"Tympanum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nest! Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and so fond of their offspring! They sit on their eggs like hens, and the young, as soon as they are born, creep under them for protection,—quite touchingly! Imagine such an establishment domesticated at one's tympanum! ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Nubian's reed-pipe hath an ear-piercing note, And you may hear mad music from 'ARRY in a boat; But safest of all sounds to give the tympanum a twist, Is the tow-row, tow-row, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... almost savage character of the work, abundant on tympanum and doorway without, above all on the immense capitals of the nave within, is the sculpture which offended Bernard. A sumptuous band of it, a carved guipure of singular boldness, passes continuously round the arches, and along the cornices from bay to bay, and with ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... look at the rudely carved Norman tympanum over the church door at Wold Newton, and then go up to Thwing, on the rising ground to the south, where we may see what Mr. Joseph Morris claims to be the only other Norman tympanum in the East Riding. A cottage is pointed out as the birthplace of ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... this end they stretch a skin very tight over the knees, and thus may be said to use the tympanum in its rudest form, this being the only instance of a musical instrument that I have seen among them. Burder says: "By the timbrels which Miriam and the other women played upon when dancing, we are to understand the tympanum of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which instrument ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... impalpable, incomprehensible little air-waves in mathematical combination, that beat against a tiny drum at the back of one's ear. And these mathematical combinations and the laws that govern them have existed forever, before Moses, before Pan, long before either a larynx or a tympanum had been evolved. They ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... turning the pages of a blue-and-gold favorite, the doorbell rang. In accordance with some mysterious law of acoustics, the sound was full three minutes descending the kitchen staircase, entering the keyhole of the kitchen door, and striking on the tympanum of Mash, the cook, who was sitting by the fire, reading the twenty-fifth chapter of "The Buttery and the Boudoir: A Tale of Real Life." When Mash became fully conscious (which was not till the end of the chapter) that the bell had rung, she expelled a sigh from ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... hand on her call bell and, as its vibrations dinged and smote upon the shrinking tympanum, a rigid and breathless expectancy would pervade the silence of ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... it serves the same purpose. But is too much wax collects, it prevents the air from playing well upon the drum, and therefore makes you deaf. Across the end of this canal, a membrane or skin called the tympanum is stretched, like the parchment over the head of a drum, and it is this membrane which moves to and fro as the air-waves strike on it. A violent box on the ear will sometimes break this delicate membrane, or injure it, and therefore it is very ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... the 12th century, but the Gothic central tower and the chapels were added in the 15th century by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, born at Autun. The chief artistic features of the church are the group of the Last Judgment sculptured on the tympanum above the west door, and the painting by Ingres representing the martyrdom of St Symphorien, which took place at Autun in 179. In the cathedral square stands the fountain of St Lazare, a work of the Renaissance. The hotel Rolin, a house of the 15th century, contains the collections of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... this about a mile and a half, and passing a disused churchyard, with two or three gravestones and no church, at Dalderby, we reach the village of Haltham. Here we have a church of considerable interest. Taking the exterior first, we find a remarkable semi-circular tympanum over the door, within the porch on the south. It has a kind of Maltese cross within a circle, with a second circle running through the limbs of the cross. Below this is a small round object, with an oblong on each side of it; and below them, to the east, is an oval figure like a buckle, while ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... In such intervals the tympanum of the ear, aching with the dead collapse of its world, made sounds for itself; and it required the exercise of reason to convince myself, sometimes, that I did not hear distant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... of late years that one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty. And perhaps," he paused, looking down absently at a crumb he rolled between his thumb and finger on the table, "it's possible ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... yet undiscovered. In high waves, now mild, now stormy, the festivities went on around him. Warm glances of love caressed his face, still cold with the touch of the grave; and a friend's warm hand patted his bluish, heavy hand. And the music played joyous tunes mingled of the sounds of the tympanum, the pipe, the zither and the dulcimer. It was as if bees were humming, locusts buzzing and birds singing over the happy home ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretched tympanum, pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the Bombastophone is very original and effective. Whenever he sees that the attention of his audience is flagging he introduces an interlude of "bombination," which renders lethargy impossible and exercises an indescribably stimulating effect on the tympanum. The current of air is supplied by a bellows operated by an eight-cylinder Brome engine, but Mr. Boomer works the keys himself, climbing up and down them with a rapidity which must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... young woman, whose enormous mass of hair made her look all the more slender, beat time upon a tympanum formed of a wooden frame slightly curved inward, on ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... eye of fire; mine seemed to drop sparks with sympathy: he bounded up ten feet high—he shrieked, and fell stone dead; Gods, what a shriek it was; I fancy even now I have that shriek and its hill-echo chained to the tympanum of my ear, like the shriek of the shipwrecked hanging over the sea—heavens! it was a pity to slay a king I thought, as I saw him fall in his pride and strength; but by some irresistible instinct, my own gun, pulled, I don't know how, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... 'Transactions, Entomological Society,' 3rd series, vol. ii. ('Journal of Proceedings,' p. 117).), that there has been more than ample time. This naturalist has lately found a fossil insect in the Devonian formation of New Brunswick, which is furnished with "the well-known tympanum or stridulating apparatus of the male Locustidae." The insect, though in most respects related to the Neuroptera, appears, as is so often the case with very ancient forms, to connect the two related Orders of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... austerest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... play upon an instrument of percussion I admire that other percussive machine of wood and wire, the piano, or consider the tympanum an ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... blow in the stomach that doubles him up speechless. The doctor walks over to the window and reads the morning paper for a while. Presently he turns and begins to mutter more to himself than the patient. "Hum!" he says, "there's a slight anaesthesia of the tympanum." "Is that so?" says the patient, in an agony of fear. "What can I do about it, doctor?" "Well," says the doctor, "I want you to keep very quiet; you'll have to go to bed and stay there and keep quiet." In reality, of course, the doctor hasn't the least idea what is wrong with the man; but he ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... I; as in my tympanum I heard the cannon's roar, "'Twill be a wonder if I come Impervious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... harmony. 3. From the repetition of sounds at certain intervals of time; as we hear them with greater facility and accuracy, when we expect them; because they are then excited by volition, as well as by irritation, or at least the tympanum is then better adapted to assist their production; hence the two musical times or bars; and hence the rhimes in poetry give pleasure, as well as the measure of the verse: and lastly the pleasure we receive from music, arises from the associations of agreeable sentiments ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... itself to my eye, or which acts upon my retina. As soon as I smell a body, my olfactory nerve must be irritated or put into motion by the parts exhaled from an odorous body. As soon as I hear a sound, the tympanum of my ear must be struck by the air put in motion by a sonorous body, which could not act if it was not moved of itself. From which it follows, evidently, that without motion I can neither feel, see, distinguish, compare, nor judge the body, nor even occupy my thought with ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Tomodactylus possessing the following combination of characters: (1) tips of two outer fingers truncate, about twice width of narrowest part of digit; (2) tympanum small, less than one half diameter of eye; (3) ventral surfaces smooth; (4) contrasting marbled pattern on back and top of head, and (5) venter whitish, ...
— A New Species of Frog (Genus Tomodactylus) from Western Mexico • Robert G. Webb
... bass, it is a poor concert, very poor indeed, though there are about ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The tone lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always capable of perceiving these subtleties of sound. The little that reaches me is extremely sweet and most appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a little more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green Grasshopper, and your ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... either end. The flight of steps leading to the central entrance is in itself one hundred and twenty-five feet in extent; the front as a whole covers three hundred and seventy feet. Capping the portico is a sculptured tympanum by Sir Richard Westmacott, representing the "Progress of Civilization" not unworthily. As a whole, the building is one of the few in London that are worth visiting for an inspection of their exterior alone. It seems admirably ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... into the trumpet, separating the sounds well, so that they should not clash on the unsusceptible tympanum ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... realism, as, for instance, in the words: "The stones beoth al wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of a Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same tendency then as there is now to regard ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... noise, the Giant clapped his hand to his ear with such force, that had not Ting-a-ling held on very tightly, he would have been shot up against the tympanum ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... for an explanation of all this, will answer: "It is the vibration of the tuning-fork which, transmitted by the air, is carried to our auditory apparatus, causes a vibration in the tympanum, the movements of which are communicated to the small bones of the middle ear, thence (abridging details) to the terminations of the auditory nerve, and so produces in us the subjective sensation of sound." Well, in so saying, the physicist commits an error of interpretation; ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... were the aids of Religion and Government. On the friezes of Greek temples, we see coloured bas-reliefs representing sacrifices, battles, processions, games—all in some sort religious. On the pediments we see painted sculptures more or less united with the tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even when we come to statues that are definitely separated from the buildings to which they pertain, we still find them coloured; and only in the later periods of Greek civilisation ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... harangue must for ever remain a mystery; for Hans, at this moment, took up the family volume which had served him for a pillow, and dashed it at the heads of the trio. A scream, so loud that it broke the tympanum of his left ear, seemed to issue from them simultaneously—a thick vapour filled the room, which gradually cleared off, and left no traces of Hans' visitors but three small sticks of stone brimstone. The truth flashed upon the barber—his visitor was the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... conservatorem omnium profitentur. Eadem sententia est gratiarum actionis. Post convivium, dorsis invicem obversis ... choreas ducere et cantare fescenninos in honorem daemonis obscaenissimos, vel ad tympanum fistulamve sedentis alicujus in bifida arbore saltare ... tum suis amasiis daemonibus foedissime commisceri. Ultimo pulveribus (quos aliqui scribunt esse cineres hirci illis quem daemon assumpserat et quem adorant subito coram illius ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Miss Freer's command, it was that the attacking hypnotists did not have the chances they had with Father H. of hypnotising their victims; and here again, where action on the ear and eye is concerned, talking with a friend, or indeed any one, is a great safeguard. The tympanum is stirred, the eye moves—the mere irregularity of the breath is an aid. Another reason will be given later. Miss Campbell, whose case—one of experimental thought transference—has been twice referred to, was an intimate friend of Miss Despard, who effected the transfers. Her case differs from ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... in the churches of Marston Montgomery and of Sawley; and the curiously carved font in Wilne church is attributed to the same period. Examples of Norman work are frequent in doorways, as in the churches of Allestree and Willington near Repton, while a fine tympanum is preserved in the modern church of Findern. There is a triple-recessed doorway, with arcade above, in the west end of Bakewell church, and there is another fine west doorway in Melbourne church, a building principally of the late Norman period, with central ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... this gracious opinion sufficiently loud to strike upon the tympanum of the poor fellow at the door, I could perceive his dark eyes glisten, and the blood tinge his woe-begone cheeks; his lips trembled with emotion: there was an evident struggle between offended ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... tempestuously sonorous surged around him; warm glances of love were reaching out for his face, still cold with the coldness of the grave; and a friend's warm palm caressed his blue, heavy hand. And music played the tympanum and the pipe, the cithara and the harp. It was as though bees hummed, grasshoppers chirped and birds warbled over the happy house of Mary ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the Pharaohs, the language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the prelude of the milk cans at 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum produced by concussion of the air emanating from Mr. H. James. But who can comprehend the meaning of the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... discharge. Others understand by canker a species of erysipelatous inflammation, that makes its appearance on the inside of the flap, and extends itself to the interior of the ear. What we understand by canker, is an acute inflammation of the lining membrane of the ear, destroying the tympanum or drum, and producing total deafness. The secretion is often considerable, and if not removed, will soon fill up the cavity of the ear with a dark reddish deposit, which greatly increases the irritation and inflammation ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... two or three pairs of narrow frontal shields, similar to, and behind the nasal shield, with two odd large vertebral shields; nostrils oblong, in the suture between the outer angle of the nasal shield and the front loreal shields; ears distinct, tympanum sunk; eyes surrounded with a series of scales; belly with two or four series of broad 6-sided ventral shields; tail with three series of broader shields, the central the broadest; limbs two, rudimentary, undivided, scaly, on the side of the vent; throat covered ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... know. Certain it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly believed, in little ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Middle, which lies a little to the E. of W. Chinnock. The church has been restored, but retains several features of interest. The low embattled tower has a very wide staircase-turret. The S. door is Norm., with the zigzag moulding on the jambs and arch, and a carved tympanum. Under one of the stone seats in the porch is a canopy, protecting the head and shoulders of a small effigy (apparently an ecclesiastic). There is a (late) Norm. font, with an unusual moulding. Note, too, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... lions' heads and shoulders seem to issue; these, too, may be taken as symbolical of the bellicose disposition of the god to whom the building was dedicated. The pediment with which the facade is crowned is rather low in its proportions. Its tympanum is filled with a kind of reticulated ornament made up of small lozenges or meshes. There is nothing to throw light upon the internal arrangements, but by the aid of this carved sketch the facade may be easily restored, save, of course, in the matter ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... heard to beat every night in a Wiltshire country house, gave Addison the hint for his comedy of "The Drummer." Young Lewis gloated with a pleasing horror over Glanvil's pages and the wonderful copperplates which embellished them; particularly the one which represents the devil beating his airy tympanum over Mr. Mompesson's house. In the ancient mansion of Stanstead Hall, belonging to a kinsman of his father, where the boy spent a part of his childhood, there was a haunted chamber known as the cedar room. "In maturer years," says his biographer, "Lewis has frequently been heard to declare that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ornament which occurs also inside the door. Each arch has its own shaft, and the groups of five on each side are elaborately banded. The shafts have richly sculptured capitals, and in those on the south side, as well as in the tympanum, the signs of the Evangelists appear. The shafts second from the door on either side are carved with statues, two of the oldest in England. These are much mutilated, but they were thought worthy ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... and casts fetters about its feet; here he is hard, narrow, materialistic, mechanical,—or, in a word, English. For—we may turn aside to say—in philosophy no nation is so straitened, illiberal, and hard of hearing as England, except, perhaps, China. Its tympanum is sadly thickened at once with materialism and conceit; and the consequence is that a thinker there is either ignored into silence, like Wilkinson, or driven to bellow, like Carlyle, or to put rapiers and poignards into his speech, like Ruskin. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... physique of the nation. For he was able to assure them, speaking with the authority of one who had taken first-class honours in Zoology, that the study of Greek more than anything else predisposed people to influenza by promoting cachexia, often leading to arterio-sclerosis, bombination of the tympanum, and even astigmatism of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... believe that the diggers cared about anything else from him. Was it then his being an esquire that brought his administration into contempt? The fact is, a clap of "The Thunder" from Printing House-square boomed on the tympanum of my ear. We diggers got the gracious title of "vagabonds," and our massa "Joe," for his pains to keep friends with us, was put down "an incapable;" all for the honour ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... do we know of the actual details of the Attis mysteries? The first and most important point was a Mystic Meal, at which the food partaken of was served in the sacred vessels, the tympanum, and the cymbals. The formula of an Attis initiate was "I have eaten from the tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbals." As I have remarked above, the food thus partaken of was a Food of Life—"Die Attis-Diener in der Tat ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... median line upon the rectus capitis anticus major muscle and in front of the pre-vertebral layer of the cervical fascia. They receive part of the lymph from the posterior wall of the pharynx, the interior of the nose and its accessory cavities, the auditory (Eustachian) tube, and the tympanum. When they are infected with pyogenic organisms or with tubercle bacilli, they may lead to the formation of one form of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... leaned her back against the abutting pier, on whose column was a statue of Saint Agnes, the martyr of but thirteen years of age, a little girl like herself, who carried a branch of palm, and at whose feet was a lamb. And in the tympanum, above the lintel, the whole legend of the Virgin Child betrothed to Jesus could be seen in high relief, set forth with a charming simplicity of faith. Her hair, which grew long and covered her like a garment when the Governor, whose son she ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... circular, entire; palate concave, with two groups of palatine teeth between the orifices of the internal nostrils; jaw toothed; head smooth, high on the side; mouth large; eyes convex, swollen above, tympanum scarcely visible; back rather convex, high on the sides; skin smooth, not porous; limbs rather short; toes 4.5, tapering to a point, nearly free, the palms with roundish tubercles beneath; the fourth hind toe elongate, the rest rather short; the ankle with an oblong, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... microscopical, and almost concealed in the fur. At one time it was a popular delusion that the mole was devoid of the power of sight, but this is not the case. The sense of hearing is extremely acute, and the tympanum is large, although externally there is no aural development. The tail is short, the fur set vertically in the skin, whence it is soft and velvety. The bones of the pubis do not join, and the young when produced are large. The mammae are six in number. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... gong! how it does belabor and thrash one's tympanum!" said the judge irritably, as he slowly arose to dress ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... conclusively as that we can't fly-a fact still more strikingly proven by the constant thud of people tumbling out of them. To a Titan of comprehensive ear, who could catch the noises of a world upon his single tympanum as Hector caught Argive javelins upon his shield, the patter of dropping aronauts would sound like the gentle pelting of hailstones upon a dusty highway-so thick and ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... and heard sung for the first time lines that were to be imprinted upon his tympanum until they became ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... guide the creature. There is, in certain events, another world of the senses in which our organs perceive nothing, a world which is closed to us. The eye of the camera sees the invisible and photographs the image of the ultra-violet rays; the tympanum of the microphone hears what to us is silence. A scientific toy, a chemical contrivance surpass us in sensibility. Would it be rash to attribute similar faculties to the delicate organization of the insect, even with regard to agencies unknown to our science, because they do not fall ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... possibly have imagined. The musicians choked with laughter; the auditors opened their eyes, and would fain have closed their ears. But that was an impossibility. My tormenting set of symphonists, who seemed rather to enjoy the fun, scraped away with a din sufficient to crack the tympanum of one born deaf. I had the firmness to go right ahead, however, sweating, it is true, at every pore, but held back by shame; not daring to retreat, and glued to the spot. For my consolation I heard ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... sublingual, and submaxillary glands. The otic ganglion is placed below the base of the skull, and also connects with the carotid plexus. Its filaments of distribution supply the internal muscles of the malleus, the largest bones of the tympanum, the membranous linings of the tympanum and the eustachian tube. Three ganglia, usually designated as the superior, middle, and inferior, connect with the cervical and spinal nerves. Their interlacing filaments are distributed to the muscular walls of the larynx, pharynx, trachea, and esophagus, and also penetrate ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... from Harviss recalled the Professor to town. He had been looking forward with immense zest to this second meeting; Harviss's college roar was in his tympanum, and he pictured himself following up the protracted chuckle which would follow his friend's progress through the manuscript. He was proud of the adroitness with which he had kept his secret from Harviss, had maintained to the last the pretense of a ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... bare by the picks and shovels of twentieth-century Trade Unionism, was a veritable Gothic arch, bricked up to the height of a tall man's waist, but open at the tympanum. Alban hoisted himself to the aperture and, slipping through, his feet discovered the reeking floor of a dank and dripping subway; and guiding himself now by hands outstretched and fingers touching the fungi of the walls, he went on with confidence until the roof lifted ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... carried a small tambourine and with the other he agitated a little bell. From the rim of each tambourine depended a metallic ball, so placed that the least movement of the hand brought it in contact with the resonant tympanum, which caused a strange, continuous undercurrent of pulsating sound. There new performers circled several times about the court, marking the time of their dancing steps by measured thumpings of the tambourines. At the completion of each turn, they made a deafening ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... too large and too high for a mere doorway at the end of an aisle, besides being rather too far from the church to agree with its supposed dimensions. The modern iron gate is surmounted by a gilded cross and the name of the church on a framework in the tympanum. The arch is acutely pointed, and moulded in four orders, with a tooth ornament in the hollows, and is in tolerably good condition; but the supporting shafts have been superseded by a wall on each side, with the circular moulded capitals (much decayed) above it, the bases ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... censured. The commissioners insisted on twelve columns, as emblematical of the twelve apostles, and Wren could not obtain stones of sufficient size; but (as Mr. Gwilt observes) it would have been better to have had joined pillars rather than a Composite heaped on a Corinthian portico. In the tympanum is the Conversion of St. Paul, sculptured in high relief by Bird; on the apex is a colossal figure of St. Paul, and on the right and left are St. Peter and St. James. Over the southern portico is sculptured the Phoenix; over the north are the royal arms and regalia, while on each side stand ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... were usually limited in depth to the thickness of the front wall. The Gothic builders secured increased depth by projecting the portals out beyond the wall, and crowned them with elaborate gables. The vast central door was divided in two by a pier adorned with a niche and statue. Over this the tympanum of the arch was carved with scriptural reliefs; the jambs and arches were profusely adorned with figures of saints, apostles, martyrs, and angels, under elaborate canopies. The porches of Laon, Bourges, Amiens, and Reims are especially ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... junction of this new work with the stone enclosure of the choir." In fact, this archway is considerably higher than that of De Estria which still remains behind it. The apex of this arch reaches but a little above the capitals of the new arch, and the flat space, or tympanum, thus left between the two, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... shaft, with moulded base and foliaged capital. The jambs contain five shafts on each side, which differ from that in the centre, in that they are of Purbeck marble, and banded, in pleasing contrast to the plain stone of their own bases and capitals, and of the (unbanded) central shaft. In the tympanum of the double doorway thus formed, there is a pointed arcading, consisting of a central arch and two smaller arches on either side. The deep soffit of the arch in which this elegant arcading is enclosed, is adorned with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... on a plinth, to the height of the first story (19 feet,) and is approached by numerous steps, which are arranged to produce a fine effect. Twelve Corinthian columns support a flattened pediment, in the tympanum of which is to be a composition in basso-relievo, analogous to science and literature. Behind this pediment is a cupola, finished by a lantern light, in imitation of a peripteral temple, crowning and ornamenting a grand octagonal vestibule, or saloon. North of this is the museum of natural ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... Deans, with a sternness far beyond his usual gravity, as soon as these offensive words had struck upon the tympanum ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... claimed him all for his own. He was lying in true enjoyment, with his tired limbs stretched between the unaccustomed sheets, and snoring with free and sonorous nose, restrained by the contiguity of no Speaker's elbow. But even in his deepest slumber the quick wheels of the bounding cab struck upon the tympanum of his anxious ear. He roused himself as does a noble watch-dog when the 'suspicious tread of theft' approaches. The hurry of the jaded horse, the sudden stop, the maddened furious knock, all told a tale which his well-trained ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... but much of the abbey church, which dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, has been fortunately preserved. The interior is not remarkable, but the large and elaborate bas-relief of the Last Judgment which fills the tympanum of the portal is considered the most precious example of mediaeval sculpture in the Bas-Limousin. The face of the Saviour, expressive of something above all human passions and motives, shows a really God-like combination of serenity and severity. The fantastic spirit of the age is ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... But his thoughts were sad, for he knew that he was to leave her, and he knew also that he must tell her so. It was no easy matter, and his walk slackened, till, at the corner of the great thoroughfare, he stood still, looking at a poor woman who ground a tuneless hand-organ. The instrument of tympanum torture was on wheels, and to the back of it was attached a cradle. In the cradle was a dirty little baby, licking its fist and listening with conscientious attention to the perpetual trangle-tringle-jangle of the maternal music. In truth the little thing could not well ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... horn, which gives a notable pathos (read Berlioz on this despairful elegist, and remember its haunting wail in the last act of "Tristan und Isolde"). The woeful plaint of this voice breathing above a low sinister roll of the tympanum establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets, the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... membrane is spoken of by Loeseke. There is sometimes natural perforation of the tympanum in an otherwise perfect ear, which explains how some people can blow tobacco-smoke from the ear. Fournier has seen several Spaniards and Germans who could perform this feat, and knew one man who could smoke a whole cigar without losing any smoke, since ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... unlimited advantage, rendering the journey one continued slamming of doors, which, if the homoeopathic principle be correct, would prove an infallible cure for headache, could the sound only be triturated, and passed through the finest sieve, so as to reach the tympanum in infinitesimal doses. But, alas! it is administered wholesale, and with such power, that almost before the ear catches the sound, it is vibrating in the tendon Achilles. It is said by some, that salmon get accustomed to crimping; and I suppose that, in like ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... is known Bourseul was not practical enough to try his own suggestion, and never made a telephone. About 1860, Reis built several forms of electrical telephonic apparatus, all imitating in some degree the human ear, with its auditory tube, tympanum, etc., and examples of the apparatus were exhibited in public not only in Germany, but in England. There is a variety of testimony to the effect that not only musical sounds, but stray words and phrases, were actually transmitted with mediocre, casual success. It ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... however, of a balm in Gilead. An ingenious Yankee—a commercial traveler—has invented and patented an instrument made of gutta percha, to be fitted to the nose, and pass from that protuberance to the tympanum of the ear. As soon as the snorer begins the sound is carried so perfectly to his own ear, and all other sounds so well excluded, that he awakens in terror. The sanguine inventor believes that after a few nights' trial the wearer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... pleasure with which one listens, whose auricular nerves are more highly developed. But this rare and soul-stirring enjoyment is many times accompanied, as in my case, with acute suffering whenever the tympanum is made to resound with the slightest discord. The most painful moments of my life, physically speaking, have been those in which I have been forced to listen to diabolical noises. A harsh, rasping sound has often given me a pang more ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... can displace another from a place where it isn't," and that Lardner's assertion is incorrect, except when the containing vessel "was originally full to the brim." But the question of floating depends on the present state of things, not on past history. OLD KING COLE takes the same view as HECLA. TYMPANUM and VINDEX assume that "displaced" means "raised above its original level," and merely explain how it comes to pass that the water, so raised, is less in bulk than the immersed portion of bucket, and thus land themselves—or rather set themselves floating—in ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... called in when the canons desired to embellish their west facade and have a finer central door. This work was begun in 1508 with the money of Georges d'Amboise, and Pierre Desaubeaulx did the central tympanum. Jean Theroulde, Pierre Dalix, another Leroux, Nicolas Quesnel, Hance de Bony, and Denis Lerebours worked at the statuettes. A screen of open work (carrying the clock) was raised in front of the rose window, and four turrets were added, of which but ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... One of the wounded men, through loss of blood, died soon after coming on board. The other three having received flesh wounds, soon returned to their duty. The surgeon examined my ear, and found the tympanum ruptured. It destroyed my hearing on that side for ever, and for years after I was distressed with a loud roaring noise on the left side of my head. A fortnight later we fell in with a Spanish eighty-gun ship, a large frigate and a heavy-armed store ship. We were soon alongside the ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... surface. The weight of authority inclines to the last view. It is held that, if artists had become accustomed to carving pedimental groups in wood, the first examples that we have in stone would not show so great inability to deal with the conditions of pedimental composition. If ever the tympanum was simply painted or filled with a group in terracotta, it is easy to see why the fashion died and why consequently we can bring forward no direct proof to-day. It was simply that only figures in the round can satisfy the ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... and castles. On the pillar dividing the doorway stood Jesus in kingly crown and mantle, thin and drawn out, with the look of emaciation and misery that the imagination of the Middle Ages conceived necessary for the expression of Divine sublimity. In the tympanum a relievo represented the Virgin surrounded by angels, robed in the habit of St. Ildefonso, a pious legend repeated in various parts of the building as though it were one ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... precluded from the perception of external objects, by their external organs being rendered unfit to transmit to them the appulses of external bodies, during the suspension of the power of volition; thus the eye-lids are closed in sleep, and I suppose the tympanum of the car is not stretched, because they are deprived of the voluntary exertions of the muscles appropriated to these purposes; and it is probable something similar happens to the external apparatus of our other organs of sense, which may render them unfit for their office of perception ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... outer mouldings to the inner door. They are, however, often richly ornamented and have rooms above, which rooms are wrongly called "parvises." The shallow aperture often follows the form of the arch, but is frequently square-headed, having a semi-circular tympanum of masonry filling the space between the lintel of the door and ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... was called the 'electromotograph,' and it occurred to Edison that in a similar way the undulatory currents from his carbon transmitter might, by varying the friction between a metal stylus and the prepared surface, put a tympanum in vibration, and reproduce the original sounds. Wonderful as it may appear, he succeeded in doing so by the aid of a piece of chalk, a brass pin, and a thin sheet or disc of mica. He attached the pin or stylus to the centre of the mica, and ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... reflections on her husband, in that he had brought home a viper in his bosom, a wolf into his fold, the wretched minion of a worldly church to lead her son away captive at his will; and partly no doubt from his last uncomfortable sermons, but mainly from the play of Mrs Marshal's tongue on her husband's tympanum, the deacons in full conclave agreed that no further renewal of the invitation to preach "for them" should be made to the schoolmaster—just the end of the business Mr Graham had expected, and for which he had provided. On Tuesday morning he smiled to himself, and wondered whether, if he ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... being professor at Pisa in 1548, and at Padua in 1551, died at the age of forty, studied the general anatomy of the bones; described better than heretofore the the internal ear, especially the tympanum and its osseous ring, the two fenestrae and their communication with the vestibule and cochlea; and gave the first good account of the stylo-mastoid hole and canal, of the ethmoid bone and cells, and of the lacrymal passages. In myology he rectified several ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a borrowed designation, meaning something entirely different from its present signification. Captain Scott had been the first to apply the term; and he had done so simply because it tickled the tympanum of his ear, and it really meant ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Mrs. Pipelet, bawling in a voice sharp enough to split the tympanum of a deaf man. "Alfred! have at 'em, old darling! They wanted to behave improperly to thy 'Stasie! (Anastasia). Those rascals would take liberties with me! Pitch into them with your broom! call the oyster-woman and the potboy next ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue |
