"Heraldic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 14. 'His points;' an heraldic term, expressive of the exact position of the various bearing on the shield—a scrupulous or superstitious niceness as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and generally all national or other Sectarian Costumes and Customs: they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... writer has no pretensions to a knowledge of heraldic terms and devices; so, without pinning any argument on the coincidence, he thought it not without interest. He is aware that the mere fact of a similarity between surnames and crests is not without its ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... so little should have been accurately known and recorded of a dog which at one time must have been a familiar figure in the halls of the Irish kings. It was no mere mythical animal like the heraldic griffin, but an actual sporting dog which was accepted as a national emblem of the Emerald Isle, associated with the harp and ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... difficulty occurred, and explained how they were completely at a stand from their inability to decipher the word Gassoc, or to decide who or what it could mean. All the conjectures of the commissioner, the cassock, and the bishop, and the gosshawk, and the heraldic researches, and the French misnomers, and the puns upon the coats of arms, and the notes from Wilkins on universal language, and an old book on deciphering, which had been lent to the commissioner, and the private ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... am sorry to say, in the description of this splendid scene, or in the heraldic bearings of the different Flemish and German knights, which the lady blazoned with pitiless accuracy, Quentin began to entertain some alarm lest he should have passed the place where his guide was to join him—a most ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Hemorrhage sangado. Hemorrhoids hemorojdo. Hemp kanabo. Hen (fowl) kokino. Henbane hiskiamo. Hence de nun. Henceforth de nun. Hepatic hepata. Heptagon sepangulo. Her sxin. Her (possessive) sxia. Hers sxia. Herald heroldo. Heraldic heraldika. Heraldry (science) heraldiko. Heraldry blazono. Herb herbo. Herbalist herbovendisto. Herbivorous herbomangxanta. Herd brutaro. Herdsman pasxtisto. Here tie cxi, cxi tie. Here are jen estas. Here is jen estas. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... his office, invited the young draughtsman, then aged twenty-six, to become a regular contributor. Mr. Furniss's first sketch (published on p. 204, Vol. LXXIX., 1880) was a skit on what is ignorantly called the Temple Bar Griffin—(it is really an heraldic dragon, designed by Horace Jones)—executed by his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies, save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from the days ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... green, sings too, but he, unmindful of southern chivalry, attacks her furiously when she bursts into song; ornithologists explain that jealousy prompts the ungallant act. The oriole singing lustily in the spring would seem conscious of his coat of orange and black. These are the heraldic colors worn by the servants of Lord Baltimore. The nightingale and the whippoorwill sing unpretentiously in the quiet of eventide. The blackbird makes up for his somber dress in good deeds. He destroys insects on leaf and bark. The eagle still finds a haven of safety in giant trees ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Christian army. The Spanish camp (the most gorgeous Christendom had ever known) gradually grew calm and hushed. The shades deepened—the stars burned forth more serene and clear. Bright, in that azure air, streamed the silken tents of the court, blazoned with heraldic devices, and crowned by gaudy banners, which, filled by a brisk and murmuring wind from the mountains, flaunted gaily on their gilded staves. In the centre of the camp rose the pavilion of the queen—a palace in itself. Lances made its ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... portraiture of the Saint, which had served as their emblem, to be cut out of the city standard, as an idol, and a Thistle to be inserted, "emblematical (as a recent writer remarks) of rude reform, but leaving the Hind which accompanied St. Giles, as one of the heraldic supporters of the city arms."—(Caledonia, vol. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... evening dress, signed by Ingres, was the only picture in the room. Through the open windows could be seen a pool of water, and near it a stork, the only creature that M. Bourjot would tolerate in his park, and that on account of its heraldic form. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them—appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full-length and half-length, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the school and the fourscore old men of the hospital, the founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy, carved allegories. There is an old hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time. An old hall? Many old halls, old staircases, old passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits, walking in the midst of which we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house, gave three raps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach- door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day examined the shield ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... breadth. It applies primarily to the flat vertical plane. It deals with the symbols of form, with fact by suggestion, with color in mass. It substitutes light and dark for nature's light and shade. Conceptions evolved upon the flat vertical plane deal with pictorial data as material for heraldic quartering, with natural fact as secondary to the happy adjustment of spaces. Nature to the decorative mind presents a variegated pattern from which to clip any shape which the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... submitted to the members of the various noble and eminent families themselves. Much additional information of the deepest interest has thus been obtained. The collateral branches, too, have been fully investigated and inserted. In addition, great improvements have been made in the Heraldic Illustrations, and arrangement of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... clear explanation of the origin and meaning of the various heraldic devices of British Monarchs, and exhibiting the lineal descent of Queen Victoria from the Saxon Egbert. The Chart is set forth in bold characters, and not encumbered with superfluous details. The source of each line of monarchs and the events that led to the interruption of the succession ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... one of the great dramas in the reign of a victorious monarch. Above them would rise the tall masts of coloured cedar-wood, inserted in sinkings chased into the wall, surmounted by the expanded banners of the king, or the heraldic bearings of the temple floating in the breeze. Between the huge propylons opened up the great gateway of the temple, sixty feet high, which led into a vast court, surrounded by columns and open to the sky. Beyond were walls whose roofs were supported by a forest of enormous pillars, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... a name. We can hardly imagine the Tribe scratching its congregated head in the deliberate effort to think out a suitable emblem for itself. That is not the way in which nicknames are invented in a school or anywhere else to-day. At the same time the heraldic appeal of a certain object of nature, animate or inanimate, would be deeply and widely felt. The strength of the lion, the fleetness of the deer, the food-value of a bear, the flight of a bird, the awful jaws of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... he pointed was a small, oblong piece of thin, much-worn silver, about the size of a railway ticket. On one side of it was what seemed to be a heraldic device or coat-of-arms, almost obliterated by rubbing; on the other, similarly worn down by friction, was the figure ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... similar to the flag of Yemen, which has a plain white band, and of Iraq, which has three green stars (plus an Arabic inscription) in a horizontal line centered in the white band; also similar to the flag of Egypt, which has a heraldic eagle ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... prosperity, and before he had anticipated the honours to which he afterwards succeeded, that he built his chantry chapel in the church with which his early youth was doubtless associated, and tradition, to some extent supported by both architectural and heraldic evidence, has identified the screen in which Rahere's monument is encased as a portion of that chapel. The beautiful canopies and tracery, the character of the carving of the effigy and its attendant figures, and the arms of England emblazoned on one of the shields, all point to a date supporting ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... spots in the Middle Ward of Clydesdale. The house was old and dilapidated, and looked sorry for itself, as if sensible of a derogation; but the sign was strong and new, and brightly painted, displaying a heraldic shield (three shuttles in a field diapre), a web partly unfolded for crest, and two stout giants for supporters, each one holding a weaver's beam proper. To have displayed this monstrous emblem on the front of the house might have hazarded bringing ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... dissipation are rapidly thinning them out. Shamanism exists here, but not to such an extent as amongst the Siberian races, and the totem poles, which are met with at every turn in Wrangell, are not objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but they are only brought out on the occasion of a feast, when a chief and his crew appear in the gaudy ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... silent and apart—very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. And above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... church was very probably erected by Geoffrey de Magnaville, who was Earl of Essex and Lord of the Manor of Sabriesword (Sawbridgeworth) during the reign of Stephen. It is E.E. and stands on the hill about 1/4 mile N. from the Park. There is a fine double piscina in the chancel, and some heraldic glass in the windows, showing the coats of Astley, Bassett, Eastfield and Engayne. The monuments to the Gore family are numerous; amongst those buried in the church are (1) Sir John Gore, Kt. (d. 1659); he was twice sheriff of the county, and ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... station in front of the scaffolding, the Marshal bade the speaker read the challenge, which, unrolling the parchment, he began to do in a loud, clear voice, so that all might hear. It was a quaint document, wrapped up in the tangled heraldic verbiage of the time. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... revealed, as she laid the packet on it, stirring it down into a red hollow, so that not a flickering fragment should be left unconsumed, were four letters—only four—written on dainty paper, in a man's hand, sealed with a man's large heraldic seal. When they were mere ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... like a dragon to place myself in the wrong, some fiend apparently so counterworked me, that eternally I was reminded of the Manx half-pennies, which lately I had continually seen current in North Wales, bearing for their heraldic distinction three human legs in armor, but so placed in relation to each other that always one leg is vertical and mounting guard on behalf of the other two, which, therefore, are enabled to sprawl aloft in the air—in fact, to be as absurdly negligent as they choose, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... front of this tomb is the only specimen in the Cathedral which has not been disturbed, although Mr. Havergal says "most of our large ancient monuments were protected by iron railings." It is divided into six square panels, having shields and heraldic ornaments. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... other explorers on a tablet in the National Library, the name of a battleship, and a few pages in history, help to remind us of his association with this nation. Perhaps a few may recognize his personal colors—red and white—in the binding in this book, and his Coat of Arms in the heraldic device which ornaments the cover, and which are mentioned "lest we ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... round a crown, the special ornament of a baron, not of a duke. It also signifies in heraldry a circular band or pad to which heraldic negroes' ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... in the National Library at Paris.[36] In this book the artist has made drawings, as he says, from the life—some are views, others drawings of objects of art; one represents a lion of the medival heraldic type, yet the artist assures us it is from the life. But there is no real accuracy, everything is done with reference to some canon. It is, however, quite free from the Byzantine influence, though by no means free from a ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... The coat-armour or coat of arms should have had his heraldic emblems on it, not been ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... an excellent memory, we had managed to classify in our heads the name and value of all foreign money. We could also describe a coat-of-arms in heraldic terms. Thus, on the arms of the house of X—- being handed me, my son would reply: "Field gules, with two croziers argent in pale." This knowledge was very useful to us in the salons of the Faubourg Saint Germain, ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... her beautiful boudoir, with its blue-satin hangings, its numerous mirrors, its redundancy of coronets surmounting her own cipher, twisted and twined into a far more graceful decoration than the grim heraldic bruin which formed her husband's cognisance, she said to herself that something was yet required to constitute a woman's happiness beyond the utmost efforts of the upholder's art—that even carriages, horses, tall footmen, quantities ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... an apple of discord to your heraldic, genealogical, and antiquarian, readers. Was there originally more than one family of Courtnay, Courtney, Courtenay, Courteney, Courtnaye, Courtenaye, &c. Which is right, and when did the family commence in England, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... it should have been corrected in the new edition. "If this sort of thing continues," says the faithful "Co.," "Dod will be known as Dodder, or even Dodderer!" Sir BERNARD BURKE'S Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage is, in every sense, a noble volume, and seems to have been compiled with the greatest care and accuracy. KELLY'S Post Office Directory, of course, is a necessity to every man of letters. Whitaker's Almanack for 1890 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... probably by some herald-at-arms as an appropriate legend for signifying the peculiar attributes of the family. Now, however, unfortunately, men were not of one mind as to the exact idea signified. Some declared, with much heraldic warmth, that it was an address to the savages, calling on them to take care of their patron; while others, with whom I myself am inclined to agree, averred with equal certainty that it was an advice to the people at large, especially ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... amputate and cast into the river the right hands of those who infringed this simple tariff. Thus Hand-werpen, hand-throwing, became Antwerp, and hence, two hands, in the escutcheon of the city, were ever held up in heraldic attestation of the truth. The giant was, in his turn, thrown into the Scheld by a hero, named Brabo, from whose exploits Brabant derived its name; "de quo Brabonica tellus." But for these antiquarian researches, a simpler derivation of the name would seem an t' werf, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deep in a heraldic design and was whistling through his teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of professional courtesy,—for he was denoting or at the moment, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... during play hours and made few friends, but those were 'solid fellows,' his sister tells us; while at home he had appropriated to himself a small attic where he would read, write and draw pictures—a number of which are preserved in the British Museum—of knights and churches, and heraldic designs in red and yellow ochre, charcoal, and black-lead. In this attic too he had stored—though at what date is uncertain—a number of writings on parchment which had a rather singular history. In the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe, ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... the latter of her grandfather and grandmother. These marriage stones are about two feet square. The initials of the bride and bridegroom, and the date of the marriage, are cut upon them, together with the family coat of arms, which bears, among other heraldic devices, two laurel leaves and the motto, Virtus semper viridis. Below the grandfather's marriage stone is cut in the lintel ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... under a purposed artlessness of narrative and a caressing superfluity of loyal eulogy. We learn, however, that Mademoiselle Desbordes was born at Douai in 1786, and died in Paris in 1859. Daughter of a heraldic painter, the necessities of her family obliged her to make a voyage, as a child, to Guadeloupe, in the hope of receiving aid from a rich relative, and a little later to go upon the stage. In the provinces, and occasionally at Paris, she played in the role of ingenue with an exquisite address, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... according to Dugdale and others, had a chapel of their own, the hamlet appertained to the parish of Aston, to the mother church of which one Henry de Erdington added an isle, and the family arms long appeared in the heraldic tracery of its windows. Erdington Church (St. Barnabas) was built in 1823, as a chapel of ease to Aston, and it was not until 1858 that the district was formed into a separate and distinct ecclesiastical parish, the vicar of Aston being ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... The figure is clad in mail armour, which covers the mouth in a peculiar fashion, and wears a surcoat falling in simple folds, almost Greek in feeling, that are somewhat curious in connection with the rich mediaeval luxuriance of the surface ornament. On his shield are borne six heraldic leopards or lions. The slab and effigy are stone, but the base is of wood encircled by an arcade of trefoiled arches. One of its compartments protected with glass yet shows a piece of the beautiful diaper work, in silver overlaid on white linen, remains of the rich ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... brought his wife and a little corn, and says that his father told him that there is a God, but nothing more. The marks on their foreheads and bodies are meant only to give beauty in the dance, they seem a sort of heraldic ornament, for they can at once tell by his tattoo to what tribe or portion of tribe a man belongs. The tattoo or tembo of the Matambwe and Upper Makonde very much resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the Autobiography, the letters, the documents of every kind, and at any moment this disease will darken Bulwer-Lytton's brightest hours. But curtailed by his grandson, and with its floral and heraldic ornaments well pared away, the Autobiography is a document of considerable value. It is written with deliberate candour, and recalls the manner of Cobbett, a writer with whom we should not expect to find ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and generals to officer the armies of Europe—and as for judges!... There are enough badges, fraternity pins, cockades, and association medals to keep second-hand jewelers busy for their lifetimes! My countrymen are the most passionate collectors of heraldic certificates and genealogical maps in the world. The instinct for decoration is prevalent—the more obscure the family, the more plentiful the framed diplomas of aristocratic origin on ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... be said for the peculiar influence of pictorial symbols on men's minds. All letters, we learn, were originally pictorial and heraldic: thus the letter A is the portrait of an ox, but the portrait is now reproduced in so impressionist a manner that but little of the rural atmosphere can be absorbed by contemplating it. But as long as some pictorial and poetic quality remains in the symbol, the constant use of it must do something ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Purdie, a native of Scotland, was editor of the Virginia Gazette from March 1766 to December 1774. Shortly after this date he started a Gazette of his own, and in the issue of his paper for June 7, 1776, he printed the heraldic device of a shield, on which is a rattlesnake coiled, with supporters, dexter, a bear collared and chained, sinister, a stag. The crest is a woman's head crowned and the motto: Don't tread on me. Adam Boyd (1738-1803), colonial printer and preacher, purchased the printing outfit ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... executed, their friends often pressed to stain handkerchiefs with their blood, or to get some other relic, which they might keep, either as precious memorials of them, or as having a kind of sacramental virtue. 'Cognizance' is here used in a heraldic sense, meaning any badge to show whose friends the ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... high power, is seen to be pitted with an inconceivable number of minute craters; and the summit ridge, and the region towards Werner, scalloped in a very extraordinary way, the engrailing (to use an heraldic term) being due to the presence of a row of big depressions. The floor at this phase is sufficiently illuminated to disclose some of its most noteworthy features. Taking its area to be about 8000 square miles, at least 1200 square miles of it is occupied by the central mountain group ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... been called unpicturesque, owing to its low central tower and insignificant pinnacles. It is, however, a huge building, and its interior is so richly decorated that it more resembles a cathedral than a parish church. It possesses the finest fan-vault in existence, covered with gilded bosses and heraldic arms. Contrasting with this wonderful richness of decoration are ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... display of his grief, by carrying in his arms two young children, the offspring of the deceased. A long train of mourners followed, and I question whether more tears are shed, or more sensibility exhausted, at funerals accompanied with heraldic pomp, than in this simple display of natural affection. I drew up my horse as the procession passed, and the affair threw a gloom over my spirits, in which it seemed as though the village at large partook. The funeral group, with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... altar screen of clunch, filling up the lower part of the apse; and an organ screen, also of clunch, with an open parapet, and enriched with much diaper-work and many canopies, and adorned on the west face with large shields of arms,[17] very brightly coloured, charged with the heraldic bearings of the principal subscribers. At first there were only four stalls on each side of the entrance to the choir; others were added, in front of the ladies' pews, when Honorary Canons were created in 1844. This organ-loft did not occupy the place ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... richly dight, In radiance and collateral light, Of knight’s and baron’s heraldic scroll, And prayers invoked for manie ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... heraldic lore The Cardinal's place to find. Of course he'll always come before The ones ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... of the valley; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages): pleasure of the eye, and pride of life! So rolls and dances the Procession: steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment,—under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written: The wages of sin ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... period he had lived happy and respected in his native town of Orthez, when all at once he was tempted by the thought of titular rank, and from that time his life was one long misery. He took the name of one of his estates, he bought his title in Italy, and ordered his coat-of-arms from a heraldic agent in Paris, and now his ambition was to be treated as a real nobleman. The mere fact of dining with the eccentric Duke de Champdoce, who never invited any one to his table, was to him, as it were, a ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... to her perfect satisfaction, not only that the Esmonds were descended from noble Norman warriors, who came into England along with their victorious chief, but from native English of royal dignity: and two magnificent heraldic trees, cunningly painted by the hand of the Colonel, represented the family springing from the Emperor Charlemagne on the one hand, who was drawn in plate-armour, with his imperial mantle and diadem, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... roof and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind it, where hothouse plants and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... boughs, and such flowers as November had spared. Devices in coloured lamps waited for the evening illumination to bring them out in perfection. Venetian masts had not been hoisted then in England, but "rows of national flags and heraldic banners were stretched across the Strand at several points, and busts and portraits of her Majesty were placed in conspicuous positions." The only person in the Queen's train who excited much interest was the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... enthroned, and surrounded by figures representing the Virtues, variously supporting or administering its authority. Now, observe what work is given to each of these virtues. Three winged ones—Faith, Hope, and Charity—surround the head of the figure; not in mere compliance with the common and heraldic laws of precedence among Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitually, but with peculiar purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thus represented ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not mean merely religious faith, understood ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... family house, in Great Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been during the late baronet's reign. The black outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pitiless Time had taken up the challenge. I found it fine work to rumble through the narrow single street of Irun and Renteria, between the strange-colored houses, the striped awnings, the universal balconies, and the heraldic doorways. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... intelligent men, have in our time seriously suggested that we should study the insect because we are his inferiors. The old moralists merely took the virtues of man and distributed them quite decoratively and arbitrarily among the animals. The ant was an almost heraldic symbol of industry, as the lion was of courage, or, for the matter of that, the pelican of charity. But if the mediaevals had been convinced that a lion was not courageous, they would have dropped the lion and kept the courage; ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the summit of those trunks which bent their naked boughs along the vaulting, joined and met and gathered at their junction, and thin, engrafted knots, extravagant bunches of heraldic roses, armorial flowers with open tracery; and for more than four hundred years no sap had run, no bud had formed in these trees. The shafts bent for ever remained untouched, the white bark of these pillars was scarcely worn, but the greater part of the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Smith, know the exact value of heraldic bearings. We know that though the greatest pleasure of all is to ACT like a gentleman, it is a pleasure, nay a merit, to BE one—to come of an old stock, to have an honorable pedigree, to be able to say that centuries back our fathers had gentle blood, and to us transmitted the same. ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... hail, or the Trinacrian limbs, being put on the giant's shields also. It is connected besides with the Cretan labyrinth, and the circles of the Inferno. 3. Parted per fesse, gules and vai (I don't know if vai means grey—not a proper heraldic colour—or vaire). ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... but the unobtrusive sense and the calm courtesy of a well-bred gentleman. His very equipage kept up the series of contrasts between him and the two Ballantynes. Constable went back and forward between the town and Polton in a deep-hung and capacious green barouche, without any pretence at heraldic blazonry, drawn by a pair of sleek, black, long-tailed horses, and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain blue livery. The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife about the streets and suburbs in a snug machine, which did ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... collection of State papers amassed by Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls in the reign of James I.; the historical collections of White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, which amounted to a hundred and seven volumes, many of them being in the bishop's handwriting; the heraldic and genealogical collections of Segar, St. George, Dugdale, Le Neve, and other heralds; and some valuable legal, topographical, musical, biblical and classical manuscripts. The collection of manuscripts, which amounted to one ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... rooms. They gave the house something of the air of a French chateau, only it looked stronger and far grimmer. Carved around some of the windows, in ancient characters, were Scripture texts and antique proverbs. Two time worn specimens of heraldic zoology, in a state of fearful and everlasting excitement, stood rampant and gaping, one on each side of the hall door, contrasting strangely with the repose of the ancient house, which looked very like what the oldest part of it was said to have been—a monastery. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... application was made in his father's name. The thing was started as early as 1596, but so much question was had, so many difficulties raised, concerning it, that the Poet was three years in working it through. To be sure, such heraldic gentry was of little worth in itself, and the Poet knew this well enough; but then it assured a certain very desirable social standing, and therefore, as an aspiring member of society, he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... as a Part of Speech, is, therefore, the Analogue, within the Lingual Domain, of The State or the Constitution, governmentally, of Human Society, the ascending and descending rank of individuals in the social organization, the Heraldic ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wrote that nothing in the Chesapeake country so impressed him as the myriads of birds in its woods. But the song and color of the oriole particularly cheered and delighted him, and orange and black became the heraldic colors of the first ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Bruce's Coffin-plate.—Can any of your heraldic readers give me any information as to whom the arms found on King Robert Bruce's coffin-plate in 1818 belonged? They are a cross inter four mullets pierced of the field. They are not the arms given in Nisbet to the families of Bruce; neither does Sir. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sort of half-man, like a half-lion or half-stag, is quite common in heraldry? Might not that line through the ship be one of those parti-per-pale lines, indented, I think they call it? And though the third thing isn't so very heraldic, it would be more heraldic to suppose it a tower crowned with laurel than with fire; and it looks ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... aware of a lot of fluted wainscotting around her, and, beyond Dr. Fallows' head, a Tudor staircase in silhouette against a large bay window of many leaded panes. Some of these panes, of stained glass in heraldic patterns, gleamed against a passing cloud like rubies, emeralds, and sapphires that had lost their fire. Dr. Fallows still blocked her way—almost another Brantome!—engrossed in his pessimistic peroration, his visage of an urbane, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... tradition of one of the proscribed of the clan MacGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-side sheep-pen—'Son of my love,' a heraldic bar sinister, but history reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other than the sinister aspect of the name": these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo Innes; but history or tradition, being interrogated, tells a somewhat tangled tale. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over her white shoulders. For the moment, her attire is much simpler than that of the Empress Dowager, who wears a diamond crown and a great mantle of gold brocade, lined and edged with ermine, the long train displaying in bright-coloured embroidery the heraldic double-headed eagle ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... catacombs took the form of a blunt cross naturally; a square chamber having a vaulted recess on each side; then the Byzantine churches were structurally built in the form of an equal cross; while the heraldic and other ornamental equal-armed crosses are partly signs of glory and victory, partly of light, and divine spiritual presence. [Footnote: See, on this subject generally, Mr. R. St. J. Tyrwhitt's "Art-Teaching of the Primitive Church." S. P. B. ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... Paul), for the souls of the masters, William and Robert of Pickering, Adam de Bruce and Mathilda his wife." The two beautifully carved figures of a knight and his lady that lie in the Bruce Chapel are not Bruces for the surcoat of the man is adorned with the arms of the Rockcliffes—an heraldic chess-rook and three lions' heads. Both the knight and his lady wear the collar of SS, the origin of which is still wrapped in obscurity. Traces of gilding are visible in several places on the wings of the angels ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon—and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more, and also less. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... into his study, where he found him with the sword in his hand, which he had taken from over the mantel-piece, and was holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with great minuteness; the hilt being wrought in openwork, with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belonging to the family ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... room in the lodge and was just opening a book, when Nikolai Artemyevitch's valet came cautiously into his room and handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest. 'I hope,' he found in the note, 'that you as a man of honour will not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... King said something over his shoulder to Sir William de Pakyngton the herald, who advanced and stood by the royal chair. He was a tall and noble-featured man, with long grizzled beard which rippled down to the gold-linked belt girdling his many-colored tabard. On his head he had placed the heraldic barret-cap which bespoke his dignity, and he slowly raised his white wand high in the air, while a great hush ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said Morris, "it is a capital idea to have all ready in case we want to go horse backing, but don't you think that one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a byway of Walworth or Mile End would attract too much attention for our purpose? It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east. And even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we are ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... BLAZONRY, or of ARMS. This is an enormous folio MS. full of heraldic embellishments relating to the HOUSE of Austria. Among these embellishments, the author of the text—who lived in the XVIth century, and who was a very careful compiler—has preserved a genuine, original portrait of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... adornment (and so best) To Nature's reverential hand. The tomb, Made ready there for a fresh habitant, Was that of an old family. I knew it.— A very ancient altar-tomb, where Time With his rough fretwork mark'd the sculptor's art Feebly elaborate—heraldic shields And mortuary emblems, half effaced, Deep sunken at one end, of many names, Graven with suitable inscriptions, each Upon the shelving slab and sides; scarce now Might any but an antiquarian eye ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... lengthening of the transepts.[258] The church is thus the work of many generations, and is the outcome of public and private contributions. That the choir was enlarged at this period is chiefly made evident by the heraldic devices and armorial bearings still existing. While the pillars nearest to the centre are plain octagons, with arches corresponding in simplicity, those at the east end have decorated capitals, supporting moulded ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... enough, but was not the cause of the rising at Perth. That England is also aimed at is proved by the fact that Mary and Francis, on the seal of Scotland, quarter the arms of England. Knox himself had seen, and had imparted the fact to Cecil, a jewel on which these fatal heraldic pretensions were made. The Queen is governed by "the new authority of the House of Guise." In short, Elizabeth must be asked to intervene for these political reasons, not in defence of the Gospel, and large preparations for armed action in ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... fluttered pleasantly into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his pictures—a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft red leather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthday book, or a ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Then there is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house, with battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and colors, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... specimens have been found recently in South Australia. The name chiastolite is derived from the Greek chiastos, crossed or marked with the latter ch: cross-stone and macle are earlier names, the latter having been given on account of the resemblance the cross-section of the stone bears to the heraldic macula or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the features of the 1862 Exhibition, and were afterwards presented to the Prince by the County of Norwich. On the top is the golden crown, supported by the Prince's feathers. Underneath, held by bronzed griffins, are heraldic shields representing the various titles of the Prince, while the remainder is composed of flowers, sprays, and creeping vines. They are connected with the palisading by rose, shamrock and thistle. The ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... all the trees of the forest? A kingly majesty marks every motion, and notwithstanding the unusual plainness of his accoutrements, all eyes are turned upon him with interest and curiosity. He is clad in brightly-shining steel, and no heraldic emblems show his rank. His Moorish page bears before him his shield, upon the black ground of which one blooming rose, and the motto Quero, "I seek," form the only device. He is an utter stranger to all: yet both Emperor and Princess command the herald to discover who he is. That he is illustrious, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... the periodicals, stating his opinion that they were the burial-places of chiefs; and to prove it, he asserts that some of them are thrown up in imitation of the figure of the animal which was the heraldic distinction of the chief whose remains they contain, such as the beaver, elk, etcetera. He has given drawings of some of them. That the Indians have their heraldic distinctions, their totems, as they call them, I know to be a fact; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... admitted the honour on behalf of the Republic, and Pontano goes so far as to call Amalfi magnetica in compliment thereof, whilst during the later crusades the Amalfitani, who were evidently convinced of the genuine nature of Gioja's claim, had an heraldic figure of the mariner's compass emblazoned on their banners. It seems a thousand pities to throw doubt upon so picturesque a tradition, for the date of the invention of the compass has been fixed as 1302, two years only after the holding of the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Princess should wish to see him before he went; but Lilias found poor Margaret far too ill for this to be of any avail. She had tossed about all night, and now was lying partly raised on a pile of embroidered, gold-edged pillows, under an enormous, stiff, heavy quilt, gorgeous with heraldic colours and devices, her pale cheeks flushed with fever, her breath catching painfully, and with a terrible short cough, murmuring strange words about her sisters, and about cruel tongues. A crowd of both sexes and all ranks filled the room, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my planet like your heraldic unicorn. He is very graceful, but very ferocious, not heeding kindness, ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... Redcliff, in Bristol, and the boy's sensitive imagination took the stamp of his surroundings. He taught himself to read from a black-letter Bible. He drew charcoal sketches of churches, castles, knightly tombs, and heraldic blazonry. When only eleven years old, he began the fabrication of documents in prose and verse, which he ascribed to a fictitious Thomas Rowley, a secular priest at Bristol in the 15th century. Chatterton pretended to have found these among the contents of an old chest in the muniment room ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... he will keep his hands in them. To deny him the right is to do violence to natural laws. He is the born money-maker, bread-winner, provider—the huesbonda of our Anglo-Saxon ancestry—and the pocket is his heraldic symbol, his birthright. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... latter days can we imagine a lawsuit, costing contestants thousands of pounds, over the right to a certain heraldic charge? In the fourteenth century Sir Robert Grosvenor was the defendant in such a suit, and we read of Chaucer, John of Gaunt, Owen Glendower, and Hotspur being witnesses before the High Court of Chivalry. Sir Robert established his defence, and since those days the Grosvenors ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... sympathetic elders. Then, after a solemn enumeration of the benefits which the Commonwealth had that year received at the hands of Divine Providence, came at last the naming of the eventful day, and, at the end of all, the imposing heraldic words, "God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." And then, as the congregation broke up and dispersed, all went their several ways with schemes of mirth and feasting ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... splashing from the dolphin's jaws into the marble basins, where the snowy lilies and the fresh roses bloomed in abundance. He stepped into the great lofty hall, whose walls and ceilings shone with gilding and bright colors and heraldic devices. Gayly-dressed serving-men, adorned with trappings like sleigh horses, walked to and fro, and some reclined at their ease upon the carved oak seats, as if they were the masters of the house. He told them what had brought him to the palace, and was conducted up the shining marble ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and warm the colouring of the heraldic devices telling in armorial language what noble families had there treasured their dead. The altar, without chancel-rail, stood on a crimson-covered platform. On each side of it, at a respectful distance, were two stately monuments, on which two marble heroes were resting, ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... should have. Then there is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house, with battlements and frescoes and heraldic devices in gold and colours, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... dark cypresses of the grave-yard of Pisa, the art of the Middle Ages came for the first time face to face with the art of antiquity. There, among pagan sarcophagi turned into Christian tombs, with heraldic devices chiselled on to their arabesques and vizored helmets surmounting their garlands, the great unsigned artist of the fourteenth century, be he Sienese or Florentine, be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... interstices, so that the stairs are open to the air. Every inch of this structure, of its balconies, its pillars, its great central columns, is wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great heraldic salamander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois—over the chimneys, over the doors, on the walls. This whole quarter of the castle bears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The running cornice along the top of the front is like an unfolded, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... were of a flamboyant Italian period, and more arrestive than distinguished. Panelled upon them, and belonging to a later day than they, had been imposed two iron coats of arms, with crest above and motto beneath—the heraldic bearings of the present owner of Chadlands. He set store upon such things, but was not responsible for the work. A survival himself, and steeped in ancient opinions, his coat, won in a forgotten age, interested him ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... heart of London city. The death-day of the founder of the place is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the school, and the fourscore old men of the Hospital, the founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice: emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy carved allegories. There is an old Hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time; an old Hall? many old halls; old staircases, passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits, walking in the midst of which we walk as it were ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more dramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in person, (vera incessa patuit dea) presented herself to them, clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of the ship of the city of Paris. She had come herself to claim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful. Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room, supported ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... opening the door a little way, simultaneously with a sound of scuttling outside it, the good lady made the proclamation, 'Send Miss Bella to me!' which proclamation, though grandly formal, and one might almost say heraldic, to hear, was in fact enunciated with her maternal eyes reproachfully glaring on that young lady in the flesh—and in so much of it that she was retiring with difficulty into the small closet under the stairs, apprehensive of the emergence of Mr ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... places. As these signs evidently had their origin in England, and one of them is alluded to in the old Scotch ballad "The Blue Bell of Scotland," it seems to me that the best method to apply for information upon the subject is to ask "N. & Q." Are these signs of inns heraldic survivors of old time; are they corruptions of some other emblem, such as that which in London transformed La Belle Sauvage into the Bell Savage, pictorialised by an Indian ringing a hand-bell; or is the choice of such improper colour as blue for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... rum; which is a totally different thing." But he set down his barrow, albeit reluctantly, and followed his shipmate up the entrance steps. The front door was massive, and sheeted over with lead embossed in foliate and heraldic patterns. Mr. Jope inserted the key, turned it with some difficulty, and pushed the door wide. It opened immediately upon the great hall, and after a glance within ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that of a church. The walls were panelled with oak to a height of about eight feet, and above that were decorated with elaborate designs in plaster relief, representing lions, wild boars, stags, unicorns, and other heraldic devices from the coat-of-arms of the original owner of the estate. A narrow winding staircase led to a minstrels' gallery, from which was suspended a wooden shield emblazoned with the Welsh dragon and the national motto, "Cymru am byth" ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... prepared, upon which is inscribed the totem or heraldic emblem of the injured man's gens, and a picture-writing setting ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... had come from Osborne with three wreaths and a bouquet. The wreaths were simple garlands of moss and violets woven by the three elder princesses; the bouquet of violets, with a white camellia in the centre, was from the Queen. These were laid between the heraldic insignia. The Prince of Wales with his brother and uncle stood at the head, the Lord Chamberlain at the foot, the other mourners and the pallbearers around. Minute-guns were fired at intervals by Horse ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... profession. If 'it only is when he is out he is acting,' let him make the fools stare, but give others something worth looking at. Good Mr. Carver and Gilder, good Mr. Printer's Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, 'do me your offices' unmolested! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a great many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. Lay on, and do not spare. No man's merit can be fairly judged of if he is not known; and how can he be known if he keeps entirely in the background?(4) A great name in art goes but a little way, is chilled as it creeps along the surface ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... comparatively little of seignorial dignity, but it was as though generation after generation had employed upon its perfecting the craft of its most delicate fingers, the love of its most fanciful and ingenious spirits. Overhead, the stucco-work ceiling, covered with stags and birds and strange heraldic creatures unknown to science, had the deep creamy tint, the consistency and surface of antique ivory. From the white and gilt frieze beneath, untouched, so Robert explained, since the Jacobean days when it was first executed, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from the sea, his hair clinging about his ribs, and giving him the air of a heraldic griffin, crept on the puffing fat man and hurled at him with ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... walls of Southampton have been pulled down, or are crumbling away, the most perfect portion being the gateway, or Bar Gate, in the High Street. On either side of it stand two curious old heraldic figures, and beside them are two blackened pictures—one representing Sir Bevis of Hampton, and the other his companion, Ascapart. Sir Bevis, who lived in the reign of Edgar, had a castle in the neighbourhood. It is said he bestowed ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... use energy as a means, but only very tired people ever use energy as a reason. Athletes go in for games, because athletes desire glory. Invalids go in for calisthenics; for invalids (alone of all human beings) desire strength. So long as the German Army points to its heraldic eagle and says, "I come in the name of this fierce but fabulous animal," the German Army will be all right. If ever it says, "I come in the name of bayonets," the bayonets will break like glass, for only the weak exhibit strength without ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... space the two fugitives quickly traversed, passing through a high-arched entrance to an olden bridge that spanned a moat. Long ago had the feudal gates been overthrown by Francis; yet above the keystone appeared, not the salamander, the king's heraldic emblem, but the almost illegible device of the old constable. Beyond the great ditch outstretched a rolling country on which the jester gazed with eager eyes, while his companion swiftly led the way to a clump of willow and aspen ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... that the man he sought lived in the Temple. Baptist Hatton at that time was the most famous of heraldic antiquaries. Not a pedigree in dispute, not a peerage in abeyance, but it was submitted to his consideration. A solitary man was Baptist Hatton, wealthy and absorbed in his pursuits. The meeting with Morley excited ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... vair—i.e., of a grey, or grey and white, fur, the exact nature of which has been a matter of controversy, but which was probably a grey squirrel. Long before the seventeenth century the word vair had passed out of use, except as a heraldic term, and had ceased to convey any meaning to the people. Thus the pantoufles de vair of the fairy tale became, in the oral tradition, the homonymous pantoufles de verre, or glass slippers, a delightful improvement on the ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... frontispiece consists of the portrait of the lady for whose devotions the book was prepared. She kneels before the Madonna, while her patron saint stands beside her. Beneath this celestial vision is the heraldic shield of the lady's family, thus throwing in a glimpse of visible worldly grandeur. The borders and arabesques of this manuscript are equal in execution to the miniatures, and the missal is one of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... chivalrous absurdity is the banner of some high and mighty prince, hanging over his stall in Windsor Chapel, when you think of the purpose for which men are supposed to assemble there! The Church of the Knights of St. John is paved over with sprawling heraldic devices of the dead gentlemen of the dead Order; as if, in the next world, they expected to take rank in conformity with their pedigrees, and would be marshalled into heaven according to the orders of precedence. Cumbrous handsome paintings adorn ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sent him to guide them across the deserts of the Colorado. At the Mormon camp, therefore, he could present himself in his Mexican costume, without the Saints having the slightest suspicion as to his true character. This left him free to lend his services to the rest of us, and assist in our heraldic emblazonment. His first essay was upon myself. My features being sufficiently pronounced, rendered it all the more easy to make an Indian of me; and a uniform coat of vermilion over my neck, face, and hands, transformed me into a somewhat ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... years the foundation of the Jesuits' Sillery residence, now owned by Messrs. Dobell and Beckett, which dates of July, 1637. Who prepared the inscription? Who engraved the letters? Who cut on the lead the figure of the "flaming heart?" The stars? Are they heraldic? What did they typify? Did the plate come out, ready prepared from France? Had the Academie des Inscriptions, etc., or any other academie, any hand in the business? ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and heraldic honours complete, plus a generous allowance on which to support them, and a palace in which to live, Lola Montez cut a very considerable dash in Munich. Two sentries marched up and down in front of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... wolf, the inference is obvious to the mythopoeic mind that men may become wolves, at least after death. And to the uncivilized thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer has shown, by evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate descendants of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by a beast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... several square yards of yellow bunting, charged with the image of another double-headed eagle, floating from the highest flag-staff above the building, betrayed to the initiated the fact that a Russian Grand Duke was concealed somewhere on the premises. Unannounced by heraldic symbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature's own blazonry, were several citizens and citizenesses of the great republic of the Western world. One or two Cobdenite members of the British Parliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost of living in ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... laughing satyrs—a strange combination of paganism and Christianity—amid wreaths of flowers, and arabesques twining round the groups and over every vacant space, partly framing, partly hiding, the heraldic devices which commemorate Sixtus and his family:—a web of lovely forms and brilliant colours, combined in an ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... is perhaps a symbolical figure, a heraldic shield, or it may be some geometrical form that supplies the motive. Fig. 13 is a conventional sprig of hawthorn that ornaments in this way an altar frontal at Zanthen. It is by no means necessary that the element which repeats should be always identical; so long as it is similar in size, form, ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... in triumph, as they drove from the door, "you must acknowledge my heraldic witchcraft, as you are pleased to call it, is right for once ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... its monuments of a fashion long passed away, and its heraldic adornments, suggestive of the age of chivalry, forms a picture at once imposing and pathetic. The monuments are of considerable interest, and are good examples of Renaissance ornament and sculpture of ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... proud of being gentlemen, although they have been told in every conceivable tone that it was a foolish pride,—foolish in itself, foolish in that it did not have the heraldic backing that was claimed for it; the utmost concession being that a number of "deboshed" younger sons of decayed gentry had been shipped to Virginia in the early settlement of that colony. But the very pride played its part in making us ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... her movement as she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown, but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the present dowager's included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all this her grandmother scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters. ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... life, but in its monumental weight and a certain splendour of design it impresses us with a sort of majesty as no merely naturalistic study of a lion could do. If we compare it for a moment with the heraldic shield in Casa Martelli, where Donato has carved in relief a winged griffin rampant, cruel and savage, with all the beauty and vigour of Verrocchio, we shall understand something of his failure in the Marzocco, and something, too, of his success. In that heavy grotesque and fantastic Lion of the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... The heraldic ornaments were the only things in this retired place that reminded us of Europe. The church or chapel formed one side of a quadrangle, in the middle of which a large clump of bananas were growing. On another side was a hospital, containing about a ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Jules that he should go and try his luck. A twenty-franc piece was wheedled out of Werdet for the experiment, which proved a fiasco. Next, the novelist, to convince his companions of the accuracy of his theory, which he further detailed, went and borrowed forty francs from his heraldic engraver, and sent Sandeau and Regnault into the saloon again. Alas! fate was once more unkind. They returned minus their money. To console themselves, they went to the Funambules Theatre, to see Debureau act in the Boeuf Enrage, and Balzac laughed so loud that he and his party ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... stamps bear some family likeness to the stamps of the mother country. Our British colonial stamps are distinguished by their Queen's heads; the stamps of Portugal and its colonies by the portraits of the rulers of Portugal; those of Germany by the German currency; those of France mostly by French heraldic designs; those of Spain by the portraits of the kings and queens of Spain. So that the postage stamp is a key to much definite, valuable, and ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... here led the way to the family tree—a goodly roll of parchment, with the arms of the family emblazoned at the top. Those arms were simple, as ancient heraldic coats are,—three fishes argent on a field azure; the crest a mermaid's head. All flocked to inspect the pedigree except Mr. Gordon, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doubt not, some naked black fellow by the banks of the Thames has hunted the mammoth among unbroken forest two hundred thousand years ago and more; with it he has faced the angry cave bear and the original and only genuine British lion (for everybody knows that the existing mongrel heraldic beast is nothing better than a bastard modification of the leopard of the Plantagenets). Nay, I have very little doubt in my own mind that with it some aesthetic ancestor has brained and cut up ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... bannered balcony Of God's heraldic house, Waving above the dinning throng of the days Pennants of purple and oriflammes of crimson And cloths of gold. Your varying device is on every shining shield Of the brilliant row that flames beneath the eaves Of that house whose street is ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... consists of the nave and side aisles. It is chiefly built of outlayer granite, and, though the plainest cathedral in Scotland, its stately simplicity and severe symmetry lend it unique distinction. On the flat panelled ceiling of the nave are the heraldic shields of the princes, noblemen and bishops who shared in its erection, and the great west window contains modern painted glass of excellent colour and design. The cemeteries are St Peter's in Old Aberdeen, Trinity near the links, Nellfield at the junction of Great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... him to his widow. But the old house was theirs, and a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in the dining room. She had ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... 'come!' Breeding! The cant of it. The silly dishonesty of it! It is like those little three-by-two front yards you see in suburban streets, the last contemptible vestige of the rolling park-lands and fair demesnes of a far-off feudal time. It is like the silly Latin mottoes and heraldic crests you see on the doors of automobiles. It is a fetish in England. The boy from the great public schools sets the fashion, and all the little tinpot grammar-schools and academies follow suit and ape the clothes and the manners and the speech, the mincing speech, of people of breeding. And ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... words of his,—"I'll try, Sir!"—spoken on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valor were rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase—which it seems so easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and glory before him, has ever spoken—would be the best and fittest of all mottoes for the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
