United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five times captured and carried away by marauders, who have at different times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things, and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way back again, an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is worthy of commendation.

After spending a long time among the paintings, wood-carvings, lacquers, bronzes, and gardens, we left the temple, and crossed several court-yards, before the main street was reached. Then, after a short walk, we came to another beautiful garden, laid out like a miniature park, with lakes, bridges, rocks, streams, canals, pavilions, &c.

And she led the way into a stiff, chilly, magnificent apartment, where all the blinds were closed, and all the shades pulled down, and all the furniture shrouded in linen covers. Even the picture frames and mirrors were sewed up in muslin to keep off flies; and the bronzes and alabaster ornaments on the chimney-piece and etagere gleamed through the dim light in a ghostly way.

Emotion choked her, and when some one asked if the girl was a stranger to her, she simply bowed her head; then, letting her gaze pass from face to face till it had completed the circle of those about her, she said in her former mechanical way: "My name is Ermentrude Taylor. I came to look at the bronzes. I should like to go now."

The houses, descending to the river brink, were cracked, scorched, rusted by innumerable burning summers, like so many antique bronzes.

No Catholic will think hardly of my saying that before the Coliseum falls, and with it the imperial city, whose doom prophecy has linked with that of the almost eternal amphitheatre, the marbles, the bronzes, the paintings, the manuscripts of the Vatican will have left the shores of the Tiber for those of the Potomac, the Hudson, the Mississippi, or the Sacramento.

Rugs, bronzes, lacquer work, bamboo work, fans, screens, more tea-cups than you ever see before, and little silk napkins of all colors, where you can have your name wove right in it before your eyes, and etcetry, etcetry. Here also the peculiar fire department of the Japanese is kept.

In the one camp the antique bronzes, gildings, and carvings of a bygone art were retained with pious veneration; in the other, pictures, carpets, Jacob chairs and sofas, mirrors, and time-pieces, and the gold and silver plate were all in lavish style, indicative of their owner's ampler means.

There are spaces of intense light, and cool shadows and shrines of glass mosaic, inside them Buddhas in marble or bronze the bronzes are beautiful pieces of cire perdu castings flowers droop before them, and candles are melting, their flame almost invisible in the sunlight, and two little children play with the guttering wax.

But an old curiosity-shop, with bronzes, china, marqueterie, point-lace, and armour, embraced at once a few centuries; and he thought of the feudal times, the fifteenth century, the belle of former days, the amber-headed cane and snuff box of the beaux who sought her smiles, all gone, all dust; the workmanship of the time, even portions of their dresses, still existing everything less perishable than man.