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Updated: June 8, 2025
How appropriate the inscription at the threshold: "To the Memory of an Undying Love." On the surrounding grounds are the fragrant blossoms of nature; within are flower-wreaths of mosaic blooming in jasper, carnelian, and lapis-lazuli, fresh and bright as when they came from the artist's hand centuries ago.
Those who have only once been driven round together with the crew of sightseers, can carry little away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens with rows of pink primroses in spring, and of begonia in autumn, blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta.
He had instituted a queer system of punishments, he made queer remarks, he looked queer: in fine, he was generally regarded as a radical, and therefore a person to be watched with suspicion by boys who, as a body, are intensely conservative. He was of a clear red complexion with lapis-lazuli blue eyes, that peculiar blue which is the colour of the sea on a bright stormy day.
Lowest in the scale: bright green of varied tints, the meadow-grasses mingling with willows and acacias, harmonised by air and distance. Next, opaque blue the blue of something between amethyst and lapis-lazuli that belongs alone to the basements of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate whiteness of ridged snow on Alps or Apennines.
Thus the temple of Amon at Thebes was endowed by Thothmes III. with the revenues of the three cities Anugas, Inu'am, and Harankal; while Seti I., the father of Ramses II., bestowed upon it "all the silver, gold, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and precious stones which he carried off from the humbled land of Syria."
The chamber, which was lofty and spacious, was enriched with the most costly furniture, and the most gorgeous decorations. Pilasters, incrusted with marble, and enamelled with lapis-lazuli, broke the monotony of the walls and supported the ceiling with their capitals.
Straight ahead of him there rises, above the red sandstone walls and the bare parade ground, three marble domes, white as newly-fallen snow, and just beyond are seen the gilt pinnacles of Akbar's palace. We wander among the beautiful marble creations, gaze in wonder at the snowy domes supported on marble pillars, mosaiced with jasper, agate, blood-stone, lapis-lazuli, and other rare stones.
Simultaneously, as the mouth of that valise yawned, the two men leaped forward so that their heads came together resoundingly and absurdly, but not before the bag had exposed its surface articles: a pair of tortoise-shell military brushes, a packet of documents, and a precious silver and lapis-lazuli box about the dimensions of a playing card, the kind usually dedicated to such elusive addenda as stamps, collar buttons, or sewing box in a lady's overnight bag.
Ornamental sculpture seems to be superior to statuary in Russia: it is abundantly practised in the decoration of churches; the innumerable chapels standing at the street corners in honour of some saint possess icons and lamps of bronze and silver; the iconostases of the cathedrals are extremely rich, gold, silver-gilt, silver, lapis-lazuli, malachite and enamel-work are lavishly employed there.
I was much disappointed in the chapel of St. Lorenzo. Notwithstanding the great profusion of granite, porphyry, jasper, verde antico, lapis-lazuli, and other precious stones, representing figures in the way of marquetry, I think the whole has a gloomy effect.
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