Historic Buildings: As Seen and Described by Famous WritersEsther Singleton |
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admirable altar Amritsar ancient angels apsis arches architect architecture beautiful Belem beneath Bishop building built Carcassonne CARISBROOKE CASTLE carved castle cathedral CATHEDRAL OF PALERMO centre Century chambers chapel charm choir Christian church cloister Coliseum colour columns corner court cupola dark decoration dome Domenico Rossi door Earl edifice Emperor entrance erected eyes façade feet flowers fortress gallery garden gate Giralda gold Gothic Gwalior Haddon Haddon Hall hall Holy honour India Italy Kenilworth King light look Loretto Luxembourg magnificent marble mediæval monks monuments mosaics mosque Murano nave Nicola Pisano Norman ornaments Orvieto painted palace Palermo pass pavement pillars Pisa Pope Prince restored Rheims river roof round ruins sacred Saint Saint Ouen Salisbury Saracenic sculpture Sepulchre Shah Jehan side Sikh splendour square stands stone story style temple tion tomb TORRE DEL ORO tower transept triforium vault walls whole
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Page 219 - For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
Page 75 - ... their nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see its Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre ; to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches of...
Page 134 - Nazareth was taken by Sultan Khalil in 1291, when he stormed the last refuge of the Crusaders in the neighbouring city of Acre. From that time, not Nazareth only, but the whole of Palestine, was closed to the devotions of Europe. The Crusaders were expelled from Asia, and in Europe the spirit of the Crusades was extinct. But the natural longing to see the scenes of the events of the Sacred History — the superstitious craving to win for prayer the favour of consecrated localities — did not expire...
Page 71 - Flavian amphitheatre was contemplated with awe and admiration by the pilgrims of the north ; and the rude enthusiasm broke forth in a sublime proverbial expression, which is recorded in the Eighth Century, in the fragments of the venerable Bede: " As long as the Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall.
Page 132 - ... transplantation of the sanctuary, occurs first in a bull of Leo X. in the year 1518. But it is the object of these remarks simply to confront the House as it stands at Loretto with the House as it appears at Nazareth. It has been already said that each professes to contain the exact spot of the Angelic visitation, to be the scene of a single event which can only have happened in one ; each claims to be the very House of the Annunciation, and bases its claim to sanctity on that especial ground....
Page 212 - This manner of living he chose in his beginning, and in this excused his youth. But the inward Seer and merciful God of all, the which out of Mary Magdalen cast out seven fiends, the which to the Fisher gave the Keys of Heaven, mercifully converted this man from the...
Page 16 - They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and fastened, as of old. Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room: once the chapel of the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition chambers!
Page 73 - "Strong as I am great;" "If I fall," addressing himself to the spectators, " you fall with me " — intimating (says the contemporary writer) that while the other families were the subjects of the Vatican, they alone were the supporters of the Capitol. The combats of the amphitheatre were dangerous and bloody. Every champion successively encountered a wild bull; and the victory may be ascribed to the quadrupeds, since no more than eleven were left on the field, with the loss of nine wounded and...
Page 189 - Few stop there, for the place is old and dirty, and its inns are said to be indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can fail to be struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the level plain upon that mass of rock among the Apennines. Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which are found like fossils embedded in the more recent geological formations of Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line to the Campagna of Rome. Many of...
Page 189 - ... of them, like that on which Civita Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms, and ravines and fosses, strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, an almost perfect cube, with walls precipitous to north and south and east, but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains of the Apennines, but which in...