United States or Central African Republic ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When the queen visited Kenelworth she was met outside the gates by sybils reciting a poem of welcome. At the gates the giant porter feigned anger at the intrusion, but, overcome by the sight of Elizabeth, laid his club and his keys humbly at her feet. On posts along the route were placed the offerings of Sylvanus, of Pomona, of Ceres, of Bacchus, of Neptune, of Mars, and of Phoebus.
Those, who would have procured him that title, gave it out, that it was foretold in the Sybils' books that the Romans should conquer the Parthians when they fought against them under the conduct of a king, but not before.
And to strengthen this profound conjecture, it is further insisted that this custom of female priests is kept up still in certain refined colleges of our modern AEolists , who are agreed to receive their inspiration, derived through the receptacle aforesaid, like their ancestors the Sybils.
So he painted all round these newly born a company of ancients, who were in those days called prophets and sybils, whose majesty was that of the mind alone at its intensest. And this painting was acknowledged through ages and ages to be the summit and masterpiece of art. Of course we cannot believe such a tale literally. It is only a legend.
To complete this phantasmagoric exhibition, we are presented with sybils and misers; parricides; maniacs in abundance; monks with scourges pursuing a naked youth streaming with blood; subterranean Jews surrounded by the skeletons of their wives and children; lovers blasted by lightning; Irish hags, Spanish grandees, shipwrecks, caverns, Donna Claras and Donna Isidoras, all opposed to each other in glaring and violent contrast, and all their adventures narrated with the same undeviating display of turgid, vehement, and painfully elaborated language.
"But I warn you, you'll be at some disadvantage, sir, to compete with Mosaide in the knowledge of human antiquities. He has rediscovered monuments which were believed to have been lost; among others, the column of Seth and the oracles of Sambethe the daughter of Noah and the most ancient of the sybils."
Wilford would not have exchanged Katy for a dozen Sybils, but there was about the latter a flash and sparkle very fascinating to most men, and Wilford felt himself so much exhilarated in her society that he half regretted leaving it, wishing as he did so that in some things Katy was more like the brilliant woman of the world, who, flashing upon him her most bewitching smile, leaned back in her handsome carriage with a careless, easy abandon, while he ran up the steps of his own dwelling, where Katy waited for him.
Word Of The Day