"Heraldic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... group of the dainty maids of honor, yet each showed, for her only color, the arms of her ancient Venetian house wrought large upon the creamy fabric of her tunic, the threads of gold and gleam of jewels half lost within its folds as she walked: but the people looked for the heraldic devices and named them eagerly as, two by two, the maidens stepped on shore—Mocenigo—Giustiniani—Morosini— Dandolo—Contarini—a new name for every sweet young face—the King of Cyprus could add none fairer, nor no more noble arms to the court of his youthful Queen. The ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... record. Later writers have, it is true, always admitted the honour on behalf of the Republic, and Pontano goes so far as to call Amalfi magnetica in compliment thereof, whilst during the later crusades the Amalfitani, who were evidently convinced of the genuine nature of Gioja's claim, had an heraldic figure of the mariner's compass emblazoned on their banners. It seems a thousand pities to throw doubt upon so picturesque a tradition, for the date of the invention of the compass has been fixed as 1302, two years ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... through many trials to victory or immortality. These groups, in purely classic taste, are not wanting in merit, and show in some parts good study of the nude; their pedestals are ornamented with medallions, whereon the Prussian eagle, half-real, half-heraldic, makes a fine appearance. Considered as a decoration, the whole is, in my opinion, somewhat too rich for the simplicity of the bridge, which opens midway to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... other hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some Calabrians were murdered by their host, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... then aged twenty-six, to become a regular contributor. Mr. Furniss's first sketch (published on p. 204, Vol. LXXIX., 1880) was a skit on what is ignorantly called the Temple Bar Griffin—(it is really an heraldic dragon, designed by Horace Jones)—executed by his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... conventional form; likewise the lily of France, which it is said was once a conventional frog. The rose of England, the shamrock, and the thistle have always been more naturalistic than is usual in such heraldic designs; but the parti-coloured rose of York and Lancaster was decidedly ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... offences committed by knights, and generally as to military matters. When the earl marshal alone presided, it was a court of honour deciding as to precedence, coats of arms, &c. This court sat for the last time in 1737. The heraldic side of its duties are now vested in the earl marshal as head of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... which had served as their emblem, to be cut out of the city standard, as an idol, and a Thistle to be inserted, "emblematical (as a recent writer remarks) of rude reform, but leaving the Hind which accompanied St. Giles, as one of the heraldic supporters of the city arms."—(Caledonia, vol. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of it than the Cinquecento. The garlands and trophies, lions' and bulls' heads, dolphins and griffins, tridents and shells and rosettes, and numberless familiar forms appear in a new guise; the new forms being, for the most part, heraldic motives or town arms, such as the fleur-de-lis of Florence, the Biscione or viper of Milan, and lions which are rampant, a condition unknown to their classic prototypes. Shields, though used before, have a new form, and ribbons are developed ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 06, June 1895 - Renaissance Panels from Perugia • Various
... MAINTENCE, an insignia of dignity, a cap of state borne before kings at their coronation; also an heraldic term. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... absurdity is the banner of some high and mighty prince, hanging over his stall in Windsor Chapel, when you think of the purpose for which men are supposed to assemble there! The Church of the Knights of St. John is paved over with sprawling heraldic devices of the dead gentlemen of the dead Order; as if, in the next world, they expected to take rank in conformity with their pedigrees, and would be marshalled into heaven according to the orders of precedence. Cumbrous handsome paintings adorn the walls and chapels, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson, the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his hands in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and looking towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the middle of it, which ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... plants and heraldic badges is often close, and although we do not find rue frequent in heraldry, one curious instance of it is interesting. In 809 an Order was created whereof the collar was made of a design in thistles and rue—the thistle because 'being full ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the Niagara district, where, above the great falls, near the mouth of Cayuga Creek, he built the first vessel that ever ventured on the lakes, and which he named the "Griffin" in honour of Frontenac, whose coat-of-arms bore such a heraldic device. The loss of this vessel, while returning with a cargo of furs from Green Bay to Niagara, was a great blow to La Salle, who, from this time until his death, suffered many misfortunes which might well have discouraged one of less indomitable will and fixity of ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... the expedition he had planned against the impious and savage despot, Sigismondo Malatesta. King Rene of Anjou, by special patent, authorised him to bear his name and arms, and made him a member of his family. The Duke of Burgundy, by a similar heraldic fiction, conferred upon him his name and armorial bearings. This will explain why Colleoni is often styled 'di Andegavia e Borgogna.' In the case of Rene, the honour was but a barren show. But the patent of Charles the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... town, who, on the occasion of a great feast in 1814, presented "one honest plum-pudding of one hundredweight" towards the entertainment. Farther on is a house built in 1746 by Sir Peter Thompson. It is a good specimen of Georgian architecture, and still bears the heraldic arms of the merchant who built it. Sir Peter's house is now Lady Wimborne's "Cornelia Hospital". Most of the other old houses of the town's merchants have been modernized and sadly disfigured. The oldest almshouses—and the number of ancient almshouses in a town ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... green five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; similar to the flag of Yemen, which has a plain white band, and of Iraq, which has three green stars (plus an Arabic inscription) in a horizontal line centered in the white band; also similar to the flag of Egypt, which has a heraldic eagle ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... second class was composed of domestic bards, living in private houses, quite after the custom of ancient Greece. These we may suppose were chiefly devoted to the annals and glories of their wealthy patrons. The third class, the heraldic bards, was the most influential of all. They wrote the national annals. All these classes were poet-bards ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... old fellow," said Morris, "it is a capital idea to have all ready in case we want to go horse backing, but don't you think that one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a byway of Walworth or Mile End would attract too much attention for our purpose? It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east. And even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... know it," said the Marquis; "in a strict heraldic and genealogical sense, you certainly are so; what I mean is, that being in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... huge vaults lay. Over the tester of the bedstead was a beautiful traceried window, of many lights, its date being the fifteenth century. It was called the d'Urberville Window, and in the upper part could be discerned heraldic emblems like those on Durbeyfield's old seal ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... dwarfed all others we had seen—yes, dwarfed even cathedrals! A long line of ramparts rising from a high headland of gray-white chalk-ramparts crowned with broken, round towers, which the sun was painting with heraldic gold: the stump of a tremendous keep that reared its bulk like a giant in his death struggle, for a last look over his shield of shattered walls. This was what German malice had made of Coucy, pride of France, architectural masterpiece ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... simple brain," said Montreal, impatiently, "let the youth speak for himself; I perceive that on his mantle are the arms of Rome blended with other quarterings, which are a mystery to me,—though sufficiently versed in heraldic art as befits ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... gate, mounted, and in complete armour, was an elderly and stately knight, whose raised visor and beaver depressed, showed a beard already grizzled. Beside him appeared the pursuivant on horseback, the royal arms embroidered on his heraldic dress of office, and all the importance of offended consequence on his countenance, which was shaded by his barret-cap and triple plume. They were attended by a body of about fifty soldiers, arranged under the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... raised for that purpose. A Mr Taylor has written an article in one of the periodicals, stating his opinion that they were the burial-places of chiefs; and to prove it, he asserts that some of them are thrown up in imitation of the figure of the animal which was the heraldic distinction of the chief whose remains they contain, such as the beaver, elk, etcetera. He has given drawings of some of them. That the Indians have their heraldic distinctions, their totems, as they call them, I know to be a fact; as I have seen ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rectangle into four sections; the middle part has a white background with an ermine pattern; the third part has a red background with two stylized yellow lions outlined in black, one above the other; these three heraldic arms represent settlement by colonists from the Basque Country (top), Brittany, and Normandy; the flag of France is used ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... himself pointed out this betise in Dod's &c., &c., for 1889, it should have been corrected in the new edition. "If this sort of thing continues," says the faithful "Co.," "Dod will be known as Dodder, or even Dodderer!" Sir BERNARD BURKE'S Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage is, in every sense, a noble volume, and seems to have been compiled with the greatest care and accuracy. KELLY'S Post Office Directory, of course, is a necessity to every ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... Up, straight, down, straight—square. Crumpled grey-white papers Blow along the side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, And white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... at the summit of those trunks which bent their naked boughs along the vaulting, joined and met and gathered at their junction, and thin, engrafted knots, extravagant bunches of heraldic