Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


When Porphyro looked upon Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much for him: "'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven: Porphyro grew faint, She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.

Porphyro got over his faintness before he ran away with Madeline, and Cesar Birotteau was an accepted lover when he swooned with happiness: but many an officer has been cashiered, and many a suitor has been rejected, because the centre of inhibition has got the upper hand of the centre of stimulation.

There were assembled men of widely different types, much astonished at finding themselves in company: the venerable Gabriel, Archbishop of Janina, and uncle of the unfortunate Euphrosyne, who had been dragged thither by force; Abbas, the old head of the police, who had presided at the execution of the Christian martyr; the holy bishop of Velas, still bearing the marks of the chains with which Ali had loaded him; and Porphyro, Archbishop of Arta, to whom the turban would have been more becoming than the mitre.

We may forget the names of Porphyro and Madeline, but we do not forget the background of casement and arras and golden dishes and beautiful sensual things against which we see them, charming figures of love-sickness.

The simple theme, the easy measure, have been his choice; while he is a very Porphyro in the profusion with which he heaps his board with delicates: "Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd; With jellies soother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon; Manna and dates, in argosy transferred From Fez; and spicèd dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon."

It took Barndale a long time to get into this young artist's confidence; but he got there at last, and made a bid for 'Madeline and Porphyro, and paid something in advance for it, and had the work completed. He sold it to a connoisseur at an amazing profit, handed that profit to young Antoletti, and made a man of him.

Agnes is an almost flawless narrative poem, romantic in its conception and artistic in its execution. Porphyro, a young lover, gains entrance to a hostile castle on the eve of St. Agnes to see if he cannot win his heroine, Madeline, on that enchanted evening.

There was little Alice chained to old Bowlsby; there was Lucille, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," linked forever to the dwarf Perrywinkle; there was my friend Porphyro, the poet, with his delicate genius shrivelled in the glare of the youngest Miss Lucifer's eyes; there they were, Beauty and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age Oh, sorrowful procession!

There were assembled men of widely different types, much astonished at finding themselves in company: the venerable Gabriel, Archbishop of Janina, and uncle of the unfortunate Euphrosyne, who had been dragged thither by force; Abbas, the old head of the police, who had presided at the execution of the Christian martyr; the holy bishop of Velas, still bearing the marks of the chains with which Ali had loaded him; and Porphyro, Archbishop of Arta, to whom the turban would have been more becoming than the mitre.

He had denied himself the very necessaries of life, as genius will, to buy his marble and to hire his studio. He had paid a twelvemonth's rent in advance, not daring to trust hunger with the money. He lived, poor fellow, by carving meerschaum pipes for the trade, but he lived for 'Madeline and Porphyro' and his art.