"Buttress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment. The next he was walking slowly and steadily behind the convict, who led him between two or three bushes, and then along a narrow shelf which passed round the end of the rock slip; and as soon as it was cleared the buttress at that end grew still more narrow, so that the boy felt his right arm brushing against the perpendicular rock wall, while his left ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... town of St. Malo—thrust out like a buttress into the sea, strange and grim of aspect, breathing war front its walls and battlements of ragged stone, a stronghold of privateers, the home of a race whose intractable and defiant independence neither time nor change has subdued—has ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... intention of calling some one—the first person he met—to account. But the house that he had just quitted was gone. The wall! Ah, there it was, no longer purposeless, intrusive, and ivy-clad, but part of the buttress of another massive wall that rose into battlements above him. Mr. Clinch turned again hopelessly toward Sammtstadt. There was the fringe of poplars on the Rhine, there were the outlying fields lit by the same meridian sun; but the characteristic chimneys of Sammtstadt were gone. Mr. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... into the long and carefully calculated aim. A thin spurt of white smoke jets forth; a sharp report echoes "from peak to peak the rattling crags among;" half a dozen chamois whisk around the next rock-buttress, and "one more unfortunate" tumbles from the verge into vacancy. The labor of days is rewarded. Securing the scanty venison if he can, the hunter is off for his hillside burrow, advertising his approach by an exultant jodel of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... mouldering walls Of the vast theatre, like the deep roar Of distant waves, or the tumultuous rush Of multitudes: the lichen creeps along Each yawning crevice, and the wild-flower hangs Its long festoons around each crumbling stone. The window's arch and massive buttress glow With time's deep tints, whilst cypress shadows wave On high, and spread a melancholy gloom. Silent forever is the voice Of Tragedy and Eloquence. In climes Far distant, and beneath a cloudy sky, The echo of their harps is heard; but all The ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... where he was; and the boy obeyed him. The black porter who let Raphael out told him somewhat insolently, that his mistress would see no one, and receive no messages: but he had made up his mind: complained of the sun, quietly ensconced himself behind a buttress, and sat coiled up on the pavement, ready for a desperate spring. The slave stared at him: but he was accustomed to the vagaries of philosophers; and thanking the gods that he was not born in that station of life, retired to his porter's cell, and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... so quick in the Bushland!—steps, though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the little door at an angle in the ruins,—a woman's form. Is it my mother? It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the building, it turns to look ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the driver having leaped from his engine, the latter darted alone at full speed for London. Notice was immediately given by telegraph to London and other stations; and, while the line was kept clear, an engine and other arrangements were prepared as a buttress to receive the runaway, while all connected with the station awaited in awful suspense the expected shock. The superintendent of the railway also started down the line on an engine, and on passing the runaway he reversed his engine and had it transferred at the next crossing ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Beside the buttress of one bridge lay two still figures of Algerian Zouaves. These were fresh dead, fallen in the taking of the town. Only two men! There were dead by thousands which one might see in other places. These two had leaped out from cover to dash forward ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... fought up the thin line, and all the world vanished, save the streak of foam, and the snarling water, and the grinning fissure. But they passed it, inch by inch, and the broad bend welcomed them from above, and only a rocky buttress of implacable hate, around whose base howled the tides of an equal hate, stood between. Then La Bijou leaped and throbbed and shook again, and the current slid out from under, and they remained ever in one place. Dip ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... there were not independent proof, that faults of character contributed very largely to the formation of their unbelief. Nevertheless, the political aspect of the movement carries a solemn warning to the Christian church, not to endanger the everlasting Gospel of the Son of God by making it the buttress to support corrupt political and ecclesiastical institutions. It is true that Christ will not abandon his true church. Whatever is divine and eternally true will always as in this case survive the catastrophe. But this period of history ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... course, there are the perennial {holy wars} — {EMACS} vs. {vi}, {big-endian} vs. {little-endian}, RISC vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc. As in society at large, the intensity and duration of these debates is usually inversely proportional to the number of objective, factual arguments available to buttress ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... figure was dark and menacing. But he was not in a hurry. When he passed off the ledge Rojas was edging farther and farther along the wall. He was clinging now to the lava, creeping inch by inch. Perhaps he had thought to work around the buttress or climb over it. Evidently he went as far as possible, and there he clung, an unscalable wall above, the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... adopted every means to place the borders of Cape Colony in a state of military security. As one detail he had to ensure that, in the event of war, the frontier settlers should not be massacred. A line of men was drawn across country, so as to make a buttress against any advance by the crazy Kaffirs. Each picket had charge of a stretch of ground, and in the morning soldiers would ride sharply to right and left, covering it. They could tell, by footmarks on the dewy grass, whether any Kaffirs had been about in the night. The chief ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... the nearest point, the passing blurrs would have suggested two riders on bush hacks leading a third with an empty saddle on its back—a lady's or "side-saddle", if one could have distinguished the horns. They may have struck a soft track or level, or rounded the buttress of the hill higher up, but before they had time to reach or round the foot of the spur, blurs, whispers, stumble and clatter of hoofs, jingle of bridle rings, and the occasional clank together of stirrup irons, seemed shut off as suddenly and completely as though a great sound-proof door ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... personal staff during dinner, the great soldier told us that stirring tale of how, as Governor of Paris, he despatched its garrison in buses and taxis and any vehicles that he could lay hands upon, to buttress the army which, under Maunoury's stalwart leadership, was to fall upon Von Kluck's flank, and was to usher in ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... little troop of cavalry was pushing westward across the desert. The young May moon was sinking to rest, its pure pallid light shining faintly in contrast with the ruddy glow of some distant beacon in the mountains beneath. Ever since nightfall the rock buttress at the pass had been reflecting the lurid glare of the leaping flames as, time and again, unseen but busy hands heaped on fresh fuel and sent the sparks whirling in fiery eddies to the sky. Languid ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... trespassings. But the last of the daylight was now upon me, and I thought best to postpone my enterprise till the morrow. As I betook myself back toward humanity and lodgings, I felt that eye piercing me till I rounded the buttress of the wall; but I denied my folly permission ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the blacks could be of no use to us. No man could stem the current, supposing it to have been shallow at the place, but it was on the contrary extremely deep. Remaining myself in the boat, I directed all the men to land, after we had crossed the stream, upon a large rock that formed the left buttress as it were to this sluice, and, fastening the rope to the mast instead of her head, they pulled upon it. The unexpected rapidity with which the boat shot up the passage astonished me, and filled the natives with wonder, who testified their admiration of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... man leaned heavily upon her to take the weight off his tender foot, while he held his burden betwixt himself and the wall, cuddling it jealously to his side, and thrusting forward his young companion to act as a buttress whenever the pressure of the crowd threatened to bear him away. The evident anxiety of the man, the appearance of his attendant, and the joint care with which they defended their concealed possession, excited the interest of the two young Englishmen who ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the windows of the north side there is a space or tympanum over the inner arch. Each corner of the tower was strengthened by a pair of flat buttresses, with one shaft at the corner itself and another at the inner side of either buttress, and with the shafts banded half way up and again near the top. These buttresses are received in an overhanging corbel-table, above which runs a hollow moulding, filled with dog-tooth ornament of a large size and continued round the projections ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... relation to the slenderness of the tower, and its own height above the eye. The first stage is panelled so as not to present too great a contrast to the octagon, and the next is also panelled and has narrow canopied slits on alternate sides, with four thin buttress-like projections on each face. These provide the slight entasis to the outline which is found in so many spires, as it is in classic columns, and is designed to correct the appearance of hollowness which would occur in so long a straight ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... retained so many good points when at least forty years had passed over them. She winked to the merchant, touching at the same time her under lip with her forefinger, to announce the propriety of silence and secrecy; then gliding from the crowd, retreated to a small recess formed by a projecting buttress of the chapel, as if to avoid the pressure likely to take place at the moment when the bier should be lifted. The merchant failed not to follow her example, and was soon by her side, when she did not give him the trouble of opening his affairs, but ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... was, it aided the poor fugitives at that dead hour of night to find an angle between the church wall and a buttress where the eaves afforded a little shelter from the rain, which slackened a little, when they were a little concealed from the road, so that the light need not betray them in case any passenger was abroad at such an hour, as two ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the hollows, waiting for the others to catch up," whereupon Nolan, looking daggers, had called him a scarehead, and Geordie shouted for Cawker's glass. It was sent up the stairway in less than a minute and focussed on Porphyry Point, a massive buttress overhanging the farther valley. For long seconds Geordie steadied the binocular against the staff and peered silently through. At last he said: "Some riders and two or three livery-rigs are coming, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... [as I shall in all cases speak by the voices of others] I shall summon my witnesses that you may cross-examine them. I shall try, to the best of my ability, to buttress every opinion with adequate proofs. If I do not convince, I hope ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the Church, and there are not many people on the mountain besides the two thousand monks scattered about in the different monasteries which occupy every point where a flat spur or buttress offers a foothold. Each has its objects of interest or veneration, and I believe that to do one's duty by Omei, one must burn offerings before sixty-two shrines. Judging by the determined look on some of the pilgrims' faces, they were bent on ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... made me bolder, and I slipped out of bed across to my little window—giving on the Close—but the dog he bored right down to the bottom of the bed—and I looked out. First go off I couldn't see anything. Then right down in the shadow under a buttress I made out what I shall always say was two spots of red—a dull red it was—nothing like a lamp or a fire, but just so as you could pick 'em out of the black shadow. I hadn't but just sighted 'em when it seemed we wasn't the only people that ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... breath again!" he shouted. "We are over the worse now and shall soon be in calmer water. Get your feet well out in front of you, if you can, and dig your heels into the mud, then you will act as a buttress to me and help me to keep ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... means travail of thought. Easier than thinking with surrender of already formed ideas and detachment from facts already learned is just to stick by what is already said, looking about for something with which to buttress it ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... have referred—the law that liberty is progress—and conform our policy to the spirit of that great law? or shall we, governed by unreasonable and selfish prejudices, initiate a policy which will make this race our hereditary enemy, a mine beneath instead of a buttress to the edifice which you are endeavoring to repair? Sir, I do not hesitate to say that, in my opinion, it were better to follow where conscience and justice point, leaving results to a higher Power, than to shrink from an issue which it is the clear intention ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... to the clouds if she wished to go there, and seeming a mere speck in the sky, she was swept along till she beheld the Arch of St. Martin far below, with the rays of the sun shining on it. Then she swooped down, and, hiding herself behind a buttress so that she could not be detected from below, she set herself to dig out the nearest blue stones with her beak. It was even harder work than she had expected; but at last it was done, and hope arose in her heart. She next drew out a ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides, who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a specially poetical mood. Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the huge buttress of the Moench, the dullest of us—I refer, of course, to myself—felt something of the spirit of the scenery. The day was cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck upward into the sky through ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... upon me, and from where I sat I watched Simon anxiously, for all depended on his object in being here. He took no notice of the little group observing him, however, but, drawing his men up against the wall, leaned against a buttress, moodily pulling at his ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... of Athena Nike, tho outside the Propylaea—thrust out as it were on a sort of great buttress high on the right—must still be called a part, and a very striking part, of the Acropolis. It is only of late years that it has been cleared of rubbish and modern stone-work, thus destroying, no doubt, some precious traces of Turkish occupation which the fastidious historian ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... all, though some may be obtained in that manner. They are made from the buttress of the tapang-tree, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... we observed six stripes of snow near the top of the cliff, being very conspicuous at a great distance, when viewed from the southward. These stripes, which are formed by the drift of snow between the buttress-like projections before described, and which remained equally conspicuous on our return the following year, have probably at all times much the same appearance, at least about this season of the year, and may, on this ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... a window, at a great height from the ground, a very deep ravine, which is one of the main defences of the city, lying below it. In the adjoining ante-chamber is a similar window, and between the two is a projecting buttress, and outside the sill of each is a stone ledge a foot wide, which runs round the buttress. I do not know who first thought of it, but one day when the King was absent and we pages were lounging in the room—which ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... sustaining consciousness that he need not debase himself, nor do violence to his convictions, in order to achieve success therein, since he can live and thrive in another (if you choose, humbler) vocation, if driven from that of his choice. This buttress to integrity, this assurance of self-respect, is to be found in a universal training ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the wintry snow On hoar Plinlimmon's head. A golden staff His steps supported; powerful talisman, Which whoso feels shall never feel again The tear of Pity, or the throb of Love. Touch'd but by this, the massy gates give way, The buttress trembles, and the guarded wall, Guarded in vain, submits. Him heathens erst Had deified, and bowed the suppliant knee To Plutus. Nor are now his votaries few, Tho' he the Blessed Teacher of mankind Hath said, that easier ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... to us in our life's pilgrimage, but that if we trace it to a sense of our self-interest, we not only vulgarize it, but we turn it into a caricature. For there is in humour this singular property; its aroma is so subtle, delicate and undefinable that the effort to buttress it upon coarse, common utility is doomed to fail, and in the mere attempt humour vanishes. There is something deliciously contagious about laughter that is quite sincere and unthinking; whereas the only people who contrive to be always absurd, but never amusing, are ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... large ancient building was found standing upon the wall or buttress. At this place the wall appears to be about seventy-nine feet wide, or thick. The site of this building, upon an elevation, together with its solid structure, leave no doubt that it was the grandest building in Troy; nay, that it ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... period of comparative peace, far worse had yet to come. Under James I. and during the early part of the reign of Charles I., little happened to the building beyond the institution of Curle's passage through the buttress at the southern end of the cathedral, with its quaint inscription on the western wall. The Great Rebellion, as was only to be expected, brought Winchester into the utmost peril. The important situation ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... forest into the river valley that leads to Dieppe. It was still early, and Peter stopped the cars to suggest that they might have a look at the castle of Arques-le-Bataille. The grand old pile kept them nearly an hour, and they wandered about the ruins to their hearts' content. Julie would climb a buttress of the ancient keep when their guide had gone on with the others, and Peter went up after her. She was as lissom as a boy and seemingly as strong, swinging up by roots of ivy and the branches of a near tree, in no wise impeded by her short skirts. From the top one had, indeed, a glorious view. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... biers, and about which men in medical purple hurried to and fro. From this room came groans and wailing. He had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on other couches, bandaged and blood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railed footway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... a wooden roof. At first this pilaster-like form bore a reminiscence of a classic capital as its termination; a moulded capping under the eaves of the building. Next this capping was almost insensibly dropped, and the buttress became a mere flat strip of wall. As the vaulting became bolder and more ambitious, the buttress had to be made more massive and of greater projection, to afford sufficient abutment to the vault, more especially toward the lower part, where the thrust of the roof is carried to the ground. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... with such churches are amongst the earliest instances of Norman work which survive; they are simple in design, square on plan, and are carried up, without break or buttress, to the parapet, where they are finished with a gable roof, forming the saddle-back arrangement still preserved in the Muthill Tower.[14] The break in the height is formed by string courses, which mark the unequal stories. ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... Paslew. "Mine eyes have often striven to pierce those stone walls, and see him lying there in that narrow chamber, or forcing his way upwards, to catch a glimpse of the blue sky above him. When I have seen the swallows settle on the old buttress, or the thin grass growing between the stones waving there, I have thought ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the incident? No, he stood with his back to a buttress looking in the opposite direction. Did he always stand with a wall behind him in this terrible place? How could he live in it? A minute of it made one sick if one were cursed with imagination. Oh, the horror of the prison ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... once a refuge for the Picts; and Caerketton—probably Caer-etin, the giant's strong-hold—is one of them. Darkly its cliffs frown down upon you, while all else is flashing white in the winter sunlight. For once, in this last buttress thrown out into the plain of Lothian towards the royal city, the outer folds of the Pentlands loses its boldly-rounded curves, and drops an almost sheer descent of black rock to the little glen below. In a wrinkle of the foothills ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made His pendant bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the qualities which Lincoln exhibited in the White House: "Lincoln is a strong man, but his strength is of a peculiar kind; it is not aggressive so much as passive; and among passive things, it is like the strength not so much of a stone buttress as of a wire cable. It is strength swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and on that, to popular needs, yet tenaciously and inflexibly bound to carry its great end.... Slow and careful in coming to resolutions, willing to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... meet any but the milder members of the tribe living in the vicinity of Compostela. On one occasion I had made arrangements to meet a Maggugan warrior chief at an appointed trysting place in the forest. Upon arriving at the spot, one of my companions beat the buttress of a tree as a signal that we had arrived, but it was more than an hour before our Maggugan friends made their appearance. Upon being questioned as to the delay, they informed us that they had circled around at a considerable distance, examining ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... cord over the buttress, there," cried one of the nobles; "give the noose mouth enough to tell its own tale, and I will answer for it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... of Ilchester, has a small church dedicated to St Vincent. It is remarkable for the large square bell-cot over the W. gable (cp. Brympton and Chilthorne Domer) which is supported by a massive buttress in the middle of the W. front. Within the building note (1) the three lancets at the E. end; (2) the foliated interior arches of the chancel windows (two of which are very small lancets); (3) the pulpit, dated 1637. The glass in some of the windows ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... voiceless indignation seized one of a buttress of birch-switches behind the door, and began applying it to the consciously ruined Snipe, at the arising of whose howls the post-carrier drove up, and, entering, threw the bag, in loud token of his arrival, ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... it,—imprisoned it,—and lived on. Then, when he was a little older, came more clay; and poured itself upon him here, at the side; and he has laid crystal over that, and lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and tried to cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw out buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own central line as chapels round a cathedral apse; and clustered them round the clay; and conquered it again. At last the clay came on at his summit, and tried to blunt his summit; ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... tone that made Trimble, who was busy engaged in inspecting the architecture of the minster from behind a deep buttress close to the speaker, jump—"I'd ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... architecture, spent whole days in shaping and reshaping a phrase, like some sublime mason who—by a prodigy—had built a cathedral single-handed and whose heart bled upon discovering a neglected carving in the shadow of some buttress and expended infinite pains to perfect it, although it was almost invisible amidst the vastness and the beauty of the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may retain its character of a wall, being supported against the pressure by buttresses at intervals; but if the lateral pressure be very great, it is supported against such pressure by a continuous buttress, loses its wall character, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... All night she lay at his feet to be ready at the first peep of dawn to buttress a purpose that she feared was still weak, and whilst he slept fitfully, she slept not at all, but lay wide-eyed ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... footpath, which the clerk pointed out as the shortest and most convenient course to their destination. Soon the east end of the priory chapel was visible, basking in the broad light of the harvest moon, then riding up full and unclouded towards her zenith. Buttress and oriel were weltering in her beam, and the feathery pinnacles sprang out sharp and clear into the blue sky. The shadows were thrown back in masses deep and unbroken, more huge in proportion to the unknown depths through which the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... supports of our dam, being detached from the cliff as Lumley had surmised, had been undermined by the unusual floods of the previous week. Even in that condition it might have remained fast, so strong was our artificial buttress, but as the foundation wore away the rock heeled over to one side a little; this deranged the direct action of the buttresses, and in an instant they flew aside. The rock was hurled over, and the whole of our dam was dashed in dire confusion ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... at comes thro' t' Jumples Clough Were gettin' rayther mazy, An' Warkus Ned had supped enough To turn their Betty crazy, An' Bob at lives at t' Bogeggs farm, Wi' Nan thro' t' Buttress Bottom, Were treatin' her to summat warm- It's just ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... the rocks and the lichen shone in rings of soft and varied color. Blue shadows filled the dale, which, from the side of the Buttress, looked profoundly deep. A row of young men and women followed a ledge that crossed the face of the steep crag; Mortimer Hyslop leading, a girl and Vernon a few yards behind, Lister and ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... its western side," says a sentimental voyager long ago, "where it faces the black buttress of Albemarle. I walked beneath groves of trees—not very lofty, and not palm trees, or orange trees, or peach trees, to be sure—but, for all that, after long sea-faring, very beautiful to walk under, even though they supplied no fruit. And ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... look busy in a quiet way about the place. Men were at work blasting the rocks in a quarry not far off, whence laden carts went creeping to the castle; but this was oftener in the night. Some of them drove into the paved court, for here and there a buttress was wanted inside, and of the battlements not a few were weather-beaten and out of repair. These the earl would have let alone, on the ground that they were no longer more than ornamental, and therefore had better be repaired AFTER the siege, if such should befall, for the big guns ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... had been some way ahead, returned; and having spoken a few words to Uncle Paul, he led us to the side of the stream, where we found the buttress roots, as I have before described, of a large tree projecting into the water. We all climbed on it; and Arthur and I assisted Marian to a spot where she could rest with comparative comfort. We sat down ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... latter were not at all despised by him. His face was indeed rather pale than otherwise, for he had just come from the mill. It was capable of immense changes of expression: mobility was its essence, a roll of flesh forming a buttress to his nose on each side, and a deep ravine lying between his lower lip and the tumulus represented by his chin. These fleshy lumps moved stealthily, as if of their own accord, whenever ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... people looked, and shouted aloud, for in truth Niobe and her children were like unto gods, their queen said, "Do not waste thy worship, my people. Rather make the prayers to thy king and to me and to my children who buttress us round and make our strength so great, that fearlessly ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... architectural evidence we may safely assume that it was built during the first quarter of the 13th century, and it nearly resembles the contemporary work in the north transept of Lincoln Cathedral. The western facade is supported by a buttress on the south, and a larger buttress on the north in the shape of a staircase turret, the upper portion of which is now lost. Between these is one of the most lovely doorways imaginable. Its jambs are first enriched by an inner pair of pillars, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... airy promenade thus formed was reached by several stairs intermediate the landmarks mentioned; yet the main ascent was near the Imperial stables, and it consisted of a flight of stone steps built against the inner face of the wall, like a broad buttress. This latter was for the public, and of sunny days it was used incessantly. Everybody in the category of invalids affected it in especial, since litters and sedans were not inhibited there. In short, the popularity of this mural saunter can ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... did something to hearten the promoters in their herculean task. For several miles along the shore the line had to be protected against the assault of the high tides that periodically sweep Cardigan Bay, and it was soon only too evident that ordinary ramparts were no sure buttress against Atlantic rollers. More than once the permanent way was washed by the waves and engineer and contractor, viewing the dismal wreckage, must have felt that noble references to the moral of Canute, however pungent, were not ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... arises:—Whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;—whether it continues true to the principles upon which it has hitherto stood;—whether this be de facto the constitution of the House of Commons, as it has been since the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most magnificent oriel window, which fills the whole of the space between the centre and the left-hand divisions, is a specimen of pointed architecture in its best and purest style. The arches are lofty and acute. Each angle is formed by a double buttress, and the tabernacles affixed to these are filled with statues. The basement of the oriel, which projects from the flat wall of the house, after the fashion of a bartizan, is divided into compartments, studded with medallions, and intermixed with tracery of ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... windows, all of the same design, of which the five at the east end, and the two most western of the sides, are of four lights each, the remaining four having three lights each. Between each pair of the latter there is no buttress; there are thus in all twelve buttresses, six being at the east end. These are massive, having to support the heavy fan-tracery within. Each buttress has a seated figure at the top, commonly believed to represent an Apostle; but the outlines are much worn, and it is not possible to distinguish ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... attraction for the Celtic inhabitants, and the rocks piled up around it stand there as witnesses of a civilization and architecture certainly more primitive than the civilization and architecture of Roman, Saxon, or Norman settlers. We need not look beyond. How long that granite buttress of England has stood there, defying the fury of the Atlantic, the geologist alone, who is not awed by ages, would dare to tell us. But the historian is satisfied with antiquities of a more humble and homely character; and in bespeaking the interest, and, it may be, the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... something else had already happened, though its consequences were not yet to be foreseen. A storm had delayed them for a day in a hut upon the Meije. They went out of the hut. The sky had cleared; and in the sunset the steep buttress of the Promontoire ran sharply up to the Great Wall; above the wall the small square patch of ice sloped to the base of the Grand Pic and beyond the deep gap behind that pinnacle the long serrated ridge ran ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Leston, and of every defacement that the alternate neglect and good-will of the Underwoods could perpetrate. The grand tower at the west end was, however, past their power to spoil, and they had not done much damage to the exterior, except in a window or buttress here and there. But within! The brothers, used to the heavy correctness of the St. Oswald's restoration, stood aghast when Abednego admitted them by the door of excommunication, straight into the chancel, magnificently deep, but ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... according to the most orthodox arctic rules, until, instead of presenting the appearances of a body intended for progress through the water, they resembled nothing so much as very ungainly snuff-boxes; and their bows formed a buttress which rather pushed the water before it than passed through it. The remark made by an old seaman who had grown gray amongst the ice was often recalled to my mind, as with an aching heart for many a long ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... came upon our folk and the War-duke lying at the foot of a little hill that went up as a buttress to a long ridge high above us, whereon we set a watch; and a little brook came down the dale for ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... passes over the roofs filled with flowers, warbling, and sunlight, with the same pleasure; but to-day it stops at the end of a buttress which separates ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... me, who alone perhaps had the power to execute such mighty tasks, was more than even I, sanguine as my expectations had been, could have hoped! To rout politicians and extirpate heresy, to pull down a minister and become the buttress of the church, to reform the state and establish the hierarchy, was indeed a glorious office! Honour and power were suspended over my head: I had but to cut the thread and they would drop ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... said, "Mr. Reding, that so good a young man as you once were would have gained a place on some foundation, and been settled here, and been a useful man in his generation, sir; and a column, a buttress of the Church of England, sir. Well, sir, here are my best wishes for you, sir. When you come up for your Master's degree, sir—no, I think it is your Bachelor's—which is it, Mr. Reding, are you yet a Bachelor? oh, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... stood serene on Fenner's Ground, indifferent to blisters, While the Buttress of the period Bowled me his peculiar twisters: Sung, "We won't go home till morning"; Striven to part my backhair straight; Drunk (not lavishly) of Miller's Old dry wines ...
— English Satires • Various
... a sort of flying buttress which sprung sideways, with a wide span, across the angle the tower made with the hall, from an embrasure of the battlement of the hall to the outer corner of the tower, itself more solidly buttressed. I think it must have been made to resist the outward pressure ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... ten feet distant, a little table-land of grass projected from the face of the cliff—the green top of a flying buttress, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of granite, like a vast buttress, ran into the sea, pierced by a great arch, some sixty feet high. Aloft all sharp grey stone: below, wherever the salt water had reached, a mass of dark clinging weed: while beyond, as though set in a dark frame, was a soft glimpse of blue ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... own, is more remarkable for its verdure, and for a general appearance of civilisation, than for its natural beauties. The chalky cliffs may seem bold and noble to the American, though compared to the granite piles that buttress the Mediterranean they are but mole-hills; and the travelled eye seeks beauties instead, in the retiring vales, the leafy hedges, and the clustering towns that dot the teeming island. Neither is Portsmouth a very favourable specimen of a British port, considered ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... at the Estrella battery, ran around the head of the cove, and then, turning to the right, climbed the almost precipitous side of the Morro promontory, in a long, steep slant, to a height of one hundred and fifty feet. There it made another turn which carried it out of sight behind a buttress of rock under the northwestern corner of the castle. Near the mouth of the cove, on my right, rose the white, crenellated, half-ruined wall of the Estrella battery—a dilapidated open stone fort of the eighteenth century, which contained no guns, and which, judging from its appearance, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... shall not save him from trafficking with Schmalkaldners and Lutherans if it shall serve his monstrous passions and his vanities. And if he do not this yet he will do other villainies. And you will cosset him in them—to save his hoggish dignity and buttress up his heavy pride. All this ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in this,—a sketch within a sketch, a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... square, becomes gradually octagonal, springing from corbeled heads; till terminated by four octagonal pinnacles, and crowned by an octagonal moulded battlement. Upon the tower is an enriched stone lantern, perforated with gothic windows of two heights, each angle having a buttress and enriched finial; the whole being terminated by an ornamental, pierced, and very rich crown parapet. The height of the tower, to the battlements, is 90 feet; and the whole height of the tower ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... open no sign remained of the dome-roofed settlement of the Sleepers. The huts had served to buttress the snow for the blizzard. They were buried deep under the great white ridges which the storm ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... at least some recompense That we return from airy Eastern domes Glittering in blank sunlight, unto lands Where men erect their temples to the gods In forms whose light and shadow, stress and play Of arch and buttress, satisfies my blood Better than does barbaric loveliness. The dome that poises its clear perfect curves Rising above the palm-trees, with the look As of a winged bubble lightly resting On needless ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... always been the teacher and guardian of that natural moral law which stands as the foundation and buttress of the social edifice. Her plans of Reconstruction rest on the eternal principles of equity which God has engraved on the human conscience and which the teachings of Christ have sanctioned and perfected. In the light of Catholic doctrine moral laws are definite ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... "Richard III." to a detailed and minute criticism. Yet if I passed them over without mention it would probably be assumed that they made against my theory, or at least that I had some more pertinent reason for not considering them than their relative unimportance. In fact, however, they help to buttress my argument, and so at the risk of being tedious I shall deal with them, though as briefly as possible. Coleridge doubted whether Shakespeare had had anything to do with the "First Part of Henry VI.," but his fellow-actors, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... these intermediate apartments. On the left-hand side of the entrance has been a spiral staircase, leading to the rooms above and to the top of the castle, which has had a flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and several turrets. The walls of this tower are very strong and firm; a deep buttress is placed at each corner, and one against the middle of each side wall. A small square tower has stood at the southern corner, but the greater part of it has been thrown down by the sea. The foundation of one side wall is also undermined the whole of its ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... across the way was the Guild House of the Arte della Lana, or Wool-combers, and is now the head-quarters of the Italian Dante Society, who hold a conference every Thursday in the large room over Or San Michele, gained by the flying buttress-bridge. The dark picture on the outer wall is the very Madonna to which, when its position was at the Mercato Vecchio, condemned criminals used to pray ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... selfishness that were soon to become dominant in Charles's Court. Such were Ormonde, now Lord Steward, whose loyalty was as untarnished as his position was above the assaults of slander and envy, and whose unbroken friendship was a powerful buttress to Hyde, and warded off the slights to which his own more humble birth might have subjected him. Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, represented the very best type of courtier of an older generation, and his acceptance of the post of Lord High Treasurer gave security ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... saw the dark shadow of a man's body pressed against the inside buttress of the corner of the Cathedral wall. The shadow crouched, the body all drawn together as though folding in upon itself to hide ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... was establishing the best government ever known in that region, and giving promise to the nation of order, peace, and prosperity, word was brought us, in the moment of our deepest affliction, that the French Emperor, moved by a desire to erect in North America a buttress for imperialism, would transform the republic of Mexico into a secundo-geniture for the house of Hapsburg. America might complain; she could not then interpose, and delay seemed justifiable. It ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... preservation, which accounted for his distended and sleepy state. One day, just after Evensong, when the people were coming out of church, one of the boys heard a hiss, and saw a cobra in the angle of a buttress. The long bamboo was again equal ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... seemed deliciously quiet after the noise of the Marktplatz, and before her, at the end of the street, she could see one tall buttress of the cathedral, and a corner of the graveyard. She walked up the pathway between the tombs and pushed open the heavy church door. The cathedral nave was dark. Wilhelmine peered about and, thinking there was no one in the church, turned to go, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to lay it to the charge of her sex), treated my complexion almost as an offence for which I was responsible, hastening to assume from that external sign inward qualities of which I protest my entire innocence; and this unjust inference she sought to buttress by pointing to the uselessness of the life I had led. Well, be that as it may, I had picked up a good deal of pleasure and a good deal of knowledge. I had been to a German school and a German university, and spoke German as readily and perfectly as English; I was ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... himself stated, not once but repeatedly—of his ability to prove the facts he alleged by competent and unbiased testimony. These facts, he pointed out, were common knowledge in the community; nevertheless, he stood prepared to buttress them with the evidence of reputable witnesses, given ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Puerta de Rochapea which gives exit to the city on the northern side. It had been sunny since morning, and the snow had melted from the roads, but the hills across the plain were still white and great drifts were piled against the ramparts, forming a natural buttress from the summit of the steep river bank almost to the deep embrasures ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... pile, where the moon dimly flashes O'er gray roof, tall window, sloped buttress, and base, O'erarches the ashes, the now silent ashes, Of the noblest, the bravest, of Scotia's race. How hallow'd yon spot where a hero is lying, Embalm'd in the holiness worship bedews, The lamb watching ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... way," said Alberic. "I scrambled down that wide buttress by the east wall last week, when our ball was caught in a branch of the ivy, and ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the soul has thus done penance, it takes possession of the body of some animal, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... master," occurs several times in the Berlin Papyrus, No. ii. For instance, the peasant who is the hero of the story, says of the lord Miruitensi, that he is "the rudder of heaven, the guide of the earth, the balance which carries the offerings, the buttress of tottering walls, the support of that which falls, the great master who takes whoever is without a master to lavish on him the goods of his house, a jug of beer and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... at their eastern edge, a great crag jutted forth in a sort of shoulder, a vast flying-buttress that supported the pine-clad Ridge above—a mighty stone Atlas carrying the hills on its shoulder. From this rock one looked out eastward over the rolling country below to where, far beyond sloping hills covered with forest, it merged into a soft blue that faded away into ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... might. Disputing the ground inch by inch, he manoeuvred so as to draw near one of the lateral walls of the church, and at length succeeded in ensconcing himself in a corner formed by the projection of a buttress, and close by a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the little caravan and engulfed it. Through the front opening Susan watched the road. There was a time when each dust ridge showed a side of bright blue. To half-shut eyes they were like painted stripes weaving toward the distance. Following them to where the trail bent round a buttress, her glance brought up on Courant's mounted figure. He seemed the vanishing point of these converging stripes, the object they were striving toward, the end they aimed for. Reaching him they ceased as though they had accomplished their purpose, led the woman's eyes to him ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... including Captain Arms, who should surely have known the lay of the land about his childhood's home, had been so interested in their talk that before they were aware of the danger the great vessel had run her nose upon a projecting buttress of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss |
