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More "Vestal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your understanding," exclaimed the lady. "Whatever my ambition may be, my morality is unimpeached; a vestal would lose none of ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... they make of the artist's own strong interest in what he had to say. In both pictures he succeeded in showing the Colosseum as no longer a ruin, but as, so to speak, a living place peopled by the swarm of the Roman populace, with the emperor and his court, and the College of the Vestal Virgins, and, for chief actors, the hapless wretches who are "butchered to make a Roman holiday." Another picture that greatly increased Gerome's reputation, was his "Death of Julius Caesar," though it must be confessed there was a touch of the stage in the arrangement of the scene, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... party was led by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (q.v.), consul in 391, who presented to Valentinian II. a forcible but unsuccessful petition praying for the restoration of the altar of Victory to its ancient station in the hall of the senate, the proper support of seven vestal virgins, and the regular observance of the other pagan ceremonies. To this petition Ambrose replied in a letter to Valentinian, arguing that the devoted worshippers of idols had often been forsaken by their deities; that the native valour of the Roman soldiers had gained their victories, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hearth itself. Four virgins of the noblest families, the Vestals, were charged with keeping the hearth, for it was necessary that the flame should never be extinguished, and the care of it could be confided only to pure beings. If a Vestal broke her vow, she was buried alive in a cave, for she had committed sacrilege and had ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... by an appearance of naivete.... All her charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... solemn Feast to hold In vestal February; Not rather choosing out some rosy day From the rich coronet of the coming May, When all things meet to marry! O, quick, praevernal Power That signall'st punctual through the sleepy mould The Snowdrop's time to flower, Fair as ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... grave where Laura lay, Within that temple where the vestal flame Was wont to burn; and passing by that way, To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept, All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept; ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... holy alliance of Science and the People—those opposite poles! They will crush between their arms of steel all that opposes the higher civilization. The State, the immemorial vestal fire of all civilization—what a good phrase! I must write that down for my ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the cure of this Indian malady, worse ten thousand times than the leprosy which our forefathers brought from the East. Could they have done this, if they had not been actuated by some strong, some vehement, some perennial passion, which, burning like the Vestal fire, chaste and eternal, never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining the rights of the injured or in denouncing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, all on ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... peccadillos are unknown; But I have motives, whether wise or silly, For letting that pure sanctuary alone. Therefore I name not square, street, place, until I Find one where nothing naughty can be shown, A vestal shrine of Innocence of Heart: Such are—but I have lost ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... worship. He felt it impossible to think of her as performing the ordinary acts of a mortal world. He had the feeling that she moved on higher levels—that she was a creature too shy and perfect to be made the instrument of passion. She should be guarded in her purity like a vestal virgin, so that her straight young body might be forever valiant and her eyes might never ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... was sure. The Greek Xenophon has not only painted us a sweet picture of the domestic Woman, in his Economics, but in the Cyropedia has given, in the picture of Panthea, a view of Woman which no German picture can surpass, whether lonely and quiet with veiled lids, the temple of a vestal loveliness, or with eyes flashing, and hair flowing to the free wind, cheering on the hero to fight for his God, his country, or whatever name his duty might bear at the time. This picture I shall copy by and by. Yet Xenophon grew up ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... but thoughts, found her a Vestal Virgin in Pagan Rome when brutes were kings, and lust stalked rampant through the streets. She was the bride of Christ, and her fair, frail body was flung to the wild beasts, and torn limb from limb while the multitude feasted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... and similar occurrences are, of course, as common and frequent in our temples as in our homes. Gentlemen, can any amount of esoteric whitewashing justify these disgraceful and fairly incredible practices? Then there are the deva dasies, our 'vestal virgins,' of whom even small and poor temples have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the country, and many sociologists are of opinion that no 'civilized' human society can completely get rid of such a class. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... watching the little flames grow into big flames, and spreading her hands to the warmth. Her face, arms, throat, and the front of her white dress became golden. She looked more like some lovely vestal of fire-worship than an ambitious American girl, determined to achieve fame in the battleground of ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... might burn it upon the funeral-pile, and mourn over him. Ay, upon my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that boon, while all the Roman maids and matrons, and those holy virgins they call vestal, and the rabble, shouted in mockery, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, and tremble like a very child, before that piece of bleeding clay; but the Prtor drew back as if I were ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the darkness of the upper and lower halls, made walls and balustrades seem vast by its flickering impotence to oust the darkness. Surely this girl, towering in her sweeping robe and queenly pose, was made to be loved of men and gods! Hero, carrying her vestal taper in the temple recesses, before ever Leander had crossed the wave, could not have had a larger or more noble form, a more noble ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... will court you, their whole delight is to immortalize—Alexander was begot by a Salamander, that visited his Mother in the form of a Serpent, because he would not make King Philip jealous; and that famous Philosopher Merlin was begotten on a Vestal Nun, a certain King's Daughter, by a most beautiful young Salamander; as indeed all the Heroes, and Men of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... fiancailles, or espousals, was now approaching; and it seems that neither the profession of the Abbess, nor her practice at least, were so rigid as to prevent her selecting the great parlour of the convent for that holy rite, although necessarily introducing many male guests within those vestal precincts, and notwithstanding that the rite itself was the preliminary to a state which the inmates of the cloister had renounced ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... to me it shows that the poet did not so absolutely crawl in the dust before her, as did almost all the so called men of her court; though he did certainly flatter her after a fashion in which few queens can be flattered. His description of the belligerent old Gorgon as the "Fair Vestal throned by the West" seems like the poetry and fancy of the beautiful Fairy Queen wasted upon the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Pleasure! you're indeed a pleasant thing,[59] Although one must be damned for you, no doubt: I make a resolution every spring Of reformation, ere the year run out, But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing, Yet still, I trust, it may be kept throughout: I'm very sorry, very much ashamed, And mean, next winter, to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there a doctor, With nature's secrets wrinkled round ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... whose walls were overrun with flowering vines, and whose cells were pretty vestal bowers, entered the bard and the young girl, to be met on the front porch by the wardeness herself, a mite of a woman, with wavy yellow hair, fine complexion and washed-out blue eyes. Sensitive almost ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... come here to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of this gift to the nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must constantly be rekindled, and only those who ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... queen" with her maids of honour were not, if we may credit the existing memoirs of her court, precisely such as modern fastidiousness would assign to the "fair vestal throned by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... universal patroness of poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594; or that of William Stanley, earl of Derby, at Greenwich on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate compliment to the Queen, 'a fair vestal throned by the west' (II. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledgment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful description (II. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw the little western flower ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... imagining her not human like the other women and the men I had known, but a creature apart and in a class apart, I stood day after day gaping at that very door, and wondering how I could open it, how penetrate even to the courtyard of that vestal citadel. So long as my old-fashioned belief that good women were more than human and bad women less than human had influenced me only to a sharper lookout in dealing with the one species of woman I then came in contact with, no harm to me ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... thought, than I would have permitted a stranger to kiss my sister. Her maiden shyness was a bloom which I did not wish to brush off. I took her hand in my own as we turned to retrace our steps to the house, and stood looking down at her in the wonderful September moonlight. She seemed a vestal virgin, in her long, clinging dress of white wool, with a scarf thrown ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... from Portia, and strongly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is "severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a man ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... vivacious Ricord, whom I remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature,—a sceptic as to the morality of the race in general, who would have submitted Diana to treatment with his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue pills for the vestal virgins. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you." This proposal was accepted with thanks by Thaisa; ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... He entreated that the Pannonian general might be associated to the empire. He sent public ambassadors of consular rank to negotiate with his rival; he despatched private assassins to take away his life. He designed that the Vestal virgins, and all the colleges of priests, in their sacerdotal habits, and bearing before them the sacred pledges of the Roman religion, should advance in solemn procession to meet the Pannonian legions; and, at the same time, he vainly tried to interrogate, or to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 'round the campus they marched, drums beating time which no one observed, band clashing with band, in tune with nothing but the dominant note—the joy of reunion. A motley lot of men they are—sailors and traction engineers, Pierrots, soldiers, and even vestal virgins—for the June Commencement ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... "The Great." From making the practice of magic and the inspection of the entrails of animals capital offences, he proceeded to prohibit sacrifices, A.D. 391, and even the entering of temples. He alienated the revenues of many temples, confiscated the estates of others, some he demolished. The vestal virgins he dismissed, and any house profaned by incense he declared forfeited to the imperial exchequer. When once the property of a religious establishment has been irrevocably taken away, it is needless to declare its worship a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... what I was to do with my restless spirit. By contemplation, however, of noble works of art, it appeared to me frequently that the enigma of my inner self became clear to me. When I observed the antique vestal, so calm, so assured, and yet so gentle—when I saw how she stood, self-possessed, firm, and serene—I had a foretaste of the life which I needed, and sought after, both outwardly and inwardly, and I wept tears of ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... verified in the case of tapu. By it authority was ensured, dignity hedged about with respect, and property and public health protected. Any person, place or thing laid under tapu might not be touched, and sometimes not even approached. A betrothed maiden defended by tapu was as sacred as a vestal virgin of Rome; a shrine became a Holy Place; the head of a chief something which it was sacrilege to lay hands on. The back of a man of noble birth could not be degraded by bearing burdens—an awkward ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... astray by their own sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than those who went ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to imagine the lady to have been of the vestal kind when his amour began; yet, as he was thoroughly ignorant of the town, and had very little acquaintance in it, he had no knowledge of that character which is vulgarly called a demirep; that is to say, a woman ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... closed thy wings For ever. When the happy living things Of the old world come forth upon the new I know my heart shall miss thee; and the dew Of summer twilights shall shed tears for me —Tears liker thee, ah, purest! than mine own— Upon thy vestal grave, O ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Cosimo III foolishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence. Sustermans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in return he painted her not only as herself but in various unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... was a trace of tears; Over all his face a shade of pain That deepened and vanished, and came again. Fixed he his woeful eyes on me— Through my very soul they seemed to see. And lightly he laid his hand on mine— His hand was cold as the vestal shrine. "'Tis haunted," he said, "haunted, and he Who dares at night-noon go with me To this cursed place, by phantoms trod, Must fear not devil, man, nor God." "Tell me the story," I cried, "tell me!" And frightened was I at my bravery. A curious smile ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day, She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and "Love Among ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... "Anchorage", and advertise Bertie's danger? So vague were her ideas relative to the limits of extradition, that she had regarded Canada as a city of refuge; considered its protection of United States' criminal fugitives as efficacious, as meeting a Vestal Priestess on the way to his execution, proved in rescuing a Roman malefactor from the penalty of violated law; but this shred of comfort had parted, when most she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wife to fall, a life which we call the honest life of the family. Think what a perversion of ideas must arise when the happiest situation of man, liberty, chastity, is looked upon as something wretched and ridiculous. The highest ideal, the best situation of woman, to be pure, to be a vestal, a virgin, excites fear and laughter in our society. How many, how many young girls sacrifice their purity to this Moloch of opinion by marrying rascals that they may not remain virgins,—that is, superiors! Through fear of finding themselves ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... ululation, umbrage, unanimous, undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, voracious, votive, vulnerable, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Rome of the domus or private house. Two, however, have left remarkably interesting ruins—the Atrium Vest, or House of the Vestal Virgins, east of the Forum, awell-planned and extensive house surrounding a cloister or court; and the House of Livia, so-called, on the Palatine Hill, the walls and decorations of which are excellently preserved. The typical Roman ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Heaven the sacred fire And swept to earth with it o'er land and sea. He lit the vestal flames of poesy, Content, for this, to ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... by the Devil? And have not men been seen to do things which are above humane Strength, that no man living could do without Diabolical Assistances? Claudia was seen by Witnesses enough, to draw a Ship which no humane Strength could move. Tuccia a Vestal Virgin was seen to carry Water in a Sieve: The Devil never assists men to do supernatural things undesired. When therefore such like things shall be testified against the accused Party not by Spectres which are Devils in ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... apartment in Bellingham-Castle. He partook of his frugal meal, and talked of the joyous regales he would provide for his tenantry. He was no longer the existing root of a tree that had been hewn down; one fatal shot had not smitten his Eustace, and doomed his Isabel to remain a vestal mourner over her brother's grave. De Vallance and Eustace were now cementing that bond of virtuous friendship which would distinguish them in happier times; and those times would soon return. The generous ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... however, would have been less fervent had she known that, for the time being, her protegee had assumed the role of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... his work stood perfected, A woman beautiful with youth and grace, But like a Vestal singled from her sex To show the beauty of pure innocence. Her form was such as rapt Endymion Saw on the heights of Latmos when he slept And dreamed Heaven down to him. A glorious shape That to the brightness of ethereal charms Join'd the familiar sweetness of a maid; A soft clear forehead circled ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... I always goes with father, and he trusts me with every thing. I saw the paper signed. The king's ship is called the Vestal, and the captain who signed the paper, signed it ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... a large measure the ancient prototype of the modern nun, and their house is the prototype of the convent. Six nobly-born young women, sworn to chastity, and dressed in a ritual garb, live in an edifice of much magnificence under the rule of one who is the chief Vestal, a sort of Mother Superior. Many pedestals of the statues of such chief priestesses still remain, and we can clearly trace the arrangement of their abode, with its open court—once containing a garden and cool cisterns of pure water—its separate room for each Vestal, its baths, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... her sweet, And from her greatness stoop so low, 395 To be the rival of a cow: Others to prostitute their great hearts, To he baboons' and monkeys' sweet-hearts; Some with the Dev'l himself in league grow, By's representative a Negro. 400 'Twas this made vestal-maids love-sick, And venture to be bury'd quick: Some by their fathers, and their brothers, To be made mistresses and mothers. 'Tis this that proudest dames enamours 405 On lacquies and valets des chambres; Their haughty ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... be State property. As the supreme pontiff could not leave the vicinity of the temple of Vesta, he built a temple to that goddess near his own dwelling, leaving the guardianship of the ancient altar below the Palatine to the Vestal virgins. He spared no effort, for he well realised that human omnipotence, the mastery of mankind and the world, lay in that reunion of sovereignty, in being both king and priest, emperor and pope. All the sap of a mighty race, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea maid's music. That very time I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the West, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow. As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The over-dressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the priestess ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... despise The holiest chain of human ties For him, the dear One in thine eyes, Broke it no more. Thy heart was withered to it's Core, It's hopes, it's fears, it's feelings o'er: Thy Blood grew Ice when his was shed, And Thou the Vestal of the Dead. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the Roman general in his chiselled corselet and dyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestruck silence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. And the old Senator in his white cloak with its broad purple hem, his smooth-faced clients at his elbows, his silent slaves before ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... wrote them. Born with an artist's craving for beauty of expression, he achieved that beauty with infinite pains. Confident in romance and in the beneficence of joy, he cherished the flame of joyous romance with more than Vestal fervor, and kept it ardent in a body which Nature, unkind from the beginning, seemed to delight in visiting with more unkindness—a "soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed" almost from birth. And his books leave the impression ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reached the street, Benda said in a tone of compassion: "They are three delicate creatures; they live their lonely lives like vestal virgins guarding ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was very sweet, very pure and noble. She would have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve. "Stay awhile!" he cried. "I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the still, white flame! Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Do you know what a pretty name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair that a queen might envy? Westover has been ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... DRURY LANE VESTAL. A woman of the town, or prostitute; Drury-lane and its environs were formerly the residence ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... an age when Pontiff and Vestal sleep in the eternal silence. Let the slave of the iron gods chatter what he will; for him flows no Falernian, for him the Muses have no smile, no melody. Ere the sun set, and the darkness fall ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... that extended its immense flaps to his knees; his brown locks, also, hung down behind, in a mode unknown to our times. By his side was a sweet young damsel, her fair features sheltered by a prim little bonnet, within which appeared the vestal muslin of a cap; her close, long-waisted gown, and indeed her whole attire, might have been worn by some rustic beauty who had faded half a century before. But that there was something too warm and life-like ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... evil dreams should vex thee, I did bring That worshipped wafer by the Vestal given; Then, with loose robes and linen stole, did sing Nine prayers to Hecate ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... Waning and waning slowly away, Yet waxing more beautiful every day, As if she were drawing from spheres above, Before she got there, the spirit of love, Which shone as a light through the silken lire, Pure as was that of the vestal fire; And ever she kissed in hysterical mood The bit of the cross all red with blood. "Oh mother dear! I wish—I fear The time of my going is drawing near: Last night, at the mirk and midnight hour, A voice seemed to come through my chamber door— ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid, allarm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed on, In maiden meditation, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... more The Delphian mountain and the Delian shore, And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands, His utterance stifled by the desert sands. No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian grove The golden censers flame with gifts to Love; The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and prays Where the eternal fire sends up its blaze; Cybele hears no more the cymbal's sound, The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round; And shatter'd shrine and altar lie o'erthrown, Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... some say, goes back to the walls of Troy. The form of it passed with the windmills that Don Quixote charged. It is with you to keep the high spirit of it an ever-burning vestal fire. It was a deadly play of old—it is a harmless play to you this day. But the prowess of the game is unchanged; for the skill to strike those pendent rings is no less than was the skill to strike armor-joint, visor, or plumed ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... looked into the room, It wavered, changed, dissolved beneath the sun, Which mingled both the mornings in their eyes, Till the true conquered, and the unreal passed. No walls, but woods bathed in a level sun; No ceiling, but the vestal sky of morn; No bed, but flowers floating 'mid floating leaves On water which grew audible as they stirred And lifted up their heads. And a low wind That flowed from out the west, washed from their eye The last films of the dream. And they sat up, Silent for one long cool delicious ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... expense or that of friend or foe, was wont to observe that there were three things which nobody would ever believe, and which yet were very true; that Queen Elizabeth deserved her title of the, throned vestal, that he was himself a good Catholic, and that Cardinal Albert was a good general. It is probable that the assertions were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for many changes for the better in the lives of these people. Her very presence in a room was an inspiration for cleanliness. Her clothes were no better than theirs but she stood out among them like a vestal virgin. She came into their quarters and made the women ashamed that the rooms were not better fitted to receive so pure a being. You would scarcely have recognized Michele's rooms at the end of the first ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... Christ was miraculously born of a virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia, or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus, Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union; and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang from Jupiter's brain, and that she came out of it, all armed, by means of a blow ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... anchored within the point called in the chart Sampormangio, or, properly, Sampang Mengayu, which, being translated, signifies piratical or cruising waiting-place. The weather was thick and squally, and it was late before the Daedalus and Vestal arrived with their tows, the Nemesis and Pluto, the former frigate having carried away her ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... great fool of myself, having injured my own prospects and done no good to anyone. I understood perfectly that I had acted in an unpardonable manner; for Her Majesty's Maids of Honour were kept, or were supposed to be kept, in very great seclusion at home, as if they were Vestal virgins—which was indeed a very great supposition. Tale after tale came back to my mind of those Maids in the past—of Mademoiselle de la Garde herself, of Miss Stewart, Miss Hyde, Miss Hamilton, and others like them—some of whom were indeed good, but had the greatest difficulty in ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... besprent of its dew! Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew! Her favour it was fill'd the sails of the Trojan for Latium bound, Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on Laurentian ground, And anon from the cloister inveigled the Virgin, the Vestal, to Mars; As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Caesar—last, best of that blood, of that thew. Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... be conceived that I mean to degrade or vilify the literary character, when I would only separate the Author from those polluters of the press who have turned a vestal into a prostitute; a grotesque race of famished buffoons or laughing assassins; or that populace of unhappy beings, who are driven to perish in their garrets, unknown and unregarded by all, for illusions which even their calamities cannot disperse. Poverty, said an ancient, is a sacred thing—it ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... she urged her husband to take vigorous action against Catiline, who had compromised her half-sister Fabia, a vestal virgin; also to give evidence against Clodius, being jealous of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... great community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he—like the pater familias—leaves the worship of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,' the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is instituted, a special official, the rex sacrorum, inherits the king's ritual duties, while the superintendence of the Vestals passes to his representative in the matter of religious law, the pontifex maximus, whose official residence is always ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... Mary, brought from the hysterical sanctuary of her room by the pressing sense of the necessity of looking after the kitchen fire, and coming back to her duties like a vestal of old, found her dreaded enemy cheerfully eating in the kitchen, while Norah sat near and carried on a one-sided conversation with every appearance of friendliness, with Tait sleepily lying beside her—at which astonishing spectacle Mary promptly ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... must otherwise have been precipitated. The Champion of Scotland was saved in the desperate attempt, but I who fell among a heap of stones and rubbish, I the disobedient daughter, wellnigh the apostate vestal, waked only from a long bed of sickness, to find myself the disfigured wretch, which you now see me. I then learned that Malcolm had escaped from the fray, and shortly after I heard, with feelings less keen ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... guardians of a state, And when they fail, portend approaching fate: For that which Rome to conquest did inspire, Was not the Vestal, but the Muses fire; Heav'n joins the blessings, no declining age E'er felt the raptures of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... up yonder aisle, with rows of columns high, A female form, with timid step and downcast modest eye;— A girl she seems by the fresh bloom that decks her lovely face— With locks of gold and vestal brow, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... herself a conscientious, rigid, and devoted Papist. When the house of Saint Roque was despotically dissolved by the fiat of the impetuous monarch, the Lady Foljambe received her friend into her spacious mansion, together with two vestal sisters, who, like their Abbess, were determined to follow the tenor of their vows, instead of embracing the profane liberty which the Monarch's will had thrown in their choice. For their residence, the Lady Foljambe contrived, with all secrecy—for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... (what other way was left) I came.' 'O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none; If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe Within this vestal limit, and how should I, Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.' 'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there, I think no more of deadly lurks therein, Than in a clapper clapping in a garth, To scare the fowl from fruit: if more ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... conquistadores. The native chiefs faced the necessity of saving whatever was possible of the ancient religion. The Spaniards coveted gold and silver. The most precious possessions of the Incas, however, were not images and utensils, but the sacred Virgins of the Sun, who, like the Vestal Virgins of Rome, were from their earliest childhood trained to the service of the great Sun God. Looked at from the standpoint of an agricultural people who needed the sun to bring their food crops to fruition and keep them from hunger, it was of the utmost importance to placate him ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... from the almost vestal quiet of "Aunt Mary's" life, to all this open-windowed, open-eyed screaming of "poltroon," "nefarious plan," "entire depravity," ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the dear ones gathered nightly round the shining household hearth, What to them is brighter, better than the choicest things of earth? Ask that dearer one, whose loving, like a ceaseless vestal flame, Sets my very soul a-glowing at the mention of her name; Ask her why the loved, in dying, feels her spirit linked with his In a union death but strengthens? she will ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... reminds me of his wife, the daughter of Carlo Maratti, the painter. She was so beautiful that she was her father's favourite model for his Nymphs, Madonnas, and Vestal Virgins; and to her charms she added virtue, and to her virtue uncommon musical and literary talents. Among her poems, there is a sonnet addressed to a lady, once beloved by ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... no gossamer-like slightness of theme, which did not rest upon the unseen structure of artistic sincerity. That was why in rare solemn moments he believed that his poetry would live, live beyond his own lifetime and his age, even, perhaps, as long as the Pontifex Maximus and the Vestal Virgin should ascend to the Capitol in public processional. He had said laughingly of his published metrical letters that they might please Rome for a day, travel on to the provinces, and finally become exercise-books for school-boys ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... typical variations of the scene galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Kong, where we found the Castor, Vixen, and Espiegle. The next day the Agincourt, Daedalus, Vestal, and Wolverine, arrived from Borneo, having been engaged with the pirates of Maludu Bay. The squadron had suffered a loss of one officer and eighteen men killed, and about double the number wounded. This heavy loss was occasioned by ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own), To increase the streaming ordures of the stage? What can we say to excuse our second fall? Let this thy Vestal, Heaven, atone for all! Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmixt with foreign filth, and undefil'd; Her wit was more than ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... appear between the interstices of the red-brick hearth. The room, yielding a little in the point of coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie's fresh virginity, and, barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal's cell. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... 6. The Vestal Virgin; or the Roman Ladies, a Tragedy, 1665. In his prologue to this play, Sir Robert has the following couplet, meant as an answer to Dryden's animadversions on ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... according to tradition, reigned Ascanius, the son of AEneas, and his descendants for three hundred years were the Latin tribes. After eleven generations of kings, Amulius usurps the throne, which belonged to Numitor, the elder brother, and dooms his only daughter, Silvia, to perpetual virginity as a Vestal. Silvia, visited by a god, gives birth to twins, Romulus and Remus. The twins, exposed by the order of Amulius, are suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by one of the king's herdsmen. They feed their flocks on the Palatine, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... victories still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal,[13] under spoils decease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross the deck to her, drop a word into those deep places he had discovered, and see her emotions ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... presentation in a country tavern! One is tempted to believe that the father was a man of robuster judgment in such matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the making of a ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum by the fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by its guardians, the Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, the Atrium Vestae, and also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whose potestas they were; these three buildings, then insignificant to look at, constituted the religious focus of the oldest Rome.[31] A ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... was the young astronomer, he reflected, who had helped to crystallise her strange views. His lurking fear that she might one day marry and leave him was aroused at the thought, and his heart contracted with jealousy. She possessed in his eyes something of the sanctity of a vestal virgin, one who must not be profaned by marriage. In such an event, also, his cherished hope that she might complete the quadrangle of St. George's Hall was likely to be frustrated forever. These fears moved him to argue with a bitterness that ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the city has in a memorial set forth three propositions which he considers of force—that Rome, he says, asks for her rites again, that pay be given to her priests and vestal virgins, and that a general famine followed upon the refusal of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... other softer magic move Us less thy fam'd Etesia to love; Where such a character thou giv'st, that shame Nor envy dare approach the vestal dame: So at bright prime ideas none repine, They safely ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... August, I being his favorite, bestowed his name Upon me, and I hold it still in trust, In memory of him and of his fame. I am the Virgin, and my vestal flame Burns less intensely than the Lion's rage; Sheaves are my only garlands, and I claim The golden Harvests ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... through its port Pyrgos (q.v.), was of considerable importance. It fought with Rome in the time of Tarquinus Priscus and Servius Tullius, and subsequently became the refuge of the expelled Tarquins. After the invasion of the Gauls in 390 B.C., the vestal virgins and the sacred objects in their custody were conveyed to Caere for safety, and from this fact some ancient authorities derive the word caerimonia, ceremony. A treaty was made between Rome and Caere in the same year. In 353, however, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hair, tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, conveyed to the happy Bell the result of the Vestal's conference with herself. Thrice before had she snipt off one of her auburn ringlets, and given them away. The possessors were faithless, but the hair had grown again: and Martha had indeed occasion to say that men were deceivers ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that Christ was miraculously born of a virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia, or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus, Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union; and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang from ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, the ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... should vex thee, I did bring That worshipped wafer by the Vestal given; Then, with loose robes and linen stole, did sing Nine prayers to Hecate 'neath the ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... delay arose, during the first act, through the evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfaction with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priestesses; for he was so excited, and withal so terribly short-sighted, that nothing which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... women at the tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and "Love ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... to Caesar they allowed the vestal virgins to employ one lictor each, because one of them had been insulted, owing to not being recognized, while returning home from dinner toward evening. The offices in the City they assigned for a greater ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent had she known that, for the time being, her protegee had assumed the role of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... school-girl already knows much more of it than she will find in this "Tale of the Jewish Dispersion." "Adonijah" is simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed to be instructive, we presume, because the hero is a Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman vestal; because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the "Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews;" and because, instead of being written ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... table d'hotes of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, impoison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias, their petrified vestal manners, their indescribable toilettes and a certain odor of India rubber, which makes one believe that at night they slip themselves into a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... cat,—she who hesitates, is lost. But Diana, shining in heaven, the goddess of the Silver Bow, sees the peril of poor Pussy, and interposes her celestial aid to save the vestal. An enormous grimalkin, almost a wild cat, comes rattling along the roof, down from the chimney-top, and Tom Tortoiseshell, leaping from love to war, tackles to the Red Rover in single ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... distance. She went swiftly up the road, and straight to the railway tracks. She entered the house, the dark, wrecked house, where from the second story window, a perpetual look-out was kept, like the watch of the Vestal Virgins. They came to the open door, and heard her ascend to ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... did he till his work stood perfected, A woman beautiful with youth and grace, But like a Vestal singled from her sex To show the beauty of pure innocence. Her form was such as rapt Endymion Saw on the heights of Latmos when he slept And dreamed Heaven down to him. A glorious shape That to the brightness of ethereal ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... shore, And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands, His utterance stifled by the desert sands. No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian grove The golden censers flame with gifts to Love; The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and prays Where the eternal fire sends up its blaze; Cybele hears no more the cymbal's sound, The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round; And shatter'd shrine and altar lie o'erthrown, Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion lone Has dimly traced his name upon ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... revelation of her spiritual life gave him. "Nobody is good enough for little Mary Ware," he had said once, when she was a romping child. He was thinking of her unselfishness, her sturdy sincerity, her undaunted courage. Now he repeated it, thinking of her as this letter revealed her, a white-souled vestal maiden who took the stars as a symbol of her duty, and who would not swerve a hair's-breadth from the orbit which she thought was ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... every mother's son of them!" said Maurice Quill, as he elbowed his way through the mass; "and here's an old vestal won't leave my arm. She has already embraced me three times, and we've finished a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... you imagine, continued the gentleman; for I assure you they were all vestal virgins for anything which I knew to the contrary. The reputation of intriguing with them was all I sought, and was what I arrived at: and perhaps I only flattered myself even in that; for very probably the persons to whom I showed their billets knew as well as ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day, She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light and life, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... and Peace beguile the blameless Day; And where Friendship's fixt star beams a mellow'd Ray; 50 Where Love a crown of thornless Roses wears; Where soften'd Sorrow smiles within her tears; And Memory, with a Vestal's meek employ, Unceasing feeds the lambent flame of Joy! No more thy Sky Larks less'ning from my sight 55 Shall thrill th' attund Heartstring with delight; No more shall deck thy pensive Pleasures sweet ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... from the year 748 or 750 B. C.— cooperated with the endless other Pagan superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs, or the indispensable office and the indefeasible privileges of the Pontifex Maximus, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work, for many years sought to fight off the evidences for that fact, yet afterwards partially he confessed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... thrilling to the stars, Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow; Glimpsing the golden dawn o'er coral bars, Flaunting the vanisht sunset's garnet glow; Proudly patrician, passionless, serene; Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break; Virgin and vestal — Oh, a very Queen! And at her feet there dreams a ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... foolishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence. Sustermans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in return he painted her not only as herself but in various unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin and even ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... thing in the Exhibition, is the "Veiled Vestal," a statue of a woman carved in marble, with a veil over her face, and so neatly done, that it looks as if it had been thrown over after it was finished. The Exhibition presents many things which appeal to the eye and touch the heart, and altogether, it is ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... seen to do things which are above humane Strength, that no man living could do without Diabolical Assistances? Claudia was seen by Witnesses enough, to draw a Ship which no humane Strength could move. Tuccia a Vestal Virgin was seen to carry Water in a Sieve: The Devil never assists men to do supernatural things undesired. When therefore such like things shall be testified against the accused Party not by Spectres which are Devils in the Shape of Persons either living or dead, but by ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... he clearly know these eight. The group they form is an entirely distinct one, exactly intermediate between the Vestals and Draconids, and cannot be rightly attached to either; for it is Draconid in structure and affinity—Vestal in form—and I don't see how to get the connection of the three families rightly expressed without taking the Draconidae out of the groups belonging to the dark Kora, and placing them next the Vestals, with the Monachae between; for indeed ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Hong Kong, where we found the Castor, Vixen, and Espiegle. The next day the Agincourt, Daedalus, Vestal, and Wolverine, arrived from Borneo, having been engaged with the pirates of Maludu Bay. The squadron had suffered a loss of one officer and eighteen men killed, and about double the number wounded. This heavy loss was occasioned by their having to cut through a large boom which the pirates ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... great many other heresies, it is true. . . . But such green, green, green, as flutters in the vineyard down below the windows, that I never saw; nor yet such lilac and such purple as float between me and the distant hills; nor yet in anything, picture, book, or vestal boredom, such awful, solemn, impenetrable blue, as in that same sea. It has such an absorbing, silent, deep, profound effect, that I can't help thinking it suggested the idea of Styx. It looks as if a draught of it, only so much as you could scoop up on the beach in the hollow of your ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... youth will permit us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,—by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it learned and felt and suffered;—so the circles, which are the tree's memories ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the foyer of the Grand Opera in Paris; is best known as the author of the "Punishment of a Vestal Virgin" and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart into tumult?... Lucile ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... signal sounded at this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not divulge the source of their ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... principle of life! precious flame over which all nature, like a careful vestal, incessantly watches in the temple of God! Center of all, by whom all exists! The spirit of destruction would itself die, blowing at thy flame! I am not astonished that thy name should be blasphemed, for they do not know who ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... time I saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid, allarm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... her cooking and cleaning; from all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm-hearted girl, full of humour and feeling to those she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to strangers. A different being to the fierce impassioned Vestal who has seated herself in ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... sweet, and her limbs perfectly turned; but, I think, rather in a subdued glow from the soul outward. This was not an opaque vase, of material however costly, but a lamp chastely lucent, guarding from extinction, yet not hiding from worship, a flame vital and vestal. In speaking of her attractions, I would not exaggerate language; but, indeed, they seemed to me very real and engaging. What though all was on a small scale, it was the perfume which gave this white violet distinction, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... read the story of Caius Silanus, the Proconsul of Asia, who, accused of malversation and peculation, is first banished to the island of Gyarus, but when the Prince pleads for him, and he is backed by the intercession of a Vestal Virgin of sanctity,—corresponding to a Christian nun or abbess of exemplary piety,—Silanus is removed to the more bearable place of exile, the island ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... water. Ships left the village and went by them to sea gay with the bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, voracious, votive, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... with his own hands in large letters, that the boy might start in life with a useful knowledge of what his forefathers had done, and he was as careful not to use an indecenr expression before his son as he would have been before the vestal virgins. He never bathed with him; which indeed seems to have been customary at Rome, as even fathers-in-law scrupled to bathe naked before their sons-in-law. In later times, however, the Romans learned from the Greeks the habit of bathing naked, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the remonstrances of her subjects, where marriage was spoken of, there was something in the very unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and excited the imagination of her people. As a woman, they regarded her just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces, but not womanly affections—passionless, pure, self-sustained, and self-dependent"; shining "with a cold lunar light and not the warm glow ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of Apulius, as some say, tho' according to others the Son of Mars by one of the Vestal Virgins, built the City of Rome, and reign'd there 37 Years; after him reigned six Kings successively (their Names are of no Consequence) but the Wickedness of the last King put an end to the regal State, and introduced ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... year, one of these—to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal—I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: "Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead." It is more defeats that one can read so ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... parts of her recital sufficiently cruel and mortifying; for the intention, at least, of the infidelity was so obvious, that she had not even taken the trouble to disguise it. She could never have imagined that G—— M—— meant to venerate her as a vestal. She must therefore clearly have made up her mind to pass at least one night with him. What an avowal for a lover's ears! However, I considered myself as partly the cause of her guilt, by having been ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... desires, a gaucherie which she strives to cover by an appearance of naivete.... All her charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity, that ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... glory Revived in Latium's later story, When, by her auspices, her son Laurentia's royal damsel won. She vestal Rhea's spotless charms Surrender'd to the War-god's arms; She for Romulus that day The Sabine daughters bore away; Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name, Thence the old Quirites came; And thence the stock of high renown, The blood of Romulus, handed down Through many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... jests whether at his own expense or that of friend or foe, was wont to observe that there were three things which nobody would ever believe, and which yet were very true; that Queen Elizabeth deserved her title of the, throned vestal, that he was himself a good Catholic, and that Cardinal Albert was a good general. It is probable that the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... passion of sense, or transfigures it so that we know it no longer. The idea-driven is callous to the blandishments of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love to woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake are the exemplars ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... "So, our fair vestal is stirring abroad?" said the only man she met, who was one of the menials; but Catharine passed on without notice or reply, and gained the little garden without ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... had not accomplished the impossible and transmuted the pirate of body into the pure of soul. It would not be true to say that he never thought lewdly of her; he would have thought lewdly of an angel or a vestal maid; that was ingrain in the composition of the man; but he thought well of her as he had never thought well of women before since he first scorched his stripling's fingers, and he would have killed twenty men to keep her from hearing a foul word. Sometimes when he talked with her, ever ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the comedies of Aristophanes were unworthy of presentation in a country tavern! One is tempted to believe that the father was a man of robuster judgment in such matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the making of a ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... furniture, with his bald head, and pale, impressive face, would have made a fine study for a painter. By such men, the embers of learning and of science were nursed into a faint but steady flame, burning through the long, gloomy night of the dark ages, unseen by profane eyes, like the vestal ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... a tall, lean figure of a woman of about thirty-six; the other, of the same size and make of about forty. There was no mark of wife or widow in any one part of either of them. They seemed to be two upright vestal sisters, unsapped by caresses, unbroke in upon by tender salutations. I could have wished to have made them happy. Their happiness was destined, that night, to come from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... could'st trample and despise The holiest chain of human ties For him, the dear One in thine eyes, Broke it no more. Thy heart was withered to it's Core, It's hopes, it's fears, it's feelings o'er: Thy Blood grew Ice when his was shed, And Thou the Vestal of the Dead. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... say, goes back to the walls of Troy. The form of it passed with the windmills that Don Quixote charged. It is with you to keep the high spirit of it an ever-burning vestal fire. It was a deadly play of old—it is a harmless play to you this day. But the prowess of the game is unchanged; for the skill to strike those pendent rings is no less than was the skill to strike armor-joint, visor, or plumed crest. It was of old an exercise for deadly ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... a right hearty welcome from his father, and intense was the satisfaction of the brave seaman when his son showed him his commission and appointment as second lieutenant to the "Vestal," an eighteen gun sloop of war, commanded by Captain Gale, and destined ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... planned and in part written, it was discovered that Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darkness and Dawn" a scene, "Onesimus and the Vestal," which corresponds very closely to the scene, "Agias and the Vestal," in this book; but the latter incident was too characteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why such a book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness and Dawn" and "Quo ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... of help, she did not know. They had reached Elizabeth House, and she paused on the broad steps under the shelter of the veranda. With her back toward the door she looked down upon him as he stood on the sidewalk, his umbrella deeply shadowing his head and shoulders. She stood before him like a vestal guarding her temple from desecration. She was conscious of a sharp revulsion of feeling, and a sudden fierce anger burned in her heart. She spoke ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... task. As he looked at his sturdy young companion, listened to her picturesque talk, he felt that he was called upon to tell a young vestal virgin that she was to be sacrificed to ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... Deans," said the dairy-vestal, addressing Jeanie, who sat, not in the most comfortable state of mind, by the side of Archibald, who himself managed the helm.—"are you not afeard of these wild men with their naked knees, and of this nut-shell ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... especially of her personal attentions, on the sick and the poor, she will find all she has done of good at home an invaluable prompter and aid. For the sake, therefore, of others, as a social and responsible being, let the flame she would support on the public altar be kindled from the vestal ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... The generous wine penetrated, perhaps, to some inner cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words, which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an anchorite or to a vestal. A word or two she said or sung about the flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women; of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden time that was ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... majestic scenery that Lake Tahoe lies enshrined. Its entrancing beauty is such that we do not wonder that these triumphant monarchs of the "upper seas" cluster around it as if in reverent adoration, and that they wear their vestal virgin robes of purest white in token of the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... under a happier condition of his private life. That Caesar should have escaped destruction in this unequal contest with an enemy then wielding the whole thunders of the state, is somewhat surprising; and historians have sought their solution of the mystery in the powerful intercessions of the vestal virgins, and several others of high rank amongst the connexions of his great house. These may have done something; but it is due to Sylla, who had a sympathy with everything truly noble, to suppose him struck with powerful admiration for the audacity of the young ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... hear him. She continued: "Until I loved you, every throb of my heart belonged to Poland. She, alone, was the object of my love and of my prayers. But since then, sire, the holy fire that burned upon the altar is quenched. I am faithless to my vestal vow, and I feel within my soul the tempest of an earthly passion. I have broken the oath that I made to my dying mother, for there is one more dear to me than Poland now, and for him are the prayers, the hopes, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that were no longer in keeping with the social realities, so religion witnessed the foundering of a system of ethics contrary to the moral code that had slowly been established. The idea of collective responsibility contained in a number of beliefs is one instance. If a vestal violated her vow of chastity the divinity sent a pest that ceased only on the day the culprit was punished. Sometimes the angry heavens granted victory to the army only on condition that a general or soldier dedicate himself to the infernal gods as an expiatory victim. However, through the influence ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... the polished metal cover of a hunting-watch will sometimes converge a sufficiency of rays, to burn. The vestal fire of Rome and the sacred fire of the Mexicans were obtained by means of reflectors. If I understand aright, they consisted of a stone with a conical hollow, carefully polished, the apex of the hollow cone was a right angle: the tinder was held in the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... perhaps already commenced to sit at the foot of the ladder which bound his fig-tree to the highest heaven; and the peasant maiden Mary, the descendant of a noble house, though with fallen fortunes, who, like some vestal virgin, clad in snowy white, watched through the dark hours beside the flickering flame; and last, but not least, Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth, "who were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... ancient prototype of the modern nun, and their house is the prototype of the convent. Six nobly-born young women, sworn to chastity, and dressed in a ritual garb, live in an edifice of much magnificence under the rule of one who is the chief Vestal, a sort of Mother Superior. Many pedestals of the statues of such chief priestesses still remain, and we can clearly trace the arrangement of their abode, with its open court—once containing a garden ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... considered her sacrifice to her mother as a safeguard against the risk of a mediocre domesticity. Indeed, she began to feel a certain pride, as of a priestess, in the conservation of the dignity of her nature. It is better to be a vestal virgin than—some mothers. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... is yours; where'er it falls, It treads your well-wrought leather, On earthen floor, in marble halls, On carpet, or on heather. Still there the sweetest charm is found Of matron grace or vestal's, As Hebe's foot bore nectar round Among the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... red-blooded men, yet lacking the finer sensibility, this might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting. That was it, the superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that attracted, was the shield, the immaculate robe that clothed her and preserved her like a vestal virgin from such violation. Barlow could not word all these things; subconsciously they swayed him—like the magnetic needle, always toward the pole ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Nunnery, like herself a conscientious, rigid, and devoted Papist. When the house of Saint Roque was despotically dissolved by the fiat of the impetuous monarch, the Lady Foljambe received her friend into her spacious mansion, together with two vestal sisters, who, like their Abbess, were determined to follow the tenor of their vows, instead of embracing the profane liberty which the Monarch's will had thrown in their choice. For their residence, the Lady Foljambe contrived, with all secrecy—for Henry might not have relished ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature,—a sceptic as to the morality of the race in general, who would have submitted Diana to treatment with his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue pills for the vestal virgins. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and People to meet in, and to consult and worship in, and feast, and buy, and sell; and this [Greek: demos] they walled about for its safety, and called [Greek: ten polin] the city: and this I take to have been the original of Villages, Market-Towns, Cities, common Councils, Vestal Temples, Feasts and Fairs, in Europe: the Prytaneum, [Greek: pyros tameion], was a Court with a place of worship, and a perpetual fire kept therein upon an Altar for sacrificing: from the word [Greek: Hestia] ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... face was very sweet, very pure and noble. She would have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve. "Stay awhile!" he cried. "I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the still, white flame! Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Do you know what a pretty name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair that a queen might envy? ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... She had always looked on Alice as excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as consecrated from her birth for a vestal's lot. She had never thought of her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... appeal of the Queen for Assad's life, rising to an intensely dramatic pitch as she warns the King of the revenge of her armed hosts ("When Sheba's iron Lances splinter and Zion's Throne in Ruins falls"). In sad contrast comes the mournful chant which accompanies Sulamith as she passes to the vestal's home ("The Hour that robbed me of him"), and ends in her despairing cry rising above the chorus of attendants as ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and pressed; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all that drink of ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... was just completed, when the pale figure in light blue livery announced Counsellor Daly and dinner, for both came fortunately together. Taking the post of honour, Miss Riley's arm, I followed Tom, who I soon perceived ruled the whole concern, as he led the way with another ancient vestal in black stain and bugles. The long procession wound its snake-like length down the narrow stair, and into the dining-room, where at last we all got seated; and here let me briefly vindicate the motives of my friend—should any unkind person be found to impute to his selection of a residence, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... are less liable to be led astray by their own sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than those ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... am I worthy of such kindness; have I done any thing entitling me to such a proof of condescension on her part, and am I thus honored by her who is the guardian angel of Prussia!—whom Napoleon hates, because he fears her zeal and fidelity. As a vestal, she has kept alive the fire of patriotism on the altar of her country. When all despair, she still hopes for the redemption of her people from a victorious but merciless enemy. I will consecrate my life anew to her, though unworthy of the distinguished regard she bestows on me by this present, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... love for a man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... poem, the "Faerie Queen," as he said, to extol "the glorious person of our sovereign Queen." Shakespeare is reported to have written the "Merry Wives of Windsor" for her amusement, and in his "Midsummer Night's Dream" he addresses her as the "fair vestal in the West." The translators of the Bible spoke of her as "that bright Occidental Star," and the common people loved to sing and shout the praises of their "good Queen Bess." After her death at Richmond, when her body was being conveyed ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... means! The generous wine penetrated, perhaps, to some inner cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an anchoret or to a vestal. A word or two she said or sung about the flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women, of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden time ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... to anyone. I understood perfectly that I had acted in an unpardonable manner; for Her Majesty's Maids of Honour were kept, or were supposed to be kept, in very great seclusion at home, as if they were Vestal virgins—which was indeed a very great supposition. Tale after tale came back to my mind of those Maids in the past—of Mademoiselle de la Garde herself, of Miss Stewart, Miss Hyde, Miss Hamilton, and others like them—some of whom were indeed good, but had the greatest difficulty in remaining ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... rose from the extreme west corner of a great petted rose bush on the Wainwright lawn, reaching through an elaborate iron fence to get it as he went cross-lots back to school. He would call it stealing now to do that same, but then it had been in the nature of a holy rite offered to a vestal virgin. Yet he must have cast it down with the grin of an imp, boorish urchin that he was; and he remembered blushing hotly in the dark afterwards at his presumption, as he thought of it alone at night. And all the time she had been ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... the kingdom the treasure and gold that were brought from Troy. Numitor chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... could not reside in a private house, he declared his abode to be State property. As the supreme pontiff could not leave the vicinity of the temple of Vesta, he built a temple to that goddess near his own dwelling, leaving the guardianship of the ancient altar below the Palatine to the Vestal virgins. He spared no effort, for he well realised that human omnipotence, the mastery of mankind and the world, lay in that reunion of sovereignty, in being both king and priest, emperor and pope. All ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... even in those times of pure Zeal and primitive Religion. Yet, in respect of Shakespear's great sense, Aristophanes's best wit is but buffoonry; and, in comparison of Aristophanes's Freedoms, Shakespear writes with the purity of a Vestal. But they will say, St. Chrysostom contracted a fondness for the comic Poet for the sake of his Greek. To this, indeed, I have nothing to reply. Far be it from me to insinuate so unscholarlike a thing, as if We had the same Use for good English ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... Claudius, and by the tidings which had spread rapidly through the streets, of what had occurred. The soldiers whom Claudius had sent forward, were making arrests in the streets, and searching the houses. In the midst of this excitement, Messalina, with her children, attended by one of the vestal virgins, named Vibidia, whom she had prevailed upon to accompany her and plead her cause, came forth from her palace on foot, and proceeded through the streets, her hair disheveled, her dress in disorder, and her whole ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... bewildered your understanding," exclaimed the lady. "Whatever my ambition may be, my morality is unimpeached; a vestal would lose none of her ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... sufficiently cruel and mortifying; for the intention, at least, of the infidelity was so obvious, that she had not even taken the trouble to disguise it. She could never have imagined that G—— M—— meant to venerate her as a vestal. She must therefore clearly have made up her mind to pass at least one night with him. What an avowal for a lover's ears! However, I considered myself as partly the cause of her guilt, by having been the first to ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... VESTAL. A woman of the town, or prostitute; Drury-lane and its environs were formerly the residence of many of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Queen of Crete To take a town-bull for her sweet, And from her greatness stoop so low, 395 To be the rival of a cow: Others to prostitute their great hearts, To he baboons' and monkeys' sweet-hearts; Some with the Dev'l himself in league grow, By's representative a Negro. 400 'Twas this made vestal-maids love-sick, And venture to be bury'd quick: Some by their fathers, and their brothers, To be made mistresses and mothers. 'Tis this that proudest dames enamours 405 On lacquies and valets des chambres; Their haughty stomachs overcomes, And makes ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... adopt you as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?" "Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by morning this wood has not been cut, you will go minus your breakfast." Thereupon ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... doctors call; Let this estate from parents' care descend: The getting it too much of life does spend. Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be A fair encouragement for industry. Let constant fires the winter's fury tame, And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame. Thee to the town let never suit at law, And rarely, very rarely, business draw. Thy active mind in equal temper keep, In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, Without which all the composition's vain. In the same ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... annual festival; births, marriages, deaths, and similar occurrences are, of course, as common and frequent in our temples as in our homes. Gentlemen, can any amount of esoteric whitewashing justify these disgraceful and fairly incredible practices? Then there are the deva dasies, our 'vestal virgins,' of whom even small and poor temples have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the country, and many sociologists are of opinion that no 'civilized' human society can completely get rid of such ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... those humbler friends who helped the parson's busy daughter in her cooking and cleaning; from all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm-hearted girl, full of humour and feeling to those she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to strangers. A different being to the fierce impassioned Vestal who has seated herself in Emily's ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... by private jars, The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o'er: And him the Trojan vestal bore (Sprung of that hated line) ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... the guardians of a state, And when they fail, portend approaching fate: For that which Rome to conquest did inspire, Was not the Vestal, but the Muses fire; Heav'n joins the blessings, no declining age E'er felt the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... the blast! Who is the victor of the day? Thou of the delicate form, and golden hair, And manhood glorious in its midst of May; Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest The bold device, "The loftiest is the fairest!" As bending low thy stainless crest, "The vestal throned by the west" Accords the old Provencal crown Which blends her own with thy renown; Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse, Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed With daintiest Castaly's most silver dews, Alas! how soon thy amaranth leaves were shed; ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... unwilling, to their accustomed passions. Consider the timorous, they are afraid even of those things that preserve them. Consider the pettish, they are angry with their best and dearest friends. Consider the amorous and lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... too amiable Wallace, it as powerfully denounced to her, that she had devoted herself to one who must ever be to her as a being of air. No word of sympathy would ever whisper felicity to her heart; no-the flame that was within her (which she found would be immortal as the vestal fires which resemble its purity) must burn there unknown; hidden, but ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... hundred years were the Latin tribes. After eleven generations of kings, Amulius usurps the throne, which belonged to Numitor, the elder brother, and dooms his only daughter, Silvia, to perpetual virginity as a Vestal. Silvia, visited by a god, gives birth to twins, Romulus and Remus. The twins, exposed by the order of Amulius, are suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by one of the king's herdsmen. They feed their flocks ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of that "Vestal Virgin" business—Sahwah was flourishing a chamois vest to give us the idea of vestal—Nyoda walked in. There was only one low lamp burning in order to carry out Sahwah's idea of what a Rain Jinx ceremony should be like, and ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... the closed and barred gates of that vestal establishment, Maitland's cabman "pulled, and pushed, and kicked, and knocked" for a considerable time, without manifest effect. Clearly the retainers of Miss Marlett had secured the position for the night, and expected no visitors, though ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon, And the Imperial Votress ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... good enough for little Mary Ware," he had said once, when she was a romping child. He was thinking of her unselfishness, her sturdy sincerity, her undaunted courage. Now he repeated it, thinking of her as this letter revealed her, a white-souled vestal maiden who took the stars as a symbol of her duty, and who would not swerve a hair's-breadth from the orbit which she thought ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the aching heart, Lest the freed malefactors should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there a doctor, With nature's secrets wrinkled round a brow Guilty with conscious ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... tavern! One is tempted to believe that the father was a man of robuster judgment in such matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the making of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... powerful enough in its way, but the conclusion which the fair artist draws is at least an odd one. We prepare ourselves to hear that woman has resolved to extirpate such a monster as this, or that she will remain an obstinate vestal till a nobler breed of wooers arises. What woman owns that she really does is to mould herself as much on the monster's model as she can. According to her own account, she puts nature's picture of herself into the hands of this imbecile, invites him ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... with money. Don't worry about the vestal virgin. He won't have time in this game to bother with poor relations, no matter how pretty they may happen ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... very time I saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid, allarm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west; And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial vot'ress passed on, In ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... do I woo? Because her spirit's vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness; Nay, rather marks more fair the height Which can with safety so neglect To dread, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the jewels; and she looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you." This proposal was accepted with thanks ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... end by roaring at as the delusion; this common bloom of the ripeness of a season; this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to vanquish him in his mastery, snare him in her surrender. It must have been the veritable passion: a flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the yewwood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of very favourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night,-love was the explicable magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compelled to quit Italy. The censors hold a lustrum, and find the number of the citizens to be two hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and twenty-four. [Y. R. 479. B. c. 273.] A treaty of alliance formed with Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Sextilia, a vestal, found guilty of incest, and buried alive. Two colonies sent forth, to Posidonium and Cossa. [Y. R. 480. B. C. 272.] A Carthaginian fleet sails, in aid of the Tarentines, by which act the treaty is violated. Successful operations ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... within it! So there was nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shut themselves up in the Capitol; all the rest, with the women and children, put their most precious goods into carts and left the city. The Vestal Virgins carried the sacred fire, and were plodding along in the heat, when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state, helped them into his cart, and took them to the city of Cumae, where they found shelter in a temple. And so Rome ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley, Cibber, Vanbrugh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... knows much more of it than she will find in this "Tale of the Jewish Dispersion." "Adonijah" is simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed to be instructive, we presume, because the hero is a Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman vestal; because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the "Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews;" and because, instead of being written in plain language, it is adorned with that peculiar style of grandiloquence ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... cooperated with the endless other Pagan superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs, or the indispensable office and the indefeasible privileges of the Pontifex Maximus, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work, for many years sought to fight off the evidences for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Cicisbeo—Platonic of course—was requested to leave the house, and discontinue his visits to Madame Lebrun. This simple proceeding let loose all the winds of heaven; poor Lebrun was pounced upon by the whole female sex. Even his old mother turned against him; even his sister, a sour vestal of thirty-seven, sided with her injured sister-in-law; and what had the wretched poet to say for himself? He suspected nothing improper—a good easy man—he adored his "Fanny"—he wanted her to come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal,[13] under spoils decease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... performing the ordinary acts of a mortal world. He had the feeling that she moved on higher levels—that she was a creature too shy and perfect to be made the instrument of passion. She should be guarded in her purity like a vestal virgin, so that her straight young body might be forever valiant and her eyes might never learn the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... made a complete and universal conquest. In the darkest ages and most benighted regions, it has been found impossible utterly to extinguish the light of reason. There always have been some in whose souls the torch of truth has been kept burning with vestal watchfulness: we can discern its glimmer here and there through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered it ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drink there in ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The over-dressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... David, before he had left "those few sheep in the wilderness"; and by the prophet who "was in the deserts till the time of his showing unto Israel." Its primary "institution," for Europe, was Numa's, in that of the Vestal Virgins, and College of Augurs; founded on the originally Etrurian and derived Roman conception of pure life dedicate to the service of God, and practical wisdom ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... imagine, continued the gentleman; for I assure you they were all vestal virgins for anything which I knew to the contrary. The reputation of intriguing with them was all I sought, and was what I arrived at: and perhaps I only flattered myself even in that; for very probably the persons to whom I showed their billets ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... are forsaken now; Dark mould and moss cling to thy fretted towers; Deep rents and seams, where struggling lichens grow, And no sweet voice of prayer at vestal hours; But voice of screaming shot and bursting shell, Thy deep damnation and thy doom foretell. The 'fire' has left a pile of broken walls, And Night-hags revel ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... could not control. Does he hear in a dream, through the buzz of the crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart into ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... rose our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... wore the conventional sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross the deck ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Zappi reminds me of his wife, the daughter of Carlo Maratti, the painter. She was so beautiful that she was her father's favourite model for his Nymphs, Madonnas, and Vestal Virgins; and to her charms she added virtue, and to her virtue uncommon musical and literary talents. Among her poems, there is a sonnet addressed to a lady, once ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... lives of millions of workers go to the adornment of women. In painting they sometimes excel, but a Madame Le Brun does her best work when she paints herself and her child, and when Angelica Kauffmann would paint a vestal virgin, she drapes a veil over her own head and transfers her features to the canvas. Sculpture and architecture are too impersonal and abstract to attract much attention from women at present. Even a sculptor like Mrs. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... family is the heart of the state, and that the state is but the widened family, is the fact which the old vestal consecration, power, and honor set forth and ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark this day, by your verdict, your horror of their profanation; and believe me, when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and the tongue that asks it, traceless in the grave, many a ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... hair and by his mincing walk got charged with effeminacy: and Pompey's scratching his head with one finger was construed in the same way, though both these men were very far from effeminacy or wantonness. And Crassus was accused of an intrigue with one of the Vestal Virgins, because he wished to purchase from her a pleasant estate, and therefore frequently visited her and waited upon her. And Postumia, from her readiness to laugh and talk somewhat freely with men, got accused and even had to stand her trial for ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... serious delay arose, during the first act, through the evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfaction with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priestesses; for he was so excited, and withal so terribly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... which first the vestal fire begun, Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame, Devised a vessel to receive the sun, Being stedfastly opposed to the same; Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art, On which the sun might by reflection beat, Receiving strength for every secret part, The ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... virgins to various deities, of which the classic example is the institution of the Vestal Virgins at Rome, and the fact that at Thebes and elsewhere even the male deities had their priestesses as well as priests, are other indications that at this time woman was regarded as divine or as capable of ministering to divinity. ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... him exceedingly. He was not sure, indeed, but that he ought to go straight to Norbanus and tell him what had happened, yet he feared that in such a case the anger of the magistrate would be so great that Ennia would be forced by him into becoming one of the vestal virgins, or be shut up in strict imprisonment. Scarce a word was spoken as they passed down the hill and into the streets, now almost deserted. At last Ennia stopped at the entrance used by the slaves ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... lonely marshland and dykes between us and the nearest human habitation. And then perhaps he remembered the soothing fact for he allowed a gleam to light up his eyes, like the reflection of some inward fire tended in the sanctuary of his heart by a devotion as pure as that of any vestal. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... spray; as if, in the language of ancient poetry, and fable, the genii of the place, pleased with the beholder's near approach to the seat of their empire, decked the devotee with the appropriate robes of the cataract, the vestal veil of fleecy spray, and the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a beautiful open fireplace, but which was now walled up with broken bricks, and surmounted by a mantel of Italian marble sculptured with the story of Prometheus's boon to mankind, and supported on either end by caryatides in the shape of vestal virgins bearing flaming brands in their hands. Overhead the ceiling showed great patches of bare lath, where the plaster had fallen away, and the uncarpeted floor was strewn with bread-crumbs and marked by a trail of coal-siftings from the stove to a closet-door from which the fire was ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... own sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than those who went ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely-exaggerated classic stride. "And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know, that among a thousand such traditional, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... saw the grave where Laura lay, Within that temple where the vestal flame Was wont to burn: and, passing by that way To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tomb fair Love and fairer Virtue kept, All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... I sawe the grave where Laura lay; Within that temple, where the vestal flame; Was wont to burne: and passing by that way, To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tombe fair love, and fairer virtue kept, All suddenly I sawe the Fairy Queene: At whose approach the soul of Petrarche wept And from henceforth, those Graces were not scene; For they this queen ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... vocabulary?—I think life has not yet done with the vivacious Ricord, whom I remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature,—a sceptic as to the morality of the race in general, who would have submitted Diana to treatment with his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue pills for the vestal virgins. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the practice of magic and the inspection of the entrails of animals capital offences, he proceeded to prohibit sacrifices, A.D. 391, and even the entering of temples. He alienated the revenues of many temples, confiscated the estates of others, some he demolished. The vestal virgins he dismissed, and any house profaned by incense he declared forfeited to the imperial exchequer. When once the property of a religious establishment has been irrevocably taken away, it is needless to declare its worship a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... plovers, snipes, or rabbits."* Sometimes they enjoyed fishing in the near-by brook or the larger river. The two brothers were devoted to their sister Gertrude, to whom Sidney referred in later years as his "vestal sister, who had, more perfectly than all the men or women of the earth, nay, more perfectly than any star or any dream," represented to him "the simple majesty and the serene purity of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... lay and looked into the room, It wavered, changed, dissolved beneath the sun, Which mingled both the mornings in their eyes, Till the true conquered, and the unreal passed. No walls, but woods bathed in a level sun; No ceiling, but the vestal sky of morn; No bed, but flowers floating 'mid floating leaves On water which grew audible as they stirred And lifted up their heads. And a low wind That flowed from out the west, washed from their ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... natural sense; And those perpetual yearnings sweet Of lives which dream that they can meet Are given that lovers never may Be without sacrifice to lay On the high altar of true love, With tears of vestal joy. To move Frantic, like comets to our bliss, Forgetting that we always miss, And so to seek and fly the sun, By turns, around which love should run, Perverts the ineffable delight Of service guerdon'd with full sight And pathos of a hopeless want, To an unreal victory's ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... afterwards explained, and the English and French forms given in each case are the terms which would be used in answering the rapid question, 'Of what order is this flower?' the answer being, It is a 'Cyllenid,' a 'Pleiad,' or a 'Vestal,' as one would answer of a person, he is a Knight of St. John or Monk of St. Benedict; while to the question, of what gens, we answer, a Stella or an Erica, as one would answer of a person, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... on, and came to a great city, where, upon his arrival, he understood there was a great and solemn procession, in order to shut up a young woman against her will among the vestal-nuns. The prince was touched with compassion; and thinking the best use he could make of his cap was to redress public wrongs and relieve the oppressed, he flew to the temple, where he saw the young woman, crowned with flowers, clad in white, and with her disheveled hair flowing ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality; namely, a group of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Halle, as he was playing a variation ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... upon the vestal earth, The morn she rose exulting from her birth; A living harmony, a perfect plan Of power and beauty, ere the rebel man Defiled with sin, and stain'd with kindred blood, The paradise his God ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... utensils for their religious services, and with the ashes of some of their Aztec princes who had fancied this airy sepulcher. Before each sanctuary stood an altar, with that undying fire upon it, the extinction of which boded as much evil to the empire as that of the Vestal flame would have done in ancient Rome. Here also was the huge cylindrical drum made of serpents' skins, and struck only on extraordinary occasions, when it sent forth a melancholy, weird sound, that might be heard for miles" over the country, indicating ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Vesta, called Vestales or Vestal Virgins, played a conspicuous part in these festivals. They were six in number, and were chosen—between the ages of six and ten—from the noblest families in Rome. Their term of office was thirty years. During the first ten years, they were initiated in their religious duties, during the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... they all do! I got there, I threw myself into a chair. "What shocking weather! How tiring the streets are!" Then some gossip: "Mademoiselle Lemierre was to have taken the part of Vestal in the new opera, but she is in an interesting condition for the second time, and they do not know who will take her place. Mademoiselle Arnould has just left her little Count: they say she is negotiating with Bertin.... That poor Dumesnil no longer knows either what he is saying or what he is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... aspirants then graciously withdrew their claims, and pledged their cordial support to the regular nominee of the convention.[157] Such machine-like precision warmed the hearts of Democratic politicians. The editor of the People's Advocate declared the integrity of Douglas to be "as unspotted as the vestal's fame—as untarnished and as ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... her hand on his mouth. "Silence," she said. "I am studying you. I am unbridled desire, immaculate. I am a vestal bacchante. No man has known me, and I might be the virgin pythoness at Delphos, and have under my naked foot the bronze tripod, where the priests lean their elbows on the skin of the python, whispering questions to the invisible god. My heart is of stone, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... conscientious, rigid, and devoted Papist. When the house of Saint Roque was despotically dissolved by the fiat of the impetuous monarch, the Lady Foljambe received her friend into her spacious mansion, together with two vestal sisters, who, like their Abbess, were determined to follow the tenor of their vows, instead of embracing the profane liberty which the Monarch's will had thrown in their choice. For their residence, the Lady Foljambe contrived, with all secrecy—for Henry ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... have never doubted my mother's faith. When I imagined I did I was self-deceived. Everything here confirms it, and Miss Walton more than all. I will consult the divine oracle. She shall be the fair vestal, the gentle priestess. She lives near to heaven, and knows its mind. If her kind and womanly nature shrinks from me, if she coldly draws her skirts aside that I pollute them not even with a touch—if she by word or even ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... their tyranny, for us possibly to think rationally that they still possess that power over us which they had formerly, so far as to work wonderful things which appeared miraculous; such as they relate of the vestal virgin, who, to prove her virginity, carried water in a sieve; and of her who by means of her sash alone, towed up the Tiber a boat, which had been so completely stranded that no human power could move it. Almost all the holy doctors agree, that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... last four hundred years? Have we not had tumblers, conjurers, allegories, martyrdoms, marriages, elephants on the tight-rope, learned horses, and learned asses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura; with a good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the presence of a vestal? It is an age of execrable taste, and we must ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... and stalked by me as grave as a Judge. A Citizen then desired me to give free Ingress and Egress to his Wife, who was dressed in the gayest coloured Ribbons I had ever seen. She went in with a Flirt of her Fan and a smirking Countenance, but came out with a Severity of a Vestal, and throwing from her several Female Gugaws, told me with a Sigh, that she resolved to go into deep Mourning, and to wear Black all the rest of her Life. As I had many Coquets recommended to me by their Parents, their Husbands, and their Lovers, I let them ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this girl who had drawn him to her which made it necessary that he should assert mere sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her—something in her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then this passing ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... extinguish'd glory Revived in Latium's later story, When, by her auspices, her son Laurentia's royal damsel won. She vestal Rhea's spotless charms Surrender'd to the War-god's arms; She for Romulus that day The Sabine daughters bore away; Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name, Thence the old Quirites came; And thence the stock of high ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... I fear this novelty celestial That very night was visible and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... baser passion of sense, or transfigures it so that we know it no longer. The idea-driven is callous to the blandishments of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love to woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake are the exemplars of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... would reach Italy, where in due time his son would found Alba Longa. Jupiter added a brief sketch of what would befall this hero's race, until, some three hundred years after his death, one of his descendants, the Vestal Ilia, would bear twin sons to Mars, god of War. One of these, Romulus, would found the city of Rome, where the Trojan race would continue its heroic career and where Caesar would appear to fill the world ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... presents, for the first time in fiction, a correct and adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and privileges, as well as of many strange Roman customs ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... marked—but thou could'st not— Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow As he would pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid's fiery dart Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... erratic in its changes of key. It is full of reminiscences of Haydn's "Creation" and other works. The musical stimulation of this boy was meager indeed. Not until he was thirteen years of age did he hear an opera; and not until he was fifteen a really first-class work, Spontini's "Vestal," in 1812. Three years later he probably heard Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride," a work which in his estimation eclipsed them all. During the same year there were the sixth and seventh symphonies, the choral fantasia and portions of the mass in C, and the overture to "Coriolanus," of Beethoven. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... rushing of a stream at his feet. The sun was shining. It was a clear morning. From the other shore came his wife, young, beautiful, in a dress of flowered goods, rowing her skiff. Her full, gentle figure had the charm of the vestal virgin and the wife. From woods nearby, Ingigerd appeared in the delicacy and the adornment of her light hair and naked body. The sunny landscape, of which her pure nudity was a part, seemed to belong to the time before Adam and Eve were driven from ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... agitated. She had always looked on Alice as excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as consecrated from her birth for a vestal's lot. She had never thought of her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled the idea as ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... done when the army of Xerxes approached. It was resolved to abandon the city to the barbarians, but to maintain the citadel, the home of the gods of Rome. The holy articles in the temples were buried or removed, the Vestal Virgins sent away, and the flower of the patricians took refuge in the Capitol, determined to defend to the last that abiding-place of the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... but by luck we found a halcyon morning which had got lost in the year's procession. It was a Sunday morning, and it had not been ashore. It was still virgin, bearing a vestal light. It had not been soiled yet by any suspicion of this trampled planet, this muddy star, which its innocent and tenuous rays had discovered in the region of night. I thought it still was regarding us as a lucky find there. Its light was tremulous, as if with ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... us that he himself wrote books on history with his own hands in large letters, that the boy might start in life with a useful knowledge of what his forefathers had done, and he was as careful not to use an indecenr expression before his son as he would have been before the vestal virgins. He never bathed with him; which indeed seems to have been customary at Rome, as even fathers-in-law scrupled to bathe naked before their sons-in-law. In later times, however, the Romans learned from the Greeks the habit of bathing ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... surprise, even irritation. What business had she touching the bits of pasteboard like that—like some old gambler. Such a slight slip of a thing, with all the beauty of early youth in her face, and all the guilelessness of a vestal in the pure white of her garb. He fancied he would have felt different if he had seen her playing cards in that Indian dress; it would not have brought such a discord with it. And it was not merely ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594; or that of William Stanley, earl of Derby, at Greenwich on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate compliment to the Queen, 'a fair vestal throned by the west' (II. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledgment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful description (II. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw the little western flower called 'Love-in-idleness' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Gulf; and the clarion-call James R. Randall so nobly used—"There's Life in the Old Land Yet!"—warmed every southern heart, by the dead ashes on its hearth. Who does not remember "Beechenbrook," that pure Vestal in the temple of Mars? Every tear of sympathy that fell upon its pages was a jewel above rubies, in the crown ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Terentia, whose half-sister was a Vestal, seems to have taken sanctuary with the Vestals, as did the mother and sister of Augustus in B.C. 43. The special indignity of which Cicero complains is that she had been forced to leave the sanctuary and ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it, and there are many strokes of the most melting tenderness. Cartesmunda, the Fair Nun of Winchester, inspires the King with a passion for her, and after a long struggle between honour and love, she at last yields to the tyrant, and for the sake of Canutus breaks her vestal vows. Upon hearing that the enemy was about to enter the Cloister, Cartesmunda breaks out into ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the scene galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... all alike in these stages. (Aloud.) No, my Vestal. We're going along the quietest ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... its vestal virgins, its holy women, mothers of ideas rather than of men; its Marys, as well as its Marthas, who, rather than be busy housewives, preferred to sit at the feet of divine wisdom, and ponder the mysteries of the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... coquette, A brow of marble, but a heart of jet; An eye that shows no vestige of the deep And stained thoughts that in her bosom sleep: By day a vestal, but by night a bawd; Her ways a riddle, her whole life a fraud; At church an angel, but at home a shrew, Cheating her mother, to her sire untrue; Vain without talent, without merit proud; By all who see her, still a fool allow'd; Without all love, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... of the city has in a memorial set forth three propositions which he considers of force—that Rome, he says, asks for her rites again, that pay be given to her priests and vestal virgins, and that a general famine followed upon the refusal of the priests' ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,—by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... refrain from exhausting the theme and the reader? Some few passages of coquetry it would certainly be pleasant to give in outline; the story of Mme. de Beauseant's demurs and sweet delayings, that, like the vestal virgins of antiquity, she might fall gracefully, and by lingering over the innocent raptures of first love draw from it its utmost strength and sweetness. M. de Nueil was at an age when a man is the dupe of these caprices, ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... with her; thou art dear Beyond what vestal lips have told, And, like a lamb from fountains clear, She turns confiding to thy fold. She, round thy sweet domestic bower, The wreath of changeless love shall twine, Watch for thy step at vesper hour, And blend her ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... abates thou wilt have closed thy wings For ever. When the happy living things Of the old world come forth upon the new I know my heart shall miss thee; and the dew Of summer twilights shall shed tears for me —Tears liker thee, ah, purest! than mine own— Upon thy vestal grave, O ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the street, Benda said in a tone of compassion: "They are three delicate creatures; they live their lonely lives like vestal virgins guarding a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing, Although one must be damn'd for you, no doubt: I make a resolution every spring Of reformation, ere the year run out, But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing, Yet still, I trust it may be kept throughout: I 'm very sorry, very much ashamed, And mean, next ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was responsible for many changes for the better in the lives of these people. Her very presence in a room was an inspiration for cleanliness. Her clothes were no better than theirs but she stood out among them like a vestal virgin. She came into their quarters and made the women ashamed that the rooms were not better fitted to receive so pure a being. You would scarcely have recognized Michele's rooms at the end of the first year. The windows were cleaned, the floors scrubbed, and even the bed linen ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... listening to the sepulchral echo that floats down the arcade of centuries. "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... me of his wife, the daughter of Carlo Maratti, the painter. She was so beautiful that she was her father's favourite model for his Nymphs, Madonnas, and Vestal Virgins; and to her charms she added virtue, and to her virtue uncommon musical and literary talents. Among her poems, there is a sonnet addressed to a lady, once beloved ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... His latest victories still thickest came, As near the centre motion doth increase; Till he, press'd down by his own weighty name, Did, like the vestal,[13] under spoils decease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... realities, so religion witnessed the foundering of a system of ethics contrary to the moral code that had slowly been established. The idea of collective responsibility contained in a number of beliefs is one instance. If a vestal violated her vow of chastity the divinity sent a pest that ceased only on the day the culprit was punished. Sometimes the angry heavens granted victory to the army only on condition that a general or soldier ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... my heart I have never doubted my mother's faith. When I imagined I did I was self-deceived. Everything here confirms it, and Miss Walton more than all. I will consult the divine oracle. She shall be the fair vestal, the gentle priestess. She lives near to heaven, and knows its mind. If her kind and womanly nature shrinks from me, if she coldly draws her skirts aside that I pollute them not even with a touch—if she by word or even manner proves ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... whose half-sister was a Vestal, seems to have taken sanctuary with the Vestals, as did the mother and sister of Augustus in B.C. 43. The special indignity of which Cicero complains is that she had been forced to leave the sanctuary and appear at the bank of Valerius, but for what purpose we cannot now tell. It is suggested ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... won her, do I woo? Because her spirit's vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... after year, one of these—to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal—I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: "Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead." It is more defeats that one can read so plainly ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... having long selected the more beautiful women.) Here is a more curious case; the priestesses who attended the temple of Venus Erycina at San- Giuliano in Sicily, were selected for their beauty out of the whole of Greece; they were not vestal virgins, and Quatrefages (3. 'Anthropologie,' 'Revue des Cours Scientifiques,' Oct. 1868, p. 721.), who states the foregoing fact, says that the women of San-Giuliano are now famous as the most beautiful in the island, and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the vestal fire begun, Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame, Devised a vessel to receive the sun, Being stedfastly opposed to the same; Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art, On which the sun ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... ideas, twists the meaning of these names, trying to reconcile them with some system, though Hesiod merely gave his maidens their names from his own fancy. So Homer altered the name of one of them, naming her Pasithea, and betrothed her to a husband, in order that you may know that they are not vestal virgins. [Footnote: i.e. not vowed ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... to immortalize—Alexander was begot by a Salamander, that visited his Mother in the form of a Serpent, because he would not make King Philip jealous; and that famous Philosopher Merlin was begotten on a Vestal Nun, a certain King's Daughter, by a most beautiful young Salamander; as indeed all the Heroes, and Men of mighty ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... that of the women at the tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... wouldst thou talk of love To Marcia, whilst her father's life's in danger? Thou might'st as well court the pale, trembling vestal, When she beholds ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... OF PRIMEVAL FIRE! YOUR vestal train Hung with gold-tresses o'er the vast inane, Pierced with your silver shafts the throne of Night, 100 And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light; When LOVE DIVINE, with brooding wings unfurl'd, Call'd from the rude abyss the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the old Greek observance of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... French painter, decorated the foyer of the Grand Opera in Paris; is best known as the author of the "Punishment of a Vestal Virgin" and the "Assassination ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from his brother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin. In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men, but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with great honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there was great anger when ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... women who haunt the tables d'hote of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias, their petrified vestal manners, their indescribable toilettes, and a certain odor of india-rubber, which makes one believe that at night they slip themselves into a case of that material. When I meet one of these people in a hotel, I act like birds which see ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... amphitheatre, among the youth of his own age! with what an appetite for every detail of the entertainment, and its various accessories:—the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela, with their serpentine patterning, spread over the more select part of the company; the Vestal virgins, taking their privilege of seats near the empress Faustina, who sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems, changing, as she moved, like the waves of the sea; the cool circle of shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the fashionable told so effectively around the blazing arena, covered ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... stage of beauty, from the hint that a tiny spot of green and white, bursting through the dark earth, might give, to the fully-developed blossoms, hanging lightly on its graceful stalks, robed in its vestal garb of white, and shedding its own peculiar fragrance on the pure air. I gathered large supplies—enough to make me the envy of all the lovers of spring-flowers whom I met; enough to fill my moss-basket, and vases, and glasses without end for myself; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... the cloud of some darkening hour O'ershadows the soul with its gloom, Then where is the light of the vestal pow'r, The lamp of pale Hope to illume? Oh! the light ever lies In those bright fond eyes, Where Heaven has impressed its own blue As a seal from the skies As my heart relies On that gift of its ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... many changes for the better in the lives of these people. Her very presence in a room was an inspiration for cleanliness. Her clothes were no better than theirs but she stood out among them like a vestal virgin. She came into their quarters and made the women ashamed that the rooms were not better fitted to receive so pure a being. You would scarcely have recognized Michele's rooms at the end of the first year. The windows were cleaned, the floors ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... furious over the thought of a woman learning much, and still more, venturing to use such acquirement; but heretical Christians insisted that the respect which Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was her right, and each founder of a new sect had some woman as helper. But as a rule, her highest post during the first three centuries of Christianity was that of doorkeeper or message-woman, her economic dependence upon man being absolute. ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... said the father—and his eyes shone—'rise and look yonder. Do you see the citadel? Under its marble floor there is a grave. It is that of one who kissed a vestal and was buried alive. There are sacred people in Rome, and among them is this daughter of my beloved Publius. Go you to your palace, son of Herod, and, hereafter, forget not that ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... through the buzz of the crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart into tumult?... ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... own hands? Oh, am I worthy of such kindness; have I done any thing entitling me to such a proof of condescension on her part, and am I thus honored by her who is the guardian angel of Prussia!—whom Napoleon hates, because he fears her zeal and fidelity. As a vestal, she has kept alive the fire of patriotism on the altar of her country. When all despair, she still hopes for the redemption of her people from a victorious but merciless enemy. I will consecrate my life anew to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... conventional sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... now crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early days had been passed amid the temptations of a court, where her virtue had been ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... representation.' All this is very true, but not at all applicable in this instance. This time Racine is well judged. The denouement is the most ridiculous I ever heard. Imagine that silly, conceited Junia turning vestal, as if Madame de Sennes were to enter the Ursuline Convent. Heaven forbid that I should play the scholar; but I have read in Menage that it required other formalities to take the veil in the convent of ladies of the society of Vesta. I forgot the most essential. Your little ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... must needs be perfect, clearly indicating its origin by an exemption from all that besets ordinary human feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never flickering, never darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal fire burning always on the altar of the heart! The passage before us, and all others that speak about the matter, give us the directly opposite notion. The Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... round, rough logs on the outside, and the weeds and wild vines each year grew still more ambitious to get quite to the top of the cabin, and peep down into the mysterious crater of a chimney that forever smoked in a mournful and monotonous sort of way, as if watchers were there—Vestal virgins, who dared not let their fires perish, on penalty ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... Troy. Numitor chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, whom Amulius, becoming yet more ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... its port Pyrgos (q.v.), was of considerable importance. It fought with Rome in the time of Tarquinus Priscus and Servius Tullius, and subsequently became the refuge of the expelled Tarquins. After the invasion of the Gauls in 390 B.C., the vestal virgins and the sacred objects in their custody were conveyed to Caere for safety, and from this fact some ancient authorities derive the word caerimonia, ceremony. A treaty was made between Rome ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... thing well. I told the furniture people I wanted it just as it stood in the picture: "Design for bedroom and boudoir combined, suitable for young girl, in teak, with sparrow blue hangings." We had everything: the antique fire arrangements that a vestal virgin might possibly have understood; the candlesticks, that were pictures in themselves, until we tried to put candles in them; the book-case and writing-desk combined, that wasn't big enough to write on, and out of which it was impossible ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... imprisoned in the aching heart, Lest the freed malefactors should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... for the first time in fiction, a correct and adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and privileges, as well as of many strange Roman ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... have in this conception as perfect an instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality; namely, a group of gentle ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... lead my freend Horatio through those feeldes Where neuer-dying warres are still inurde; Ile lead faire Isabella to that traine Where pittie weepes but neuer feeleth paine; Ile lead my Bel-imperia to those ioyes That vestal virgins and faire queenes possess; Ile lead Hieronimo where Orpheus plaies, Adding sweet pleasure to eternall daies. But say, Reuenge,—for thou must helpe or none,— Against the rest how shall ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... American long-distance records for insect voices. To another group, known as Fulgorids, gigantic heads and streamers of wax have been allotted. Those possessing the former rejoice in the name of Lantern Flies, but they are at present unfaithful vestal bugs, though it is extremely doubtful if their wicks were ever trimmed or lighted. To see a big wax bug flying with trailing ribbons slowly from tree to tree in the jungle is to recall the streaming trains of a flock ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... and came to a great city, where, upon his arrival, he understood there was a great and solemn procession, in order to shut up a young woman against her will among the vestal-nuns. The prince was touched with compassion; and thinking the best use he could make of his cap was to redress public wrongs and relieve the oppressed, he flew to the temple, where he saw the young woman, crowned with flowers, clad in ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... athletes, another court for gladiators. Highly carved marble columns supported the roofs and the rarest statues stood in niches. The bathing capacity was the largest ever planned. To sit there alone and people it, as when it was at its best, with all the glory of the emperor, the court ladies, the vestal virgins, senators, warriors, artists, men of letters and the rest, is a treat to the imagination that cannot be realized ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... kingship among the ancient Latins, the state of things in this respect would be somewhat as follows. The political and religious centre of each community would be the perpetual fire on the king's hearth tended by Vestal Virgins of the royal clan. The king would be a man of another clan, perhaps of another town or even of another race, who had married a daughter of his predecessor and received the kingdom with her. The children whom he had by her would inherit their mother's name, not his; the daughters would ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... features were sweet, and her limbs perfectly turned; but, I think, rather in a subdued glow from the soul outward. This was not an opaque vase, of material however costly, but a lamp chastely lucent, guarding from extinction, yet not hiding from worship, a flame vital and vestal. In speaking of her attractions, I would not exaggerate language; but, indeed, they seemed to me very real and engaging. What though all was on a small scale, it was the perfume which gave this white violet distinction, and made it superior to the broadest camelia—the fullest ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... inconsistency will be afterwards explained, and the English and French forms given in each case are the terms which would be used in answering the rapid question, 'Of what order is this flower?' the answer being, It is a 'Cyllenid,' a 'Pleiad,' or a 'Vestal,' as one would answer of a person, he is a Knight of St. John or Monk of St. Benedict; while to the question, of what gens, we answer, a Stella or an Erica, as one would answer of a person, a ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity, that captivated ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... robe floating, the dejection worn On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day, She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of the entrails of animals capital offences, he proceeded to prohibit sacrifices, A.D. 391, and even the entering of temples. He alienated the revenues of many temples, confiscated the estates of others, some he demolished. The vestal virgins he dismissed, and any house profaned by incense he declared forfeited to the imperial exchequer. When once the property of a religious establishment has been irrevocably taken away, it is needless to declare its worship a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... eastern horizon a thin, fleecy scarf of clouds was silvered by the rising moon, the west was a huge shrine of beryl whereon burned ruby flakes of vapor, watched by a solitary vestal star; and the sapphire arch overhead was beautiful and mellow as any that ever vaulted above the sculptured marbles of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... vexed him exceedingly. He was not sure, indeed, but that he ought to go straight to Norbanus and tell him what had happened, yet he feared that in such a case the anger of the magistrate would be so great that Ennia would be forced by him into becoming one of the vestal virgins, or be shut up in strict imprisonment. Scarce a word was spoken as they passed down the hill and into the streets, now almost deserted. At last Ennia stopped at the entrance used by the slaves to ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... that are but thoughts, found her a Vestal Virgin in Pagan Rome when brutes were kings, and lust stalked rampant through the streets. She was the bride of Christ, and her fair, frail body was flung to the wild beasts, and torn limb from limb while the multitude feasted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Winchmore's verdant hill, Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. With soft and Lady speech the first applies The mild correctives that to grace belong To her redundant friend, who her defies With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. O differing Pair, yet sweetly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... most serious delay arose, during the first act, through the evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfaction with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priestesses; for he was so excited, and withal so terribly short-sighted, that nothing which appealed to the eye alone was perceptible to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... imaginations. Error has never yet made a complete and universal conquest. In the darkest ages and most benighted regions, it has been found impossible utterly to extinguish the light of reason. There always have been some in whose souls the torch of truth has been kept burning with vestal watchfulness: we can discern its glimmer here and there through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... earlier kings by later were o'erthrown: One half the mighty Roman work, and more, Fell to the ground: Columba's Irish monks The ruin raised. From Canterbury's towers, 'Rome of the North' long named, from them alone Above sea-surge still shone that vestal fire By tempest fanned, not quenched; and at her breast For centuries six were nursed that Coelian race, The Benedictine Primates ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... house, and discontinue his visits to Madame Lebrun. This simple proceeding let loose all the winds of heaven; poor Lebrun was pounced upon by the whole female sex. Even his old mother turned against him; even his sister, a sour vestal of thirty-seven, sided with her injured sister-in-law; and what had the wretched poet to say for himself? He suspected nothing improper—a good easy man—he adored his "Fanny"—he wanted her to come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... who had helped to crystallise her strange views. His lurking fear that she might one day marry and leave him was aroused at the thought, and his heart contracted with jealousy. She possessed in his eyes something of the sanctity of a vestal virgin, one who must not be profaned by marriage. In such an event, also, his cherished hope that she might complete the quadrangle of St. George's Hall was likely to be frustrated forever. These fears moved him to argue with a bitterness that ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... man of simple mind, Gamaliel Nibbs by name, Whose early faith in human kind Burned like a Vestal flame; No wind of doubt that stirs the dust Fluttered that bright and constant taper; But oh, he had his dearest trust Pinned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... carried down some basket chairs, tacked a few coloured pictures from annuals on its bare walls, and made it look quite pretty. Tom lighted them a blazing fire every day, and tended it during their absence with the care of a vestal virgin, so they were extremely cosy and jolly there. The joiner's bench and the glue-pot gave facilities for any hobbies they wished to carry on; they could make as much noise as they liked, and walk in and out with ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... coarseness; although he wrote a century and a half ago, there is less of the low and indelicate than in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley, Cibber, Vanbrugh, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... we see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. Finally, in the great community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he—like the pater familias—leaves the worship of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,' the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is instituted, a special official, the rex sacrorum, inherits the king's ritual duties, while the superintendence of the Vestals passes to his representative in the ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... decayed fellow, they are in a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think them well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her: but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as the touch and company ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Light to a Cigar Evening Amusement Trip to MATANZAS—El Casero Slave Plantation Sugar Making Luxuriant Vegetation Punic Faith and Cuban Cruelty H.M.S. "Vestal" Bribery Admiralty Wisdom Cigars and Manufactory Population—Chinese Laws of Domicile—Police and Slavery Increase of Slaves and Produce Tobacco, Games, and Lotteries Cuban Jokes Sketch of Governors The ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... The vestal virgins, whose duty it was to keep the fire burning on the altar in the temple of Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the home, and the vestal virgins were bound by oath ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... of veil some get born with. I know a girl carried hers around in a little wooden box for luck. Well, you got that white-veil kind of look that would blacklist you for the Vestal Virgin Sextet. I can pick 'em every time. You look to me like—say, I got a little mud puddle of my own to play in without wetting my feet ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and there are many strokes of the most melting tenderness. Cartesmunda, the Fair Nun of Winchester, inspires the King with a passion for her, and after a long struggle between honour and love, she at last yields to the tyrant, and for the sake of Canutus breaks her vestal vows. Upon hearing that the enemy was about to enter the Cloister, Cartesmunda breaks out ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting. That was it, the superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that attracted, was the shield, the immaculate robe that clothed her and preserved her like a vestal virgin from such violation. Barlow could not word all these things; subconsciously they swayed him—like the magnetic needle, always toward the pole ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... very time I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon, And the Imperial Votress passed on, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... crown upon her head, pauses and wonders: had she any love for children? He finds in her "a plentiful lack of inborn baby-worship"; she is unworthy to compare in this with George Eliot, "the spiritual mother of Totty, of Eppie, and of Lillo". "The fiery-hearted Vestal of Haworth," he says, "had no room reserved in the palace of her passionate and high-minded imagination as a nursery for inmates of such divine and delicious quality." There was little Georgette in Villette, to say nothing of Polly, and there was Adele in Jane Eyre. But ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... out with their milk-pails, carried on yokes from the shoulder: Leopoldine, Jensine, and little Rebecca. All three barefooted. The Margravine, Inger herself, is not with them; she is indoors preparing the meal. Tall and stately, as she moves about her house, a Vestal tending the fire of a kitchen stove. Inger has made her stormy voyage, 'tis true, has lived in a city a while, but now she is home; the world is wide, swarming with tiny specks—Inger has been one of them. All but nothing in all ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... and the resurrection. And they have also got a new goddess. Have you heard of Cybele, the mother of the gods, a virgin, who is worshipped in Rome like Vesta by vestal priests." ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the days of the republic, every famine, pestilence, or drought was followed by a searching investigation of the sacred rites, to ascertain what irregularity or neglect had caused the divine anger, and two instances are recorded in which vestal virgins were put to death because their unchastity was believed to have provoked a national calamity."[517] In the Roman law is found a proposition which was often quoted in the Middle Ages: "That which is done against divine religion is done to the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... be above even his courage. All must be done within the next month. If on Miss Baker was to fall the honour of being Lady Bertram, she must not only receive him within the month, but, having done so, must also agree to wear her vestal zone yet a little longer, till that troublesome old gentleman should ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of this gift to the nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must constantly be rekindled, and only those who live can rekindle them. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his face with vestal ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... general in his chiselled corselet and dyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestruck silence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. And the old Senator in his white cloak with its broad purple hem, his smooth-faced clients at his elbows, his silent slaves before him and behind, meets the low-chattering knot ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... In every other respect, too, the pomp and circumstance of the funeral was past description. In awe of the veterans all the priests of all the sacred fraternities were there in full robes, with the Vestal Virgins, and all the senators, and all the magistrates, each in his garb of office. Next, in array that contrasted with theirs, came the knights of Rome in column; then all the men whom Sulla had commanded in his wars, and who had vied with each other in hastening there, carrying ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... A vestal virgin with a husband and two children, a Roman Lothario, with an Irish friend, a Druidical temple, a gong, and an auto-da-fe, mix up charmingly with Bellini's quadrille-like music to form a pathetic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... distinguished from Portia, and strongly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is "severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a man ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... second-rate article, a bungling piece of work, and naturally felt his disadvantages more keenly in the presence of those upon whom Nature had expended all her best art. He was, according to his own assertion, an idealist by temperament, and had kept a sacred chamber in his heart where the vestal fire burned with a pure flame. Now the deepest strata of his being were stirred, and he loved with an overwhelming fervor and intensity which fairly frightened him. In a moment of abject despair he proposed to Emily, and to his surprise was accepted. And what was more, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and moreover, she is not a woman, but a noble virgin. I discern a distinction, though you may not. The Vestal's fire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the parson's busy daughter in her cooking and cleaning; from all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm-hearted girl, full of humour and feeling to those she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to strangers. A different being to the fierce impassioned Vestal who has seated herself in Emily's place ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... say that Christ was miraculously born of a virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia, or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus, Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union; and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... filled the sail of the Trojan for Latium bound; Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on Laurentian ground; And anon from the cloister inveigled the Vestal, the Virgin, to Mars, As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Ceesar—last, best of that ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... of Love is not destined to be solved so easily; nor had it ever been solved in centuries dead by Egyptian, Mongol, or Greek—by priest or princess, prophet or singer, or by any vestal or acolyte ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Antony, having been ill-used by Cleopatra, whom they had most resisted in her design of being present in the war, came over to Caesar, and gave information of the contents of Antony's will, with which they were acquainted. It was deposited in the hands of the vestal virgins, who refused to deliver it up, and sent Caesar word, if he pleased, he should come and seize it himself, which he did. And, reading it over to himself, he noted those places that were most for his purpose, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... besides ourselves and a lady the places occupied by a Dutch officer, who sat gasping without his coat, and so far exhausted by the heat, though he had been ten years in Batavia, that his pipe hung dangling as if he had not breath sufficient to keep its vestal fire alive, and a lady with two children besides living intruders. A net from the top was filled with bags, baskets, and band-boxes. Our night was sad indeed, and the groans of our fellow-travellers and the ineffectual fluttering of a fan which the Officer used ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... sea-god Glaucus, but changed into a monster through the jealousy and enchantments of Circe. The mother of Romulus: Silvia, daughter and only living child of Numitor, whom her uncle Amulius made a vestal virgin, to preclude the possibility that his brother's descendants could wrest from him the kingdom of Alba Longa. But the maiden was violated by Mars as she went to bring water from a fountain; she bore Romulus and Remus; and she was drowned in the Anio, while ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the village, and there he walked up and down for hours. The sun set, and the night came, and the stars glittered; but still he walked alone, inspired, exalted, full of generous and loving schemes: of sweet and tender fancies: a heart on fire; and youth the fuel, and the flame vestal. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... sought! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more reverence than she felt, as she passed into the silence of this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... rapidly through the streets, of what had occurred. The soldiers whom Claudius had sent forward, were making arrests in the streets, and searching the houses. In the midst of this excitement, Messalina, with her children, attended by one of the vestal virgins, named Vibidia, whom she had prevailed upon to accompany her and plead her cause, came forth from her palace on foot, and proceeded through the streets, her hair disheveled, her dress in disorder, and her whole appearance marked by every characteristic of ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... fellow-actors at her palaces on the banks of the Thames. When Shakespeare was penning his new play of A Midsummer Night's Dream next year, he could not forbear to make a passing obeisance of gallantry (in that vein for which the old spinster queen was always thirsting) to "a fair vestal throned by the West," who passed her life ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... of February, captain Hood, of his majesty's frigate the Vestal, belonging to a small squadron commanded by admiral Holmes, who had sailed for the West Indies in January, being advanced a considerable way ahead of the fleet, descried and gave chase to a sail, which proved to be a French frigate called the Bellona, of two hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of his private life. That Csar should have escaped destruction in this unequal contest with an enemy then wielding the whole thunders of the state, is somewhat surprising; and historians have sought their solution of the mystery in the powerful intercessions of the vestal virgins, and several others of high rank amongst the connections of his great house. These may have done something; but it is due to Sylla, who had a sympathy with every thing truly noble, to suppose him struck with powerful ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... among them; and seeing that the worship had been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways without high principle. To this religion they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... in Rome of the domus or private house. Two, however, have left remarkably interesting ruins—the Atrium Vest, or House of the Vestal Virgins, east of the Forum, awell-planned and extensive house surrounding a cloister or court; and the House of Livia, so-called, on the Palatine Hill, the walls and decorations of which are excellently preserved. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... bedaubed, by way of insignia, with red and white chalk or clay, follow her from the village to some remote nook in the jungle, where the lodge is tiled. Sentinels are stationed around whilst business is transacted before a vestal fire, which must burn for a fortnight or three weeks, in the awe- compelling presence of a brass pipkin filled with herbs, and a basin, both zebra'd like the human limbs. The Rev. William Walker was once detected playing "Peeping Tom" by ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... wicked as you imagine, continued the gentleman; for I assure you they were all vestal virgins for anything which I knew to the contrary. The reputation of intriguing with them was all I sought, and was what I arrived at: and perhaps I only flattered myself even in that; for very probably the persons to ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... "England's queen" with her maids of honour were not, if we may credit the existing memoirs of her court, precisely such as modern fastidiousness would assign to the "fair vestal throned by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... you back into this realm, my hero, my troubadour?" inquired Mr. Kecskerey. "Some love-adventure, some notable affair, I'll be bound. I'll dare to guess that you have abducted some Hindu vestal from Budhur?" ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... thou principle of life! precious flame over which all nature, like a careful vestal, incessantly watches in the temple of God! Center of all, by whom all exists! The spirit of destruction would itself die, blowing at thy flame! I am not astonished that thy name should be blasphemed, for they do not know who thou art, they who think ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is proportionately cheaper, for the feathers are infinitely better. Long, white, full, and curly feathers can be bought for much less than you give for them in England. We drove down to the town, finished our business transactions, and then went in the 'Vestal's' steam launch on board the 'Gamma,' one of the new Chinese gunboats on her way ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... walls were overrun with flowering vines, and whose cells were pretty vestal bowers, entered the bard and the young girl, to be met on the front porch by the wardeness herself, a mite of a woman, with wavy yellow hair, fine complexion and washed-out blue eyes. Sensitive almost to shyness, Mademoiselle de Castiglione appeared more ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... right-hand side of the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum by the fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by its guardians, the Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, the Atrium Vestae, and also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whose potestas they were; these three buildings, then insignificant to look at, constituted the religious focus of the oldest Rome.[31] A little ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited the mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped the door thereof with ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... no. I mean ancient Rome. [He seats himself on the edge of the table]. Ive just come to the period when the propertied classes refused to get married and went in for marriage settlements instead. A few of the oldest families stuck to the marriage tradition so as to keep up the supply of vestal virgins, who had to be legitimate; but nobody else dreamt of getting married. It's all very interesting, because we're coming to that here in England; except that as we dont require any vestal virgins, nobody will get married at all, except the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... of, there was something in the very unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and excited the imagination of her people. As a woman, they regarded her just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces, but not womanly affections—passionless, pure, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... clearly on the sandstone, not upon the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated farms—all were English in their details. Only the vines, and mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by oxen, most Roman in aspect, reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such carpenta may the vestal virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the primitive war-chariot also, capable of holding four with ease; and Romulus may have mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a vehicle to Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in Italy. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very time I marked—but thou could'st not— Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow As he would pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid's fiery dart Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on In ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... at this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not divulge the source of their ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... theatre, which must have been of vast extent,(209) as at Athens it was capable of containing above thirty thousand persons; and the orchestra, which amongst the Greeks was the place assigned for the pantomimes and dancers, though at Rome it was appropriated to the senators and vestal virgins. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... more virgin-proud. The maiden-moon, new-seated on a cloud That seems her throne where she receives the stars,— The moon who holds her court beyond the jars Of land and sea,—the moon, the vestal moon, Has kept thee cold since the transcendant noon Of that wild day when I thy hand did claim, And when thy ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... gold shall hem his ashes in: The vestal virgins with their holy notes Shall sing his famous, though too fatal, death. I and my Fulvia with dispersed hair Will wait upon this noble ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Sanctuaries are forsaken now; Dark mould and moss cling to thy fretted towers; Deep rents and seams, where struggling lichens grow, And no sweet voice of prayer at vestal hours; But voice of screaming shot and bursting shell, Thy deep damnation and thy doom foretell. The 'fire' has left a pile of broken walls, And Night-hags revel ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words, which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an anchorite or to a vestal. A word or two she said or sung about the flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women; of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... is the Roman goddess of the hearth, worshiped in a temple containing the sacred fire tended by the vestal virgins. ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... publication to me. There was but a slight fee to pay, a matter of fifty dollars or upwards, and for this trifling sum you were furnished with your rightful coat-of-arms and with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Virgins, and all the best people in the world. Therefore I felicitated the Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrix with whom the Almanach de Gotha had provided her for so small a consideration, and observed that for myself I supposed ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... pony up the avenue; and while she was receiving the salutations of the rest of the family, he took occasion to notice the fat coachman, to pat the sleek carriage-horses, and, above all, to say a civil word to my lady's gentlewoman, the prim, sour-looking vestal ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... what wisdom the Vestal Virgins showed in never letting their fire go out, another crash came at the door, followed by the war-whoop of a scalp-hunter. "I seem to recognise that noise," he thought, "but I can't possibly open the door in ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... personal, Rena's new vestal instinct took alarm, and she began to apprehend his character more clearly. She had long ago learned that his pretensions to wealth were a sham. He was nominal owner of a large plantation, it is true; but the land was worn out, and mortgaged to the limit of its security ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Fohn did not materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in the full ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Michael gleam upon the wind? Where did Mozart hear the awful cries of the risen dead come to judgment? What voice was in the fountain of Vaucluse? Under what nodding oxlip did Shakespeare find Titania asleep? When did the Mother of Love come down, chaster in her unclothed loveliness than vestal in her veil, and with such vision of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... people. Henry Ward Beecher has said: "Every mother is a priestess ordained by God Himself," and Professor Mason enlarges the same thought: "Scarcely has the infant mind begun to think, ere this perpetual priestess lights the fires of reverence and keeps them ever burning, like a faithful vestal" (112. 12). ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to her, that she had devoted herself to one who must ever be to her as a being of air. No word of sympathy would ever whisper felicity to her heart; no-the flame that was within her (which she found would be immortal as the vestal fires which resemble its purity) must burn there unknown; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... gay with the bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, all ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore; Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be, Than a few embers, for a deity. Had he our pits, the Persian would admire No sun, but warm 's devotion at ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... his descendants after him, reigned over the town for many years. At length Numitor and Amulius, two brothers, quarrelled about the kingdom. Amulius seized the crown by force, cast out Numitor, and made his daughter, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin. The Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, were sworn to celibacy. But Rhea Silvia broke her vow, and gave birth, by the god Mars, to the twins, Romulus and Remus. For this offence she was ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... till his work stood perfected, A woman beautiful with youth and grace, But like a Vestal singled from her sex To show the beauty of pure innocence. Her form was such as rapt Endymion Saw on the heights of Latmos when he slept And dreamed Heaven down to him. A glorious shape That to the brightness of ethereal ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... to her which made it necessary that he should assert mere sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her—something in her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and she looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Coliseum in mystery. It opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, upon which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor and vestal virgin and gladiator and martyr come out of the darkness, and pass before us in long and silent procession. The breezes which blow through the broken arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a vast audience. By day, the Coliseum ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... horizon new flushed in the first Uncertain ray of Altruism, thou seem'st More ghost than human. Yet thou lovest, loving ghost, And thy fierce parent flame thyself snuffed out Scarce later than the dark'ning of the fire Thou gav'st to be eternal vestal of Thine Antony's spirit. Thou didst love and die Of love; let, therefore, no light tongue, brazen In censure, say that nothing in thy life Became thee like the leaving it. The cloth From which humanity ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... where Pleasure's streamlet glides Fann'd by soft winds to curl in mimic tides; Where Mirth and Peace beguile the blameless Day; And where Friendship's fixt star beams a mellow'd Ray; 50 Where Love a crown of thornless Roses wears; Where soften'd Sorrow smiles within her tears; And Memory, with a Vestal's meek employ, Unceasing feeds the lambent flame of Joy! No more thy Sky Larks less'ning from my sight 55 Shall thrill th' attund Heartstring with delight; No more shall deck thy pensive Pleasures sweet With wreaths of sober hue my evening ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... among which she was crouching. Had she indeed any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal. ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... 748 or 750 B. C.— cooperated with the endless other Pagan superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs, or the indispensable office and the indefeasible privileges of the Pontifex Maximus, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work, for many years sought to fight off the evidences for that fact, yet afterwards partially he confessed his error) actually ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... under the old civilizations. In Rome she had not only secured remarkable personal and property rights,[178] but she officiated as priestess in the most holy offices of religion. Not only as Vestal Virgin did she guard the Sacred Fire, upon whose preservation the welfare of Rome was held to depend, but at the end of every consular period women officiated in private worship and sacrifice to the Bono Dea, with mystic ceremonies which no man's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Henry IV., who loved his jests whether at his own expense or that of friend or foe, was wont to observe that there were three things which nobody would ever believe, and which yet were very true; that Queen Elizabeth deserved her title of the, throned vestal, that he was himself a good Catholic, and that Cardinal Albert was a good general. It is probable that the assertions were all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... magnify The night of ages,—now when the pale ray Of starlight penetrates the studious gloom, And, at my window seated, while mankind Are lock'd in sleep, I feel the freshening breeze Of stillness blow, while, in her saddest stole, Thought, like a wakeful vestal at her shrine, Assumes ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... by the Romans to their household deities, individually and unitedly, in honour of whom a fire, in charge of the vestal virgins, was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
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