"Tuscan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first great Italian historian, and one of the most eminent political writers of any age or country, was born at Florence, May 3, 1469. He was of an old though not wealthy Tuscan family, his father, who was a jurist, dying when Niccolo was sixteen years old. We know nothing of Machiavelli's youth and little about his studies. He does not seem to have received the usual humanistic education of his time, as he knew ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the mansion are tapestried with books. The green secluded alleys, the gentle knolls, the glades, the spacious meadows of the park, recall at every step the younger Pliny's incomparable picture of his Tuscan villa. 'Placida omnia et quiescentia.' 'A spirit of pensive peace broods over the whole place, making it not lovelier only, but more salubrious, making the sky more ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... who was in the courtyard. Just then Blanche came out. She had changed her gown for one of plain white serge, and she wore a hat of tuscan straw which ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... born, or taught Our country's sweetest accent there, Whose works, with learned labor wrought, Immortal honors justly share, Then hast such treasure drawn of purest ore, That not even Tuscan bards can ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That "armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for treasure; but earth,—a fleet's burden,—from the place where there was healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of holy tombs, prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... so that he was as much at ease head, as feet, downward. The stove once in it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat was a long time crossing: the lake here is about three miles broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to move, even though they are towed and ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... saw—two radiant Tuscan springs, What time the wild red tulips are aflame In the new wheat, and wreaths of young vine frame The daffodils that every light breeze swings; And the anemones that April brings Make purple pools, as if Adonis ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... and the arbiter of style conversed learnedly of Tuscan, Pompeiian, Elizabethan, Louis Quatorze, buhl, marqueterie, &.c., &c., till the head of the proprietor, to whom all these words were strangers, and all his talk Greek, was thrown into a ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... in an old quarter of Florence, in that picturesque zigzag which goes round the grand church of Or San Michele, and which is almost more Venetian than Tuscan in its mingling of color, charm, stateliness, popular confusion, and architectural majesty. The tall old houses are weather-beaten into the most delicious hues; the pavement is enchantingly encumbered with peddlers and stalls and all kinds of trades going on in the open air, in that bright, merry, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... womb of colour unborn, that brings Forth all fair forms of things, As freedom all fair forms of nations dyed In divers-coloured pride. Fly fleet as wind on every wind that blows Between her seas and snows, From Alpine white, from Tuscan green, and where Vesuvius reddens air. Fly! and let all men see it, and all kings wail, And priests wax faint and pale, And the cold hordes that moan in misty places And the funereal races And the sick serfs of lands that wait and wane See thee and hate thee in vain. In the clear ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... everyone else) Niccolini to be the best of the recent Italian poets. Of Redi, whose verses taste of the rich juice of the grape in those good old days when Tuscan vines had not become demoralized, and wine was cheaper than water, Landor spoke fondly. Leigh Hunt has given English readers a quaff of Redi in his rollicking translation of "Bacchus in Tuscany," which is steeped in "Montepulciano," "the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... licensers thought." Milton is the most scholarly and the most truly classical of English poets. His Latin verse, for elegance and correctness, ranks with Addison's; and his Italian poems were the admiration of the Tuscan scholars. But his learning appears in his poetry only in the form of a fine and chastened result, and not in laborious allusion and pedantic citation, as too often in Ben Jonson, for instance. "My father," ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... The Via Santa Maria leads directly to the Piazza del Duomo, containing, in a row, the Leaning Tower, the Cathedral, and the Baptistery, and immediately behind, the Campo Santo, with frescoes considerably effaced, yet valuable as specimens of the Tuscan school of the 14th and 15th centuries. Fee for the Campo Santo 25 ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... at the isle of Elba, the "Great Emperor's" mimic domain; step into the town lying beneath this rocky bluff; which is crowned by a fort-it is Porto Ferrajo. Look off for a moment from this rocky eminence, back of the town, and see the wild beauty of these Tuscan mountains on the main land. Now, we will over to the Italian coast, and cross, if you will, from Leghorn to Florence. There, we are now in the very lap of genius and of poetry; let us pause here and breathe the dreamy, soothing, balmy air ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... advised him to apply to the Spanish minister the Duke of Lerma; and, through the influence of the Grand Duke Cosmo, his ambassador at the court of Madrid was engaged to manage the affair. The anxiety of Galileo on this subject was singularly great. He assured the Tuscan ambassador that, in order to accomplish this object, "he was ready to leave all his comforts, his country, his friends, and his family, to cross over into Spain, and to stay as long as he might be wanted at Seville or at Lisbon, or wherever it might be convenient to communicate ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... said Dashall, "is 120 feet span; the piers 20 feet thick, with Tuscan columns; the width between the parapets 42 feet; these footpaths are seven feet each, and the road-way is 28 feet. The cost has been immense, and it is not likely that the original subscribers will ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Jugarian street into the forum: in the forum the procession stopped, and the virgins, linked together by a cord passed through their hands, moved on, beating time with their feet to the music of their voices. They then proceeded by the Tuscan street and the Velabrum, through the cattle market, up the Publician hill, and to the temple of Juno Regina; where two victims were immolated by the decemviri, and the cypress images carried ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... from this counterfeit of him Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of lineament, how grim, The father was of Tuscan song: There but the burning sense of wrong, Perpetual care and scorn, abide; Small friendship for the lordly throng; Distrust of all ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... question was a pertinent and in its way a truly philosophical one. Fiesole crests the ridge of a Tuscan hill, and in America they don't build cities on hill-tops. You may search through the length and breadth of the United States, from Maine to California, and I venture to bet a modest dollar you won't find a single town perched anywhere in a position at all resembling ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... do, Don Silverio presented himself at the Palazzo Corradini. He was shown with much deference by an old liveried servant into a fine apartment with marble busts in niches in the walls, and antique bookcases of oak, and doorhangings of Tuscan tapestry. The air of the place was cold, and had the scent of a tomb. It was barely luminated by two bronze lamps in which unshaded oil wicks burned. Corradini joined him there in five minutes' time, and welcomed him to the house with ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... "The Labyrinth" was produced, I changed my mind. There again was that disturbing loveliness. It was a story of the passionate Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Esther Levenson drifted through the four long acts against a background of Tuscan walls, scarlet hangings, oaths, blood-spilling, dark and terrible vengeance. Grimshaw took London by the throat and put ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... and excuse themselves by the law and the public sentiment. So are the people taught. There has been a great deal said on the subject of influence from abroad; but those who talk in that way interfered with the persecution of the Madiai, and remonstrated with the Tuscan government. We have had large meetings on the subject in New York, and those who refuse the Bible to the slave took part in that meeting, and did not seem to think there was ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... family were installed in the Villa Reale di Quarto, the picturesque old Palace of Cosimo, a spacious, luxurious place, even if not entirely cheerful or always comfortable during the changeable Tuscan winter. Congratulated in a letter from MacAlister in being in the midst of Florentine sunshine, he answered: "Florentine sunshine? Bless you, there isn't any. We have heavy fogs every morning, and rain all day. This house is not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were content to cook and darn for them (and perhaps secretly burn a candle in their behalf to Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Dominick, refuters of heresy), there were others who aspired to all the honours of scholarship, and would order about their servant-girls in Tuscan, and scold their babies in Ciceronian Latin. Among these fair grammarians, however, he met none that wore her learning lightly. They were forever tripping in the folds of their doctors' gowns, and delivering their most trivial views ex cathedra; ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... of human kind And Gods the sovran Sire, hath given to thee To lull the waves and lift them with the wind, A hateful people, enemies to me, Their ships are steering o'er the Tuscan sea, Bearing their Troy and vanquished gods away To Italy. Go, set the storm-winds free, And sink their ships or scatter them astray, And strew their corpses forth, to weltering ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... started from better things, or been subject at important points of his progress to better influences. Benjamin Silliman was of Revolutionary stock, which had its roots in the soil of the Reformation. The Connecticut Puritan came of Tuscan Puritans, who fled their city of Lucca, and finally passed from Switzerland through Holland to our shores. Brain and heart in him were thus imbued with an unfaltering love of freedom, chastised by religious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... personal prejudices may be found in the Sonnets, from his hatred of those frightful Scotch appellations that would "make Quintlian gasp" to his longing for Classic companionship and "Attic wine" and "immortal notes" and "Tuscan airs"! As one reads on, laughing gently at the folly of those who have so misunderstood him, one is conscious more and more of that high, cold, clear, lonely tenderness, which found so little satisfaction in the sentiment of the rabble and still less in the endearments ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... water, in the principal gaol in Hubbabub;" but becomes ensconced in Leigh Hunt's "elegantly furnished apartment, with French sash-windows and a piano. Its lofty walls were entirely hung with a fanciful paper, representing a Tuscan vineyard; the ceiling was covered with sky and clouds; roses were in abundance; and the windows, though well secured, excited no jarring associations in the mind of the individual they illumined, protected as they were by polished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... What, the romance? I should so love to hear! I dote on poetry; and Count Paolo Sweetens the Tuscan with his mellow voice. I'm weary now, quite ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... the Brownings at Vallombrosa, a visit later described in his Easy Chair. Mr. Field, who had brought out the American reprint of the two-volume edition of Browning's poems in 1849, was a guest at Casa Guidi in 1852. Charles Sumner writes of "delicious Tuscan evenings" with the Brownings and the Storys in 1859. Mr. Browning's interests in art led to friendships with American artists, among whom were Mr. Page, who painted a successful portrait of Browning; ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... it always put Shelley in spirits, and his best work was done beneath the sultry blue of Italian skies, floating in a boat on the Serchio or the Arno, baking in a glazed cage on the roof of a Tuscan villa, or lying among the ruins of the Coliseum or in the pine-woods near Pisa. Their Italian wanderings are too intricate to be traced in detail here. It was a chequered time, darkened by disaster and cheered by friendships. Both their children died, Clara at ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... has obeyed the father of lies. He has also accepted with thankfulness the chance of redeeming his soul by a signal service rendered to the cause of Truth. The process of engraving on gold, furtively witnessed in a Tuscan workshop, has suggested to him the manufacture of metallic types, and he has been for years secluded with the conception of his printing-press, and glowing visions of that winged word which should one day fly forth at his ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... descriptions of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts, and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark sallow face lighted up, and his fierce eyes moistened with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his thanks, we marveled at the fears which had so nearly closed our doors against him, and as he departed we all felt that he had left with us the blessing ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... of Brunelleschi's dome, which was much larger and heavier than the one the original architect had himself designed. Arnolfo died when he had built his Palazzo in rugged strength, as it still stands, with walls like living rock and heavy Tuscan cornices—tho it was reserved to the other masters to put upon it the wonderful crown of its appropriate tower—and just as the round apse of the cathedral approached completion; a hard fate for a great builder to leave such noble work behind him half done, yet the most common ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... ancient authors, if a man pounds the seeds or roots of the trapa bispinosa, the kasurika, the tuscan jasmine, and liquorice, together with the kshirakapoli (a kind of onion), and puts the powder into milk mixed with sugar and ghee, and having boiled the whole mixture on a moderate fire, drinks the paste so formed, he will be able to ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... Tyrol, and who could have spoken German, if he had not despised that tongue as the language of the ugly Croats, like one born to it. Who, for example, spoke Venetian more elegantly than Sior Tommaso? or Tuscan, when he chose? and yet he was poor,—a man of that genius! Patience! When Garibaldi came, we should see! The facchini and gondoliers, who had been wagging their tongues all day at the church corners and ferries, were never tired of talking of this ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... and divine genius, that Filippo Brunelleschi should leave to the world, the most noble, vast, and beautiful edifice that had ever been constructed in modern times, or even in those of the ancients; giving proof that the talent of the Tuscan artists, although lost for a time, was not extinguished. He was, moreover, adorned by the most excellent qualities, among which was that of kindliness, insomuch that there never was a man of more benign and amicable disposition; in judgment he was calm and dispassionate, and laid ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... chivalry, and fell into disrepute when chivalry declined. In the fourteenth century men of intellectual genius in Italy resolved to cultivate their own native language and to combine with its grandeur the charms of imagination and the acquirements of classical learning. The poetry of the Tuscan school, the works of Dante, Ariosto, Boccio and Petrarch, have never yet been excelled by four succeeding centuries of genius and literature. The way was open for the revival of classical learning in the fifteenth century, and for the cultivation ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... singing, impulsive Germans of Tacitus. Titus Livius, Plutarch, and Machiavelli, all maintained that the successive invasions of the Germans into Italy were for the sake of the wine to be found there. Plutarch writes that "the Gauls were introduced to the Italian wine by a Tuscan named Arron, and so excited were they by the desire for more that, taking their wives and children with them, they journeyed across the Alps to conquer the land of such good vintages, looking upon other countries as sterile and savage by comparison. Even if this be not history, it is an ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... our happier eyes have seen! For not till peace came with Elizabeth Did those fair maids of holy Hippocrene Cross the wan waves and draw a northern breath: Though some far-echoed strain on Tuscan lyres Our Chaucer caught, and sang Like her who sings ere dawn has lit his ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... I remember as a thing almost farcical my explanations to Margaret, and how frantically anxious I was to prevent the remote possibility of her coming with me, and how I crossed in the TUSCAN, a bad, wet boat, and mixed seasickness with ungovernable sorrow. I wept—tears. It was inexpressibly queer and ridiculous—and, good God! how ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... never more inspired than here, where they worked and died. Michelangelo (at the end of it) may be more surprising in the Vatican; but here are his wonderful Medici tombs. How it came about that between the years 1300 and 1500 Italian soil—and chiefly Tuscan soil—threw up such masters, not only with the will and spirit to do what they did but with the power too, no one will ever be able to explain. But there it is. In the history of the world two centuries were suddenly given mysteriously ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... he adhered to it throughout, though by no means approving all the actions of its leaders. After the fashion of the time, he begins his chronicle with the Tower of Babel; touches on Dardanus, Priam, and the Trojan war; records the origin of the Tuscan cities; and so by easy stages comes down towards the age in which he lived. The earlier portions, of course, are more entertaining and suggestive than trustworthy in detail; but as he approaches a time for which he had ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,[12] who now rests beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... perhaps the picture that attracts most attention is Van Eyck's "John Arnolfini, of Lucca, and his Wife." The gentleman wears a portentous hat, which tickled the fancy of the Boxing-day people immensely. There were great speculations too among them as to whether the curious Tuscan pictures at the top of the stairs were "needlework" or not. Still, who shall say that these visitors were not the better for their visit, surrounded as they were by forms of beauty on every side, even if they did not examine them with the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... had they common interests. What would be good and suitable in one State might, by no means, be adapted to the requirements of another; might even in some cases prove disastrous. The Grand Dukes had, by their mild and liberal rule, endeared themselves to the Tuscan people. Piedmont and Naples were alike devoted to their respective monarchies. The people of the Papal States, with the exception of the populace of Rome, were loyal to their government. That populace was greatly increased in 1848 by the influx of strangers—men ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... only reach sustained importance in his lament on the death of the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster, written about 1370. It is significant that the favourite poet of the king's declining years was no clerk but a layman, and that the Tuscan mission of 1373, which perhaps first introduced him to the treasures of Italian poetry, was undertaken in the king's service. Thorough Englishman as Chaucer was, he had his eyes open to every movement of European culture. His higher and later style begins with his study of Dante, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... When fond remembrance tells me that from these Thy filial hand, tho' robb'd of strength and ease, Yet inly conscious of ingenious power, Resolv'd, in labour's first reviving hour, To fashion portraits claiming just regard, The Tuscan sculptor! and the Grecian bard! Whom 'twas thy hope in marble to create As honour'd guardians of thy poet's gate; There is no spot within this Villa's bound, E'en to the Turret's topmost airy round, Which thy kind fancy, that no ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... kindly received and provided with lodgings. When their wounds were cured, many of them went home and told the kind hospitality they had met with. Affection for their hosts and for the city detained many at Rome; a place was assigned them to dwell in, which they have ever since called the Tuscan Street. ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... started. At the fixed hour a procession starts from the Capitol, descends by the temple of Saturn and past the face of the Basilica Julia, turns along the "Tuscan Street," and enters the Circus under a large archway in the middle of the building which contains the stalls. In front go a body of musicians with blare of the straight Roman trumpet and the scream of the flageolets; behind these ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... better fortune; Desperatio facit monachum, as the saying is, and desperation causeth death itself; how many thousands in such distress have made away themselves, and many others? For he that cares not for his own, is master of another man's life. A Tuscan soothsayer, as [6688]Paterculus tells the story, perceiving himself and Fulvius Flaccus his dear friend, now both carried to prison by Opimius, and in despair of pardon, seeing the young man weep, quin tu potius hoc inquit facis, do as I do; and with that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... from Dante, it is at all events the most faithful and scholarly paraphrase. The sonnets which accompanied it are among Longfellow's best work. He seems to have been raised by daily communion with the great Tuscan into a habit of deeper and more subtle thought than is elsewhere common in ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... and Northern Italy, Innocent III was more speedily successful than in the South. On Philip of Swabia's return to Germany, Tuscany and the domains of the Countess Matilda fell away from their foreign lord, and invoked the protection of the Church. The Tuscan cities formed themselves into a new league under papal protection. Only Pisa, proud of her sea power, wealth, and trade, held aloof from the combination. It seemed as if, after a century of delays, the papacy was going to enjoy the inheritance of Matilda,[55] and Innocent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... all ugly, those Valdarni. Besides, they are of Tuscan origin. What do you say to the little Rocca girl? She has great chic; she was brought up in England. She is ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... daughter neither has deteriorated, but perhaps improved. For the benignant clime of California has such effect; the soft breezes of the South Sea fanning as fair cheeks as were ever kissed by Tuscan, or Levantine wind. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... peninsula. Starting in the Maritime Alps, they extend easterly towards the Adriatic coast, and turn southeasterly hugging the coast through its whole extent. This conformation of the country causes the rivers of any size below the basin of the Po to flow into the Tyrrhenian (Tuscan) Sea, ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... family. The Farnese became prominent in Etruria as a small dynasty of robber barons, without, however, being able to attain to the power of their neighbors, the Orsini of Anguillara and Bracciano, and the famous Counts of Vico, who were of German descent and who ruled over the Tuscan prefecture for more than a hundred years, until that country was swallowed up by Eugene IV. While these prefects were the most active Ghibellines and the bitterest enemies of the popes, the Farnese, like the Este, always stood by the Guelphs. From the eleventh century they ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... of Assisi.—Francis, the son of a merchant in the Tuscan town of Assisi, threw aside the vanities of youth after a serious illness. He was wedded, he declared, to Poverty as his bride. He clothed himself in rags. When his father sent him with a horseload of goods to a neighbouring ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... rival, none surpass me quite. Only it grieves me when I understand What precious time in vanity I've spent- The wind it beareth man's frail thoughts away. Yet, since remorse avails not, I'm content, As erst I came, WELCOME to go one day, Here in the Flower of this fair Tuscan land. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to her charm, she liked the torture, and smothered her victim with caresses. Never had one seen her so winning. The hot Italian summer brooded outside, over the market-place and the picturesque peasants, and, in the singular color of the Tuscan atmosphere, the hills and vineyards of the Apennines seemed bursting with mid-summer blood. The sick-room itself glowed with the Italian joy of life; friends filled it; no harsh northern lights pierced the soft shadows; ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... greater contrast than that between Francesco de Medici, heir to the Tuscan Grand Dukedom, and the beautiful young wife of the bank-clerk, now playing the role of maid-of-all-work and charwoman. It is said that Francesco was a madman; and indeed what we know of him makes this description quite plausible. He was a man of black brow and violent temper, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... this for some time; at length putting his head out of the window, he said, in the purest Tuscan, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... arrival of a Genoese or Spanish vessel, escaped to Spain or Italy, where Mercedes and his father could have joined him. He had no fears as to how he should live—good seamen are welcome everywhere. He spoke Italian like a Tuscan, and Spanish like a Castilian; he would have been free, and happy with Mercedes and his father, whereas he was now confined in the Chateau d'If, that impregnable fortress, ignorant of the future destiny of his father and Mercedes; and all this because he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... royal from the twin brother of Louis XIV, thought to be the Iron Mask; nor imperial from the Julian gens, nor Greek, nor Saracen, nor, in short, anything which later-invented and lying genealogies declared it to be. But it was almost certainly Italian, and probably patrician, for in 1780 a Tuscan gentleman of the name devised a scanty estate to his distant Corsican kinsman. The earliest home of the family was Florence; later they removed for political reasons to Sarzana, in Tuscany, where for generations men of that ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the largest crowd in the history of the Academy. Every seat was occupied, every foot of standing room taken. Chairs were placed in the side aisles. The programs announced that it was the second appearance in America of Angelo Diotti, the renowned Tuscan violinist. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... moment. On the whole, he thought the only way to decide the matter was to try it; so stretching his head quietly out of the window, he seized the bonnet in his teeth, and tearing it from Fluff's head, he proceeded to chew it as calmly as if it had been a wisp of hay instead of a Tuscan straw. It was Fluff's scream that I heard, and I found the little mouse overcome with grief at the loss of her bonnet, the last fragment of which was just disappearing between Billy's ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... the figure," said the Critic, "is tolerably good, though rather Etrurian, but the expression of the face is decidedly Tuscan, and therefore false to nature. By the way, have you read my work on 'The Fallaciousness of the ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... third day after I resumed command we were ordered to take an old castle which the owner, though a Tuscan, more churchman than patriot, had voluntarily turned over to ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic contraction of the enormous tubes is provided for by supporting them on cannon-balls! how venerable seems the most graceful of Tuscan bridges, when we remember it was erected in the fifteenth century,—and the Rialto, when we think that it was designed by Michel Angelo! and how signal an instance is it of the progressive application of a true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... would sooner bank on Tuscan, Ay, or even on Etruscan, Than on Erse; But fanatical campaigners, Gaelic Leaguers and Sinn ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... at moments, of those bright climates beneath which he designed their asylum, where the very air is music, and the light is like the colourings of love; and he associated the sighs of a mutual rapture with the fragrance of myrtles, and the breath of a Tuscan heaven. Time glided on. The hour was long past, yet Emily came not! The sun rose, and Falkland turned in dark and angry discontent from its beams. With every moment his impatience increased, and ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wonderful charm that belongs to everything connected with their lovely land. They are seen, like the early Tuscan paintings, against a golden background of romance. Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, invested with this magic light, are themselves more attractive even than their poetic creations. But Torquato Tasso, perhaps, more than them ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... clouds besiege the vales below, Keeps the clear heaven and doth with sunshine glow. To the June stars that circle in the skies The dainty roofs of that tall villa rise. Hence do the seven imperial hills appear; And you may view the whole of Rome from here; Beyond, the Alban and the Tuscan hills; And the cool groves and the cool falling rills, Rubre Fidenae, and with virgin blood Anointed once Perenna's orchard wood. Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way, Stretch far broad below the dome of day; And lo! the traveller toiling ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me you have just come back from Italy. No doubt, mademoiselle, you speak the purest Tuscan—I fear you'll find it somewhat ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... so interested that he ordered his architect Inigo Jones to enquire into its date and purpose. The architect's conclusion was that it was a Roman temple "dedicated to the god Caelus and built after the Tuscan order." ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... family sacrificed themselves for their country; the father in the Latin war, the son in the Tuscan war, and the grandson in ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in a tomb at Essiout, in Egypt, painted perhaps about 1600 B.C., in company with some other very old friends,[129] the Tuscan border, the Egg and Tongue, and the Bead, the Daisy, and the Wave. (Pl. 17, No. 2.) We meet it everywhere in ancient and modern decoration. There are several forms of it on a large terra-cotta vase in the British Museum from Kameiros in Rhodes, and on Chinese fictiles and embroideries. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... contented, and we are without anything.) The last line often is "E nui semu cca munnamu li denti" (And here we are picking our teeth), or "Ma a nui 'un ni desinu nenti" (But to us they gave nothing), which corresponds to a Tuscan ending:— ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... wandering over the greater part of the world, and conquering most nations, settled there, and gave the city its name from their own strength in battle.[A] Others tell us that after the capture of Troy some fugitives obtained ships, were carried by the winds to the Tyrrhenian or Tuscan coast, and cast anchor in the Tiber. There the women, who had suffered much from the sea voyage, were advised by one who was accounted chief among them for wisdom and noble birth, Roma by name, to burn the ships. At first the men were angry at this, but afterwards, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... wand I wielded then is buried, Broken, and buried in the sand. Oh no. By mortal hands I must be ferried Unto the Tuscan strand. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... pirates, which probably earned them their exaggerated reputation. At that time they had vessels of thirty and thirty-six guns, but unwieldy and badly built, with which they captured Provencal ships and did considerable mischief, till the Chevalier Acton in 1773, with a single Tuscan frigate, destroyed three out of their five ships. About 1788 the whole Morocco navy consisted of six or eight frigates of two hundred tons, armed with fourteen to eighteen six-pounders, and some galleys. The rovers of Sal[e] formed ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... words were drowned by the loud crash of fiercely disrupturing timbers, and the sullen splash of the dark river, did his enemies hurl their showers of arrows and javelins. Then, dexterously warding off the missiles with his shield, he plunged into the Tiber. Although stabbed in the hip by a Tuscan spear which lamed him for life, he swam ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... he dismissed those of his servants who had been taken from the ranks of the Duke's people, and bade his own Tuscan followers, Zaccaria and Lanciotto, see to the packing of his effects, and make all ready to set out ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... first thing we have to do is to cast it out, and shake the dust of it from our feet for ever. Whatever has any connexion with the five orders, or with any one of the orders,—whatever is Doric, or Ionic, or Tuscan, or Corinthian, or Composite, or in any way Grecized or Romanized; whatever betrays the smallest respect for Vitruvian laws, or conformity with Palladian work,—that we are to endure no more. To cleanse ourselves of these "cast clouts and rotten rags" ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more massive and less regular than his father's. The blood of the Tuscan ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... shepherd's hut must have been in those days, in a narrow valley of the Tuscan hills—the small cottage built of unhewn stones picked up on the hillside, fitted together one by one, according to their irregular shapes, and cemented, if at all, with clay and mud from the river bed—the roof of untrimmed saplings tied ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... very imperfect, and, so to speak, not greatly ornamental. For they did not observe that measure and proportion in the columns that the art required, or distinguish one Order from another, whether Doric, Corinthian, Ionic, or Tuscan, but mixed them all together with a rule of their own that was no rule, making them very thick or very slender, as suited them best; and all their inventions came partly from their own brains, and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... did not pass unobserved. A French abbe, in a provincial dialect, complimented him upon his retaining that purity in pronunciation, which is not to be found in the speech of a Parisian. The Bolognian, mistaking him for a Tuscan, "Sir," said he, "I presume you are from Florence. I hope the illustrious house of Lorrain leaves you gentlemen of that famous city no room to regret the loss of your own princes." The castle of Versailles becoming the subject of conversation, Monsieur le Compte appealed to him, as to a native ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... in that council-chamber of the world,—the masses of France, as the spring-tide, into her gardens of the Tuileries, her club-rooms, her hall of the convention,—the representatives, the genius, the grace, the beauty of Ireland into the Tuscan Gallery of her House of Commons,—the delegates of the Colonies into the Hall of Independence at Philadelphia,—thus men come in an hour of revolution, to hang upon the lips from which they hope, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... is Dante, too, who in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, has further signalised him by honourable record. Sordello, he says, excelled in all kinds of composition, and by his experiments in the dialects of Cremona, Brescia and Verona, cities near Mantua, helped to form the Tuscan tongue. But besides the brief record of Dante, there are certain accounts of Sordello's life, very confused and conflicting, in the early Italian Chronicles and the Provencal lives of the Troubadours. Tiraboschi ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... hunt that game with me; For spendthrifts are insane, the world shall see. Soon as the youngster had received at last The thousand talents that his sire amassed, He sent round word to all the sharking clan, Perfumer, fowler, fruiterer, fisherman, Velabrum's refuse, Tuscan Alley's scum, To come to him. next morning. Well, they come. First speaks the pimp: 'Whatever I or these Possess, is yours: command it when you please.' Now hear his answer, and admire the mind That thus could ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... my hungry eye, And see against the lotus-colored sky, Spring the slim belfry graceful as a reed. To kneel upon the ground where Dante trod, To breathe the air of immortality From Angelo and Raphael—TO BE— Each sense new-quickened by a demi-god. To hear the liquid Tuscan speech at whiles, From citizen and peasant, to behold The heaven of Leonardo washed with gold— Would I had waked this morn ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da Faggiuola, Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke of Athens. The revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from Uguccione; the premature death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the Tuscan duchy he was building up upon the basement of Ghibellinism; while the rebellion of 1343 averted tyranny from Florence for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... those southern districts from the Umbrians at a period considerably subsequent to their occupation of the country on the north of the Ciminian Forest, and that an Umbrian population maintained itself there even after the Tuscan conquest. In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan, we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped with such a relishing gusto into the colors of the hyacinths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sings, Save that upon his upper lip His beard, a good palm's length at least, Level and pointed at the tip, Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings. The poets read he o'er and o'er, And most of all the Immortal Four Of Italy; and next to those, The story-telling bard of prose, Who wrote the joyous Tuscan tales Of the Decameron, that make Fiesole's green hills and vales Remembered for Boccaccio's sake. Much too of music was his thought; The melodies and measures fraught With sunshine and the open air, Of vineyards and the singing sea Of his beloved Sicily; And much it pleased him to peruse The songs ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... poetry of Italy had been composed exclusively in the literary Tuscan of the day. To Florence and to Lorenzo de' Medici in particular is due the honour of having first introduced the rustic speech of the people. His two poems written in the language of the peasants about Florence, La Nencia da Barberino and a canzonet In morte della ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... of the East," by WEST, has a scolloped frame in the Tuscan style, with extra fine enamelling. This is a very singular picture. It must be admitted that this frame is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... O' th' sun by day; they follow fortune still, And hate or love discreetly, as their will And the time leads them. This tumultuous fate Puts all their painted favours out of date. And yet this people that now spurn, and tread This mighty favourite's once honour'd head, Had but the Tuscan goddess, or his stars Destin'd him for an empire, or had wars, Treason, or policy, or some higher pow'r Oppress'd secure Tiberius; that same hour That he receiv'd the sad Gemonian doom, Had crown'd him emp'ror of the world ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the same house, "Tuscan Cities," which shows the capabilities of wood-engraving in quite another direction. Some of the illustrations might absolutely be taken for etchings, so faithfully have the peculiarities of the artist been followed. Compare the treatment ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... with whom he often strolled into the woods, or rather groves, for which this portion of Etruria was always remarkable, sometimes traversing or descending the Val d'Arno, at others roaming about the ruins, or visiting the site of Pliny's Tuscan Villa. On returning in high spirits from one of these excursions, he learned by the letter of a friend that the object of his first love had proved unfaithful, and been united in marriage to another. This event, though it had no connexion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... are carefully arranged on an adjustable shelf, and Creso takes his place behind them, while in his rear a perfect chemist's shop of flasks, bottles, and pillboxes is disclosed. Very soon his singer ceases, and in the purest Tuscan dialect—the very utterance of which is music—the Florentine quack-doctor proceeds to address the assemblage. Not being conversant with the Italian, I am only able to give the substance of his harangue, and pronounce ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Lulli, son of a Tuscan peasant, born 1633, died 1687. He invented the dramatic overture. "But during the first years of Charles II. all musick affected by the beau mond run in the french way; and the rather because at that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... steps, or more. The three first allude to the three principal supports in Masonry, viz., wisdom, strength, and beauty; the five steps allude to the five orders in architecture, and the five human senses; the five orders in architecture are the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite; the five human senses are Hearing, Seeing, Feeling, Smelling, and Tasting; the three first of which have ever been highly essential among Masons: Hearing, to hear the word; Seeing, to see the sign; and Feeling, to feel the grip, whereby one Mason may know ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... future character and fortune; and one single stone wanting in that foundation is of more consequence than fifty in the superstructure; which can always be mended and embellished if the foundation is solid. To carry on the metaphor of building: I would wish you to be a Corinthian edifice upon a Tuscan foundation; the latter having the utmost strength and solidity to support, and the former all possible ornaments to decorate. The Tuscan column is coarse, clumsy, and unpleasant; nobody looks at it twice; the Corinthian fluted column is beautiful ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... this company of poets comes Angelo Poliziano, with his 'Rusticus' in Latin hexameters. Keeping clear of all imitation of Virgil's Georgics, he describes the year of the Tuscan peasant, beginning with the late autumn, when the countryman gets ready his new plough and prepares the seed for the winter. The picture of the meadows in spring is full and beautiful, and the 'Summer' has fine passages; but the vintage-feast in autumn is one of the gems of modern ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Tuscan poet [Ariosto] doth advance The frantic paladin of France [Orlando Furioso]; And those more ancient [Euripides and Seneca] do enhance Alcides in his fury [Hercules Furens]; And others, Ajax Telamon;— But ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... so outrageously violated by the French, was better satisfied with the measure than some of the Neapolitans themselves. Nasseli, their general, refused to seize the French vessels at Leghorn, because he and the Duke di Sangro, who was ambassador at the Tuscan court, maintained that the king of Naples was not at war with France. "What!" said Nelson, "has not the king received, as a conquest made by him, the republican flag taken at Gozo? Is not his own flag flying there, and at Malta, not only by his permission, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... within two years, been gathered to his fathers, and his title and estates had descended to his only son, then in his twenty-third year. At an early age Frederic had received a commission as captain of cavalry, but as every body knows that promotion is slower in the army of his Tuscan highness than in that of any other European power, he still remained a captain of cavalry, and probably would do so unto his dying day. It was his determination, as soon as he returned to Florence, to resign his commission, and retire to his paternal estates ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... 3rd of May 1469. The period of his life almost exactly coincides with that of Cardinal Wolsey. He came of the old and noble Tuscan stock of Montespertoli, who were men of their hands in the eleventh century. He carried their coat, but the property had been wasted and divided. His forefathers had held office of high distinction, but had fallen away as the new wealth of the bankers and traders increased ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Meanwhile the Tuscan army, 65 Right glorious to behold, Came flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. Four hundred trumpets sounded 70 A peal of warlike glee, As that great host with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty |
