"Armorial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said to himself, "I shall there have a firebrand of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of the three great armorial bearings of royal sugar which have been erected on the public refreshment-stall of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... particular precaution used, one moment's inspection sufficed. The cards had been issued to the parties invited not very long before the time of assembling; consequently, as each was sealed with a private seal of the Landgrave's, sculptured elaborately with his armorial bearings, forgery would have been ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... superior specimens of them at the Manchester Exhibition, that I shall say nothing of them here. The seal-ring of Mary, Queen of Scots, is in one of the cases; it must have been a thumb-ring, judging from its size, and it has a dark stone, engraved with armorial bearings. In another case is the magic glass formerly used by Dr. Doe, and in which, if I rightly remember, used to be seen prophetic visions or figures of persons and scenes at a distance. It is a round ball of glass or crystal, slightly tinged with a pinkish hue, and about ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let down the step of a tasteful coupe emblazoned with armorial bearings. The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat at the side where she could be best seen when the carriage turned, put her hand on the door, and waved her handkerchief in the duennna's despite. In contempt of what might be said by the curious, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... days, the lovers of the Fadae, or Fairies, were numerous; and describes the rules of their intercourse with as much accuracy, as if he had himself been engaged in such an affair. Sir David Lindsay also informs us, that a leopard is the proper armorial bearing of those who spring from such intercourse, because that beast is generated by adultery of the pard and lioness. He adds, that Merlin, the prophet, was the first who adopted this cognizance, because he was "borne of faarie in adultre, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage with his armorial bearings on the panels; but his presentation to His Majesty made it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten. The restored dynasty, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... as the coffin was put in the hearse, two empty carriages, with the armorial bearings of the Comte de Restaud and the Baron de Nucingen, arrived and followed in the procession to Pere-Lachaise. At six o'clock Goriot's coffin was lowered into the grave, his daughters' servants standing round the while. The ecclesiastic recited ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... of George Washington's containing his book-plate has an added interest, though the plate itself is an armorial design, not at all well executed. Its motto is "exitus acta probat"—the event justifies the deed. From its rarity and the high price it commands, it has probably been the only American book-plate ever ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... XVIII. "Really, M. de Blacas, I must change your armorial bearings; I will give you an eagle with outstretched wings, holding in its claws a prey which tries in vain to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from France into other countries. St. Giles was honoured in Edinburgh as early as 11 50, when a monastery existed under his invocation. He became the {128} recognised patron saint of the city, and his figure appeared in the armorial bearings of Edinburgh, accompanied by the hind which is said in his legend to have attached herself to the saint. Since the Reformation the figure of the saint has disappeared, though that of ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... male heirs, and are no help to us here. In the first 1596 draft the claims are based on John's public office, on a grant to his antecessors by Henry VII. for special services on marriage with the daughter and heir of a gentleman of worship (i.e., entitled to armorial bearings). Then a fuller draft was drawn out, also in 1596, correcting "antecessors" into "grandfather." Halliwell-Phillipps only mentions one at that date, but Mr. Stephen Tucker,[54] Somerset Herald, gives facsimiles of both. Halliwell-Phillipps calls these ridiculous ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... composed of two wings which are parallel at their extremities, and a peristyle between the two former, but which does not so far project. Two columns of the corinthian order support the pediment, on which the armorial bearings of the town are sculptured; they are supported on one side by Mercury and the attributes of Commerce, and on the other by Industry in the likeness of Minerva. On the first floor of the southern wing, there is a very fine room, which is used for the meetings of the municipal ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... Herald's office. In England the Herald's College, or College of Arms, is a royal corporation the chief business of which is to grant armorial bearings, or coats of arms, and to trace and preserve genealogies. What does Emerson mean by comparing certain circles ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... should have been entirely omitted. The following extract from Guillim's Heraldry, shews that Bishop Earle could not have been connected with the Streglethorp family, since, if he had, there would have been no occasion for a new grant of armorial bearings. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... own will, however, and his own way, because he was a Scot, and only "English" in the sense we use that word for "British,"—too frequently thereby giving dire offence to the blue lion of the North, whose armorial tail is so punctiliously correct as to the precise curl and make up of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... very suspiciously at the letters—one had his own armorial bearings displayed in red wax—and the formal direction was at a glance detected to be that of his aunt Catharine—Catharine's missives were never agreeable—she had a rent charge on the property for a couple of thousands; and, like Moses and Son, her system was "quick returns," and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... the river, is an Indian graveyard, consisting of a collection of tombs, in each of which were the scattered bones of many skeletons. The tombs were made of boards, which were ornamented with many figures of men and animals of the natural size— from their appearance, constituting the armorial device by which, among Indians, the chiefs ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... and Mrs. Comyns Carr, and Mr. Hawes Craven, who was to paint the scenery. We bought nearly all the properties used in "Faust" in Nuremberg, and many other things which we did not use, that took Henry's fancy. One beautifully carved escutcheon, the finest armorial device I ever saw, he bought at this time, and presented it in after years to the famous American connoisseur, Mrs. Jack Gardner. It hangs now in one of the rooms ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... him with either inaccuracy or falsehood. No man would be at leisure to court heraldic honors, when he knew himself to be embarrassed, or apprehended that he soon might be so. A man whose anxieties had been fixed at all upon his daily livelihood would, by this chase after the armorial honors of heraldry, have made himself a butt for ridicule, such as no fortitude could enable him ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... "The Red Cow," but I will not omit to hazard an idea for the consideration of GLYWYSYDD. Marlborough has changed its armorial bearings several times; but the present coat, containing a white bull, was granted by Harvey, Clarenceux in A.D. 1565. Cromwell was attached to Cowbridge and its cow by family {307} descent; so he was to Marlborough by congeniality of sentiment with the burghers. Query, Whether, in affection ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... knights are still carved over the doors, whence issue these miserable greasy hucksters and pedlars. The Turks respected these emblems of the brave enemies whom they had overcome, and left them untouched. When the French seized Malta they were by no means so delicate: they effaced armorial bearings with their usual hot-headed eagerness; and a few years after they had torn down the coats-of- arms of the gentry, the heroes of Malta and Egypt were busy devising heraldry for themselves, and were wild to be barons and ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mascon, Bingham, vi. 421., in the Excerptions of Ecgbright, A.D. 740, Item 154., and the Constitutions of Othobon, A.D. 1268, can. 4., to bear arms for the purposes of warfare, it is a question whether any below the episcopal order ought, in strict right, to display any armorial ensigns at all. Archbishops and bishops bear the arms of their sees impaled (as of their spouse) with their own paternal coats; the latter probably only in right of their baronies. It is worthy of remark ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... sacred burden across the tide, and the details are in an advanced stage of symbolism. Far more pleasing, artistically, are the beautiful bench-ends of the early sixteenth century, with their various emblems of the Crucifixion, their armorial insignia, their symbols and initials. This church is peculiarly attractive, and its situation is delightful. From thence the road runs to Kilkhampton, whither recollections of the Grenvilles have already carried us. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the private receptions given during her stay in Paris the same ceremonial was observed as if she had been really on the throne. The young Duke, her husband, was not present, being in exile as a pretender, but armorial bearings of the "reigning family," as their followers insist on calling them, were hung around the Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... at first denoted the valor, afterwards the nobility, of the bearer; and in process of time gave origin to the armorial ensigns so famous in the ages of chivalry. The shields of the private men were simply colored; those of the chieftains had the figures ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the eminence of the persons from whom it came. I would hang it round my neck by a string of pearls, and when I came into the presence of knights and of ladies, I would proclaim that this addition to my achievement of armorial distinction, was bestowed by the renowned Count Robert of Paris, and his unequalled lady." The Knight and the Countess looked on each other, and the lady, taking from her finger a ring of pure gold, prayed the old man to accept of it, as a mark of her ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the road grew very fine indeed. It was going proudly through a mighty city, sweeping in like a river; you would not think that it ever remembered duck-boards. There were great palaces there, with huge armorial eagles blazoned in stone, and all along each side of the road was a row of statues of kings. And going down the road towards the palace, past the statues of the kings, a tired procession was riding, full of the flags of the Allies. And ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... decorating funerals, though but little in the intention of making them objects of outward show. A bearer of plumes precedes the procession. The horses employed are dressed in trappings. The hearse follows ornamented with plumes of feathers, and gilded and silvered with gaudy escutcheons, or the armorial bearings of the progenitors of the deceased. A group of hired persons range themselves on each side of the hearse and attendant carriages, while others close the procession. These again are all of them clad in long cloaks, or furnished, in regular order, with scarfs and hat-bands. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... on the field of battle is not recorded in the annals of chivalry. In memory of this expedition, the Douglases have ever since carried the armorial bearings of the Bloody Heart surmounted by the Crown; and a similar distinction is borne by another family. Sir Simon of Lee, a distinguished companion of Douglas, was the person on whom, after the fall of his leader, the custody of the heart devolved. ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... must not be taken too seriously; the red hand in the armorial bearings having led, it has been suggested, to the supposition of some sanguinary business in the records of the family. Among the monuments in Cranbrook Church, Kent, there is one erected to Sir Richard Baker—the gauntlet, red gloves, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... wish for jewellery in the evening, choose between pearls and diamonds; better have a few of these, and good, than whole caskets of topazes and amethysts. If you are a gentleman, wear only two rings—one for your lady-love, the other for your armorial bearings—if you have a gold chain to your watch, keep it, but the less you show of it the better. Avoid a foolish custom now springing up, of fastening the coat with a couple of supplementary buttons, attached by a metallic link. This is the trick of some scoundrel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... one commission that I must trouble you with. I lately lost a valuable seal, a present from a departed friend, which vexes me much. I have gotten one of your Highland pebbles, which I fancy would make a very decent one; and I want to cut my armorial bearing on it; will you be so obliging as inquire what will be the expense of such a business? I do not know that my name is matriculated, as the heralds call it, at all; but I have invented arms for myself, so you know I shall be chief of the name; and, by courtesy of Scotland, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the antique oak panelling that covered its walls. He loved the great ingle-nook, set deep back as it were, in the very bosom of the house, with its high and elaborately carved benches on each side, and its massive armorial emblems wrought in black oak, picked out with tarnished gold, crimson and azure,—he appreciated every small gleam and narrow shaft of colour reflected by the strong sun through the deeply-tinted lozenge panes ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... burgee^, blue Peter, jack, ancient, gonfalon, union jack; banderole, old glory [U.S.], quarantine flag; vexillum^; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. heraldry, crest; coat of arms, arms; armorial bearings, hatchment^; escutcheon, scutcheon; shield, supporters; livery, uniform; cockade, epaulet, chevron; garland, love knot, favor. [Of locality] beacon, cairn, post, staff, flagstaff, hand, pointer, vane, cock, weathercock; guidepost, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Dingle and investigates the older buildings, so carefully examined by Mr. Hitchcock, will notice how frequent is the emblem of a tree; and that is a conspicuous feature of the Hussey armorial bearings. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... all the ladies of the court. Now this was called the full-dress Mass, because none but fops, fashionables, young gentlemen and ladies puffed out and highly scented, were to be met there. In fact no dresses was seen there without armorial bearings, and no spurs that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Cased in armor richly inlaid and embossed, decked with rich surcoats and waving plumes, and superbly mounted on Andalusian steeds, they pranced out of Antiquera with banners flying and their various devices and armorial bearings ostentatiously displayed, and in the confidence of their hopes promised the inhabitants to enrich them with the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... gem of its particular style of architecture, with an elegantly-adorned ceiling and fan tracery of stucco on basket-work. The carving is rich and over the fireplace are the Countess of Oxford's armorial bearings. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... husband's, as might well be the case. It contained two large divans, the silk cushions of which were gay with gold and silver embroidery, carpets of painted felt, several trunks, and a very pretty work-basket. A small Russian mirror and the prince's armorial trophies formed the decoration of the walls. But the floor was not boarded, the walls were rough plastered, and the only provision for light and air were two little holes furnished with shutters. The princess, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... catafalque beneath a velvet baldachin. The deceased Countess lay within it, with her hands crossed upon her breast, with a lace cap upon her head, and dressed in a white satin robe. Around the catafalque stood the members of her household; the servants in black caftans, with armorial ribbons upon their shoulders and candles in their hands; the relatives—children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—in ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... artist), standing on projecting pedestals, and playing with the world as a ball; not doubting but for this piece of vanity, the world, or the reviewers for them, will knock them about in return. On the front of the pedestals are the arms of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and in the centre armorial shields of the Cities of London and Westminster. The picture of a modern Hell, in the centre, between the pedestals, has the very appropriate emblems of Misery and Death, in the niches on each side. Crowning the whole, the Genius of Wit ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Designs for armorial windows. (More especially those with Landsknechte and one with three peasants gossiping.) Washed Drawings. Basel Museum and ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... bat drew the chevalier into the Rue St. Honore. A carriage without armorial bearings, with two dark-colored horses, waited at the corner of the street. The coachman was on his seat, enveloped in a great cape which hid the lower part of his face, while a three-cornered hat covered his ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... haunt of predatory birds was promptly checked by the spectacle of the nailed-up carcasses of a dozen hawks against the walls, and the outspread wings of an extended eagle emblazoning the gable above the door, like an armorial bearing. Within the cabin the walls and chimney-piece were dazzlingly bedecked with the party-colored wings of jays, yellow-birds, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and the poly-tinted wood-duck. Yet in that dry, highly-rarefied atmosphere, there ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... door opposite that by which they had entered, he unlocked it, and Geraldine found herself passing through a beauteous old lofty chamber, with a groined Tudor roof, all fans, and pendants, and shields; tall windows stained with armorial bearings, parchment charters and blazoned genealogies against the walls, and screens upon screens loaded with tomes of all ages, writing-tables and chairs here and there, and glass-topped tables containing illuminations and seals. 'Here is ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extended application of this art, the arms and crests of persons or families being emblazoned in their proper colours according to the rules of heraldry, and prepared for Decalcomanie. Armorial bearings, thus embellished, serve admirably to ornament and identify the books of a library and pictures of a gallery, to decorate menus for dinner, the invitations to a soiree, &c. By their brilliant colours they give an elegant effect to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... urging us to come immediately to the Castle. . . . Taymouth Castle, though not more than fifty years old, has the air of an old feudal castle. . . . As we were ushered up the magnificent staircase through first a large antechamber, then through a superb hall with lofty ceiling glowing with armorial bearings, and with the most light and delicate carving on every part of the oaken panelling, then through a long gallery, of heavier carving filled with fine old cabinets, into the library, it seemed to me that the whole Castle was one of those magical delusions that one reads ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... had lately been paved and glazed at Sir Richard Whittington's own expense. The bright new red and yellow tiles, and the stained glass of the tall windows high up, as well as the panels of the wainscot, were embellished with trade-marks and the armorial bearings of the guilds; and the long tables, hung with snowy napery, groaned with gold and silver plate, such as, the Duke of Orleans observed to Catherine, no citizens would dare exhibit in France to any prince or ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bore: Heralds and pursuivants, by name Bute, Islay, Marchmount, Rothsay, came, In painted tabards, proudly showing Gules, argent, or, and azure glowing, Attendant on a king-at-arms, Whose hand the armorial truncheon held, That feudal strife had often quelled, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... "Spectator," its near neighbor Steele; the "Gentleman's Magazine," a long run this, but not complete; rare Ben Jonson, rubbed at the joints; Spenser's "Faerie Queen," with marginal notes in a contemporary hand; the "History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant," in sable morocco, with armorial decorations; Tacitus in all his ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... its big stone chimney-piece and its Gothic arches supporting the balcony above. To be sure the arches were ugly, the chimney-piece of cardboard-like carved stone, with its armorial decoration, looked silly just opposite the bicycle stand and the radiator, whilst the great notice-board with its fluttering papers seemed to slam away all sense of retreat and mystery from the far wall. Nevertheless, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... had driven away half of the population—10,000 souls, who could easily be 20,000—and had barricaded the houses to the curious stranger. Most of them, faced and porticoed with florid pillars, were mere dickies opening upon nothing, and only the huge armorial bearings showed that they had ever been owned. Mixed with these 'palaces.' were 'cat-faced cottages' and pauper, mildewed tenements, whose rusty iron-work, tattered planks, and broken windows gave them a truly dreary and dismal appearance. The sole noticeable movement was a tendency ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... phraseurs and farceurs have inscribed the cabalistic devices, in flaming characters—"Leave the imports alone, the exports will take care of themselves;" and, "A fixed duty is a fixed injustice." One might be tempted to believe the first borrowed from the armorial bearings of Lord Huntingtower's "bill" friends, whose motto is, or should be—"Leave the fools alone, and the knaves will take care of themselves;" the second is clearly no better than a petty-larceny paraphrase of Newgate felony, in whose code of duties it stands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... upon the corroded sculpture of their capitals a clinging vine, that dappled the floor with palpitant light and shadow in the afternoon sun. The gate, whose exquisite Saracenic arch grew into a carven flame, was surmounted by the armorial bearings of a family that died of its sins against the Serenest Republic long ago; the marble cistern which stood in the middle of the court had still a ducal rose upon either of its four sides; and little lions of stone perched upon the posts at the head of the marble stairway ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... had made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the farther end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the furniture of this room in ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... be impossible to describe all the luxuries. Among them a boar's head was seen, highly ornamented, while on either side were two peacocks, the feathers of their tails spread out, while on their necks hung two golden grasshoppers, the armorial bearings of the host. The peacocks, which had been roasted, and covered with the yolk of eggs, after having cooled, had been sewed into their skins, and thus looked almost as if they were alive. There were two pair of cocks which had been roasted, ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... profited of the opportunity which the changing horses afforded me to see the Chateau of Chantilly. I found it totally stripped of its furniture, and every decoration that bore the smallest reference to armorial bearings was defaced; but otherwise the building has not suffered much injury. The statue of the great Conde on the principal staircase remains, but the head is cut off. The barbarians were not content with beheading ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... been immortalised by Le Sage in Turcaret. It is a town of about 6,000 inhabitants, built of granite, and therefore little altered from what it was 200 years ago. Over many of the doors are the armorial bearings of the provincial nobility who made it a small winter capital: the practice is not wholly extinct. I asked who was the inhabitant of an imposing old house. 'M. de Neridoze,' answered our landlady, 'd'une tres-haute noblesse.' I went ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Bohemian rhapsodist, stanzas improvised in the hovel in which the "belle qui fut haultmire" loosened her gilt girdle to all comers, which now-a-days metamorphosed into dainty gallantries scented with musk and amber, figure in the armorial bearing enriched album of some ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... were brought for me also, item, a glass of foreign wine in a glass painted with armorial bearings, whereupon I humbly took my ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... same in real Chinese china; but he told me he could distinguish better, and that it was not the same. Also, there is a uniformity in certain little flowers and roses which is seen in no others. The shapes are good, and as the manufacture advanced the painting was improved; armorial bearings were ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... articles of wardrobe to put into his cloak-bag for his meditated short visit, when going to open one of the top drawers in his chamber, he found it sealed, and observed on the black wax the impress of an eagle. It was a large seal. Hardly crediting his eyes, it appeared to be the armorial eagle of Poland, surmounted by its regal crown. Nay, it seemed an impression of the very seal which had belonged to his royal ancestor, John Sobieski, and which was appended to the watch of his grandfather when he was robbed of it on his first ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... particular Christmas, 1561, in the fourth year of Elizabeth, it was Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, who was Constable Marshal, and with chivalrous gallantry, taking in fantastic style the name of Palaphilos, Knight of the Honourable Order of Pegasus, Pegasus being the armorial device of the Inner Temple, he contributed to the splendour of this part of the entertainment. After the seating of the Constable Marshal, on the same St. Stephen's Day, December the 26th, the Master of the Game entered in green velvet, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... he wrote during forty years, published a work called Apes Urbanae—Urban Bees. It is a biographical work, devoted to the great men who flourished during the Pontificate of Urban VIII., whose family carried bees on their coat-armorial. The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, has sorely perplexed certain strong-minded women, who read nothing but genuine history. The book which, in the English translation, goes by the name of Marmontel's Moral Tales, has been found to give disappointment to parents ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... books have gone to the building of this one. I look round my study table and I survey those which lie with me at the moment, before I happily disperse them forever. I see La Croix's "Middle Ages," Oman's "Art of War," Rietstap's "Armorial General," De la Borderie's "Histoire de Bretagne," Dame Berner's "Boke of St. Albans," "The Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brokeland," "The Old Road," Hewitt's "Ancient Armour," Coussan's "Heraldry," Boutell's "Arms," Browne's "Chaucer's England," Cust's "Scenes of the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and I intend that nothing else shall stop me until my task is finished. The doctor was shown the marks on the mirror and agreed that they were armorial bearings. He is deeply interested in all that I have told him, and cross-questioned me closely on the details. It amuses me to notice how he is torn in two by conflicting desires—the one that his patient ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the common footway of the townspeople seems to lie to and fro across it. It is paved, according to English custom, with flat tombstones; and there are also raised or altar tombs, some of which have armorial hearings on them. One clergyman has caused himself and his wife to be buried right in the middle of the stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard; so that not an individual of the thousands who pass along ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the superstitions they have given rise to; all the metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from them; the attributes that have been assigned to them; the representations that have been made of them in hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word all the histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any mention either of a cow or hen. How much natural history is likely to be found in such a lumber room? and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... from every species of direct taxation! and their indirect taxes are not more than those to which the inhabitants of England and Scotland are subject. Thus, while the English and Scotch gentleman is taxed for his servants, his carriages, his horses, his dogs, and his armorial bearings—and, in addition, pays, in common with the trading and operative classes, his window-tax—the Irish gentleman and tradesman are totally free from all such imposts. And though, at first sight, this exemption would seem to benefit only the wealthier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... of the woodwork naturally accompanied the design of the building. Fireplaces, which until the end of the fifteenth century had been of stone, were now made of oak, richly carved and ornamented with the armorial bearings of the "seigneur." The Prie dieu chair, which Viollet le Due tells us came into use in the fifteenth century, was now made larger and more ornate, in some cases becoming what might almost be termed a small oratory, the back being ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... eagles; screens of old raised Oriental Japan; massive musical clocks, richly chased with ormulu and tortoise-shell; ottomans superbly damasked; Persian and other carpets, with corresponding hearth-rugs bordered with ancient family crests and armorial ensigns in the centre, and rich hangings of English tapestry. The carved chimney-pieces were adorned with the choicest bronzes and models in wax and terra-cotta. The tables were covered with Sevres, blue Mandarin, Nankin, and Dresden china, and the cabinets were surmounted with crystal ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... small jug, which he replenished with ale from a large black jack. Three of these jugs were of ordinary earthenware, but the fourth, which he placed by the right-hand cover at, the upper end of the table, was a flagon of silver, and displayed armorial bearings. Beside this flagon he placed a salt-cellar of silver, handsomely wrought, containing salt of exquisite whiteness, with pepper and other spices. A sliced lemon was also presented on a small ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... was the adornment of the private dwellings. The great families—the Trescorri, the Belverdi, the Pievepelaghi—had outdone each other in the display of golden-threaded tapestries and Genoese velvets emblazoned with armorial bearings; and even the sombre facade of the Boscofolto palace showed a rich drapery surmounted by the quarterings ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... that she should have more glory in the grave than she appeared to have enjoyed on this side of it; and, with our united exertions, we succeeded in raising a marble slab, which surmounted a monumental vault, and was beautifully embellished with armorial blazonry, and, depositing the body inside, we replaced it again carefully. If the personage to whom it belonged happened to have a tenant of his own for it soon afterwards, he must have been rather astonished at the manner in which the apartment ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... Not be very ceremonious; But might throw thee down the staircase, Which is steep and very slippery, And might prove injurious to thee. Now, my Muse, mount upward to the Castle gate, behold there sculptured The three balls upon the scutcheon. As in the armorial bearings Of the Medici in Florence— Signs of ancient, noble lineage; Now ascend the steps of sandstone, Loudly knock at the great hall door, Then step in and give report of What thou there hast slyly noticed. In the spacious, lofty knights' ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... illustrious in France from time immemorial. Generation after generation, many of its members had obtained renown, not only for chivalric courage, but for every virtue which can adorn humanity. Their ancestral home was a massive feudal castle on an eminence near the stately city of Leon. The armorial bearing of the family commemorates deeds of heroic enterprise five hundred years ago. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... and tournaments are mentioned at a period when they were unknown. God and my Right is the word used by duke William in the Battle of Hastings, though it was first used by king RichardI. after the victory at Grizors; and hatchments and armorial bearings, which were first seen at the time of the Croisades, are introduced in other places ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... and, though not versed in the mysteries of heraldry, he thought he remembered enough of most of the arms he had seen to say that this armorial bearing was a strange one to him. He turned the letter over and over again, and looked at it back and front, with an expression in his face that said, as plain as countenance could speak, "I'd give a trifle to ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... over a room of noble dimensions and costly fashion. Although it was the height of summer, a low fire burned in the grate; and, stretching his hands over the feeble flame, an old man of about sixty sat in an armchair curiously carved with armorial bearings. The dim yet fitful flame cast its upward light upon a countenance, stern, haughty, and repellent, where the passions of youth and manhood had dug themselves graves in many an iron line and deep furrow: ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... people of the soil—and they pass them silently, with much ostentation of taking all the gondoliers of Murano into the friendliness of their jests and curses, as the barges touch and clash with some swiftly gliding gondolier of their own rank, who wears no bravery or armorial bearings. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... far as they can be so made, genealogies; and will then truly give what may be called the plan of creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler when we have a definite object in view. We possess no pedigree or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by characters of any kind which have long been inherited. Rudimentary organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost structures. Species and groups ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... splendor of Europe transplanted, and he blinked his eyes, half humorously. There were mettlesome steeds, and coaches with a high polish, and silver weighted harness, and the insolence of livery, and armorial bearings, and the gilt of coronets on carriage panels. There were silk hats and peaked sombreros, lace mantillas and Parisian bonnets. A lavish use of French money was doing these things, and the Mexicans, believing in their ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... immediately and lighted a little spirit lamp; above the lamp was suspended a sort of tiny crucible, in which was a drop of sealing-wax; as soon as this had melted, the maid poured it on the envelope, presenting to her mistress a seal with armorial bearings. This the countess imprinted on the wax with her own beautiful ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... is especially distinguished for the number and beauty of its chantries, and any who have a taste for examining armorial bearings will find two good-sized volumes devoted to a description of those in this church, by Richardson. Equal distinction attaches to the church owing to the beauty of its steeple, which has been called the pride and glory of the Northern Hemisphere. According to the enthusiastic Richardson ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... within the walls have long since been demolished, so that scarcely a vestige remains; but with their materials a workhouse has been built for the poor. The only armorial bearings traceable are three ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits; its monumental inscriptions; its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men; on account of their age, and on account of those from whom ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... fireplaces of the time, blazoned with the silver crane on scarlet of the Gruyere arms, armorial windows and walls brilliantly painted with lozenges or squares of blue and scarlet. In the great Hall of the Chevaliers, Count Pierre and his brother Jeannod held their revels among a familiar company of their cousins of Blonay, ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... contents the treasures my young fancy conjured up as lying there in state. I dared not ask to have the cover raised for my gratification, as I had often been told I was "too little" to estimate aright what that armorial box contained. "When you grow up, you shall see the inside of it," Aunt Mary Ann used to say to me; and so I wondered, and wished, but all in vain. I must have the virtue of years before I could view the treasures of past magnificence so long entombed in that wooden sarcophagus. Once I saw the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... imagination. It was begun by Gregory XV., in 1622, and completed by his successor, Urban VIII., and his brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, from the plans partly of Bernini and Borromini. On the most prominent parts of the edifice are sculptured bees, which are the well-known armorial bearings of the Barberini family. The Propaganda used to divide with the Vatican the administration of the whole Roman Catholic world. It was compared by the Abbe Raynal to a sword, of which the handle remains in Rome, and the point reaches everywhere. The Vatican takes cognisance ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... dispatches were sent off here and there with hot haste. The building was the ancient palace of the dukes of Lorraine, and a splendid fountain of white marble in the centre of the "Cour," still showed the proud armorial bearings of that princely house. Around the sculptured base of this now were seated groups of soldiers; their war-worn looks and piled arms contrasting strangely enough with the great porcelain vases of flowering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... neglected scroll, Where lords, unhonor'd, in the tomb may find One spot, to leave a worthless name behind. There sleep, unnoticed as the gloomy vaults That veil their dust, their follies, and their faults, A race, with old armorial lists o'erspread, In records destined never to be read. Fain would I view thee, with prophetic eyes, Exalted more among the good and wise, A glorious and a long career pursue, As first in rank, the first in talent too: Spurn every vice, each little meanness shun; Not Fortune's minion, but ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the feast was arrayed with feudal grandeur. The seats at the table, spread for the knights of both countries, were covered with highly-wrought stuffs; while the emblazoned banners and other armorial trophies of the nobles being hung aloft according to the degree of the owner, each knight saw his precedence, and where to take his place. The most costly means, with the royally attired peacock served up in silver ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... in different parts of the nude body. Occasionally, but seldom, the same device may be seen in the drapery. All the work is exquisitely fine and perfectly even. The groundwork of the quatrefoils is of gold-laid or "couch" work, as is also that of the armorial bearings. ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... the independent Duchy of Lorraine for centuries, and even now a distinctive cognizance of the Border Province of France, the double traverse cross, known as the Cross of Lorraine, forms part of the armorial bearings of no less than 163 noble families. And several military units engaged in the world war adopted the cross as an emblem. These units include, besides the Lorraine Detachment of the French ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... Malta.—On the stone corbels which support the roof of one of the aisles of a church in my neighbourhood, there are carved the armorial badges of persons who are supposed to have contributed to the building of the church, which was erected in the thirteenth century. On one of the corbels (the nearest to the altar, and therefore in the most honourable place) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... cathedral. There is a remarkable room in the deanery, the priors' dining-hall, with a very fine ceiling, put up by Prior Senhouse (1507-1520). It is of oak, richly carved and painted; and covered profusely with verses, armorial bearings, and devices. In every third compartment are two birds holding a scroll between them, on which, and on the cross beams, the following rude verses are written ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... terror. Never since I was a mere infant have I been within it till to-day, and yet it was quite familiar to me—horribly familiar. I knew the hall in which we stood together, with its huge arched fireplace, and the armorial bearings upon it, and could point out the stone on which were carved my father's initials 'R.N.,' with the date '1572.' I knew the tapestry on the walls, and the painted glass in the long range windows. I knew the old oak staircase, and the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Molly's: I will be content with a sleeve. Only it must have the armorial bearings proper to a fourth daughter, with my ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... breastplate, and of the elegant manner of twisting the hanging sword belt, pendant from the military girdle, round the upper part of the sword." The head of the figure reposes on a helmet, a lion couches at his feet. Armorial bearings appear on shields at the sides of the tomb. (See ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... is shining, And the purple windows glow, Till their rich armorial shadows Stain the marble floor below:- Faded Autumn leaves are trembling, On the withered jasmine tree, Creeping round the little casement, Where ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... the light came only from the one large window through which they entered; and though the window rose to the cornice of the ceiling, and took up one side of the apartment, the daylight was subdued by the heaviness of the stonework in which the narrow panes were set, and by the glass stained with armorial bearings in the upper part of the casement. The bookcases, too, were of the dark oak which so much absorbs the light; and the gilding, formerly meant to relieve them, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... gallant conduct in the glorious and decisive victory obtained over the French fleet, at the mouth of the Nile, on the 1st of August last, his royal licence and authority, that he, and his issue, may bear the following honourable augmentations to his armorial ensign: viz. "A chief, undulated, argent—thereon, waves of the sea; from which, a palm-tree issuant, between a disabled ship on the dexter, and a ruinous battery on the sinister; all proper." And, for his crest, "On a naval crown, or; the chelengk, or plume of triumph, presented to him ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... cares was to select a flag for the Elbese Empire, and after some hesitation he fixed on "Argent, on a bend gules, or three bees," as the armorial ensign of his new dominion. It is strange that neither he nor any of those whom he consulted should have been aware that Elba had an ancient and peculiar ensign, and it is still more remarkable that this ensign should be one singularly adapted to Bonaparte's situation; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... believe that there is a single example of armorial bearings to be found either in Scotland or Ireland of an earlier date than the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... in the sunlight; the drawbridge slide on its hinges, and men-at-arms in dazzling cuirasses pass and repass behind the battlements. You should sit beside me as my chatelaine, in the great hall, under a canopy emblazoned with armorial bearings, the centre of a brilliant retinue of ladies in waiting, archers and varlets. You should be the dove ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Milan and Pavia compelled him to give up his post at the Certosa; but in much of the ornamental detail—in the angels that adorn its branches of the candelabra between the windows, in the profusion of carved trophies, armorial bearings, burning censers, cherub-heads, leaf-mouldings, flowers and fruit that has been lavished on every portion of the west front we recognize his handiwork. And this facade of the Certosa, more than any other architectural ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... captain to have me buried in a vault from which my body can be exhumed in case the duke, my father, should request its exhumation. I entreat him likewise to forward my certificate of baptism, the seal with the armorial bearings of my family, and a legal certificate of my birth to the French ambassador in Venice, who will send the whole to the duke, my father, my rights of primogeniture belonging, after my demise, to the prince, my brother. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... spoken about Alice Oke or Christopher Lovelock. Indeed, to a casual observer, it might have seemed as if all that craze about Lovelock had completely departed, or never existed. About five o'clock, as I was strolling among the red-brick round-gabled outhouses—each with its armorial oak—and the old-fashioned spalliered kitchen and fruit garden, I saw Mrs. Oke standing, her hands full of York and Lancaster roses, upon the steps facing the stables. A groom was currycombing a horse, and outside the coach-house was Mr. Oke's ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... questions, "Whence?" and "Whither?" The bibliophile asks about his books the question which the metaphysician asks about his soul. Whence came they? Their value depends a good deal on the answer. If they are stamped with arms, then there is a book ("Armorial du Bibliophile," by M. Guigard) which tells you who was their original owner. Any one of twenty coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value of the volume which it covers. If there is no such mark, the fancy is left to devise a romance ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... Grand Master's palace, and through the vast marble hall, where the banners hung against the walls, and devices and armorial bearings testified to the antiquity and gallantry of his race. The lofty roof, supported by vast ashen beams, echoed to each step as it rang on the pavement. Sculpture and painting decorated the several galleries; but he passed by all unnoticed, for he had one object in view which absorbed all ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... with roughly plastered walls, where an artisan enshrines his tools, rises the mansion of a country gentleman, on the stone arch of which above the door vestiges of armorial bearings may still be seen, battered by the many revolutions that have shaken France since 1789. In this hilly street the ground-floors of the merchants are neither shops nor warehouses; lovers of the Middle Ages will here find the ouvrouere ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... seem to have set great store by their armorial bearings: at least we are told that two branches of them lived at Northleigh at the same time in the eighteenth century, hardly on speaking terms with each other, and that one cause of quarrel was a difference of opinion as to whether the three 'pears'—which, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... of this; that so called modest women, and ladies whose skirts bear their armorial bearings, are thoroughly ignorant of the nature of man, because they keep to one alone, like the Queen of France who believed all men had ulcers in the nose because the king had; but a great courtesan, like Madame Imperia, knew man to his core, because she had handled ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... classical building, the panels on the front of the chest being divided by the pilasters of the architecture. The central panel contains the first owner's initials, "H.H.O." The others hold the crests and armorial bearings of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... found in the most remote parts of England, in the dwellings of the noble and wealthy. By the side of a huge hearth, where the crackling and blazing logs imparted the only cheerful sound or sight in the apartment, in a richly-carved oaken chair emblazoned with the armorial bearings of his house, sat Lord Greville, lost in silent contemplation. A chased goblet of wine with which he occasionally moistened his lips, stood on a table beside him, on which an elegantly-fretted silver lamp was burning; and while it ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... the papal chair, of the family of the Barberini, nicknamed the Mosche, or Flies, from the circumstance of bees being their armorial bearing. The Emperor having exhausted all his money in endeavouring to defend the church against Gustavus Adolphus, the great King of Sweden, who was bent on its destruction, applied in his necessity to the Pope for a loan of money. The Pope, however, and his relations, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... sentence against the Prince of Orange was now proposed by the Viceroy. This was, to execute him solemnly in effigy, to drag his escutcheon through the streets at the tails of horses, and after having broken it in pieces, and thus cancelled his armorial bearings, to declare him and his descendants, ignoble, infamous, and incapable of holding property or estates. Could a leaf or two of future history have been unrolled to King, Cardinal, and Governor, they might have found the destined fortune of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... presume that there is not, at the present day, one tenth part of the number of carriages which were in use here in 1780-90. Except on the domestics of foreign ambassadors and foreigners, I have as yet noticed nothing like a livery; and, in lieu of armorial bearings, every carriage, without distinction, has a number painted on the pannel. However, if private equipages are scarce, thence ensues more than one advantage; the public are indemnified by an increased number of good hackney coaches, chariots, and cabriolets; ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... converting the hillock into an island, and forbade access. I had spent many an hour among the tombs. They are few and scattered, and of the true antique cast,—roughened with death's heads, and cross-bones, and rudely sculptured armorial bearings; and on a broken wall, that marked where the ancient chapel once had stood, there might be seen, in the year 1821, a small, badly-cut sun-dial, with its iron gnomon wasted to a saw-edged film, that contained more oxide than metal. The only fossils described in my present ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... rock, in which our guide lighted the fuel he had gathered. The gloomy walls were lighted up for a moment, then when the fire died away, we returned to the open air. A little further on is the famous gateway with two lionesses carved in relief above—the armorial bearings, we may call it, of the city—and in every direction are seen massive walls, foundation-stones, ruins of gates and of subterraneous chambers like the first we visited, conical hillocks, probably containing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Constitution. How complex is the architecture of the latter! here exhibiting the clumsy work of the Saxon, there the more graceful touch of later conquerors; the whole colossal pile, magnificent with turrets and towers, and decorated with armorial devices and inscriptions, written in a language not only dead, but never native to the island; all eloquent, indeed, with the spirit of ages past, yet haunted with the cry of suffering humanity and the clanking of chains that come ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... harpies. The violent lie supine on a plain of dry and dense sand, upon which descend flakes of fire like "snow in the Alps, without a wind." Usurers—should we call them profiteers?—suffer also from a rain of fire and carry about their necks money bags stamped with armorial designs. Thieves, to remind them of their sneaking trade, are repeatedly transformed from men into snakes, hissing and creeping. Hypocrites march in slow procession with faces painted and with leaden ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... a word frequently heard in this quarter. In tracing its origin, it is found to be a corruption of the Indian "dodaim," signifying family mark, or armorial bearing. The word appears to be a derivative from odanah, a town or village. Hence neen dodaim, my townsman, or kindred-mark. Affinity in families is thus kept up, as in the feudal system, and the institution seems ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... daughter. The keeper of a great hotel and the editor of a widely circulated newspaper were considered as ranking with the wholesale dealers, and their daughters belonged also to the untitled nobility which has the dollar for its armorial bearing. The second set had most of the good scholars, and some of the prettiest girls; but nobody knew anything about their families, who lived off the great streets and avenues, or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... disinterestedness of my lord's attentions was a myth which I soon discarded: for in twelve months subsequent to Mr. Thomas Erminstoun's decease, a letter from Treherne Abbey was brought to Gabrielle, sealed with the armorial bearings of the Trehernes, and signed by the present representative of that noble race. We were seated at our fireside, busy with domestic needlework, and I saw Gabrielle's hands tremble as she opened it, while that strange, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... upper room over the chapel on the north side of Redcliff church;" and thence, most rare young conjurer, he evoked its spirit in the shape of fragments of law-parchment, quaintly inscribed with spells of verse and armorial hieroglyphics, to puzzle antiquaries and make fools of scholiasts. Puzzle them he did; and they could not forgive a clever stripling, whom hunger had tempted to don an ancient mask, and impose himself on their spectacled eyes as a reverend elder. Rogue!—vagabond! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable carriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald's College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... shown on the third quarter; that on the left, a wyvern argent, also gorged with a coronet, from which depends a long gold chain, is that of the Parr family. The wyvern is a piece of blue silk, finished in gold and silver cords, in applique. The gold cord enclosing the armorial design is amplified at each corner into an arabesque scroll. The book has been most unfortunately rebound, and the work is badly strained in consequence—the back being entirely new; nevertheless it is in a wonderful state of preservation. It is said to ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... twilight had deepened the shadows in the house, we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and paused just ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the image of an animal tattooed on his breast or arm, to charm away evil spirits." (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 156.) The sailors of Europe and America preserve to this day a custom which was once universal among the ancient races. Banners, flags, and armorial bearings are supposed to be survivals of the old totemic tattooing. The Arab woman still tattoos her face, arms, and ankles. The war-paint of the American savage reappeared in the woad with which the ancient Briton stained his body; ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful host of semi-legendary animals—griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes—till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... disturbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch which Mr. Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer. Nor did it add to the picturesque appearance of the panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline stage was suspended against them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some far-descended governor. A stage-driver sat at one of the windows reading a penny paper of the day—the Boston Times—and presenting a figure which could nowise be brought into any picture of "Times in Boston" seventy or a hundred ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Raleigh's noon—stormy enough at best, yet brilliant. There is a pomp about him, outward and inward, which is terrible to others, dangerous to himself. One has gorgeous glimpses of that grand Durham House of his, with its carvings and its antique marbles, armorial escutcheons, 'beds with green silk hangings and legs like dolphins, overlaid with gold': and the man himself, tall, beautiful, and graceful, perfect alike in body and in mind, walking to and fro, his beautiful wife upon his arm, his noble boy beside his knee, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... conversed with Montoni, observed with admiration, tinctured with awe, their high martial air, mingled with the haughtiness of the nobless of those days, and heightened by the gallantry of their dress, by the plumes towering on their caps, the armorial coat, Persian sash, and ancient Spanish cloak. Utaldo, telling Montoni that his army were going to encamp for the night near a village at only a few miles distance, invited him to turn back and partake of their festivity, assuring the ladies ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... testimony of a well-authenticated ancestral portrait—for each successive representative to add to the collection. One of the first cares of every Landale, therefore, on succeeding to the title was to be painted, with his proper armorial and otherwise distinguishing honours jealously delineated, and thus hung in the place of honour over the high mantelshelf of the gallery—displacing on the occasion his own immediate and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... time, Henrietta wears the diamonds which formerly belonged to the old Countess, and it is long since she was a ballet girl, for now she sits by the side of her husband in a carriage on whose panels their armorial bearings ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... those early times, was not without its families which affected state and splendor, rolled about in carriages with armorial emblazonments, and had servants in abundance to every turn within-doors, yet there, as elsewhere in New England, the majority of the people lived with the wholesome, thrifty simplicity of the olden time, when labor and intelligence went hand in hand, in perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... which were invariably occupied by the same gentlemen. One of these was Mr. Bryant, citizen and stationer, but not bookseller, save that he sold bibles, prayer-books and almanacks; for he seriously considered that the armorial bearings of the Stationers' Company displaying three books between a chevron, or something of that kind, for he was not a dab at heraldry, mystically and gravely set forth that no good citizen had occasion for more than three books, viz. bible, prayer-book and almanack. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... ran out on to the steps to meet the gentlemen; a little girl of twelve years old made her appearance alone. After her there came out of the house a young lad, very like Piotr, dressed in a coat of grey livery, with white armorial buttons, the servant of Pavel Petrovitch Kirsanov. Without speaking, he opened the door of the carriage, and unbuttoned the apron of the coach. Nikolai Petrovitch with his son and Bazarov walked through a dark and almost empty hall, from behind the door of which they caught a glimpse of a young ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... have been other legal authorities, to the privileges asserted by the mouthpiece of the said committee. But that is a long story, on which I do not intend here to enter. I had not forgotten that in one of the publications of Sir Richard Broun the armorial coat of the premier baronet of each division is represented encircled with a Collar of Esses; but I should never have thought of alluding to this freak, except as an amusing instance of fantastic assumption. I will now confine myself to what has appeared in the pages of "NOTES AND QUERIES;" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... 1853 and the subsequent years, fiscal unity has never been completely effected. To this day Ireland secures exemption from the Land Tax, the Inhabited House Duty, the Railway Passenger Duty, and the tax on horses, carriages, patent medicines, and armorial bearings. It will be said, no doubt, that Ireland ought to show due gratitude for these exemptions, but though they raise collectively a sum of L4,000,000 by their incidence in England, Scotland, and Wales, it is calculated ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... recumbent on an oblong stone. The figure is armed cap-a-pee, in a hauberk,[6] with sword and shield, the latter of which bears, quarterly, two bulls passant, gorged with collars and bells, and three garbs, being the armorial bearings of the noble family of De Foix, of which was the Captal de Buck, one of the first Knights of the Garter, at the commencement of the Order. On a slab, placed perpendicularly against the adjoining wall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... chancel window as the sexton entered the churchyard, darkly defining all the ramified tracery of the noble Gothic arch, and illumining the gorgeous dyes of its richly-stained glass, profusely decorated with the armorial bearings of the founder of the fane, and the many alliances of his descendants. The sheen of their blazonry gleamed bright in the darkness, as if to herald to his last home another of the line whose achievements it displayed. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 13 feet by 14 feet 6 inches, with Three Gothic Windows of carved Oak and splendid stained Glass, exhibiting old Armorial Bearings, and forming a Bow Window, handsome Chimney Piece of yellow and white marble, and Recesses fitted up with Gothic Book Cases, and the Doors and Architrave ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... trefoiled piscina, each surmounted by a gable moulding with a finial. The piscina probably belonged to the chantry of Our-Lady-in-the-Lady-loft. A large stone bracket, supported by a grotesque figure, projects from the east wall, and the east window is bright with armorial bearings of benefactors of the church. This glass, which is mostly of the eighteenth century, was once in the great window of the choir. The north side of the recess in which the east window is set, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... on the ground with all their crews, all their officers, all their horses—the pieces still mounted, riddled with splinters. They were taken back to the rear, and attracted all the way along the curiosity of the soldiers, with their sumptuous armorial bearings and their motto, Ultima ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... The gallery was lighted by long lanceolated Gothic casements, divided by heavy shafts, and filled with painted glass, where the sunbeams glimmered dimly through boars'-heads, and galleys, and batons, and swords, armorial bearings of the powerful house of Argyle, and emblems of the high hereditary offices of Justiciary of Scotland, and Master of the Royal Household, which they long enjoyed. At the upper end of this magnificent gallery stood the Marquis himself, the centre of a splendid ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... and, I hope, Maude. Come and bring all the children. I suppose Algernon is in London helping to make laws for unruly Britishers, but we will make merry and defy the constables. Despite my marital patronymic, and my armorial bearings, I am still, your loving ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... River; the seven signs of the Zodiac from Aries to Libra, inclusive, through which the sun was supposed to pass in making his apparent annual revolution, and which constitutes the Royal arch from which was derived the name of one of its higher degrees; and its armorial bearings, consisting of pictures of the Lion, the Bull, the Waterman, and the Flying Eagle, which representing the signs at the cardinal points, constituted the genii of the seasons. Besides these, we have the checkered flooring or mosaic work, representing the earth ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... (1535) directed their journeys of discovery along the banks of the Lower Orinoco. The former is the famous Conquistador of Mexico, who boasted that he had taken sulphur out of the crater of the Peak of Popocatepetl, and whom the emperor Charles V permitted to wear a burning volcano on his armorial bearings. Ordaz, named Adelantado of all the country which he could conquer between Brazil and the coast of Venezuela, which was then called the country of the German Company of Welsers (Belzares) of Augsburg, began ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... have in Fig. 6 (Le Fou) one of the cards designed by Mitelli about 1680, it is said to the order of a member of the Bentivoglio family (parts of whose armorial bearings are to be found on many of the cards), for the "Tarrocchini di Bologna," a special form of the game of Tarot, a series of spirited designs of vigorous and careful drawing, and the most artistically ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... appearance, and the family sate down to partake of their evening meal,—leaving, however, Miss Hetty, from her place, command of the window, which she begged her brother not to close. That young gentleman had been down amongst the crowd to inspect the armorial bearings of the Countess's and other sedans, no doubt, and also to invest sixpence in a cheese-cake, by mamma's order and his own desire, and he returned presently with this delicacy wrapped up in ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray |
