointed. To-morrow we go to the ruins of the Abbey of St. Osyth; it is the seat of the Rochfords, but I never chose to go ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the soil from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Jean Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D—— A path which intersected the plain passed a few paces ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... brothers grew fat, Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul. But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, Where only the wind sings miserere. Of what the monks came by no legend runs, At least they were lucky in not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... an hour after dawn when his father aroused him. The boat lay moored by a little quay, beyond which his eye travelled to clusters of red roofs glowing in the easterly sunshine, and a dominant spire, the weathercock of which dazzled the eye with its brightness. The town was just waking up, as could be perceived from the blue wreaths of smoke that poured out of ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the interior ... are founded on no higher authority than an interpolation by a missionary translator into the Chinese text of the treaty between France and China." That "the disturbance of a local fengshui by a church spire is considered as much of a grievance as the erection of a hideous tannery beside Westminster Abbey ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... amounted to about 7,500 men; and at Done they were to meet M. Bonchamps and M. de Lescure, who, it was supposed, would bring with them as many more. They marched out of Vihiers early on the Tuesday morning, having remained there only about a couple of hours, and before nightfall they saw the spire of Doue church. They then rested, intending to force their way into the town early on the following morning; but they had barely commenced their preparations for the evening, when a party of royalists came out to them from the town, inviting them in. M. de Lescure ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... district where the clever and painstaking French agriculturist gets every grain out of the soil, a district where we could see the spire of a parish church every six miles, the land of a people, sturdy, devout, tenacious and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... rich, level pastures of the Vale of Pickering, the town has a picturesque and pleasant site. At the top of the market-place where the ground becomes much steeper stands the church, its grey bulk dominating every view. From all over the Vale one can see the tall spire, and from due east or west it has a surprising way of peeping over the hill tops. It has even been suggested that the tower and spire have been a landmark for a very long time, owing to the fact that where the hills and formation of the ground do not obstruct the view, or make road-making ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... the church at Ormskirk, having two steeples, a tower and spire, contiguous to each other, is briefly glanced at in the tradition. This circumstance, according to some accounts, was occasioned by the removal of part of the bells from Burscough at the dissolution of the monasteries, when the existing spire steeple was found to be not sufficiently ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fro, saw surgeons passing up, or men coming down carrying a stretcher, where lay a long white figure whose face was shrouded, and whose fight was done. Sometimes I stopped to watch the passers in the street, the moonlight shining on the spire opposite, or the gleam of some vessel floating, like a white-winged sea-gull, down the broad Potomac, whose fullest flow can never wash away the red ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... purpose of saving me. One of these was M. Frotte, who, as the pupil of my physician Dessault, was allowed free ingress and egress to the Temple. One day he entered my cell, motioned me to be silent, seized me, and dragged me to a cabinet under the spire of the tower. A sick child who had been given over by the faculty was substituted in my place, and he, dying two days after (8th June 1795), was buried as Louis XVII. At my supposed death, there being ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... buttresses and flying buttresses and all the rest of it so as to keep them from falling. Look at those," he added, pointing at the skyscrapers before him, "they're not afraid to stand by themselves; they mean something, they have a use, while a spire just sticks straight up, pointing at nothing and being of no service unless it is to hang bells in a belfry. I don't care what people say about those crazy old tumble-down buildings of the Middle Ages, they may be beautiful and all that, but they're ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had not come true, thus far. There were no roses blooming on Archie's cheeks yet; and sometimes, when Lilias watched his pale face, as he sat gazing out into the mist, she was painfully reminded of the time when he used to watch the shadow of the spire coming slowly round to the yew-tree by the ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... and the Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the Tubercled or Small Pale Green Orchis (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime necessity. Orchids have arrived ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... certainly superior to any church I had hitherto seen in Switzerland. Its architecture exhibits various specimens