United States or Zimbabwe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The bed of the river showed that at certain seasons it must be at least half a mile in width, but it was a meagre stream when we crossed it that bright and sunny February day. The royal apartments within the palace are being restored at present, and many skilled workmen were busy upon the frescoes, inlaid stone work, and delicate marble ornamentations, while we were there.
"It is certain," said he, "some grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the composition of human nature; only the choice is left us whether we please to wear them inlaid or embossed, and we need not go very far to seek how that is usually determined, when we remember it is with human faculties as with liquors, the lightest will be ever at the top."
It was this long passage, with its interminable row of low latticed windows, that Lord Newhaven was turning into a depository for the old English weapons which he was slowly collecting. He was standing now gazing lovingly at them, drawing one finger slowly along an inlaid arquebus, when a yell from the garden made him turn and look out.
When they entered the Queen's apartment, announced by two ushers dressed in black and bearing ebony rods, she was seated at her toilette. This was a table of black wood, inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass, in an infinity of designs of very bad taste, but which give to all furniture an air of grandeur which we still admire in it.
A tomb in this country means a magnificent structure of marble, with domes and minarets, the walls inlaid with precious stones, and the whole surrounded by gardens, fountains, and artificial lakes, covering from ten to twenty acres. Cheap as labor is in India, the Taj must have cost some fifteen millions of dollars, and was seventeen years in building.
When the weaver Rebecca was more eager to find room in the cart for the rude cradle in which her darling had died, than for the beautiful ebony chest inlaid with ivory an Egyptian had pawned to her husband, who could blame her? Light shone from all the window openings and tent doors, while from the roofs of the largest houses the blaze of torches or lanterns greeted the approaching Hebrews.
There was nothing else in the place except an ancient, string-seated chair of ebony, adorned with inlaid ivory patterns; an effigy of a snake in porcelain, showing that serpent worship was in some way mixed up with their religion; and two rolls of papyrus, at least that is what they looked like, which were laid in the niche with the statue.
The inlaid marbles were then fresher in their pink, and white, and purple, than they are now, when the winters of four centuries have turned their white to the rich ochre of well-mellowed meerschaum; the facade of the cathedral did not stand ignominious in faded stucco, but had upon it the magnificent promise of the half-completed marble inlaying and statued niches, which Giotto had devised a hundred and fifty years before; and as the campanile in all its harmonious variety of colour and form led the eyes upward, high into the clear air of this April morning, it seemed a prophetic symbol, telling that human life must somehow and some time shape itself into accord with that pure aspiring beauty.
'At least, said the Prince, who was obviously pleased with this proposal, 'allow me the pleasure of arming you after the Highland fashion. With these words, he unbuckled the broadsword which he wore, the belt of which was plaited with silver, and the steel basket-hilt richly and curiously inlaid.
Word Of The Day