"Amphitheatre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heavenly way; the going out is the way of the world." Yet in its evaporation it travels as far as any. In summer it is the earth's liquid eye; a mirror in the breast of nature. The sins of the wood are washed out in it. See how the woods form an amphitheatre about it, and it is an arena for all the genialness of nature. All trees direct the traveller to its brink, all paths seek it out, birds fly to it, quadrupeds flee to it, and the very ground inclines toward it. It is nature's saloon, where she has ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... himself not only for attack but for defense; henceforth he sits at home and awaits the insurrection with which he is daily menaced; he resigns himself to everything, except drawing his sword; his attitude is that of a Christian in the amphitheatre.[2517]—The proposition of a camp outside Paris, however, draws out a protest from 8,000 Paris National Guards. Lafayette denounces to the Assembly the usurpations of the Jacobins; the faction sees that its reign is threatened by this reawakening and union of the friends ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... moment Quesada, in complete general's uniform, and mounted on a bright bay thorough bred English horse, with a drawn sword in his hand, dashed at full gallop into the area, in much the same manner as I have seen a Manchegan bull rush into the amphitheatre when the gates of his pen ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... heard and sung of "Tibby Fowler o' the glen;" but they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within about four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... pressed forward without halting and reached the hills above James City—a magniloquent name, but the "city" was a small affair—a mere village nestling down amid an amphitheatre ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... some wheeling themselves about in little hand carts. About three thousand of the decayed soldiers were lodged in the Hotel des Invalids, at the time of my visit. Passing the National Assembly on my return, I spent a moment or two in it. The interior of this building resembles an amphitheatre. It is constructed to accommodate 900 members, each having a separate desk. The seat upon which the Duchesse of Orleans, and her son, the Comte de Paris, sat, when they visited the National Assembly after the flight of Louis Philippe, was shown with considerable alacrity. ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the same time, and Seneca alone could not restrain the Emperor from his foolish vanity. He would descend into the arena of the great amphitheatre and sing to the lyre his own compositions; and he showed off his charioteering in the circus before the whole assembled city, letting no one go away till the performance was over. It very much shocked the patricians, but the mob were delighted, and he chiefly cared for their praises. ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great carnivals, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and obtuseness of the Romans to pathos appears a priori in their amphitheatre, and its tendency to put out the theatre; secondly, a posteriori, in the fact that their theatre was put out; and also, a posteriori, in the coarseness of their sensibilities to real distresses unless costumed and made sensible as well as intelligible. The grossness of this demand, which ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to the distant ward. The porter followed. The three surgeons standing by that grim table in the rubber-floored central space of the amphitheatre, fenced in by students' benches, vacant save for half a dozen whispering dressers, looked at one another. Bloused and aproned with sterilised material, masked, rubber-gloved, and slippered, and splashed with the same ominous stains that were on the table and upon the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... gigantic and grotesque. Very soon a gray twilight stole to meet them; an arch of light like a window opening into heaven brightened, glared, and the party emerged into a courtyard that seemed an entrance to some vast amphitheatre. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... walked forward boldly, Ginepro more timidly by his side. They were such wild-looking outlaws. At last they reached a spring, and Martin left the beaten path, ascended a slope, and stood at the entrance to a large natural amphitheatre, not unlike an old chalk pit, such as men still hew from the side ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... once before, on the occasion of the Swayamvara, I was beheld by the assembled kings in the amphitheatre, and never even once beheld afterwards. I am to-day brought before this assembly. She whom even the winds and the sun had seen never before in her palace is to-day before this assembly and exposed to the gaze of the crowd. Alas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... which form the southern border of the kingdom. Alpine heights rising around them in rugged magnificence, and gigantic grandeur, presented scenery which our traveller had never seen surpassed. The passes of Hairey and of Horza, amid a superb amphitheatre of hills, closely shut in by overhanging cliffs, more than two thousand feet high, were truly striking. Here for the first time in Africa, did nature appear to the English to rival in the production of vegetable ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... to listen. The window turned into a chute, and he slid down its polished sides into an amphitheatre. There, across gray sand, the corpse crept toward him on the stubs of arms and legs. The enormous grandstand was empty except for the judge and the informer, who ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... along the Valmontone road[130] coincide nearly enough with the provenience of the inscription to settle an amphitheatre here of late imperial date. The tradition of the death of the martyr S. Agapito in an amphitheatre, and the discovery of a Christian church on the Valmontone road, have helped to make pretty sure the ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... arranged as a semicircular amphitheatre, the orchestral conductor may conduct a considerable number of performers alone, all eyes then being able to look towards him. Nevertheless, the employment of a certain number of sub-conductors appears to me preferable to individual ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... town in those days choked up within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The most peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it lies exactly between two broad seas of light, between the marvellous mirror of its roadstead and its glorious amphitheatre of mountains, baldheaded, of a dazzling grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun. All the gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not lead straight to the harbour and draw some light therefrom, are plunged at ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... it, and no man would be The stroker of his mane, much less would prick His nostril with a reed. When nations roar Like lions, who shall tame them and defraud Of the due pasture by the river-shore? Roar, therefore! shake your dewlaps dry abroad: The amphitheatre with open door Leads back upon the benches who applaud ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... heat of a southern summer. Here waving elms offer him shared walks, and magnificent residences surrounded by flowers, fill the mind with ideas of comfort and of rest. If weary of constant contact with his fellow men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the back ground of this grand amphitheatre, lie the eternal mountains, frowning with brow of rock and cap of snow upon the smiling fields beneath, and there in its recesses may be found as much of wildness, and as much of solitude, as the pilgrim weary of the cares of life can desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... this grotto, bound hand and foot, looking like the victim of some mysterious sacrifice about to be performed on the altar of the grotto, in the amphitheatre of this old garden closed by the wall of tall laurels and overlooked by a pile ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... and went, and I was at the exit of the chasm, staring out upon an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Yet, of the mountains, and the terrible grandeur of the place, I recked nothing; for I was confounded with amazement to behold, at a distance of several miles and occupying the center of the arena, a