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It was beautiful there; rare flowers and exotics of all kinds, trees that I never see before and lots that I had seen, sparklin' fountains with gold fish, grottos all lit up by colored lanterns, and little marble tablets with wise sayings.
Then you come to grassy slopes and to smooth plains across which you can look for miles without seeing a hill; or, when you arrive at the seashore, you clamber into caves and grottos, and along dark narrow passages leading from one bay to another. All these hills, valleys, gorges, ravines, slopes, plains, caves, grottos, and rocky shores have been cut out by the water.
The voice of the storyteller went on and drew her with it into winding grottos under the sea, glowing with soft, clear blue light, and paved with pure golden sands. Strange sea flowers and grasses waved about her, and far away faint singing and music echoed. The hearth brush fell from the work-roughened hand, and Lavinia Herbert looked round. "That girl has been listening," she said.
Where is our grove, with its cool grottos, its primaeval trees, its shady nooks, and all the peace and enjoyment of which it was as full as a ripe grape is full of sweet juice?" "It was cut down and rooted up," replied the steward. "The emperor gave the sanctuary over to Bishop Theophilus and he set to work at once to destroy it.
It is hollowed into caverns and grottos, hung with massive stalactites, and fashioned into pinnacles and domes. Every section and configuration has its heart of translucent blue or green, interlaced or bordered by fretted frostwork of intensest white, so that the appearance is at all times gnome-like and supernatural....
It is really a bewilderingly lovely garden, and we wandered through its paths joyously until we came suddenly upon some artificial grottos at one end overlooking the lake. These remarkable creations are so utterly tasteless, with masses of bristling shellwork and crude, ungainly statues, that we wondered how anything so inartistic could find a home upon Italian soil.
The top of the temple is exquisitely finished, and terminates in an open hall. It is surrounded by eight mounts or eminences, which may be ascended both on the outside and the inside; and these have several grottos, the walls of which are adorned with various paintings, representing priests, idols, hermits, tigers, leopards, serpents, and trees.
Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought together to produce a charming effect.
Ts'ao Kuo-chiu was connected with the imperial family of the Sungs, and is shown with the tablet of admission to Court in his hand. He became one of the Eight Immortals because the other seven, who occupied seven of the eight grottos of the Upper Spheres, wished to see the eighth inhabited, and nominated him because "his disposition resembled that of a genie."
On this spot Elsie paused a moment, and called back after Agnes, who had disappeared into one of those deep grottos with which the sides of the gorge are perforated, and which are almost entirely veiled by the pendent ivy-wreaths. "Agnes! Agnes! wild girl! come quick!"
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