"Amphitheatre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mount the stories of this amphitheatre of palaces spread out afar upon the ground, after crossing a deep ravine hollowed out of the roofs in the Town, which marked the passage of the Rue Saint-Antoine, the eye reached the house of Angouleme, a vast construction of many epochs, where there were perfectly new and very white parts, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in the mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky, and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Seville, not near to its cigarette factory and the guard-house, but at the scene of the great bull-fight, where Escamillo is to strut and show what a famous fellow he deserves to be! The old amphitheatre at the back with its awning stretched, the foreground with its orange-girls, fan-girls, wine-pedlars, ragged idlers and beggars, fine gentlemen, mules—all eager for the entertainment! Escamillo is the man who kills bulls and makes love to all the pretty girls ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... liberty, and at Ketchikan, a thriving town, the boys here gained their first real impressions of Alaskan conditions. They found Skagway a town of about fifteen hundred people, set in a great natural amphitheatre surrounded by mountains capped with perpetual snow. It is connected with the outside world by a cable to Seattle, and by other parts of Alaska by telegraph, and has electric lights and a telephone system. A fine school building ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... was quiet, and my room so pleasant, commanding a view of the sea, confined by an amphitheatre of hanging woods, that I wished to remain there, though no one in the house could speak English or French. The mayor, my friend, however, sent a young woman to me who spoke a little English, and she agreed to call on me twice a day to receive my orders and translate them ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... yet another dose of sal-volatile as a preparation for the ordeal of the arithmetical paper, and then, gathering up pens and pencils, marched slowly into the dreaded room. It was shaped like an amphitheatre, with a railed-in platform at one side, and sloping seats descending ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Eminent physicians and scientists were encouraged to settle in Rome. The harbor of Ostia was improved, and a road constructed from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea, over the Apennines. A temple to Mars was built, and an immense amphitheatre was erected at the foot of ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... this plain of Sebaiyeh is bounded by mountains having long, sloping bases, and covered with wild thyme and other herbs, affording a good tenting-ground immediately fronting Sinai, which forms, as it were, a grand pyramidal pulpit to the magnificent amphitheatre below. The width of the plain immediately in front of Sinai is about 1600 feet, but further south the width is much increased, so that on an average the plain may be considered as being nearly one-third ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... day, and among the pennons of the challenging knights, which made gay the ancient amphitheatre of Arles where the lists were staked, there fluttered one bearing the device of a golden cup from which ran a stream of silver water. Also when Richard, with visor drawn and all in mail of shining steel, caracoled in the field, he was hailed Knight of the Spilling ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... flash he was up again, wild to close with his rival and get his fingers about his throat. There, in the little natural amphitheatre, with only the ancient trees as silent witnesses, was staged again the oft-fought fight between the boxer and the battler, but the decision was not to rest on points. No Marquis of Queensberry rules governed, no watchful referee was present to disqualify ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the top of the steps. He was hurried across a narrow railed footway, and suddenly with a vast shouting the amphitheatre of ruins opened again before him. "The Master is with us! The Master! The Master!" The shout swept athwart the lake of faces like a wave, broke against the distant cliff of ruins, and came back in a welter of cries. "The ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... and disarming himself not only for attack but for defense; henceforth he sits at home and awaits the insurrection with which he is daily menaced; he resigns himself to everything, except drawing his sword; his attitude is that of a Christian in the amphitheatre.[2517]—The proposition of a camp outside Paris, however, draws out a protest from 8,000 Paris National Guards. Lafayette denounces to the Assembly the usurpations of the Jacobins; the faction sees that its reign is threatened by this reawakening and union of the friends of order. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Hippodrome as the two charioteers, Green and Blue, rounded the spina, neck and neck, the tragedies acted in the theatre amid rapturous applause, the strange beasts from every part of the Roman world that roared and fought in the Amphitheatre, the delicious idleness of the Baths, the chatter and bargaining and banter of the Forum,—all this made a day in beautiful Constantinople very unlike a day in the solemn and somewhat rude ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... vineyards and orchards which monopolize all the favorable exposures, is a multitude of small villages, some of which have become famous—Ste. Euphraise, Bligny, and Ville-en-Tardenois, whose rustic dwellings of uncut rubble, arranged amphitheatre-wise, sheltered some 500 inhabitants. Higher up, on the uneven surface of the plateau, are scattered villages built on limestone foundations—tiny fortresses, like Rumigny and Champlat, the scene of hard-fought battles. Almost the entire surface is covered with forests of pine and oak and birch. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... be called the students' hospital, for here is not only the little chemical laboratory of Dr. Bernath, but also dissecting rooms, amphitheatre, and anatomical museum. Of the latter, indeed, there are several, osteological, physiological, &c., and they reflect great credit upon the gentlemen who have formed them under almost insuperable difficulties. ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... front; a line of tall, well-built houses, not in the least rural in their aspect, but that seem rather as if they had been transported from the centre of some stately city entire and at once, sweeps round its inner inflection, like a bent bow; and an amphitheatre of mingled rock and wood rises behind. With all its beauty, however, there hangs about the village an air of melancholy. Like some of the other western coast villages, it seems not to have grown, piece-meal, as a village ought, but to have been made wholesale, as Frankenstein ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the Villedieu road to just without the town, where a byeway on the right leaves the main road at an acute angle. Continue this byeway to two arches, which indicate the site of the Roman theatre. The chapel seen to the N.W. is St. Quenin, while a little beyond is the cathedral. The amphitheatre, or "les arnes" as they call it, is built on the same plan, and in a similar position, as the theatre of Orange, but far less perfect. Besides the two arches, there exist still five tiers, but all the stone seats are gone, excepting those on ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... his new friend after his departure, but he made anxious and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant summer afternoon the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced among the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this weary world as they journeyed ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foot-hills called the Happy Valley, bestowed on the public for such pleasures by the local nobleman whose title is given to a principal street, and to other points and places, I suppose out of the public pride and gratitude. It is a charming amphitheatre overlooked by the lofty tops around, and there on the green slope the Niggers had set up their stage, and ranged the spectators' chairs in the classification of first, second, and third so dear to the British soul. There they cracked their jokes, and there ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... pure and transparent lake spread its broad mirror, or rolled its voluminous windings, by banks richly covered with olives and laurels; and in the distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre blushing with vines, and the elevations of the Alps covered with woods and pasturage, and sprinkled with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... were driving at night up a rising ground between Hanau and Gelhausen, and, although it was dark, we preferred walking to exposing ourselves to the danger and difficulty of that part of the road. All at once, in a ravine on the right-hand side of the way, I saw a sort of amphitheatre, wonderfully illuminated. In a funnel- shaped space there were innumerable little lights gleaming, ranged step- fashion over one another; and they shone so brilliantly that the eye was dazzled. But what still more confused the sight was, that ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... for we have to cross a creek and climb a high hill before we get on to them. Then for an invigorating gallop over the green turf, the breeze freshening as we pace along. These plains are really wonderful. They look like a large natural amphitheatre, being level for about fifteen miles in every direction and encircled all round by high hills. There is very ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... dwarf amphitheatre, and was filling up fast. Bullets were zipping over from left and front. The enemy position rested on river and railway, a half-dug position which some six thousand men were frantically completing when ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... passing under the bridge which he had viewed with so much terror, the path ascended rapidly from the edge of the brook, and the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheatre, waving with birch, young oaks, and hazels, with here and there a scattered yew-tree. The rocks now receded, but still showed their grey and shaggy crests rising among the copse-wood. Still higher, rose eminences and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... cost much money to rear such an edifice. Nearly opposite are the ruins of Hammerstein Castle, where, in 1105, Henry IV. found an asylum. We next came to Andernach. This is an ancient city, and here you see towers and ruins standing amidst a wide amphitheatre of basaltic mountains. The place is spoken of by various old historians, and under several names. The great trade of the place is in millstones, which find their way even to America. Here is a celebrated Roman arched gate; but the lancet form would ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... as possible," he said. "The trouble with Commodus is that he is growing tired of exhibiting himself as an athlete to invited audiences in the Palace. He is perfectly frantic to show himself off in the Circus or in the Amphitheatre. He oscillates between the determination to disregard convention and to do as he likes and virtuous resolutions, when he has been given a good talking-to by his old councillors and has made up his mind to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Nature uses her most ordinary materials to form her most delightful landscapes, and often keeps in reserve prospects of enchanting beauty, and causes them to rise up, as it were, by magic, where we should least expect them. Here I suddenly found myself encompassed by a charming amphitheatre of hills and woods, and in a valley so beautiful that I could not have imagined anything equal to it. A neat cottage stood alone in this spot, without a single architectural decoration, which I am confident would have dissolved the spell that made the whole scene so attractive. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... education on the same lines for all the children of France, and through all the degrees of education, and the suppression of the right to bequeath or to inherit property of any kind,' On the latter point a rather intelligent Socialist with whom I made acquaintance while I was visiting the fine Roman Amphitheatre at Nimes, and whom I took to be a skilled mechanic, was very explicit. He thought property a 'privilege' and therefore inconsistent with equality. He spoke in an oracular fashion, and he probably belonged to the class known among French workmen, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,—make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... healthier and more strengthening than that of Rome. In spite of the public calamity Nero continued to give games for the amusement of the populace, other rich men followed his example, and the sports of the amphitheatre were carried on on an even more extensive ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... which a few are to be found, especially among the descendants of the Dutch, is looked upon with some such reverence as is felt by the modern traveller in gazing at the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the amphitheatre of Verona. ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... manhood's tested energies. Take heed, O generous champion, take heed, If thou thy name by worthy thought or deed, From Time's all-sweeping current couldst redeem; Take heed, and lift thy heart to high desires! The amphitheatre's applause, the public voice, Now summon thee to deeds illustrious; Exulting in thy lusty youth. In thee, to-day, thy country dear Beholds her ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... to her! A little philosopher in skirts. By Jupiter Chronos, such a disputation in this giant amphitheatre of the mountains ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... many cases excavated with great success (for their results see the works quoted above). It would be impossible to enumerate here all the monographs describing, for example, the ruins of Carthage, those of the temple of the waters at Mount Zaghuan, the amphitheatre of El Jem (Thysdrus), the temple of Saturn, the royal tomb and the theatre of Dugga (Thugga), the bridge of Chemtu (Simitthu), the ruins and cemeteries of Tebursuk and Medeina (Althiburus), the rich villa of the Laberii at Wadna (Uthina), the sanctuary of Saturn Balcaranensis ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... summit, from whence a magnificent and comprehensive view bursts upon the vision, and it really requires an effort to tear one's self away, realizing that in all probability I shall never see it again. At one point I seem to be overlooking a vast amphitheatre which encompasses within itself the physical geography of a continent. It is traversed by whole mountain-ranges of lesser degree; it contains tracts of stony desert and fertile valley, lakes, and a river, not excepting even the completing element ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... reside, And all the seasons lavish all their pride: Blossoms, and fruits, and flowers together rise, And the whole year in gay confusion lies. Immortal glories in my mind revive, And in my soul a thousand passions strive, 70 When Rome's exalted beauties I descry Magnificent in piles of ruin lie. An amphitheatre's amazing height Here fills my eye with terror and delight, That on its public shows unpeopled Rome, And held uncrowded nations in its womb; Here pillars rough with sculpture pierce the skies; And here the proud triumphal arches rise, Where the old Romans' ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... carts. About three thousand of the decayed soldiers were lodged in the Hotel des Invalids, at the time of my visit. Passing the National Assembly on my return, I spent a moment or two in it. The interior of this building resembles an amphitheatre. It is constructed to accommodate 900 members, each having a separate desk. The seat upon which the Duchesse of Orleans, and her son, the Comte de Paris, sat, when they visited the National Assembly after the flight ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... abruptly into a shining estuary, populous with anchored shipping. Tall hills flanked it, and in the curve of the westernmost hill a grey town rose from the waterside: its terraces climbing, tier upon tier, like seats in an amphitheatre; its chimneys lifting their smoke over against the dawn. The tiers curved away southward to a round castle and a spit of rock, off which a brig under white canvas stood out for the line of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... natural formation, deepened by the hand of man to allow a free passage to the waters of the Nile. The canal which conveys them leaves the Bahr Yusuf at a point a little to the north of Heracleopolis, carries them in a swift stream through the gorge in the Libyan chain, and emerges into an immense amphitheatre, whose highest side is parallel to the Nile valley, and whose terraced slopes descend abruptly to about a hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean. Two great arms separate themselves from this canal to the right and left—the Wady Tamieh and the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... beyond the general's plantation, M. Michaux passed over Mulder Hill, a steep and lofty mountain, that forms a kind of amphitheatre. From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of imperceptible extent. As far as the eye can reach, nothing but a gloomy verdant space is seen, formed by the tops of the close-connected trees, and, through which, not even the vestige of ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... natural position of the most famous cities of the South—of Lisbon, Genoa, Naples and Constantinople—and she eclipses them in point of climate. Built at the eastern extremity of a fine gulf—that of Les Anges—and backed by an amphitheatre of hills and lofty mountains, she is sheltered from cold winds in winter, and in summer the Alpine breezes temper an atmosphere which would else be unendurably sultry, owing to the prevalence of the sirocco, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... district is most beautiful. Picture to yourself an immense amphitheatre, such as only Nature can create, with a wide- spreading plain ringed with hills, and the summits of the hills themselves covered with tall and ancient forests. There is plentiful and varied hunting to be had. Down the mountain slopes there ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Grecian thought and enterprise. The exhibition of sculpture and painting alone made them attractive and intellectual, while the athletic exercises amused ordinary minds. They were not demoralizing, like the sports of the amphitheatre, or a modern bull-fight, or even fashionable races. They were more like tournaments in the martial ages of Europe, but superior to them vastly, since no woman was allowed to be present at the Olympic ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... leaving a considerable space unoccupied, and the next moment Quesada, in complete general's uniform, and mounted on a bright bay thorough bred English horse, with a drawn sword in his hand, dashed at full gallop into the area, in much the same manner as I have seen a Manchegan bull rush into the amphitheatre when the gates of his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... celestial frame, in his Vanity of Human Wishes he has supposed death to be 'kind Nature's signal for retreat,' from this state of being to 'a happier seat,' his thoughts upon this aweful change were in general full of dismal apprehensions. His mind resembled the vast amphitheatre, the Colisaeum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drives ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... a little town at the bottom of a pretty amphitheatre of hills. There was a floating photographer there, as we passed, with a gang-plank run out to the shore, and framed specimens of his work hung along the town side of his ample barge. Men with teams were getting ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... suffered martyrdom[638] had a vision of the deacon Pomponius, who had suffered martyrdom some days before, and who said to her, "Come, we are waiting for you." He led her through a rugged and winding path into the arena of the amphitheatre, where she had to combat with a very ugly Egyptian, accompanied by some other men like him. Perpetua found herself changed into a man, and began to fight naked, assisted by some well-made youths who came ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... long gallery with a vaulted roof, as in the amphitheatre at Aries or Nimes, stretched away between smoke-stained walls, covered with huge fissures, remains of plaster and iron work, and tangled vegetation. At the entrance to this passage was inscribed on the wall, 'Corridor des Huissiers.' ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... The amphitheatre, where stood Spell-bound the mighty multitude, Rested its long and gilded walls Upon two pillars' capitals: His brawny arms, with labor spent, He threw around the pillars there, And to the deep blue firmament Lifted ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... with animation, "this is a fossil man, the contemporary of the mastodons whose remains fill this amphitheatre. But if you ask me how he came there, how those strata on which he lay slipped down into this enormous hollow in the globe, I confess I cannot answer that question. No doubt in the post-tertiary period considerable commotions were ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... from personal knowledge, of the splendour of the city, as regards both its public edifices and its site, sloping gradually up from the banks of the River Wei, so as to exhibit its walls and palaces at one view like the interior of an amphitheatre. West of the city was a sort of Water Park, enclosed by a wall 30 li in circumference, full of lakes, tanks, and canals from the Wei, and within this park were seven fine palaces and a variety of theatres and other places of public diversion. To the south-east of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... purple outlines of the Alps. Beautiful Verona has a broad and rushing river of deep blue sweeping through the heart of it; it has an environment of cliffs, where grow the cypress and the olive, and a far-away view of the St. Gothard Alps. Rome, from its amphitheatre of hills, has views of unrivalled loveliness, and its broad Campagna is a picture in itself. Paris even has its charms of external nature, as have all the cities of the New World; but London is grim and gray, and bare and desolate, wrapped in eternal fog. To be sure, it has the Thames, and there ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... just visible the bold rocky point of Porto Fino; to the right extended westward a grand line of picturesque coast, including the headlands of Capo di Noli and Capo delle Mele; and near at hand lay the harbor of Genoa, with its shipping, its amphitheatre of palaces, surmounted by the high ground above, and crowned by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... these colours lurked the unconquerable chalk, and wherever the soil was poor it emerged. The grassy track, so gay with scabious and bedstraw, was snow-white at the bottom of its ruts. A dazzling amphitheatre gleamed in the flank of a distant hill, cut for some Olympian audience. And here and there, whatever the surface crop, the earth broke into little embankments, little ditches, little mounds: there had been no lack of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... of Southwell, in the county of Nottingham, is situated in the midst of an amphitheatre of well-wooded hills; the soil is rich, and the air, from the vicinity of the River Trent, is remarkably pure. It is fourteen miles north-east of Nottingham, about as many south-east of Mansfield, and eight south-west from Newark; the River Greet, famous for red trout, runs ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... which, and indeed eminent over all, are the Baths of Titus. Then, as you will conjecture, the eye takes in the Palatine and Capitol hills, catching, just beyond the last, the swelling dome of the Pantheon, which seems rather to rise out of, and crown, the Flavian Amphitheatre, than its own massy walls. Then, far in the horizon, we just discern the distant summits of the Appenines, broken by ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... his people to bring a number of straw-roofs from his station, to form a protection for the officers. The men quickly housed themselves in temporary huts, and the cattle were placed for the night in a regular amphitheatre of rock, which ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... magnificence of her old streets has this name come to her, but in part from the character of her people, and in great measure, too, from her brave position there between the mountains and the sea, a city of precious stone in an amphitheatre of noble hills. Nothing that Genoa could build, steal, or win could even be so splendid as that birthright of hers, her place among the mountains on the shores of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... wild and desolate conventual garden—once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... death to visit this spot except upon the occasion of the laying to rest of one of the royal blood, or to offer the annual sacrifice to the spirits of the dead. Even beneath the bright moon that shone upon it the place seemed terrible. Here in the bosom of the hills was an amphitheatre, surrounded by walls of rock varying from five hundred to a thousand feet in height. In this amphitheatre grew great mimosa thorns, and above them towered pillars of granite, set there not by the hand of man but by nature. It would seem that the Amasuka, ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... was like a temple in its sense of space and height and clear air, but its proportions did not impress one, and indeed one could not remember its boundaries as one does not consider the boundaries of a grove. It was amphitheatre-shaped, and about it ran a splendid colonnade, in the niches of whose cornices were beautiful grotesques—but Yaque seemed to be a land whose very grotesques had all the dignity of the ultimate instead of crying for the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... sank lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance and observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it and the range of mountain above mountain by which ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... seemed complete or perfect unless one had seen the sun set. Thus, almost every evening, we used to spend an hour or more, pacing up and down, or sitting in that little hollow under the brow of the Flat, where, as from the topmost seat of a natural amphitheatre, one could see Rose Cottage and the old well-head where the cattle drank; our own green garden-gate, the dark mass of the beech-wood, and far away beyond that Nunneley Hill, where the sun ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... pageant wound through the dejected street, pursuing neither method nor set route, till it came to a deserted slag-heap, selected for the speech-making. Slowly the motley regiment swung into that grim amphitheatre under the pale sunshine; and, as I watched, a strange fancy visited my brain. I seemed to see over every ragged head of those marching women a little yellow flame, a thin, flickering gleam, spiring upward and blown back by the wind. A trick of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... valley of the short and busy Powow River, beginning with the southwestern extremity of the amphitheatre, are: Bailey's, on the declivity of which, overlooking the Merrimac, is the site of Goody Martin's cottage, the scene of the poem of "Mabel Martin;" next is the ridge on which is the Union Cemetery where Whittier is buried; ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... situated on the river Finn, in a fertile valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of green hills, beyond which may in some direction be seen the more imposing summits of the Donegal highlands. The walk to Meenglas, Lord Lifford's Irish residence, would be considered of wonderful beauty if its extensive views were visible anywhere near ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... glorious Surrey hills, thinking of nothing but gorse and skylarks, when I came out on a vast circle of land, and over me lifted a vast, voiceless structure, tier above tier of seats, as huge as a Roman amphitheatre and as empty as a new letter-rack. A bird sailed in heaven over it. It was the Grand Stand at Epsom. And I felt that no one would ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... puzzled myself over a fancied resemblance of Mr. Hamilton to some picture I had seen. All at once I remembered the subject. It was the picture of a young Christian sleeping peacefully just before he was called to his combat with wild beasts in the amphitheatre: the keeper was even then opening the door: the lions were waiting for their prey. The face was boyish, but still Mr. Hamilton reminded me of him. And there was a picture of St. Augustine sitting with his mother Monica, that reminded me of Mr. Hamilton ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... little amphitheatre in the barren hills. Green grass, actual green grass, covered its floor and wild oats grew on the hillsides in fair plentitude. From the further end of the enclosed oasis arose clouds of steam which they afterwards learned came from boiling hot ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... small detail, but it is really an important auxiliary in the teaching by demonstration with specimens for which this room was peculiarly intended. The ordinary lectures of Professor Virchow were held in a neighboring amphitheatre of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the waters like flying fish, and the Frank garb ill replaces the graceful Arab dress. The Paris-like block of houses ill replaces the graceful Moorish architecture, undisturbed when the Calypso sailed into the harbour, and the amphitheatre-like city rose before her, in successive terraces of dazzling white, interspersed with palms and other trees here and there, with mosques and minarets rising above them, and with a crown of strong fortifications. The harbour itself was protected by a strongly-fortified ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sea, as flat as a band of paint, the unnaturally bright moonlight, the two chief figures going through a love quarrel in the foreground, and she herself calmly seated in the shadow, as in the darkened amphitheatre, and looking on unseen ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... weapons, the excited and respectful hum of eager voices. Before sunset he would take leave with ceremony, and go off sitting under a red umbrella, and escorted by a score of boats. All the paddles flashed and struck together with a mighty splash that reverberated loudly in the monumental amphitheatre of hills. A broad stream of dazzling foam trailed behind the flotilla. The canoes appeared very black on the white hiss of water; turbaned heads swayed back and forth; a multitude of arms in crimson and yellow rose and fell with one movement; the spearmen ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... on a sandy plain beside a little river near the modern Ventimiglia. An amphitheatre of rock surrounded them, and, far beyond, the valley was crowned by the ancient snow of an Alpine peak. The tribes of either party gathered in the rocky amphitheatre, and breathlessly watched the issue of the battle. Each warrior was equipped with a shield, a sheaf of spears, and a heavy, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... next, because it is not reason, but feeling; and when once it is irritated, it is not apt to confine itself within its proper limits. If it becomes, not difference in opinion upon law, but a trial of spirit between parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple of justice, but the amphitheatre for gladiators. No—God forbid! Juries ought to take their law from the bench only; but it is our business that they should hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to the principles of the Constitution. The jury are to hear the judge, the judge ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... lake, descended to the deep bed of another stream, crossed it by a series of stepping-stones, ascended to some height on the opposite side, and followed upwards the line of the stream, till the banks opened into a spacious amphitheatre, where stood, in its fields and meadows, the farmhouse ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... in the middle of a vast plain around three sides of which rose a grand amphitheatre of mountains. The nearest of them was some thirty miles away, yet ordinarily, in this clear, dry, Western atmosphere they were always imminent. Over their eastern ramparts the sun rose to look upon a chill and frosty world; behind their western ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... showed that it was carefully shored internally with driftwood and bamboos, and over the mouth a wooden drip-board projected, like the peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet. No sign of life was visible in these tunnels, but a most sickening stench pervaded the entire amphitheatre—a stench fouler than any which my wanderings in Indian villages have ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Iphigenie. Wrote. Oct. 7th.—Milner. Wraxall. A dinner-party. Wrote out a sketch for an essay on Justification. Singing, whist, shooting. Copied a paper for my father. 12th.—A day on the hill for roe. 14 guns. [To Liverpool for public dinner at the Amphitheatre.] 18th.—Most kindly heard. Canning's debut everything that could be desired. I thought I spoke 35 minutes, but afterwards found it was 55. Read Marco Visconti. 21st.—Operative dinner at Amphitheatre. Spoke perhaps 16 or 18 minutes. 28th.—Haddo ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... From the amphitheatre of the enclosing hills thirty thousand voices rose in one thundering chorus of "Jae, jae, Omkar!" and, "To Omkar ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... fables of the poets. Marc Antony, at one of his breakfasts with Cleopatra, had eight wild boars roasted whole; and though the Romans do not appear to have been addicted to hunting, wild-boar fights formed part of their gladiatorial shows in the amphitheatre. In France, Germany, and Britain, from the earliest time, the boar-hunt formed one of the most exciting of sports; but it was only in this country that the sport was conducted without dogs,—a real hand-to-hand ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... close of the thirteenth century, Enrico Scrovegno, a noble Paduan, purchased, in his native city, the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre or Arena from the family of the Delesmanini, to whom those remains had been granted by the Emperor Henry III. of Germany in 1090. For the power of making this purchase, Scrovegno was in all probability indebted to his father, Reginald, who, for his avarice, is placed by Dante in the seventh circle ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... hostile forces was a remarkable one. They were separated by the vast gorge that opens upon the St. Lawrence; an amphitheatre of lofty precipices, their brows crested with forests, and their steep brown sides scantily feathered with stunted birch and fir. Into this abyss leaps the Montmorenci with one headlong plunge of nearly two hundred and fifty feet, a living column ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... There was a rush to see some horrible human debris found in it. I was contented with the word-pictures of enthusiastic gunners, and didn't go myself. From the brow, a glorious view opened out. The nek, flanked by its frowning crags, opened out into an immense amphitheatre of rich undulating pasture-land, with a white farm here and there, half hidden in trees. Beyond rose tier on tier of hills, ending on the skyline in snow-clad mountain peaks. You could just conjecture that a "happy valley" ran right and left. After ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... her favourite spot, a spur of rock overhanging a green nook in the broken ugliness of the cliffs, sheltered from the sea by an encircling arm of rock, and reached by a steep path down the cliff. Around her towered an amphitheatre of vast cliffs in which the sea sang loud music to the spirit of solitude. In the moaning waters in front of the cove a jagged rock rose from the incomparable green, tilted backward and fantastically shaped, like a great grave face watching ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... embarrassment, proclaim the favored object of their evening's ride. Crowds of foot-passengers sauntered along the road-side, looking at the rich display made by the aristocracy and nobility of the republic. At the entrance of the Paseo, in front of the amphitheatre, where on Sundays bulls are tortured to death as a popular amusement, is the equestrian bronze statue of Carlos IV., the work of Tolsa, who, as artist and architect, has won for himself undying renown at Mexico. The garden of Tolsa, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... choral societies in rows, dressed in black with red caps, their standard-bearer in front, grave, important, his teeth clinched, holding high his carved staff; farther down still, on a vast circular space now arranged as an amphitheatre, were the black bulls, and the herdsmen from Camargue seated on their long-haired white horses, their high boots over their knees, at their wrists an uplifted spear; then more flags, helmets, bayonets, and decorations right down to the triumphal arch at the gates; as far as the eye ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... is irritated, it is not apt to confine itself within its proper limits. If it becomes not difference in opinion upon law, but a trial of spirit between parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple of justice, but the amphitheatre for gladiators. No,—God forbid! Juries ought to take their law from the bench only; but it is our business that they should hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to the principles of the Constitution. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... encouraged him to talk. Presently Mr. Eager gave a signal for the carriages to stop and marshalled the party for their ramble on the hill. A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full of terraced steps and misty olives, now lay between them and the heights of Fiesole, and the road, still following its curve, was about to sweep on to a promontory which stood out in the plain. It was this promontory, uncultivated, wet, covered with bushes ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... situated, like Port Lyttelton, on rising undulating ground, encompassed by an amphitheatre of hills which, to the south, extended to a point or promontory and gave shelter to the little harbour. Also, like Lyttelton, the latter was an open roadstead, but on the town front was bounded by a steep bank from which ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... which, despite its name, fell on the 1st of June, turned out hardly a more successful exhibition. Napoleon, his brothers, and the great civil functionaries, appeared in theatric dresses, in the midst of an enormous amphitheatre, where the deputies, sent from the departments to swear allegiance to the Emperor and the "additional act," were almost lost in the military among whom the eagles were to be distributed. The enthusiasm was ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... mountain-cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and rapid like a torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes, mixed with fragments of burning stone! Over the crushing vines, over the desolate streets, over the amphitheatre itself,—far and wide,—with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... of the mountain where the Marechai de Gie had pitched his tents, the king beheld both his own camp and the enemy's. Both were on the right bank of the Taro, and were at either end of a semicircular chain of hills resembling an amphitheatre; and the space between the two camps, a vast basin filled during the winter floods by the torrent which now only marked its boundary, was nothing but a plain covered with gravel, where all manoeuvres must be equally difficult for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had just surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down, but where I had never before beheld a human figure. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Argos, for her deliverer. The pride of Corinth, again rising from her ruins with the honors of a Roman colony, exacted a tribute from the adjacent republics, for the purpose of defraying the games of the Isthmus, which were celebrated in the amphitheatre with the hunting of bears and panthers. From this tribute the cities of Elis, of Delphi, and of Argos, which had inherited from their remote ancestors the sacred office of perpetuating the Olympic, the Pythian, and the Nemean games, claimed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... whirled through naked space, whirled up the moon for him, and he pressed on at a good speed. A wind from Arabia wandering cooled his face. And at last, over the brow of Toft End, he saw suddenly the Five Towns a- twinkle on their little hills down in the vast amphitheatre. And one of those lamps was Constance's lamp—one, somewhere. He lived, then. He entered into the shadow of nature. The mysteries made him solemn. What! A boneshaker, his ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... is choked with observations. Only to prevent us from being submerged by chaos, nature and society between them have arranged a system of classification which is simplicity itself; stalls, boxes, amphitheatre, gallery. The moulds are filled nightly. There is no need to distinguish details. But the difficulty remains—one has to choose. For though I have no wish to be Queen of England or only for a moment—I would ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... expected to take, hold, and fortify. Pontoons, with a full supply of balks and chesses, had been prepared for the bridge over the Tennessee, and all things had been prearranged with a foresight that elicited my admiration. From the hills we looked down on the amphitheatre of Chattanooga as on a map, and nothing remained but for me to put my troops in the desired position. The plan contemplated that, in addition to crossing the Tennessee River and making a lodgment on the terminus of Missionary Ridge, I should demonstrate against Lookout Mountain, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked over the river at their neighbours. Above them, on both shores, the land fell, and at the distance of about eight miles curved round to the east in an amphitheatre of low hills. There the river formed a sort of inland sea, and from thence swept down queen-like between its royal handmaids on the right hand and on the left, till it reached the promontory point. This low distant shore and water was now masked with ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... time, been concealed from view by the mountain itself, burst upon them, and a few minutes placed them on the summit. They stood within the crater, or what has been such, for, at present, the mountain discharges itself through a lofty cone which rises on one side of this strange, black, sulphurous amphitheatre. All around them, however, the volcanic vapours were steaming up from innumerable crevices, and the hot lava pouring out, moving slowly, with a dull red heat. No need here of further clothing. Their feet were burning where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... feet long, eighty feet wide and twenty-five feet high. Throughout the whole central length the floor was quite level, and on each side of this central aisle the sides rose in tiers, like the seats of an amphitheatre. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... their entrance — I suppose after some chairmen shall have been maimed, and a few lives lost by those accidents, the corporation will think, in earnest, about providing a more safe and commodious passage. The Circus is a pretty bauble, contrived for shew, and looks like Vespasian's amphitheatre turned outside in. If we consider it in point of magnificence, the great number of small doors belonging to the separate houses, the inconsiderable height of the different orders, the affected ornaments ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... it moves interminably along the boulevard, a blue haze of fine dust and burnt gasoline rises into the sunshine like the haze over the passages to an amphitheatre toward which a crowd is trampling; and through this the multitudes seem to go as actors passing to their cues. Your place at one of the little tables upon the sidewalk is that of a wayside spectator: and as the performers go by, in some measure acting or looking their parts already, as if in ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... go snaring moonbeams as dream to crush such airy beings. Ever and again a gossamer company would soar like a spider on his magic thread, and float with a whisper of remotest music past my ear; or some bolder pigmy, out of the leaves we brushed in passing, skip suddenly across the rusty amphitheatre of my saddle into ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... the dogs." Another new and handsome caffe had been built in the Piazza Carlo Felice, between the old one of the Bei Arti and the Strada Carlo Felice; and the Teatro Diurno had now stone galleries and seats, like an ancient amphitheatre. "The beastly gate and guardhouse in the Albaro road are still in their dear old beastly state; and the whole of that road is just as it was. The man without legs is still in the Strada Nuova; but the beggars in general are ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Heaven, angels and saints, are made manifest in the Rose which spreads out like a vast amphitheatre the lowest circle of which is wider than the circumference of the sun. Above the center of the Rose as the Point of light, is God in all His glory and love, adored in blissful raptures by the saints who form the petals of the heavenly flower. Angels with faces aflame, in white garments ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... and, after fiddling and dancing to his quaking audience for an hour, dismissed them to their homes uninjured. The air seems to keep a sort of spiritual scent or trail of these old deeds, and to make them more real here than elsewhere. The old horrors of the Amphitheatre can be made real to any person of imaginative mind in the Colosseum. He has but to lend himself to the contagion of the place, and he will see the circle of ten thousand eager eyes thirsting for his blood, fill up the ruined benches and arched tiers as of yore, and hear the savage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... daggers and dungeons, wild beasts and serpents, and the rack, did their worst. He threw into the sea, Clemens, the venerable bishop of Rome, with an anchor about his neck; and tossed to the famished lions in the amphitheatre the aged Ignatius. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... prominently in the foreground. After a noble reply by Captain de Camp, of the Hon. East India Company's service, from Madras, and much applause from the diners, they ascend, to join the ladies; forming, round the drawing-room-fire, a vast amphitheatre, in the centre of which, gladiatorial children contend for nuts and oranges—Captain de Camp filling the post of honour,—making himself at home in Mr. Brown's easy chair and slippers. Mr. Wellesley drags in ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... at it from the wide end of the horse-shoe, one sees, a little to the right, in the face of the cliff, a romantic cave which is really an abandoned quarry, and towards the left a little hill, commanding a view of the road, which skirts the amphitheatre on the left, maintaining its higher level on embankments and on an occasional stone arch. On the hill, watching the road, is a man who is either a Spaniard or a Scotchman. Probably a Spaniard, since he wears the dress of a Spanish goatherd and seems at home ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... August 6th, the line of coast is broken by Cape Conway, which, at its south-eastern extremity, rises to a height of 1,637 feet. A chain of peaks extends northwards from Cape Conway to Mount Drysander, and forms a fine amphitheatre of hills on the western side of the Whitsunday Passage. On the eastern side is a group of islands, of which Whitsunday, the largest, is eleven miles long, while Whitsunday Passage is twenty miles in length. At its narrowest ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of piles over the Rhine executed by the engineers of Caesar, and even two semicircular stages of boards arranged for being pushed together, and employed first separately as two theatres and then jointly as an amphitheatre. The public exhibition of foreign natural curiosities at the popular festivals was not unusual; and the descriptions of remarkable animals, which Caesar has embodied in the reports of his campaigns, show ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was the shape, in manner of compass, Full of degrees, the height of sixty pas" The building was a circle of steps or benches, as in the ancient amphitheatre. Either the building was sixty paces high; or, more probably, there were sixty of the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... village of the Limboos, Taptiatok, is large, and occupies a remarkable amphitheatre, apparently a lake-bed, in the course of the Tambur. After proceeding some way through a narrow gorge, along which the river foamed and roared, the sudden opening out of this broad, oval expanse, more than a mile long, was very striking: the mountains ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... decorated the front of the house, which bore the inscription, "His fame is every where, and his heart is here." Young girls dressed in white, and wreaths of flowers on their heads, covered the steps of an amphitheatre erected before the house. Madame de Villette, to whom Voltaire had been a second father, in all the splendour of her beauty, and the pathos of her tears, advanced and placed the noblest of all his wreaths, the wreath of filial affection, on the head ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... that ages agone had echoed with the proud tread of the elite of barbaric old Rome! Conducted by a guide belonging to the Hotel de France, they set out and were soon standing among the ruins of the great amphitheatre. There they were seized upon by a special cicerone, who seemed to consider the huge wreck of Flavius Vespasian's monument as his particular property and who could not be shaken off. He joined forces with the hotel guide and the twain, jabbering ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... the Amphitheatre, a lofty temporary enclosure with rows of seats running round it, I fell into the crowd, and made my way across the common at the extremity of which the building in ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which the scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans; right and left, immense virgin forests full of those subdued and distant harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me, a prospect of twenty leagues marvelously enhanced by the extreme transparency of the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... observer, and the terrific contest only afforded him a spectacle for the amusement of his official leisure. He sits as if two gladiators were crossing swords for his recreation. The cabinet seems to be little better than a box in an amphitheatre, from whence his majesty's ministers may survey the business of blood. There are three parties concerned, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the government: the Catholics advance upon the one hand; the Protestants upon the other; and the government, by whom all ought to be controlled, looks ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... horror that words cannot express I turn from this scene—in which, though latent at this moment, there lie all the horrors of the Roman amphitheatre, and wars of the legions of Scipio, Marius, Tiberius, Caesar, Nero, Severus, Decius, Valerianus, of Alaric, Attila, and Genghis Khan—to the dawn of liberty, peace, and enlightenment on the American continent, where, though old forms and institutions may survive, their interior nature ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... projectile hung right over the amphitheatre. The circumference of Copernicus formed an almost perfect circle, and its steep ramparts were clearly defined. A second circular inclosure could even be distinguished. A grey plain of wild aspect spread around on which ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... of an army, so near yet so powerless to help, the Guides commenced their retirement. With the great mountains as an amphitheatre the drama began to unfold itself before the gaze of waiting thousands. At first so far away were they, so few, so scattered, and clad to match the colour of the hills, that only the strongest glasses could make out the position of the Guides; but apparent to the naked eye of all was ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... that directly affects this history. The rest contains some scandal concerning greater personages about the Court, a great share of abuse of the Elector of Hanover, and a pretty description of a boxing-match at Mr. Figg's amphitheatre in Oxford Road, where John Wells, of Edmund Bury (as by the papers may be seen), master of the noble science of self-defence, did engage with Edward Sutton, of Gravesend, master of the said science; and the ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... winds the valley of the Soane, with low-wooded hills on its opposite bank, and a higher range, connected with that of Behar, in the distance. To the right, the hills sweep round, forming an immense and beautifully wooded amphitheatre, about four miles deep, bounded with a continuation of the escarpment. At the foot of the crowned spur is the village of Akbarpore, where we encamped in a Mango tope;* [On the 24th of June, 1848, the Soane ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... eight men set to work; and ten minutes later the grave was dug, greatly to the astonishment of the whole army, which had gathered in a semicircle on the rising slopes of the two hills which bordered the road, standing as if on the steps of a huge amphitheatre. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... below are displayed the varied hues of the brand-new, spotlessly clean, little town, with its murmuring, health-giving springs and its babbling, many-tongued throng. Yonder, further away, the mountains tower up in an amphitheatre, ever bluer and mistier; and, at the edge of the horizon, stretches the silver chain of snow-clad summits, beginning with Kazbek and ending with two-peaked Elbruz... Blithe is life in such a land! A feeling akin to rapture is diffused ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... The Flavian Amphitheatre's gaping wounds, The Baths of Caracalla's roofless walls, The Forum's multitude of ruined mounds, The royal ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... mountains of Tennessee, when for half an hour every gorgeous tint of red and yellow was lavishly flaunted—and then the whole pride and splendour of it wiped out at once by a wind that sprang up; the encircling and towering reds and pinks of a gigantic amphitheatre of rock in the Dolomites; a patch of flowers right against the snow in the high Rockies, so intensely blue that it seemed the whole vault of heaven could be tinctured with the pigment that one petal would distil. And, more inspiring than them all, there came the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... walls; and the town was accessible only by two wooden bridges. A forest overspread the northern side of the Seine, but on the south, the ground, which now bears the name of the University, was insensibly covered with houses, and adorned with a palace and amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct, and a field of Mars for the exercise of the Roman troops. The severity of the climate was tempered by the neighborhood of the ocean; and with some precautions, which experience had taught, the vine and fig-tree were successfully cultivated. But in remarkable winters, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... long wooden edifice from the center of which four beams arose, surmounted by a little belfry in which was hung a bell; the church overlooked the village, and was in turn overshadowed by immense cliffs, covered by rich vegetation, which made an amphitheatre of ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... heights, which, particularly near the sea, was so steep as to be almost inaccessible, continued for about two miles along the south bank, and then broke away from the river (making a deep curve round an amphitheatre, as it were, about a mile wide), and then returned to the stream again, but with gentler slopes, and features of a much less abrupt character." The road crossed the river by a wooden bridge, and ran through the centre of ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... in Rome is the Colosseum (Plate XXVI.), an amphitheatre which was built by the two Emperors, Vespasian and Titus, and which was finished eighty years after the birth of Christ. The outside walls are nearly 160 feet high. The tiers of benches, which could accommodate 85,000 spectators, were divided into four ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... merchandise was still carried in sailing ships or Chinese junks. How astounding the progress that has marked the last half-century! The streets that meandered, as it were, among the valleys, or fringed the water's edge, now girdle the hills like rows of seats in a huge amphitheatre; a railway lifts the passenger to the mountain top; and other railways whirl him from hill to hill along the dizzy height. I Trade, too, has multiplied twenty fold. In a commercial report for the year ending June, 1905, it is stated that in amount ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hill-tops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one there. Two little rivers, or rather, two swamps, emptied out into this pond, as you might call it; and the foliage round that part of the shore had a kind of poisonous brightness. From the ship we could see nothing of the house ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hurl her javelin at a ferocious tiger, who has fastened on the neck and shoulders of her frightened horse. Here is also a figure of Mazeppa on the wild horse, which is extremely well made, and, perhaps, reminds those of my little friends who have seen the play of "Mazeppa" at Astley's Amphitheatre, of the scenes where poor Mazeppa was carried along on the terrible horse's back, through brambles, thorns, and crashing boughs. But what have we here? A grim-looking growling bronze lion, from Bavaria, who glares at us as if he would be only too glad to eat us up if he were alive, and does ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... appearance of some of the masses is in consequence most singular. Pernety [8] has devoted several pages to the description of a Hill of Ruins, the successive strata of which he has justly compared to the seats of an amphitheatre. The quartz rock must have been quite pasty when it underwent such remarkable flexures without being shattered into fragments. As the quartz insensibly passes into the sandstone, it seems probable that the former owes its ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... by lord B—-, in the House,—not Mr. Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages, could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did now. "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more—ten more—a century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy water, but don't ask that: ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its unique collection of fish and marine animals; it is one of the finest in the world. Near by is the race course and amphitheatre. What is still better is the winding road through ferns and flowers that leads to the crater ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... was a great thing, and Pte. Finch, who was, poor chap, killed and buried in this spot the following March, knocked out all comers in the divisional heavyweight. Some of these events took place in a huge crater, which had been transformed into a sort of Roman amphitheatre, produced by the blowing up of a large and deep German heavy ammunition dump. In the divisional sports also, the officers proved that they were at least the most able-bodied in the 42nd by ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... way becomes so difficult that you must leave the motor and continue on foot. The Matopos are a wild and desolate range. It is not until you are well beyond the granite outposts that there bursts upon you an immense open area,—a sort of amphitheatre in which the Druids might have held their weird ritual. Directly ahead you see a battlement of boulders projected by some immemorial upheaval. Intrenched between them is the spot where Rhodes rests and which is marked by a brass plate bearing the words: ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... and then, with a touch that seemed as light as if he were merely throwing his hand into the air unpurposing, he made a push at the breast of Professor Flick, and Professor Flick went down as the bull goes down in the amphitheatre of Madrid or Seville when the hand of the practised swordsman has touched him with the point in just the place where he lived. Professor Flick, as he called himself, was dead, and the whole plot was ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Wuchai is steady pulling. Once in an opening in the hill we passed along and then ascended an exceedingly steep spur on one side of a narrow and very deep natural amphitheatre, formed by surrounding mountains. We then came to a lagoon, and eventually the brow of the hill was reached. Thus the Wuchai Valley is arrived at, where, owing to a collection of water, the road is ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the sides of many of the hills to be of a lively green. But I now found that this was occasioned by a single plant, which, with the other natural productions, shall be described in another place. Before I returned to my ship, I ascended the first ridge of rocks, which rise in a kind of amphitheatre above one another. I was in hopes, by this means, of obtaining a view of the country; but before I reached the top, there came on so thick a fog, that I could hardly find my way down again. In the evening, we hauled the seine ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... through the rain, I saw huge circular structures that I could make nothing of, until, entering the larger of the two, I stopped in surprise, for I looked down into a huge, circular amphitheatre, with circular rows of seats descending tier below tier to a circular floor of sand, very firm ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... with low banks and two islands (Walker's Islands) showing just off its entrance. Higher up, it flows through a mountainous country, and at Samba, its furthest navigable point, there is a wonderfully beautiful waterfall, the whole river coming down over a low cliff, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains. It takes the Eclaireur two days steaming from the mouth of the Ngunie to Samba, when she can get up; but now, in the height of the long dry season neither she nor the Move can go because of the sandbanks; so Samba is cut off until next ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... projecting from the vallum, to have been intended for the accommodation of sitting, to the spectators who resorted hither to the public festivals; and adds he, what a grand and imposing spectacle must so extensive and elevated an amphitheatre have presented, the vallum and its declivities lined with spectators, whilst the hallowed area was preserved for the officiating Druids, and perhaps the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... cab. In the heavening he gives up the tigger, and comes out as the paige, in a fansy jackit, with too rose of guilt buttings, wich makes him the perfeck immidge of Mr. Widdycomb, that ice sea in the serkul at Hashley's Amphitheatre. The paige's bisiness is to weight on the ladies, wich is naterally light work; and being such a small chap, you may suppose they can never make enuff of him. These are all the upper servants, of coarse, I shan't lower myself by notusing the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... could not fail to awaken a train of reflections in a mind which had early been accustomed to contemplate with delight the eventful histories and agreeable fictions of this Eastern world. It gave me inexpressible pleasure to find myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre, almost encircled by the vast regions of Asia, which has ever been esteemed the nurse of sciences, the inventress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... sound. At length an answer reaches his ears. The snapping of the branches is resumed; and presently the moose is seen stalking into the middle of the moonlit "barren." Our weapons are ready; and as the magnificent animal stands looking eagerly around in the woodland amphitheatre, a rifle ball, laden with death, brings him to ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... been more read in England than most historical works; and the Mexico of Montezuma has a well-defined idea attached to it. The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the straight streets of low ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor |
