"Picturesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Greece and of England. The Greeks were polytheists; their religion was local; almost the only object of all their knowledge, art, and taste, was their gods; and, accordingly, their productions were, if the expression may be allowed, statuesque, whilst those of the moderns are picturesque. The Greeks reared a structure, which, in its parts, and as a whole, filled the mind with the calm and elevated impression of perfect beauty, and symmetrical proportion. The moderns also produced a whole—a more striking whole; ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... sequestered dingle here conducts the Spodden through a scene of wild, woodland, and picturesque beauty. Drayton, in his Polyolbion, has ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... far-famed Stepney or Poplar. It stood in a little, old-fashioned, old-world court, back of Bloomsbury. They were a foreign-looking little pair—not in their dress, which was truly English in its clumsiness and want of picturesque coloring—but their faces were foreign. The contour was peculiar, the setting of the two pairs of eyes—un-Saxon. They sat very close together, a grave little couple. Presently the girl threw her arm round the boy's neck, the boy laid his head on her shoulder. ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... is so dripping wet with the supernatural, the phantasmal, the mystical—so surcharged with adventures, from the deeper picturesque to the illusive fantastic, one unconsciously finds oneself thinking of him as a poet of greater imaginative impulse than Emerson or Thoreau. He was not a greater poet possibly than they—but a greater artist. Not only the character of his substance, but the care in ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... freshness, that makes the mere act of breathing it delightful. But I have mercy on you—not one word of Clarens, not one word of Meillerie. Take it for granted that Ferney is burnt down, as it well might be without any harm to the picturesque; and that Jean Jacques never wrote, played the knave, or existed. If I were a Swiss Caliph Omar, I should make a general seizure, to be followed by a general conflagration, of every volume that has ever touched on the wit and wickedness of the one, or the intolerable sensibility ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... corpses piled, the one on top of another with trim regularity, as if carefully arranged so. Blue, red, and yellow uniforms, with the occasional green of the Tyrolean Jager, were mixed together in picturesque confusion along the Verdun road; in fact, the dead and dying were everywhere in such prodigious numbers that the hearts of those seeking out ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a clement cardinal or the rage of the sympathising mob put a stop to the proceedings. Barbarous as we remember the Rome of the Popes, we must imagine it just a hundred times more barbarous, more squalid, picturesque, filthy, and unsafe if we would know what it was ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... comfortable than the inhabitants of Coon Hollow!—and Stuart's tent was the most comfortable of all. He had stretched a large canvas beneath some sheltering trees; and filling up the opening at each end with a picturesque wicker-work of evergreens, ensconced himself there in his sylvan lodge, like some Robin Hood, or ranger of the greenwood in old times. The woodland haunt and open air life seemed, at first, to charm the bold cavalier; ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... among the printers, from 10 P.M. until 3 A.M., walking home with the milk-carts in the lead-blue morning; sitting in the outer office of one of the greatest city editors for three of these years; studying every "first night," every picturesque slum, every visiting or indigenous notoriety at close range—to catalogue a life like this, add that it was the life of a handsome, well-dressed, high-spirited girl, and pretend that it was an existence unqualified by male adjectives, would be the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... approval, their respective teams—ten a side—drawn up in two long lines; heads caged in wire-masks, tufted, with curly feathers, red and blue; ponies champing and pawing the air. Not precisely a picturesque array; but if the plumes and trappings of chivalry were lacking, the spirit of it still nickered within; and will continue to flicker, just so long as modern ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... prettily arranged. The galleries which opened upon it on the different stories were adorned with balconies, and the walls of it were hung with maps and pictures of Alpine scenery, pretty engravings of hotels standing in picturesque spots on the margins of lakes, or on the banks of running streams, or hidden away in some shady glen, in the midst of stupendous mountains. Then, besides these pictures, the hall was adorned with statues, and vases of flowers; and there was a neat little table, with writing materials and the ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... into the open part of the park presently, and she was fain to confess, that whatever changes had been made—and the alterations here were not many—had been made with a perfect appreciation of the picturesque. Even the supreme neatness with which the grounds were now kept did not mar their beauty. Fairy-like young plantations of rare specimens of the coniferous tribe had arisen at every available point of the landscape, wherever there ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... monumental fashion and the figure of St. Gabriel with the lily has something grand and graceful. We trace the same treatment of flying banners and draperies and rippling hair in the fantastic but picturesque S. Grisogono in the left transept of San Trovaso. Jacobello's will, executed in 1439 in favour of his wife Lucia and his son, Ercole, with provision for a possible posthumous son, shows him to have been a man of considerable possessions. He owned a slave and had other servants, a house, money, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... They were, however, in front, where he would sooner have them than behind, and he set off down the valley for Hexham. He found the old Border town, clustering round the tall dark mass of the abbey, strangely picturesque; the ancient Moot Hall and market square invited his interest, but he shrank from wandering about the streets in the dark. Now he had Graham's checks, he must be careful; moreover his knapsack and leggings made him conspicuous, and he went ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... longing of those who were unfortunate here (and who did not think himself so?) for a recompense (a revenge he called it) hereafter, and declared transmigration to be at once the most ingenious and the most picturesque embodiment of this yearning. He played billiards extremely well, and excused his skill on the ground that he was compelled to pass the time while foreign diplomatists and his own colleagues were making up their mind. I do not think that he ever hesitated ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... its energies to the erection of wine-cellars, the most uninteresting buildings in the world. A visitor, after a couple of days in Jerez, would be tired of its uninteresting streets, badly kept squares and absence of any places of interest or picturesque drives. Probably he would note the presence of the stately and silent ciguenas, who make their home and build their nests upon the top of every church steeple or tower. They are not exciting, but there they have been for years, and there they ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... gentleman in the straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is nominally ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... fanciful speculations by the ignorant painters of the later schools of art. In their "Nativities," the ox and ass are not, indeed, omitted; they must be present by religious and prescriptive usage; but they are to be made picturesque, as if they were in the stable by right, and as if it were only a stable, not a temple hallowed to a diviner significance. The ass, instead of looking devoutly into the cradle, stretches out his lazy length in the foreground; the ox winks his eyes ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... was falling fast, Ishmael was introduced to Mrs. Dove, who looked him up and down and said little, after which they began their supper. When their simple meal was finished, Ishmael lit his pipe and sat himself upon the disselboom of the waggon, looking extremely handsome and picturesque in the flare of the firelight which fell upon his dark face, long black hair and curious garments, for although he had replaced his lion-skin by an old coat, his zebra-hide trousers and waistcoat made of an otter's pelt still remained. Contemplating him, Rachel felt sure that whatever ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... vulgar extravagances which had become common at Washington, she by no means held herself superior to the obligation of dress, and of the pleasant little artificial graces belonging to high civilization. Some of her evening dresses were elegant, the colors harmonizing, and the style picturesque and becoming. If she had the good taste not to disfigure her classically-shaped head, or to load herself with flashy jewelry, so ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... two works are by no means the same; but between them they represent fairly enough the characteristics of all Bacon's English prose. It might indeed be desirable in studying it to add to them the Henry the Seventh, which is a model of clear historical narration, not exactly picturesque, but never dull; and though not exactly erudite, yet by no means wanting in erudition, and exhibiting conclusions which, after two centuries and a half of record-grubbing, have not been seriously impugned or greatly altered by any modern historian. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... received with an eclat that gratified my vanity. My dress was white and blue, made after the Persian costume; and though it was then singular on the stage, I wore neither a hoop nor powder; my feet were bound by sandals richly ornamented, and the whole dress was picturesque and characteristic. ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... not very picturesque. It produces sugar which undergoes the process of being clayed—that is, after a great part of the molasses has been drained from it, it is put into forms made of clay, which extract the remaining moisture; it then becomes a beautiful straw colour; it is exported in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... ship. He was climbing down the ladder which hung over the boat, rising and sinking on the sea below, while the two men in her held her from the ship's side with their oars; in the offing lay the white steam-yacht which now replaces the picturesque pilot-sloop of other times. The Norumbia's screws turned again under half a head of steam; the pilot dropped from the last rung of the ladder into the boat, and caught the bundle of letters tossed after him. Then his men let go the line that was towing their craft, and the incident of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... skirt in more effective folds, and wondered how it would look as one came up the woodland path. She thought it would look rather picturesque. It was a nice heliotrope colour. It would look like a giant Parma violet against the dark green background. She hoped her hair was tidy. And that her hat was not very crooked. However little one desires to attract, one may at ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... on the 2nd September, 1886, in a small, dull, country town. When I say the town was dull, I mean, of course, that the inhabitants were unenterprising, for in itself Muddleton was a picturesque place, and though it laboured under the usual disadvantage of a dearth of bachelors and a superfluity of spinsters, it might have been pleasant enough had it not been a favourite resort for ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... driver muttered and swore, while he applied the whip to his horse's flanks, and pursued the route indicated by May until they came to the very verge of the city limits, where grand old oaks still waved their broad limbs in primeval vigor over sloping hills and picturesque declivities. Near a rustic bridge, which spanned a frozen stream, stood a few scattered huts, or cottages, towards the poorest of which she directed her footsteps. Standing on one of the broken flags, which formed a rude sort ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... It is a picturesque sight to watch the Indians move camp. Their trains often covered several hundred acres of land. The Indians usually move in a large body, or band. Their moving "van" consists of two long slim poles placed on each side of a pony, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... of the King. Seeing that he was of aristocratic birth, it was held that he had violated his caste and creed by taking sides with the Roundheads. History has told us that he was right, and that the Cavaliers, picturesque as they were, were fighting a dubious cause. But I need not go into that. Carfax was a hard, stern man who spared nobody, and many were the stories ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... place better than he does, who is too humble. Oh, you cannot think how well we get on after six weeks of marriage. If I suffer again it will not be through him. Some day, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will show you and dear Mr. Martin how his prophecy was fulfilled, saving some picturesque particulars. I did not know before that Saul was among ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... only a sardonic sympathy for such weakness. Things changed at once when Shon McGann arrived. He should have come before, according to a promise given Pierre, but there were reasons for the delay; and these Shon elaborated in his finely picturesque style. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the town of Oleron, and in one of the wildest parts of the Pyrenees, is a difficult pass, scarcely known, except to smugglers and izard-hunters whose hazardous avocations make them acquainted with the most hidden recesses of these rugged and picturesque mountains. Towards the close of the summer of 1841, this defile was occasionally traversed by adherents of the Ex-Queen-Regent Christina, entering Spain secretly and in small parties, to be ready to take share in the abortive attempt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Drovers' Association in Cheyenne were sowing nation-wide picturesque stories of the rustlers' uprising. The ground was being prepared for the graver news that was to come; the cattlemen's justification was ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... it is!" resumed Wildeve. "What are picturesque ravines and mists to us who see nothing else? Why should we stay here? Will you go with me to America? I have kindred ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... is always preceded by an extension of the circle of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries, and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through fortuitous ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... thus advertised gratuitously. Wilmington lies, says the author of Peg Woffington, "between the finger and thumb of two rivers," and also upon the broad palm of the Delaware. The two minor streams which embrace it are entirely different in character: one is a picturesque torrent, named by the Dutch Brand-wijn (Brandywine), from the circumstance of a ship loaded with brandy having foundered at its mouth; the other, serene and navigable, is the Christine, named by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... a passage which led into a broad gallery, or upper chamber, stretching right across the end of the hall. From this you descended by means of a small staircase in oak, whose carved balustrade, bending round the corner of the hall, formed one of the prettiest features of the picturesque old room. The barrier which ran along the front of the gallery was in solid oak, and of such a height that, unless standing close up to it, you could neither see nor be seen by the occupants of the room below. On approaching ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... are of light and fragile materials, more suitable to evening than to daytime. Flower girls and pages are dressed in quaint old-fashioned dresses and suits of satin with odd old-fashioned bonnets—or whatever the bride fancies as being especially "picturesque." ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... years, has watched nightly for the beacon-fires that are to announce the fall of Ilion, and who now beholds them blaze at last. The description which Clytemnestra gives of the progress of these beacon-fires from Troy to Argos is, for its picturesque animation, one of the most celebrated in Aeschylus. The following lines will convey to the general reader a very inadequate reflection, though not an unfaithful paraphrase, of this splendid passage [23]. Clytemnestra has announced to the chorus the capture ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... country-seat, The Mural Inclosure, he observed a crowd, apparently of the working-class, gathered around a singular-looking man in the picturesque garb of an Ethiopian serenader. "What does he say?" inquired ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... pictures of Bonaparte which I have seen, a conspicuous feature is that curl or lock of hair which depends upon the emperor's forehead, and gives to the face a pleasant degree of picturesque distinction. Yet this was a vanity, and really a laughable one; for early in life Bonaparte began to get bald, and this so troubled him that he sought to overcome the change it made in his appearance by ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... passed slowly to and fro upon the shaded roads, their high, two-wheeled carts loaded to the very top; beside a pond a maiden herded geese; upon a hill a boy lay sleeping, his sheep nibbling the herbage near by. It was all quaint and picturesque, and to the American eyes surpassing strange to see, but those two particular American eyes before which all the panorama was displayed, happened just then to be blind to everything except one vivid spirit-photograph, and grew moist each time that ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... Nature it is not necessary to go out into the fields and botanize, nor to attempt to make water colours of picturesque scenery. These things are very well, but not so profitable to your particular purpose as observation directed toward the discovery of the laws which underlie and determine form and structure, such as the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... lithographs of the brief Belgian war of 1832, and by his Russian and Oriental sketches made while travelling with Prince Demidov. The motley uniforms of the volunteers of Garibaldi, the Swiss Papal Guards and the Austrian, Piedmontese and French troops, as well as the picturesque costumes of the Italian peasantry, afforded a great scope for Raffet's brush. One of the most characteristic specimens of Raffet's art during this period is his well-known picture of "The Evening ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... with Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Skelton, widely known under his literary pseudonym of "Shirley." A Civil servant as well as a man of letters, he united practical life with literature, a combination that appealed particularly to Huxley, so that he was a constant visitor at Dr. Skelton's picturesque house, the Hermitage of Braid, near Edinburgh. A number of letters addressed to Skelton from 1875 to 1891 show that with him Huxley felt the stimulus of an ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... her life might depend on that grip, which contained her drugs against heart attacks. And, since I was never much of a hand at carrying things, I entrusted this, in turn, to Julius, who was a grey-haired chap of sixty or so, and very picturesque at that. He made so much impression on Florence that she regarded him as a sort of father, and absolutely refused to let me take him to Paris. He ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... is, however, brought from the Certam, but it is a precarious crop, depending entirely on the quantity of rain in the season; and it sometimes does not rain in the Certam for two years. The party we met formed a very picturesque groupe, the men clad in leather from head to foot, of which their light jerkin and close pantaloons are fitted as closely as the clothing on the Egina marbles, and have something of the same effect: the small round hat is in the form of Mercury's petasus; and the shoes and gaiters of the greater ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... a beautiful little town. Perhaps no town in Europe can boast a site more exquisitely picturesque. Edinburgh would be equal to it, if it had a river instead of a railroad running through its valley and under its Castle-hill. But we sojourned too long in the Holy Land to permit of our dwelling ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... something picturesque about the young man's appearance, in spite of the impeccable cut and finish of his dress-suit and the waxed ends of his small blond mustache. His hair was of a ruddy nut-brown color, and had a wave in it; his bright hazel eyes seemed exactly to match ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... situated on the crest of a hill overlooking the public park. He did not glance about him, but went with eyes downcast, dragging himself along with as much difficulty as though he were some feeble old man. He had left off his usual picturesque peasant garb on this occasion, and was wearing a black cloth suit and a starched shirt which he had already crumpled. He felt very solemn, yet all the while he was anxious ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... from the results of successful business. Most houses were of timber; those of the more wealthy were of stone and timber.{original had ","} The use of half-timbering, when the face of a building consisted of woodwork and plaster, made houses and streets very picturesque. The woodwork was often artistically carved. Each storey was made to overhang the one below it, so that an umbrella, if umbrellas had been in use then, would have been almost a superfluity, if not a needless luxury, besides being impossible to manipulate in the narrow streets and ways ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... beauties, on account of their being surrounded with such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment adapted to a singular character, he frequently hits, as it were by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions, as well as descriptions, abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... dedicated to Confucius (Van mien) are to be found in the towns, but are generally open only on certain feast days, when they are visited by officials. Sometimes altars dedicated to the sage may be found in natural grottoes or other picturesque situations. Besides these numerous elements, Annamite religion also includes the veneration of ancestors and ceremonies such as the worship of Heaven and Earth performed in imitation of the Court of Peking. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... back a pace, made the radiant child a low bow, held out his hand, and led her into full view of the audience, the rays of the big lantern softening the tones of the quaint, picturesque costume which concealed her slight figure, transforming the child of eleven into the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fence we were passing at the moment were gilded by the rays of the setting sun. It seemed as if those rough, ragged posts were fit material wherewith to make the heavenly gates, each of which we are told is one pearl. It seems to be God's intention that this earth, even where it is least picturesque, should give us hints and tokens of ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... valley. Each of the three principal tribes has a dialect different from the other two, but have several words in common, and as a rule have very little to do with those inhabiting the other valleys. The entire population is estimated at over 200,000 souls. Their country is picturesque, densely wooded, and wild in the extreme; the men of fine appearance, with sharp Aryan features and keen, penetrating eyes; blue eyes are not common but do occur, but brown eyes and light hair, even to a golden hue, in combination are ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... been more than once dishevelled by the morning wind that day. Her attire was a light, neatly fitting, but amply flowing dress of muslin; the shawl she had worn in the garden was still draped in a careless fold round her. Indolent, wilful, picturesque, and singularly pretty was her aspect—prettier than usual, as if some soft inward emotion, stirred who knows how, had given new bloom and expression to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... unconsciously, into a certain picturesque uniformity of dress and could smile now over the large, cart-wheel hats, coarse embroideries, and short-vamp shoes; neither was she often above mentally contrasting herself in her annual seventy-five dollar suit of dark-blue serge, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was trying to decide just what sort of vine would thrive best on this sunny side of the house. His name is not nearly so picturesque as Bonfanti. It is Jonathan Scroggs. Not a fine name, surely, but his name has never hindered him in his profession. He is one of the best florists in the country, he knows all about beautiful vines and trees, and he is also ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... and completed their arrangements for passing the night, it still lacks an hour of sunset, and with nothing better to be done, they sit by the fire and contemplate the landscape, at which hitherto they have but glanced. A remarkable landscape it is—picturesque beyond description, and altogether unlike the idea generally entertained of Fuegian scenery. That portion of it which an artist would term the "foreground" is the cove itself, which is somewhat like the shoe of a mule—running about a hundred yards ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... making merry on their homeward way. We came to Monsieur Gratiot's, bade our farewells to Madame, picked up our saddle-bags, the two gentlemen escorting us down to the river bank where the keel boat was tugging at the ropes that held her, impatient to be off. Her captain, a picturesque Canadian by the name of Xavier Paret, was presented to us; we bade our friends farewell, and stepped across the plank to the deck. As we were casting off, Monsieur Gratiot called to us that he would take ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rode through magnificent groves of stately yellow pines which extended from Grand Canyon out past Grand View and the picturesque old stage tavern there which is the property of Mr. W. R. Hearst. Quite a distance beyond there we stopped for lunch on a little knoll covered with prehistoric ruins. I asked Smolley what had become of the people who had built the homes lying at our feet. He grunted ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... picturesque scene that struck Johnny's eye as he neared the grave. Before him stood his comrades with bowed and uncovered heads. In the distance stretched the unmeasured expanse of the ice-whitened sea. Beyond, on ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... through his long journey of 900 miles. The first part, through the provinces of Yunnan and Kwei-chow as far as the city of Ch'en-yuan-fu, was made by boat—a long and monotonous trip of four weeks, through a country so picturesque that the "sight was at last completely satiated with the perpetual view of the most glorious scenery that ever made the human heart leap with wonder ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... glance, the young man who was walking alone in the midst of this picturesque country seemed to have nothing remarkable in his dress; a straw hat, a blue blouse and linen trousers composed his costume. It would have been very natural to take him for an Alsatian peasant returning to his village through the Vosges's rough pathways; but a more attentive glance quickly dispelled ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of some size, and at this hour the main street was fairly well crowded with a picturesque throng of cowboys, Mexicans, and Indians from the near-by reservation, with the usual mingling of more prosaic-looking business men. Not a few motor-cars mingled with horsemen and wagons of various sorts in the roadway, but as Buck's glance fell on a big, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... belongs to the former category, and the electricity of chemistry, heat, and magnetism to the latter. The spark of a factional or influence machine can be compared to a highland cataract of lofty height but small volume, which is more picturesque than useful, and the current from a voltaic battery, a thermopile, or a dynamo to a lowland river which can be dammed to turn a mill. It is the difference between a skittish gelding and ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... been let down for the occasion between the usual two; his knees crowd one of the girls and his elbows the other. He seems uncommonly alert and genial; he focusses brilliantly the entire attention of the party. His little black mustache flaunts with a picturesque upward flourish, and it is supplemented by a small tuft at the edge of his underlip—an embellishment which overlays any slight trace of lingering juvenility with an effect which is most knowing, experienced, caprine, if you like, and which makes fair amends ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... could cross the Oise at Meriel. Pluquet replied that it was easy to do so, "but there were gendarmes to examine all who passed." At that they hesitated. They described themselves as conscript deserters coming from Valenciennes who wished to get back to their homes. Pluquet's account is so picturesque as ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... spots on the Murray. Our tents were pitched on some sloping ground, sheltered from the S.W. wind. The feed was excellent, and the soil of better quality than usual. We had a splendid view of the river, which here is very broad and flanked on the right by a dark clay cliff, which is exceedingly picturesque. On the opposite side of the stream there is an extensive, well wooded and grassy flat of beautiful and park-like appearance. Altogether it was a cheerful and pleasant locality, and we were sorry to leave it so soon. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... suit, and to protest with oaths that he was in earnest and had the most friendly intentions. Artabanus upon this yielded, addressed Caracallus as his son-in-law, and invited him to come and fetch home his bride. Herodian describes with much minuteness, and with a good deal of picturesque effect, the stately march of the Imperial prince through the Parthian territory, the magnificent welcome which he received, and the peaceful meeting of the two kings in the plain before Ctesiphon, which was suddenly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... superstitious love for the venerable which should characterize an advanced civilization, that it is greatly to be feared the rest of the structure will soon follow. Yet it was in this courtyard, and before this very inn, that Chaucer and his nine-and-twenty pilgrims stood in picturesque confusion in the early dawn of that spring morning, long, long ago; and agreed for their common amusement on the road each one of them should tell at least one tale in going to, and another in returning from Canterbury; the best story teller to be treated to a supper ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... plays? This is but another way of saying an abstract and brief chronicle of the time, to whose age and body Mr. Tree so shrewdly holds up the mirror. For this dying century of ours is all things to all men. We are living in the most picturesque confusion of the old and new known to history—in a cross-road of chronology where all the ages meet. 'T is a confusion of tongues outbabbling Babel, a simultaneous chattering of the centuries. And, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... irregular patches of undulating grassy plains, all covered with a rich profusion of tropical flowers and climbing-plants, that it seemed to Martin more like a magnificent garden than the uncultivated forest—only far more rich and lovely and picturesque than any artificial garden could possibly be. When the sun shone in full splendour on this valley—as it almost always did!—it seemed as if the whole landscape were on the point of bursting into flames of red and ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... large. Near it, and slightly apart from the building, is a picturesque stone belfry with three old Spanish bells. Condore said that the church was built at least three hundred years ago. It is probably the very structure whose construction was carefully supervised by Ocampo. In the negotiations for permission to move the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... appealed to my imagination now came in with a shock and a realism that was in part a disillusionment and in part an intense satisfaction of some of my primal instincts and cravings. Old salts are more picturesque and companionable spinning yarns about the stove in a shoemaker's shop than they are when one is obliged to live, eat and sleep with them for four months in the crowded forecastle of a fishing schooner. An ocean storm is a sublime spectacle, witnessed from a position of safety on the land; but ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... those who came within range of vision were apparently cowboys, for they were rigged in the picturesque garb that he had studied many times in the illustrations of Eastern magazines. He had admired them afar, for there was something about them, something in the free, wild life they led, that appealed to him; something that struck ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Dream Children begins quite simply, in a calm, narrative manner, enlivened by a certain quippishness concerning the children. The style is grave when great-grandmother Field is the subject, and when the author passes to a rather elaborate impression of the picturesque old mansion it becomes as it were consciously beautiful. This beauty is intensified in the description of the still more beautiful garden. But the real dividing point of the essay occurs when Lamb approaches his elder brother. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... peculiarly his own by the enthusiasm and labors of a lifetime. The German books are not nearly so valuable. Hausrath's The Apostle Paul is a brilliant performance, but it is as weak in handling the deeper things as it is strong in coloring up the external and picturesque features of the subject. Baur's work is an amazingly clever tour de force, but it is not so much a well-proportioned picture of the apostle as a prolonged paradox thrown down as a challenge to the learned. The latest large German work, ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... cry of 'All's well!' Just beyond her, in saucy propinquity, lay a slaver, bound for the coast of Africa—a beautiful, graceful craft. Still farther out the crew of a clumsy French brig were chanting the evening hymn to the Virgin. Ships from every civilized country lay anchored, in picturesque groups, in all directions, and far down, her tall white spars standing in bold and graceful relief against the dark, gray walls of San Severino, I recognized my own beautiful craft, sitting like ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... time was still young, but had already lost that fresh bloom of youth which suffering causes to wither so soon among the poor. Her husband, a clever joiner, gradually left off working to become, according to the picturesque expression of the workshops, "a worshipper of Saint Monday." The wages of the week, which was always reduced to two or three working days, were completely dedicated by him to the worship of this god of the Barriers,[315-2] and Genevieve was obliged herself to provide for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of the race showed very similar tastes to those of their more southern brethren. The men of rank wore white or dyed cotton tunics, and the women mantles fastened by means of golden clasps. The warlike splendour of the men was characteristically picturesque, their chief decorations being breast-plates of gold and magnificent plumes for the head. They, too, employed as weapons darts, bows and arrows, clubs, lances, and slings. The fate of the Chibchas was, of course, the same as that of the Incas. Their ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... and every clime on the face of the earth. Had it been selected for the purpose of showing the cosmopolitan character of the population in the tenement-house district surrounding Chatham Square, it could not have been more picturesque. Bristle-bearded Russians and Poles, heavy-bearded Italians, dark-visaged Hungarians, and every other manner of unwashed man had been drawn into this Grand Rally of Non-Partisan Citizens in ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... the earlier part of the evening had completely passed away. He walked slowly because a big yellow moon hung down from the sky, and because Mr. Waddington's rooms were in a neighborhood of leafy squares and picturesque houses. When he came back to the more travelled ways he ceased, however, to look about him. He took a 'bus to Westminster and returned to his rooms. Somehow or other, the possession of the sheets acted like a sedative. He ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... medicine, and especially in its past history, at home and abroad. 4. Their importance in the useful and fine arts, and especially in the art of dyeing. 5. Their affinities and analogies to other cryptogamic families, and to the Phanerogamia. 6. Their value as an element of the picturesque in nature; and, 7. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... defined. He had carried her off to Baden for his work of naturalising plants. He had a great name for that, a European name. In three weeks his work absorbed him; within that time she knew that she was no mate for him. You can't be picturesque for ever, she thought. She had never reckoned with his incredible simplicity, and never for a moment connected his talk with his acts. Perhaps this Jack was the only really logical man in the world. Now she found that ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... said I over my shoulder: "dark as dark; blue chins, oleaginous curls, and ear-rings; ragged as they make them, but nothing picturesque ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... not attempted anything in the way of picturesque disguise. There was nothing brigandish or romantic about the appearance of the very ordinary-looking young man who put in an appearance ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... towards Seymour Michael, who stood behind, uncomfortably conscious of Mark Ruthine at his heels. It was not in Jem to make an effective scene. Englishmen are so. We do not make our lives superficially picturesque by apostrophising the shade of a dead mother. Jem gave way to the natural instinct of a soldier by nature and training. A clear statement of the facts, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... and, as we think, not inapt parallel might be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern history,—Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden change, as by a rub of Aladdin's lamp, from the attorney's office in a country town of Illinois to the helm of a great nation in times like these. The analogy between the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... wrote about the Holy Cross, not just because it was a picturesque subject, capable of picturesque treatment, one that would make a fine poem; but because, as he tells us, Holy Wisdom had revealed to him "wider knowledge through her glorious power over the thoughts of the mind." He tells us how the fetters ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... mounted on another pony, and was looking the picture of peaceful beauty. Other young people followed, also on horseback. The day was most lovely, and an inspiriting canter along lane and over moor soon brought them to the ruin. It was a stately moss-embroidered fabric, more picturesque in its decay than it ever could have been in its completeness. Its shattered columns, solitary mullions, and pendent fragments of tracery hoary with age, and in parts half concealed by the negligent profusion of ivy, entranced the mind by their suggestive and melancholy beauty; ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... that it is done for the picturesque, that is another thing. Lord Rufford is a wealthy lord, and can afford to be picturesque. A green sward I should have thought handsomer, as well as less expensive, than a ploughed field, but that is a matter of taste. Only why ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... upon which the government has developed to its present Constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a narrative of the external causes which have impeded the Nation's growth toward its ideal of "the greatest possible good to the greatest ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... having the chance to drown his old enemies, Milord and Milady, saves them at the mute appeal of their blue-eyed English baby. Terje Vigen is a masterpiece of what we may define as the "dash-away-a-manly-tear" class of narrative. It is extremely well written and picturesque, but the wonder is that, of all people in the world, Ibsen should have ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... rapid strides, and Littleton, as seen on a certain June morning of that year, would never have suggested the bare, ugly collection of buildings she had visited the March before. They had turned the flat sandy plain into a grassy park, with little cottages of picturesque exterior set down all over it at random, apparently, for they faced in all directions; while the green-bordered highways wound in and out among them, like satin ribbon with a velvet edge. Even the Works, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... think I am asking pity—I feel that you must know. From the very first my success—which was really failure—began to come in the wrong way. As my father's daughter I could not be obscure. I was sought out, I was what was called picturesque, I suppose. The women petted me, although some of them hated me, and I had a fascination for a certain kind of men—the wrong kind. I began going to dinners, house parties, to recognize, that advantages came that way . . . . It seemed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Hignett's delightful old-world mansion, Windles, in the county of Hampshire. He had gone to his room after lunch, because there seemed nothing else to do. It was still raining hard, so that a ramble in the picturesque garden was impossible, and the only alternative to sleep, the society of Mr. Henry Mortimer, had become peculiarly distasteful ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... top the lazy clouds of thin white smoke were floating, tinged with the evening light; around him the desolate convulsed waste,—so arid, so supernaturally dreary; and below, like a soft enchanted dream, the beautiful bay, the gleaming white villas and towers, the picturesque islands, the gliding sails, flecked and streaked and dyed with the violet and pink and purple of the evening sky. The thin new moon and one glittering star trembled through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... It is undoubtedly true that the romantic prototype of these worthy youths is Dick Whittingon, for whom we unconsciously cherish the affection which we often bestow on a far-off personage. Perhaps—who can say?—it is the picturesque adjunct of the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... nothing to hide; and if there were, you would not hide it. Now, Mrs. Blake has her reserves; with all her impulsiveness, she has thorough self-command, and would never say a word more than suited her own purposes. It is her pleasure to indulge in a wild, picturesque sort of talk; it is effective, and pleases people; and Mrs. Blake, in common with other pretty women, likes to please. There is no positive harm in it—perhaps not, but it ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... about it—the fact that no one seemed to know whence he came, or how he had acquired the information which, for the moment, was making him so formidable. "I should like to see him," Ralph said; "he must be a good specimen of the one of the few picturesque types we've got." ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the upper Ohio River is pleasing in any season of the year; no wonder that, in early May, the travellers were enchanted by its picturesque beauty. To this day, in many places, the hills, vales, and woods on either bank, retain almost the original wildness of primeval Nature. The river winds among high limestone hills, which are carved in frequent ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... did they care about the "masses," that "regal race that is now no more," when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling them against the sky-line on the top of that great stone mountain! It amuses me to think how much more picturesque they left the world, and how much better we shall leave it; though if an artist were requested to distribute individual awards to different generations, you could never persuade him to give first prizes to ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... to go too, and come back as soon as I knew the result; so I followed my mother. As I descended the stairs, notwithstanding my anxiety, I could not help seeing what a picture lay before me, for I had learned already to regard things from the picturesque point of view,—the dim light of the low-burning lamp on the forward-bent heads of the listening, anxious group of women, my mother at the open door with the housekeeper and her maid, and the men-servants visible through the door ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... that of a pensive female, with the chin resting on the hand, was her ghost ruminating over the extraordinary events which had recently occurred, and which she had quitted for ever. You will see Malmaison in my sketch-book, as well as the Castle of Vincennes, which is as picturesque and imposing as it is interesting, from the circumstances attending the Duke d'Enghien's[59] death. It seems this event was known at Paris the next day and spoken of with as much freedom as the despotic government ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... management, the more so as the house was supplied by it with water through an artificial streamlet made for the purpose. In these pursuits my father was always assisted by the village post-master, an old man named Morton, of picturesque appearance and conversation, and the consultations between the two used to be full of interest. Morton spoke with a strong brogue, and combined several other pursuits with that of post-master, the universality of his aptitudes making him an interesting companion, and my father had a great ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... other feature, very essential to be noticed, but which, we greatly fear, may damage any picturesque and romantic impression which we have been willing to throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice. In the front gable, under the impending brow of the second story, and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided horizontally ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... From her countrymen, she kept as far away as possible, not for her own sake, but for that of her boy; for he was to grow great and strong, and the knowledge of his birth might shatter his strength and break his courage. For the same reason she also exchanged her picturesque Norse costume for that of the people among whom she was living. She went commonly by the name of Mrs. Brita, which pronounced in the English way, sounded very much like Mrs. Bright, and this at last became the name by which she ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... her mother will doubtless go and help her, and probably some of the real "Good-byes" will be spoken before she rejoins the company. The dress will have been chosen with reference to the journey she is now undertaking. If she has but a short distance to go it may be a picturesque, dainty creation, but if she has hard travelling before her it will be of the tailor-made type, at once stylish and business-like, devoid ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Millbrook, a large village situated a mile and a half from Kingsand. In those days the quay at Millbrook was picturesque with groups of watermen who gained an honest livelihood by ferrying passengers to Devonport and back. But former things have passed away; and now two sets of steamers, well adapted for shallow water (for the landing-piers ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... on the slope of a picturesque hill in the middle of a pleasant landscape, used to be visited every year by numerous tourists. On the 4th of September, at night, the 121st and 122d Wuerttemburg Regiments entered the place, breaking down the doors of the houses and giving themselves ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... letter exhibiting the effect of external things on the writer's mind, and expressed with almost the picturesque power of his higher days. He tells his friend, that he will endeavour to answer his letter in good-humour, "though every thing around," he says, "conspires to excite in him a contrary disposition—the melancholy gloom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... had an interview to-day, Eugene, with a Jew, who seems determined to press us hard. Quite a Shylock, and quite a Patriarch. A picturesque grey-headed and grey-bearded old Jew, in a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... broad gravelled terrace in front of the great white facade of the Casino amid the palms, the giant geraniums and mimosa, the sapphire Mediterranean stretched before them. Below, beyond the railway line which is the one blemish to the picturesque scene, out upon the point in the sea the constant pop-pop showed that the tir-aux-pigeons was in progress; while up and down the terrace, enjoying the quiet silence of the warm winter sunshine with ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the annual kermesse, or fair, where the inhabitants vied with each other in doing honour to their distinguished guests. Six thousand citizens, magnificently apparelled, were under arms during their stay; and from the galleries of the quaint and picturesque old houses hung draperies of damask, tapestry, and velvet, which blended their rich tints with those of the banners that waved above the summits of the public buildings, and from the masts of the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... verdure, with white cottages, are seen on the shores and scattered along the sides of the mountains; while here and there a village church rears its simple spire, distinguished above the surroundings buildings by its glittering vane and bright roof of tin. The southern shores are more populous but less picturesque than those of the north, but there is enough on either side ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... flagged footpaths, led to a large, gray old Tudor house, whose mullioned diamond-paned windows, twisted chimney stacks, irregular moss-grown roof, ivied bell-tower, stone balls and carved porch offered the very utmost of the romantic and picturesque. The change from the humdrum, ordinary surroundings of their former school was supreme. Miss Beasley had promised them a pleasant surprise, and she had undoubtedly kept her word. The sixteen new arrivals grasped their handbags and small possessions, and set off up the flagged pathway with delight ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... last have clutched it when this rude raft was made? It may, indeed, have been the handiwork of children, on the Penobscot or the St. Mary's River. But its Condition betokens voyages yet longer; and it may just as well have come from the stranded "Golden Rule" on Roncador Reef,—that picturesque shipwreck where (as a rescued woman told me) the eyes of the people in their despair seemed full of sublime resignation, so that there was no confusion or outcry, and even gamblers and harlots looked death in the face as nobly, for all ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... city;" but there were many other flaneurs as well. There were travellers from Europe:—men of wealth and rank who had left behind them the luxuries of civilised society to rough it for a season in the wild West—painters in search of the picturesque— naturalists whose love of their favourite study had drawn them from their comfortable closets to search for knowledge under circumstances of extremest difficulty—and sportsmen, who, tired of chasing small game, were on their way to the great plains ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... further still towards the sea, scattered gardens. But the appearance of the suburbs is a great deal more magnificent than those of the Southern ones. To the left, on the rocks were seen the Keifars, or barracks of the regiment of Kourin; while on both sides of the road, fragments of rock lay in picturesque disorder, rolled down in heaps by the violence of the mountain-torrents. A forest of ilex, covered with hoar-frost, thickened as it approached Vellikent, and at each verst the retinue of Verkhoffsky was swelled by fresh arrivals of Beglar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... colonial piracy presents a smaller array of legal documents than American colonial privateering, it makes up for it by its rich abundance of picturesque narrative and detail. The pieces here brought together show us piracy off Lisbon and in the East Indies and at Madagascar, at Portobello and Panama and in the South Sea, in the West Indies, and all along the Atlantic ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... Mary's Meadow, runs the Ladybrook, which turns the old water-wheel of Mary's Mill. It is a very picturesque old mill, and Mother has made beautiful sketches of it. She caught the last cold she got before going abroad with sketching it—the day we had a most delightful picnic there, and went about in the punt. And from that afternoon Arthur made up his ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the fire, and we all sat about on tables and chair-arms and windowsills and boxes and anywhere except upon chairs after the manner of young men. The only other chair whose seat was occupied was the one containing his knitted woollen comforter and his picturesque old beach-photographer's hat. We were all shy and didn't know how to take hold of him now we had got him, and, which was disconcertingly unanticipated, he was manifestly having the same difficulty with us. We had expected to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... to popular literature and all matters of taste and general culture—published at a price to bring it within the reach of all classes. It contains superior fiction, in the form of serials and short stories; papers graphically descriptive of picturesque places; articles upon men of note, and upon the habits of different peoples; essays upon household and social topics; articles of travel and adventure; scientific and industrial articles written in a graphic and popular style. In brief, the aim is to be comprehensive, ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... and empty as one. I'll soon make it warm and live enough inside at least!" said Elizabeth, and turned westward from the highway into the short road that ran between the mansion and the north bank of the Neperan, by the grist-mill and the gate and the stables, down a picturesque descent to a landing where that stream entered ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. Native States were created by Providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers, and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... church was a paved square, around which several overhanging wood buildings of old time cast a picturesque shade. The young man on leaving the door went to cross the square, when, in the middle, he met a little woman. The expression of her face, which had been one of intense anxiety, sank at the sight of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... frightful place of abode, this must be attributed to the want of cultivation, the distance from every other inhabited country, and the excessive quantity of mosquitos. The site of the mission is highly picturesque; the surrounding country is lovely, and of great fertility. I never saw plantains of so large a size as these: and indigo, sugar, and cacao might be produced in abundance, if any trouble were taken for their cultivation. The Cerro Duida is surrounded with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... green and draped here and there with masses of creepers. Narrow gaps of shadow opened between them, and the slender square towers of the cathedral dominated all, but in places a steep, red roof struck a picturesque but ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... by the picture of the large crowd of silent Red Men who lined Georgia Street, and who stood as motionless as statues all through the service, and until the funeral cortege had passed on the way to the cemetery. This must have rendered the funeral the most impressive and picturesque one of any poet that ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... started. This stage was interesting, as we left the treeless expanse of prairie, and drove over highland through picturesque forests of spruce firs among rocks and canyons. About 20 miles of this scenery was passed; then we descended a long slope, and once more emerged upon the dreary, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... curved round in a mimic bay, the waters caught the sun's parting smile, and rippled against the herbage that clothed the shore, with a scarcely noticeable wave. There are two of the numerous mills which are so picturesque a feature of that country, standing at a distance from each other on the rising banks, their sails perfectly still in the cool silence of the evening, and adding to the rustic tranquillity which breathed around. For to me there is something in the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Eyoub in their cypress-woods before me, the whole embowered now in trees, all that complexity of ways and dark alleys with overhanging balconies of old Byzantine houses, beneath which a rider had to stoop the head, where old Turks would lose their way in mazes of the picturesque; and on the shaded Bosphorus coast, to Foundoucli and beyond, some peeping yali, snow-white palace, or old Armenian cot; and the Seraglio by the sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea of Marmora, blue-and-white, and vast, and fresh as a sea just born, rejoicing at its birth ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... crag of Drachenfels." The French armies were not far off, and there were alarums and excursions all along the border. But the fair traveler paused upon many a spot already sacred to legend and song: the Mouse Tower and Rolandseck and the Seven Mountains. She noted the peasants, in their picturesque costumes, carrying baskets of soil to the steep vineyard terraces: the ruined keeps of robber barons on the heights, and the dark sweep of the romantic valleys, bringing in their tributary streams ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... an article appeared in the Signal, signed by Denry, and giving a full picturesque description of the state apartments at Sneyd Hall. He had formed a habit of occasional contributions to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... council, who were also the favourites of the crowd. For Mere Royaume's act hit marvellously the public fancy, and, passing from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation, is still the first, the best loved, and the most picturesque ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... were old-time hunters of skins and game. They had added to their earnings by gathering in spring and fall the few medicinal seeds, leaves, and barks they knew. His mother had been of different type. She had loved and married the picturesque young hunter, and gone to live with him on the section of land taken by his father. She found life, real life, vastly different from her girlhood dreams, but she was one of those changeless, unyielding women who suffer silently, but never rue a bargain, no ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... known members of this church in Leyden with nearly three hundred more associated with them. Such economic and social conditions gave to the women certain privileges and pleasures in addition to the interesting events in this picturesque city. ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... Let picturesque Autolyci Their cloying foreign dainties cry; I don't see much to buy, not I, Such messy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... it thrilled me to think that you had so brandished a bayonet against the Teutons—I hope with the same precision and happy results. Round about that period, the very pigments seemed to have some sort of picturesque connection with your national story. There seemed to be something gorgeous and terrible about Venetian Red; and something quite catastrophic about Burnt Sienna. But somehow or other, when I saw in the street yesterday ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... our own and from adjoining counties, came to see it drawn up. Fortunately, it happened to be a very fine autumn day, and the groups of spectators of different ranks and ages, assembled and waging in silent expectation, gave a picturesque effect to the whole. A bugle sounded as the signal for ascent. The top of the spire appearing through the tower of the church, began to move upwards; its gilt ball and arrow glittered in the sun, while with ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... Senator Thurston's speech on intervention in behalf of Cuba, there is picturesque language for impressing the contention that force is justified in a worthy cause. The speaker cites graphically examples of force at Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Lookout Heights. The student ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... infinitely tedious method of expressing himself,—the other was full of restless movement and pantomimic gesture, and being proud of his English, plunged into that language recklessly, making it curiously light and flippant, though picturesque, as he went. Macfarlane was destined to become a shining light of the established Church of Scotland, and therefore took life very seriously,—Duprez was the spoilt only child of an eminent French banker, and had very little ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... at Kew, So picturesque and pretty, Cost me of thousands not a few, To fit it up for Kitty. She said it charm'd her fancy quite, But (still I can't help loving her) She bolted with the plate one night— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various |