of Gothic: there are many windows of painted glass in good preservation, and also several handsome monuments. The choir is handsome, and its pillars are of black marble. Its spire rises to a great height, and from the church-yard there is a fine prospect of the lake, and the surrounding country, with which I should have been more delighted, had I not so recently seen the still grander scene which Vevay commands. The population of Lausanne is computed at 8,000, and they ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... right and left. Once more the car began to move, sinking in a long still curve towards the face of the mountain; and as it checked, and began to sway again on its huge wings, he turned to the door, seeing as he did so, through the cloudy windows in the glow of light, a spire of rock not thirty feet below rising from the mist, and one smooth shoulder of ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... pretty department of the subject which I might call grace swearing. 'Od's fish,' cried the king, when he saw the man climbing Salisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it—no one else shall do it.' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od's bodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the British Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his own particular grace curse, just ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... instantly. On the horizon a British destroyer steamed leisurely. Henri stood for a long time on the deck. The land fell away quickly. From a clear silhouette of the town against the sky—the dunes, the spire of the cathedral, the roof of the mairie—it became vague, shadowy—the ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to courage firm and high! Health to Granta's chivalry! Wisely finding, day by day, Play in toil, and toil in play. Granta greets them, gliding down On by park and spire and town; Humming mills and golden meadows, Barred with elm and poplar shadows; Giant groves, and learned halls; Holy fanes and pictured walls. Yet she bides not here; around Lies the Muses' sacred ground. Most she lingers, where below ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... snail is of a brightly shining yellowish or greenish horn colour. The whorls of its spire are small, but the body whorl, whilst preserving a wide diameter throughout, gradually increases in trumpet-like manner to the round mouth. It belongs to the same group with H. olivetorum and H. nitida, and is allied to the Australian H. ptycomphala. ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... representing artists of every period, poets. musicians, painters and sculptors. In the centre of the basement sits the colossal bronze-gilt figure of Prince Albert. The canopy terminates at the top in a Gothic spire, rising in three stages and surmounted by a cross. The monument is one hundred and seventy-five feet high, and gorgeously embellished with bronze and marble statues, gildings, colored ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... top of a steep hill Mary looked back to see if Chicopee were yet, visible, but nothing was to be seen except the spire of the Unitarian Meeting-House. About a quarter of a mile to the west, however, the graveyard was plainly discernible, and she looked until her eyes were dim with tears at the spot where she knew her parents and brother were lying. By this time ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... prologue to The Golden Legend, we have the attempt of Lucifer and the Powers of the Air to tear down the cross from the spire of the Strasburg Cathedral, with the remonstrance of ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... here. Eastminster is over there——" again she pointed. "On fine days you can see the spire of the cathedral, but not from here—from a point about two miles further across Bessmoor. If you are staying some time you ought ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... anything but peace and pleasant life in the surroundings. But these black-clad women do know—know that the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides a roofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that for all their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longer visible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and stone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of scarlet yonder in the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... all was prosperity and riches, healthfully distributed. Before us lay our native town, extending from the foot of the hill to the harbor, level as a chess board, embraced by two arms of the sea, and filling the whole peninsula with a close assemblage of wooden roofs, overtopped by many a spire, and intermixed with frequent heaps of verdure, where trees threw up their shade from unseen trunks. Beyond was the bay and its islands, almost the only objects, in a country unmarked by strong natural features, on which time and human toil ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... grateful to the smell; while the eyesight was soothed by reposing on the smooth sward of a bowling-green spread out immediately before it, or in dwelling upon gently undulating meads, terminating, at about a mile's distance, in the woody, spire-crowned ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of mind they, like the pagans of ancient Rome, charge them with horrible crimes, and seize the slightest occasion for murderous attack. A church [Page 262] spire is said to disturb the good luck of a neighbourhood—the people burn the building. A rumour is started that babies in a foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic medicine—the hospital is demolished and the Sisters of Charity killed. A skeleton ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Plassans was the steeple of St. Mark, rising like a stony needle against the blue sky. To and fro he slowly paced the court with a row of fellow-students; and each time he faced the wall he eyed that spire which to him represented the whole town, the whole earth spread beneath the scudding clouds. Noisy groups waxed hot in disputation round the plane-trees; friends would pair off in the corners under the spying glance of some ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome, All sparkling and bright, like white ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... good a right to their churches as we have to ours and that the Huns had no kind of business to destroy them. Just think, Mrs. Dr. dear," concluded Susan pathetically, "how we would feel if a German shell knocked down the spire of our church here in the glen, and I'm sure it is every bit as bad to think of Rangs cathedral being ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her companion moodily, and with no show of interest. 'Very like.' His eyes wandered from the thatched roof of the cottage to where, high above the tall old yew-trees, a slender spire ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... upspringing, fantastic German architecture, in which every shaft, arch, vault-girdle, pillar, window-frame, pinnacle, seems struggling and panting upward with an almost audible eloquence. This is not the expression of the duomo here. There is no perpetual Excelsior ringing from point, spire, and turret. On the contrary, the grave, almost rigid aspect of the ancient basilica—the Roman business-hall, compounded of Greek elements, and transformed into a Grecian temple—is ever at work repressing that devotional ecstasy which is the characteristic of the Gothic church. The Italian language ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified to every Englishman by centuries ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... houses, over the windings of the Nidda. Walter could hear the tinkle tinkle of sheep bells below, or was it possible that he could already hear the bells of fairyland ringing? Over the church spire of a little village they soared, and all the children shouted: "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" because you see all this happened in modern times, when even the children no longer believe in ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... lovely and romantic against the distant spire of Hillport Church, and its effect on the couple was just what ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... eye, of all castles which I had seen, the most elevated in its situation, and the most difficult of access. The clouds of heaven seemed to be resting upon its battlements. But what do I see yonder? "Is it the top of the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral?" "It is, Sir," replied the postilion. I pulled off my travelling cap, by way of doing homage; and as I looked at my watch, to know the precise time, found it was just ten o'clock. It was worth making a minute of. Yet, owing to the hills before—or rather to ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... against its obstructing current. No scheme of colonisation has ever been designed or thought of by them; for it is only near its source, as we have seen, that settlements exist. In the Chaco no white man's town ever stood upon its banks, nor church spire flung shadow athwart ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... just coming into sight must be Old Sarum. The little ancient city that faded away when Salisbury lifted its spire into the world. We will stop ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... air on the edge of the rock, and the trees on the long esplanade in front of the Admiralty, were all similarly coated, every twig rising as rigid as iron in the dark air. Only the huge golden hemisphere of the Cathedral dome, and the tall, pointed golden spire of the Admiralty, rose above the gloom, and half shone with a muffled, sullen glare. A few people, swaddled from head to foot, passed rapidly to and fro, or a droschky, drawn by a frosted horse, sped away to the entrance of the Nevskoi Prospekt. Even these appeared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... temple bell" is the coinage of popular speech. Many of the inscriptions, though with less of sunny hope and joy than even Christian grave-stones bear, are yet mournfully beautiful.[33] They preach Buddhism in its reality. Whereas, the general associations of the Christian spire and belfry, apart from the note of time, are those of joy, invitation and good news, those of the tongueless and log-struck bells of Buddhism are sombre and saddening. "As merry as a marriage bell," could never be said of the boom ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... sword in his hand and his gold and silver treasures about him. There is a grey old castle upon the top of that mighty mound; and yonder, rising three hundred feet above the soil, from among those noble forest trees, behold that old Norman master-work, that cloud encircled cathedral spire, around which a garrulous army of rooks and choughs continually wheel their flight. Now, who can wonder that the children of that fine old city are proud of her, and offer up prayers for her prosperity? I, myself, who was not born within her walls, offer up prayers ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... condemn it, but in one plain brief word He never comes to Sunday morning chapel. Methinks he teacheth in some Sunday-school, Feeding the poor and starveling intellect With wholesome knowledge, or on the Sabbath morn He loves the country and the neighbouring spire Of Madingley or Coton, or perchance Amid some humble poor he spends the day, Conversing with them, learning all their cares, Comforting them and easing ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... take it, and told him why I was in such a hurry. It was silly, I dare say, but it changed his mind, for I got rather excited, and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly, 'Take it, Thomas, and oblige the young lady. I'd do as much for our Jimmy any day if I had a spire of ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... kings in stony state, As if with breath and human soul expand. Well may'st thou be astounded—view it well; Go not from hence before thou see thy fill, And learn the builder's virtues and his name. Of this tall spire in every country tell, And with thy tale the lazy rich men shame; Show how the glorious Canning did excel; How he, good man, a friend for kings became, And glorious paved at once the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the cathedral. He also constructed the spiral staircase leading to the roof through an elegant Gothic turret, where the medallion portrait of Omodeo may be seen. It has since been proved that the cupola of Omodeo was solid enough, for it has sustained the spire which was put upon it in 1772; but he was tormented concerning it in many ways, and died ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... near the Hotel de Ville, dropped something that spit fire and sparks. Everybody in the neighbourhood let out a yell and rushed for cover in the firm belief that it was another bomb such as was dropped in Namur. It dropped, spitting fire until fairly near the spire of the Hotel de Ville, when it burst into ten or a dozen lights like a Roman candle—evidently a signal to the troops still outside the city—perhaps to tell them that the occupation had been peacefully accomplished. We learned afterward that ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... the amber mist, That softly wreathes each mountain-spire, The sky its clustered columns kissed, And touched their snow with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... It was at Wellington College that he was born, in the Master's Lodge, in a sunny bedroom, in the south-east corner of the house; one of its windows looking to the south front of the college and the chapel with its slender spire; the other window looking over the garden and a waste of heather beyond, to the fir-crowned hill of Ambarrow. My father had been Headmaster for twelve years and was nearing the end of his time there; and I was myself ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... orders. It was afterward argued that these noises came from an explosion of meteors, a shower of these missiles being then in progress, invisible, of course, in the day-time. Just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence the royal arms on the spire of the Episcopal church at Hampton, Virginia, were struck off by lightning. Shortly before the surrender of Cornwallis a display of northern lights was seen in New England, the rays taking the form of cannon, facing southward. In Connecticut ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... be placed in alcohol. The outer shell, when it is spiral, should be broken at the upper part, and at several points of the spire, to let the liquor run in, so that the whole animal may be preserved; it is possible, following this indication, to have shell-fish in such order, that they may be dissected, even after being a very long time ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... the barbacues for several weeks, without the slightest advance in curing; and, unless it be frequently turned while in this wet state, it is sure to germinate; the berries first swell, then a thin white spire issues from the seam, and on opening the berry the young leaves will be actually seen formed inside, so rapid is ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... river winds round the bases of rocky hills, a river like our own Wye or Tees in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither Perugino nor any other of the ideal painters ever use Italian forms but always Transalpine, both of church and castle. The little landscape which forms the background of his own ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... would crawl out every night to and sometimes into the enemy lines and on their return report what they had heard. By day, aviators came back from flights over enemy positions and gave details of what they had seen. Every hill, tree-top, church spire, tall building and captive balloon watched every move of the enemy and reported it. These reports by the ears and eyes of the armies enabled American and allied commanders to plan their infantry ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... slowly to the village of Ecclefechan, the site of which is marked to the eye, a mile or more away, by the spire of the church rising up against a background of Scotch firs, which clothe a hill beyond. I soon enter the main street of the village, which in Carlyle's youth had an open burn or creek flowing through the center of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... see now, on the water-side, is the viceroy's palace; that to the right again, is the convent of the barefooted Carmelites; yon lofty spire is the cathedral of St. Catherine; and that beautiful and light piece of architecture is the church of our Lady of Pity. You observe there a building with a dome, rising behind the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... lights in the windows; a blue spire of smoke Climbs from the grange grove of elm and oak. The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to her Its dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh, And an incense to Toil is the smell of the loam On the ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... was thinking that the next time he came to the station would probably be at the end of term, when his schoolboy days would be over. He leaned against a gate, and looked long at the green quiet hill, with its tall spire and embosoming trees, till ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... he embarked again in the very same nut-shell of a boat that he had left Egypt in, passed right under the bows of the English vessels, and set foot once more in France. France acknowledged him; the sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; and all the people cried, "Long ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... oarsmen, all plying their arms in unison, so that the vessel looked like some brilliant many-limbed creature treading the water. Presently appeared the heavy walls inclosing the City itself, dominated by the tall openwork timber spire of St. Paul's, with the foursquare, four-turreted Tower acting, as it has been well said, as a padlock to a chain, and the river's breadth spanned by London bridge, a very street of houses built on the abutments. Now, Bankside had houses on each side of the road, and Wry-mouthed Tibble showed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... ago, when I was first made boatswain of a corvette (during this conversation he was looking through the telescope); yes, there it is," said he; "I have it in the field. Look, Mr Simple, do you see a small church, with a spire of glazed tiles, shining ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... be refused. Ascend to the top of this spire by this outer stair, and throw yourself down from it without hesitation. When you are at the earth, though you were in a thousand pieces, with one word I will set you upon your feet, straighter and with a better carriage than ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... all, might be planted in Warwickshire, and no tourist would know that it was not indigenous there. They call their local stream the Avon, and boating there some idle summer days, I easily dreamed myself at home again, and within bow-shot of the skyward-pointing spire which covers the bones of Shakespeare. It is, I believe, a fact that the stream is christened after another river than that which owes its glamour to the poet's name, but in a case of this kind mere fact matters little, and the inhabitants themselves are, for ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... as we had hitherto seen it, grey under a leaden sky, but bright and blue in the sunshine; Banff on the left of the bay; the River Doveran almost lost amid banks of shingle, where it enters the sea; a white and tolerably high shore extending eastwards; a kirk, with a high spire which serves as a sea-mark; and, on the point, about a mile to the east, the town of Macduff. At Banff, we at once went to the pier, about half finished, on which 15,000L. will be expended, to the great benefit of this clean, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... builders of west Oxfordshire experimented in cruciform planning. The division between chancel and nave is felt much less at Witney than in the other two churches; for the great thirteenth century tower and spire, resting upon massive piers joined by pointed arches, throw a considerable portion of their weight upon nave and transept arcades, whose exceptional massiveness gives unity to the whole design. In the fifteenth century, however, the rebuilders of the aisleless church of Minster Lovell, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... staircase skylight was blown away, and the lead which surrounded it rolled up as neatly as if just out of the plumber's: roofs were torn off and cabins blown down.] Have any trees been blown away? Has the spire stood? Is Madgy Woods alive? How many roofs of houses in the town have been blown away, and how many hundred slates and panes of glass must be replaced? The glass dome over the staircase at Ardbraccan has been blown away; two of the saloon windows blown in. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... protruding at the angles. There was no great originality of design, merely the delightful picturesqueness which unstripped logs never fail to yield. She knew that every detail of the building was to be carried out in the same way. The roof, the spire, the porches, even the fence which was ultimately to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... casement to get a better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. The sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom; then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins, daffodils, and so on, till ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lump, of any regular shape, which has a very small, sharp, high pinnacle in the centre, the height above water can easily be equal to the depth below. An authentic case on record is that of a berg grounded in the Strait of Belle Isle, in sixteen fathoms of water, that had a thin spire about one hundred ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... critics said, and a new scene which in these days is much to be desired. The manner in which Lacroix had arranged to show both the exterior and interior of the church was a clever hit, every one agreed. Outside, with the clear blue sky for background, the spire of the church was clearly defined, and on a niche just above the main doorway stood an exquisitely carved statue of the patron St. Anne, holding by the hand her little daughter, the Blessed Virgin. And beyond ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... the wonderfully complex jaws and legs of crustaceans. It is familiar to almost every one, that in a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire. In monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence of the possibility of one organ being transformed into another; and we can actually see, during the early or embryonic stages of development in flowers, as well as in crustaceans and many other animals, that organs, which when mature ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... raise vertical OP, and then from P draw sloping lines to each corner of base a, b, &c., and by means of central lines drawn from P to half base, find the points where the gable roofs intersect the central spire or pyramid. Any other proportions can be obtained by adding to ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... most lonely and forlorn of all sad places—by their broken and fallen headstones, which surround a half-filled-in and uncovered cellar, show that once a meeting-house for New England Christians had stood there. Tall grass, and a tangle of blackberry brambles cover the forgotten graves, and perhaps a spire of orange tiger-lilies, a shrub of southernwood or of winter-killed and dying box, may struggle feebly for life under the shadow of the "plumed ranks of tall wild cherry," and prove that once these lonely graves were cared for and loved for the sake of those who lie buried in ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Jane, to Fred and Frank, To Theodore and Mary, To Willie and to Reginald, To Louis, Sue and Gary; To sturdy boys and merry girls, And all the dear young people Who live in towns, or live on farms, Or dwell near spire or steeple; To boys who work, and boys who play, Eager, alert and ready, To girls who meet each happy day With faces sweet and steady; To dearest comrades, one and all, To Harry, Florrie, Kate, To children small, and children ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... half-height with a crown of thorns. The different sides of the Chapelle are in the same style—with buttresses between the windows, gables surmounting these, and a fine open parapet crowning all. The roof is sloping, and the height is over a hundred feet. The spire measures, from the vaulting, seventy feet. We entered by a stair-case the upper chapel, and an exquisite view presented itself. A single apartment, a half-circular chair, with fine, large windows, detached columns with bases and capitals, and fine groining—these all ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... white Cape Hyacinth, or Spire Lily. A hardy, summer-flowering, bulbous plant 3 ft. to 4 ft. in height, gracefully surmounted with from twenty to fifty pendent, bell-shaped snow-white flowers. Thrives in any position and equally suitable for ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... the master (the salary is four hundred pounds a year), the school flourishes, and must prove one of the greatest advantages to the country of anything that could have been established. This edifice entirely at the Primate's expense. The church is erected of white stone, and having a tall spire makes a very agreeable object in a country where churches and spires do not abound—at least, such as are worth looking at. Three other churches the Primate has also built, and done considerable reparations to ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... for the distant sea. The roar of London is the roar of ire The lion utters in his old desire For Libya out of dim captivity. The long bright silver of Cheapside I see, Her gilded weathercocks on roof and spire Exulting eastward in the western fire; All things recall one ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... The graceful spire rose before them, guiding them all the way, which did not seem long to Olive, who revelled in the beauties unfolded along their lonely walk—a winding road, bounding the forest, on whose verge the hill stood. But Christal's Parisian feet soon grew wearied, and when they came ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... wield, And strike proud Haco from his car, While all around the shadowy kings Denmark's grim ravens cowered their wings. 'Tis said, that, in that awful night, Remoter visions met his sight, Foreshowing future conquests far, When our son's sons wage northern war; A royal city, tower and spire, Reddened the midnight sky with fire, And shouting crews her navy bore, Triumphant to the victor shore. Such signs may learned clerks explain - They pass ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... last, why the Kafirs hated to go about the land after dark, averring that the afflicted bushes threatened and chased them. She began herself to experience an inexplicable feeling of relief, as though at the overcoming of an enemy, when a great spire of smoke betokened the final uprooting and burning of a clump of bush. For fire was the ultimate element used to transform the pest from a malignant into a beneficent factor, and, as aromatic ash, it became of service to the land it had ruined so long. Almost, the process seemed an ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... themselves. Some of them have been men once: perhaps one retains his sculling skill, and is occasionally engaged by a gentleman to give him lessons. They regarded me eagerly—they "spotted" a Thames freshman who might be made to yield silver; but I walked away down the road into the village. The spire of the church interested me, being of shingles—i.e. of wooden slates—as the houses are roofed in America, as houses were roofed in Elizabethan England; for Young America reproduces Old England ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... a large room, with a wide window looking on to the garden and away across meadows and cornfields to Harrow Hill with its thin church spire. The window was guarded with iron bars. The wall-paper was designed in little circles; and in each circle there were figures of little boys and girls, absurd and gay. So many hundreds of little figures, and so absurd and gay, that to sit in that room surrounded by them, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the Old Empire are in Quebec to-day. Quebec is French to the core, not in loyalty to republican France, but in loyalty to the religious ideals which the founders brought to the banks of the St. Lawrence three centuries ago. Church spire, convent walls, religious foundations occupy the most prominent site in every city and town and hamlet of Quebec. From Tadousac to Montreal, from Labrador to Maine or New Hampshire, you can follow the thread of every river in Quebec by ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... looked down he saw a beautiful country, a fertile land upon which man had worked for two thousand years, too beautiful to be trodden to pieces by armies. He saw the cultivated fields, varying in color like a checker board, and the neat villages with trees about them. Here and there the spire of a church rose high above everything. Churches and wars ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sombre hue, but in reality the waters are clear as crystal. Beyond these groves, still looking south, you discover the woods about Wardour Castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. To the south-west is the giant spire of Salisbury, which since the fall of Fonthill Tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. Stourton Tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high hills are traced which have ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... beautiful landscape; and finding the captain, a noble-hearted sailor, inquired of him how long it would take us to reach the port of New York. "That is New York," said he, pointing to a dark mass of buildings, with here and there a spire towering in the air. "We shall reach there about eight o'clock; but it is Sunday, and you will have to stay on board till to-morrow." With this he turned away, calling his men to weigh anchor; as the physician, whose duty it was ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... arrow that was the cause of so much sorrow could never be found, and the Indians believe that it was taken away by the spirits of Kos-su'-kah and Tee-hee'-nay. In memory of them, and of this tragedy, the slender spire of rock [sometimes called "The Devil's Thumb"] that rises heavenward near the top of the cliff at this point is known among the Indians as ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... all the time the great brown eyes, which looked as if they had seen celestial things, scanned the sky, saw the tall cedars of Lebanon, the flocks on the slopes across the valley, the scattered stone cottages, the fleecy clouds that faintly flecked the deep blue of the sky, the distant spire of a church. All these treasures of the Umbrian landscape were his. Well might he have anticipated, four hundred years before he was born, that greatest of American writers, and said, "I own the landscape!" In frescos signed by Perugino ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... short-lived finery; a stillness as of death had fallen on the uninhabited house, and all was tranquil on the country road, stretching on one side across the tranquil fields, on the other towards the clustering houses of the village and the low spire which pointed to heaven. "Lizzie," she said, "if it is never put right,—and perhaps it will never be put right, for who can tell?—if you will come with me who know so much about it, we will go and be missionaries to these poor girls. I will ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... is divided into little rectangular patches of various verdure, —yellow-blossomed broom, blue-flowering flax, and the contrasting green of lupines, beans, Indian corn, and potatoes. There is not a spire of genuine grass on the island, except on the Consul's lawn, but wilds covered with red heather, low faya-bushes, (whence the name of the island,) and a great variety of mosses. The cattle are fed on beans and lupines. Firewood is obtained from the opposite island of Pico, five miles off, and from ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the interior of the edifice, who overthrew that colossal figure of Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues by the same right as the great hall of the palace among halls, as the spire of Strasburg among steeples? And those myriad statues which peopled every space between the columns of the choir and the nave, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops, men-at-arms—of stone, of marble, of gold, of silver, of copper, nay even of wax—who brutally ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... suppose that in a country journey we arrive at the summit of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming village imbosomed in trees from the midst of which, rises the white spire of the village church. If we are in a poetical mood, we say: "How beautiful is this retirement! This quiet retreat, away from the world's distractions and great temptations, must be the abode of domestic and social virtue—the home of contentment, of peace, and of an unquestioning ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... the Jesuits. To this day it is possibly the most symmetrical in appearance of any church of the Church of England in Canada. Exteriorly, it is 135 feet in length and 73 in breadth, while the height of the spire above the ground is 152 feet, the height from the floor to the centre arch, within, being 41 feet. The communion plate, together with the altar cloth, hangings of the desk and pulpit of crimson velvet and cloth of gold, and the books for divine service, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... was not alone in his love for the wide reaches, level as the sea, across which every village spire could be seen for many a mile. Not very far away, in clear weather, the great tower of Boston, not ungraceful, stood out in awe-inspiring grandeur against the sky, and was pointed out with pride and pleasure by all who loved the fens and rejoiced ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... sickle, was green and apparently growing through all the months of last winter. What a phenomenon it would have been, on the first of February last, to a New England farmer, suddenly transported from his snow-buried hills to the view of this landscape the same day! Not a spire of grass or grain was alive when he left his own homestead. All was cold and dead. The very earth was frozen to the solidity and sound of granite. It was a relief to his eye to see the snow fall upon the scene and hide it two feet deep for months. He looks upon this, then upon the one he left ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the store, however, and as far as she could see toward Cardhaven, were better homes, some standing in the midst of tilled fields and orchards. Sandy lanes led to these homesteads from the highway. She could see the blunt spire of the Mariner's Chapel. Yet Cap'n Abe's house and store stood quite alone, for none of the other dwellings were ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... lightning is because they project up into the air, and according to their height, they remove a corresponding amount of the poorly conducting air. If the lower edge of a thunder-cloud is two thousand five hundred feet above the air, and the spire of a church is five hundred feet high, it follows that it is easier for a flash to jump two thousand feet than two thousand five hundred. So when the electricity-bearing cloud comes over the church spire ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... I hadn't seen this before," she breathed. "Look—'way off there, with those trees and the houses and that lovely church spire, and the river shining just like silver. Why, Nancy, there doesn't anybody need any pictures with that to look at. Oh, I'm so glad now she ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... 9th, King Lamb; 10th, Emperor Lamb; 11th, Pope Innocent,—higher than which is nothing. Puns I have not made many (nor punch much) since the date of my last; one I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral; upon which I remarked that they must be very sharp-set. But in general I cultivate the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. I am stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... spite of herself, as she saw the spire of St. Clement's Dane, where she was told they must turn City-wards, she began to talk, and Anthony ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... house in all directions. The surrounding country is undulating and highly picturesque. North and south the eye ranges over a vast extent of lovely scenery; and on the west, looking over the town of Chesterfield, with its church and crooked spire, the extensive range of the Derbyshire hills bounds the distance. The Midland Railway skirts the western edge of the park in a deep rock cutting, and the shrill whistle of the locomotive sounds near at hand as the trains speed past. The ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... was set apart for her, next to her bedroom nearly at the top of the house, and which commanded a wide view of the Manor park-lands, and the village of St. Rest, with the silvery river winding through it, and the spire of the church rising from the surrounding foliage like a finger pointing to heaven. And she also found relief from the strain of constant entertaining by rising early in the mornings and riding on her favourite 'Cleopatra' all over her property, calling ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... huge park with a sprinkling of houses in it than anything else. The green foliage rolls over it like the waves of the ocean, and the houses rise up like isolated habitations. Now and then a red brick building, or the slender white spire of a church gave a touch of colour to the landscape, and contrasted pleasantly with the bluish-white roofs and green trees. Scattered all through the town were the huge mounds of earth marking the mining-shafts of various colours, from dark brown to pure ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume |
