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


The porticoes stand up separately, rising one above another; their wonderful shapes are at once remarkably simple and studiously affected; their outlines stand out sharp and distinct, having nevertheless the vague appearance of all very large objects in the pale moonlight.

The Countess von Stackelberg, wife of the Russian minister at Turin, was buying something at a shop under the Porticoes, when the shopman suddenly left her and rushed to the door. On coming back he said with excuses, "I saw Count Cavour passing, and wishing to know how our affairs are going on, I wanted to see how he looked. He looks in good spirits, so everything is going right."

The Forum Augusti was still larger, and also inclosed a temple, in which the Senate assembled to consult about wars and triumphs, and was surrounded with porticoes in which the statues of the most eminent Roman generals were placed, while on each side were the triumphal arches of Germanicus and Drusus.

A stately palace composed the body of the place, and in that palace were porticoes, galleries, halls, and chambers, of an admirable beauty; all was cut in the living stone, and wrought so curiously, that the works seemed to be cast within a mould, and not cut by the chizzel.

The approach to this place is as solitary now as it was thronged and bustling on the evenings of the festival; and in broad daylight one is surprised at the deathlike decay of the sacred surroundings which at night had seemed so full of life. Not a creature to be seen on the time-worn granite steps; not a creature beneath the vast, sumptuous porticoes; the colors, the gold-work are dim with dust.

Names were applied to the temples, as well as the porticoes, according to the number of columns in the portico at either end of the temple, such as the tetrastyle with four columns in front, or hexastyle when there were six. There were never more than ten columns in front. The Parthenon had eight, but six was the usual number.

Here stood a large house, with the usual pillared porticoes, built long since by the Chancellor family and inhabited by them in their generation, but now turned into a country inn. Yet it had importance. Roads ran from it in various directions and in territories very unlike, including the strange and weird region known as the Wilderness.

He is said to have been the first Italian painter smitten with the beauty of the natural world. He was the first to create rich landscape backgrounds, and he enlivened his landscapes with animals. He displayed a fine fancy for architectural effects, introducing into his pictures open porticoes, arcades, balconies, and galleries.

The outbuildings of the palaces must have descended to this point; fragments of porticoes, fallen beams, columns and friezes set up afresh, edged the rugged path which wound through wild weeds, suggesting a neglected cemetery; and the guide repeated the words which he had used day by day for ten years past, continuing to enunciate suppositions as facts, and giving a name, a destination, a history, to every one of the fragments.

Narrow ribbons of silver here and there were the numerous brooks and creeks that cut the country. Groves, still heavy and dark with foliage, hung on the hills, or filled some valley, like green in a bowl. Now and then, among clumps of trees, colonial houses with their pillared porticoes appeared. It was a rare and beautiful scene, appealing with great force to Dick.