"Picturesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confirmations; the analyst from this material formed the due equation of high birth; the philosopher traced the course of aristocracy, from its primeval rise in crude strength or subtlety, through centuries of power, to picturesque decadence, and the beginnings of its last stand. Even the artist might here, perchance, have seized on the dry ineffable pervading spirit, as one visiting an old cathedral seems to scent out the constriction ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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. When I left the train I ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Lumano where it widened into almost the proportions of a lake just below the picturesque Red Mill, a bank of tempestuous clouds was shouldering into view above the sky line of the rugged and wooded hills. These slate-colored clouds, edged with pallid light, foredoomed the continuance ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... harm on a shallow, or for both reasons combined. At Long Wittenham, though I never saw a trout in the river (they are, however, taken there), Admiral Clutterbuck recently had a fine old stew pond in the picturesque old grounds of the Manor House cleaned out, and stocked it with rainbow trout. They did well and grew fast, and so far as I know, none died. The water was not suited for their breeding, but the fish were very ornamental, and rose freely ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... each page is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sort of aurora borealis of wit streams and rustles across the dusky surface, amusing to the reader, but discontinuous, and insufficient to illuminate the matter in hand. It is extraordinary that a man can make so many picturesque, striking, and apparently apposite remarks, and yet leave us so frequently in doubt as to his meaning. If this was the result of the imitation of Aretino, Nash's choice of a master ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... once acknowledged the authority of Spain in the New World, no portion, for interest and importance, can be compared with Mexico—and this equally, whether we consider the variety of its soil and climate; the inexhaustible stores of its mineral wealth; its scenery, grand and picturesque beyond example; the character of its ancient inhabitants, not only far surpassing in intelligence that of the other North American races, but reminding us, by their monuments, of the primitive civilisation of Egypt and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... woods and get a handful of common red cedar twigs with leaves on, or other picturesque branches, some creeping moss of the kind used by flower dealers to pack plants, various dried grasses, and a few flat or sharp-cornered pebbles. Take these home. Get a cigar box or a candy-box, some paper, clay or putty and glass, as already described ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an accurate representation of the "North or Grand Front of Blenheim," and entitled, "A Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings, Tapestry, and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks, and a General Description of the famous China Gallery, 6-c.; with an Essay on Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park." And lastly, and to the purpose, there ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... as upon the street. The door was indeed closed, but in the interior of the house all the doors stood wide open; the house cock stood in the midst of the sitting room, and crowed in order to give information that there was some one in the house. As to the rest, the house was entirely picturesque; it had an open balcony looking out upon the court—upon the street would have been too lively. The old sign hung over the door and creaked in the wind; it sounded as if it were alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass had overgrown the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not heed the picturesque effect of all this, yet the sweet influences of nature reached her, and softened while they increased her sorrow. She felt her own heart sadly out of tune with the peace and loveliness of all she saw. Her eye sought those distant hills—how very far off they were? and yet ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Arezzo is a picturesque old town, rich with historical and religious associations, and as the birth-place of Petrarch, possessed a singular interest in the eyes of Isabel; for, just then, she was keenly alive to all that was sad in the life and ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... spent four or five millions in order to represent in his park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys, and prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad, Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays, which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola Bella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... by the flashes of the guns at Nieuport and Dixmude, whilst we could hear their dull roar in the distance. All along the road were encamped the Turcos, and their camp- fires, with the dark forms huddled around them, gave a picturesque touch to the scene. Half-way to Furnes the road was lit up by a motor-car which had caught fire, and which stood blazing in the middle of the road. We had some little difficulty in passing it, but when ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... platform; a heap of flax at which Priscilla is supposed to have been working, was piled together in front of it; and she and Alexander took their places. The curtain was drawn aside, and a cry of pleasure from the company testified to the picturesque prettiness of the representation. It was according to the fact, that Priscilla should be looking in John Alden's face; it was just at the moment when she is supposed to be rebuking him for bringing to ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... the last surviving inns of Chancery, has recently passed away after upwards of four centuries of newness. Even now, however, a few of the old, dismantled houses (including perhaps, the mysterious 31) may be seen from the Strand peeping over the iron roof of the skating rink which has displaced the picturesque hall, the pension-room and the garden. The postern gate, too, in Houghton Street still remains, though the arch is bricked up inside. Passing it lately, I made the rough sketch which appears on next page, and which shows ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... appropriate eulogium upon the binding, which would make those people read who never read before; or buy, at least, which is his first consideration. Of pictures we have already spoken. Of china, of jewelry, of gold-headed canes, valuable arms, picturesque antiquities, with what eloquent entrainement might he not speak! He feels every one of these things in his heart. He has all the tastes of the fashionable world. Dr. Meyrick cannot be more enthusiastic about an old suit of armor than he; Sir Harris ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... came as a youth to Rome, where he mixed freely in the best society, and where he continued to reside, except when his health or fortunes made a change desirable. [106] At such times he resorted either to Sirmio, a picturesque spot on the Lago di Garda, [107] where he had a villa, or else to his Tiburtine estate, which, he tells us, he mortgaged to meet certain pecuniary embarrassments. [108] Among his friends were Nepos, who first acknowledged his genius, [109] to whom the grateful poet dedicated ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Fall of Jerusalem; and judging by the portion before us, this work will form one of the most attractive in the whole series. In proof of this it would be easy to select many passages which are beautifully picturesque; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... an' beauty o' Rocky Springs around to get eyes on her glory. I can't say either o' you boys fit in with these things, but if you don't git too near hoss soap and cold water mebbe you'll pass for the picturesque." ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... houses rose in tiers up a gentle slope, interspersed with feathery tufts of 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 foreign note. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... wives had driven in to Sebastian to meet their friends and make their weekly purchases. A row of light rigs stood outside the livery-stable, voices and laughter rose from the sidewalks; the town looked cheerful and almost picturesque with its roofs and tall elevator towers cutting against the ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Tschaikowsky's immense and lurid Slavonic Sonata; and the unparalleled Otto, renowned throughout the British Empire for Otto's Bohemian Autumn Nightly Concerts at Covent Garden Theatre, had happened to hear her and that seldom played sonata for the first time. It was a wondrous chance. Otto's large, picturesque, extempore way of inviting her to appear at his promenade concerts ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the captain and his men forming a picturesque group about the stone steps; and as soon as he appeared, the former swung himself round, and threw his cloak over his ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... The Chair is made to pass from one to another of those personages, of whom he thought it most desirable for the young reader to have vivid and familiar ideas, and whose lives and actions would best enable him to give picturesque sketches of the times. On its sturdy oaken legs, it trudges diligently from one scene to another, and seems always to thrust itself in the way, with most benign complacency, whenever a historical personage happens to be looking round ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... large mansion, surrounded by extensive gardens, and a considerable domain. There were few residences of more importance as betokening greater wealth in the province of Poitou; but it was neither magnificent nor picturesque. The landlords of the country were not men of extensive property or expensive habits—they built no costly castles, and gave no sumptuous banquets; but they lived at home, on their incomes, and had always something to spare for the poorer of their neighbours. Farming ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... beginning, "It is not to be wondered at," &c. (see p. 286), in which the imagination of figures not merely intended to embody beautiful or newly assorted proportions is clearly considered; and if we review Duerer's actual work we shall see how much oftener he created figures for picturesque or dramatic effect than he did to embody beautiful proportions in them, though he evidently also considered the last purpose as of the first importance, as we see when ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... itself a defective object, and to transport itself by its own strength from a limited state to one of absolute freedom. Thus the simple poet needs a help from without, while the sentimental poet feeds his genius from his own fund, and purifies himself by himself. The former requires a picturesque nature, a poetical world, a simple humanity which casts its eyes around; for he ought to do his work without issuing from the sensuous sphere. If external aid fails him, if he be surrounded by matter not speaking to mind, one of two things will happen: either, if the general character of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... thing to be the heir of Satanstoe, it was far better to be the tenant in common, with my friend Dirck, of all these ample plains, rich bottoms, flowing streams and picturesque lakes. In a word, for the first time, in the history of the colonies, the Littlepages had become the owners of what might be termed an estate. According to our New York parlance, six or eight hundred acres are not an estate; nor two or three thousand, scarcely, but ten, or twenty, and much ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hill, a mile or two south of this rock, and at the eastern base of the mountain, that Robert Keyes cut down the forest, and made a home for his little family. The spot is picturesque and sightly. To the north, and seen through the clearing, nestles Lake Wachusett among its woody banks; while far in the horizon are seen the New Hampshire hills, and beyond, the blue summits of the White Mountains; to the east the landscape stretches away, diversified with lake and ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... at home, yet the foliage seemed green, glimpses of stiff tropical vegetation appeared along the banks, with great clumps of shrubs whose pale seed-vessels looked like tardy blossoms. Then we saw on a picturesque point an old plantation, with stately magnolia avenue, decaying house, and tiny church amid the woods, reminding me of Virginia; behind it stood a neat encampment of white tents, "and there," said my companion, "is your future regiment of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... pleasant surprise you have prepared for us, dear Mr. Hamilton! quite unprepared, I assure you! but ah, how you artists idealise to be sure! who but genius itself could find anything picturesque under so much glitter and vulgarity?" and so on and so on, until Eily's blushing ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... far side of the field the scene had been arranged. It represented a hill road, over which the dispatch bearer must ride at breakneck speed. For picturesque purposes Hal wore a surgeon's field case, hanging over one shoulder by a strap. In actual war time his real dispatches would have been hidden somewhere in his clothing, his shoes, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... Kangaroo men repair to a place called Undiara. It is a picturesque spot. By the side of a water-hole that is sheltered by a tall gum-tree rises a curiously gnarled and weather-beaten face of quartzite rock. About twenty feet from the base a ledge juts out. When the totemites hold their ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking back, one may almost ask one's self with reason if it was not actually an aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It was our modesty that stood out longest against their taste.... How well they guessed that, these ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... daring scheme in view, looking to showing his friend from the East the wonders of this grand country, where the distances were so great, the deserts so furiously hot, the mountains so lofty, and the prairies so picturesque. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions—off the stage—I ever saw. One of the transports of that marvellous actor, Edmund Kean—whom, by the way, he idolized—was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure. I remember, upon one occasion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... about, and among them some school-boys, who kept scrambling up to points whither no other animal, except a goat, would have ventured. Their shouts and the sunshine made the old castle cheerful; and what with the ivy and the hawthorn, and the other old trees, it was very beautiful and picturesque. But a castle does not make nearly so interesting and impressive a ruin as an abbey, because the latter was built for beauty, and on a plan in which deep thought and feeling were involved; and having once been a grand and beautiful ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... outside of his own experience, he went curiously to books, and was captivated by the "recherche." He was also caught by the rising cult of sublimity in his two great pindaric odes, and by the cult of the picturesque in his flirtations with Scandinavian materials. In these later poems he broadened the field of poetic material notably; but in them he hardly deepened the imaginative or emotional tone: his manner, rather, became elaborate and theatrical. The "Elegy" is the ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... and enthusiastic time on board the steamer Vanderbilt. Wednesday was spent at 648 Broadway, Regimental Headquarters of the "Harris Light Cavalry;" and on that night we came by train to our present camp: or, rather, as near it as we could, for it is two miles from the nearest station. The spot is picturesque enough to be described. An old farm, surrounded by stone fences that look like ramparts, constitutes the camp. The Hudson and Harlem rivers are in full view, and the country around is full of beauty. On the first night we ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... garb of the travelling Englishman, and his athletic figure in its plain-cut modern attire looked curiously out of place in that mysterious grotto which, with its rocky walls and flaming symbol of salvation, seem suited only to the picturesque prophet-like forms of the white-gowned brethren whom he now surveyed, as he stood behind their ranks, with a gleam of something like mockery in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... village, on the whole. The fine seat of the Earl of Hartledon, rising near it, had caused a few families of note to settle there, and the nest of white villas gave the place a prosperous and picturesque appearance. But it contained a full proportion of the poor or labouring class; and these people were falling very much into the habit of writing the village "Cawn," in accordance with its pronunciation. Phonetic spelling was more in their line than Johnson's Dictionary. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of Boston's shipping prosperity; Long Wharf, so named because when it was built it was the longest in the country, and bore a battery at its end; Central Wharf, with its row of venerable stone warehouses; T Wharf, immensely picturesque with its congestion of craft of all descriptions; Commercial Wharf, where full-rigged sailing vessels which traded with China and India and the Cape of Good Hope were wont to anchor a hundred years ago. All this region is crammed with the paraphernalia of a typical water-front: curious little ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... up in force, and went into camp along the road that skirted the levee. As night fell, the scene took on a wild and picturesque air. In the narrow bayou lay the gunboats, strung out in single file along a line of half a mile. They bore many signs of the hard knocks they had received in their excursion through the woods. Boats, davits, steam-pipes, and every thing breakable that rose above ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... is to be thrown across the Nile at Assouan: its height will raise the water to the level of the floors of the ruins at Philae, enhancing rather than detracting from their picturesque grandeur. It is said that the structure of the dam will harmonize with the ancient architecture of Philae. The material already cut and lying in the quarries of Assouan will be almost sufficient to complete ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... on sufferance, but now for the first time in his life he was in power. His colleagues were serfs or cyphers. He had acquired an influence at Court such as no other Minister ever possessed. He had conciliated the House of Lords, which in old days had looked askance at the picturesque adventurer. He was supported by a strong, compact, and determined majority in the House of Commons. He was the idol of Society, of the Clubs, and of the London Press. He was, in short, as nearly a dictator as the forms of our constitution permit; and the genius, which for forty years ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... in Blue" generally preferred to camp in the open fields. The Confeds took to the woods, and so the Confederate camp was not as orderly or as systematically arranged, but the most picturesque of the two. The blazing fire lit up the forms and faces and trees around it with a ruddy glow, but only deepened the gloom of the surrounding woods; so that the soldier pitied the poor fellows away off on guard in the darkness, and, hugging himself, felt ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... hill, about two miles from Linden-Car, stood Wildfell Hall, a superannuated mansion of the Elizabethan era, built of dark grey stone, venerable and picturesque to look at, but doubtless, cold and gloomy enough to inhabit, with its thick stone mullions and little latticed panes, its time-eaten air-holes, and its too lonely, too unsheltered situation,—only shielded from the war of wind ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... repeating the old decorative devices—trophies, cartouches, classical figures, Roman ruins, and other international conventions that had lost their significance by the 1780's, although a spurious classicism was still kept alive for genteel consumption and the romantic picturesque still ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... and smooth-running car made the trip to Newark in minimum time. Though the road was not a picturesque one, the party was in gay spirits and the host was indefatigable in his ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... be seen that Ethelberta was the sort of woman that well-rooted local people might like to look at on such a free and friendly occasion as an archaeological meeting, where, to gratify a pleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the nonce preferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve from strict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood and acres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the Plains, we cross Medicine Bow,—a mere brook,—and a few hours later the North Fork of the Platte, which eccentrically turns up in this most unexpected quarter, running nearly due north from a source which cannot be very far off. The rope-ferry by which the writer last crossed this picturesque and rapid stream we have replaced by a strong iron bridge. Leaving the west end of that bridge, we look out of the rear car and send our final message to the Atlantic by the last stream which we shall find going thither. A stupendous, but not impracticable, system of grades next carries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the second Rameses. But it is by no means certain that the Halicarnassian writer was in this case misinformed; and in this fiction no history will be inculcated, only as a background shall I offer a sketch of the time of Sesostris, from a picturesque point of view, but with the nearest possible approach to truth. It is true that to this end nothing has been neglected that could be learnt from the monuments or the papyri; still the book is only a romance, a poetic fiction, in which I wish all the facts derived from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enabled me to avoid scrubby and sandy ground on each side. I believed its direction (N. E.), to be about parallel to the river. Leaving it at length to make the river, I met with rather a thick scrub; but came upon the river where the banks were very rocky and picturesque. Its course seemed to be from N. E.; but, following another flat of firm clay, I got again into scrub so thick that I turned eastward towards the river, and travelled along its bank until I encamped in lat. 27 deg. 56' 12" S. There was but little water in the bed of the river there; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... full equipment, ponchos over everything, we turned off the main road, went by new and strange ways, and found ourselves for the first time on the range, where we lined up at the 600 yards mark. As we looked toward the butts the scene was very picturesque. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... course, the advantage of a picturesque personality and of a high repute acquired in arms. The populace called him "Old Hickory"—a nickname originally invented by the soldiers who followed him in the frontier wars of Tennessee. They loved to tell the tale of his victories, his duels, his romantic marriage, and to recall ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... captain in a towering rage, dancing frantically about on the deck and shouting for the crew to join him. He filled the air with picturesque profanity and stamped and yelled in ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... he saw, Leonard looked towards the east, and here an extraordinary prospect met his gaze. The whole of the city of London was spread out like a map before him, and presented a dense mass of ancient houses, with twisted chimneys, gables, and picturesque roofs—here and there overtopped by a hall, a college, an hospital, or some other lofty structure. This vast collection of buildings was girded in by grey and mouldering walls, approached by seven gates, and intersected by ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to meet the desire which exists for accurate and graphic information in regard to the leaders of political action in other countries. They will give portraitures of the men and analysis of their lives and work, that will be vivid and picturesque, as well as accurate and faithful, and that will combine the authority of careful historic narration with the interest attaching to anecdote and ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... picturesque Moslem idea that good deeds become incarnate and assume human shapes to cheer the doer in his grave, to greet him when he enters Paradise and so forth. It was borrowed from the highly imaginative faith of the Guebre, the Zoroastrian. On Chinavad or Chanyud-pul (Sirat), the Judgement bridge, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... her basket chair, very picturesque in a broad hat, smiled at him out of her peculiar bluish-green eyes, while Courtlandt Classon fussed and fussed and patted his shoulder; an old beau who had toddled about Manhattan in the days when ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grandstand while the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semiparalysed doyen of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... night was, Chester could not resist that exquisite sense of the beautiful, which objects so novel and picturesque were sure to excite in his imaginative mind. There was something so purely ideal in those massive branches, stripped of leaves and laden down with crystalline spray, while the wind swayed them heavily about, and the moonlight flooded ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the abbot, or the king, or whoever had supreme power over the convent, insisted on black and white being worn, why, it would be easy to model the cap and sleeves near enough to the fashion to look picturesque; and could not the dress be of satin and velvet and lace, and yet be black ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... until his wound had healed, and Stella and Michael missed him very much in all their games and walks, so much so indeed that Mr. Anketell, who had been sent for at once, took to planning little excursions to various picturesque spots in the neighbourhood, where they would have tea in a cottage, or in a cottage garden, and drive home in the cool of ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... according to his account, were ever plotting his downfall. But it was rescued from this fate by his excellence as a mathematician, by the interest clinging to his personality, by the enormous range of his learning, by his picturesque reputation as a dreamer of dreams, and a searcher into the secrets of the hidden world. In an age when books were few and ill-composed, his works became widely popular; because, although he dealt with abstruse subjects, he wrote—as ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... like walking through the tunnel of a mine; the snow walls on either side of her were as high as her head. Occasionally the green fringes of a pine branch tapped her cheek sharply with their rusty needles. Then the tunnel widened to a little clearing where stood the cabin, picturesque with the lichened bark of the trees on ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... 26th September) I took the road in a new order. The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. It was more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would ensure stability, blow high, blow low. But it was not without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had purchased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plodding creature indeed, who would not be spellbound by such a scene! On either hand were the sloping wooded sides of the ravine whose depths were shrouded in the mysterious whiteness of the fog; above me, a short distance in front, was the arch of the broad, picturesque bridge with which the driveway spans the hollow. The little rustic bridge on which I stood was much lower than the larger one; hence, from my position, I looked through the archway, beyond, down, and far along the ravine. Can you call up fairyland ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... in the air which caught from Alice a thrill of romantic energy. The men in the ranks and the officers in front of them felt a wave of irresistible sympathy sweep through their hearts. Her picturesque beauty, her fine temper, the fitness of the incident to the occasion, had an instantaneous power which moved all ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... and ease, of a native. Whether the subjection of this lawless and powerful survival of a wild and unfettered nature around him was part of his plan, or whether it was only a lingering trait of some younger prowess, no one knew; but his grim and decorous figure, contrasting with the picturesque and flowing freedom of the horse he bestrode, was a frequent spectacle in road ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... of woods and waters encircling the mouth of a small inlet, at the extreme northwestern end of the picturesque Maguntic, there lay encamped, at the point of a low headland, on one of the first nights of May, the three trappers, whose expedition had been the subject of so many gloomy speculations, and whose unexpectedly prolonged absence had caused, as we have seen, so much anxiety in the settlement ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... capitalization, could have sustained a policy of political reform, when, in the picturesque vernacular of the time and place, "the bottom had dropped out of the town." A rival newspaper, the LEDGER, in order to retrench, began a war on the Printers' Union, to break wages. Lane repudiated the effort made to "rat" his paper and to force the Union out. He sustained ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the shallow water rippled about it. At high tide the coy reef withdrew entirely within the briny deep, so that the unromantic and unsightly scow was not visible and the island stood in all its wild and floral beauty, a vision of picturesque delight for three or four hours each day at full tide. From the mainland (some thirty feet distant according to a piece of string) the yellow dandelions could be seen dotting its geometric coast and occasionally some drowsy turtle, ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... dinner fires rose up, and was gently borne away to the more wide-spread scene of grandeur and cultivation that lay in the champaign country below it. On each side of the glen were masses of rock and precipices, just large enough to give sufficient wildness and picturesque beauty to a view which in itself was calm and serene. In the distance about a mile to the north, stood out a bold but storm-vexed headland, that heaved back the mighty swell of the Atlantic, of which a glimpse could be caught from an eminence ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... which many prizes were given for gardening, needlework, dressmaking, carpentering, and a variety of other subjects. It was seldom, indeed, that an untidy dress was to be seen, still more uncommon that a foul word was heard in the streets of Stokebridge. Nothing could make the rows of cottages picturesque as are those of a rural village; but from tubs, placed in front, creepers and roses climbed over the houses, while the gardens behind were gay ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... very much, but two years have changed you entirely'; and Bess looked up with girlish pleasure at the picturesque figure before her—for it was a decided contrast to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was up. Two or three large fires were kindled with the ruins, so that the scene of the disaster was entirely visible. And the light shining in the midst of the thick darkness, near the river, with the crowd of people standing around, was not very romantic, perhaps not picturesque— but it was quite novel; and the novelty of the scene enabled us to bear with ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... space in which it was exhibited contained, I am told, about sixteen acres. The rear of this, where the animals were shown, was a large grove covered with tall spreading trees, beneath the shade of which, reposing or standing in the most picturesque attitudes, were to be seen the finest breeds of cattle, horses, and sheep, in the province. This inclosure was surrounded by a high boarded fence, against which pens were erected for the accommodation of plethoric-looking pigs, fat sleepy lambs, and wild mischievous goats; while noble horses ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... succeeded in weaning them completely from the old influences. But, scattered over it and already in possession, were numerous Canaanite tribes, wealthy and powerful under their chiefs—Amorites, and Hivites, and Hittites, and many more. In the pithy and picturesque Biblical language, "the Canaanite was in the land" (Genesis, xii. 6), and the Hebrews constantly came into contact with them, indeed were dependent on their tolerance and large hospitality for the freedom ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... of Italy, in a picturesque valley, with the mountains close at hand and the blue waves of the Mediterranean rolling at a little distance—at the foot of wonderful Vesuvius, green and fertile, and covered with vines to its very top, from which smoke is perpetually escaping, and in whose ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... form; whereas the Gothic is in nature and design profound, solemn, majestic. The genius of the one runs to a simple expressiveness; of the other to a manifold suggestiveness. That is mainly statuesque, and hardly admits any effect of background and perspective; this is mainly picturesque, and requires an ample background and perspective for its characteristic effect. There the mind is drawn more to objects; here, more to relations. The former, therefore, naturally detaches things as much as possible, and sets each out by itself in the utmost clearness and definiteness of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... His language was picturesque, fluent, and convincing, and everybody on board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... reached at 5.15 a.m. the following morning, is 20 miles an hour. At Heron Bay (802 miles from Montreal) the north shore of Lake Superior is first touched, and the line runs along it to Port Arthur, a distance of 993 miles from Montreal. The scenery here is very wild and picturesque. At one time the line runs along the face of the rock, with the lake from 50 to 100 feet below, the road-bed being benched out on the cliff, and at another time is away back among barren hills and rocks, crossing several large streams (with either bridges ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... was sent to school and, "then sent back again," to use his own words. He was restive under what he called the "iron discipline." A number of years ago, he spoke of these early educational beginnings in phrases so picturesque and so characteristic that they ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... and silly women, of course, but there was a new race springing up of grand, splendid, competent women, with a knowledge of affairs. The appointment of Mr. Cox as Minister to Turkey was a compliment to American literature. In consequence of a picturesque description he gave of some closing day in a foreign country, he was facetiously nicknamed "Sunset Cox." I rechristened him "Sunrise Cox." When President Tyler appointed Washington Irving as Minister to Spain, he set an example for all ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... to us his mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silvery turrets [Footnote: "Turrets":—As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterisation, and of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the word torrettes is used by him to designate the little devices through which the reins are made to pass. This same word, in ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... large, handsome, white houses belonging to different gentlemen, and on two of the heights are small forts built by Mr. Maclean. The cocoa-trees with their long fan-like leaves are very beautiful. The natives seem to be obliging and intelligent, and look very picturesque with their fine dark figures, with pieces of the country cloth flung round them. They seem to have an excellent ear for music: the band plays all the old popular airs, which they have caught from some chance hearing. The servants are very tolerable, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... before him with the distinctness of a picture. For, strange as it may seem, our friend had under his plain garb—unchanged in form since the days of Franklin, to go no further back—a fine dramatic talent, and could not relate the humblest incident without giving it a picturesque or dramatic turn, speaking now for one character, now for another, with a variety and discrimination very remarkable. This made his company greatly sought, and as his strongly social nature readily responded, his acquaintance was very large. To every one that knew ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... this startling manner stopped as though he had been shot. He gazed at the sky and then gravely surveyed the gilded statue that surmounts the picturesque church of Notre ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Monks is a most charmingly picturesque pile of old buildings; there are towers and turrets, and peaked roofs and arches, and everything which could possibly be thought of the architectural line, to make a convent picturesque. It is built of graystone; but it is only once in a while that you can see the graystone, for ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... than record—of the disillusions of a country sojourn, as they affect the disordered nerves of a town nevrose. The narrative is punctuated by nightmares, marvellously woven out of nothing, and with no psychological value—the human part of the book being a sort of picturesque pathology at best, the representation of a series of states of nerves, sharpened by the tragic ennui of the country. There is a cat which becomes interesting in its agonies; but the long boredom of the man and woman is only too faithfully shared ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and they fronted each other with smiles of 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 woman ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... nevertheless much that seemed to us extremely pretty and picturesque about the game, we set to work—and here a certain Mr M. with his brother, Captain M., hot from the Great War in South Africa, came in most helpfully—to quicken it. Manifestly the guns had to be ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... fastened by means of a girdle, through which the bottom part of the dress trailing along the ground was pulled up just far enough to let the toes be visible. Above the girdle the chiton was arranged in shorter or longer picturesque folds. The chief alterations of varying fashion applied to the arrangement of the diploidion which reached either to the part under the bosom or was prolonged as far as the hips; its front and back parts might either be clasped together across the shoulders, or the two rims might be pulled ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... greed hath left its trail The picturesque and beautiful take flight; The Past's inspiring influences fail, As stars ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... as never before in the history of the world brought to the nations of the earth a realization of the vital place which the science of chemistry holds in the development of the resources of a nation. Some of the most picturesque features of this awakening reached the great public through the press. Thus, the adventurous trips of the Deutschland with its cargoes of concentrated aniline dyes, valued at millions of dollars, emphasized as no other incident our former dependence ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... know everything that had been done to him, and who had done it, and how and when and where and why. Peter had a sense of the dramatic, and enjoyed being the center of attention and admiration, even tho it was from a roomful of criminal "Reds." So he told all the picturesque details of how Guffey had twisted his wrist and shut him in a dungeon; the memory of the pain was still poignant, and came out of him now, with a realism that would ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... Fame, Bret Harte must be accorded a prominent, if not first place. His short stories and dialect poems published fifty years ago made California well known the world over and gave it a romantic interest conceded no other community. He saw the picturesque and he made the world see it. His power is unaccountable if we deny him genius. He was essentially an artist. His imagination gave him vision, a new life in beautiful setting supplied colors and rare literary ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... that previous to this Joe had swiped some bananas from the fruit stand of one Tony, and that, previous to that, Joe had been hungry—"Hung'y as hell" was Joe's way of putting it—a way that commended itself to Tommy at once as being extremely picturesque. In fact, even while Joe talked he kept on saying it over and over in his mind, so fine was the phrase and ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... residence here. Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty—its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame—its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other—such being the features of my native town, it would be ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foot of its forest-clad bluffs, or by the margin of undulating fields, the Rappahannock flowed calmly to the sea. Old mansions dotted this beautiful land—for beautiful it was in spite of the chill influences of winter, with its fertile meadows, its picturesque woodlands, and its old roads skirted by long lines of shadowy cedars."* (* Cooke ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... a picturesque costume, such as is worn by the lower orders in the North of Spain, with the addition, however, of a bright-colored turban. Her face was decidedly handsome, though rather too sharp in outline and expression, while at the same time decidedly the worse for wear. A pair ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... fortress-palaces of the Wyscherad. There, in the mythical legendary past of Bohemia had dwelt the shadowy Libuscha, daughter of Krok, wife of King Premysl, foundress of Prague, who, when wearied of her lovers, was accustomed to toss them from those heights into the river. Between these picturesque precipices lay the two Pragues, twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries, and growing up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and most splendid city, bristling with steeples and spires, and united by the ancient ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... already referred to the beautiful location of Chicahuastla. Its appearance is most picturesque. Unlike the indian towns in the Mixteca which we had so far visited, it has many houses of circular form with conical roof. It is possible that this style of construction is the result of African influence. At Chicahuastla we were on the very summit of the great water-shed, and from it, when the ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... earthquake of Nov. 1, 1755, appears to have put both the theologians and philosophers on the defensive.... At twenty minutes to ten that morning, Lisbon was firm and magnificent, on one of the most picturesque and commanding sites in the world,—a city of superb approach, placed precisely where every circumstance had concurred to say to the founders, Build here! In six minutes the city was in ruins.... Half the world felt the convulsion.... For many weeks, as we see in the letters ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... women, boys and girls, of all the mingled nationalities that made this war in China so picturesque, appear in the story and give it vigor, variety, ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... you in all her bravery, but then the veil fell, and from that moment I understood her not. For long I watched her, but she was never clear to me again, and for long she hovered round me, like a dear heart willing to give me a thousand chances to regain her love. She was so picturesque that she was the last word of art, but she was as young as if she were the first woman. The world must have rung with gallant deeds and grown lovely thoughts for numberless centuries before she could be; she was ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... we cannot get far enough off," said Edmund, "to make a good drawing of it. Too many things go to the making of the picturesque." ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... truth, they are quite likely to use college slang and know which fork to use first. Not on the Zone, but proper to be mentioned here, are the Blackfoot Indians brought to the Exposition from Glacier Park by the Great Northern Railroad. Eagle Calf is a real chief of the old days, and his band is a picturesque group. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... little peninsula which separates the Shannon from the wide Atlantic. On one side the placed river flowed on its course, between fields of waving corn, or rich pasturage—the beautiful island of Scattery, with its picturesque ruins reflected in the unrippled tide—the cheerful voices of the reapers, and the merry laugh of the children were mingled with the seaman's cry of the sailors, who were "heaving short" on their anchor, to take the evening tide. The village, which consisted ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... that might be a park, because of the large, solitary trees that stood here and there, across the water of the narrow lake, at the wooded hill that successfully hid the colliery valley beyond, but did not quite hide the rising smoke. Nevertheless, the scene was rural and picturesque, very peaceful, and the house had a charm ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... in the crowning glory of the dramatic, the romantic, the picturesque,—elements so fascinating to an artist,—we still feel no loss in the absence of these; for Mr. Marshall has found abundant material in the rich and varied qualities that Mr. Lincoln did possess, and has treated them with the loftier sense of justice and truth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... 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 to take ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... to become master of Constantinople, and vast were the preparations and the implements of war which he had provided for its capture or its destruction. The story of the siege need not here be told; nowhere has it been recorded with more picturesque and energetic brevity than in the glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in the art of war. Constantine did ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various |
