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Updated: May 31, 2025
Over this I walked to a door that admitted me into the principal quadrangle of the convent, surrounded by a cloister supported on Ionic pillars, beautifully proportioned. A flight of stairs opens into the court, adorned with balustrades and pedestals, sculptured with elegance truly Grecian.
Telford thinks there always ought to be some curve to enable the rain water to run off, and because he would have the outline look like the segment of a large circle, resting on the abutments. A double line over the arches gives a finish to the bridge, and perhaps looks as well, or almost as well, as balustrades, for not a sixpence has been allowed for ornament on these works.
The lane led to the village street, a very pretty one sloping upwards, and lying on each side of the Leston, which rippled along as clear as crystal, crossed every here and there by footbridges, some wooden, some a single stone; while the cottages on the opposite side were perched on a high shelf or terrace, and were approached by charming irregular flights of stairs with low walls or balustrades.
Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding off it and being tumbled in a heap over the balustrades, can he be got up stairs. 'Fetch a doctor, quoth Miss Abbey.
Altogether it is a staircase that charms the eye through its unaffected simplicity, a quality that never loses its power of appeal whether found inside the house or out. Two other stairways with balustrades of slender grace are worthy of note, especially as instances of a single, small turned newel on the lower step, the handrail terminating in a round cap on the top.
And the next instant they could only gaze at each others' terror-stricken faces, at the place she had left vacant, for she was gone. She went up the stairs blindly and uncertainly. When she reached the turn of the fourth floor where the staircase was bare and unlighted, she staggered and sank against the balustrades, her face upturned.
The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough flowers and feathers on her Sunday hat. A certain comic anthropomorphism is to be seen, even on the balustrades of the castle, where the good Emperor William is posed as Jupiter, the Empress Augusta as Juno, Emperor Frederick as Mars, and his wife as Minerva!
The inclined marble slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery; the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved. Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs.
The inside of the dome is figured all over with a monstrous inscription in Turkish characters, wrought in gold mosaic, that looks as glaring as a circus bill; the pavements and the marble balustrades are all battered and dirty; the perspective is marred every where by a web of ropes that depend from the dizzy height of the dome, and suspend countless dingy, coarse oil lamps, and ostrich-eggs, six or seven feet above the floor.
At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice were heard to echo. At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from the top of the facade on the assailants. "The devil!" cried Jehan, "are the towers shaking their balustrades down on our heads?"
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