"Brickwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a quaint, dawdling, sleepy place it is ! All these narrow streets are falling into ruin; everywhere the same green stains upon the walls, as of slime left by a flood; everywhere disjointed brickwork, crumbling roofs, pungent odors of mould. Yet this Spanish architecture was built to endure; those yellow, blue, or green walls were constructed with the solidity of fortress-work; the very stairs are stone; the balustrades and the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the Regent's Park Colosseum, are jumbled confusedly one upon another. He never achieves the triumph of art—repose. Besides, he wants variety. A country box, consisting of twenty feet square of tottering brickwork, a plateau of dirt, with a few diseased shrubs and an open drain, is as elaborately be-metaphored as an island of the Hebrides, with a wilderness of red-deer, Celts, ptarmigan, and other wild animals upon it. Now, this is out of all rule. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... thereupon relocated at a distance of three miles on the bank of the Camu. The site of the old city is now private property and is overgrown with tropical vegetation. Moss-grown foundation walls protrude from the ground; a mass of brickwork some twenty feet high and having the form of a blockhouse chimney remains of the old church; and part of the circular tower erected at the corner of the fort of Columbus, well provided with loop-holes for muskets, still remains standing. In desultory excavations made at different times small objects ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... revenge. He went at once to Mr. Puddleham, and learned from him that Grimes' story was true. This had been in December. After Christmas, the foundations were to be begun at once, said Mr. Puddleham, so that the brickwork might go on as soon as the frosts were over. Mr. Puddleham was in high spirits, and expressed a hope that he should be in his new chapel by next August. When the Vicar asked why the change of site was made, being careful to show no chagrin by the tone ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... in the past. It was a small apartment, having direct access on the first landing of the staircase, and the one window gave on the rose garden at the back of the house. Inside the monumental hearth, at an arm's length up the wide chimney, a receptacle had been contrived in the brickwork, with a small iron door which opened and closed with a secret spring. Chauvelin, whom his nefarious calling had rendered proficient in such matters, had soon mastered the workings of that spring. He could now open and close the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... is still in extensive use. This boiler is a long rectangular vessel, with a rounded top, like that of a carrier's wagon, from its resemblance to which it derives its name. A fire is set beneath it, and flues constructed of brickwork encircle it, so as to keep the flame and smoke in contact with the boiler for a sufficient ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... beneath the pediment of a fine brick portico, summarised the history of one of the tall houses at the upper end of King's Bench Walk and as I, somewhat absently, read over the inscription, my attention was divided between admiration of the exquisitely finished carved brickwork and the quiet dignity of the building, and an effort to reconstitute the dead and gone Richard Powell, and the stirring times in which he ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... and enlargements of the church, much required, had necessitated the bricking up of a door regarded by the lady as the private entrance to the Olmer pew. She sent him notice of her intention to batter at the new brickwork; so there was the prospect of a pew-fight before him. But now she came to sit under him every Sunday; and he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his thoughts from piety to the selections of texts applicable in the case of a woman who sat with arms knotted, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gable-end, or dove-cot vane, A gilded weathercock at intervals Glimmers—an angel on the wing, most like, Of local workmanship; for since the reign Of pious Edward here have carvers thrived, In saints'-heads skillful and winged cherubim Meet for rich abbeys. From yon crumbling tower, Whose brickwork base the cunning Romans laid— And now of no use else except to train The ivy of an idle legend on— You see, such lens is this thin Devon air, If it so chance no fog comes rolling in, The Torridge where its branching crystal spreads To join the Taw. ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... high oak mantelpiece was shattered, and doleful cracks and splinters in the panelling all round showed how mad the attack had been; one of the pillars of the further archway was broken clean off, and the brickwork showed behind; the pictures had been smashed and added to the heap of wrecked furniture and broken ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming inscription, which told ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... is Gothic made sprightly and sunny; Gothic without a hint of solidity or gloom. So light and fresh is the effect, chiefly the result of the double row of arches and especially of the upper row, but not a little due to the zig-zagging of the brickwork and the vivid cheerfulness of the coping fringe, that one has difficulty in believing that the palace is of any age at all or that it will really be there to-morrow. The other buildings in the neighbourhood—the Prison, the Mint, the Library, the Campanile: ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... urns we could obtain no good account of their coverings; only one seemed arched over with some kind of brickwork. Of those found at Buxton, some were covered with flints, some, in other parts, with tiles; those at Yarmouth Caster were closed with Roman bricks, and some have proper earthen covers adapted and fitted to them. But in the Homerical urn of Patroclus, whatever was ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... his justly celebrated observingness, noticed that one of the bars was loose in the brickwork of a sort of half-underground window. To pull it out was to the lion-hearted youth but the work of a moment. He got down through the gap thus obtained, and found himself in a place like a very small area, only with no steps, and with bars above him, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... natural picturesque is to be sought only in the rich, almost coarse, summer colouring of the Champagne country, of which the very tiles, the plaster and brickwork of its tiny villages and great, straggling, village-like farms have caught the warmth. The cathedral, visible far and wide over the fields seemingly of loose wild-flowers, itself a rich mixture of all ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... mystery, which only the gods and sharp architects will be able to solve. The roof is supported by ten long, thin, gilt-headed iron pillars, which relieve what would otherwise in the general aspect of the church amount to a heavy monotony of red brickwork and sombre timber. On each side of the body of the church there are four neat-looking three-light windows; at the western end there is a beautiful five-light window, but its effect is completely spoiled by a small, pert-looking, precocious organ, which stands right before it. At each ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... which came into the brickwork delighted us. These "accidentals" as the painters say were quite as we wished them to be. Privately, our bricklayer considered us—"Crazy." The idea of putting common rough brick on the inside of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... I could see no glimmer of light from this place; but I groped my way out, up a few more steps further on into a smaller, dirtier passage than the one which I had just left. After this I had to crawl like a badger in his earth, with my back brushing against the roof, over many masses of broken brickwork most rough to the palms of my hands. All of a sudden I smelt a pleasant stable-smell. I heard the rattle of a halter drawn across manger bars. I heard a horse paw upon the ground quite close to me. A dim, but regular chink of light ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... boilers on opposite sides of the center aisle of the boiler room), and each platform is composed of single-web plate girders, well braced and surmounted by a grillage of 20-inch I-beams. The grillage is filled solidly with concrete and flushed smooth on top to receive the brickwork of the chimney. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... defences. Flanking towers were erected at the angles of the walls. The moat was doubled in width, and a work erected beyond it, to guard the approach across the drawbridge. The windows on the unprotected side were all partially closed with brickwork, leaving only loopholes through which the defenders could fire. The battlements of the wall were raised two feet and pierced with loopholes, so that the defenders would no longer be obliged to raise their heads above its shelter to fire; and the narrow path was widened ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... bored her, and she threw aside the brushes in disgust. She came downstairs and found Ferdinand in the dining-room, standing at the window looking at the rain. It came down in one continual steady pour, and the water ran off the raised brickwork of the middle of the street to the gutters by the side, running along in a swift and murky rivulet. The red brick of the opposite house looked cold and cheerless in the wet.... He did not turn or speak to her as she came in. She remarked that it did not look like leaving ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... might drive an iron on through the brickwork, and find out how much of it there was beyond the stone, but Malipieri pointed out that if the "lost water" should rise it would pour out through the hole and stop their operations effectually. The entrance must incline upwards, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the little tattered figure strutting on the brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have lain down, Kim's white blood set him upon ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... showed us lots of interesting bits of German shells and time fuses, &c. The house was full of big holes, with dirty smart curtains, and hats and mirrors lying about the floors upstairs among the brickwork and ruins. ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... characteristic feature of his cabinets was the swan-necked pediment surmounting the cornice, being a revival of an ornament fashionable during Queen Anne's reign. It was then chiefly found in stone, marble, or cut brickwork, but subsequently became ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... the settlement of the tower was partially due. The hole was, by Scott's direction, filled with bricks laid in cement, and cement was poured in to fill up all the interstices; some of the decayed rubble was cut out of the piers and brickwork put in to take its place: the walls were tied with Yorkshire flagstone and iron rods, and were grouted with liquid cement wherever possible. It was an anxious time for those in charge of the work; it was only after ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... must be felt, and on such a night as this. The measures which the Government have taken to save the Coliseum from destruction will certainly accomplish that end, but its picturesque appearance will be greatly damaged. There is no part of the ruin which is not already supported by some modern brickwork, and they are building a wall which will nearly surround it. If they had been more selfish they would have left it to moulder away, and posterity to grumble over their stinginess or indifference. I am always tossed backwards and forwards between admiration of the Coliseum and St. Peter's, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... window, that dear little window!" I turned back to see him point to a small protruding oriel, above us, relieved against the purple brickwork, framed in chiselled stone and ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... instead of digging in the ordinary way, the men carefully cut down through what was not earth, but thick well-compressed black peat, each piece, about ten inches square and three or four thick, to be carefully laid up like so much open brickwork to drain and dry. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... a hundred yards from Battersea Bridge, an extensive pile of massy brickwork, for the manufactory of Soap, has recently been erected, at a cost, it is said, of sixty thousand pounds. I was told it was inaccessible to strangers, and therefore was obliged to content myself ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... when Winnie was abed. Through the warm summer days he took her daily and twice daily walks, down to the Green where the sea air could blow in her face fresh from its own quarter, where she and he too could turn their backs upon brickwork and pavement and look on at least one face of nature unspotted and unspoiled. At home he read to her, and with her, the times when he used to read the classics; and many other times; he talked to her and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... those such as Salviati and other Venetians shipped from Venice," explained Mr. Cabot. "No, these were made directly upon the walls, the pieces of glass being pressed into prepared areas of cement spread thickly upon the brickwork of the building. The designs are simple, large and effective figures being preferred to smaller and more intricate patterns. Millions of pieces have been used to make the pictures, and if you will notice ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... remain. It is of stone, except the arches, which have a mixture of brick. The peasants, by digging under the foundations, are rapidly destroying it. An old man told us that he had seen six or seven piers tumble. A little nearer to Tours is the Pile de Cinq Mars, a solid, nearly square tower of Roman brickwork more than ninety feet high, and about twelve feet by fourteen feet thick. On one side there appear to have been inscriptions or bas-reliefs. Ampere believes it to have been a Roman tomb; but the antiquaries are divided and perplexed. Being ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his arms abroad. 'Hire me!' was all he said, and ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... Farther still were the walls of a great town, huge earthworks crowned with plastered fortifications, and a gate, with a curious roof to it, running out at each end into horns carved of wood. At some distance, out of a grove to the right, rose a round tapering tower of mouldering brickwork. The rest of the nearer country seemed laid out in low plantations of some green-leaved shrub, with rice-fields interspersed in ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little more friendly, though, for it ran from the brickwork of the forge, leaped on to a bench behind me, and bounded from that on to my back, and crept to my shoulder, where it could rub its head against ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... places, illimitable vistas of pin-point lights. Here was the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a brewery, and here unprecedented reeks. Everywhere were pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as Graham had never before seen, thick Titans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight of that complex city world, even as these anemic millions were crushed by its complexity. And everywhere were pale features, lean limbs, disfigurement ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... that this is brick, this is stone, or this is cast iron; but they always fail to impress the beholder with the idea of harmonious design. The use of finer varieties of clay in terra cotta figures laid among the brickwork furnishes a field of architectural design hardly appreciated. The heavy mass of brick, divided by regular lines of demarkation, serves as the groundwork of such ornamentation, while the suitable introduction in the proper ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... infinite soft depth, and smoulder'd down Low as the roofs, dark burning blue, and soared Clear to that winking drop of liquid silver, The first exquisite star. Now the half-light Tidied away the dusty litter parching Among the cobbles, veiled in the colour of distance Shabby slates and brickwork mouldering, turn'd The hunchback houses into patient things Resting; and golden windows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... and the recesses were there,—the huge wall too along the face of the hill; all broken and gashed and ruinous, showing the fine reticulated brickwork that had been once faced with marble; alternately supported and torn by the pushing roots of the ilex-trees. The tunnelled passages too were there, choked and fallen in; no flash of the lake now beyond their ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we find elephants closely similar to those of our own time, far more numerous and more widely distributed than in our own day, and happily established all over the temperate regions of the earth—even in our Thames Valley and in the forests where London now spreads its smoky brickwork. When we go further back in time—as the diggings and surveying of modern man enable us to do—we find other elephants of many different species, some differing greatly from the three species I have mentioned, and leading us back by ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... avenues of straight trees, abundant in their leaves and branches, which filled them quite up. The gates seem monumental works of art, and picturesque to a degree; while over the walls—and what noble specimens of brickwork, or tiling rather, are these old Vauban walls!—peep with curious mystery the upper stories and roofs of houses with an air of smiling security. I catch a glimpse of the elegant belfry, the embroidered spires, and ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... on a small projection of brickwork, and considered his case. He had been more than twelve hours without water under a fierce sun. His thirst would not increase so fast at night, but it would increase, nevertheless, and the Mexican ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Praetorium were a dozen tents, smaller indeed than the Praetorium, but much larger than tents set up for us, presumably for the commanders' aides. In front of the Praetorium, between it and the square, was a wide, broad and high platform of new brickwork, paved on top, railed with solid, low, carved railings set in short carved oak posts. The corner posts, and two others dividing the front and back of the platform equally, were tall and supported an awning of striped canvas like that of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... sighed but, brought to book like that, admitted that it was. Conversation flagged, however, while he busied himself with toasting a smoked herring, and dragging roasted potatoes from the little iron oven that was fitted into the brickwork of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... was a most difficult man to live with. But at my father's death he owned this estate, and we had to live with him or go homeless. He had plenty of money, and he repaired and restored much about the place. But even in this he was erratic. He would have masons in to renew the crumbling plaster and brickwork in the cellars, while the drawing-room furniture could go ragged and forlorn. He spent his money freely for anything he wanted himself, but was niggardly toward mother and myself. However, he always told us that at his death we should inherit ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... so, these should always be well covered, not only to avoid pollution, but to prevent the barrels from becoming mosquito breeders. Cisterns should always be built with care and made water-tight and impervious. The walls should be lined with cemented brickwork. In soil consisting of hard pan, cisterns in some parts of the country are built without brick walls, the walls of the excavation being simply cemented. I do not approve of such cheap construction, particularly where the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... native cultivation and advance purchase, somewhat similar to the indigo trade in British India. On our way we stayed to look at a fragment of the ruins of the ancient city of Modjo-pahit, consisting of two lofty brick masses, apparently the sides of a gateway. The extreme perfection and beauty of the brickwork astonished me. The bricks are exceedingly fine and hard, with sharp angles and true surfaces. They are laid with great exactness, without visible mortar or cement, yet somehow fastened together so that the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... they almost always disregard; this is the tendency to the formation of ugly meandering white lines or "rivers" in the page, a blemish which can be nearly, though not wholly, avoided by care and forethought, the desirable thing being "the breaking of the line" as in bonding masonry or brickwork, thus: The general solidity of a page is much to be sought for: modern printers generally overdo the "whites" in the spacing, a defect probably forced on them by the characterless quality of the letters. For where these are boldly and carefully designed, and each letter is thoroughly individual ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... under those already mentioned. The column, or central erection, containing these staircases and the ascending-room, is of timber, with twelve principal uprights seventy-three feet high, one foot square, set upon a circular curb of brickwork, hooped with iron, and further secured by bracing, and by two other circular curbs, from the upper one of which rises a cone of timbers thirty-four feet high, supporting the refreshment-rooms, the identical ball, and model of the cross, of St. Paul's, Mr. Hornor's sketching cabin, staircase ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... Tristan may be visited for itself, however, if not for Sir Walter; it is an exceedingly picturesque old facade, to which you pick your way through a narrow and tortuous street—a street terminating, a little beyond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant Gothic doorway is let into the rusty-red brickwork, and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large surface of brick, lifted out of the shadow of the street, looks yellow ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... street to the westward, Thomas Carlyle was still living, and a little beyond Cheyne Row stood the modest cottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti's house had to me the appearance of a plain Queen Anne erection, much mutilated by the introduction of unsightly bay-windows; the brickwork seemed to be falling into decay; the paint to be in serious need of renewal; the windows to be dull with the accumulation of the dust of years; the sills to bear the suspicion of cobwebs; the angles of the steps and the untrodden flags of the courtyard to be here and there ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... day of their exploration that they at last penetrated the ruins of Providence. Here, as in New York, pavements and streets and squares were all grassed over and covered with pines and elms and oaks, rooting among the stones and shattered brickwork that lay prone upon the earth. Only here or there a steel or concrete building still defied the ravages ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... usually long fire-brick tubes of D-section, the flat side at the bottom. Under each is a furnace, the flames of which play on the bottom, sides, and inner end of the retort. The outer end projecting beyond the brickwork seating has an iron air-tight door for filling the retort through, immediately behind which rises an iron exit pipe, A, for the gases. Tar, which vaporizes at high temperatures, but liquefies at ordinary atmospheric heat, must first be got rid of. This is effected ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... smoke and shadows, and the roofs assume their ruddy tones. At midday, when the sunlight pours down upon the medley of houses clustered along the face of the cliff, the scene is brilliantly coloured. The predominant note is the red of the chimneys and roofs and stray patches of brickwork, but the walls that go down to the water's edge are green below and full of rich browns above, and in many places the sides of the cottages are coloured with an ochre wash, while above them all the top of the cliff appears covered with grass. There is scarcely a chimney ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home |