roses, armorial flowers with open tracery; and for more than four hundred years no sap had run, no bud had formed in these trees. The shafts bent for ever remained untouched, the white bark of these pillars ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... by Ryan; banners, of early explorers and pioneers, heraldic shields related to history of California, Mexico, Central ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... manor-houses, with a variety of wings and gables, and with broad entrance halls which in an emergency might have served the purpose of presence-chambers. They dined long and late, and with much old-world pomp and ceremonial. They drove out in coaches emblazoned with heraldic bearings, and attended by broad-calved flunkeys in family livery. Certain social observances of the early Georgian era, long since effete and worn out in England, flourished in the social life of Little York down to a period within the memory of many persons who are still living. The aristocratic ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... built of outlayer granite, and, though the plainest cathedral in Scotland, its stately simplicity and severe symmetry lend it unique distinction. On the flat panelled ceiling of the nave are the heraldic shields of the princes, noblemen and bishops who shared in its erection, and the great west window contains modern painted glass of excellent colour and design. The cemeteries are St Peter's in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... every day and the Marsh blessed. Or take Snargate with its church of St Dunstan. It, too, has a fine western tower of the fifteenth century, but much of the church dates from the thirteenth, and upon the north chancel roof-beams are heraldic devices, among them an eagle and the initials W.R. And here is a piece of fine old glass in which we may see the Lord Christ. Or take Ivychurch; so noble and lovely a thing is the church that even without it catches ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... with the green silk are bands of dark red velvet with ornamented designs cut from the green silk, and upon which are small pieces of white silk representing berries. Also, another handsome specimen of Spanish applied work of the seventeenth century is a linen curtain richly embellished with heraldic emblems couched with gold thread. Horse trappings and reposters, loaded with applique flowers cut from gold and silver cloth, were much in evidence among the Spanish nobility ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... were made, the farewell was said, Violante was in the carriage by Lady Lansmere's side. Slowly moved on the stately equipage with its four horses and trim postilions, heraldic badges on their shoulders, in the style rarely seen in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and now fast vanishing even amidst ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been during the late baronet's reign. The black outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... covered by his raiment of camel's hair; bearing a gentle aspect, because the herald of a gentle Lord; and pointing to his quite legibly written message concerning the Lamb which is that gentle Lord's heraldic symbol. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... long-lived, and diseases due to drink and dissipation are rapidly thinning them out. Shamanism exists here, but not to such an extent as amongst the Siberian races, and the totem poles, which are met with at every turn in Wrangell, are not objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but they are only brought out on the occasion of a feast, when a chief and his crew appear in the gaudy ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... sculpture brought from Rome and from Greece; and in the Gothic cloister enclosing the green sward and dark cypresses of the grave-yard of Pisa, the art of the Middle Ages came for the first time face to face with the art of antiquity. There, among pagan sarcophagi turned into Christian tombs, with heraldic devices chiselled on to their arabesques and vizored helmets surmounting their garlands, the great unsigned artist of the fourteenth century, be he Sienese or Florentine, be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, painted the typical masterpiece of mediaeval art, the great fresco ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... originated in the wars of the Cross, the crusaders in their eastward wanderings engrafting many variations upon the original Greek cross. Many of these heraldic crosses tell some story of religious feeling. In their varied and fanciful forms the simple faith and holy purpose out of which they sprang may yet ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... have experienced the difficulty of placing impalements or quarterings correctly, even on a lozenge. On the long and narrow fusil it would be impossible. When the fusil, instead of being a mere heraldic bearing, has to be used as the shape of a shield for the actual use of the painter or engraver, it must of necessity be widened into the lozenge; and as the latter is probably only the same distaff with little more wool upon it, there seems no objection to the arrangement. BROCTUNA is too good ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... had anticipated the honours to which he afterwards succeeded, that he built his chantry chapel in the church with which his early youth was doubtless associated, and tradition, to some extent supported by both architectural and heraldic evidence, has identified the screen in which Rahere's monument is encased as a portion of that chapel. The beautiful canopies and tracery, the character of the carving of the effigy and its attendant figures, and the arms of England emblazoned on one of the shields, all point to a date supporting ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... itself in some of its features, very closely with the relics of the Norman age, especially in the short, massive round pillars which support the clerestory. The roof, with its carving, gilding, and bright heraldic colors, is in thorough contrast with the rest of the architecture, and the eye gratefully relieves itself from the gloom below, by wandering over its quaint devices and gaudy hues. It is divided into three longitudinal ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... ever use energy as a reason. Athletes go in for games, because athletes desire glory. Invalids go in for calisthenics; for invalids (alone of all human beings) desire strength. So long as the German Army points to its heraldic eagle and says, "I come in the name of this fierce but fabulous animal," the German Army will be all right. If ever it says, "I come in the name of bayonets," the bayonets will break like glass, for only the weak exhibit strength ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... I am by nature anything but neat. Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never could seal a letter without dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding my fingers. I never had a seal too of my own. Writing to a great man lately, who is moreover very Heraldic, I borrowed a seal of a friend, who by the female side quarters the Protectorial Arms of Cromwell. How they must have puzzled my correspondent!—My letters are generally charged as double at the Post office, from their inveterate clumsiness of foldure. So you must not take ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... might be multiplied. But the arms of the City of London and of free boroughs, like Winchester, Oxford, and Exeter, are referable to no over-lord, although the borough of Southwark still bears traces in its heraldic shield of its former ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... They gave the house something of the air of a French chateau, only it looked stronger and far grimmer. Carved around some of the windows, in ancient characters, were Scripture texts and antique proverbs. Two time worn specimens of heraldic zoology, in a state of fearful and everlasting excitement, stood rampant and gaping, one on each side of the hall door, contrasting strangely with the repose of the ancient house, which looked very like what the oldest part of it was said ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... about the room were scattered gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... ran splashing from the dolphin's jaws into the marble basins, where the snowy lilies and the fresh roses bloomed in abundance. He stepped into the great lofty hall, whose walls and ceilings shone with gilding and bright colors and heraldic devices. Gayly-dressed serving-men, adorned with trappings like sleigh horses, walked to and fro, and some reclined at their ease upon the carved oak seats, as if they were the masters of the house. He told them what had brought him to the palace, and was conducted ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... in case the Princess should wish to see him before he went; but Lilias found poor Margaret far too ill for this to be of any avail. She had tossed about all night, and now was lying partly raised on a pile of embroidered, gold-edged pillows, under an enormous, stiff, heavy quilt, gorgeous with heraldic colours and devices, her pale cheeks flushed with fever, her breath catching painfully, and with a terrible short cough, murmuring strange words about her sisters, and about cruel tongues. A crowd of both sexes and all ranks filled ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... powers"—with angels swinging censers, and graceful nymphs, and laughing satyrs—a strange combination of paganism and Christianity—amid wreaths of flowers, and arabesques twining round the groups and over every vacant space, partly framing, partly hiding, the heraldic devices which commemorate Sixtus and his family:—a web of lovely forms and brilliant colours, combined in an intricate and ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... double. C and D Companies give them five minutes start, and move on. The road at this point runs past a low mossy wall, surmounted by a venerable yew hedge, clipped at intervals into the semblance of some heraldic monster. Beyond the hedge, in the middle distance, looms a square and stately Georgian mansion, whose ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a thing, but to tell you the truth, I don't think much of such matters. Besants d'or and such heraldic moneys are not currency ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... world—under which Harold Hardrada triumphed at Fulford, near York, but to fall a few days later at Stanford Bridge, is well known; but who can inform us as to the device which it bore? These early traces of heraldic usage appear to deserve more notice than I believe ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... heart-felt demand, but only from a fancied or simulated demand,—from tradition, association; at second-hand in one shape or another. It is at bottom something of the same flunkeyism that in a more exaggerated form assumes heraldic bearings and puts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... carved with skill, wondrous skill, of some period when the art of carving wainscot with arms and devices was much practised; so that on this coffer—some six feet long it is, and two or three broad—most richly wrought, you see faces in relief of knight and dame, lords, heraldic animals; some story, very likely, told, almost revelling in Gothic sculpture of wood, like what we have seen on the marble sarcophagus of the old Greeks. It has, too, a lock, elaborately ornamented ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these exquisite ribs and groins, the ceiling is decorated with heraldic insignia, displaying the arms of Edward the Confessor, Edward the Third, Edward the Black Prince, Henry the Sixth, Edward the Fourth, Henry the Seventh, and Henry the Eighth; with the arms of England and France quartered, the holy ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "immense" but unamiable amateur. Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions of book-plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... accidental Standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and generally all national or other Sectarian Costumes and Customs: they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic one. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... above his controlling head, acclaim his triumph. The Fountain embodies the mood of joyous, exultant power and exactly expresses the spirit of the Exposition. Its unique decorative character has been aptly described as heraldic, "The Power of ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... all of us, to impute personal motives in explanation of the conversion of every individual convert, as he comes before us, if there were in us, the public, an adhesion to that absolute, and universal, and unalienable principle, as its titles are set forth in heraldic style, high and broad, sacred and awful, the right, and the duty, and the possibility of Private Judgment? Why should we confess it in the general, yet promptly and pointedly deny it in every particular, if our hearts retained more than the "magni nominis umbra," when we preached up the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... The Heraldic designs always denote ownership, and are most frequently found on Royal books bound in velvet, rarely occurring on silk or satin, and never, as far as I have been able to ascertain, on canvas. The Figure designs may be subdivided into three smaller ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... are open to the air. Every inch of this structure, of its balconies, its pillars, its great central columns, is wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great heraldic sala- mander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois, - over the chimneys, over the doors, on the walls. This whole quarter , of the castle bears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The run- ning cornice along the top ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... One of the earliest sensations of the Flag was a correspondence exposing the misdeeds of some communal officials; but in the end the very persons who made the allegations ate humble pie. Evidently official pressure had been brought to bear, for red tape rampant might have been the heraldic device of Jewish officialdom. In no department did Jews exhibit more strikingly their marvellous powers of assimilation to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... faithful representation of the manners, customs, and daily life and speech of his own time, in "The Canterbury Tales," are sweepingly advanced against his works at large. In an allegory — rendered perhaps somewhat cumbrous by the detail of chivalric ceremonial, and the heraldic minuteness, which entered so liberally into poetry, as into the daily life of the classes for whom poetry was then written — Chaucer beautifully enforces the lasting advantages of purity, valour, and faithful love, and the fleeting ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his mind, and qualifies the noun in it with adjectives of his own. The Academy Dictionary gives de son propre mouvement as one interpretation of the phrase. The meaning would be, 'they are of a most choice and developed instinct in dress.' Cheff or chief suggests the upper third of the heraldic shield, but I cannot persuade the suggestion to further development. The hypercatalectic syllables of a, swiftly spoken, matter little to the verse, especially as it ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... into a gentleman; and, as his profession of actor stood in the way, the application was made in his father's name. The thing was started as early as 1596, but so much question was had, so many difficulties raised, concerning it, that the Poet was three years in working it through. To be sure, such heraldic gentry was of little worth in itself, and the Poet knew this well enough; but then it assured a certain very desirable social standing, and therefore, as an aspiring member of society, he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... seignorial dignity, but it was as though generation after generation had employed upon its perfecting the craft of its most delicate fingers, the love of its most fanciful and ingenious spirits. Overhead, the stucco-work ceiling, covered with stags and birds and strange heraldic creatures unknown to science, had the deep creamy tint, the consistency and surface of antique ivory. From the white and gilt frieze beneath, untouched, so Robert explained, since the Jacobean days when it was first executed, hung Renaissance tapestries ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bastioned rock, and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart—very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. And above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... for it is only saved by a kind of good fortune from failure. It is without energy and without life, but in its monumental weight and a certain splendour of design it impresses us with a sort of majesty as no merely naturalistic study of a lion could do. If we compare it for a moment with the heraldic shield in Casa Martelli, where Donato has carved in relief a winged griffin rampant, cruel and savage, with all the beauty and vigour of Verrocchio, we shall understand something of his failure in the Marzocco, and something, too, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... was the only picture in the room. Through the open windows could be seen a pool of water, and near it a stork, the only creature that M. Bourjot would tolerate in his park, and that on account of its heraldic form. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... against the gate, and steadying himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil Paraday this lady, who, as all the world agreed, was tremendous fun, considered that she had secured a prime attraction, a creature of almost heraldic oddity. Nothing could exceed her enthusiasm over her capture, and nothing could exceed the confused apprehensions it excited in me. I had an instinctive fear of her which I tried without effect to conceal from ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... Knights and nobles lie clad in armour with their ladies by their sides. Bishops and abbots bless the spectators with their uplifted right hands. Judges lie in their official garb, and merchants with the emblems of their trade. At their feet lie animals, usually having some heraldic connection with the deceased, or symbolical of his work—e.g. a dragon is trodden down beneath the feet of a bishop, signifying the defeat of sin as the result of his ministry. The heads of effigies usually rest on cushions, which are sometimes ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... tradition of one of the proscribed of the clan MacGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-side sheep-pen—'Son of my love,' a heraldic bar sinister, but history reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other than the sinister aspect of the name": these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo Innes; but history or tradition, being interrogated, tells ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surface, and over the glowing red of its Venetian leather binding, lambs, lions, eagles, doves, and pelicans stood lucently embossed, bearing upon their well-drilled shoulders the sacred emblems and mottoes of the ecclesiastical party. More important and more central than these showed the proud heraldic bearings of the metropolitan see of Ebury, crowned with a miter which its occupant never wore, and a Cardinal's hat for which he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... to represent the youngest of the pages wears thin silk which clings closely and is pale-blue, and has heraldic lilies of the palest gold woven into it. This and as much lace as can possibly be employed are the most distinctive feature of the costume. It does not aim at any definite century, but seeks to emphasize the youthful ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... The heraldic ornaments were the only things in this retired place that reminded us of Europe. The church or chapel formed one side of a quadrangle, in the middle of which a large clump of bananas were growing. On another side was a hospital, containing about a ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the valley; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages): pleasure of the eye, and pride of life! So rolls and dances the Procession: steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment,—under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written: The wages of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... deciphered, pointed out where the remaining difficulty occurred, and explained how they were completely at a stand from their inability to decipher the word Gassoc, or to decide who or what it could mean. All the conjectures of the commissioner, the cassock, and the bishop, and the gosshawk, and the heraldic researches, and the French misnomers, and the puns upon the coats of arms, and the notes from Wilkins on universal language, and an old book on deciphering, which had been lent to the commissioner, and the private and public letters ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the period it had no upper story, the roof being timbered like that of a church. The walls were panelled with oak to a height of about eight feet, and above that were decorated with elaborate designs in plaster relief, representing lions, wild boars, stags, unicorns, and other heraldic devices from the coat-of-arms of the original owner of the estate. A narrow winding staircase led to a minstrels' gallery, from which was suspended a wooden shield emblazoned with the Welsh dragon and the national motto, "Cymru ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Castle, a relic of the Norman days, but long since gone to decay. Here lived the ancestors of King Henry VIII.'s last wife, Queen Catharine Parr. Opposite it are the ruins of Castle How, and not far away the quaint appendage known as Castle Dairy, replete with heraldic carvings. It was in the town of Kendal that was made the foresters' woollen cloth known as "Kendal green," which was the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... the which took place upon the Mount of Olives. I take this family beneath my own protection; and therefore it is my will it should be called henceforth the congregation of S. Mary of Mount Olivet.' After this, the Blessed Virgin took forethought for the heraldic designs of her monks, dictating to Guido Tarlati the blazon they still bear; it is of three hills or, whereof the third and highest is surmounted with a cross gules, and from the meeting-point of the three hillocks ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... embrace twenty full-page Plates, Emblazoned in Heraldic Colours, reproducing the Arms of the Principal Persons who have been identified with the Minster, either as Builders or Benefactors; the four hundred and thirty pages of Text contain a wealth of historic illustration of the rise, ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... Tyre (architect), Nathaniel Dance (portrait painter), Richard Wilson, G. Michael Moser (Swiss, gold-chaser and enameller), Samuel Wale (sign painter and book illustrator), Peter Toms (portrait and heraldic painter), Angelica Kauffman (Swiss), Richard Yeo (sculptor of medallions, engraver to the Mint), Mary Moser (Swiss, flower painter), William Chambers (architect), Joseph Wilton (sculptor), George Barrett (landscape painter), Edward Penny (portrait ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... disposed. A short distance from the house, embosomed in trees, stands the church, built in the time of Henry III.; with a sublime Gothic arch, richly painted windows, and a ceiling fretted with the heraldic fires of the Lyttleton family, whose tombs are placed on all sides; among them, the resting-place of the gay poet is distinguished by the following ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... of the scaffolding, the Marshal bade the speaker read the challenge, which, unrolling the parchment, he began to do in a loud, clear voice, so that all might hear. It was a quaint document, wrapped up in the tangled heraldic verbiage of ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... distinguished men were executed, their friends often pressed to stain handkerchiefs with their blood, or to get some other relic, which they might keep, either as precious memorials of them, or as having a kind of sacramental virtue. 'Cognizance' is here used in a heraldic sense, meaning any badge to show ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... not much fun. We joked each other, and whistled and sang, and trudged manfully along, gun over shoulder. The pale sun was strengthening; the mountains were turning darker as they threw aside the filmy rose of early day; in treetops a row of buzzards sat, their wings outspread like the heraldic devices of a foreign nation. Thousands of doves whistled away; thousands of smaller birds rustled and darted before our advancing lines; tens of thousands of blackbirds sprinkled the bare branches of single trees, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing no other that will express what I mean,—the division of the picture into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... thinks it looks stylish, is as though, for the same reason, he changed his name from Muggins to Marmaduke, and quite properly subjects him to ridicule. (Strictly speaking, a woman has the right to use a "lozenge" only; since in heraldic days women did not bear arms, but no one in this country follows heraldic rule ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... in a heraldic design and was whistling through his teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rubber of professional courtesy,—for he was denoting or at the moment, which is fussy work, as it ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny; and the picture-papers of the European continent are already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic emblem. The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with all their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human quality, and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring traditions. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Trinacrian limbs, being put on the giant's shields also. It is connected besides with the Cretan labyrinth, and the circles of the Inferno. 3. Parted per fesse, gules and vai (I don't know if vai means grey—not a proper heraldic ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... of "fluency" interpenetrates the Autobiography, the letters, the documents of every kind, and at any moment this disease will darken Bulwer-Lytton's brightest hours. But curtailed by his grandson, and with its floral and heraldic ornaments well pared away, the Autobiography is a document of considerable value. It is written with deliberate candour, and recalls the manner of Cobbett, a writer with whom we should not expect ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... has been expressed to ascertain whether any portion of the skeleton of the murdered cook has been discovered beneath the flooring of the cellar, which tradition, fomented by illiterate gossip, pointed out as the place of his interment. Your correspondents would confer a heraldic benefit if they would point out other instances—which I believe to exist—where family reputation has been damaged by ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... gables and the peacock dreams in the sun on the balustrade of the terrace, as in past centuries, but the castle of the French noble and the burg of the German ritter are given over to the bats and owls, and are quarries whence the peasants pick out the heraldic carvings for the construction of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Nazareth constantly gathers around her and ask yourself how she can dare to claim to represent Him! Go through Holy Rome and see how the richest and most elaborate buildings bear over their gateways the heraldic emblems of Christ's Vicar! Go through any country which has not risen in disgust and cast off the sham that calls herself 'Christ's Church' and you will find that no worldly official is so splendid as these heavenly delegates of Jesus Christ, no palaces more ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... young bearer behind, and perched upon the shoulder of her mistress; making up a picture of innocent beauty somewhat fanciful and allegoric, but not on that account the less fitted to harmonize with the antique pageantries of this heraldic solemnity. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey |
