"Obelisk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Landscape should contain variety enough to form a picture upon canvas; and this is no bad test, as I think the landscape painter is the gardener's best designer. The eye requires a sort of balance here; but not so as to encroach upon probable nature. A wood or hill may balance a house or obelisk; for exactness would be displeasing. . . It is not easy to account for the fondness of former times for straight-lined avenues to their houses; straight-lined walks through their woods; and, in short, every kind of straight line, where the foot has to travel over what the eye has ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... two long, black scarfs formed by the buildings. But they were so well acquainted with this panorama that in imagination they mentally saw the majestic sweep of the avenue, the double row of palaces, the place de la Concorde in the background with the Egyptian obelisk, and ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... great public places in the city of Paris, moreover, commemorate, more or less openly, what might be called the great stains on the history of the nation. The Place de la Concorde is that of the Guillotine, and the Luxor obelisk is the monument of the more than twenty-eight hundred victims beheaded by that axe. The Place de l'Hotel de Ville was formerly the Place de Greve, famous in all hangmen's annals,—burnings alive, tearings asunder by horses, breakings on the wheel, decapitations, hangings,—from ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... navigator has no distant view of all this verdure and beauty. It lies so low that it continues beneath the horizon until the ship is close upon the shore. The first landmarks, in fact, which the seaman makes, are the tops of trees growing apparently out of the water, or the summit of an obelisk, or the capital of a pillar, marking the site of some ancient ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... glittering in moisture, and their lines of stately trees, that, as the light flashed out, threw their shadows over the grass. The river expanded into the estuary, the estuary into the open sea; we left behind us beacon, and obelisk, and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... up through the Rue Royale, the Church of the Madeleine. That is one of the most beautiful of the Paris churches, and you shall visit it, of course, but not now. To-day I want you to get merely a birdseye view, a sort of general idea of locations. But here we are in the Place de la Concorde. The Obelisk, which you see in the centre, was brought from Egypt many years ago. It is very like our own Obelisk in Central Park, and also Cleopatra's needle in London. From here we turn into one of the most beautiful avenues ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... fertile valley, called the Queen's Girdle, because its revenues were appropriated to that costly article of the royal wardrobe. This pleasant city had once been the favourite residence of Cyrus the Great, and a plain obelisk in the royal gardens marked his burial-place. The adjacent promontory of Taoces afforded a convenient harbour for Tyrian merchants, and thus brought in the luxuries of Phoenicia, while it afforded opportunities for literary communication between the East and the West. Here ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Major Young of the 97th Regiment. To the top of the surbase is fourteen feet from the ground; on this rests a sarcophagus, seven feet three inches high, from which rises an obelisk forty-two feet eight inches in height, and the apex is two feet one inch. The dimensions of the obelisk at the base are six feet by four feet eight inches. A prize medal was adjudged to J.C. Fisher, LL.D. for the following ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... handed with crocodiles and cameleopards, riding upon elephants, mastering tigers and young hyenas, visiting mosques and mausoleums. In every land he made collections of its greatest curiosities in art, literature, science, natural history, and politics. A sphinx, an obelisk, a winged bull from Nineveh, stuffed porcupines, live monkeys, fossil remains, a pinchbeck president of the United States, and many rare specimens even more curious, did he collect, and after years of wandering, by land and by sea, carry with him to his native village. There he converted ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... an obelisk, set up in commemoration of a visitation of the Plague in 1669, when the country people brought their produce and left it outside the gate to be taken in by the city dwellers, who deposited the ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... marble columns and statues, executed after the design of Buonaroti. Within-side you find yourself in a noble piazza, from whence three of the principal streets of Rome are detached. It is adorned with the famous Aegyptian obelisk, brought hither from the Circus Maximus, and set up by the architect Dominico Fontana in the pontificate of Sixtus V. Here is likewise a beautiful fountain designed by the same artist; and at the beginning of the two principal ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Green were applauded by hundreds, to whom the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my soul. When on the broad, handsome Place de la Concorde, I saw at the same time, with my bodily eyes, the beautifully impressive obelisk, and in my mind's eye the scaffold on which the royal pair met with their death in the Revolution; when in the Latin quarter I went upstairs to the house in which Charlotte Corday murdered Marat, or when, in the highest storey of the Louvre, I gazed at the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... fragments of old glass in the windows of the N. aisle; (4) the large picture, a "Descent from the Cross," by Perriss; (5) the window in the chancel to the memory of Colonel J.R.M. Chard, of Rorke's Drift fame, with a wreath preserved beneath it sent by Queen Victoria. The obelisk near the S. door is said to have ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... is right; the British troops, under General Gage, drove the American forces off both Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill. The obelisk of Quincy granite was erected at Charlestown, I think, to commemorate the stout resistance which the raw provincial militia made against regular British soldiers, confirming the Americans in the belief that their ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... proportion, with their several pillars, cornices, and other suitable ornaments. The eye, astonished, though not dazzled, penetrated through the garden, and, directed by this avenue of light, embraced a view of the temporary obelisk erected on the ridge of the gradual ascent, where stands the Barriere de Chaillot; the road on each side of the Champs Elysees presenting an illuminated perspective, whose vanishing ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... tomb. To mediaeval relics he was hardly less indifferent. The old buildings of the Lateran were thrown down to make room for the heavy modern palace. But, to atone in some measure for these acts of vandalism, Sixtus placed the cupola upon S. Peter's and raised the obelisk in the great piazza which was destined to be circled with Bernini's colonnades. This obelisk he tapped with a cross. Christian inscriptions, signalizing the triumph of the Pontiff over infidel emperors, the victory of Calvary over Olympus, the superiority of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Jock journeyed onwards, until, happy and laughing at having for once done a nigger in the eye, they rejoined at the Obelisk Restaurant, where they turned their borrowed steeds adrift. Coming weekly as it did, dinner in Cairo was an affair of some length, and, between shandies and cigarettes, it was already late when it was mafeesh. They strolled along the streets and were about to drop into the Cafe Egyptien, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... women, when he obtained possession of Calcutta in 1756—confining them in a narrow and noisome cell, which poisoned them with its malarious atmosphere, so that by morning only a few remained alive—is now part of a warehouse. But an obelisk stands at the entrance, inscribed with the names ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... women were climbing up every possible elevation, and a bright-faced girl who had conquered a high place on the base of the obelisk was chattering down at a group of her friends who ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora, who were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had not seen the O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years before, so that we had much to tell each other. For the third time now had the O'Kelly proved ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... physical house in which the soul dwelt. Every instinct of refinement and self-respect revolted from the thought of discarding the body like a cast-off garment or worn-out tool. In his dying hour it was little to Rameses that his career was to be pictured on obelisk and preserved in pyramid, but it was very much to the King that the embalmer should give permanency to the body with which his soul had gone singing, weeping and loving through three-score years and ten. The papyrus found in the tombs tells us that the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... on these lines that day and I was in the little hollow just beyond the Kingmaker's obelisk. The sun had gone down behind Mill Hill and the evening was full of blue shadows, full of the odour of smoke and sap, full of mysteriously comfortable silences. For a few moments that particular rod, pole or perch of the great road was empty save for me and a lamplighter on a ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... turf-covered graves. Reared against the buttresses of the church was an old stone coffin, together with a fragment of a curious monumental effigy, likewise of stone; but the most striking objects in the place, and deservedly ranked amongst the wonders of Whalley, were three remarkable obelisk-shaped crosses, set in a line upon pedestals, covered with singular devices in fretwork, and all three differing in size and design. Evidently of remotest antiquity, these crosses were traditionally assigned to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... through the streets nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting, except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ever after. This devotion was not primitive, but began in the fourth dynasty, and was established by the fifth dynasty being called sons of Ra, and every later king having the title 'son of Ra' before his name. The obelisk was the emblem of Ra, and in the fifth dynasty a great obelisk temple was built in his honour at Abusir, followed also by others. Heliopolis was the centre of his worship, where Senusert I, in the twelfth dynasty, rebuilt the temple ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... his life is easily traced. When an old man, he himself wrote down the main events of it, at the request of his friends; and his sketch has been filled out by commentators, if not always favourable, at least erudite. Born in 1506, at the Moss, in Killearn—where an obelisk to his memory, so one reads, has been erected in this century—of a family "rather ancient than rich," his father dead in the prime of manhood, his grandfather a spendthrift, he and his seven brothers and sisters were brought up by a widowed mother, Agnes ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... with her arm round nurse's neck, and her handkerchief to nurse's eyes, murmuring, "There—there—don't cry, nurse; everybody esteems you, and that lady did not mean to affront you; she did not say 'obelisk;' she said 'obstacle.' That only means that you stand in the way of her improvements; there was not much harm in that, you know. And, nurse, please give that lady her way, to oblige me; for it is by my brother's invitation ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... expanse of sea. There is a carriage-road made from Sydney to the extreme point, which is South Head, and a great many carriages and horsemen frequently go down there to spend the day, or to see any vessels which may appear off the land. On South Head are, a Flag-staff, a Lookout-house, and an Obelisk; and betwixt it and the North Head, is a narrow entrance, by which vessels enter the port, about seven miles from Sydney. The small island in the centre is called Pinch-gut, which name originated ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... incidents, we are already able to subject considerable portions of history to this test. The records of Shalmaneser II., Tiglath-Pileser III. and Sennacherib, kings of Assyria, of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and of Cyrus, king of Persia, all contain direct references to Hebrew history. An obelisk of Shalmaneser II. contains explicit reference to the tribute of Jehu of Samaria, and graphically depicts the Hebrew captives. Tiglath-Pileser III., a usurper who came to the throne of Assyria in 745 B.C., and whose earlier name of Pul proved a source ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... seat of Sixtus V. —[Sixtus V., originally Felix Peretti, born at Montalto, 1525, and in 1585 succeeded Gregory XIII. as pope. He was distinguished by his energy and munificence. He constructed the Vatican Library, the great aqueduct, and other public works, and placed the obelisk before St. Peter's. Died 1589. ]—how many popes have there been who have occupied themselves only with frivolous subjects, as little advantageous to the best interests of religion as fruitful in inspiring ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... ancient times, the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of "Linnaeus;" which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's fairy builds ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... the Pincian to see better. There is no place so fine for anything of this kind as the Piazza del Popolo, it is so full of light, so fair and grand, the obelisk and fountain make so fine a centre ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... which Mr Cheeryble had directed him was a row of mean and not over-cleanly houses, situated within 'the Rules' of the King's Bench Prison, and not many hundred paces distant from the obelisk in St George's Fields. The Rules are a certain liberty adjoining the prison, and comprising some dozen streets in which debtors who can raise money to pay large fees, from which their creditors do NOT derive any benefit, are permitted to reside by the wise provisions ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... all Greek and Roman buildings with which we are acquainted is the absence—save in a few and unimportant cases—of the pyramidal form. The Egyptians knew at least the worth of the obelisk; but the Greeks and Romans hardly knew even that: their buildings are flat-topped. Their builders were contented with the earth as it was. There was a great truth involved in that; which I am ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... seven young men—nobles of Chiltistan, as Phillips knew from their chogas of velvet and Chinese silk—gathered in the court. They were kneeling with their backs towards him and the doorway, so that not one of them had noticed his approach. They were facing a small rough-hewn obelisk of stone which stood at the head of a low mound of earth at the far end of the court. Six of them were grouped in a sort of semi-circle, and the seventh, a man clad from head to foot in green robes, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... ranks and nations had never been seen at any public ceremony on the Bosphorus as that which, on July 24, accompanied the remains of Hobart Pasha to their last resting place in the English cemetery at Scutari, not far from the spot where a tall granite obelisk records the brave deeds and glorious death of those heroes who ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... mountain above. Several boulders of large dimensions rested upon the ground, at short distances apart; and there was one of a pillar-shape that stood some twenty-feet high, while it was only about five or six in diameter. It bore a sort of rude resemblance to an obelisk; and one might easily have fancied that the hand of man had accomplished its erection. For all that, it was a mere freak of Nature, and had probably been set up by ancient glacier ice. Up one of its sides there was a series of projections, by which an active man might climb ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... understanding, very small would the matters have been which, even with their best efforts applied in conjunction, they could have attempted or accomplished. Now (to pause while upon this example and look in it as in a glass) let us suppose that some vast obelisk were (for the decoration of a triumph or some such magnificence) to be removed from its place, and that men should set to work upon it with their naked hands; would not any sober spectator think them mad? ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... touched with pity, would gladly have welcomed him. He broke from them all, lived his own life, was reputed to be a freethinker, and when he came to his estate, a long while afterwards, he put up the obelisk, and recorded in Latin how Death, the foul adulterer, had ravished his sweet bride—the coward Death whom no man could challenge—and that the inconsolable bridegroom had erected this monument in memory of her matchless virtues. That was all: no blessed resurrection ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... the stars were withdrawn. What effect of light! In the north the moon scatters silver over the water: here it was gold. The circulating lanterns of the lighthouse now exhibited their dazzling light, now were totally extinguished. The torches of the fishing-boats threw their obelisk-formed blaze along the surface of the water, or else the boat concealed them like a black shadow, below which the surface of the water was illuminated. One fancied one could see to the bottom, where fishes and plants were in motion. Along the street itself thousands of lights ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... my favorite retreat. This is my bower for meditation, and frequently for reading too. Let us take this seat. Observe how through these openings we catch some of the prominent points of the city. There is the obelisk of Cleopatra; there the tower of Antonine', there the Egyptian Pyramid; and there a column going up in honor of Aurelian; and in this direction, the whole ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... years B. C.), when, also, it was set up in the temple of Karnak, at Thebes. It is a tall, rectangular pillar, tapering from the base to near the top, where it is pointed like a flattened pyramid; its sides are inscribed with hieroglyphics. The obelisk was taken to Alexandria by Queen Cleopatra, and was named after her. Some think that Cleopatra's Needle was another stone, quarried by order of Ramesis II., and set up in Heliopolis, the City of the Sun; but several ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... had remained. He showed black against the background of the sky. The moon was shining behind him, and his shadow, which was of extravagant size, looked in the distance like an obelisk ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... tree that stands up like an obelisk in the midst of the plain beyond the deserted Matabele village. I passed the low clumps of dry karroo-bushes by the rocky kopje. I passed the fork of the rubbly roads where I had parted from Hilda. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... in the reign of thirty-five years of his successor, Shalmaneser III., is contained on the Black Obelisk of Nimroud, discovered by Layard and preserved in the British Museum. He conquered the whole country round Lake Van, ravaging the country "as a savage bull ravages and tramples under his feet the fertile fields." An attack on Damascus ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... them in the latter.[67] They may be recognized at once by the band of inscription which passes across the figures and reproduces one text again and again (Fig. 4). To Assurnazirpal's son SHALMANESER III. belongs the obelisk of basalt which also stands in the British Museum. Its four faces are adorned with reliefs and with a running commentary engraved ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... place where Perry lies buried beneath a simple obelisk of granite: few heroes appear to have lived so universally loved as was the Conqueror of the Lakes. His short but brilliant career, added to his youth and remarkable personal beauty, made him the idol of the people; whilst ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... One obelisk standing in the midst of the open plain, a few waste mounds of debris, scattered blocks, and two or three lengths of crumbling wall, alone mark the place where once the city stood. Ka was worshipped ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Boston for China, and watched, as he tells us, "while light and eyesight lasted, till the summit of that monument faded, at last, from view." Many a departing, many a returning, sailor and traveler, has given his "last, long, lingering look" to that towering obelisk, but none with deeper ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... me an interesting fact that the striking and beautiful forms in inorganic nature are not as a rule the result of a building-up process, but of a pulling-down or degradation process. A natural bridge, an obelisk, caves, canals, the profile in the rocks, the architectural and monumental rock forms, such as those in the Grand Canon and in the Garden of the Gods, are all the result of erosion. Water and other ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and shaly; but there are other causes of difference in impressiveness which I am endeavouring to analyze, but find considerable embarrassment in doing so. There seems no sufficient reason why an isolated obelisk, one-fourth higher than any of them, should not be at least as sublime as they in their dependent grouping; but it assuredly is not. For this reason, as well as because I have not found here the near studies of primitive rock I expected,—for ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... planned with considerable skill, so as to mask the steepness of the Pincian, and forming the chief feature of the Piazza. Various landings and dividing walls break up their monotony; and a red granite obelisk, found in the gardens of Sallust, crowns the upper terrace in front of the church. All day long, these steps are flooded with sunshine, in which, stretched at length, or gathered in picturesque groups, models of every age and both sexes bask away the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he walked once more in King street. Five years later, in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green beside the meeting-house at Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a slab of slate inlaid commemorates the first-fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he inferred both that and the Ruthwell Cross to be productions of the latter half of the seventh century. The inscription, of which we will treat more particularly later on, is to the effect that the obelisk was raised to the memory of Alcfrid, son of that King of Northumbria, who decided to celebrate Easter according to the Roman precept. Alcfrid died about the year 664, and thus when we consider the similarity ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... narrow and round-headed, and there is in the north-western bay a pointed door, differing only from those of about a hundred years earlier in having twisted shafts. One curious feature is the parapet of the central aisle, which is like a row of small classical pedestals, each bearing a stumpy obelisk. By far the finest feature of the outside is the great west door. On each side are clusters of square pinnacles ending in square crocketed spirelets, and running up to a horizontal moulding which, as so often, gives ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... of St. Januarius are preserved here; the people assert that this blood liquefies every year. The frescoes on the ceiling are splendidly painted; and on the square before the church is to be seen an obelisk surmounted by a statue ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... The obelisk generously presented by the Khedive of Egypt to the city of New York has safely arrived in this country, and will soon be erected in that metropolis. A commission for the liquidation of the Egyptian debt has lately concluded its work, and ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... deficient in power, or else spiteful, because, though it usually exaggerates everything, it fell very short in its praises of the things which are at Rome; and having deliberated for some time what he should do, he determined to add to the ornaments of the city by erecting an obelisk in the Circus Maximus, the origin and form of which I will describe when I come to the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... smoking he was whistling, and when he was doing neither, and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers, he was swearing to himself. For there was no fire in the room. The materials for a fire were there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as an obelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive, and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open—one window, to be exact, the room being very small—and spends most of the day in a warm and ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... laughed.... But it's no rumor that he disappeared. He's gone, all right, and nobody knows where he went, and nobody seems to want to know. Officially they said he was drowned out swimming—or lost in a sandstorm riding in the desert—or spiked on top of an obelisk or something equally reasonable—but, privately, people say other things.... No international law intrudes ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... constantly under irrigation, and in course of time most of their heavy stone buildings have sunk into the soft ground and become completely covered by deposits of mud. So, as at Memphis, all that now remains of ancient Heliopolis, or On, is one granite obelisk, standing alone in the fields; while at other places, such as Tamai or Bete-el-Haga near Mansurah, practically ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... on the elevation of which Dunsink is the summit. On the south side of Dublin there are several eminences that would have been suitable: the breezy heaths at Foxrock combine all necessary conditions; the obelisk hill at Killiney would have given one of the most picturesque sites for an Observatory in the world; while near Delgany two or three other good situations could be mentioned. But the Board of those pre-railway days was naturally guided ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... half. Here the full face of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau is squarely commanded. The view is said to challenge that of the Matterhorn from the Riffel. The plateau itself is nearly five thousand feet above the sea, and across the ravine before it, this isolated granite obelisk, with its mitre of snow, lifts itself upward more than five thousand feet higher,—a precipitous cone, "notched like a pair of gaping jaws, eager to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... with his forehead on the type-writer keys—he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up—and crept into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that private ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... so often does on mountain ascents, upon other summits; for by this time I was thousands of feet above Little Ararat, the next highest peak visible, and could scarcely guess how many thousands. From this tremendous height it looked more like a broken obelisk than an independent summit twelve thousand eight hundred feet in height. Clouds covered the farther side of the great snow basin, and were seething like waves about the savage pinnacles, the towers of the Jinn palace, which guard its lower ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Boys" fought with distinction and maintained their reputation right up to the end of the siege. Visitors to Mafeking may now see near the obelisk in front of the pretty town hall of the famous siege town, a five-pounder gun "captured by the Cape Police during the siege". This gun was seized by the coloured Sergeant Bell and two other subalterns of the "Cape Boys" contingent; their contingent was then under the command of Lieutenant Currey ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... bore away by his servile disposition, had drored up his leg with a higher and a higher relish, and was now discovered to be waving his corkscrew over his head. It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep' her eye upon him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. Our Missis followed them both out, and cries was heard ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... considerable extent, in the broader part of which stands what may justly be deemed one of the most valuable curiosities of the place; it is a milliare, or Roman mile-stone, forming part of a small obelisk. This stone was discovered in 1771, by some workmen, digging to form a rampart for a new turnpike-road from Leicester to Melton, upon the foss road leading to Newark, and at the distance of two miles from Leicester. Antiquarians allow it to be the oldest milliare now extant in Britain; ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... be unnoticed and unknown; buried, like Babylon and Nineveh, in indistinct confusion, without poetry, as without existence; but to whatever spot of earth these ruins were transported, if they were capable of transportation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, and the Memnon's head, there they would still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in the pride of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture; but why did I do so? The ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the party was in disguise, and the whole city was in a state of indescribable tumult, the fugitives succeeded in traversing, without being recognized, the broad central avenue of the garden of the Tuileries. Emerging by the gate of the Pont Tournant, they reached the foot of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. It was one o'clock in the afternoon; the duke had ordered the carriages to be ready for them there. But the mob, recognizing the carriages as belonging to the royal family, had dashed them ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... pictures that I would mention if my mind were not so full of one picture to which, if I can find it and acquire it, a special place of honour shall be given: a certain huge picture in which a life-sized gentleman, draped in a white mantle, sits on a fallen obelisk and surveys the ruined ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... An obelisk of gray Canadian granite now stands on this historic ground. Madame de la Peltrie did not remain more than two years in Ville-Marie, but returned to the convent at Quebec which she had left in a moment of caprice. Mdlle. Mance, who ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... sweet little lawns opening and opening beyond one another, the whole surrounded by impenetrable woods." Following the taste of his times in landscape gardening, he adorned his lawns with artificial mounds, a shell temple, an obelisk, and a colonnade. But the crowning glory was the grotto, a tunnel decorated fantastically with shells and bits of looking-glass, which Pope dug under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope received in state, and his house and garden was for years the ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... which were one hundred gates of brass, must have had considerable architectural splendor. This account of Babylon, however, is probably exaggerated, especially as to the height of the walls. The tower of Belus, the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Obelisk of Semiramis were probably wonderful structures, certainly in size, which is one of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... bulls is that inscribed on the obelisk near Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland. In this inscription a very clumsy attempt is made to distinguish between natural tracks and ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... intermixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Kepler, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... known as the "Maison de France" . . . Within its walls the illustrious Champollion and his ally Rosellini lived and worked together in 1829, during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Here the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde took up their temporary quarters. And here, most interesting to English readers, Lady Duff Gordon lingered through some of her last winters, and wrote most ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... they threw no light on the matter. He knew ever variety of windmill and weathercock, but was not a whit the wiser as to the aerial sign in question. He had even dabbled in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the mystic symbols of the obelisk, but none furnished a key to the reply of Nicholas Koorn. He called a meeting of his council. Anthony Van Corlear stood forth in the midst, and putting the thumb of his right hand to his nose, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... land in tocher to the son of Sir Andrew Moray, patriot and friend of Wallace, in whom the Morays of Abercairny find their origin. Such were the men; and over there on Tomachastel was their home—a place famous then, and very noticeable still, with its gleaming memorial obelisk to "oor Davie" of Ferntower, the hardy soldier who overcame the fierce Tippoo Sahib at Seringapatam. Beyond lie the Aberuchill Hills, with the flat pyramidal face of Ben Voirlich filling up a gap, and sending its roots, on one side, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... lines owe something to his eye for costume, for staging; but, as mere picture writing, it is as firm as if carved on an obelisk. And as he reconciled concrete and abstract here, so he had left his short breath, in those earlier lines, behind, and had come into the long sweep and open water of ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... held converse with magic, methinks, And the future was given to her gaze; For an obelisk marked her abode, and a sphinx On her threshold kept vigil always. She was pensive and ever alone, nor was seen In the haunts of the dissolute crowd; But communed with the ghosts of the Pharaohs, I ween, Or with visitors wrapped ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... much commend the without-doors. This scene consists of a beautiful lake entirely shut in with wood: the head falls into a fine cascade, and that into a serpentine river, over which is a little Gothic seat like a round temple, lifted up by a shaggy mount. On an eminence in the park is an obelisk erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci amoenitatem et memoriam advent'us ejus." There are several paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... bragging, boasting blasphemies of this or that conquering king, all to the same tune—'I came, I saw, I conquered; I slew so many thousands of the people—I took so many thousands into captivity—I built this temple to the gods—I raised this obelisk or that pyramid'—and all by hand labour, with the miserable, belaboured slaves dying by their thousands upon thousands under their taskmasters' lashes, to be cast afterwards into the Nile, or left to the jackals and vultures. These and the crocodiles have always been wanted ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... of a large mining village in the Midlands. A man addressing a small gang of colliers from the foot of a stumpy memorial obelisk. Church bells heard. Churchgoers passing along ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... generally spent. Snow-field extend from the lake to the summit, which, although apparently near, requires 2 full hours' climbing to reach, often on hands and feet, over sharp fragments of rock, or up steep beds of slippery frozen snow. The extreme peak is a rugged obelisk of gray rock ending in a pinnacle. A way leads down by the S. side in 6 hours, to Guagno by lake Bettianella, 3419 ft., then W. by the road over the Col de Manganella, 5874 ft. See ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... which is tufted with trees in the prettiest manner imaginable; on the other side a rich scenery of wood, among which is Dr. Norris's house. To the right, on a rising ground on the banks of the river, is the obelisk, backed by a very bold declivity. Pursued the road till near it, quitted my chaise, and walked to the foot of it. It is founded on a rock which rises boldly from the river. It is a noble pillar, and admirably placed. I seated myself on the opposite rock, and indulged ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the apostles' execution was indicated "by immemorial tradition" as between the two goals (inter duas metas) of Nero's Circus, which spot Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... rising from a square, triangular, or other base, gradually diminishing in size till it ends in a point at the top. Like the obelisk, pyramids were sometimes erected to preserve the memory of singular events, or to transmit to future ages the glory and magnificence of princes; but oftener as funeral monuments and receptacles for ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... and the Jama Masjid is rich in memories of the Mutiny. It has on its left S. James' Church, with memorial tablets within and outside the shot-riddled globe which once surmounted its dome. Further on are the obelisk to the telegraph officers who stuck to their posts on the fatal 11th of May, and on a gateway of the Old Magazine a record of the heroism of the nine devoted men, who blew it up, losing five of their number ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... 210; knob, loma^, pena [U.S.], picacho^, tump^; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig^, tor^, peak, pike, clough^; escarpment, edge, ledge, brae; dizzy height. tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola; skyscraper. pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant mast. ceiling &c (covering) 223. high water; high tide, flood tide, spring tide. altimetry &c (angel) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to promote science: an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... within twenty or thirty feet of the floor, serves to give great effect to the large enclosed space of an antique hall. Against the walls are several marble monuments; one to the Earl of Chatham, a statue of white marble, with various allegorical contrivances, fronting an obelisk or pyramid of dark marble; and another to his son, William Pitt, of somewhat similar design and of equal size; each of them occupying the whole space, I believe, between pavement and ceiling. There is likewise a statue of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wild heart of Luther;" and adds: "I will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage, affection, and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain, so simple, honest, spontaneous; not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great. Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet, in the clefts of it, fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers. A right ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... new planet made." Dr. Eben sat down by her side, and they both waited in silence for the light. The whole western and southern sky glowed red; a high wind had been blowing all day, and the water was covered with foamy white caps; the tall, slender obelisk of the lighthouse stood out black against the red sky, and the shining waves leaped up and broke about its base. But all was quiet in the sheltered curve of the beach on which Hetty and Dr. Eben were sitting: the low surf rose and fell as gently ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... labour from the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Tiber. Upwards of thirty of them have perished without leaving any trace behind. They are doubtless buried deep under the ruins of ancient Rome, but the chance of their disinterment is very problematical. One obelisk, indeed, was exposed a hundred and forty years ago in the square of the principal church of the Jesuits, near the Pantheon; but being found to be broken, and also to underlie a corner of the church ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... passed on By the obelisk. In the language of my home Came to me the chatter of news. The mirror-poem which I had polished For masculine minxes Had been smeared at home ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Obelisk convinced us we had entered the confines of Abbot's Park, as the rules are generally termed, for here Bob recognised two or three among the sauntering rangers, whose habiliments bore evidence ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Weeks Tour' in the Southern Counties of England and Wales,' pp. 153-5. The roads all over South Wales were equally bad down to the beginning of the present century. At Halfway, near Trecastle, in Breconshire, South Wales, a small obelisk is still to be seen, which was erected to commemorate the turn over and destruction of the mail coach over a steep of l30 feet; the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... apex of a cone, from which the descent is equally steep on all sides, and which is only approached by a series of steps. To give in a few words an idea of the height of this tower, we may compare it to the obelisk of Luxor on its pedestal. The pedestal of the tower of Issoudun, which hid within its breast such archaeological treasures, was eighty feet high on the side towards the town. In an hour the cart was taken off its wheels and ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... had cleared a space for himself where he was now seated, clutching his hair impatiently from time to time, as he endeavored to decipher a page of notes, compared to which the hieroglyphics on the obelisk of Luxor, would have been transparently intelligible. Just as the secretary's impatience was approaching desperation, the door opened and a young officer wearing ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... success; and alike on the bare uplands and in the deep-scored valleys there were few signs of human life. Then, suddenly, in such a setting, we came upon the grandest of the Seven Marvels, the most wonderful lone rock in Europe, Mont Aiguille, more like an obelisk of incalculable immensity than a mountain. Once, it had been considered unscalable, and might have remained virgin until this century of hardy climbers, had not Charles the Eighth had a fancy to hear (not to see!) what was on top. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... are airy and pleasant, suitable to the climate. Most of them have balconies, where the owners sit and enjoy the air. Those of the lower classes ill-built, dirty, and almost without furniture. In the square where the market is held, near the pier, is a tolerably elegant marble obelisk in honour of our Lady of Candelaria, the tutelar goddess of the place. The Spaniards erected this statue, calling it Our Lady, keeping up some semblance of the ancient worship that they might better ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... for it became apparent just then that the opening close ahead of them was too narrow for the sledge to pass. It was narrowed by a buttress, or projection, of the cathedral-berg, which jutted up close to a vast obelisk of ice about forty feet high, ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... parts, and was obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around it. His tomb stands near the house,—a spacious receptacle, an iron door at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H——. There is a stone fence round the monument. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... asterisks generally denote the omission of some letters in a word, or of some bold or indelicate expression, or some defect in the manuscript."—Ib., 283. (12.) "An Ellipsis —— is also used, when some letters in a word, or some words in a verse, are omitted."—Ib., 283. (13.) "An Obelisk, which is marked thus [dagger], and Parallels thus ||, together with the letters of the Alphabet, and figures, are used as references to the margin, or bottom of the page."—Ib., 283. (14.) "A note of interrogation should not be employed, in cases where it is only said a ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... della Colonna and the Castle of St. Angelo (which burst upon me unexpectedly as I turned on the bridge), and got out as soon as St. Peter's was in sight. My first feeling was disappointment, but as I advanced towards the obelisk, with the fountains on each side, and found myself in that ocean of space with all the grand objects around, delight and admiration succeeded. As I walked along the piazza and then entered the church, I felt that sort of breathless bewilderment which was produced ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Tuileries and Rue de Rivoli. Numerous historical associations are connected with the place. The guillotine did much bloody work here during 1793-4-5; upwards of 2800 people perished by it. Foreign troops frequently bivouacked on the square when Paris was in their power. The Obelisk of Luxor, a Monolith or single block of reddish granite 76 feet high, was presented to Louis Phillipi by Mohamed Ali and erected in the centre of the Place. It adds very much to ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... the shrubberies, hidden from public view, is an obelisk commemorating the fall of Simon de Montfort, and in the plantation near the lower road is a tower, like the house denoting the period of the late Georgian Gothic revival, and bearing the name of the ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... count continued to descend the Corso. As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd became more dense, and above the heads of the multitude two objects were visible: the obelisk, surmounted by a cross, which marks the centre of the square, and in front of the obelisk, at the point where the three streets, del Babuino, del Corso, and di Ripetta, meet, the two uprights of the scaffold, between which glittered the curved knife of the mandaia. At the corner of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... named they would be by this time attacking the mill; but it was not likely that they would be punctual—some of the hands would be sure to be late. There would be discussion and delay before starting. They might well be half an hour after the time named before they left the steeple, as the obelisk in Sir George Armitage's field was called by the country people. He might be in time yet, but it would be a close thing; and had his own life depended upon the result Ned could not ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... I took the shadeless road leading out of the town towards the north-east, and after walking about a mile between vineyards, I came to the commemorative monument of the battle raised in 1888 by the Union Patriotique de France. It is a low obelisk, with no ornament save a mediaeval sword carved upon it, with point turned upwards. Facing the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, arrayed in his waterproof cape, and mounted on a low-shouldered hack instead of a charger, on the top of an arch, by way of perpetual atonement to France for Waterloo; and now to think of planting an obelisk of the Pharaohs on a cab-stand. An obelisk of the Pharaohs in ancient Rome was an august captive, symbolizing the university of the Roman Empire, but an obelisk of the Pharaohs in London symbolizes little more than did the Druidical ring of stones which an English squire ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... not least of the claims of our friend to reverence was the strange line of hieroglyph he left on the tabula rasa sea-washed, in column like the message written down an obelisk; and that the most high priest had no key to the cipher only made it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various |
