"Nativity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... utterance to be the very voice of God. The struggle with Newman was not the struggle of faith with scepticism, but the struggle between two kinds of loyalty, the personal loyalty to his own past and his own friends and the Church of his nativity, and the loyalty to the infinitely more ancient and venerable tradition of the Roman Church. It was, as I have said, an aesthetic conversion; he had the mind of a poet, and the particular kind of beauty which appealed to ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... crying for help and perishing for want of food and shelter, until, on Christmas Day, when the siege had continued nearly five months, Henry ordered food to be distributed to them "in the honor of Christ's nativity." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... subject—the connection between Paganism and Christianity still seems rather remote. Indeed the common notion is that Christianity was really a miraculous interposition into and dislocation of the old order of the world; and that the pagan gods (as in Milton's Hymn on the Nativity) fled away in dismay before the sign of the Cross, and at the sound of the name of Jesus. Doubtless this was a view much encouraged by the early Church itself—if only to enhance its own authority and importance; yet, as is well known to every student, it is quite misleading and contrary ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the successful evaders are for the most part foreigners, and those, too, of commonly despised races. The conclusion is plain: Seek the grounds on which to deny passage to undesirable emigrants who wish to come to the United States, in the villages from which they emanate. In the communes of their nativity the truth is known and ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and, being chosen assistant to Dr. Chauncey, preached the first time on the birthday that completed his twenty-fourth year, probably considering that as the day of a second nativity, by which he entered on a new period ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... served so loyally, and with so much distinction, so much temperance, albeit so disastrously for his own influence in the world, will perish on the far boundaries of an extremism altogether foreign to our English nativity. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... loaded with vine twigs, one with lime, women with black dresses and long white veils, boys with bent backs carrying iron stones. I saw, too, some Bethlehemite Christians hurrying home to the traditional site of the nativity. You can always distinguish these, for they are the only Christians in Palestine that wear turbans habitually. And all over the landscape dominated the beautiful green hills, fresh with the morning dew, a dew so thick that I had what I had not expected, a real morning bath. I was soaked quite wet ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... think Aunt Phoebe was named after her. Was there a sickness in any of the households, she was there ready to sit up and count out the drops of medicine. Was there a marriage, she helped deck the bride for the altar. Was there a new soul incarnated, she was there to rejoice at the nativity. Was there a sore bereavement she was there to console. The children, rushed out at her first appearance, crying, "Here comes Aunt Phoebe," and but for parental interference they would have pulled her down with their caresses—for she was not very strong, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... fearful cry of "Plague!" The city was in a great measure depopulated—and in those horrible regions, in the vicinity of the Thames, where amid the dark, narrow, and filthy lanes and alleys, the Demon of Disease was supposed to have had his nativity, Awe, Terror, and Superstition were alone to be ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the Place, it may if times alter be as pleasant & Beautifull with Regard to y^e Buildings as ever. But I Cannot Behold such a Number of my fellow beings (altho Differing in Complexion) Dragged from the Place of their Nativity, brought into a Country not to be taught the Principles of Religion & the Rights of Freeman, but to Be Slaves to Masters, who having Nothing but Interest in View without ever Weting their own Shoes, Drive these fellows to ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... in one of the Fifth Avenue pastry shops in the course of Nancy's indefatigable tours of exploration, who was the son of a French chef and a Virginian mother, and could express himself in the culinary art of either his father's or his mother's nativity. His staff of helpers and dishwashers had been chosen by himself, with what Nancy considered most felicitous results, while her own galaxy of waitresses, who operated the service kitchen up-stairs, proved themselves to a woman almost unbelievably ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... her." She was unaware perhaps at that time of the great distance that was to divide them; his feelings on being thus sundered need not be stated. However, he had scarcely been in Mississippi three weeks, ere his desire to return to his wife, and the place of his nativity constrained him to attempt to return; accordingly he set off, crossing a lake eighty miles wide in a small boat, he reached Kent Island. There he was captured by the watchman on the Island, who with pistols, dirk and cutlass ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... that the Lady Fast, if of an annual character, was regulated of necessity by the feast of the Annunciation, or, in the happier, more affectionate phrase of our forefathers, "the Gretynge of Our Ladye." The Blessed Virgin had no fewer than six festivals—those of the Conception, Nativity, Annunciation, Visitation, Purification, and Assumption—any one of which might be made the starting-point of the fast either by the choice of the votary or by the cast of the die. A third method is instanced in the "Popish Kingdom" of Barnabe Googe (1570), ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... after a deal of political tergiversation (Nicolas concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our Lady's nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward's reign, came to the British realm, and landed at Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have been in consonance with seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the other daughter of King Philippe ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Buddhacarita. It contains Sanskrit versions of old legends, which are almost verbal renderings of the Pali text, but also new material and seems to be conscious of relating novelties which may arouse scepticism for it interrupts the narrative to anathematize those who do not believe in the miracles of the Nativity and to extol the merits of faith (sraddha not bhakti). It is probably coeval with the earlier Gandharan art but there are no facts ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 7th September that Jeanne and her immediate followers reached the village of La Chapelle, where they encamped for the night. The next day was the day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a great festival of the Church. It could scarcely be a matter of choice on the part of so devout a Catholic as Jeanne to take this day of all others, when every church bell was tinkling forth a summons to the faithful, for the day of assault. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... Raphael and of Luini; but they break their wands across their knees with the same gesture and expression; and although the temple is sometimes close at hand, and sometimes a little way off, the wedding ceremony invariably takes place outside it, and not inside. The shepherds in the Nativity are sometimes young and sometimes old, but they always come in broad daylight, and the manger by which the Virgin is kneeling is always outside the stable, and always in one corner of the picture. Again, whatever slight difference there may be in the expression and gesture of the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... of white corn and Yolaikaiason an ear of yellow corn on the mountain where the fogs meet. The corn conceived, the white corn giving birth to Hasjelti and the yellow corn to Hostjoghon. These two became the great song-makers of the world. They gave to the mountain of their nativity (Henry Mountain in Utah) two songs and two prayers; they then went to Sierra Blanca (Colorado) and made two songs and prayers and dressed the mountain in clothing of white shell with two eagle plumes placed upright upon the head. From here they visited San Mateo Mountain (New Mexico) and ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... whose most startling adventure in life, we have just witnessed, was the only son of a Carolinian, who could boast the best blood of English nobility in his veins. The sire, however, had outlived his fortunes, and, late in life, had been compelled to abandon the place of his nativity—an adventurer, struggling against a proud stomach, and a thousand embarrassments—and to bury himself in the less known, but more secure and economical regions of Tennessee. Born to affluence, with wealth that seemed adequate to all reasonable desires—a noble plantation, numerous slaves, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... "On the Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a ruby, one piece of silk, and one gold cup of the weight of ten marks; and when ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... governor, seeing that the sentence was already executed, and that he had now obtained the chief object of his desire, wrote to the archbishop, requesting him to have the censures removed and the interdict raised, and the churches opened on the day of the nativity of our Lady. The archbishop, recognizing the duplicity of the governor, refused to answer that letter without first consulting the orders; and, after consulting with some of them, decided that he would not raise the interdict, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... like the Emperor Titus, to have lost a day. But what came of the London lady's or of Mrs. Schreiber's Spartan discipline? Did the little blind kittens of Gracechurch-street, who were ordered by their penthesilean mamma, on the very day of their nativity, to face the most cruel winds—did they, or did Mrs. Schreiber's wards, justify, in after life, this fierce discipline, by commensurate results of hardiness? In words written beyond all doubt by Shakspeare, though not generally recognized as his, it might have been ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... similar liberal arts supported their professors, was a matter of course. The casting of horoscopes was already a scientific pursuit; Lucius Tarutius of Firmum, a respectable and in his own way learned man, a friend of Varro and Cicero, with all gravity cast the nativity of kings Romulus and Numa and of the city of Rome itself, and for the edification of the credulous on either side confirmed by means of his Chaldaean and Egyptian wisdom the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the child of old age. My nativity, I am told, was not heartily welcomed, for the family was already within one of a dozen, and the means of support were not superabundant. I arrived at Middlebrook, New Jersey, while my father kept the toll-gate, at which business the older children helped him, but I was too small to be of service. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... been frequently applied to for a decision of disputes, and sometimes wagers,[A] respecting the place of his nativity, and finding they sometimes operate to his disadvantage: Begs leave to give this public information—that he was born in Nottingham-west, in the State of New-Hampshire—in which state he resided until sixteen years old; after which time, he traveled by sea and land to various ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... exclusive establishment for the daughters of people of fashion, Eve at an early age had made her debut; but within the year her father died, and her mother, whose heart had always been in the city of her nativity, closed the house on East Fifty-seventh street and removed with her daughter to Paris. There Eve had met her future husband. Shortly after, her mother died. Eve returned to New York to attend to some business in connection with her estate, remaining only ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... who takes charge of perhaps a dozen young women, who are to be cooped up for months in the same ship with as many young men. Love, powerful everywhere, has on the waters even more potent sway, hereditary, I presume, from his mother's nativity. Idleness is the friend of Love; and passengers have little or nothing to do to while away the tedium of a voyage. In another point, he has great advantage, from the limited number of the fair sex. In a ball or in general society, a man may see hundreds of women, admire many, yet fall ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... strengthened. The church attached to the monastery of Lips was dedicated to the Theotokos, as may be inferred from the circumstance that the annual state visit of the emperor to that shrine took place on the festival of the Nativity of the Virgin.[198] So likewise was the sanctuary which Phenere Isa Mesjedi represents, for the inscription it bears invokes her blessing upon the building and its builder (Fig. 42). Would that the identity of all the churches in Constantinople ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... reluctance that she consented to follow her husband into the wilderness. Having at last consented, she showed the greatest firmness in carrying out a resolution which involved the loss of a happy home at the place of her nativity, and consigned her to a life of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... descended from a family illustrious in France and ancient in Italy, and born upon a day remarkable for the taking of a monstrous sturgeon in a small river that runs through the country of Montmirail, in Brie, the place of my nativity. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... Southern States termed piazza; this being but little elevated above the level of the outside street. Besides Don Ignacio and his daughter, but one other individual occupied the house—their only servant, a young girl of Mexican nativity and mixed blood, half white, half Indian—in short, a mestiza. The straitened circumstances of the exile forbade a more expensive establishment. Still, the insignia within were not those of pinched poverty. The sitting-room, if small, was tastefully furnished, while, among ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... surround the birth of Confucius. With the same desire to glorify the Sage, and in perfect good faith, they narrate how the event was heralded by strange portents and miraculous appearances, how genii announced to Ching-tsai the honor that was in store for her, and how fairies attended at his nativity. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... at Oxford; where, in his chamber in Christ Church College, he departed this life, at or very near the time which he had some years before foretold, from the calculation of his own nativity, and which, says Wood, "being exact, several of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his neck." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... other days unto their forefathers. "Know, therefore," the Lord continued to speak, "that I shall provide for you all together what is for your good, and for thee in particular that which shall make thee celebrated; for the child out of dread of whose nativity the Egyptians have doomed the Israelite children to destruction, shall be this child of thine, and be shall remain concealed from those who watch to destroy him, and when he has been bred up, in a miraculous ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... of the plain stands the Greek convent called Mar Elyas. This is about half way to Bethlehem, and the city of the nativity soon comes into view. Before going much farther the traveler sees a well-built village, named Bet Jala, lying on his right. It is supposed to be the ancient Giloh, mentioned in 2 Samuel 15:12 as the home of Ahithophel, David's counselor, for whom Absalom sent when he conspired against ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... offered the following: "No discrimination shall be made in any State among the citizens of the United States in the exercise of the elective franchise, or in the right to hold office in any State, on account of race, color, nativity, property, education, or religious creed." Mr. Trumbull declared that the adoption of this Amendment would abolish the constitutions of perhaps all, certainly of half, the States of the Union. He then pointed out that the constitution of almost every State prescribed a ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... him, that with an enchanted ointment, which they had prepared for him, he shall be invulnerable, though he should face the mouth of a cannon: they have, at the earnest request of Hermione, calculated his nativity, and find him born to be a king; and, that before twenty moons expire, he shall be crowned in France: and flattering his easy youth with all the vanities of ambition, they have made themselves absolutely ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Indians, drew her and the children in safety to the land. But his trials were not at an end, for many of the hastily constructed rafts and canoes sank before his eyes, and the mortality of Indians was great. Eventually they found a temporary refuge in the Reduction of the Nativity upon the Acaray, and at Santa Maria la Mayor upon the Iguazu. Then famine raged, and the arrival of so many people increased the scarcity, so that six hundred of the new arrivals died in one reduction, and five hundred in the next. At last the scarcity became so great that the poor Indians ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... reading could ever make them able to appropriate; but Annie read, understood, and re-read the "Paradise Lost"; knew intimately "Comus" as well; delighted in "Lycidas," and had some of Milton's sonnets by heart; while for the Hymn on the Nativity, she knew every line, had studied every turn and phrase in it. It is sometimes a great advantage not to have many books, and so never outgrow the sense of mystery that hovers about even an open book-case; it was with awe and reverence that Annie, looking around ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... negro. nublina. mist, fog. ocote. pine-tree, splinter of pine. otro. other. padre. father, priest. padrecito. priest. pais. country, esp. one's native town. panela. sugar in cake or loaf. papaya. a fruit. pastorela. a drama relative to the Nativity. pastores. shepherds. patio. inside court of house. pelico, mai. tobacco, with chili and lime. peso. a money denomination, one hundred centavos, one dollar. petate. mat. pinolillo. a species of tick. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Borne to mishap, my self am only she On whom the Sun of Fortune never shined: But Planets ruled by retrogard aspect Foretold mine ill in my nativity. ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... to give the names of the men constituting this body, and the places of their nativity. The ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. Mark made his first Confession on the vigil, his first Communion on the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... elements are taught in the several books of the gospels, yet it makes no difference to the faith of the believers, since by one guiding Spirit all things are declared in all of them concerning the nativity, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation with His disciples, and His two comings, the first in lowliness and contempt, which has come to pass, the second glorious with royal ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the nativity was passed the Star ascended up into the firmament, and it had right many long streaks and beams, more burning and brighter than a brand of fire; and, as an eagle flying and beating the air with his wings, right so the streaks and beams of the Star ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... blur on the moonlit road; and very crisply their music rang out beneath a sky scattered with cloud and stars. All their songs were simple carols of the country, and the burden of them was but the joy of man at Christ's nativity; but the young man and maid who walked behind ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Germans; my grandfather was born in the South. About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade farewell to the land of his nativity and emigrated to South Africa. They found a home for themselves in the neighbourhood of Port Elizabeth, and there they settled as farmers. Two of the brothers married women of Dutch extraction; ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... much needed change and refreshment for both Gilbert and Frances. Her Diary shows a vivid enjoyment of all the scenes and happenings: going into the Church of the Nativity with a door "so low you can hardly get in—this done to prevent the cattle from straying in"; seeing camels on the roof of a convent; standing godmother to an Armenian ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... a previous state recognition of Christianity. But that was neither splendid nor distinct. Whereas the Byzantine Rome built avowedly upon Christianity as its own basis, and consecrated its own nativity by the sublime act of founding the first provision ever attempted for the poor, considered simply as poor, (i.e. as objects of pity, not as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... had foretold their miscarriage. The old and the new are as"mismatched as an orange and a lemon, and destroy each other; nor is there room enough to retire back and see half of the new; and Sir Joshua's washy Virtues make the Nativity a dark spot from the darkness of the Shepherds, which happened, as I knew it would, from most of Jarvis's ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... when he was to perform what was then thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling more than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his destination till noon on the day preceding his birthday. It seemed as if he had been carried away ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... position assumed by Richard Cameron, and his followers, and commended to public approval their testimony. Some three years ago, a like public commemoration of Renwick's birth and martyrdom was celebrated, at the place of his nativity near MONIAIVE, in the south of Scotland,—ministers and people of the Free, United, and Reformed Presbyterian Churches manifesting the deepest interest in the proceedings. Besides the ministers and large concourse of people—many of them gathered from great distances, ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... bust of Christ on the easternmost division of the vaulting. One hand holds the Gospels, with the inscription Salus Populi Ego Sum. On the wall beneath are the Descent from the Cross and the Entombment. The Nativity and Annunciation also appear on the roof, while on the walls are the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus, the Descent into Hell, and the Appearance to Mary Magdalene ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... Thomasius, (the finishing of which some ascribe to Pope Gelasius I., others more probably to Leo I., though the ground was doubtless the work of their predecessors,) this festival is called the Octave of our Lord's Nativity. The same title is given to it in the Latin calendar (or rather collection of the gospels read at Mass throughout the year) written above 900 years ago, presented to the public by F. John Fronteau, regular canon of saint Genevieve's at Paris, and by ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... treated with more care and less rapidity than Signorelli usually gave to predella work, while retaining the same breadth and freedom of general effect. "The Annunciation," with its beautiful perspective, is one of his best compositions of this subject, in which he is always so successful. "The Nativity" recalls that of the Uffizi predella; "The Adoration of the Magi" is a fine rendering of the scene, but the two last are the most interesting as well as being the best in workmanship. In "The Flight into ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... never come to the scragging-post, unless you turn topsman, Dick Turpin. My nativity has been cast, and the stars have declared I am to die by the hand of my best friend—and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the queen of old King Henry, was distinguished from her by being called Margaret of York, as she belonged to the York family. The queen was generally known as Margaret of Anjou. Anjou was the place of her nativity. ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... LEO, in one of his homilies on the nativity of our Saviour, says, in addressing man: "O man, recognize thy dignity!" We might, with all due propriety, address these same words to woman, for her happiness and virtues depend in great measure on the elevated idea that she has of herself, and on the care with which she maintains this idea, both ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... joint guardianship of the Romans, Greeks, and Armenians, who vie with each other in adorning it. Beneath an altar gorgeously decorated, and lit with everlasting fires, there stands the low slab of stone which marked the holy site of the Nativity, and near to this is a hollow scooped out of the living rock. Here the infant Jesus was laid. Near the spot of the Nativity is the rock against which the Blessed Virgin was leaning when she presented her babe to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... reasonable pride in my ancestral land. But odds were against me. Even the mistress of my manse, whose judgment was wont to take counsel of her kindly heart, even she remonstrated when she first discovered my nativity, and has never since been altogether thankful, though she strives ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... with botany, I have confined myself to a description of the general impression produced by the luxuriant growth of the soil, without entering into the individualities of the vegetation. In the more highly situated Montanas, where the cinchona is found in the place of its nativity, the gigantic orchidae, the numerous fern plants, the tree-like nettles, the wonderful bignonias, and the numerous, impenetrable complications of climbing plants, powerfully rivet the attention of the observer. Lower down, in the lighter forest soil, amidst numerous shrubs and climbers, the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... from whom we could reasonably expect to hear the truth about the mystery of the miraculous Conception—Mary and Joseph; and when we open the Gospels we have, as everybody knows, two narratives of the Nativity—St. ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... of a dance of angels and religious shows us that Fra Angelico thought the practice joyful; this dance is almost a counterpart of that amongst the Greeks (fig. 11). The other dance, by Sandro Botticelli (fig. 44), is taken from his celebrated "Nativity" in the National Gallery. Although we have records of performances in churches, no illustrations of an early date have come to the knowledge of ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... all is now to me the cause of much remorse and sorrow; yet erelong I hope to be absolved from it by our Holy Father. In the meanwhile, I am resolved to go and join my fellow-countrymen, and assist them in their efforts to restore to its liberty the land of my nativity, for none, as you know, is an enemy of his own flesh, and as for me, I love my people. Let me beseech you, then, to adopt the same resolution, and you shall ever be esteemed my most dear friends and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents—in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Antonio," says the tenant of the double flat,—the one with two rooms,—"come and keep Christmas." Antonio enters, cap in hand. In the corner by the dormer-window a "crib" has been fitted up in commemoration of the Nativity. A soap-box and two hemlock branches are the elements. Six tallow candles and a night-light illuminate a singular collection of rarities, set out with much ceremonial show. A doll tightly wrapped in swaddling-clothes represents "the Child." Over it stands a ferocious-looking ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... morning on the 28th, we began to unmoor, and at eight weighed, and stood out to sea, with a light breeze at N.W., which afterwards freshened, and was attended with rain. At noon, the east point of the sound (Point Nativity) bore N. 1/2 W., distant one and a half leagues, and St Ildefonzo Isles S.E. 1/2 S., distant seven leagues. The coast seemed to trend in the direction of E. by S.; but the weather being very ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... of more ancient birth than many very honest people suspect; nay, more than, were the register of its nativity laid before their eyes, they would be willing to admit. We have no space for its voluminous history; but it is our belief, since quackery first plied its profitable trade with human incredulity, it never perpetrated so successful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... that Gargantua was born. He did not whimper as the other babes used to do, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice, he shouted out, "Drink, drink, drink!" The sound was so extremely great that it rang over two counties. I am afraid that you do not thoroughly believe in the truth of this strange nativity. Believe it or not, I do not care. But an honest man, a man of good sense, always believes what is told him, and what ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... visions of the other they opposed those of 'a certain Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine hysterical temperament, frantic at need, and half mad—so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of dog-fight was got up between the two. They besmeared each other with false charges. Anne saw the devil quite ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... which had been set down to the Pope's account, and in receiving two monks arrived from Jerusalem to present to the King, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, as well as the sacred standard. Lastly, on the 25th of December, 800, "the day of the Nativity of our Lord," says Eginhard, "the King came into the basilica of the blessed St. Peter, apostle, to attend the celebration of mass. At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was bowing down to pray, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Letter, Leander quitted Ferara with a Grief inexpressible, but however had Resolution to finish his Journey to the Place of his Nativity without self Violence, but soon after, ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... on gallant schemes for the advantage and advancement of that branch of happiness.... I consider the duty of a true Englishwoman is to do what honour she can to her native country; and that it would be a sin against the pious love I bear the land of my nativity, to confine the renown due to the Schemers within the small extent of this little island, which ought to be spread wherever men can sigh, or women wish. 'Tis true they have the envy and curses of the old ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... regard to a matter yet more trifling.] and that he thereby subjected himself self to open rebuke in his own country;[4] [Footnote 4: See Dyce's Strictures etc., 1859, p. 28.] and he found, we suppose, his justification for this course in his seniority and his opponent's place of nativity. It is true, also, that, in the recently published edition of Shakespeare's Works, just alluded to, he has vengefully revived, in its worst form, the animosity which disgraced the pages of the editors and commentators ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... your name and age, the place of your nativity, and all you know of the marriage performed at the Church of St. ——, in the city of Philadelphia, on the fifteenth day of September last, between the hours of twelve and one p. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of Bells.—There is a story, that a person had long been absent from the land of his nativity, where in early life, he had assisted in setting up a singularly fine peal of bells. On his return home, after a lapse of many years, he had to be rowed over some water, when it happened that the bells struck out in peal; the sound of which so affected him, that ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... Incarnation that justifies all joy, and song is the expression of joy. The Gospel Songs all celebrate the Great Nativity. Birth and marriage are the occasions most sacred to mirth and music among men; and Christmas is at once the Birthday and the ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... the continual activity of divine providence from infancy to the very close of life. Here it need only be said that all the laws of divine providence have the salvation and reformation of the human being for their object, in other words, the inversion of his state, which by nativity is infernal, into the opposite, which is heavenly. This can only be done progressively as man recedes from evil and its enjoyment and comes ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... or will teach you, that most of the wonderful stories patients and others tell of sudden and signal cures are like Owen Glendower's story of the portents that announced his birth. The earth shook at your nativity, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... my appointment, because my black-and-white is not sufficiently yellow for them; but I hardly believe they will succeed, and you, my poor dear, will probably have to jump into the cold water of diplomacy; and the boy, unlucky wight that he is, will have a South-German accent added to his Berlin nativity. * * * As far as can now be foreseen, I shall not be able to get away from this galley for two or three weeks, for, including Silesia, that amount of time would probably be necessary for it. But much water will flow down the Main before then, and I am not worrying ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... to her, to ask her on what day and at what hour she was born. They also inquired concerning the birthdays of her parents, and other events of her life. Timotheus had informed her that the emperor had ordered them to cast her nativity. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "ting-a-ting-ting" of diminutive rivals. If demons dwell in Moscow and dislike bell-ringing, as is generally supposed, then there must have been at that moment a general stampede of the powers of darkness such as is described by Milton in his poem on the Nativity, and as if this deafening din were not enough, big guns were fired in rapid succession from a battery of artillery close at hand! The noise seemed to stimulate the religious enthusiasm, and the general ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... a mournful relict of five husbands, and the happy mother of twenty-seven children, the tender pledges of our chaste embraces. Had old Rome, instead of England, been the place of my nativity and abode, what honours might I not have expected to my person, and immunities to my fortune? But I need not tell you that virtue of this sort meets with no encouragement in our northern climate. Children, instead ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... American, who by the very fact of that nativity is bound to support the Constitution of the United States, and no foreign-born citizen who has taken the oath of allegiance to it, has a right by his vote to do anything that will imperil or impede the carrying out of its principles and its commands. "The establishment of justice, the insurement ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... we run through an eternity of lives and deaths. Surfeited with the unqualified pleasures of heaven, we "straggle down to this terrene nativity:" When, amid the sour exposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed our appetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, we forsake the body and ascend to heaven; this constant recurrence illustrating the great truths, that alternation ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... magazines; French, English, and American, Punch, the Spectator, the Nation, the 'Revue des deux Mondes'. Like the able general she was, Mrs. Constable kept her communications open, and her acquaintance was by no means confined to the city of her nativity. And if a celebrity were passing through, it were pretty safe, if in doubt, to address him in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... elevation, encircled in every part by water, without tree or created thing; and immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men of deformed stature and possessed the land, and desiring to see the nativity of the sun, as well as his occident, proposed to go and seek them. Dividing themselves into two parties, some journeyed to the west and others toward the east; these travelled; until the sea cut off ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... bright young Christian lad of that nation, who helped me to instruct those who were to be baptized. It was thus that I spent Advent in the year fifteen hundred and ninety-five. We celebrated Christmas Eve and the feast of the Nativity with solemnity and joy, preparing in the meantime to celebrate our first feast of the Circumcision, for which we had decorated the church and invited father Fray Bartolomeo Garcia—at that time the preacher in the Sebu convent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... landscapes in the Ryks Museum. Still, they liked to hear that at Laren Corot's great disciple had found inspiration. Nowhere in the Netherlands are there such beautiful barns, each one of which is a background for a Nativity picture; and it was Laren peasants, Laren cows, and the sunlit and cloud-shadowed meadows of Laren which kept Mauve's brush busy ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... lounging, play, and perfume, to Herod's rich palm-tree groves; why the other, rich and uneasy, from the rising of the light to the evening shade, subdues his woodland with fire and steel: our attendant genius knows, who governs the planet of our nativity, the divinity [that presides] over human nature, who dies with each individual, of various ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... May an ancient Spanish Nativity Play for Christmastide, which Reverend Raymond Mestres intends to translate into English, and which contains glorious music, and a history of mission times, which this scholarly pastor of San Carlos Church has in store, soon delight Californians ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... easily understood how these houses were dealt with in erecting a scheme of nativity. The position of the planets at the moment of the native's birth, in the several houses, determined his fortunes with regard to the various matters associated with these houses. Thus planets of good influence in the native's ascendant, or first house, signified generally a prosperous life; but ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... our population, which had alternately risen and fallen since 1860, now fell again, from 14.8 per cent. to 13.7 per cent. The South retained its distinction as the most thoroughly American section of the land, having a foreign nativity population varying from 7.9 per cent. in Maryland to only 0.2 ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... The Nativity, he named the fort, in remembrance of the day of the wreck, and when he came back in 1493 he hopefully expected to find its garrison awaiting him, with a rich treasure in the precious yellow metal. He reached the spot to find the fort ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... greatly gifted; well for him that his great powers are given to good, rather than to evil. The sacred festival of the birth of the Christ is so near, and our brother sings at Paris the joyful songs of his nativity. This being a Saint's day, some of the younger brothers of our order have begged our sweet singer of the churches to pour forth the notes of his melody, that they also, may feel as the Parisiens, the wonderful power ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... first report, under the supervision of Commissioner John Lamb, appeared in 1888 for the years 1887 and 1888, found little or no room for statistics, but included a chapter on working-women, with a few admirable tables of age, nativity, home and working conditions, etc. Minute inquiry was made as to cost of living, clothing, etc.; and the results form a chapter of painful interest, that on domestic service being equally suggestive. Clothing, as usual, represents the lowest average wage, $3.66 per week, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... order of Being—the Beginner of a new race. Adam had in himself all the possibilities which Christ realized, but the former failed and the latter succeeded and so has become the Head of a divine and heavenly type of humanity. By "a new nativity," a rebirth from above, any man in the world who wills it in living faith may be a recipient of the divine-principle, the Christ-Life, and may thereby be raised to membership in the Kingdom of the Christ-Humanity, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... herself more than mortal, a maiden from Oroolia, the Island of Delights, somewhere in the paradisiacal archipelago of the Polynesians. To this isle, while yet an infant, by some mystical power, she had been spirited from Amma, the place of her nativity. Her name was Yillah. And hardly had the waters of Oroolia washed white her olive skin, and tinged her hair with gold, when one day strolling in the woodlands, she was snared in the tendrils of a vine. Drawing her into its bowers, it gently transformed her into one of its blossoms, leaving her ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... they represented the unlimited world of liberty and endeavour; at sight of them something stirred in her that was the gift of all the wandering years of that old Ulysses, her grandfather, to whom the beckoning lights of ships at sea were irresistible, and though she doted on the glens of her nativity, she had the spirit that invests every hint of distant places and far-off ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... between them, which, or some of which, observable at first, grew more distinct in the lapse of years, in their places of nativity, in their temperaments, in their intellectual traits, and in their politics. Both were partly of Gallic descent; but here they differed as in other things. Tazewell was French on the father's side; Taylor on the mother's. Tazewell's ancestors were from that city on the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... and with joy beaming from every feature, saw me tear from it many a goodly mouthful. We talked—he in Norwegian, I in a mixture of German and English; we chewed; we spat; we laughed and joked; we forgot all the discrepancies of age, nativity, condition, and future prospects; in short, we were brothers, by the sublime and potent free-masonry of tobacco. All that day my senses were entranced. I saw nothing but familiar faces, gulches, canyons, bar-rooms, and boozy stage-drivers; smelt nothing but whisky and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... time for dinner," said the pastor. Religion with these mountain worshippers was not a form. The birthday of the blessed Redeemer was to them a reality. They believed that he was born and that he died; and it was to commemorate his nativity that hymns were sung and garlands wound. At an early hour they began to gather, and before the time of service the house was closely packed. There were no chains of evergreen, but small fir-trees were occasionally placed. ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... invitation to send fraternal delegates is extended to all societies known to be in sympathy with our movement. Individuals of whatever race, nativity or creed, who believe in the right of the woman citizen to protect her interests in society by the ballot, are invited to be present. The enfranchisement of women is emphatically a world movement. The unanswerable logic upon which the movement is based and the opposition ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldaea, the land of their nativity."—Ezek. xxiii. 15. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... familiar acquaintance, a good philosopher and mathematician, and one, too, that out of curiosity had studied the way of drawing schemes and tables, and was thought to be a proficient in the art; to him Varro propounded to cast Romulus's nativity, even to the first day and hour, making his deductions from the several events of the man's life which he should be informed of, exactly as in working back a geometrical problem; for it belonged, he said, to the same science ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his mean? I find people better instructed, and made more sensible of those benefits, where the feasts are not kept than where they are. 3. Think they their people sufficiently instructed in the grounds of religion, when they hear of the nativity, passion, &c.—what course will they take for instructing them in other principles of faith? Why do they not keep one way, and institute an holiday for ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... his life on soil that was not geographically a part of Greece; but the fact has an important significance of another kind. Thanks to his environment, Thales was necessarily brought more or less in contact with Oriental ideas. There was close commercial contact between the land of his nativity and the great Babylonian capital off to the east, as also with Egypt. Doubtless this association was of influence in shaping the development of Thales's mind. Indeed, it was an accepted tradition throughout classical times that the Milesian ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... pleasantness for others, after an illness that was happily brief. He passed, in the words of that great physician, Sir Thomas Browne, "in drowsy approaches of sleep;... believing with those resolved Christians who, looking on the death of this world but as a nativity of another, do contentedly submit unto the common necessity, and envy not Enoch ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... slaves for sale, but eight others afterwards joined them, making in all thirty-five. The schoolmaster who was on his return to Woradoo, the place of his nativity, took with him eight of his scholars. Altogether, the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... at Ripon on certain feasts, notably Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsuntide, and the feasts of St. Wilfrid's death (October 12th) and translation (April 24th), to which was added later a feast of his nativity, observed on the Sunday after Lammas Day, and in the parish of Ripon only.[18] On St. Wilfrid's feasts the privilege of sanctuary was extended beyond the mile-limit to all who visited the mother-church, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... was at a loss to know by what process they had arrived at the conclusion that seven men of science must be substituted to fill the place of one distinguished statesman whom they had expected to hear. He prided himself on his Albany nativity. He was proud of the old Dutch character, that was the substratum of the city. The Dutch are hard to be moved, but when they do start their momentum is not as other men's in proportion to the velocity, but as the square of the velocity. So when the ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... at once, and wanted to buy it, but the school-master insisted that he should take it as a gift. He declares that his Commentaries thereupon are the most perfect of all his writings. The book contains his famous Nativity of Christ. A remark in De Libris Propriis (cf. Opera, tom. i. p. 67) indicates that there was an earlier edition of Ptolemy, printed at Milan at Cardan's own cost, because when he saw the numerous mistakes made by Ottaviano Scoto in printing ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... which the coarse taste of the audience demanded. Sometimes, in the later period, altogether original and very realistic scenes from actual English life were added, like the very clever but very coarse parody on the Nativity play in the 'Towneley' cycle. More often comic treatment was given to the Bible scenes and characters themselves. Noah's wife, for example, came regularly to be presented as a shrew, who would not enter the ark until she had been beaten into submission; and Herod always appears as a blustering ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... know that many eminent artists have made the painting of animals a specialty, and among them are such world-renowned names as Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. Moreover, in the numerous pictures of the Nativity we often find the homely details of the stable introduced. One of Rubens' paintings of this sacred and favorite subject, which hangs in the gallery of the Louvre, represents two oxen feeding ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... like our laws she'd better emigrate!" This legal authority failed to advise where she could emigrate to find laws which were equally just to men and to women. It might also have answered the question, "Should a woman be compelled to leave the land of her nativity because of the injustice of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... became associated had those pronounced Armenoid traits which can still be traced in representatives of the Hebrew people. Of special interest in this connection is Ezekiel's declaration regarding the ethnics of Jerusalem: "Thy birth and thy nativity", he said, "is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Likewise the two following days, and the ensuing Sunday, are particularly kept holy, because on that day St Thomas thrust his hand into the side of our Saviour. Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday, the Assumption and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, Candlemas Day, Christmas Day, all the days of the apostles, and all the Sundays throughout the year, are kept with much devotion. They sanctify in a particular manner the first ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... pieces. The exact resemblance of the figure of Pulcinello is said to have been found among the frescoes of Pompeii. If he came originally from Atella, he is still mostly to be met with in the old land of his nativity. The objection that these traditions could not well have been preserved during the cessation for so many centuries of all theatrical amusements, will be easily got over when we recollect the licences annually enjoyed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... New Orleans in March last of eleven men of Italian nativity by a mob of citizens was a most deplorable and discreditable incident. It did not, however, have its origin in any general animosity to the Italian people, nor in any disrespect to the Government of Italy, with which our relations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... support to his aged and indigent parents. In the year 1800, he resigned his lease to the poet, having taken another farm on the occasion of his marriage. James now established himself, along with his parents, at Ettrick-house, the place of his nativity, after a period of ten years' connexion with Mr Laidlaw of Blackhouse, whose conduct towards him, to use his own words, had proved "much more like that of a father than a master." It was during the course of a visit to Edinburgh in the same year, that an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in the land of my nativity: grave, dignified old men with imposing beards, owners of land and cattle and many horses, though many of them could not spell their own names; handsome too, some of them with regular features, descendants of good old Spanish families who colonized the wide ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... had kept but a bad look-out. Her officers and her passengers were making merry in the cabin—the wine-cup was at their lips, and the song was floating joyously from the mouths of the fair ones returning to the land of their nativity. The blooming daughters, the newly-married wife, and two matrons with their innocent ones beside them, were all in the happiness of their hopes when the Destroyer was upon them suddenly, truly like ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... explain or even to qualify the delicate exhilaration that you feel—delicate, you may say, and yet excessive, greater than can be said in prose, almost greater than an invalid can bear. There is a certain wine of France known in England in some gaseous disguise, but when drunk in the land of its nativity still as a pool, clean as river water, and as heady as verse. It is more than probable that in its noble natural condition this was the very wine of Anjou so beloved by Athos in the 'Musketeers.' Now, if the reader has ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... showed openly the most foul face of treason on the day of St. Stephen. They threw the village into such consternation that if God had not aided it, it would have been impossible to restore it to its former quiet. It happened that, as some Indians had not been at mass on either the eve or day of the nativity, the prior meeting one of them afterward who was most esteemed for his bravery, chid him for his fault, although with demonstrations of paternal charity. He had no intentions of exasperating him, for he knew quite well that the Indian was inducing his countrymen to swell the number ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... Deposition from the Cross, which Fra Bartolommeo had sketched out and left uncoloured at Pian di Mugnone. In 1519 Fra Paolo finished it, and it presents the usual disparity between the composition and colouring, the former being good, the latter weak and crude. His best known works are a Nativity in the Palazzo Borghese, a Madonna and Child with S. John Baptist in the Sciarra Colonna, also in Rome; a Madonna and Child with S. John in the Corsini Gallery, Florence, and another of the same subject in the Antinori Palace. He painted also ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... contrary, were quite serious. He had genuine poetic feeling, but little talent. In trying to reproduce Spenser's richness of imagery and the soft modulation of his verse, he succeeds only in becoming tediously ornate. His stanzas are nerveless, though not unmusical. His college exercise, "The Nativity," 1736, is a Christmas vision which comes to the shepherd boy Thomalin, as he is piping on the banks of Isis. It employs the pastoral machinery, includes a masque of virtues,—Faith, Hope, Mercy, etc.,—and closes with a compliment to ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of marvellous invention; but it has no rival in the architectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling for balanced masses it displays. The five subjects chosen by Giovanni for his bas-reliefs are the "Nativity," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and the "Last Judgment." In the "Nativity" our Lady is no longer the Roman matron of Niccola's conception, but a graceful mother, young in years, and bending with the weakness of childbirth. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... to represent the three wise men of the East coming to worship on the nativity of Christ, depicted three Arabian or Indian kings, two of them white and one black, and all of them in the posture of kneeling. The position of the legs of each figure not being very distinct, he inadvertently painted three black feet for the negro king, and three also between the two white kings; ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest men it had in it were as proud of knowing that retiring lines converge, as if all the wisdom of Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing point. And, accordingly, it became nearly impossible for any one to paint a Nativity, but he must turn the stable and manger into a Corinthian arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspective; and half the best architecture of the time, instead of being adorned with historical sculpture, as of old, was set forth with bas-relief ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns. It relates to Partridge, the almanack-maker. I have consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... such as the varying form of the chorus to Psalm cxxxvi; but while it corrects the errata tabulated in that edition it commits many more blunders of its own. It is valuable, however, as the editio princeps of ten of the sonnets and it contains one important alteration in the Ode on the Nativity. This and all other alterations will be found noted where they occur. I have not thought it necessary to note mere differences of spelling between the two editions but a word may find place here upon their general character. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... dealt with thee so kindly, and cared for thee as no father before? Hence the perversity and contrariness of thy mind, gathering strength by the licence that I gave thee, hath made thy madness to fall upon mine own pate. Rightly prophesied the astrologers in thy nativity that thou shouldest prove a knave and villain, an impostor and rebellious son. But now, if thou wilt make void my counsel, and cease to be my son, I will become thine enemy, and entreat thee worse than ever man yet entreated ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... numerous. Like Fra Filippo, Botticelli's angels are noble youths, some of them belonging to the great families of the time. They are prone to be ecstatic with joy or frantic with grief. There is a grand Coronation of the Virgin, by Botticelli at Hamilton Palace, and a beautiful Nativity by the old master belongs to Mr Fuller Maitland. His Madonna and Child are grand and tragic figures always. Botticelli's noble frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are apt to be overlooked because of Michael Angelo's 'sublime work' ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... On his "Nativity," Botticelli wrote: "This picture I, Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy, in the halftime after the time, during the fulfilment of the eleventh of John, in the second ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... for the more modern designation of Vivarini. Both brothers are fine and delicate in work, but from the outset of their collaboration the younger man is more advanced and more full of the spirit of the innovator. In his altarpiece in the first hall of the Academy the Nativity has already a new realism; Joseph leans his head upon his hand, crushing up his cheek. The saints are particularly vivid in expression, especially the old hermit holding the bell, whose face ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... natural fool, is one that hath had no understanding from his nativity; and therefore is by law presumed never likely to attain any. For which reason the custody of him and of his lands was formerly vested in the lord of the fee[h]; (and therefore still, by special custom, in some manors the lord shall ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone |
