"Picturesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tide is high. Before it lies the splendid river, with the barges which Arnold had seen from the bridge. They are broad, and flat, and sometimes squat, and sometimes black with coal, and sometimes they go up and down sideways, in lubberly Dutch fashion, but they are always picturesque; and beyond the river is the Embankment, with its young trees, which will before many years be tall and stately trees; and behind the trees are the new red palaces; and above the houses, at this time of the year and day, are the flying clouds, already colored with the light ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... place; but most travellers prefer (Including, indeed, many persons of note) To dine at the usual-priced table d'hote. Through the town runs the Lahn, the steep green banks of which Two rows of white picturesque houses enrich; And between the high road and the river is laid Out a sort of a garden, call'd 'THE Promenade.' Female visitors here, who may make up their mind To ascend to the top of these mountains, will find On the banks ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... was the Geinig—no longer the pretty and picturesque river that he knew, but a boiling and surging torrent sweeping in red wrath down its narrow and rocky channel. The farther heights, too, that now came into view, had lost their wonted pale and ethereal ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... repeated the Bishop's son solemnly. "I joke only to keep my head above water. I never in my life was so completely submerged in the desire to get married instantly and live in a picturesque band-box. Nothing can keep me from it longer than it takes to find the girl and the band-box. If—if—" his voice dropped to a whisper, and a hint of redness crept into his face which belied his jesting words, "you knew of the ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... Upper—a height where fig trees and pomegranates flourish. Eastwards the country falls away and there are several ragged narrow valleys between some tree-topped ridges till the eye meets a sheikh's tomb on the Zeitun ridge, standing midway between Foka and Beitunia, which rears a proud and picturesque head to bar the way to Bireh. The wadis cross the valleys wherever torrent water can tear up rock, but the yeomanry found their beds smoother going, filled though they were with boulders, than the hill slopes, which generally rose in steep gradients ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... biography give us nothing new in relation to the hero, still it may be of great interest and value from the manner in which well-known authorities are collected and digested, and the facts presented in a picturesque, fascinating, living narrative. Such a work is Irving's "Goldsmith." Such a work is not Marx's "Beethoven." It is neither one thing nor another,—neither a biography nor a critical examination of the master's works. It is a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... room was at the far end of the corridor. The electric light was also brightening it, but the fire was unlit, and the presence of the unpacked trunk, taking up a position of prominence on the floor, gave it a very unhomelike feel. In itself the room was particularly picturesque. It had two charming lattice windows, set in deep square bays. One window faced the fireplace, the other the door. The effect was slightly irregular, but for that very reason all the more charming. The walls of the room were painted light ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... most sublime sight of all the works of man I ever beheld. The men looked like pigmies. There is a curious cone of grayish-coloured slate standing alone, which the workmen say is good for nothing; but it is good for its picturesque appearance. A heavy shower of hail came on, which, falling between the rifts of the rocks, and blown by the high wind, added to the sublimity of the scene: we were comfortably sheltered in one ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... hospitable. Their villas are pleasantly situated, and have a fine view of the sea; the whole face of the country is really romantic; the hills are immensely high, and the valleys very narrow; and in many of them there are a few houses, which give the whole island a very picturesque appearance. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... of human life there; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the sedges of the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... about entering one of those picturesque spreads, or bays of the Red River, which perhaps no other stream can boast of in such abundance, and on so magnificent a scale. The lofty trees and huge masses of foliage of the dense forest that covered the left ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... that wonderful sheet of water were not enough to gratify the tastes of all boys who loved to skate and swim and fish and go boating, there was Paradise River emptying into the lake close by, a really picturesque stream with its puzzling bends and constantly novel views that burst upon the sight as one drove a canoe up its lazy current of ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... at. There must be public concern in what is printed, as well as its truth, to justify it. That is something that newspapers should get to know in this country. After the earthquake in San Francisco, I saw walls topple out upon a man. And I have had more intimate glimpses still of the picturesque and of the prosaic ways by which men come to their ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... heard, now rallying, now muffled. A red flag with a blue cross rose and fell and rose again; grey names emerged, floated, wraith-like, over the sea, not to be stopped by blue men-of-war, names and picturesque nicknames, loved of soldiers. It grew to be allowed that there must be courage in the fortress, and a gift of leadership. All was seen confusedly, but with a mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... not cavil at her education, for she knew several languages—aboriginal languages—of the North. She had merely to learn the dialect of English society, and how to carry with acceptable form the costumes of the race to which she was going. Her own costume was picturesque, but it might appear unusual in London society. Still, they could use their ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not without regret that I left Melsetter, for so my husband had called the place, after his father's estate in Orkney. It was a beautiful, picturesque spot; and, in spite of the evil neighbourhood, I had learned to love it; indeed, it was much against my wish that it was sold. I had a great dislike to removing, which involves a necessary loss, and is apt to give to the emigrant roving and unsettled habits. But all regrets were now useless; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... mode.... Dr. Giles is in thorough possession of his materials and of his intention, which produces the clearness that arises from mastery: and he exhibits the same general bon hommie and chronicler disposition for minute and picturesque narrative which we noted in his life of Becket, with more ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... did not feel now as if it were anything which had especially to do with her. It seemed more like an interesting story she was unravelling sentence by sentence. The long, softly lighted old room, with its Stuarts and Sullys, and its gracious, gray-haired host and hostess, seemed only a picturesque part of it.... Her hostess ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... spendthrifts of antiquity, seem usually to have combined a gift of fancy with their wealth, often even something like poetry; and their extravagances, however extreme, had usually a saving grace of personal whim to recommend them to lovers of the picturesque. Sardanapalus and Heliogabalus may have been whatever else you please, but they were assuredly not commonplace; and the mere mention of their names vibrates with mankind's perennial gratitude for splendour and colossal display, however ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... In this picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago, we are permitted to see the unscrupulous methods employed by the invisible hand of the Mormon Church to break the will of those refusing to ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... period, recalling the times when the old halls of castles and manor houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas Carol and their ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. He had travelled a good deal on both sides of the Atlantic and he gives a picturesque account of an old English stage coach journey "on the day preceding Christmas." The coach was crowded with passengers. "It was also loaded with hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of delicacies; and hares hung dangling ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... picturesque sight to watch the Indians move camp. Their trains often covered several hundred acres of land. The Indians usually move in a large body, or band. Their moving "van" consists of two long slim poles placed on each side of a pony, made fast by means ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... was announced she was given to retiring in haste from the room, just as she did at Maria's and John's, but Marian stopped that with "Please do stay, mother, and help us entertain them; besides, I want you in that corner with your bright knitting to make our rooms picturesque; you're the greatest ornament they contain." Then the old lady would say, "Pooh! you don't want an old body like me," albeit she was well pleased that she was wanted, and would remain, occasionally throwing in her quaint remark, ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... are not what we chiefly remember in what interests us most.—But it may be asked then, Is there anything better than Claude Lorraine's landscapes, than Titian's portraits, than Raphael's cartoons, or the Greek statues? Of the two first I shall say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, rather than imaginative. Raphael's cartoons are certainly the finest comments that ever were made on the Scriptures. Would their effect be the same if we were not acquainted with the text? But the New Testament existed before the cartoons. There is one subject of which ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... called "coffee-mills," completely answering ho the couricolo of the Neapolitan and the coucou of the Parisian, equally cheap, and overladen in the same manner with passengers, therefore forming highly picturesque groups. This scene has been humorously treated in a picture by Marstrand. Between fields and meadows, the road leads pleasantly toward the park; the friends ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... intended to represent the stake of torture, to which captives are bound for execution. After the ceremonies in favor of Madam Luna had been ended, they commenced a war-dance around the post, and the spectacle must have been as picturesque as it was animating and wild. The young braves engaged in the dance were naked, excepting a breech-cloth about their loins. They were painted frightfully, their backs being chalked white, with irregular streaks of red, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... march, and the stages of the calamity corresponding to the stages of the route; so that, upon raising the curtain which veils the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of anguish, towering upwards by regular gradations, as if constructed artificially for picturesque effect:—a result which might not have been surprising, had it been reasonable to anticipate the same rate of speed, and even an accelerated rate, as prevailing through the later stages of the expedition. But it seemed, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... said in stanza first, My mind is thoroughly immersed With you until My pulses thrill And throb, I don't, in tones more picturesque Than journalistic, slam my desk, And in a fit Of frenzy ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... lifelessness of the scene. The great river stretched away northward, the hills rose abruptly from the water's edge, everywhere extended the superb spruce forest, here fortunately unburnt; but there seemed no sign of living creature outside of our own numerous, noisy, and picturesque party. River, hills, and woods were calm and silent. It was impressive, if disappointing; and, when at last the fir stillness was broken by a succession of trumpet notes from the Great Pileated Woodpecker, the sound went rolling on and on, in reverberating echoes that might ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... St. Lawrence, its snow-clad banks pierced here and there by tiny villages each with its heavenward-pointing spire; to the north were the Laurentian Hills, now glistening in a dazzling white mantle; at their feet was the town, quaint and picturesque, its spires and monuments reminders ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... back in his seat, he still looked at the picturesque figure which they had passed, as if he would not have been sorry to see it turn ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... me was in the picturesque costume of a peasant, and as Madame Sand afterward told me, her goddaughter, whom she had brought from her province. She announced me as "Madame Salere," and returned into the anteroom to tell me, "Madame says ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... beekeeper with his hybrid bees, kept in immovable hives, logs or boxes, did not derive much profit from his bees. He kept them mostly for pastime. During the last fifteen years men with new methods of management and modern equipment have been rapidly superseding the picturesque old beekeepers. Modern beekeeping courses are now taught in connection with our institutions of learning, and young men full of energy and ambition are beginning to realize that beekeeping is offering one of the few opportunities to make ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... confound mnemonics by its absolute irrelevancy. Miss Greenaway's charm lies in the fact that she first recognised quaintness in what had been considered merely "old fashion," and continued to infuse it with a glamour that made it appear picturesque. Had she dressed her figures in contemporary costume most probably her work would have taken its place with the average, and never obtained more than ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... This picturesque legend[42] tells us that in the early days of the Christian epoch the city of Ys, or Ker-is, was ruled by a prince called Gradlon, surnamed Meur, which in Celtic means 'the Great.' Gradlon was a saintly and pious man, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of Exeter House is picturesque in the extreme. The character of the building is here more distinctly ancient; and its architecture is uniform, though simple. Beyond the steps by which you descend from a spacious dining-room, is a long lawn, enclosed between high walls, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... and ardent blood; so that the new society was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding recruits alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods, its eager and militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element, and the first picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the whole well received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very fresh recruits covered the rashness of their new and ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... It was in the picturesque little settlement of Wood Hills (said the Oldest Member) that the incidents occurred which I am about to relate. Even if you have never been in Wood Hills, that suburban paradise is probably familiar to you by name. Situated at a convenient distance from the city, it combines in a notable ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... thanks to his pithy expression, his unfailing common sense, his sparkling wit and charming humor. This latter gift shows in the seeming lapses from his rigid rule requiring absolute elegance of expression at all times, when an unexpected coarseness, in some provincial colloquialism, crops out with picturesque force. The beau ideal of superfineness occasionally enjoys the bliss of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... night of happy contentment. In picturesque groups on the deck the company slept, their eyes covered from the light of the tropical night. The sentry tramped the deck, listened to the cries from the forest and the salty pool, watched the fireflies as they ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... indiscretion would, however, not bear the heavy theological superstruction that has been raised upon it, and therefore a desire for forbidden knowledge is made to account for the woman's sin and the sorrows of all her female progeny. To me this merely sensual sin, the sin of a child, seems much more picturesque, a good deal fitter for the purposes of art, without the mystic and mythical addition of an intellectual desire for knowledge and the agency of the Satanic serpent. Alas! the mere flesh is devil enough, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... describes: "Our" station, "this night, had a beauty about it, which would have made any one, possessed with the least enthusiasm, fall in love with a bush life. We were sitting on a gently-rising ground, which sloped away gradually to a picturesque lake, surrounded by wooded hills,—while the moon shone so brightly on the lake, that the distance was perfectly clear, and we could distinctly see the large flocks of wild fowl, as they passed over our heads, and then splashed into the water, darkening and agitating ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... his Kew Palm-house mood. And there is a book, I once looked into it at a man's room in London; I don't know the title, but it was by Richard Garnett, and it was all about gods who were in reduced circumstances but amidst sunny picturesque scenery. Scenery without steel or poles or wire. A thing after the manner of Heine's 'Florentine Nights.' Any book about Greek gods would be welcome, anything about temples of ivory-coloured stone and purple seas, red caps, chests of jewels, and lizards in the sun. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... had first settled on the land that was owned and tilled by his descendants, must have selected the site on which he built his first log-house with an eye to the picturesque and beautiful, for no other spot for miles around had such a far reaching and delightful prospect. As time went by, and the land gave forth its increase, the log-house was supplemented by a more pretentious structure, that was "built on," the original apartments serving for kitchens, outhouses ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... across the well of the car to peer into Mike's face, but alas! the more choice and picturesque was his language, the deeper seemed to be the gloom of Michael Clancy. At last, when within a few yards of Donoughmor, Mike abruptly requested to be set down there, and after thanking the man in somewhat tremulous tones, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... scenery, superb cuisine, Daniel Brewster, proprietor) was a picturesque summer hotel in the green heart of the mountains, built by Archie's father-in-law shortly after he assumed control of the Cosmopolis. Mr. Brewster himself seldom went there, preferring to concentrate his attention on his New York establishment; and Archie and Lucille, breakfasting in the airy ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... shabby, despite his reputation for riches. She knew that he was a candidate for the supreme position of Chief Bailiff at the end of the year, and he did not accord with her spectacular ideal of a Chief Bailiff; the actual Chief Bailiff was a beautiful and picturesque old man, with perfectly tended white whiskers, and always a flower in his coat. Further, she could not reconcile this nearly effusive friendliness between Mr. Enville and Mr. Cannon with the animadversions of the leading article which Arthur Dayson had composed, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... This picturesque touch—quite in Tomkins's way— Called forth from the savantes a general hurrah; While inquiries among them, went rapidly round, As to where this young stratified man could be found. The "learned Theban's" discourse ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is very picturesque. Grand basaltic headlands tower along the coast, while inland are lofty mountains, broad lakes, untrodden jungles, and wide-spreading plains covered with rich ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... but with seven or eight variations, having the effect of as many different conjugations, and giving great variety of expression. The predominance of these modifications over the noun, the idea of time contained in the roots of almost all its verbs, so expressive and so picturesque, and even the scarcity of its prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, make this language in its organic structure breathe life, vigor, and emotion. If it lacks the flowery and luxuriant elements of the other oriental idioms, no one of these can be compared with ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and learned to know all of the gamblers. So when I saw this weak one staking his money against them, Betting upon the turn of the cards, I knew what was coming: They never left their pigeons a single feather to fly with. Next day I saw them together,—the stranger and one of the gamblers: Picturesque rascal he was, with long black hair and moustaches, Black slouch hat drawn down to his eyes from his villanous forehead. On together they moved, still earnestly talking in whispers, On toward the forecastle, where sat the woman alone by the gangway. Roused ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... stopped playing billiards while he reviewed, in the most vivid and picturesque phrasing, the reasons of Rome's decline. Such a presentation would have enthralled any audience—I could not help feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some of his public effort to work of that sort. No one could have equaled him ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wire. Rejoicing in this work of his hands on the left, he longed to turn his murderous weapons against the right side. He was labored with; he bided his time; but I knew in my heart that whoever went there next summer would find that picturesque road bristling with barbed wire on both sides. It will be as ugly as man can make it, but it will be "tidy" (New England's shibboleth), for no sweet green thing will grow up beside it. Nature doesn't ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... one Western town marshal, himself the best and most picturesque of them all, is to cover all this field sufficiently. There is but one man who can thus be chosen, and that is Wild Bill Hickok, better known for a generation as "Wild Bill," and properly accorded an honorable place ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... was opened abruptly, and the same historical personage whom we saw playing a silent part incognito at Avignon appeared on the threshold, in the picturesque uniform of the general-in-chief of the army of Egypt, except that, being in his own house, he was bare-headed. Roland thought his eyes were more hollow and his skin more leaden than usual. But the moment he saw the young man, Bonaparte's ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Billee and Bud spoke thus in seeming harshness to their horses, there was no unkindness in their treatment of the animals. It was just their picturesque, western manner of talking, and hardly had the echo of Old Billee's words died away on the hot, dusty air than he was gently patting the neck of the ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... muleteers, for it seems we were come to a pass leading through the mountains into Spain. These were the first Spaniards we had yet seen (save the Don), and for all we had heard to their credit, we could not admire them greatly, being a low-browed, coarse-featured, ragged crew, and more picturesque than cleanly, besides stinking intolerably of garlic. By nightfall there was more company than the inn could accommodate; nevertheless, in respect to our quality, we were given the best rooms in the house ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... seemed to shine with a new brilliance. Slight eccentricities of toilette, for a part of the gathering was distinctly Bohemian, were softened and subdued. The whole effect was somewhat weird, but also picturesque. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one of the tables, if the two inverted wine-boxes used for the purpose deserved the name. There were other soldiers about, mostly British: a couple of sergeants of the Guards, an assistant of the provost-marshal, some of the new Land Transport Corps, and one or two Sardinians, in their picturesque green tunics and cocked hats with great plumes ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the gorgeous procession of dignitaries, mounted on tall war-horses, caparisoned with housings embroidered with silver and gold, and accompanied by numerous retainers. The attire of these attendants, from the most haughty man of arms to the humblest page, was as varied, picturesque, and glittering as human ingenuity ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... so much salt-fish, timber, and Medford rum, Virginia so many hogshead of tobacco, and buying with the proceeds a certain amount of English manufactures. The story of our early colonization had a certain moral interest, to be sure, but was altogether inferior in picturesque fascination to that of Mexico or Peru. The lives of our worthies, like that of our nation, are bare of those foregone and far-reaching associations with names, the divining-rods of fancy, which the soldiers and civilians of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... struggle across the slope, that we came to a complete change in the scenery. The valley had been contracting and opening out again and again; but now we seemed to come at once upon a portion of the river where the sides rose up almost perpendicularly, forming a wild, jagged, picturesque, but terrible gorge, down which the river came thundering, reduced to narrow limits, and roaring through at a terrible speed. The noise, multiplied as it was by echoes, was deafening, and as we stood gazing at the vast forbidding ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... or otherwise, see life somewhat in the true proportion of its lasting relations, events are largely transmuted into experiences, and are realized in their extended relations. The destiny of the Brownings led them into constantly picturesque surroundings; and the force and manliness of his nature, the tender sweetness and playful loveliness of hers, combined with their vast intellectual range, their mutual genius for friendships, their devotion to each other and to their son, their reverence for their ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... story, because it is true, and not merely a dramatic and picturesque incident of Indian life."—N. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Aurore Dudevant's history. On crossing the Pyrenees, the scenery, so new to her—or rather the memory of which had been lying dormant in her mind since her childhood—filled her with wild enthusiasm. This intense emotion contributed to develop within her that sense of the picturesque which, later on, was to add so considerably to her talent as a writer. She had hitherto been living in the country of plains, the Ile-de-France and Berry. The contrast made her realize all the beauties of nature, and, on ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... although the sun had set, and in the subdued light the coarse adobe huts and rickety frame dwellings were endowed with a picturesque appearance they did not really possess. Beth and Patsy came to the end of the main street rather suddenly, and stood a moment looking at the shadows cast by the rocky cliffs near by. Some of the peaks had snow ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... this true of the mediumship of a young German woman, Frederica Hauffe, who in the course of her short, pitiful, and tragic career is credited with having displayed more varied and picturesque supernatural gifts than the most renowned wonder-worker of to-day. Like many modern mediums she was of humble origin, her birthplace being a forester's hut in the Wuertemberg mountain village of Prevorst; ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Moore's Flat, and Mat Bailey hurriedly transferred baggage and passengers to the gaily painted and picturesque stage-coach which, drawn by four strong horses, was to continue the journey. A pair of horses and a mountain wagon had handled the traffic to that point; but at the present time, when Moore's Flat can boast but eleven inhabitants, ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... stages of a wasting disease. Miss Marguerite Whitland never came into Bones's office without finding him sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, except once, when she came in without knocking and Bones hadn't the time to strike that picturesque attitude. ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... in Argyllshire, Scotland, is an inland extension of the Firth of Lorne, about 20 m. in length, and varying in breadth from 2 to 1/4 m.; the mountain scenery along the shores grandly picturesque; the river which bears the same name rises in Rannoch Moor, and joins the loch after a SW. course of 15 m.; both loch and river ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... words: this is a natural tendency in young boys who are beginning to practise the art of composition, and in writers still in a semi-barbarous stage; it is the common defect of the mediaeval chroniclers.[151] Epic distortion embellishes the narrative by adding picturesque details, speeches delivered by the persons concerned, numbers, sometimes names of persons; it is dangerous, because the precision of the details produces an illusive appearance of truth.[152] Dramatic distortion consists in grouping the facts in such a ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... low tone). HEDDA GABLER! how could you throw yourself away like this!—Oh, is that the ORTLER Group? Beautiful!—Have you forgotten how we used to sit on the settee together behind an illustrated paper, and—yes, very picturesque peaks—I told you all about how I had been on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... the island of Raghery, crowned by a venerable covering of brown rock, form a very beautiful and picturesque appearance as one sails towards them; and, if the turbulence of the sea does not restrain the eyes and fancy from expatiating around, such a striking similitude appears between this and the opposite coast, as readily ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... the greater part it presents an endless succession of hills and dales, though the surface near the mountains is of a bolder and sometimes of a rugged cast. The scenery of this section is as remarkable for quiet, picturesque beauty, as that of the Western is for ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... Romance depends upon picturesque and varied setting; upon the scenery of the drama, so to speak. On the other hand it is not essentially (though this has sometimes been advanced) a narrative of mere adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of character and manners we find in the true "novel." ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the East is a'calling, The picturesque isles of the sea, But with all their wild splendor enthralling, They have no fascination ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... with ease bend apart the heavy iron bars of the prison, was led out with others to summary execution. "Every bullet has its billet," runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists in the concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds is found their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and convinced ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the Cafe de la Paix in Paris. One had arrived only a month before; the other was an old resident in France. After the fashion of their kind they became acquainted and began to talk. Before them passed a picturesque parade, brilliant with the uniforms of half a dozen nations, and streaked with the symbols of mourning that attested ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... in the Trastevere, that portion of the city beyond the Tiber whose inhabitants boast of their pure descent from the ancient Romans. A steep ascent on the slope of the Janiculum, through a somewhat squalid but picturesque street, and terminating in a series of broad steps, leads up to it from the Porta di San Spirito, not far from the Vatican. The ground here is open and stretches away, free from buildings, to the walls of the city. The church has a simple old-fashioned appearance; its roof, walls, and small ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... at these descriptions, the pestiferous Hicks scanned a picturesque description by Scoop of the events that transpired between that memorable night and the present invasion of the sunny Senior's room by the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... that region knows the beautiful falls which break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift, and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits, plunging at last in tumult and foam, with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... charmed by the historic dignity of his surroundings. In such a setting, against the background of such a past, it seemed easy to play the benefactor and friend of the people. His sensibility was touched by the contrast, and he saw himself as a picturesque figure linking the new dreams of liberty and equality to the feudal traditions of a thousand years. But this masquerading soon ceased to divert him. The round of court ceremonial wearied him, and books and art lost their fascination. The more he varied his amusements the more ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... fitting place for a study of the causes and effects of trade combinations and of alliances and counter alliances among the employers and employed, as well as among traders and manufacturers. They present a succession of picturesque incidents and romantic transformations which arrest public attention and seem to indicate a coming change of our social arrangements now in one direction and now in another; and their importance is certainly great and grows rapidly. But it is apt to be exaggerated; ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... upon a commanding eminence, about a mile to the north-east of the town of Chesterfield. Green fields dotted with fine trees slope away from the house in all directions. The surrounding country is undulating and highly picturesque. North and south the eye ranges over a vast extent of lovely scenery; and on the west, looking over the town of Chesterfield, with its church and crooked spire, the extensive range of the Derbyshire hills bounds the distance. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... wedding quite so picturesque as the outdoor one. Famous is the orchard wedding beneath a blossoming apple tree, where the air is filled with fragrance and the bridal party comes winding through the trees to the trysting place. It needn't ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... encircling valleys on the north and east completed the natural defences of this border village that became the altar of Jewish freedom. To-day the scattered ruins of the acropolis are covered in spring-time with a luxuriant growth of grain and olive trees, making it one of the most picturesque ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... hairbreadth escape in which Lieutenant De Rudio figured was so typical of the fighting days of the West that I want my readers to know it. I shall tell it, as nearly as I can, just as it came to me around the flickering fire in that picturesque ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... after the fashion of holiday schoolboys crowding a buffet of pastry. These are not coquettish, they clutch what is handy: and little so is the starved damsel of the sequestered village, whose one object of the worldly picturesque is the passing curate; her heart is his for a nod. But to be desired ardently of trooping hosts is an incentive to taste to try for yourself. Men (the jury of householders empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... strangers. Yet there he was laughing as though he had known them all his life, because Nan had rebuked him gravely for slipping two hooks into one ring. Months afterwards he recalled it all: Nan glancing up at him with quietly amused eyes, Phillis standing apart, looking quaint and picturesque in her bib-apron, Dulce with the afternoon sunshine lighting up her brown hair; the low old-fashioned room, with the great carved wardrobe, and the cupboard of dainty china; the shady little lawn outside, with Laddie rolling among the daisies. What ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Ypres, which Sydney Baxter had entered some few months previously, was now a heap of ruins. The whole country was desolate: the once picturesque roads lined by trees were now but a line of shell holes, with here and there leafless, branchless stumps, seared guardians of the thousand graves. On June 7th, 1915, Sydney ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... extensive filter-beds at the upper end of Pitchcroft, and then thrown by machinery to the top of Rainbow Hill, a position sufficiently elevated to ensure its distribution over the upper stories of the highest houses. The "Old Waterworks" remain, and, as will be seen from our sketch, form a picturesque object in the landscape. The Severn is, however, no longer the fast-flowing stream poets have described it, but what it has lost in speed it has gained in depth, breadth, and majesty; the locks and weirs at Diglis—the former two abreast, and the latter stretching 400 feet ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... the illustrated paper I saw lying on a table near me, he looked picturesque enough, seated on a boulder, a big strong man with a square-cut beard, his hands resting on the hilt of a cavalry sabre—and all around him a landscape of savage mountains. He caught my eye on that spiritedly composed woodcut. (There were no inane snapshot-reproductions in those ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... night long the island is shut up to its own memories and devices. The pretty romance of the old sailor who left England to become a sort of feudal seigneur here, with a holding of the entire island, and its fisher-folk for his villeins, forms a picturesque background for the aesthetic leisure and society in the three hotels remembering him and his language in their names, and housing with a few cottages all the sojourners on the island. By day the broad hotel piazzas shelter such of the guests as prefer to let others make their excursions ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... counties is a small village called A——. It is somewhat removed from the high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four. Nor, indeed, is there anything, whether of scenery or association, in the place itself, sufficient to allure the more sturdy enthusiast from the beaten ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... numbers, combinations, or successions, and visible objects. The second is derived from a degree of repetition of their forms, colours, numbers, combinations, or successions. Where these two circumstances exist united in certain quantities, and compose the principal part of a landscape, it is termed picturesque by modern writers. The third source of pleasure from the perception of the visible world may be termed the melody of colours, which will be shown to coincide with melody of sounds: this circumstance may also accompany the picturesque, and will add to the pleasure ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... fired, and the leaders of the demonstration, Mr. Mather, Captain Smith, and Mr. Butchert, were received everywhere with the loudest plaudits of the people. The appearance of the boats and steamers, manned by tars in their best attire, and bearing gay flags, was exceedingly picturesque. Perhaps no metropolitan sight so imposing had been witnessed by the generation of Londoners then living. The wind was boisterous and the sky lowering; the procession had also to make its way against tide; but these obstacles only broke the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... thus conveyed is then found to exist in county histories, newspapers, and elsewhere, a circumstance which lends itself to interpretation of more sorts than one. Without these very dubious modes of getting at the meaning of the crystal pictures, they remain, of course, mere picturesque hallucinations. The author of the paper referred to, is herself a crystal-seer, and (in Borderland No. 2) mentions one very interesting vision. She and a friend stared into one of Dr. Dee's 'show-stones,' at the Stuart exhibition, and both beheld the ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... varied in their costume as the gentlemen, but always neater and cleaner; and mighty picturesque they are too, and occasionally very pretty. A market-woman with her jolly brown face and laughing brown eyes—eyes all the softer for a touch of antimony—her ample form clothed in a lively print overall, made with a yoke at the shoulders, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... closed upon her and I slowly walked back to my quarters, with a head full of dreary thoughts, and several times narrowly escaped speeding taxis and brought down upon myself some picturesque language. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by chance, might ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Wagner's story of "The Ring" Brunhild's end is more picturesque. Mounted on her steed, as when she led the battle-maidens at the command of Odin, she rode into the flames which leaped to heaven from the great funeral pyre, and passed for ever ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... an old domestic, who had lived with them in those happy Albany days. Her name was Kate O'Brien, but though picturesque in name she was hardly so in person. She was a thick- set, noisy, good-natured old Irishwoman, who had joined her lot to that of Mrs. Bell when the latter first began housekeeping, and knowing when she ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... soliloquized, about the hour of one A.M. on the night of September 9, 1843—a night of more than summer beauty, sultry and light as day—while thrusting my head from the window of "mine inn" the Castle, in this pretty picturesque little village-town, to coin a term. The shadows of the rustic houses, and interspersed corn-stacks, trees, and orchards, stretched across the irregular street, without a causeway, in unbroken quiet; not a sound was heard but the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of every day use, held the mind strictly to the simple facts which gave that group of representative men and women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable illustration of this period, will put this new "Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who first spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those Senators and Representatives ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fronted each other with smiles of approval, their respective teams—ten a side—drawn up in two long lines; heads caged in wire-masks, tufted, with curly feathers, red and blue; ponies champing and pawing the air. Not precisely a picturesque array; but if the plumes and trappings of chivalry were lacking, the spirit of it still nickered within; and will continue to flicker, just so long as modern woman ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... grease-dripping beauty as the latter. Many of you have doubtless seen the potatoes neatly sliced and dumped into a frying pan full of hot lard, where they were permitted to sink or float, and soak and sob for about a half hour or more. When served, they presented the picturesque spectacle of miniature potato islands floating at liberty in a sea of yellow grease. Now, if any of you can relish and digest such a mess as that, I would advise you to leave this clime, and eat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... the picturesque effect of all this, yet the sweet influences of nature reached her, and softened while they increased her sorrow. She felt her own heart sadly out of tune with the peace and loveliness of all she saw. Her eye sought those distant hills how very far off they were! ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... been and still is in many respects a powerful influence for good is now generally admitted by those even whom its political tendencies have alarmed. New sects arose within Hinduism.[1] An ardent apostle of the Hindu revival in Bengal, Swami Vivekananda, was the most impressive and picturesque figure at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893 and made converts in America and in Europe, amongst them in England the gifted poetess best known under her Hindu name as Sister Nivedita. How strong was the hold regained by the purely reactionary forces in Hinduism ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... her task with the peach, talking to him all the time a little gravely, a sweet and picturesque picture of a graceful and very desirable woman, her delicate shape and artistic fragility more than ever accentuated by the sombreness of ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... He gave many picturesque instances of his contention, he sketched several lively and amusing portraits of the one or two business men he had succeeded in running down; their tongue-tied stupefaction before the ordinary topics of civilization, their scorn of all aesthetic considerations; ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... version was born and reared in a region closely similar to that of the story. Her home was originally in the picturesque town of Salzburg, and her father, Franz von Pausinger, was one of the greatest landscape painters of his country and generation. Another equally important requisite is knowledge of children. It happens that this translator has a daughter just the age of the heroine, who moreover ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... itself was a picturesque affair. There were horses, mules, and llamas, men, women, children, and dogs; in fact, almost every living thing in the village had turned out. A chacu is no common occasion—no one day affair. It was to be an affair of weeks. There were rude tents carried along; blankets ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... glanced curiously round the Quadrangle, with its picturesque irregularity of outline, its towers and turrets and battlements, its grey time-eaten walls, its rows of mullioned heavy-headed windows, and the quiet cloistered air that spoke of study and reflection; and perceiving on one side a row of large windows, with great buttresses ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the door of the Queen Anne cottage, which was intended to be picturesque and had succeeded in being merely extremely dirty, and out of which swarmed a horde of youngsters each more soiled than the other, Glory's heart sank. For the big woman who followed the horde was not in the least like either old friend of Elbow Lane. Her voice was harsh and forbidding ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... justice. The scenery below the city is very pleasant, to say the least. The orange groves, and the dwellings, many of them occupied by people from the North, either as settlers or as winter residents, made a picturesque view from the river. Cornwood did not seem to be wholly occupied with the wheel, for he explained the nature of the country when he found that the party in the pilot-house were willing to listen to him. ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... tenting. Men who sleep habitually in the open, breathe fresher air and are far more imbued with the spirit of wild life, than those who pass the night within the stuffy enclosure of a tent. It is an endless pleasure to lie half awake watching the stars above, and the picturesque groupings of the encampment round about, and to hear on all sides the stirrings of animal life. And later in the night, when the fire is low, and servants and cattle are asleep, and there is no sound but of the wind and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... waves have pared away the face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the high cliffs are often wholly formed of the same material. Northward, the chalk may be followed as far as Yorkshire; on the south coast it appears abruptly in the picturesque western bays of Dorset, and breaks into the Needles of the Isle of Wight; while on the shores of Kent it supplies that long line of white cliffs to which England owes her name ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like living in the smoke from a crater: highly picturesque, but too near ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... conceived than this incident can be met with in English poetry, though something akin to it was projected by Coleridge in an episode of his contemplated Michael Scott. It is—in the full sense of an abused epithet—too weird to be called picturesque. But the crowning merit of the poem still lies, as I have said, in the domain of character. Through all the outbursts of her ignescent hate Sister Helen can never lose the ineradicable relics ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... singular spot, remote, in a dense forest spreading over the summit of a cliff that rose abruptly to a great height above the sea; but so grand in its situation, in the desolate sublimity which reigned around, in the reverential murmur of the waves that washed its base, that, though picturesque, it was a forest prison. Here the young lady saw no one, except an old Negress who acted as her servant. The smiles with which the young man met her were indignantly spurned. But she was the property of another, and could hope for justice and ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... influence over the people. They assumed a stately air, wore white and flowing robes, and were adept in the arts of sorcery and magic. They were even consulted by kings and chieftains, as if they possessed prophetic power. They were a picturesque body of men, with their mystic wands, their impressive robes, their tall caps, appealing by their long incantations and frequent ceremonies and prayers to the eye and to the ear. "Pure Zoroastrianism was too spiritual to coalesce readily with Oriental ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... raced this, he backed that, he laid against the other; he was one of the greatest plungers, one of the biggest figures on the turf. He had been a kind of god to me—a god in a grey frock-coat, with a grey top-hat and field-glasses slung over his shoulder; or in a hunting-suit of the most picturesque kind—great pockets in a well- fitting coat, splendid striped waistcoat. Well, there, I only mention this because it played so big a part ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... home of almost ideal grandeur and loveliness, situated in one of the wildest and most picturesque regions of the Highlands, yet brought to the utmost perfection ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... treading air and not believe in the reality of a thing till I come to earth in time to hear the Jolly Good say—'Miss Kitty, you may take problem number ninety-four'—and wake up to the monotonous old grind again—oh, if you could only see this darling old house and the picturesque Mexicans—rather dirty some of them (I suppose that's why they are called greasers) and the perfectly dear way they adore Blue Bonnet and their deference to her 'amigos'—I tell you I feel like a princess when they call me 'Senorita' ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... or Hall was a fine brick mansion, built in the latter days of Tudor house architecture, with many gables and countless high chimneys very picturesque to the eye, but not in all respects comfortable as are the modern houses of the well-to-do squirearchy of England. And, indeed, it was subject to certain objectionable characteristics which in some degree justified the scorn which Mr Amedroz intended ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... a bare courtyard paved only with hard-packed, yellow sand; and the long front of the house with its few small windows looked unsympathetic and unattractive. The girl felt disappointed. She had imagined a picturesque house, a sort of "Kubla Khan" palace in the desert; and she had expected that perhaps Ourieda and her father, the Agha, would come ceremoniously out through a vast arched doorway to welcome her. But here there was not even the arched entrance of her fancy, only two small doors ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... figures, with their cloaks flung over their shoulders, their loose Hungarian boots up to the knees, the body closely girt with long dark-green laced and frogged tunics, and the bear-skin cap closely and warmly covering the head, were very picturesque objects by the flickering light ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... national costume consists of a long shirt, drawers, and dirty linen clothes; or, if he is a soldier, he affects a British red coat. He throws it over his shirt, while he gets on his head the picturesque Indo-Afghan turban. Others again—and these are the beau-monde—are wont to assume a half-Persian costume. Weapons are borne by all. Rarely does any one, whether civil or military, enter the bazar without his sword and shield. To be quite a la mode one must carry ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... devoted of Pussy's English admirers is the Hon. Mrs. McLaren Morrison, who is the happy possessor of some of the most perfect dogs and cats that have graced the bench. She lives at Kepwick Park, in her stately home in Yorkshire—a lovely spot, commanding a delightful view of picturesque Westmoreland on one side and on the other three surrounded and sheltered by hills and moors. Some of her pets go with her, however, to her flat in Queen Anne's Mansions, and even to her residence in Calcutta. It is at Kepwick ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... book about children and their picturesque and innocent, though often apparently meaningless, frolics, by the young in the land, I am assured, it will be received with open arms. From the "children of larger growth"—those who were once young and have delight in remembering the fact—the welcome, if less boisterous, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... river-port and watering-place in Kent, on the Thames, opposite Tilbury Fort, 24 m. SE. of London; the new town rises amid picturesque surroundings above the old town; it is the chief pilot station for the river; there is a busy trade in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... is quite different in character, and retains an old porch leading into the garden. At the farther end of the garden a venerable yew-tree arbour exists; and not [Picture: Arundel House porch and Yew Tree Arbour] far from it used to stand a picturesque old pump, with the date 1758 close to the spout; which pump is now removed, and a new one put in its place. Upon a leaden cistern at the back of Arundel House, the following monogram occurs beneath an earl's coronet, with the date 1703:—[Picture: Old Pump and monogram] Notwithstanding that ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... Avenue Cutty loaded his pipe. He struck a match on the flagstone and cupped it over the bowl of his pipe, thereby throwing his picturesque countenance into ruddy relief. Opposite emotions filled the hearts of the two men watching him—in one, chagrin; in ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the place had as yet scarcely emerged from its winter's rest. There was nobody about, and on all sides one found the dampness common to establishments which, from lack of custom, are compelled to close from November until March. In the rear were some stables, a coach-house, and various mossy, picturesque outbuildings, which painters and gardeners would now soon embellish for the gay pleasure parties which the fine ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... overhangs the sea, skirting along rocky shores, which, hollowed here and there into picturesque grottoes, and fledged with a wild plumage of brilliant flowers and trailing vines, descend in steep precipices to the water. Along the shelly beach, at the bottom, one can wander to look out on the loveliest prospect in the world. Vesuvius rises with its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... arrived in London, and on Tuesday, the 20th, met him in Fleet-street, walking, or rather indeed moving along; for his peculiar march is thus described in a very just and picturesque manner, in a short Life[238] of him published very soon after his death:—'When he walked the streets, what with the constant roll of his head, and the concomitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by that motion, independent ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of the temperate zone for the profusion and magnificence of the tropics; fruit which he had never before seen, supplies for the table unknown to him; a bright sky, a glowing sun, hills covered with vines, a deep-blue sea, a picturesque and novel costume; all meet and delight the eye, just at the precise moment when to have been landed, even upon a barren island, would have been considered as a luxury. Add to all this, the unbounded hospitality of the English ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the first occupation of Rhode Island by white men, and conducts his narrative to the close of the century. His research has been faithful. His style is chaste, forcible, and often picturesque. He has seen the world widely, and he knows human nature. He understands very well what a place of honor and what a well-proved assurance of safety distinctive Rhode Island principles have attained. The issue, having been found so triumphant, has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... a picturesque figure as he sat in his room at the Gibson House yesterday, while the balmy May breeze blew through the open windows, fluttered the lace curtains and tossed the great Infidel's snowy hair to and fro. The Colonel had come in from New York during the morning and the keen white sunlight ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... garden, too, then bright with flowers, had a grace and refinement about it that we would hardly have expected to meet in such a place; and even the paths that led athwart the verdant common which spread over so much of the upland, had been directed with an eye to the picturesque and agreeable. One of these paths, too, led to a rustic summer-house—a sort of small, rude pavilion, constructed, like the fences, of fragments of wrecks, and placed on a shelf of the cliff, at a dizzy elevation, but in perfect security. So far from there ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... century in France is thus marked by a curious blend of those two distinct movements in human history which we call the Renaissance and the Reformation, and the blend is nowhere more picturesque than in the life of Robert Estienne. At one moment we find him attacking the abuses of the church, at another we find him consulting with Claude Garamond upon the design of a new Greek type, or reading the final proofs of an edition of Horace or Catullus or Juvenal, or ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... way along the shore, and a fine pier runs off from it. At the south end is a castle in a good state of repair, although it would be more picturesque if it were a ruin. About a mile further to the south we saw Walmer Castle, where the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports resides. It was here that the Duke of Wellington spent the latter days of his life. We went on shore, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... it with a degree of gloom which is adventitious, and referable solely to painful associations; for intrinsically the situation is picturesque and beautiful, and the grounds have been arranged with consummate taste. This morning I noticed a quantity of rare and very superb lilies clustered in a corner ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... drapery, that is not a fine study for a painter. These large black mantles of heavy silk brought over the heads of the women, and covering their persons, fall into such fine folds of drapery, that they cannot help being picturesque and noble. See, kneeling by the side of two of those fine devout-looking figures, is a lady in a little twiddling Parisian hat and feather, in a little lace mantelet, in a tight gown and a bustle. She is almost as monstrous as yonder figure of the Virgin, in a hoop, and with a huge crown and a ball ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to which, in my liberality and respect for departed fashion, I forbear to fix any of the many epithets which present themselves, the Spanish dress and veil worn by Miss Montenero, associated as it was with painting and poetry, did certainly appear to me more picturesque and graceful. In favour of the veil, I had all the poets, from Homer and Hesiod downwards, on my side; and moreover, I was backed by the opinion of the wisest of men, who has pronounced that "a veil addeth to beauty." Armed with such authority, and inspired by love, I battled stoutly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... me to play to you a little?' Anne asked, when Hyacinth had returned and was sitting in the carved-oak chimney-corner, looking thoughtful and picturesque. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... and oleaginous lore, our travellers at last embarked upon the "Eagle's Wing," bound down the Vineyard Sound. As the steamer gained its offing, the view of New Bedford was very picturesque, reminding one of Boston seated at the head of her beautiful bay. The passage through the islands, though not long, is intricate, requiring skilful pilotage; and as the boat passed through the channel called Wood's Hole, certain feeble-minded sisters were positive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... There are palaces there to be beaten for gloomy majesty by none in Italy. There is a cathedral which was to have been the largest in the world, and than which few are more worthy of prolonged inspection. The town is old, and quaint, and picturesque, and dirty, and attractive,—as it becomes a town in Italy to be. But in July all such charms are thrown away. In July Italy is not a land of charms to an Englishman. Poor Stanbury did wander into the cathedral, and finding it the coolest place in the town, went ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... never, after all, given us a strictly scientific definition of the creature. They let her exhibit herself in all her drollery or her hatefulness, but they act in somewhat lordly fashion by leaving us to frame our definition from the picturesque data which they supply. Mrs. Mackenzie, in "The Newcomes," is repulsive to an awful degree, but the figure is as true as true can be, and most of us, no doubt, have seen the type in all its loathsomeness only too many times. Mrs. Mackenzie ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... degraded, broken creature whom all the world despised as a man, and who she would be forced to remind herself was the author of the poems of Byam Warner. Byron, at least, had never been a common drunkard. Picturesque in even his dissipations, he had been a superb romantic figure to the last. But this man! She could hear the struggle and rattle of romance as it died within her. Oh, that she had never seen Nevis, that her father had lived, that she ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... Luther, the peasants of Germany were suffering the most atrocious and awful misery; Luther himself knew about it, he had denounced the princely robbers and the priestly land-exploiters with that picturesque violence of which he was a master. But nothing had been done about it, nothing ever is done about it—until at last the miserable peasants attempted to organize and win their own rights. Their demands do not seem to us so very criminal as we read ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair |
