"Obelisk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sharply, and he only laughed.... But it's no rumor that he disappeared. He's gone, all right, and nobody knows where he went, and nobody seems to want to know. Officially they said he was drowned out swimming—or lost in a sandstorm riding in the desert—or spiked on top of an obelisk or something equally reasonable—but, privately, people say other things.... No international law intrudes into the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... but it has been broken into three pieces, some say by thunder. Put together, it measures about 67 feet in length, and is 16 feet in diameter. The wonder is how it was placed there, for it is little less than the obelisk of St. Peter's, which took 800 to 900 men and 70 horses nearly a year to raise,—a work which was the great triumph of Fontana the engineer. The menhir is estimated to be one-third the height of Notre Dame ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Mollwitz, and so closing his old career. Subscriptions did not take, in that April, 1841, nor in the following months or twelve-months: the zealous Doctor, therefore, indignantly drew his own purse; got a big Obelisk of Granite hewn ready, with suitable Inscription on it; carted his big Obelisk from the quarries of Strehlen; assembled the Country round it, on Mollwitz Field; and passionately discoursed and pleaded, That at least the Country should bring block-and-tackle, with proper framework, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at Alexandria remained in tantalising inactivity, in spite of the passage of the Gallipoli survivors southward through Alexandria. The East Lancashire details forgathered at Mustapha on the site of the famous victory of 1801, and near the pretty white obelisk that commemorates Sir Ralph Abercromby. The time was filled as best could be by route marches, history lectures and various competitions, until at last we had orders to rejoin the Division. We ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... minutes was a confused mixture of romantic association and solicitude about a right hotel. Our thoughts slid with prosaic facility from the lion on the top of the obelisk, so well remembered from Canaletti's pictures, to the sign of the Leone Bianca—a place of entertainment not far off, much recommended by Murray. I recalled the Byronian heroines sailing about in those gondolas, which we saw skimming away here and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... through a cemetery and pensively viewing the memorials of the departed, one question of deep interest often presses upon the mind and heart: Are these, whose names are here recorded on slab and obelisk, still alive and in the possession of conscious being, or ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... West Gate is an obelisk, set up in commemoration of a visitation of the Plague in 1669, when the country people brought their produce and left it outside the gate to be taken in by the city dwellers, who deposited the money for the goods in bowls of vinegar, whence it was abstracted by pincers, to avoid infection. ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... frequently been open to this duplicate interpretation, that is, the upright pillar. The Egyptian obelisk, the pillars of "Irmin" or of "Roland," set up now of wood, now of stone by the ancient Germans, the "red-painted great warpole" of the American Indians, the May-pole of Old England, the spire of sacred edifices, the staff planted on the grave, the terminus of the Roman landholders, all ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... had an important influence in preventing St. Leger from effecting a junction with Gen. Burgoyne, which would have materially assisted the latter's intention to cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. An obelisk on the hill to the left marks the spot where the ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... height, and sixty miles in circumference, and in which were one hundred gates of brass, must have had considerable architectural splendor. This account of Babylon, however, is probably exaggerated, especially as to the height of the walls. The tower of Belus, the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Obelisk of Semiramis were probably wonderful structures, certainly in size, which is one of the conditions of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... for the land is constantly under irrigation, and in course of time most of their heavy stone buildings have sunk into the soft ground and become completely covered by deposits of mud. So, as at Memphis, all that now remains of ancient Heliopolis, or On, is one granite obelisk, standing alone in the fields; while at other places, such as Tamai or Bete-el-Haga near Mansurah, practically nothing ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable existence,—had the great poplar cut down. It is so easy to say, "It is only a poplar!" and so much harder to replace its living cone than to build a granite obelisk! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... meaning by significant emblems.' With Clement agrees the Arabian, Abenephi, who uses this language: (This Arabic writing is preserved in the Vatican library, but not as yet printed: it is often quoted by Athanasius Kircher, in his Treatise on the Pamphilian Obelisk, whence these and other matters stated by us have been taken.) 'But there were four kinds of writing among the Egyptians: First, that in use among the populace and the ignorant; secondly, that in vogue among the philosophers and the educated; thirdly, one compounded ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... Colloredo fell. That erected by the Austrians is much more massive than its rival; and professes to commemorate rather the merits of the commander than the valour of the troops. The Prussian is a small, but singularly neat obelisk, and bears this inscription, "A grateful king and country honour the heroes who fell." There is a third in progress, of which the Emperor of Russia is the founder; but it is not yet completed. It ought to be the most magnificent of the whole; for assuredly the success of the day was ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... massive edifice, rising from a square, triangular, or other base, gradually diminishing in size till it ends in a point at the top. Like the obelisk, pyramids were sometimes erected to preserve the memory of singular events, or to transmit to future ages the glory and magnificence of princes; but oftener as funeral monuments and receptacles for ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... year, was in the deadliest throes of revolution. The dull thud of the guillotine, placed in front of the Tuileries, in the Place de la Revolution, which is now the Place de la Concorde, a little to the east of where the obelisk of Luxor now stands, could almost be heard by the quiet workers in the Museum, for sansculottism in its most aggressive and hideous forms raged not far from the Jardin des Plantes, then just on the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... and of every clime, abundantly over those green, central lawns; who scooped out hollows in fit places, and, setting great basins of marble in them, caused ever-gushing fountains to fill them to the brim; who reared up the immemorial obelisk out of the soil that had long hidden it; who placed pedestals along the borders of the avenues, and crowned them with busts of that multitude of worthies—statesmen, heroes, artists, men of letters and of song—whom the whole world claims ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the western cliff, but a fierce ray from its sinking orb, struck upon a storm-cloud that hung over us, and thence was reflected in a glow of angry light of which the focus or centre seemed to fall upon the summit of this strange and obelisk-like pinnacle of rock. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... cromlechs. Several of these attain to a great size. That to Locmariaquer (Morbihan), now unfortunately fallen and broken, measured over 60 feet in height, being thus not much shorter than the Egyptian obelisk which stands in the Place de la Concorde ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... here that the stone which Doctor Franklin erected, as above, became so dilapidated that in 1827, the citizens of Boston replaced it by a granite obelisk. The bodies repose in the old Granary ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... art to visit, or any of those priceless collections which now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the apostles' execution was indicated "by immemorial tradition" as between the two goals (inter duas metas) of Nero's Circus, which spot Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the worshippers on earth. Incense was not only "the perfume that deities," but also the means by which the deities and the dead could pass to their doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. The sun-god Re was represented in his temple not by an anthropoid statue, but by an obelisk,[99] the gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and "drew down" the dazzling rays of the sun, reflected from its polished surface, so that all the worshippers could see the manifestations of the god ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... educated and intelligent. She was also intensely bored with her home where, as if packed in a tight box, her individuality—of which she was very conscious—had no play. She strode like a grenadier, was strong and upright like an obelisk, had a beautiful face, a candid brow, pure eyes, and not a thought of her own in her head. He surrendered quickly to all those charms, and she appeared to him so unquestionably of the right sort that ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... he was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser III (860-825 B.C.), whose military activities extended over his whole reign. No fewer than thirty-two expeditions were recorded on his famous black obelisk. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... till now there is little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around it. His tomb stands near the house,—a spacious receptacle, an iron door at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H——. There is a stone fence round the monument. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... increased onward to the sea. He said that you could count fourteen towns and villages in the compass of that view, with the three conspicuous monuments accenting the different attractions of it: the tower of Memorial Hall at Harvard; the obelisk on Bunker Hill; and in the centre of the picture that bulk of Tufts College which he said he expected to greet his eyes the first thing when he opened them in the other world. But the prospect, though ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... small obelisk in the garden, erected by Pope to the memory of his mother, he placed the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Market-place of a large mining village in the Midlands. A man addressing a small gang of colliers from the foot of a stumpy memorial obelisk. Church bells heard. Churchgoers passing along the ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... latter.[67] They may be recognized at once by the band of inscription which passes across the figures and reproduces one text again and again (Fig. 4). To Assurnazirpal's son SHALMANESER III. belongs the obelisk of basalt which also stands in the British Museum. Its four faces are adorned with reliefs and with a running commentary engraved with ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... distance eastward from the centre of the churchyard, and nearly abreast of the obelisk commemorating Father Nash, stands somewhat apart the rugged tombstone of Scipio, an old slave. Aside from the graves of Fenimore Cooper and his father, the founder of the village, not forgetting the grave of Jenny York,[117] ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... temple does not face the river on the side we came in; to find it we have to scramble over heaps of rubbish to one end and there we see a great obelisk, a companion to the one which is now in the principal square of Paris, the Place de la Concorde, and we see also two huge buildings reared up on each side of the ancient entrance—these were called pylons and were always built in ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... reply, but went on: and taking one or two turns through the tortuous lanes in the neighbourhood, arrived at a spot where a small obelisk, of no very graceful form or great dimensions, planted in the middle of the road, marked the boundary of four distinct parishes. She paused there for a moment, and leaned upon the landmark, as if from fatigue, weakness, or agitation. The light was now dim, but it was not yet dark; ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the farmer and strode on through Harrington and Norton, and a little beyond this Robert took those that cared about it to see the obelisk on the site of the Battle of Evesham, at which Simon de Montfort was killed in 1265. And so they came through the orchards of plum-trees, on which the fruit was now forming, ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... of the claims of our friend to reverence was the strange line of hieroglyph he left on the tabula rasa sea-washed, in column like the message written down an obelisk; and that the most high priest had no key to the cipher only made it more curious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... sufficiently identified the Ground of the Battle with the contemporaneous Accounts of it. As I happened to know the Field well—the greater part of it then belonging to my Family—I knew that Carlyle and Arnold had been mistaken—misled in part by an Obelisk which my Father had set up as on the highest Ground of the Field, but which they mistook for the centre-ground of the Battle. This I told Carlyle, who was very reluctant to believe that he and Arnold could have been deceived—that he could accept no hearsay Tradition or Theory against the Evidence ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... were other objects which could be readily converted into bronze, and the destruction of which was irreparable. The immense hippodrome was crowded with statues. Egypt had furnished an obelisk for the centre, Delphi had given its commemoratory bronze of the victory of Plataea. Later works of pagan sculptors were there in abundance, while Christian artists had continued the traditions of their ancestors. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... night we encamped at the foot of an obelisk, in the centre of some noble ruins. It was a sacred spot with the Shoshones. Their traditions told them of another race, who had formerly lived there, and which had been driven by them to the south. It must have been ages back, for the hand of time, so lenient in this climate, and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... tree that stands up like an obelisk in the midst of the plain beyond the deserted Matabele village. I passed the low clumps of dry karroo-bushes by the rocky kopje. I passed the fork of the rubbly roads where I had parted from Hilda. At last, I reached the long, rolling ridge which looks down ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... sun illuminated it, and threw a rainbow from it a hundred feet long, upon the white and green dome of chestnut-trees near. When I was farther down the avenue, I had the dancing column of water, the obelisk, and the Arch of Triumph all in line, and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... encumbering mass of reports, letters, pamphlets and books, a man had cleared a space for himself where he was now seated, clutching his hair impatiently from time to time, as he endeavored to decipher a page of notes, compared to which the hieroglyphics on the obelisk of Luxor, would have been transparently intelligible. Just as the secretary's impatience was approaching desperation, the door opened and a young officer ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... emblematical pieces of sculpture, mixed with painting in a new style of composition. The central was a finely executed medallion of His Majesty, surrounded with a Glory, on each side of which was an alabaster obelisk, one exhibiting Gallic Liberty breaking the bonds of Despotism, and the other representing British Liberty in its present enjoyment." The terms in which the fourteen toasts were proposed breathed ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... filed along the Strada Felice till we arrived at the church of Santa Maria maggiore, a superb edifice, the third church in Rome in celebrity, and the second in magnificence. An immense Egyptian Obelisk stands before it. We then, turning a little to the right, made the best of our way to the Coliseum where we remained nearly two hours. I had figured to myself the grandest ideas of this stupendous building, but the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... describe it," said the sculptor; "but you enter on a large open space, in the centre of which stands an obelisk, which is a thousand ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Maximus. It was erected here by Pope Sixtus V, and it is nearly a hundred feet in height. It is formed of red granite, and while it has been broken in three places, the hieroglyphics are still legible. This obelisk was first erected in Egypt as a part of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, in a period preceding that of Rameses II. After the battle of Actium, Augustus transported it to Rome, and it was first ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... indescribable tumult, the fugitives succeeded in traversing, without being recognized, the broad central avenue of the garden of the Tuileries. Emerging by the gate of the Pont Tournant, they reached the foot of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. It was one o'clock in the afternoon; the duke had ordered the carriages to be ready for them there. But the mob, recognizing the carriages as belonging to the royal family, had dashed ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... cairn was not allowed to remain, there has lately been erected, within sight of the Castle of St. Andrews, a granite obelisk, to commemorate the names of the more eminent Scotish Martyrs. It bears ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... The Distich The Eight-line Stanza The Obelisk The Triumphal Arch The Beautiful Bridge The Gate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... across the inscription. Doubtless a few shillings would repair the damage; but may I suggest, Sir, that some worthier memorial is due to this pioneer of woman's higher activities? I have thought of a plain obelisk on Shakespeare's Cliff, a locality of which he was ever fond; or a small and inconspicuous lighthouse might, without complicating the navigation of this part of the Channel, serve to remind Englishmen ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a very uncomely obelisk on his battle-field of Denain near by, and General de Dampierre by a column in the public square of Anzin itself. Why should not Anzin set up a statue ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the proud cathedral Were the sparkling fountains playing; Through the spray the vivid rainbow Glitters o'er the granite basins. And the obelisk gigantic Of Rameses, King of Egypt, Looked upon the crowd of people, In his native tongue lamenting: "Most perplexing are these Romans! In the time of Nero hardly Did I comprehend their doings; Now still less I understand them. But this much I have ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... us into training for the grand coup. My friend pushed through the more frequented parts of Switzerland for Zermatt and the Matterhorn. He was much struck by the remarkable contrast of that stupendous obelisk of rock, piercing the clouds, with the vast, but still sublime, expanse of the high Fjelds of snow we had seen in Norway; and the remark applies generally to the grand distinctive features of the two countries. Descending ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... orientalis, as he named others the Do-darto, the Fagonne, the Bignonne, the Phelipee. These are compliments proper to be made by the botanists, not only to those of their own rank, but to the greatest persons; for a plant is a monument of a more durable nature than a medal or an obelisk; and yet, as a proof that even these vehicles are not always sufficient to transmit to futurity the name conjoined with them, the Nicotiana is now scarcely known by any other name ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... best point of vantage from which the visitor can get a good view of the cathedral is the summit of the Dane John, a lofty mound crowned by an obelisk; from this height we look across at the roof and towers of the cathedral rising above thickly clustering trees: from here also there is a fine view over the beautiful valley of the Stour in the direction of ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... The air is so limpid that from Galata one can see clearly every distant tree, as far as Kadi-Kioi. The whole of the immense profile of Stamboul stands out against the sky with such a clearness of line and rigor of color, that every minaret, obelisk, and cypress-tree can be counted, one by one, from Seraglio Point to the cemetery of Eyub. The Golden Horn and the Bosphorus assume a wonderful ultramarine color; the heavens, the color of amethyst in the East, are afire behind Stamboul, tinting the horizon with infinite lights of rose ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... quickly as possible; but the sun, rising just then above the horizon, turned him into stone, together with the arrow and Torge's hat, the huge pile being known as the Torghatten mountain. The people still point to an obelisk which they say is the stone arrow; to a hole in the mountain, 289 feet high and 88 feet wide, which they say is the aperture made by the arrow in its flight through the hat; and to the horseman on Senjen Island, apparently riding a colossal steed and drawing the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Lord Dalhousie laid the first stone of the beautiful obelisk overlooking what is now known as Dufferin Terrace, to commemorate the heroism of Wolfe and Montcalm, and bearing this ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... in a jiffy," replied the elastic Mr. Spriggs there ain't no obelisk a sportsman can't overcome"—and no sooner had he uttered these encouraging words, than he made a spring, and came 'close-legged' upon the opposite bank; unfortunately, however, he lost his balance, and fell plump upon a huge stinging nettle, which would ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... old stone coffin, together with a fragment of a curious monumental effigy, likewise of stone; but the most striking objects in the place, and deservedly ranked amongst the wonders of Whalley, were three remarkable obelisk-shaped crosses, set in a line upon pedestals, covered with singular devices in fretwork, and all three differing in size and design. Evidently of remotest antiquity, these crosses were traditionally assigned to Paullinus, who, according to the Venerable ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... were alight, and they cast reflections upon the still damp pavement about them. To either side, the trees of the Tuileries gardens and of the Cours la Reine and the Champs-Elysees lay in a solid black mass; in the middle, the obelisk rose slender and straight, its pointed top black against the sky; and beneath, the water of the Nereid fountains splashed and gurgled. Far beyond, the gay lights of the rue Royale shone in a yellow cluster; ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Cranbury, but happily the inhabitants of the city were more conservative than their corporation, and made such a demonstration that the bargain was annulled, and the Cross left in its proper place. He consoled himself with erecting a tall lath and plaster obelisk in its stead, which was regarded with admiration by the children of the parish for about sixty years, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... of velvet and Chinese silk—gathered in the court. They were kneeling with their backs towards him and the doorway, so that not one of them had noticed his approach. They were facing a small rough-hewn obelisk of stone which stood at the head of a low mound of earth at the far end of the court. Six of them were grouped in a sort of semi-circle, and the seventh, a man clad from head to foot in green robes, knelt a little in advance and alone. But from none of the seven nobles did the voice ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... shore in a costume that made them resemble a kind of mermaid, except that the lower half resembled that of a man rather than a fish. About two miles from Cofton was the village of Mamhead, with its obelisk built in 1742, one hundred feet high, on the top of a spur of the Great Haldon Hill. The rector of the church here at one time was William Johnson Temple, often mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson. He was ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... piazza itself, it had not yet, as the reader will understand from the foregoing explanation, either the fine colonnade of Bernini, or the dancing fountains, or that Egyptian obelisk which, according to Pliny, was set up by the Pharaoh at Heliopolis, and transferred to Rome by Caligula, who set it up in Nero's Circus, where it remained till 1586. Now, as Nero's Circus was situate ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and gloom. Such is thy kingdom's ruin, so severe The hard and bloody trial fate hath sent, Dazed is the eye, and terrified the ear; Dark grows the sun, and every wind is spent; Each stone a mournful obelisk doth rear, And every flower erects a monument; A grave seems every house, whence life is gone,— Each soldier is ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... with distinction and maintained their reputation right up to the end of the siege. Visitors to Mafeking may now see near the obelisk in front of the pretty town hall of the famous siege town, a five-pounder gun "captured by the Cape Police during the siege". This gun was seized by the coloured Sergeant Bell and two other subalterns of the "Cape Boys" contingent; their contingent ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... column, but chiefly on the lower side—the column sending out its diminished vertebrae to the extreme termination of the fin. All the forms testify of a remote antiquity. The figures on a Chinese vase or an Egyptian obelisk are scarce more unlike what now exists in nature than are the fossils of the Lower Old ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... lord of truth'; and these titles were those by {51} which the king was best known ever after. This devotion was not primitive, but began in the fourth dynasty, and was established by the fifth dynasty being called sons of Ra, and every later king having the title 'son of Ra' before his name. The obelisk was the emblem of Ra, and in the fifth dynasty a great obelisk temple was built in his honour at Abusir, followed also by others. Heliopolis was the centre of his worship, where Senusert I, in the ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... fortnight. My friend had formed some striking and original views regarding the theology represented by symbol on these ancient stones—at that time regarded as Runic, but now held to be rather of Celtic origin. In the centre of each obelisk, on the more important and strongly relieved side, there always occurs a large cross, rather of the Greek than of the Roman type, and usually elaborately wrought into a fretwork, composed of myriads of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the naked forces of the understanding, very small would the matters have been which, even with their best efforts applied in conjunction, they could have attempted or accomplished. Now (to pause while upon this example and look in it as in a glass) let us suppose that some vast obelisk were (for the decoration of a triumph or some such magnificence) to be removed from its place, and that men should set to work upon it with their naked hands; would not any sober spectator think them mad? And if they should ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... queer word fall visibly from the white man's lips. "Sofala," Captain Whalley repeated; and suddenly his heart failed him. He paused. The shores, the islets, the high ground, the low points, were dark: the horizon had grown somber; and across the eastern sweep of the shore the white obelisk, marking the landing-place of the telegraph-cable, stood like a pale ghost on the beach before the dark spread of uneven roofs, intermingled with palms, of the native ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... and conspicuous from its size and height, rises a mound of earth shaped into the semblance of an urn or vase, crusted thickly with bits of rock, moss, and pebbles, and overgrown with a tangle of tiny vines. Surmounting this picturesque pedestal is an obelisk of black-veined marble on a granite base, the whole rising some seven feet from the ground. On the polished surface of this memorial pillar is inscribed, in large black capitals, the following classic and touching tribute to the ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... sight of the monticule crowned by an obelisk; surmounting the vine-clad slopes, we also obtain a glimpse of its "Ormes de Sully," or group of magnificent elms, one of many in France supposed to have been planted by the great Sully. Since my first acquaintance with this neighbourhood, more than twenty years ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... An obelisk of gray Canadian granite now stands on this historic ground. Madame de la Peltrie did not remain more than two years in Ville-Marie, but returned to the convent at Quebec which she had left in a moment of caprice. Mdlle. Mance, who was Madame de Bullion's friend, remained at the head of the Hotel ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... sixty cubits by six, is irreconcileable with any theory of proportion suited to the human figure, and still more so with the canon of Assyrian art, as seen in their sculpture, and can apply only to an obelisk; (4) that Daniel has made honourable mention of himself; (5) that the position of the book in the third part of the Jewish canon, the Cethubim or Hagiographa, shows that it was ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... doubt, were intended to represent those of apes; for amongst the fragments were the remains of the body of a colossal ape, strongly resembling in outline and appearance one of the four monstrous animals which once stood in front of the obelisk of Luxor, and which, under the name of Cynocephali, were worshipped at Thebes. This fragment was ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... these remains is a ruin in the island of Bearnarey, in the Sound of Harris. It is evidently a chapel of the saint and is called Cill Aisaim. Near it once stood an obelisk about eight feet high, bearing sculptured symbols, and in comparatively recent years this was surrounded by heaps of coloured pebbles, coins, bone pins, and bronze needles, which were probably pilgrims offerings. The obelisk was broken up some years ago and its materials used for building, ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... towns, but by single dwellings; not by miles, but by rods. The poles of the great magnet that draws in all the iron tracks through the grooves of all the mountains must be near at hand, for here are crossings, and sudden stops, and screams of alarmed engines heard all around. The tall granite obelisk comes into view far away on the left, its bevelled cap-stone sharp against the sky; the lofty chimneys of Charlestown and East Cambridge flaunt their smoky banners up in the thin air; and now one fair bosom of the three-pilled city, with its dome-crowned summit, reveals ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unjustly!' He paused again, and slowly walked on. While deeply moved and conscious of the importance of the interview, I inwardly repeated every word he had said, in order to remember them as long as I lived. We had now reached the obelisk, near the gate of Sans- Souci. The king here gave me his left hand, and with his uplifted right hand he pointed at the obelisk. 'Look at it,' he said, loudly and solemnly; 'the obelisk is tall and slender, and yet it stands firm amid the most furious storms. It says to you: Ma force ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... that hand? The hand, I mean, pointing upward, on the top of a blunted obelisk. Yes. Well, that's what I do for a living—when I'm not thinking, or drinking, or prowling, or making love, or pretending I'm trying to be a sculptor without either the money or the morals for a model. See? And I do those hearts afire and those pensive angel guardians ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Calcutta in 1756—confining them in a narrow and noisome cell, which poisoned them with its malarious atmosphere, so that by morning only a few remained alive—is now part of a warehouse. But an obelisk stands at the entrance, inscribed with ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... element were seen modelled into a thousand quaint and grotesque patterns. Here a fountain, perfectly formed with Ionic and Doric columns, was reflecting a thousand prismatic hues from the diamond-like stalactites which had attached themselves to its crest. There a huge obelisk, which, if of stone, might have come from ancient Thebes, lay half buried beneath a pile of fleecy snow. Farther on we came to what might have been a Roman temple or vast hall in the palace of a Caesar, where many half-hidden pillars and monuments erected their tapering ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... buried in a hole pierced by a cannonball in the middle of the church of the Ursulines; and there he still rests. In 1827, when all bad feeling had subsided, Lord Dalhousie, the then English governor of Canada, ordered the erection at Quebec of an obelisk in marble bearing the names and busts of Wolfe and Montcalm, with this inscription: Mortem virtus communem, famam historia, monumentum posteritas dedit [Valor, history, and posterity assigned fellowship in death, fame, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items, Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription which he wrote for his tombstone—a modest obelisk on the grounds at Monticello. The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... busier parts of Rome, and crossing the Corso filled with painted and gilded coaches, and making his way through the many squares where the people gathered round the lemonade-booth near the fountain or the obelisk, through the tortuous black streets filled with the noise of the anvils and hammers of the locksmiths and nailors behind the Pantheon, made his way towards the palace, grand and prim in its architecture ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... rock in horizontal beds, quite rotten and shaly; but there are other causes of difference in impressiveness which I am endeavouring to analyze, but find considerable embarrassment in doing so. There seems no sufficient reason why an isolated obelisk, one-fourth higher than any of them, should not be at least as sublime as they in their dependent grouping; but it assuredly is not. For this reason, as well as because I have not found here the near studies of primitive rock I expected,—for to my great surprise, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Tour' in the Southern Counties of England and Wales,' pp. 153-5. The roads all over South Wales were equally bad down to the beginning of the present century. At Halfway, near Trecastle, in Breconshire, South Wales, a small obelisk is still to be seen, which was erected to commemorate the turn over and destruction of the mail coach over a steep of l30 feet; the driver ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... is the colossal temple of Luxor, looking as out of place now as the poor obelisk which Egypt gave us as a present, and which stands to-day in the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... mankind the oldest, the most technically perfect, the largest, and the most mysterious. Ages come and go, empires rise and fall, philosophies flourish and fail, and man seeks him out many inventions, but they stand silent under the bright Egyptian night, as fascinating as they are baffling. An obelisk is simply a pyramid, albeit the base has become a shaft, holding aloft the oldest emblems of solar faith—a Triangle mounted on a Square. When and why this figure became holy no one knows, save as we may conjecture ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of the former, and a battalion of garde mobile, preceded by a detachment of national guards, entered the Garden of the Tuileries, and advanced to the gate of the Place de la Concorde, a general, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, and escorted by a few lancers, taking his station close to the obelisk. In the meantime, the quays adjoining the palace were lined with dragoons. The presence of these troops, which nobody could account for, created much uneasiness, though in some groups a report circulated that the assembly was about to proclaim the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is a mine still very little worked, from which patient and cautious investigators may one day extract the most valuable literary treasures. The stone obelisks are but few, and are mostly in a fragmentary condition. One alone is perfect—the obelisk in black basalt, discovered by Mr. Layard at Nimrud, which has now for many years been in the British Museum. [PLATE XL., Fig. 1.] This monument is sculptured on each of its four sides, in part with writing and in part with bas-reliefs. It is about ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled, callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk—there he stood in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. A Jew surrounded by his millions will always be one of the finest spectacles which humanity can give. Robert Medal, our great actor, cannot rise to this height of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... immediate predecessors at Abusir. As now laid bare by the excavations of 1900, it is seen to consist of an artificial mound, with a great court in front to the eastward. On the mound was erected a truncated obelisk, the stone emblem of the Sun-god. The worshippers in the court below looked towards the Sun's stone erected upon its mound in the west, the quarter of the sun's setting; for the Sun-god of Heliopolis was primarily the setting sun, Tum-Ra, not Ra ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... obelisk," returned Mrs. Horton. "Come and look at it, dear. It is called 'Cleopatra's Needle,' and was brought all the way from Egypt. It is very, ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... which, we arrive in about as much time as it has taken us to reach them, at the Popolo Gate, and enter the Piazza, which no mortal wight would now care to traverse, who could avoid it. The owls—how cruel to place owls upon an obelisk dedicated to the sun—never blinked to a brighter flood of light in the streets of Thebes, than that which here streams on every object to-day. The Tazza's fountain, at its base, is a perfect cauldron, in which the glowing water bubbles up against, the sides, as if it were actually ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... did when he used to occupy the pulpit, which is the identical one from which he preached. A bas-relief in white marble by the American sculptor, Story, commemorating the work of Wyclif, has been placed in the church at a cost of more than ten thousand dollars, and just outside a tall granite obelisk has been erected in his honor. In cleaning the walls recently, it was discovered that under several coats of paint there were some remarkable frescoes which, being slowly uncovered, were found to represent scenes in the life of the great ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Champs Elysees, Tuileries and Rue de Rivoli. Numerous historical associations are connected with the place. The guillotine did much bloody work here during 1793-4-5; upwards of 2800 people perished by it. Foreign troops frequently bivouacked on the square when Paris was in their power. The Obelisk of Luxor, a Monolith or single block of reddish granite 76 feet high, was presented to Louis Phillipi by Mohamed Ali and erected in the centre of the Place. It adds very much to ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... ran with such wine instead of with water," cried the soldier, "and that I were as big as the colossus of Atnenophis, and that the biggest obelisk of Hatasu were my drinking vessel, and that I might drink as much as I would! But now—what have you to say of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... opposite me. It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair, and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body, which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottom of which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two bunches ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... sure will fell them to the Ground; Here Art to Nature join'd makes it compleat, And Pyramids and Trees together meet; Statues amidst the thickest Grove arise, And lofty Columns tow'ring to the Skies; Then next an Obelisk its Shade displays, And rustic Rockwork fills each empty Space; Each joins to make it noble, and excells Beaufets for Food, ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... streets, we can show nothing to compare with the magnificent array of the Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone stretching for five miles and presenting arms before the Tuileries. Think of the late Fleet Prison and Waithman's Obelisk, and of the Place de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone! "The finest site in Europe," as Trafalgar Square has been called by some obstinate British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... red granite obelisk covered with hieroglyphics at the end of the square is called the Obelisk of Theodosius the Great. It was originally erected in the Temple of the Sun in Egypt in 1600 B.C. by a haughty king who inscribed on the stone a statement that he had 'conquered the whole world,' and ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... continued to descend the Corso. As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd became more dense, and above the heads of the multitude two objects were visible: the obelisk, surmounted by a cross, which marks the centre of the square, and in front of the obelisk, at the point where the three streets, del Babuino, del Corso, and di Ripetta, meet, the two uprights of the scaffold, between which glittered the curved ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and chin, and ye shall find a river, which boldly enter, and sail up it a distance of three furlongs to the creek on starboard hand; pass into the creek and land on the island. The treasure lies buried at a spot one thousand feet due south from the base of the obelisk rock." ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... know the Place de la Concorde? 'Tis hard by the Tuilerie wall. Mid terraces, fountains, and statues, There rises an obelisk tall. There rises an obelisk tall, All garnish'd and gilded the base is: 'Tis surely the gayest of all Our ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lamps were disposed by millions, represented lofty arcades of elegant proportion, with their several pillars, cornices, and other suitable ornaments. The eye, astonished, though not dazzled, penetrated through the garden, and, directed by this avenue of light, embraced a view of the temporary obelisk erected on the ridge of the gradual ascent, where stands the Barriere de Chaillot; the road on each side of the Champs Elysees presenting an illuminated perspective, whose vanishing point was the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Mr. Widdicomb were, by a revolution, placed on the throne of Brentford, people would be equally fascinated by his irresistibly majestic smile and tremble as they knelt down to kiss his hand. If he went to Dublin they would erect an obelisk on the spot where he first landed, as the Paddylanders did when Gorgius visited them. We have all of us read with delight that story of the King's voyage to Haggisland, where his presence inspired such a fury of loyalty and where ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... together long had liv'd, In mansion prudently contriv'd; 400 Where neither tree nor house could bar The free detection of a star And nigh an ancient obelisk Was rais'd by him, found out by FISK, On which was a written not in words, 405 But hieroglyphic mute of birds, Many rare pithy saws concerning The worth of astrologic learning. From top of this there hung a rope, To a which he fasten'd telescope; 410 The spectacles with which the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... when a man neglects a summons his door is removed to the royal court-yard on the first day; on the second, it is confiscated. The door is a valuable and venerable article in this part of Africa. According to Bruce, Ptolemy Euergetes engraved it upon the Axum Obelisk for the benefit of his newly conquered AEthiopian subjects, to whom ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... but the representatives of the ancient sacrifice to the dead. We drink to the memory of the deceased as though pouring out libations to them. Our tombstones are direct descendants of the menhir and the obelisk, our altar-tombs of the dolmen, our family vault of the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... would be punctual—some of the hands would be sure to be late. There would be discussion and delay before starting. They might well be half an hour after the time named before they left the steeple, as the obelisk in Sir George Armitage's field was called by the country people. He might be in time yet, but it would be a close thing; and had his own life depended upon the result Ned could not ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Green were applauded by hundreds, to whom the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stillness of a holiday evening, and the lawns of Bagatelle were as fresh as June. Below the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees sloped downward in a sun-powdered haze to the mist of fountains and the ethereal obelisk; and the currents of summer life ebbed and flowed with a normal beat under the trees of the radiating avenues. The great city, so made for peace and art and all humanest graces, seemed to lie by her river-side like a princess guarded by the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... deed committed in spite of his express warning. She went so far as to conceive him subsequently saying: "I warned you." She conceived the state of marriage with him as that of a woman tied not to a man of heart, but to an obelisk lettered all over with hieroglyphics, and everlastingly hearing him expound them, relishing renewing his lectures ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... courtly old personage, and perhaps he'll have an enormous fortune that he made by shaking pagoda-trees in India. How do pagodas grow on trees, I wonder? I always thought a pagoda was a sort of odalisque—isn't that right? Oh, I mean obelisk—with beautiful flounces all the way up to the top. It seems a funny way of making money, doesn't it. Where is India, by the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... its rise. Sniff, bore away by his servile disposition, had drored up his leg with a higher and a higher relish, and was now discovered to be waving his corkscrew over his head. It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep' her eye upon him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. Our Missis followed them both out, and cries was heard ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... The narrow streets, devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dung-hill-rubbish, contrast so strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and their filth and darkness, with the broad square before some haughty church; in the center of which, a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honored statue overthrown, supports a Christian saint; Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... the young couple should reside at Pasagarda, situated in a fertile valley, called the Queen's Girdle, because its revenues were appropriated to that costly article of the royal wardrobe. This pleasant city had once been the favourite residence of Cyrus the Great, and a plain obelisk in the royal gardens marked his burial-place. The adjacent promontory of Taoces afforded a convenient harbour for Tyrian merchants, and thus brought in the luxuries of Phoenicia, while it afforded opportunities for literary communication between the East and the West. Here were celebrated ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... erected by man are smaller than their pyramids; which are also the oldest human works still remaining, the beauty of whose masonry, says Wilkinson, has not been surpassed in any subsequent age. An obelisk of a single stone now standing in Egypt weighs three hundred tons, and a colossus of Ramses II. nearly nine hundred. But Herodotus describes a monolithic temple, which must have weighed five thousand tons, and which was carried the whole length of the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... family burial ground, situated on a wooded hill up behind the homestead, and at the head of his last resting place was afterwards erected a plain obelisk of white marble, with his name and the date of his birth and ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther;" and adds: "I will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage, affection, and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain, so simple, honest, spontaneous; not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great. Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet, in the clefts of it, fountains, ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... Colonna gardens with bridges over the way, and green-clipped hedges and reddening Judas-trees under the big pines, and a row of marble Emperors turning their backs; and, further, the Quirinal with tip of obelisk, and plaster trumpet-blowing Fame; and a palm-tree, its head rising out of I know not what hidden yard, in front of a terrace of drying rags. And at every vista end, pines of the Pincian, Villa Doria, &c.; and domes; and the pale blond roofs with the telephone wires like gossamer stretched over ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... a large detachment of the army and navy,—form a vast procession at the Town Hall, and, headed by the Supreme Government, march to slow music through the Puerta del Sol and the spacious Alcala street to the granite obelisk in the Prado which marks the resting-place of the patriot dead. I saw the regent of the kingdom, surrounded by his cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoon under a blazing sun over the dusty mile that separates the monument from the Ayuntamiento. The Spaniards ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... caste humanity, driven by the lash to tortured effort, swarmed and sweated and groaned that some high priest or royal personage might in mummied grandeur await his soul's return to its foul, flinty, wrinkled and desolate home. Near, floating northward with the tide, was a great obelisk of granite weighing more than forty tons, held upon the surface by parallel rafts of ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... impression gives no idea of the extraordinary height of the spire. We continued to descend, slowly and cautiously, with Saverne before us in the bottom. To the left, close to the road side, stands an obelisk: on which is fixed, hi ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... strictly belonging to our subject. A stick of fir prepared to repair a bridge over the Naumachia in the time of Nero was left unused for some time to satisfy public curiosity. It measured 120 feet by 2 feet the entire length. The mast of the vessel which brought the large obelisk from Egypt, afterwards set up in the Circus Maximus, and now in front of S. John Lateran, was 100 feet by 1-1/2 feet, and the tree out of which it was cut required four men, holding hands, to surround it. A stick of ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... that noble room, looking out across the Place de la Concorde, past the Obelisk to the House of Deputies beyond the Seine, it was evident that Henry was thinking hard. The spectacle of Major Murphy's young men in their habiliments of service, Red Cross military uniforms that made them look like lilies ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... motion seemed to have invaded this assemblage of human beings, carriages and horses. In the distance the outlines of the Obelisk could be discerned in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... time I visited the granite obelisk known all over the civilized world as Bunker Hill monument. Sixty years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. General La Fayette, since deceased, laid the corner-stone, and Daniel Webster made a few desultory remarks which I cannot now recall. Eighteen years later it was formally dedicated, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... gentle Zoe with her arm round nurse's neck, and her handkerchief to nurse's eyes, murmuring, "There—there—don't cry, nurse; everybody esteems you, and that lady did not mean to affront you; she did not say 'obelisk;' she said 'obstacle.' That only means that you stand in the way of her improvements; there was not much harm in that, you know. And, nurse, please give that lady her way, to oblige me; for it is by my ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... like whispering into the ear of the Sphinx, and listening at her locked lips,... and to go out in April and see them suddenly abloom is as though the lips of the Sphinx should part and utter solemn words. A bunch of white flowers at the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out of this dead, gaunt, prickly thing—is not that Nature's consummate miracle, a symbol of resurrection more profound than ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the full face of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau is squarely commanded. The view is said to challenge that of the Matterhorn from the Riffel. The plateau itself is nearly five thousand feet above the sea, and across the ravine before it, this isolated granite obelisk, with its mitre of snow, lifts itself upward more than five thousand feet higher,—a precipitous cone, "notched like a pair of gaping jaws, eager ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... temple on the banks of the Nile. On the walls and lotus-shaped columns were processions of dark figures at the loom, at the work of irrigation, marching as soldiers, or mourners at funerals,—exact copies of the original delineations. There were sphinx and obelisk, coffins of kings, mummies of priest and chieftain, the fabrics they wore, the gems they cut, the scrolls they engrossed, the tomb in which they were buried. Stepping into another section, you were in Assyria, with the alabaster lions and plumed genii of the men of Nineveh and Babylon. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... effect to the large enclosed space of an antique hall. Against the walls are several marble monuments; one to the Earl of Chatham, a statue of white marble, with various allegorical contrivances, fronting an obelisk or pyramid of dark marble; and another to his son, William Pitt, of somewhat similar design and of equal size; each of them occupying the whole space, I believe, between pavement and ceiling. There is likewise a statue of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... generally denote the omission of some letters in a word, or of some bold or indelicate expression, or some defect in the manuscript."—Ib., 283. (12.) "An Ellipsis —— is also used, when some letters in a word, or some words in a verse, are omitted."—Ib., 283. (13.) "An Obelisk, which is marked thus [dagger], and Parallels thus ||, together with the letters of the Alphabet, and figures, are used as references to the margin, or bottom of the page."—Ib., 283. (14.) "A note of interrogation should not ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... time excavations were made on either side of the Via di S. Ignazio for building or restoring the houses which line it, remarkable specimens of Egyptian art had been brought to light. The annals of discoveries begin with 1374, when the obelisk now in the Piazza della Rotonda was found, under the apse of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, together with the one now in the Villa Mattei von Hoffman. In 1435, Eugenius IV. discovered the two lions of Nektaneb I. which are now in the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... direct descendant of the original one. A fine spring which flows in the vicinity is also supposed to have lost its natural brackish taste on account of the infant Jesus having been bathed in it. A half-mile farther on is Heliopolis, the old City of the Sun. It is now marked by the solitary obelisk, which alone remains to remind us of a past that stretches untold centuries back of the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640; and of a city that was the exponent of the most ancient civilization of ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... near us, and for several miles northward and eastward, the churches are small; yet several of them have features of considerable interest. Let us turn our steps northward. The road takes us in sight of a column, or obelisk, surmounted by a bust of the first Duke of Wellington. The history of this is told by the inscription on the pedestal: “Waterloo Wood was raised from acorns sown immediately after the memorable battle of Waterloo, when victory was ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... bleaching in the sun for a quarter of a century. Travellers stopped to gaze, to moralize, and to pilfer; postilions and poets scraped off skulls and thigh-bones.... At last, in 1822, the vestiges were swept together and resepulchred, and a simple obelisk of marble was erected, to commemorate a victory well deserving of its fame as a military exploit, but all unworthy to be ranked with earlier triumphs, won by hands pure as well as strong, defending ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... fashionable doctor's gig, there a mammoth express-wagon; a sullen Southerner contrasts with a grinning Gaul, a darkly-vested bishop with a gayly-attired child, a daintily-gloved belle with a mud-soiled drunkard; a little shoe-black and a blind fiddler ply their trades in the shadow of Emmet's obelisk, and a toy-merchant has Montgomery's mural tablet for a background; on the fence is a string of favorite ballads and popular songs; a mock auctioneer shouts from one door, and a silent wax effigy gazes from another. Pisani, who accompanied Prince Napoleon in his yacht-voyage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... if they can be said to have any vices at all, perhaps drinking and cheating are the most conspicuous among them. Their residences are usually on the outskirts of 'the Rules,' chiefly lying within a circle of one mile from the obelisk in St. George's Fields. Their looks are not prepossessing, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... what nonsense, and it wasn't tight round like all that; only a symptom. And we didn't even know mamma was there because of Speke and Grant's obelisk. There wasn't a soul! Papa saw it quite as I did, and was most reasonable. So I thought I would feel my way to developing an idea we had been broaching, Julius and I, just that very time by the obelisk. I asked papa flatly what he would do if I married Julius straight off. 'I believe, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... men, from the date of the earliest obelisk,—and of the whole world, moreover, since that far epoch, and before,—have made a similar demand, and seldom had their wish. If they had it, what are they the better now? But, even while you taunt yourself with this ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was delightful only to look at them. She tried to get her thoughts a little in order. For Norton, she would make the watch guard; that was one thing fixed. A delicate bronze paperweight, a beautiful obelisk, had greatly taken her fancy, and Norton had been describing to her the use of its originals in old Egypt; it was not very costly, and Matilda thought she would like to give that to Mrs. Laval. But she would ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... is four feet through; it is of iron, tubular; there is room for a winding spiral staircase within it; as for its height, I will not risk a guess at it. Could Othello's war-ships carry it they would consider it a feat, as the bringing of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a feat. The petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they? This red bowsprit at its roots is high enough to suspend a trapeze; at its head a ladder would be required to mount it from the quay; yet by-and-by, when the tide at last comes, and its time arrives to move ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... round-headed, and there is in the north-western bay a pointed door, differing only from those of about a hundred years earlier in having twisted shafts. One curious feature is the parapet of the central aisle, which is like a row of small classical pedestals, each bearing a stumpy obelisk. By far the finest feature of the outside is the great west door. On each side are clusters of square pinnacles ending in square crocketed spirelets, and running up to a horizontal moulding which, as so often, gives the whole design a rectangular form. Within comes the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... matter. He knew ever variety of windmill and weathercock, but was not a whit the wiser as to the aerial sign in question. He had even dabbled in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the mystic symbols of the obelisk, but none furnished a key to the reply of Nicholas Koorn. He called a meeting of his council. Anthony Van Corlear stood forth in the midst, and putting the thumb of his right hand to his nose, and the thumb of his left hand to the finger of the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... exist, but in the form of conical rocks, one of which-called Sugar-Loaf, or Manitou's Wigwam—is ninety feet high. A cave in this obelisk is pointed out as Manitou's abiding-place, and it was believed that every other spire in the group had its wraith, whence has come the name of the island—Michillimackinack (place of great dancing spirits). Arch Rock is the place that Manitou built to reach ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the Greek sculptures which had been carried to Rome were again borne off to decorate this new Capitol. The Emperor Constantine there erected a column a hundred feet high, and placed his statue on it; Theodosius also erected a column and an obelisk; but Justinian excelled all these, and about 543 A.D. set up a monument with a colossal equestrian statue of himself in bronze upon it. The column which supported this statue was of brick masonry covered with plates of bronze. From the accounts ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... heights flanking the river. A monument to the generals stands near here, in the Castle gardens, with the names on opposite sides of the square block. To be sure, how death levels us all! Lord Dalhousie built that obelisk when he was Governor in 1827. You see, as it is the only bit of history we possess, we never can commemorate it enough; so there's another ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of interest is the Aiguille, a Roman obelisk seventy-six feet high. There is a square base, pierced by arches in each face, and the obelisk, or pyramid rather, stands on this. It is not very beautiful, but it is worth examining. It is thought that the monument to Marius ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... convent of Abba Pantaleon, called in Abyssinia Mantillas, and the small obelisk on a rock above, we follow a path cut in a mountain of very red marble, having on the left a marble wall forming a parapet about five feet high. At intervals solid pedestals rise from this wall, bearing every token of having served to support colossal statues of Sirius, the barking ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the cliff, in the open sea rose an enormous rock, over eighty yards high, a colossal obelisk, standing straight on its granite base, which showed at the surface of the water, and tapering toward the summit, like the giant tooth of a monster of the deep. White with the dirty gray white of the cliff, the awful monolith was streaked with horizontal lines marked ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... Liverpool. Cresswell-street after Sir Cresswell Cresswell, also an ex-borough member. Brougham-terrace, after Lord Brougham. Hockenhall-alley is called after a very old Liverpool family. Lord-street is named after Lord Molyneux. Redcross-street was so named in consequence of a red obelisk which stood in the open ground, south of St. George's Church. This street was originally called Tarleton's New-street. Shaw-street was named after "Squire Shaw," who held much property at Everton. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... remained in conversation three quarters of an hour. We had coffee with him. He spoke much of his wishes to improve his people, enquired where I was going, if I was pleased with Egypt, and paid me some compliments. After the interview I rode to the Obelisk. On my return I called on Mr Salt. I found him much alarmed at the non-arrival of a despatch which had been sent by an English sloop of war. The Porte had refused the mediation, and the English Admiral had orders to act. Mr Salt was to see the Pasha in the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... a concourse of people of all ranks and nations had never been seen at any public ceremony on the Bosphorus as that which, on July 24, accompanied the remains of Hobart Pasha to their last resting place in the English cemetery at Scutari, not far from the spot where a tall granite obelisk records the brave deeds and glorious death of those heroes who perished ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... offerings from his friends. The curious will learn with interest, that another of these monuments dates back to the time of Joseph. It has twice engraved upon it the name Osortosen—perhaps the Pharaoh 'who gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potiphorah, priest of On,' and raised the obelisk at Heliopolis, towns thought to be the same. Near to this is another stela of great beauty, engraved in low relief and cavo-relievo, coloured. It belongs to Manetho's sixth dynasty, and is consequently very ancient. One still more so is in the same collection: it is of the fourth dynasty ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... founders," where you forget for a time the lure of the woods and sea as you reverently pause to read the inscriptions on the mossy headstones. The oldest marked grave is that of Governor Bradford. It is an obelisk a little more than eight feet in height. On the north side is a Hebrew sentence said to signify, Jehovah is our help. Under this stone rests the ashes of William Bradford, a zealous Puritan and sincere Christian; Governor of Plymouth Colony from April, 1621, to ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... man, six feet high perhaps, with a powerful and somewhat bulky frame, broad shoulders, a head erect and firmly planted as an obelisk, and altogether an appearance which gave a general idea of strength. He was not a bad-looking man by any means. His features were large and well cut, the mouth firm as iron, and unshadowed by beard or moustache; the eyes gray and clear, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was something noble and touching in the thought of Charles X., and the true royalists sincerely respected it. Prom the monarchical point of view, a monument to Louis XVI. had much more raison d'etre than the obelisk since erected in its place, which represents nothing, and has, moreover, the inconvenience of obstructing the fine perspective of the Champs Elysees and the Tuileries. But there were two camps in France, and these processions, expiations, ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand |
