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Luxuriance   Listen
noun
Luxuriance  n.  The state or quality of being luxuriant; rank, vigorous growth; excessive abundance produced by rank growth. "Tropical luxuriance."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Luxuriance" Quotes from Famous Books



... fair to approach, being extolled for beauty of situation, salubrity of climate, and fertility of soil; for the luxuriance of its palm-trees, and the fragrance of its shrubs and flowers. At a short distance from the city a crowd of new proselytes to the faith came forth in sun and dust to meet the cavalcade. Most of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... scene from the wild and wonderful in Nature. Its romantic luxuriance must win the attention of the artist, and the admiration of the less wistful beholder; while the philosophic mind, unaccustomed to vulgar wonder, may seek in its formation the cause of some of the most important changes of the earth's surface. Our esteemed friend and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... the slope of a high mountain in the Tropics, from base to summit, presents, in a condensed form, an epitome, as it were, of the same kind of gradation in vegetable growth that may be observed from the Tropics to the Arctics. At the base of such a mountain we have all the luxuriance of growth characteristic of the tropical forest,—the Palms, the Bananas, the Bread-trees, the Mimosas; higher up, these give way to a different kind of growth, corresponding to our Oaks, Chestnuts, Maples, etc.; as these wane, on the loftier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... here for quite a spell, seein' all the beautiful flowers, magnificent orchids—that would bring piles of money to home, jest as common here as buttercups and daisies in Jonesville, and other beautiful exotics, that we treasure so as houseplants, growin' out-doors here in grand luxuriance—palms, tree-ferns, banian trees, everything I used to wonder over in my old gography I see right here growin' free. Tommy wuz delighted with the strange, beautiful flowers, so unlike anything he had ever seen before. We had got ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... protected as a stranger. The two occupants of the ground, consequently, are not on equal terms; it is not a fair fight. The thorns are at home; the wheat is an exotic. The thorns are robust and can hold their own; the wheat is delicate and needs a protector. The weeds accordingly grow with luxuriance, while the wheat stalks in the neighbourhood, cheated of their sustenance under ground, become ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... now favors us with a wonderful description of the tropical forest, with its huge trees, brilliant flowers, strange birds and monkeys, all of which gives the reader a vivid impression of the color, beauty, perfume, and luxuriance of the tropics. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... usually accredited the finest part of the church. It comes upon one as rather plain and bare after the luxuriance of Amiens, Reims, or Rouen. As a model and design, however, it has served its purpose well, if other examples, variously distributed throughout England and France, are considered. Its lines, in fact, are superb and vary little in proportion or extent from what must perforce be accepted ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... period we are bewildered by the luxuriance of creative powers and by the rioting of the fancy in all forms of beauty indiscriminately mingled. In general we detect a striving after effects not fully realised, and a tendency to indulge in superfluous ornament without ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... "Cathedral" of Lowell may stand for individual examples respectively of the classic and the romantic styles in poetry. Compare these two productions, and in the difference between the chaste, well-pruned severity of the one, and the indulged, perhaps stimulated, luxuriance of the other, you will feel the difference between classicism and romanticism. But Victor Hugo is the great recent romanticist; and when, hereafter, we come to speak somewhat at large of him, it will be seasonable to enter more ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... Calpurnius is throughout that, which he seems to be, and whether he is worthy the love of a being like Fausta, I know not yet, though I am strong in faith that it is so. In the mean time, a mutual affection is springing up and growing upon the thin soil of the fancy, and may reach a quick and rank luxuriance before it shall be discovered that there is nothing more substantial beneath. But why indulge a single doubt? only, I suppose, because I would rather Rome should fall than that any harm come to the ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... but a short distance from the creek to the gigantic forest, rising sublimely in its luxuriance, with scarcely an encumbering shrub of undergrowth. They entered the edge of the forest, built a hot fire, roasted their game, and, while their horses were enjoying the richest of pasturage, they, with their keen appetites, enjoyed a more ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... weather side of the trunks and boughs, to silver. The glory of life here always heartened Joan. She felt the immortality of Nature, who, from naked earth and barren boughs, thus at the sun's smile splendidly awakened, and teemed and overflowed with bewildering, inexhaustible luxuriance. Nor seldom this aspect of her Mother's infinite wealth touched her blood, and a strange sensation as of very lust of life made her wild. At such times she would pick the green things and tear them and watch the colorless life ooze from ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... book, to which allusion has before been made, by Rev. Thomas Mozley, there is a description of Maria Rosina in later life. He says she was "tall, strong of build, majestic, with aquiline nose, well-formed mouth, dark penetrating eyes, and a luxuriance of glossy black hair. She would command attention anywhere.... She was very early the warmest and most appreciative of Newman's" (John Henry Newman's) "admirers.... Her great power lay in the portraits she did in chalks.... ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Gosse[23] quotes Croxall's own description of his poetry, as designed "to set off the dry and insipid stuff" of the age with "a whole piece of rich and glowing scarlet." His two pieces "The Vision," 1715, and "The Fair Circassian," 1720, though written in the couplet, exhibit a rosiness of color and a luxuriance of imagery manifestly learned from Spenser. In 1713 he had published under the pseudonym of Nestor Ironside, "An Original Canto of Spenser," and in 1714 "Another Original Canto," both, of course, in the stanza of the "Faerie Queene." The example thus set was followed before ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... grow in luxuriance, and hence dairying and beef production are profitable. Poultry pays as well as anywhere else; chickens often run on green clover all through the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... tall and strong, every line of weariness gone. Hate, loathing, scorn, one might read plainly there, but no trace of fear or despair. She might have been a lioness defending her young. Her splendour of dark auburn hair, escaped and fallen free to her waist, fascinated me with the luxuriance of its disorder. Volney's lazy admiration quickened to a deeper interest. For an instant his breath came faster. His face lighted with the joy of the huntsman after worthy game. But almost immediately he recovered his aplomb. Turning ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... wheat commonly yielded thirty for one. Besides the vine and the olive, the almond, the date, figs of many kinds, the orange, the pomegranates, and many other fruit-trees, flourished in the greatest luxuriance. Great quantity of honey was collected. The balm tree, which produced the opobalsamum, a great object of trade, was probably introduced from Arabia in the time of Solomon. It nourished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various

... fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery—these are common sights, and soon become familiar to observation. I sometimes rode for miles in succession over fertile ground which used to be cultivated, and which is now lying waste. So rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, that parties still inhabiting these desolated districts, have sometimes, in the strong language of a speaker at Kingston, 'to seek about the bush to find the entrance ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... powerfully and irresistibly. While under Mark Lemon, Mr. Sambourne, as an artist, was still unformed. Under Shirley Brooks was awakened his wonderful inventive faculty. Under the regime of masterly inactivity—the happy policy of laissez faire—of Tom Taylor, the talent had burst forth into luxuriance, not to say exuberance. And under Mr. Burnand it was schooled and restrained ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... still many persons of ample means, and some education, who, although they would be horrified at the very thought of admitting to the home a cheap rug or vase, to destroy the harmony and bring discord and confusion into the luxuriance of the furnishings, yet will nonchalantly tolerate the incongruity of a miserable fragment of a library made up of the cheapest and meanest editions to be found in the market, such as would be scorned by those of the most limited means and plebeian tastes. These ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... sir Hans Sloane, that Dr. Sydenham, with whom he was familiarly acquainted, was particularly versed in the writings of the great Roman orator and philosopher; and there is evidently such a luxuriance in his style, as may discover the author which gave him most pleasure, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... the calm sheet of the fiord, lying below, where the torrent buried its fury and was still. Beyond, the sea hemmed in this page of Nature, written by the greatest of poets, Chance; to whom the wild luxuriance of creation when apparently abandoned to ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... blossom. The railway banks were gay with the flowers which March scatters in Southern Italy, red poppies, orange marigolds, lupins, campanulas, purple snapdragons, and wild mignonette, growing anywhere among stones and rocks, with the luxuriance that in northern countries is ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... passed the splendid landmark of Beaver Lodge Mountain. Its rosy-red granite cliffs contrast wonderfully with its emerald cap of verdant grass and mosses, that cover it in tropical luxuriance, and the rippling lake about it was ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... undertake the needed experiments on an adequate scale. Furthermore, all travelers are agreed that in the high latitudes of Northern Siberia, where spring, summer and autumn crowd together in rapid succession within a few months, an astonishing luxuriance of vegetation suddenly springs forth. Thus Sweden and Norway, to-day so sparsely populated, would, with their mammoth woods and positively inexhaustible mineral wealth, their numerous rivers and long stretch ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... celebrated the banana plant for its beauty, its luxuriance, the majesty of its leaves, and the delicacy of its fruit; but never have they sufficiently praised the utility of this tropical product. Those who have never lived in southern countries are unable to fully appreciate its value. Some look even with indifference ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... places the common frog-bit had grown with such luxuriance that it had completely hidden the water, the leaves overlapping each other as if the overcrowded plants were trying to shoulder each other out of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... for Curepipe at 1.30—two hours' run, gradually uphill. What a contrast, this frantic luxuriance of vegetation, with the arid plains of India; these architecturally picturesque crags and knobs and miniature mountains, with the monotony of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and unpretending cottage window—with little diamond panes, embowered at almost every season of the year with roses, and, in the summer and autumn, with a profusion of jasmine and other fragrant shrubs. From the exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation around it, this window, though tolerably large, did not furnish a very powerful light to one who entered from the open air . . . . I was ushered up a little flight of stairs, fourteen in all, to a little drawing-room, or whatever the reader ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... used by the natives. On the slopes of the mountains a few miles away are the Siberian pine, the Ayan spruce, and here and there a larch tree. Cedars and fir trees are abundant and grow to a great size. The whole appearance of the region is one of luxuriance ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... any part of the province of North America. The Dismal Swamp is an exception to the fertility of the surrounding country. It is a vast quagmire, composed of vegetable matter and the decayed roots of trees and plants. On the surface appear in rich luxuriance every species of aquatic plants, from the delicate green moss to the tall cypress. It covers, I was told, an area of a thousand square miles, and is forty miles long and twenty-five broad, having, however, in the centre, a lake of some size fringed to the very borders ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... where the prevalence of great heat with great moisture, combined with the fact that the atmosphere contained a greater proportion of the natural food of plants, must undoubtedly have forcibly stimulated vegetation, and in quantity and luxuriance of growth, if not fineness of organization, produced it in rich abundance. The earth, it is likely, was one vast forest, which would perform a most important part for the good of its future inhabitants, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... vilest and most old-fashioned taste—stiff, cold, unnatural, and altogether detestable. Through what inconsistency or perversity of taste is it then, that I am enchanted with the fantastic elegance, and the picturesque gaiety of the Pamfili gardens; where sportive art revels and runs wild amid the luxuriance of nature? Or is it, as I would rather believe, because these long arcades of verdure, these close walls of laurel, pervious to the air, but impervious to the sunshine, these broad umbrageous avenues and marble terraces, these paved ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... clears from the soul all clouds That darken understanding, and wrap earth Round with a misty curtain, through whose folds The lineaments of beauty glimmer forth In undefined luxuriance. 'Tis a spell That brings by sympathetic influence The soul-deep glory from the universe. All things are beautiful to those who love, Whether in mind or matter. Life becomes A pathway of soft light and radiance, Whereon the spirit glideth ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... towards it through the Hobby, a wood overhanging the sea, which Kingsley describes as 'a forest wall five hundred feet high, of almost semi-tropic luxuriance.' The road was 'banked on one side with crumbling rocks, festooned with heath, and golden hawkweed, and London pride, like velvet cushions covered with pink lace, and beds of white bramble-blossom alive with butterflies; while above my head, and on my right, the delicate cool canopy of oak and birch ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... in the hollows, in which sprang up in great luxuriance the inevitable tussock-grass; while, amongst the little thickets that were sparsely scattered over the plain, were grazing large numbers of hogs, headed by a monster boar. This animal had tusks nearly a foot long; and he almost impaled Eric against a buckthorn tree, under the shelter of which he ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... he especially devoted to the herding and grazing of stock, for which purpose it was most admirably adapted. Wild oats grew in great luxuriance all over this tract, from the water's edge to the tops of the highest hills, and being surrounded on three sides by the waters of the bays and rivers, required little attention in ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... that there are only three of these trees in the republic. The gardener is an old Italian, who came over with one of the viceroys, and though now one hundred and ten years old, and nearly bent double, possesses all his faculties. The garden is pretty from the age of the trees, and luxuriance of the flowers, but melancholy as a proof of the decay of the science in Mexico. The palace itself, now occupied by the president, formerly belonged to Cortes, and was ceded by his descendants to the government. In exchange they received the ground formerly ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... to edge the walks, now straggle at their own will. A few willows, rooted in the stream, have grown up quickly like an enclosing fence, and half hide the house. The wild plants we call weeds have clothed the bank with their beautiful luxuriance. The fruit-trees, neglected for these ten years past, no longer bear a crop, and their suckers have formed a thicket. The espaliers are like a copse. The paths, once graveled, are overgrown with purslane; but, to be accurate there is no trace of ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac

... wounded man could be accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face and wounded ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... village in order to get some exercise, and breathe the fresh air. I remember the day well. It was in the latter part of May—a warm, sweet, sunny day, with enough of chilliness in the air to give a zest to walking. I was surprised at the ripeness and luxuriance of the foliage, so early for a New England spring; but I was still more surprised at the aspect of our usually silent village. The streets were full of men hurrying to and fro, and groups of men, and women, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of its American Indian name, the lovely white CHEROKEE ROSE (R. Sinica), that runs wild in the South, climbing, rambling and rioting with a truly Oriental abandon and luxuriance, did indeed come from China. Would that our northern thickets and roadsides might be decked with its pure flowers and almost equally ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... centuries still ranks (in spite of Mr. Cobden) among our chief text-books of political wisdom, has often seemed to me one of the most mournful books in the world. At no other spot on the earth's surface, and at no other time in the career of mankind, has the human intellect flowered with such luxuriance as at Athens during the eighty-five years which intervened between the victory of Marathon and the defeat of AEgospotamos. In no other like interval of time, and in no other community of like dimensions, has so much work been accomplished of which we can say ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... represent in music something which until now had been outside of music. Out of this principle, co-operating with that other idea of two centuries later, the inherent interest of the individual, has grown the richness and manifold luxuriance of modern romantic music, together with the entire province of opera and oratorio. We have now to trace the steps which led to this great transformation in the art of music; and to illustrate the application of the new ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... traces minutely how this has been brought about by the combined action of wind, birds and sea currents, as means of transport. The process will continue, and he concludes:—"At last after a long interval the vegetation on the desolated island will again acquire that wealth of variety and luxuriance which we see in the fullest development which Nature has reached in the primaeval forest in the tropics." (Op. cit. page 72.) The possibility of such a result revealed itself to the insight of Darwin with little encouragement ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... of the district may be mentioned—the Royal fern (Osmunda regalis), which has been found sparingly at Shirlett, in Willey Park, and in Dairley Dingle; the beautiful Beech fern (Polypodium Phegopteris), which grows in the greatest luxuriance in Dairley Dingle, also in a wood in Willey Park; and the Hay fern (Lastrea faenisecii), in Coalbrookdale, and upon Shirlett. Also several other commoner species, as Lastrea Oreopteris, Lastrea spinosa, Lastrea dilatata, and its variety glandulosa, Lastrea filix mas, and its ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... were closely united; and literature owes him a debt for importing into it so much of the highest scientific habit of mind; for showing that truthfulness need not be bald, and that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxuriance ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... by the sea for miles.... If I could I would stay just as I am for many a day. I feel out of the very earth sometimes as I sit here at the window." The wild coast scenery falls in with the desolate mood of James Lee's wife; the savage luxuriance of the Isle with the primitive fancies of Caliban; the arid desert holds in its embrace, like an oasis, the well-spring of Love which flows from the lips of the dying Apostle. In the poetry of Men and Women we see the ripe corn and the flowers in bloom; in Dramatis Personae, the processes ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... for those who can read between the lines) a startling light on that hereditary principle which plays so important a part in our political system. All the ancillary vices flourished with a rank luxuriance. Hard drinking was the indispensable accomplishment of a fine gentleman, and great estates were constantly changing ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of Faith, alternate with the period of Denial; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow the autumnal decay, the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... dilapidated state. The only covering to the floors of the large, handsome apartments was the common matting of the country. The same was the case in the broad and spacious verandahs, up to which the rank vegetation of the compound—for garden there was none—spread their creeping fibres in wild luxuriance. But her ladyship offered no ungracious remark on the state of things, but simply requested her husband to summon the whole of the servants and, in her presence, inform them that she was their mistress, and to be obeyed in everything, without remark or hesitation. This was done, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... and find fault with everything he meets—nothing to please him! And therefore, methinks, the Tour to the Hebrides is more excusable, and also perhaps Mr. Twiss's Tour in Ireland. Dr. Johnson, bred in the luxuriance of London, with more reason should become cross and splenetic in the bleak and dreary ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... style in which my father had reared his children, the studied elegance which had characterised my mother's dress and habitation, and the hospitality, which was now marked by the ungrateful epithet of prodigal luxuriance, but which had evinced the open liberality of ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... has his eye upon them, on Friedrich's part!—For the rest, this upland platform, insensibly sloping two ways, and as yet undrained, is of scraggy boggy nature in many places; much of it damp ground, or sheer morass; better parts of it covered, at this season, with rank June grass, or greener luxuriance of oats and barley. A humble peaceable scene; peaceable till this afternoon; dotted, too, with six or seven poor Hamlets, with scraggy woods, where they have their fuel; most sleepy littery ploughman Hamlets, sometimes with a SCHLOSS or Mansion for the owner of the soil (who has absconded in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... leave," said Sir Patrick O'Prism, "to take an exception to that same. Your system of levelling, and trimming, and clipping, and docking, and clumping, and polishing, and cropping, and shaving, destroys all the beautiful intricacies of natural luxuriance, and all the graduated harmonies of light and shade, melting into one another, as you see them on that rock over yonder. I never saw one of your improved places, as you call them, and which are nothing but big bowling-greens, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... street where he stood, which was of a shining whiteness and which reflected the effulgence of the moonlight with an incredible distinction, he observed, stretching before him, long lines of white garden walls, overtopped by a prodigious luxuriance of tropical foliage. ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... they were clear of the sombre wood, and had to commence another fight in the hollow of the slope they had to climb, for here the brambles and furze grew in their greatest luxuriance, and had woven so sturdy a hedge that it was next to impossible ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... even finds nourishment in Death: these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth:—as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... to ask—and behold he was no longer there. He approached the three hillocks—where were the flowers? He saw nothing. The wild steppe-grass darkled around, and stifled everything in its luxuriance. But the lightning flashed; and before him stood a whole bed of flowers, all wonderful, all strange: and there were also the simple fronds of fern. Petro doubted his senses, and stood thoughtfully before them, with both ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... himself as a plain and unlettered man, launched out into a wonderfully vigorous and picturesque description of those Islands of Paradise which bloom like gardens amid the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. He described the fecundity and luxuriance of Nature, drew word-portraits of the mild, brown-skinned Polynesians, wept over their enthralment by a debased system of idolatry, and painted the blessings which would befall them when converted to the gentle religion of Christ. Baltic had the gift of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... to visit the city of Kaisarieh. Through the efforts of the progressive Vali at Angora, a macadamized road was in the course of construction to this point, a part of which—to the town of Kirshehr—was already completed. Although surrounded by unusual fertility and luxuriance for an interior town, the low mud-houses and treeless streets give Kirshehr that same thirsty and painfully uniform appearance which characterizes every village or city in Asiatic Turkey. The mud buildings of Babylon, and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... direction we had come from; whilst the dry and withered state of any little grass that we found, convinced me that the earlier rains had still been more partial, so great was the contrast between the rich luxuriance of the long green grass we had met with before, and the few dry withered bunches of last year's growth, which we fell in ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... creatures of whose existence we had previously no knowledge. We had not even a suspicion that what to our unaided vision appeared inert elements held a rampant, multitudinous life, nowhere dead, but always surging and changing, ever replacing death and decay with a new life all its own. Nature's luxuriance everywhere fills us with wonder and delight. The fragrant ferny depths of the forest, and the lush growth of the rank marsh-land, the immeasurable sands of the ocean-edge hiding in their mysterious sameness innumerable ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... Meanwhile the rank luxuriance of tropical plant-growth had already changed the fire-blackened areas of Apes' and West Islands to varying tints of delicate green, the several varieties of new vegetation seeming to find congenial conditions ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... launching their light canoes and paddling off through the surf to the ship; or leapt eagerly into the boat alongside; reached the strip of dazzling beach—strewn now with beautiful shells; plunged into the grateful shade of enticing groves rich with the prodigal luxuriance and fantastic beauty of tropical growth, ablaze with flowers of gorgeous hues, alive with birds whose plumage flashed like living gems, and breathed an atmosphere oppressive ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... Benjamin Franklin which illustrates the very striking nature of its action on this crop. It is related that he once printed with gypsum the words "This has been plastered" on a field of clover, and that for a long time afterwards the legend was plainly discernible on account of the luxuriance of the clover on the parts of the field which had ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... buttercup humility of seclusion. Tall mulberry trees, with festoons of the luxuriant vine, purple with ponderous clusters, trailed and trellised between and over them, shade the wide fields of stately Indian corn; luxuriance of lofty vegetation (catalpa, and aloe, and olive), ranging itself in lines of massy light along the wan champaign, guides the eye away to the unfailing wall of mountain, Alp or Apennine; no cold long range of shivery gray, but dazzling ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... their quota of good citizenship to the best welfare of the nation. There are scattered among us materials for mournful tragedies and mirth-provoking comedies, which some hand may yet bring into the literature of the country, glowing with the fervor of the tropics and enriched by the luxuriance of the Orient, and thus add to the solution of our unsolved ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... be shown whether the cultivation of abaca is to be confined to its present limited area, while the edible species of banana has spread itself over the whole surface of the earth within the tropics. On the volcanic mountains of Western Java a species of the Musaceae grows in great luxuriance. The Government has not, however, made any real effort to cultivate it, and what has been done in that respect has been effected, up to the present date, by private enterprise. Various writers have stated that abaca ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... high tide when we reached the spot, the savages disappearing on our approach. Saw on the further shore a piteous sight, whereat our hearts burned to follow the redskins and chastise their devilish malice. A woman was bound to a stake, her face fallen forward in the water, and a wonderful luxuriance of dark hair spread about her and floating on the current. Swam across the river, with those of my men following who could, and, plunging beneath the tide, cut her bonds. But found the life had fled, at ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... capital of the Eastern Empire, where the luxuriance and magnificence of the Orient combined with the keen, quick intellectual life of the Greeks; in the circle of the imperial court, with its intrigues, its fashions, its favoritisms; at a time when outwardly much respect was paid to the forms of religious life, but when the great ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... End: the old house had dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on interesting superstitious grounds) lying against ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Iver had sprung up in her were smothered under the luxuriance of this new love that left in her soul no space for any other. She thought no more of Iver, for she had no thought for any ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... cartwheels. Proceeding for a mile and a half along the rivulet and through a valley wholly of the same description, we at length encamped on a flat of rich earth (nearly quite black) and where the anthisteria grew in greater luxuriance than I had ever before witnessed in Australian grasses. The earth indeed seemed to surpass in richness any that I had seen in New South Wales; and I was even tempted to bring away a specimen of it. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... survive for the return; impossible to go away as fervid as we come. Other enthusiasms will fatten; but the wonderful Gothic adumbration of Christianity was born in the North and has never been healthy anywhere else. Gothicism, driven southward, runs speedily to seed; an amazing luxuriance, a riot, strange flowers of heavy shapes and maddening savour; and then that worse corruption to follow a perfection premature. So mediaeval Christianity in Umbria is a ruin, but not for Salvator Rosa; it has ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus—the trip across the lake and down the San Juan River—a brand-new experience, between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The luxuriance got into his note-book. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other. Neither is the luxuriance of Fletcher, which his friends have taxed in him, a less fault than the carelessness of Shakespeare. He does not well always; and, when he does, he is a true Englishman,—he knows not when to give over. If he wakes in one scene, he commonly ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... comfort. From Boona to Blagai is about six miles, and here also is a bridge of five arches across the Boona. Leaving the village, which stands on the banks of the river, we proceeded to its source. Pears, pomegranates, olives, and other fruit trees grow in great luxuriance, and two or three mills are worked by the rush of water, which is here considerable. The cavern from which the river pours in a dense volume, is about eight feet high, and situated at the foot of a precipitous cliff, under which stands a kiosk, the abode of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... was the name given to a piece of partially cleared land lying between the mill-pond and Sandy McLachlan's clearing. The timber on it had been cut down and it had grown up in a wild luxuriance of underbrush and berry bushes. The latter had from time to time been cleared away in patches, and here and there between the fallen tree-trunks were stretches of green grass, where the wild strawberries grew. The Slash was the most ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... wide stone steps to the wide galleries, with their fluted pillars, not a murmur but the winged insects droning in the tangled grasses, for the wild luxuriance of rose tree and japonica, of lawn and crape myrtle, betrayed a lack of pruning knives in the immediate season past; and to the south, where the rice fields had reached acre beyond acre towards the swamps, there were now scattered patches of feathering young pine, creeping everywhere ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... almost as broad as the Ohio, and, in its snaky turns, crooked as the Mississippi. The banks seem to be prevented from washing away by the dense matting of grasses, and the overhanging thickets, imposing in luxuriance. The houses are close to the water, for the tidal river does not rise and fall enough to disturb the inhabitants. There are mountains a few miles away east and south—big lumps of blue. The stream that furnishes pure ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... big, sombre library where, only a few days before, Diane had seen Derek Pruyn turn his back on her, without even a gesture of farewell. On the long mahogany table the red azalea was in almost passionate luxuriance of blossom; while through the open window faint odors of lilac came from Miss Lucilla's bit ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... and exhibiting on their shelving sides, their slopes and hollows, every variety of light and shade; a thick wood of dwarf oak, birch, and hazel skirted these hills, and clothed the shores of the lake, running out in rich luxuriance upon every promontory, and spreading upward considerably upon the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the foot of the hill without encountering anything to alarm us, except, indeed, once, when we were passing close under a part of the hill which was hidden from our view by the broad leaves of the banana trees, which grew in great luxuriance in that part. Jack was just preparing to force his way through this thicket, when we were startled and arrested by a strange pattering or rumbling sound, which appeared to us quite different from any of the sounds we had heard during the previous ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... enter the gallery of the Louvre with a feeling that it is but a grand prolongation of the glorious array of pictured and sculptured trophies, scattered in such memorable luxuriance, through that chosen land of art; but the sensation is that of delightful surprise when we have but recently explored the dim chambers of the National Gallery, or obtained formal access to a private British collection. To cross the now magnificent ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... crimson velvet. Mossiaes have replaced them generally, and from beds three feet in diameter their great blooms start by the score, in every shade of pink and crimson and rosy purple. There is Loelia elegans, exterminated in its native home, of such bulk and such luxuriance of growth that the islanders left forlorn might almost find consolation in regarding it here. Over all, climbing up the spandrils of the roof in full blaze of sunshine, is Vanda teres, round as a pencil both leaves and stalk, which will drape those bare iron rods ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... sent a letter, asking me to come to Medan, he would talk to me about the "Confessions." Well do I remember going there with dear Alexis in the May-time, the young corn six inches high in the fields, and my delight in the lush luxuriance of the l'Oise. That dear morning is remembered, and the poor master who reproved me a little sententiously, is dead. He was sorrowful in that dreadful room of his, fixed up with stained glass and morbid antiquities. He lay on a sofa lecturing ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... all the characteristics of mediocrity, which will only render the elevation of Trinity College more conspicuous by the inferiority with which it will be surrounded. How stunted and dwarfed the groves of our new academies when compared with the rich luxuriance of the gardens of Trinity! I had a thousand times rather you had applied your L18,000 a-year to the establishment of new fellowships and new professorships in the metropolitan and national institutions; because if you had done so, Englishmen would have got a value—a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... sort of light tunic reaching a little below the knees, with loose leggings, which were richly ornamented with needlework. A straw hat with a simple feather, covered her head, beneath which her curling black hair flowed in unconfined luxuriance. She wore no ornament of any kind, and the slight shoes that covered her small feet were perfectly plain. In short, there was a modest simplicity about the girl's whole aspect and demeanour which greatly ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... and glaciers, the interior aspects present less of that exceeding beauty which characterizes the Swiss landscapes above those of all other mountains, there is nevertheless a brilliancy of tints in this oriental air, a glory of nearly five hundred miles of snow peaks, a luxuriance of woods on the lower ranges, and a degree of cultivation in the valleys where the hand of man has been busy since times the most remote, which render this mountain land one of the fairest portions of the globe, and worthy of having been, as by some traditions is reported, the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... I would plant a rose-tree over his remains, and some day, as Lilian and I, in the noontide of our domestic bliss, stood before it admiring its creamy luxuriance, I might (perhaps) find courage to confess that the tree owed some of that luxuriance to ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... of the old serving woman, the sombre gaze of Aissa followed the gaunt and tottering figure in its unceasing prowl along the fences, between the houses, amongst the wild luxuriance of riverside thickets. Those three human beings abandoned by all were like shipwrecked people left on an insecure and slippery ledge by the retiring tide of an angry sea—listening to its distant roar, living anguished between the menace of its return and ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... sodden, puffy, but good-humored face; everybody had felt the fiery exhalations of that enormous red beard, which always seemed to be kept in a state of moist, unkempt luxuriance by liquor; everybody knew the absurd dignity of manner and attempted precision of statement with which he was wont to disguise his frequent excesses. Very few, however, knew, or cared to know, the pathetic weariness ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... through waving forests of nutmeg and clove, flashed the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, or the silver ripples of Malacca; and, on such occasions, the orphan listened eagerly, entranced by the tropical luxuriance and grandeur of his imagery, by his gorgeous word- painting, which to her charmed ears seemed scarcely inferior to the wonderful pen-portraits of Ruskin. Those letters seemed flecked with the purple ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... as his hills. From having planned and, in a great measure, made it himself, he took in it a peculiar pride and interest. He knew just the position of every plant and shrub, tree and flower, and in what sort of condition they were as regarded luxuriance and vigor. Sitting quietly in his chair, his fancy could wander in and out along the winding paths, mindful of each new opening vista or backward scene—of where the shadow fell, and where the sunshine slept hottest; could inhale the fragrance of the tea-rose bush, and pause ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... ennobled; so pure that we are purified. They are generally women whose lives are noiseless, who live at home, wives and mothers, without the ambition that spurs men to strive for renown, but their days are full of such richness of beautiful life that its fitting image is that finest flower of tropical luxuriance, the magnificent ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... illustration. He who has never seen the vegetable world except in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the majesty of vegetable life,—a microscopic red moss tinting the surface of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a dwindled oak; but to the botanist who has seen the luxuriance of vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that wretched scene presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more genial climate; he fills up by his conception the miserable actuality presented by these ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... Saint Gall, in Switzerland, and at some other places, many Latin authors were read; at Tours, on the other hand, we find the learned Abbot Alcuin saying to the monks: "The sacred poets are sufficient for you; there is no reason why you should sully your mind with the rank luxuriance of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... he ceased to be a baby, and was a little boy while I was yet wondering what I should do with him when he had outgrown his infancy. His intellect, his character, his physique, lifted themselves with a kind of luxuriance of growth, such as plants show in tropical countries; he blossomed as a thing does which has every advantage and no hindrance; nature moved magnificently to her ends in him; it was a delight to watch such vigorous processes; he was a rich, unthwarted little creature. ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... coming noon, reclined a handsome woman of middle age, so like, and yet so strangely unlike 'Lora Delcor, that my dusky blooms quivered and fretted with emotion, as the contadina closed the door behind us. The same delicate features, the same luxuriance of hair, but—the eyes of 'Lora! ah,—a soul, a divinity looked out of them; but in these one saw only the metallic glitter of the innkeeper's gold! They turned coldly upon Herr Ritter as he stood in the doorway, and a hard ringing utterance—again how unlike ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... His form, though slight,—exactly the Napoleonic size,—was very compact and commanding; the head statuesquely poised, and crowned with a luxuriance of curling black hair; a hazel eye, bright, though serene, the eye of a gentleman as well as a soldier; a nose such as you see on Roman medals; a light moustache just shading the lips, that were continually curving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... did not decline for several centuries; but the lofty ideal was lost sight of, and gross appeals to human passions were made by those who sought to please corrupt leaders of society in an effeminate age. The turgidity and luxuriance of art gradually passed into tameness and poverty. The reliefs on the Arch of Constantine are rude and clumsy compared with those on the column ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... the edge of the precipice, and stairs are hewn out of the solid rock, which lead to nooks in the lower precipices, in which, though there is very little soil, gardens have been formed, where fig and orange trees grow with considerable luxuriance, and greatly contribute to the beauty of the scenery. From the situation of Ronda on the top of a rock, water is scarce, and stairs are constructed down to the river, by which means the inhabitants are supplied. We descended by one flight of three hundred and fifty steps, and at the bottom ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... It gathered a great wealth of rich hair into a mass at the back of the head, yet leaving the top and front of the hair in soft waves; and the bound up mass behind was loose and soft and flowed naturally from the head, it had no hard outline nor regular shape; it was nature's luxuriance just held in there from bursting down over neck and shoulders; and hardly that, for some locks were almost escaping. The whole was to the utmost simple, natural, graceful, rich. But these caricatures! All that they knew was to mass the hair at the back of the head; and that fact was ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... steamboats on the river then; but the steamers and factory smoke soon spoiled everything but the hardy chrysanthemums. However, since the Smoke Consuming Act has been enforced, the roses, stocks, and hawthorns have again taken heart, and blossom with grateful luxuriance. In 1864 Mr. Broome, the zealous gardener of the Inner Temple, exhibited at the Central Horticultural Society twenty-four trusses of roses grown under his care. In the flower-beds next the main walk he managed to secure four ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... found over its plains, and how far they enlarge or circumscribe the enjoyments and liberty of sovereign man; the birds that warble in its groves, the insects that flutter in its breeze, the fish that tenant its seas, rivers, and lakes, and the plants that wave in wild luxuriance on its hills and dales; and by comparing all these varieties with the natural characteristics of our own country, and contrasting their differences with others, we are enabled, in some degree, to appreciate, by the linked gradations, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various

... we receive actually more of the light and heat of the sun than does Java or Trinidad in December, yet these places have then a mean temperature very much higher than ours. It contained also a chapter on humming-birds, as illustrating the luxuriance of tropical nature; and others on the colours of animals and of plants, and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... of perpetual frost, such as the polar regions of our globe. But we do not find any end to it as the climate becomes warmer. On the contrary, every one knows that the tropics are the most fertile regions of the globe in its production. The luxuriance of the vegetation and the number of the animals continually increase the more tropical the climate becomes. Where the limit may be set no one can say. But it would doubtless be far above the present temperature ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... away and cities that teem with historical interest seem, with a few exceptions, to have been built last year. The garden of the Villa des Dunes was therefore more remarkable for cleanliness than luxuriance. The house itself was uninteresting, and resembled a thousand others on the coast in that it was more comfortable than it looked. A suggestion of warmth and lamp-light ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... escape; but one could make believe for him, make believe very hard—an undertaking in which at first Mr. Bousefield was visibly a blessing. Limbert was delightful on the business of this being at last my chance too—my chance, so miraculously vouchsafed, to appear with a certain luxuriance. He didn't care how often he printed me, for wasn't it exactly in my direction Mr. Bousefield held that the cat was going to jump? This was the least he could do for me. I might write on anything I liked—on anything at least but Mr. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... them were crowned with stooked sheaves of wheat, each looking in the distance like Nature with her golden curls done up in paper, dressing for the harvest-home of the season. Some of them wore belts and gores of turnip foliage of different nuances of green luxuriance, combining with every conceivable shade and alternation of vegetable coloring. Indeed, as already intimated, the view from the eminence almost overhanging the little sequestered peninsula on which Old ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... hills and the sombre woods of the farther coast, it was scarcely a wonder that his eye had failed at first to find it. Here were no pomps of lord or baron; little luxuriance could prevail behind those eyeless gables; there could be no suave pleasance about those walls hanging over the noisy and inhospitable wave. No pomp, no pleasant amenities; the place seemed to jut into the sea, defying man's oldest and most bitter enemy, its gable ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... lay up the hills, constantly growing more steep and precipitous, and occasionally winding between large rocks, which were often overgrown with honeysuckle in full luxuriance. The Arabs scrambled like wild animals over the rocks, and brought down very long streamers of honeysuckle, Luwayeh, as they call it, which they wound round and round the necks of our horses, and generally ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... quick movement he caught up a handful of its rich luxuriance and allowed it to run through his fingers like sand again and yet again, with apparent ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... (Cedrus Libani) which are the arboreal gems of the place. Major Budden informs us that they are about one hundred and twenty-eight years old, and were planted in their present position when they had attained about twenty years' growth. Some idea of their luxuriance may be formed when it is mentioned that the girth of each tree exceeds sixteen feet, and the longest branch of one of them measures eighty-four feet in length. In consequence of the habit of these trees ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... same verdant rising ground, and commanding, although well sheltered, an extensive view over the wide park, was the fragment of the old Place that we have noticed. The rough and undulating rent which marked the severance of the building was now thickly covered with ivy, which in its gamesome luxuriance had contrived also to climb up a remaining stack of tall chimneys, and to spread over the covering of the large oriel window. This fragment contained a set of pleasant chambers, which, having been occupied by the late baronet, were of course furnished with great taste and comfort; and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... Sophocles; but though there are some exquisite touches of landscape painting in that drama, the poet has introduced them with a much more sparing hand. It is said that Hurd pruned away a great deal more luxuriance of this kind, with which the first draught of the Elfrida was overrun; and we learn from Gray, in his admirable letter of criticism on the Caractacus, that the opening of that tragedy was, as it at first stood, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... Nothing could be simpler and nobler. A framework of dark wood supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against the crystal sky. At the angles are four rustling cypress trees, tranquilly swayed by the breeze. Grass is growing in the court with a wild freshness and luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twined around a column, a small rosebush, or a shrub glows beneath a gleam of sunshine. There is no noise; this quarter is deserted; only now and then is heard the voice of some promenader ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... Orient are not rich in this imaginative material which appeals to one fond of history or art; but this defect is compensated for by an extraordinary picturesqueness of life and a wonderful luxuriance of nature. The Oriental trip also makes less demand on one's reading than even a hasty journey through Europe. There are few pictures, few statues. Only India and Egypt appeal to the sense of the historical, Japan stands alone, alien to ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... One is accustomed to connect with the notion of the sea bare cliffs, breezy downs, stunted shrubs struggling for existence: and instead of them behold a forest wall, 500 feet high, of almost semi-tropic luxuriance. At one turn, a deep glen, with its sea of green woods, filled up at the mouth with the bright azure sheet of ocean.—Then some long stretch of the road would be banked on one side with crumbling rocks, festooned with heath, and golden ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... are in practice honoured as godlings. The bare simplicity of the Arabian faith has not proved satisfying to other nations, and Turks, Persians and Indians, even when professing orthodoxy, have allowed embellishments and accretions. Such supplementary beliefs thrive with special luxuriance in India, where a considerable portion of the Moslim population are descended from persons who accepted the new faith unwillingly or from interested motives. They brought with them a plentiful baggage ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... condiment of Hellenistic renaissance and add, as crowning flavour, puritan "conscience" and "sinfulness"—mix up, in a general way, good nourishment with ascetic principles—and you will attain to a capacity of luxuriance in certain matters that may well be the envy and despair of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... plantation was in that indeterminate belt which neither of the great staples could claim exclusively as its own—that delectable land where every conceivable product of the temperate zone grows, if not in its rankest luxuriance, at least in perfection and abundance. Tobacco on the hillsides, corn upon the wide bottoms, cotton on the gray uplands, and wheat, oats, fruits, and grasses everywhere. Five hundred acres of hill and bottom, forest and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... and a slightly shaded situation will conduce to its lengthened flowering, and also tend to luxuriance. Soon after the flowers fade the foliage begins to dry up; care should, therefore, be taken to have some other suitable flower growing near it, so as to avoid dead or blank spaces. Pentstemons, rooted cuttings of which are very handy ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... the herds represented the meat, and the unstinted supply of cream and milk and butter. Even the half-cleared land, where tree stumps and bushes still held sway, there was the blueberry, growing with the joyous luxuriance ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... de Ville and belfry which puts the market-house and belfry of Bruges quite in the shade from an impressive architectural point of view. There is not the quiet, splendid severity of its more famous compeer at Bruges, but there is far more luxuriance in its architectural form, and, at any rate, it was a surprise and a pleasure to find that any such splendid ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... Lake at one time included, in the clearings along the western shore and hillsides, a great luxuriance of hop-vines. The golden wreaths of hops, as they hang ripening in the August sunshine, sweeping in graceful clusters from the tall poles, or swinging in the breeze in umbrella-like canopies, add a more picturesque feature to the landscape than any ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... colored ribbon—Challenger, with his hands in his jacket-pockets and his canvas shoes daintily pointing as he walked—appeared in the open space before us. He threw back his head, and there he stood in the golden glow with all his old Assyrian luxuriance of beard, all his native insolence of drooping eyelids and ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... schoolroom to the prim splendours of Georgy's state chambers; and the cool lawn and shrubberies of Hyde Lodge were a hundred-fold more pleasant to her than the stiff little parterre at Bayswater, wherein scarlet geraniums and calceolarias flourished with an excruciating luxuriance of growth and an aggravating brilliancy of colour. She liked any place better than the hearth by which Philip Sheldon brooded with a dark thoughtful face, and a mind absorbed by the mysteries and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... could call Rudham a pretty village: it was too straggling, too bare of trees, which had been planted sparsely and attained no luxuriance of growth; but it was not wholly unattractive this evening, with the setting sun turning to gold the varying bends of the river which ran through the valley, and the cottages and farmhouses dotted here and there with a not unpleasing irregularity, ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... bed and looking grotesquely terrible, they discussed the event. Caroline, like Medusa, but with hair curlers instead of snakes sprouting from her head, and Sophia with her heavy plait hanging over her shoulder and defying with its luxuriance the yellowness of her skin, they sat side by side, propped up with pillows, inured to the sight of ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... of this article were discovered by a German laborer in a quarry, who observed the increased luxuriance of the grass by his path, when the dust fell from his shoes and clothes. This led to experiments which demonstrated its fertilizing power. With the protracted controversies on gypsum we have nothing to do; certain ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... cent., or 22,400 lb. per acre, and the whole of this carbon would therefore be removed, both from the air and the soil, in the course of little more than 23 years. But it is a familiar fact, that plants continue to grow with undiminished luxuriance year after year in the same soil, and they do so because neither their carbon nor their nitrogen are permanently absorbed; they are there only for a period, and when the plant has finished its functions, and dies, they sooner or later return into their original state. Either ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... opposite side, had a curious appearance, being like a large gateway, fully one hundred feet in height, though broken and ruinous. The creepers also were seen to great advantage, some of them falling in the most beautiful luxuriance from the very summits of the surrounding heights down to the water's edge, many of them covered the whole ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... even the length of the line. So he has hardly a rule left, save the iambic pattern, which he treats merely as a point of departure or reference, a background or framework to carry the variations imposed upon it by the luxuriance of a perfectly controlled art. The great charm of the metre of Wither, which Charles Lamb admired and imitated, lies in its facile combination of what, for the sake of brevity, may be called the iambic and trochaic movements. In L'Allegro and Il Penseroso Milton had proved his mastery ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... fails in clearness, or, more precisely, in simplicity. This comes partly from infelicitous sentence-construction, partly, perhaps, from Lanier's extraordinary musical endowment, but chiefly, I think, from over-luxuriance of imagination. But this occasional defect has been unduly exaggerated. Thus Mr. Gosse*1* declares that Lanier is "never simple, never easy, never in one single lyric natural and spontaneous for more than one stanza," — a statement so clearly hyperbolic as hardly to call for notice. As a matter ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... exhibited "The Finding of Sir Lancelot Disguised as a Fool" and "Sir Tristram and La Belle Isolde," both in water-colors. Of these, a writer in the Art Journal said: "Mrs. Stillman has brought imagination to her work. These vistas of garden landscape are conceived in the true spirit of romantic luxuriance, when the beauty of each separate flower was a delight. The figures, too, have a grace that belongs properly to art, and which has been well fitted to pictorial expression. The least satisfactory part of these clever drawings ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... the question forces itself in the midst of all this "ironic" waiting on the part of the Persians in Spartan durance for a future apotheosis of splendour and luxuriance,—what is the moral? "Hunger now and thirst, for ye shall be filled"—is that it? Well, anyhow it's parallel to the modern popular Christianity, reward-in-heaven theory, only on a less high level, but exactly ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... in two straight-backed chairs, with their whole family twining round them—a sort of Swiss Family Laocoon; and a picture of Mr. Bateson—in the attitude of Juliet and the attire of a local preacher—leaning over a balcony, which was overgrown with a semi-tropical luxuriance of artificial ivy, and which was obviously too frail to support him. But the masterpiece in Mrs. Bateson's art-gallery was a soul-stirring illustration of the death of the revered John Wesley. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... Kosmon, that Christian prefers ripe youth to ripe manhood: and he is right. Early summer is nobler than early autumn; the head is wiser than the hand. You take the hand to mean too much: you should not judge by quantity, or luxuriance, or dexterity, but by quality, chastity, and fidelity. And colour and tone are only a fair setting to thought and virtue. Perhaps it is the fate, or rather the duty, of mortals to make a sacrifice for all things, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... knowledge entirely failed to implant in him the dispositions of a scholar or thinker. His nature was perhaps a soil unfavourable to such growths, and certainly already preoccupied by a vegetation the luxuriance of which excluded, dwarfed, or crushed everything else. The truth of these remarks is proved by Chopin's letters and his friends' accounts of his tastes and conversation. In connection with this I may quote a passage from a letter which Chopin wrote ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... The rank luxuriance of the growth of this class of fruits, their handsome foliage, their productiveness, their high economic value as food, and their universal distribution throughout the tropics, all combine to place them in a premier position. As a food it is unequalled amongst fruits, as no matter ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... theory of some writers, that to the African is reserved, in the later and palmier days of the earth, the full and harmonious development of the religious element in man. The African seems to seize on the tropical fervor and luxuriance of Scripture imagery as something native; he appears to feel himself to be of the same blood with those old burning, simple souls, the patriarchs, prophets, and seers, whose impassioned words seem only grafted as foreign plants on the cooler ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... swells again, I clasp the wife to my heart, and we move on with a fair society, beautiful women, noble men, before whom the tropical luxuriance of that world bends and bows in homage; and, through endless days and nights of eternal summer, the stately revel of our life proceeds. Then, suddenly, the music stops. I hear my watch ticking under the pillow. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... gentle descent, and impressed with his transcendent abilities; charmed with his conversation—as pithy as it was apt to be impure—his wit, his taste, his information, his judgment; sensible, too, of the excellence of his wines, and luxuriance of his table, around which military officer and civil servant, merchant and judge, were accustomed to assemble, rank and office were forgotten, etiquette laid aside, and abandon ruled the hour. Votaries of ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... at the point of its supreme luxuriance, owing to the richness of the soil; the leaves of trees and plants I recognise as having seen elsewhere are here far larger, and the undergrowth particularly is more rich and varied, far and away. Ferns seem to find here a veritable ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... afford a delicious refreshment on our long rambles. But it was the flowers, and the flowering shrubs that, beyond all else, rendered this region the most beautiful I had ever seen, (the Alleghany always excepted.) No description can give an idea of the variety, the profusion, the luxuriance of them. If I talk of wild roses, the English reader will fancy I mean the pale ephemeral blossoms of our bramble hedges; but the wild roses of Maryland and Virginia might be the choicest favourites of the flower garden. They are rarely very double, but the brilliant ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... travelled merely for the pleasure of the thing, without any ulterior motives. The long French villages, the huge chapels, the frequent crosses by the way-side, the smooth, level road, the cultivated fields, the overshadowing trees, the rich luxuriance of the vegetation, the radiant beauty of the scene all around, which was now clothed in the richest verdure of June, the habitants along the road—all these and a thousand other things sufficed to excite ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... each time we fired. We did not forget the crocodiles, nor did Aboh, who was very wary when picking up the birds. As we made our way through the forest, I was especially struck by the variety and luxuriance of the trees and shrubs, the number of vines which hung from the branches in wreaths and festoons, the length of the leaves, some rising from the ground, others forming crowns on the summits of tall trees, surmounted by flowers of bright red ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... beautiful land better known, which is an essential part of the process by which it will become the "pleasant haunts of men." It is impossible to describe its rich luxuriance, but most of it is running to waste through the slave-trade ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... scene of tropical luxuriance; cattle and sheep were feeding upon the abundant grasses; but they suddenly took to their heels, with uplifted tails and terrified eyes, at the sight of his white face, a spectacle never before seen on this oasis, peopled hitherto exclusively ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... every detail of the scene in the midst of which we found ourselves stood out with the most vivid distinctness, and I was not only astonished but delighted with the singularity and beauty of Nature's handiwork that everywhere met my eye in this region of tropical luxuriance. The three craft were the only evidences of man's intrusion upon the scene with which we were confronted; everything else was the work of Nature herself, untrammelled and uninterfered with; and it appeared as though in the riotous ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... brook. The Fiord, surrounded by mountains, lay beneath us, and, far away, we could see the boat that had brought us hither, floating, like a white feather, slowly homewards to the yacht. The blue-bell and fox-glove were growing on every hand, and the heath throve in luxuriance, but, flowerless, seemed to miss the golden blossoms ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... more delicate and tender—from the prelude he wandered into a nocturne of plaintive and exceeding melancholy, which he played with thrilling and exquisite pathos—anon, he glided into one of those dreamily joyous yet sorrowful mazurkas, that remind one of bright flowers growing in wild luxuriance over lonely and forsaken graves. The "celebrate" had reason to boast of himself—he was a perfect master of the instrument,—and as his fingers closed on the final chord, a hearty burst of applause ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... under peculiar circumstances, of an enormous development of terrestrial vegetation. They seem to have originated in vast swamps, subject to occasional flooding, and to alternate movements of upheaval and subsidence. On these swamps there must have existed for ages a vegetation of whose luxuriance the richest tropical jungles of the present time can give us no idea. They tell the tale of a time when the temperature of the earth, was uniformly high (since coal fields are found in high northern latitudes), when the atmosphere was charged with moisture, and probably ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... had they been moralised in the punishments which they drew down—for, as Currie remarks in 1799, these 'three merry boys' were already all of them under the turf. Our kind host, the successor of Masterton's, took us in his carriage across the Nith, through a scene of natural luxuriance and beauty not to be surpassed, and under a sun of as intense brilliancy as ever shone in these climes. Passing into a high side-valley, we soon left the glowing plains of Nithsdale behind. We passed under the farmstead of Laggan ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... picture, especially as the prettiest end, the south, is presented to our view. A little further we turn up the hill and come to a grove of rather stunted trees, standing like a double row of soldiers up to their knees in braken. It is a lovely spot, as the pretty fern-like brakes grow in great luxuriance beneath the spreading arms of the walnut and other trees. These brakes grow so tall and thick that it is quite difficult to force a passage through them, except where I have cut a narrow path leading ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... with an olive complexion, long dark hair, and very thick bushy whiskers meeting under his chin. He wore no neckerchief, as he had been playing rackets all day, and his Open shirt collar displayed their full luxuriance. On his head he wore one of the common eighteenpenny French skull-caps, with a gaudy tassel dangling therefrom, very happily in keeping with a common fustian coat. His legs, which, being long, were afflicted with weakness, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... intended for peculiar situations and habits of life, they are powerful evidences of the design displayed in the works of an All-wise Creator. Wandering about in the forests of the Mauritius, where, previous to the advent of man, it had not a single enemy, the dodo, revelling in the perpetual luxuriance of a tropical climate, subsisted on the nuts that fell from the surrounding trees. Its powerful bill enabled it to break, and its capacious, stone-supplied gizzard to digest, the hardest shells and kernels; and thus a kind of frugivorous vulture, it cleared ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... Personal temperature, moreover, is sometimes tropical. There are brains like a South American jungle, as there are others like an Arabian desert, strewn with nothing but bones. While a passionate sultriness prevails in the mind there is no end to its luxuriance. Languages intricately articulate, flaming mythologies, metaphysical perspectives lost in infinity, arise in remarkable profusion. In time, however, there comes a change of climate and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... purple sphagnum; now passing over bare rock. The main lateral moraines that bounded the view on either hand are from 100 to nearly 200 feet high, and about as regular as artificial embankments, and covered with a superb growth of Silver Fir and Pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily left behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended; patches of the alpine bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down the valley were ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... of youth misspent In climbing learning's rugged, steep ascent; When to the top the bold adventurer's got, He reigns vain monarch of a barren spot; While in the vale of ignorance below, Folly and vice to rank luxuriance grow; Honours and wealth pour in on every side, And proud preferment rolls her ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... time for recreation and redoubled enjoyment, as the labours and occupations of the day have then ceased; and all without exception, rich and poor, flock from the town to the sweet, cool, flowery repose of the woods and vineyards, and there take their evening repast in the midst of the wild luxuriance of nature, 'health in the gale, and fragrance on the breeze.' And when the sun is gone down, they return in the cool twilight to their homes, where they find that sweet sleep which movement in the open air alone can give, and which, with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Luxuriance" :   abundance, voluptuousness, copiousness



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