stupendous structure built apparently of green jade. Yet, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... stones, also the streets were paved with gold; so that by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick." It was a momentary vision of a vast amphitheatre of splendor, mostly hidden by the trees and the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... remember once taking a tramp in your glorious Surrey hills, thinking of nothing but gorse and skylarks, when I came out on a vast circle of land, and over me lifted a vast, voiceless structure, tier above tier of seats, as huge as a Roman amphitheatre and as empty as a new letter-rack. A bird sailed in heaven over it. It was the Grand Stand at Epsom. And I felt that no one would ever be ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... with an adjoining side-show booth; while near by another was a most perfect representation of a cottage by the sea, with gables toward the observer, and chimneys rising at proper intervals along the roofs. On the other side of the vessel a huge monster presented a vast amphitheatre, with innumerable columns sparkling in the sunlight and dazzling the spectator with their intense brilliancy. I made a few sketches of the most remarkable in view; but as twenty-three could be seen ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... of the pine, but in a blood-red illumination. Among the company was a lady singer, a real and great singer. I have witnessed the homage paid to her in the greatest cities of Europe. When they came to the tragic theatre, they all sat down on the amphitheatre steps, and thus a small part of the house was occupied by an audience, as it had been many centuries ago. The stage still stood unchanged, with its walled side-scenes, and the two arches in the background, through which the beholders ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... during the Hundred Years' War was in the possession of the Companies that pretended to fight for the Leopards. And it was down this defile that the cutthroats rode on their plundering expeditions. In this valley is the village of Sauliac, in an amphitheatre of rocks, where road and river describe a semicircle. The cliff runs up to a height of 300 feet. Houses are perched on every available ledge, grappling the rock, where not simply consisting of faced caverns. In the midst of this cirque ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Romans) stood at gaze upon The battles of the monarchs of the wild And wood—the lion and his tusky rebels Of the then untamed desert, brought to joust In the arena—as right well they might, When they had left no human foe unconquered— Made even the forest pay its tribute of Life to their amphitheatre, as well As Dacia men to die the eternal death 60 For a sole instant's pastime, and "Pass on To a new ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... falling in hurriedly on the sandy ground to the south near the ragged rocks. The curve of the hills, crowned with the dark line of the troops, completed and framed the picture. Within this small amphitheatre one of the minor dramas of war was now to ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... away from our view and addressed ourselves to the task of finding out just when we were going to get there. The first day we bobbed up and over innumerable little ridges of a few hundred feet elevation, crossed several streams, and skirted the wide bowl-like amphitheatre of a basin. The second day we climbed over things and finally ended in a small hanging park named Alpine Meadows, at an elevation of eight thousand five hundred feet. There we rested-over a day, camped under a single pine-tree, with the quick-growing ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... noise," says she, "began to spread from the parterre to the orchestra, and from the amphitheatre to the boxes. Soon the news of the occurrence was known all over the house, when, like a sudden clap of thunder, an acclamation burst forth, and the whole audience, with a single undivided look of love, seemed to desire to embrace Bonaparte. What I am narrating ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... put on their waterproofs and set out to visit the town in the midst of the deluge; but as it contains no sight of special interest, I made up my mind that, like Constantinople, it was more attractive from without than within, and remained on board. An amphitheatre of rugged hills surrounds the place, broken only by a charming little valley, which stretches ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... wound through the dejected street, pursuing neither method nor set route, till it came to a deserted slag-heap, selected for the speech-making. Slowly the motley regiment swung into that grim amphitheatre under the pale sunshine; and, as I watched, a strange fancy visited my brain. I seemed to see over every ragged head of those marching women a little yellow flame, a thin, flickering gleam, spiring upward and blown back by the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... through an arcade of verdure which brought them to a short flight of steps. It was a sunk amphitheatre, surrounded by a stone balustrade, with a small pond in the middle and, opposite, in a leafy frame, a female statue, with a moonbeam quivering upon it. A musty smell ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... to the lane. Walking his spirited mustang with difficulty until the house had at last disappeared in the intervening foliage, he turned with an easy canter into a border bridle-path that seemed to lead to the canada. In a quarter of an hour he had reached a low amphitheatre of meadows, shut in a half ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... greater religious liberty, and at Ketchikan, a thriving town, the boys here gained their first real impressions of Alaskan conditions. They found Skagway a town of about fifteen hundred people, set in a great natural amphitheatre surrounded by mountains capped with perpetual snow. It is connected with the outside world by a cable to Seattle, and by other parts of Alaska by telegraph, and has electric lights and a telephone system. A fine school building and several ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... the manuscript which I was preparing for the press. There was much in the book * about early Christianity and ecclesiastical antiquities. I imagined that this parish was, in British and Druidic times, a populous place, and somewhat important. There was a "Round," or amphitheatre, for public games, and four British castles; also a great many sepulchral mounds on the hills, the burial-place of chieftains. I supposed that St. Piran came here among these rude natives (perhaps painted savages) to preach ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... settled by majorities. We eat when the majority eats; drink, when the majority drinks; sleep, when the majority sleeps; pray, when the majority prays. So far from burying ourselves in deep wells of pews, with curtains round their edges, we have raised the floors, amphitheatre fashion, so that every body can see every body; have taken away the sides of the pews, which we have converted into free and equal seats, and have cut down the side of the pulpit so that we can look at the clergyman; but I understand ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... live and know how good is GOD. I wish I knew that you enjoy such warmth and are not made languid by it. You will perhaps remember that I am always strongest at 98 degrees Fahrenheit. I delight to think that you also can look forth as I do now upon a broad valley and a fine amphitheatre of hills, and are about to watch the stately ceremony of sunset from your piazza. But you have not this lovely Lake, nor I suppose the delicate purple mist which folds these slumbering ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... We moved to-day over the frontier to Verona, by a road suspected of thieves,—'the wise convey it call,'—but without molestation. I shall remain here a day or two to gape at the usual marvels,—amphitheatre, paintings, and all that time-tax of travel,—though Catullus, Claudian, and Shakspeare have done more for Verona than it ever did for itself. They still pretend to show, I believe, the 'tomb of all the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... escape. "We must win clear of these woods. Hullo!" Ahead of us the river widened abruptly into a shining estuary, populous with anchored shipping. Tall hills flanked it, and in the curve of the westernmost hill a grey town rose from the waterside: its terraces climbing, tier upon tier, like seats in an amphitheatre; its chimneys lifting their smoke over against the dawn. The tiers curved away southward to a round castle and a spit of rock, off which a brig under white canvas stood out for the line ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... type from Utah was the same as from Ohio or Massachusetts; with all our differences we are the most homogeneous people under the sun, and likest a large family. We all frankly got tired at about the same time at the same place, and agreed that we had, without the amphitheatre, had enough when we ended at the Street of Tombs, where the tombs are in so much better repair than the houses. For myself, I remembered the amphitheatre so perfectly from 1864 that I did not see how I could add a single emotion there ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... westerly course along the path: we crossed to the south of the watercourse above the water, and proceeded over the most splendid salt-bush country that one could wish to see, bounded on the left by sandhills, whilst to the right the peculiar-looking flat-topped sandstone ranges form an extensive amphitheatre, through the far side of the arena of which may be traced the dark line of creek timber. At twelve o'clock we camped in the bed of the creek at camp—, our last camp on the road down from the Gulf, having taken four days to do what we then did in one. This comparative ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... room Craig had placed a large white sheet such as he used in his stereopticon lectures, while at the top of the tier of seats that made a sort of little amphitheatre out of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased; when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the spring of every action, and demoralizing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... a distant section of the silent city, sounded the angelus bell; and from the deep shadow of olive, vine, and myrtle that clothed the amphitheatre of hills, the convent bells ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... There, the ring is thrice carried off at the point of the lance. Feats of horsemanship follow in a covered building, to the right; and the juggler, conjurer, or magician, displays his dexterous feats, or exercises his potent spells ... in a little amphitheatre of trees, at a distance beyond. Here and there rise more stately edifices, as theatres ... from the doors of which a throng of heated spectators is pouring out, after having indulged their grief or joy at the Mary Stuart ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... tapering down towards me, is, with great pains and much clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of realising that this is a ship at all, and to become possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet what would even these things be, without the tributary workshops and the mechanical powers for piercing the iron plates—four inches and a half thick—for rivets, shaping them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... conspired to enhance the brilliance of Napoleon's triumph, the sun, which had been obscured for days by storm-clouds and torrents of rain, now shone brightly forth, bathing the scene in the mild radiance of autumn, lighting up the French forces disposed on the slopes of that natural amphitheatre, while it cast deep shadows from the long trail of the vanquished beneath. The French were electrified by the sight: the fatigues of their forced marches through the dusty heats of September, and the slush, swamps, and torrents of the last ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... out with momentary gleams to the nearer facades of precipice; it reeled, drooped, and shuddered as if in hopeless horror. Probably, since the world began, no other fire lighted by man had struggled against the gloom of this tremendous amphitheatre. The darknesses were astonished at it, but they were also uncomprehending and hostile. They refused to be ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the Fair of Beaucaire. As we passed Les Arenes, that famous Roman amphitheatre in the centre of our city, I heard my father and his old friend allude to its former uses, without paying much heed to them. I believe they reminded one another that not only wild beasts but Christians had formerly been put to death there, for the recreation of those who ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden—once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... And as a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best.' He found it so in 1833. But this and his two other voyages to Europe make no Odyssey. When Voltaire was pressed to visit Rome, he declared that he would be better pleased with some new and free English book than with all the glories of amphitheatre and of arch. Emerson in like manner seems to have thought more of the great writers whom he saw in Europe than of buildings or of landscapes. 'Am I,' he said, 'who have hung over their works in my chamber at home, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... quiet, and my room so pleasant, commanding a view of the sea, confined by an amphitheatre of hanging woods, that I wished to remain there, though no one in the house could speak English or French. The mayor, my friend, however, sent a young woman to me who spoke a little English, and she agreed to call on me twice a day to receive my orders and translate ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... enter into the situation of my poor Agnes. Perhaps the best way to express it at once is by recurring to the case of a young female Christian martyr, in the early ages of Christianity, exposed in the bloody amphitheatre of Rome or Verona, to 'fight with wild beasts,' as it was expressed in mockery— she to fight the lamb to fight with lions! But in reality the young martyr had a fight to maintain, and a fight (in contempt of that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... occasion of the laying to rest of one of the royal blood, or to offer the annual sacrifice to the spirits of the dead. Even beneath the bright moon that shone upon it the place seemed terrible. Here in the bosom of the hills was an amphitheatre, surrounded by walls of rock varying from five hundred to a thousand feet in height. In this amphitheatre grew great mimosa thorns, and above them towered pillars of granite, set there not by the hand of man but by nature. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... Egyptian architecture, and the landscape view from east or west is charming beyond the power of description. Freetown is the capital, with about twenty thousand inhabitants, situated on the south side of Sierra Leone River, and hugged in by an amphitheatre of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... The amphitheatre, where stood Spell-bound the mighty multitude, Rested its long and gilded walls Upon two pillars' capitals: His brawny arms, with labor spent, He threw around the pillars there, And to the deep blue firmament Lifted his sightless ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... characteristic mental states of a congregation of people who assemble there determine the atmosphere of any given assembly-place, church, or cathedral. Its inhabitants so make, so determine the atmosphere of a particular village or city. The sympathetic thoughts sent out by a vast amphitheatre of people, as they cheer a contestant, carry him to goals he never could reach by his own efforts alone. The same is true in regard to an orator and ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... close of the thirteenth century, Enrico Scrovegno, a noble Paduan, purchased, in his native city, the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre or Arena from the family of the Delesmanini, to whom those remains had been granted by the Emperor Henry III. of Germany in 1090. For the power of making this purchase, Scrovegno was in all probability indebted to his father, Reginald, who, for his avarice, is placed by Dante in the ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Before the massive portals of this renowned edifice, and under the shadow of its venerable towers, a magnificent platform had been reared, canopied with the most gorgeous tapestry. Hundreds of thousands thronged the surrounding amphitheatre, swarming at the windows, crowding the balconies, and clustered upon the house-tops, to witness the imposing ceremony. The gentle breeze breathing over the multitude was laden with the perfume of flowers. Banners, and pennants, and ribbons of every varied hue waved ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... this—that all this occurred in an age in which slavery had reached its worst and most fearful form, an age in which the emperors were accustomed, not unfrequently, to feed their fish with living slaves; when captives were led to fight in the amphitheatre with wild beasts or with each other, to glut the Roman appetite for blood upon a Roman holiday. And yet fearful as it was, the apostle says, "Care not for it." And fearful as war was in those days, when the soldiers came to John to be baptized, he did not recommend them to join some ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... poor slave surrendering himself into his hands, he ordered him to be carried away to Rome as soon as the lions were in readiness to be sent, and that for his crime he should be exposed to fight with one of the lions in the amphitheatre, as usual, for the diversion of the people. This was all performed accordingly. Androcles, after such a strange run of fortune, was now in the area of the theatre, amidst thousands of spectators, expecting every moment ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... round the port and rises in the form of an amphitheatre; the hills all round are covered with beautiful gardens, vineyards, olive groves and elegant country houses. Just acrost from the harbor is the old chateau where Mirabeau wuz imprisoned, poor humbly creeter! but smart. He didn't do ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Books, addressed to Lucilius. Book ii. was written after A.D. 57, as in ii. 9, 2 an amphitheatre is mentioned which was built by Nero in that year. The work was finished before the end of A.D. 64, for in Book vii. there is no mention among other prodigies of the comet which appeared again at ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... extraordinary fame of its football team with a keen spiritual life, especially fascinated Gilbert. He wrote a poem dedicated to the University and called "The Arena." In it he pictures first the golden image on "the gilded house of Nero" that stood for all the horrors of the Pagan Amphitheatre. Then comes in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... folded up in deep masses, forming a wall on every side, which obscured the horizon from their sight. It appeared as if nature had gratuitously cleared away a sufficient portion of the mist, and had thus arranged a little amphitheatre for the approaching combat ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... any one of them uncovered her Face. It is past all Doubt, that the Heart of Zeokinizul, which longed for an Object, would have received the Impression with Transport. He went to one of the Ends of the Saloon, where Women of an ordinary Rank were seated in a Kind of Amphitheatre. Their Dress was in nothing inferior to those of a higher Rank; and besides, they had those fresh healthful Countenances, which being the Result of Temperance, and a plain Way of living, was not to be found among the Quality. Zeokinizul stood viewing ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... strike his master, and would have contented himself with only choaking him; but towards Jones he bore no such respect; he no sooner therefore found himself a little roughly handled by his new antagonist, than he gave him one of those punches in the guts which, though the spectators at Broughton's amphitheatre have such exquisite delight in seeing them, convey but very little pleasure ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... this history. The rest contains some scandal concerning greater personages about the Court, a great share of abuse of the Elector of Hanover, and a pretty description of a boxing-match at Mr. Figg's amphitheatre in Oxford Road, where John Wells, of Edmund Bury (as by the papers may be seen), master of the noble science of self-defence, did engage with Edward Sutton, of Gravesend, master of the said science; and ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... include two theatres, an amphitheatre for horsemanship, and several sets of subscription concerts, for the use of which a ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... few yards, and passing under the bridge which he had viewed with so much terror, the path ascended rapidly from the edge of the brook, and the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheatre, waving with birch, young oaks, and hazels, with here and there a scattered yew-tree. The rocks now receded, but still showed their grey and shaggy crests rising among the copse-wood. Still higher rose eminences and peaks, some bare, some clothed with wood, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Genius, incarnated in Art, By thee the nations grow. Lawgiver thine, and priest, and sage, Lit up the Oriental age. Persuasive groves, and musical, Of love the illumined mountains all. Eagles and rods, and axes clear, Forum and amphitheatre; These in thy plastic forming hand, Forth leapt to life the classic Land. Old and new, the worlds of light, Who bridged the gulf of Middle Night? See the purple passage rise, Many arch'd of centuries; Genius built it long and vast, And o'er it social knowledge pass'd. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... then I paid off the cab and found my own way to this Conversationshaus. I liked the look of the trim, fresh town in its perfect amphitheatre of pine-clad hills, covered in by a rich blue sky from which the last clouds were exhaling like breath from a mirror. The well-drained streets were drying clean as in a black frost; checkered with sharp shadows, twinkling with shop windows, and ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... admission is four reals, or two shillings; but an additional charge is made for seats in the boxes; and the managers pay a considerable tax to government on every performance. Early in the afternoon of the day fixed upon for a bull-fight, every street leading to the amphitheatre is crowded with carriages, horsemen, and pedestrians. All are in the highest state of excitement, the highest glee, and in full dress. The business of the ring commences, about 2 p.m. by a curious sort of prelude. A company of soldiers perform a despejo, or a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... well known that the town became the centre of a network of great roads leading in different directions. The walls enclosed an area more than twice the size of Roman London, and one may easily gauge its importance and its princely style of buildings from the traces of its forum and its amphitheatre, as well ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... him. They were all asked to meet him at a late dinner, and the signal of his arrival was to be a white sheet attached to a pitchfork, and put on the top of a corn-stack in the barn-yard. The parish is a beautiful amphitheatre, with the Clyde winding through it—Wellbrae Hill to the west, Tinto Hill and the Culter Fells to the south, and the pretty, green, conical hill, Quothquan Law, to the east. My father's stack-yard, lying in the centre, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... embellished by Doric columns, and paintings of the most pleasing kind. Such was the interior! Without, the pure and transparent lake spread its broad mirror, or rolled its voluminous windings, by banks richly covered with olives and laurels; and in the distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre blushing with vines, and the elevations of the Alps covered with woods and pasturage, and sprinkled ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... about us, with an occasional neigh cheerfully given to encourage us in the pursuit. We were getting more unprepared in body, mind and soul for the sanctuary. Meanwhile, quite a household audience lined the fence; the children and visitors shouting like excited Romans in an amphitheatre at a contest with wild beasts, and it was uncertain whether the audience was in sympathy with us or the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... hundred yards in width. On the opposite shore immense bare, bleak hills raise their wind-swept heads seven hundred feet above the river level. A few pine-trees show their tops some distance away to the north, but no other trace of wood is to be seen in that vast amphitheatre of dry grassy hill in which the fort is built. It is a singularly wild-looking scene, not without a certain beauty of its own, but difficult of association with the idea of disease orepidemic, so pure and bracing is the air which sweeps over ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... as if he were a mere indifferent observer, and the terrific contest only afforded him a spectacle for the amusement of his official leisure. He sits as if two gladiators were crossing swords for his recreation. The cabinet seems to be little better than a box in an amphitheatre, from whence his majesty's ministers may survey the business of blood. There are three parties concerned, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the government: the Catholics advance upon the one hand; the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quite different from that of Stamboul. For whereas the latter is ranged like a great amphitheatre above the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora, here the vast town is spread out simply, in a plain surrounded by the solitude of the desert and dominated by chaotic rocks. Thousands of minarets rise up on every side like ears of corn in a field; far away in the distance one can see ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... make them join in combat with a hundred of the fiercest lions ever collected, to make sport for his subjects. The day arrived when the dreadful combat was to take place, and thousands of people assembled in the vast amphitheatre built for the purpose, to which even the huge pyramids ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the curiosity of the Pandavas that they determined to attend the Svayamvara. They found the city full of princes and kings who had come to take part in the contest for the most beautiful woman in the world. The great amphitheatre in which the games were to take place was surrounded by gold and jewelled palaces for the accommodation of the princes, and with platforms for the convenience of ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... their snow-clad summits, slanted obliquely into the rich plain before them, bathing with rosy splendour the leafless, snow-sprinkled trees, and fading gradually into shadow in the distance. To the south, too, they beheld a deep-shaded amphitheatre of heather and bracken; the course of the Esk, near Penicuik, winding about at the foot of its gorge; the broad, brown expanse of Maw Moss; and, fading into blue indistinctness in the south, the wild heath-clad Peeblesshire hills. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (Fig. 46) was generally semi-cylindrical in section, and was used to cover corridors and oblong halls, like the temple-cellas, or was bent around a curve, as in amphitheatre passages. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... when I was at Rome to say here stood the Capitol, there the Colossus of Nero, here was the Amphitheatre of Titus, there the Aqueduct of——, here the Forum, there the Catacombs, here the Temple of Venus, there of Jupiter, here the Pantheon, and the like; but I never designed to write a book. As much as was useful I kept in my head, and for the rest, I ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... costumes were made by the boys out of all sorts of material, make-up was bought from a theatrical supply house and the scenery supplied by nature. Footlights were lanterns set in front of reflectors made from old tomato cans. The path leading to the natural amphitheatre was lighted by Japanese lanterns and the guests were seated on the ground. In the words of Hamlet, "The Play's the Thing," and boys and visitors are always enthusiastic over the presentation, while the players get a new conception of Shakespeare's ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... be conveyed without danger of maladjustment or injury. This may seem a small detail, but it is really an important auxiliary in the teaching by demonstration with specimens for which this room was peculiarly intended. The ordinary lectures of Professor Virchow were held in a neighboring amphitheatre of conventional type. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... can," continued the Professor, without heeding the interruption, "that this amphitheatre is a real theatre. Allowing twice as much room as is given for the seat of each person in the most comfortable theatre in the world, and you could seat here an audience of two hundred and fifty millions of people. These would all be in the boxes ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... could never drink enough. I could not help laughing when, after drinking off my third big bowl, the poor woman of the khan, in spite of Arab courtesies, was obliged to utter a loud "Mashallah!" We were still surrounded by amphitheatre-shaped mountains, with the points to the Sea of Sidon. The sunset was splendid, and the air was cool and pleasant. We debated whether to camp or to go on; but the place was so tempting that we ended by remaining, and were repaid by ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... the prison that was set upon a little hill, a frowning building of brown stone, divided into courts and surrounded by a high wall and a ditch, could hear the workmen at their labours in the amphitheatre below. These sounds interested them, since many of those who listened were doomed to take a leading part in the spectacle of this new day. In the outer court, for instance, were a hundred men called malefactors, for the most part Jews convicted of various political offences. These were to ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... we find him pondering, like one of his own spirits of Pity and Irony, while the moonlight shines on the haunted amphitheatre where the Romans held their games. He devotes much care to noting all those little "omens by the way" that make a journey along the great highways of Wessex so full ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... himself with the awful duties imposed on him, the new juror resolved to mingle with the throng and look on at a case before the Tribunal as a member of the general public. He climbed the great stairs on which a vast crowd was seated as in an amphitheatre and pushed his way into the ancient Hall of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... unconscious that he was incomparably the most powerful of the influences that were then at work in the world. The haughty and stolid eyes of Romans saw in him nothing but a prisoner, sent up from a turbulent subject land on some obscure charge, a mere nobody. The crowds in forum and amphitheatre would have laughed at any one who had pointed to that humble 'hired house,' and said, 'There lodges a man who bears a word that will shatter and remould the city, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... dinner-party. Wrote out a sketch for an essay on Justification. Singing, whist, shooting. Copied a paper for my father. 12th.—A day on the hill for roe. 14 guns. [To Liverpool for public dinner at the Amphitheatre.] 18th.—Most kindly heard. Canning's debut everything that could be desired. I thought I spoke 35 minutes, but afterwards found it was 55. Read Marco Visconti. 21st.—Operative dinner at Amphitheatre. Spoke perhaps 16 or 18 minutes. 28th.—Haddo [Lord Aberdeen's]. Finished Marco Visconti, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the purple cliffs above, and, right in front, of the great cataract of Nant Gwynnant, a long snow-white line zigzagging down coal-black cliffs for many a hundred feet, and above it, depth beyond depth of purple shadow away into the very heart of Snowdon, up the long valley of Cwm-dyli, to the great amphitheatre of Clogwyn-y-Garnedd; while over all the cone of Snowdon rose, in perfect symmetry, between his attendant peaks of Lliwedd and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... School alone; he knew his arm, and its just time of moving; put a firm faith in that, and never let his foe escape a parry. He was just as much as great a master as any I ever saw, as he was a greater judge of time and Measure. It was his method, when he fought in his Amphitheatre, to send round to a select number of his scholars to borrow a shirt for the ensuing combat, and seldom failed of half-a-dozen of superfine Holland from his prime Pupils. Most of the young Nobility and Gentry made it a part ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... at the mouth of the Valley of Rocks, about which so much has been written, which has been compared to an amphitheatre of giants, or the scene of some titanic conflict, where the huge granite crags and boulders have been torn up and tossed about by supernatural and terrific forces. In honesty I must admit that this seems to me an exaggeration. Any walker ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... chamois. The few houses here belong to foreigners. Little paths lead up to them, and some have steps, which the Chilians look upon as a superfluous and altogether useless luxury. A staircase of tiled or palm-branch roofs below and above an amphitheatre of gates and gardens present a curious spectacle. At first I kept up with the naturalists, but they presently brought me to a place where I could not advance or retire a step, which decided me to return with one of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... glorious local art, and of the springs and sources of art, which can by no means be made subjects of package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, of salvage. Verona possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but the most perfect and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still unbroken in circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch: it contains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wrecks of temples, which give the streets of its suburbs a character of antiquity unexampled elsewhere, except in Rome itself. But ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... accomplished. The character of the audiences was even more gratifying than its numbers. Never had been such an assemblage in any theatre. A great number of elderly persons, both men and women, interspersed with the younger people, gave a beautiful shading to the amphitheatre picture, as it was seen from the boxes. It was a tribute of respect to one who had been so long the pride of Boston. As a matter of record I give the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... this is a fine place!" exclaimed Terence, as he gazed over the wide expanse of the harbour, the plain of Liguania covered with plantations, and dotted with white farm-houses quivering in the beams of a tropical sun. Beyond it rose the magnificent amphitheatre of the Blue Mountains, one piled upon another, reaching to the clouds, and intersected by numerous deep, irregular valleys; one of their spurs, with Rock Fort at its base, appearing directly over the ship's port-quarter; while before the beam was seen, at the end of a narrow spit of sand, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... scenes representing houses, woods, hills, &c., supported on wheels, so that a complete change of scene can be effected in a few moments. The music has the same place between the stage and the spectators as at home. The latter, as at home, are distributed partly in a gently rising amphitheatre, partly in several tiers of boxes rising one above another, the lowest tier being considered the principal one. The Japanese do not sit in the same way as we do. Neither the amphitheatre nor the boxes accordingly are provided with chairs or benches, but are divided into square compartments one or ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... How beautiful the entrance is of this charming city, how grand the gate, how handsome the drive forward, may all be read here in a printed book called Verona illustrata: but my felicity in finding the amphitheatre so well preserved, can only be found in my own heart, which began sensibly to dilate at the seeing an old Roman colisseum kept so nicely, and repaired so well. It is said that the arena here is absolutely perfect; and if the galleries are a little deficient, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of the ancient town walls, of a gymnasium near the harbour and of the amphitheatre are ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... wonders. He had sold her a model of the Alexandrian library, a specimen of the original type invented by Memnon the Egyptian, and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. The jury, however, thought that the virtuoso having ordered those curiosities, ought to pay for them, and brought in a verdict ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... buildings like the aviary specified by Varro, the bridge of piles over the Rhine executed by the engineers of Caesar, and even two semicircular stages of boards arranged for being pushed together, and employed first separately as two theatres and then jointly as an amphitheatre. The public exhibition of foreign natural curiosities at the popular festivals was not unusual; and the descriptions of remarkable animals, which Caesar has embodied in the reports of his campaigns, show that, had an Aristotle appeared, he would have again found ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... two virtuously amiable daughters, so prominently in the foreground. After a noble reply by Captain de Camp, of the Hon. East India Company's service, from Madras, and much applause from the diners, they ascend, to join the ladies; forming, round the drawing-room-fire, a vast amphitheatre, in the centre of which, gladiatorial children contend for nuts and oranges—Captain de Camp filling the post of honour,—making himself at home in Mr. Brown's easy chair and slippers. Mr. Wellesley drags in the yule-log, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... concealment of the orchestra by the sinking of the floor, so that the view of the audience could not be interrupted by the musicians and their movements. Private boxes were done away with, the arrangement of the seats being like that of an ancient amphitheatre, all of them facing the stage. Two prosceniums were constructed which gave an indefinable sense of distance to the stage-picture. To relieve the bare side walls, a row of pillars was planned, gradually widening outward and forming the end ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... by a silver sea, near a Golden Gate. For ages the water has washed from an almost land-locked bay against this hill-crowned city, and on its northern side has created of the shore an amphitheatre stretching for some three miles ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... out to see the sun set from Lady Judith's grounds. The wind had dropped. The clouds had rolled from the zenith, and ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and land: Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the wave faced Hyperion falling. There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk and ravined brows, stretching all his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the tea plant to the Mishmee Hills, especially about Bramakoond, where it is reported to grow. If I find it there, I will endeavour to trace it up into the mountains, which form due east of this an amphitheatre of high ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... of Peterswald lies at the northern base of a range of heights, which, circling round, place Toeplitz in the centre of a huge amphitheatre. On this side the ascent is gradual, and the face of the hill open and cultivated. In a military point of view, therefore, the position is admirable; it forms a perfect glacis. As you wind your way upwards, moreover, the view becomes, at every step, more and more ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... gun and pen. She is presumably quite a young woman; probably, when at home, a graceful figure in drawing-rooms. I should like to hear her talk, to exchange thoughts with her. She would give one a very good idea of the matron of old Rome who had her seat in the amphitheatre. Many of those ladies, in private life, must have been bright and gracious, high-bred and full of agreeable sentiment; they talked of art and of letters; they could drop a tear over Lesbia's sparrow; at the same time, they were connoisseurs in ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of its merchandise was still carried in sailing ships or Chinese junks. How astounding the progress that has marked the last half-century! The streets that meandered, as it were, among the valleys, or fringed the water's edge, now girdle the hills like rows of seats in a huge amphitheatre; a railway lifts the passenger to the mountain top; and other railways whirl him from hill to hill along the dizzy height. I Trade, too, has multiplied twenty fold. In a commercial report for the year ending June, 1905, it is stated that in amount of tonnage Hong Kong has ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... cure, or had cured any disease. My venerated instructor, Dr. James Jackson, taught me never to use that expression. Curo means, I take care of, he used to say, and in that sense, if you mean nothing more, it is properly employed. So, in the amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, I used to read the words of Ambroise Pare, "Je le pansay, Dieu le guarist." (I dressed his wound, and God cured him.) Next, I am not in the habit of talking about "the diseases to which flesh is heir." The expression has become rather ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are received and many a scene from the School for Scandal is enacted whilst the fair gossip-mongers flirt and sip ices. In winter the opera is the standard amusement of the fashionable world, while the favorite resort in summer is the diurno or open air theatre, which is in the form of an amphitheatre, the stage with its accessories facing an unroofed enclosure, with the seats arranged in tiers one above another, and fenced off by an iron balustrade from a terrace which serves the purpose of a gallery. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... of the period, who did the paying, worried about new sandals for the children, his wife insisting she hadn't a frock fit to be seen in at the amphitheatre; that, if there was one thing in the world she fancied, it was seeing a Christian eaten by a lion, but now she supposed the children would have to go without her, found that philosophy came to ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... more lofty sorts; then trees of the ordinary height; and beyond and above all, the venerable and lofty groves which border the circumference. Thus this extensive enclosure appeared, from its centre, like a verdant amphitheatre decorated with fruits and flowers, containing a variety of vegetables, some strips of meadow land, and fields of rice and corn. But, in arranging these vegetable productions to his own taste, he wandered not too far from the designs of Nature. Guided by her suggestions, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... cut off many of the causes of wretchedness, and to heal it wherever it was found. At her command, wherever she has been duly acknowledged, many of the evils of life have already fled. The prisoner of war is no longer led into the amphitheatre to become a gladiator, and to imbrue his hands in the blood of his fellow-captive for the sport of a thoughtless multitude. The stern priest, cruel through fanaticism and custom, no longer leads his fellow-creature to the altar to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... by an exhibition of a well-timed embarrassment, proclaim the favored object of their evening's ride. Crowds of foot-passengers sauntered along the road-side, looking at the rich display made by the aristocracy and nobility of the republic. At the entrance of the Paseo, in front of the amphitheatre, where on Sundays bulls are tortured to death as a popular amusement, is the equestrian bronze statue of Carlos IV., the work of Tolsa, who, as artist and architect, has won for himself undying renown at Mexico. The garden of Tolsa, the College of Mines, and the bronze horse, testify to the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the amphitheatre was raised considerably above the orchestra, and opposite to it was the stage, at an equal degree of elevation. The hollow semicircle of the orchestra was unoccupied by spectators, and was designed for another purpose. However, it was otherwise with the Romans, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... windows of Mr. Gladstone's Study is a singular circle of limes of some 20 feet in diameter, which goes by the name of Sir John Glynne's Dressing-Room. Mounting the slope towards the old castle is the Broad Walk, terminating in an artificial amphitheatre at the top, made by Sir John Glynne to give employment in a time of distress. The grounds abound in fine trees, {29b} and in rhododendrons which in spring ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... guary miracle, in English a miracle play, is a kind of Interlude compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history with that grossness which accompanied the Romans' vetus comedia. For representing it they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the diameter of this inclosed plain some forty or fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides, many miles off, to hear and see it; for they have therein devils and devices to delight ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to the north and north-west winds, which blow as cold in Provence, as ever I felt them on the mountains of Scotland: whereas Nice is entirely screened from these winds by the Maritime Alps, which form an amphitheatre, to the land-side, around this little territory: but another incontestible proof of the mildness of this climate, is deduced from the oranges, lemons, citrons, roses, narcissus's, july-flowers, and jonquils, which ripen and blow in the middle of winter. I ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... different races and dominations. Remnants of Roman or Gallo-Roman architecture stand with others that belong to the dawn of mediaeval art, and others, again, that are marked by the florid and graceful fancy of the Renaissance. The ruins of the amphitheatre are insignificant compared to those at Nimes and Arles, and there is no beautiful example of Roman art like the Maison Carre at Nimes; but there is an exceedingly curious monument of antiquity, which was long a puzzle to archaeologists, but which is now generally ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... growing swiftly dusk, though the amphitheatre of turf where the boys stood, cupped the last of the light from the west, backed as it was by the semi-circle ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... a vast amphitheatre of sward, whose walls banked out the narrow sky above. And here, in the focus of the huge ring, an object appeared which stirred strange melancholy in Lancelot,—a little chapel, ivy-grown, girded with a few yews, and elders, and grassy graves. A ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... already, ran round the whole brow of the hill, as well towards the sea as towards the land; but the ground within having originally been a mount, they have reduced it not to one level, but to several, rising in stages one above the other, like an amphitheatre, each of which is inclosed within its separate pallisade; they communicate with each other by narrow lanes, which might easily be stopt up, so that if an enemy should force the outward pallisade, he would have others to carry before the place could be wholly reduced, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... enjoyments of mankind, even under the sway of a Roman despot, "the novelty and invention" had very narrow limits when applied to matters so utterly unworthy and unintellectual as the cruel sports of the amphitheatre. Probus indeed, transplanted trees to the arena, so that it had the appearance of a verdant grove; and Severus introduced four hundred ferocious animals in one ship sailing in the little lake which the arena formed. But on ordinary ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Syracuse is built on high ground in an amphitheatre of hills surrounding Onondaga Lake—a beautiful body of clear water 5 M. long and 1-1/2 M, wide at its broadest point. James St. in the northeastern part of the city is a fine residence street, and the principal business thoroughfare is Saline St. The most noteworthy parks in Syracuse ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... occurs upon the right bank of the Murray, a little below the junction of the Rufus with it. A cliff of from 120 to 130 feet in perpendicular elevation here flanks the river for about 200 yards, when it recedes from it, and forms a spacious amphitheatre that is occupied by semicircular hillocks, that partake of the same character as the cliff itself; the face of which showed the various substances of which it was composed in horizontal lines, that if prolonged would cut the same substance in the hillocks. Based upon a soft white ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... is a trifle to another anecdote reported by the same authority:— On some occasion it happened that a dearth prevailed, either generally of cattle, or of such cattle as were used for feeding the wild beasts reserved for the bloody exhibitions of the amphitheatre. Food could be had, and perhaps at no very exorbitant price, but on terms somewhat higher than the ordinary market price. A slight excuse served with Caligula for acts the most monstrous. Instantly repairing to the public jails, and causing all the prisoners to pass in review before him (custodiarum ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... in the county of Nottingham, is situated in the midst of an amphitheatre of well-wooded hills; the soil is rich, and the air, from the vicinity of the River Trent, is remarkably pure. It is fourteen miles north-east of Nottingham, about as many south-east of Mansfield, and eight south-west from Newark; the River Greet, famous for red trout, runs by the side of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... and is supported upon the steep bank of the Isle just where the stream bends and makes an amphitheatre, so that men coming in from the north (which is the way the city was meant to be entered—and therefore, as you may properly bet, the railway comes in at the other side by the back door) see it all at once: a great sight. One goes ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... "He's saying that this amphitheatre was once almost as large as the one at Nimes, but that it would only hold about ten thousand spectators," explained the chauffeur, who was engaged partly for his French and knowledge ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... stand upon the top of Chumulari, you would have under your eye, and thousands of feet below your feet, the scene of our narrative— the arena in which its various incidents were enacted. Not so unlike an amphitheatre would that scene appear—only differing from one, in the small number of the dramatis persona, and the entire ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... killed a deer and was roping it on his pack-horse. As we proceeded up the canyon it grew narrower, and soon we entered a veritable gorge. It was short, but the floor was exceedingly rough, and made hard going for the horses. Suddenly I was amazed to see the gorge open out into a kind of amphitheatre several hundred feet across. The walls were steep, and one side shelved out, making a long, shallow cave, In the center of this amphitheatre was a deep hole from which the mountain ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... Nismes, I went to see the amphitheatre, which is a far more magnificent work than even the Pont-du-Gard, yet it made a much less impression on me, perhaps, because my admiration had been already exhausted on the former object; or that the situation of the latter, in the midst of a city, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... partnership, and as, including the women and boys, they numbered fifteen, and could take up the five claims which, by mining law, the discoverer of a new place was entitled to, they had in all twenty claims, which gave them the whole of the little amphitheatre at the foot of the fall for a ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... not remain also, by the side of Hegel's philosophy, as an eloquent codicil to those testaments of individual sovereignty signed by Aristophanes, Montaigne, and Voltaire? He believed himself a spiritualist, and, sublime sawbones, he studied only in the medical amphitheatre. He entered a drawing-room only through the kitchen and the dressing-room. He was always ignorant of that fine saying of Hemsterhuys: 'This world is not a machine but a poem.' He believed himself a painter of manners, and he invented the manners. His women who are so vividly ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... irritated, it is not apt to confine itself within its proper limits. If it becomes not difference in opinion upon law, but a trial of spirit between parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple of justice, but the amphitheatre for gladiators. No,—God forbid! Juries ought to take their law from the bench only; but it is our business that they should hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to the principles of the Constitution. The jury are to hear the judge: ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... commencement of the rainy season—at that period of the day and year when the tropic sun of Southern Mexico is least endurable. His fervid rays, striking perpendicularly downward, had heated like smouldering ashes the dusty plain of Huajapam, which lay like a vast amphitheatre surrounded by hills—so distant that their blue outlines were almost confounded with the azure sky above them. On this plain was presented a tableau of sadness and desolation, such as the destructive genius of man often ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... generally placed in the hollows, the division lines between them, if they were close together, being the tops of the ridges and the watercourses, especially the former. The buildings of each farm were usually at its lowest point, as if in the centre of an amphitheatre.[23] Each was on an average of about 400 acres,[24] but sometimes more.[25] Tracts of low, swampy grounds, possibly some miles from the cabin, were cleared for meadows, the fodder being stacked, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... had nearly passed away, there was in Athens a great noise of workmen and hammers. The duke was busy with preparations. He built a large amphitheatre, seated, round and round, to hold thousands of people. He erected also three temples,—one for Diana, one for Mars, one for Venus; how rich these were, how full of paintings and images, the tongue cannot ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the extreme left was just visible the bold rocky point of Porto Fino; to the right extended westward a grand line of picturesque coast, including the headlands of Capo di Noli and Capo delle Mele; and near at hand lay the harbor of Genoa, with its shipping, its amphitheatre of palaces, surmounted by the high ground above, and crowned by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life or death from the president of the amphitheatre, so waited our friends in anxious suspense while the conference continued. In a few minutes, before a word was uttered, the women of the tribe threw up their arms three times. This was the inviolable sign of peace! Down fell the spears. Forward, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... into crowning provinces of i. France (Gallia), 2. Belgium, 3. Holland (Batavia), 4. England (Britannia), 5. Savoy (Allobroges), 6. Switzerland (Helvetia), 7. Spain (Hispania),—than to decorate a street or to found an amphitheatre. Dr. Beattie once observed that, if that question as to the greatest man in action upon the rolls of History were left to be collected from the suffrages already expressed in books and scattered throughout the literature of all nations, the scale would be found ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... barley, and lentils were very flourishing. After rounding the promontory which forms the southern boundary of the Gulf of Sidon, we rode for an hour or two over a plain near the sea, and then came down to a valley which ran up among the hills, terminating in a natural amphitheatre. An ancient barrow, or tumulus, nobody knows of whom, stands near the sea. During the day I noticed two charming little pictures. One, a fountain gushing into a broad square basin of masonry, shaded by three branching cypresses. Two Turks sat on its edge, eating their bread and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... drink mean liquor, it was consistent with their ways so to swear it. Our Gallic-Encyclopedic friends, again, must have a Champ-de-Mars, seen of all the world, or universe; and such a Scenic Exhibition, to which the Coliseum Amphitheatre was but a stroller's barn, as this old Globe of ours had never or hardly ever beheld. Which method also we reckon natural, then and there. Nor perhaps was the respective keeping of these two Oaths far out of due proportion to such ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... huge, enlarging on the sight, Nature's volcanic amphitheatre, Chimera's Alps, extend from left to right; Beneath, a living valley seems to stir. Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain fir Nodding above; behold Black Acheron! Once consecrated to the sepulchre. Pluto! if this be hell I look upon, Close ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Digby, when he became its owner, added four wings with a tower to each. Pope visited Lord Bristol there, and has sketched the place in one of his graceful letters to Miss Blount. He dwells particularly on the lofty woods clothing the amphitheatre of hills, the irregular lovely gardens, the masses of honeysuckle, the ruins of the old fortress, the sequestered bowling-green, and the grove Ralegh planted, with the stone seat from which he overlooked the town and minster, and dreamt and smoked. The spirit of Ralegh still dominates Sherborne, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... audience, settled into order by the opening prayer or by the transaction of business, might easily catch sight of him, and as he passed down the long aisle, moving steadily on with graceful stride and immobile face, a flush of pride tinged his cheeks as cheer after cheer, rolling from one end of the amphitheatre to the other, rent the air. He sat in the front row on the centre aisle, and about him clustered Chester A. Arthur, Levi P. Morton, Benjamin F. Tracy, Edwards Pierrepont, George H. Sharpe, and the boyish figure of Charles E. Cornell, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
