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Luxuriance   Listen
noun
Luxuriance  n.  The state or quality of being luxuriant; rank, vigorous growth; excessive abundance produced by rank growth. "Tropical luxuriance."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Luxuriance" Quotes from Famous Books



... (61-95 A.D.) was the author of the Silviae, Thebaid, and Achilleid. The "Silviae" are the rude materials of thought springing up spontaneously in all their wild luxuriance, from the rich, natural soil of the imagination of the poet. The subject of the "Thebaid" is the ancient Greek legend respecting the war of the Seven against Thebes, and the "Achilleid" was intended ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... tree is shorter and stouter than ours; its foliage dense and deep, lying with a full, rounding outline against the sky. Every thing here conveys the idea of concentrated vitality, but without that rank luxuriance seen in our American growth. Having unfortunately exhausted the English language on the subject of grass, I will not repeat ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Hildebrand, and the French "Chansons de Geste," which contain episodes from the lives of Charlemagne and his nephew Roland. The true epic, arising from the rich and poetical Celtic tradition, came into existence in the eleventh century in the North of France and immediately burst into extraordinary luxuriance. The legends of the heroes of the dreamy Celtic race—King Arthur and his knights, Merlin the magician, the knights of the Holy Grail—travelling across France, became the common property of the civilised European nations, and filled all hearts with longing and fantastic dreams. Chrestien ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... as much indebted to the original society as things must always be to the central thought which inspired them. Compared with English work of the same period, they were distinguished by a certain spontaneity of motive and a luxuriance of effect, which has made these specimens more valuable to present possessors, and will make them far more precious as heirlooms. This sudden efflorescence of the art was, however, almost in the hands of amateurs, except for the occasional effort by some of the advanced contributors of the ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... of human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers into regions not so much as dimly descried or even suspected before his time, far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty and tropical luxuriance of life. For instance,—a single instance, indeed one which in itself is a world of new revelation, —the possible beauty of the female character had not been seen as in a dream before Shakspeare called into perfect ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... expenditure of time in shaving might be turned with profit into the channel of business or of worship; but his wife, noting how he stroked the beard at intervals of meditation, judged that he was moved by something like pride in its luxuriance. Then she chided herself for ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... peculiar to the reigns of the later Henrys had been merged into the graceful and peaceable hall, the residence of the Rookwoods had early anticipated the gentler characteristics of a later day, though it could boast little of that exuberance of external ornament, luxuriance of design, and prodigality of beauty, which, under the sway of the Virgin Queen, distinguished the residence of the wealthier English landowner; and rendered the hall of Elizabeth, properly so called, the pride and boast ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... represented the meat, and the unstinted supply of cream and milk and butter. Even the half-cleared land, where tree stumps and bushes still held sway, there was the blueberry, growing with the joyous luxuriance of ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... become clear and cheerful. Diseases disappear and all men become long-lived. Wives do not become widows, and no person becomes a miser. The earth yields crops without being tilled, and herbs and plants grow in luxuriance. Barks, leaves, fruits, and roots, become vigorous and abundant. No unrighteousness is seen. Nothing but righteousness exists. Know these to be the characteristics, O Yudhishthira, of the Krita ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... William, a master reared in the architectural school of Sens; and the severity of his taste might seem to have acted as a restraining power on all the subsequent changes of manner in this place—changes in themselves for the most part towards luxuriance. In harmony with the atmosphere of its great church is the cleanly quiet of the town, kept fresh by little channels of clear water circulating through its streets, derivatives of the rapid Vanne which falls just below into the Yonne. The Yonne, bending gracefully, link after ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... the right texture of leaf now so desirable in all tobaccos designed for wrappers. Could the Indians, who cultivated the plant on the banks of the James, the Amazon and other rivers of America, now look upon the plant growing in rare luxuriance upon the same fields where they first raised it, they could hardly realize them to be the same varieties that they ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... and yet intrinsically one. It is a compound lyric, with an epic theme and somewhat of an epic cast. The theme is the triumph of woman's love. It is the story of love's redemption. It has something of the tone, colour, and luxuriance of Solomon's Song; both, too, have the same theme, though treated in a different way.... The form is charming—as if the sonatas of Beethoven had been translated into poetry! The denouement is ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay

... Batu Beru was not what it has become since: the center of a prosperous tobacco-growing district, a tropically suburban-looking little settlement of bungalows in one long street shaded with two rows of trees, embowered by the flowering and trim luxuriance of the gardens, with a three-mile-long carriage-road for the afternoon drives and a first-class Resident with a fat, cheery wife to lead the society of married estate-managers and unmarried young fellows in the service of the ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... swayed her, and they fought together for supremacy. One was the love of power, and the other was the love of love. The first was natural to a girl who was a sovereign in her own right. The second was inherited, and was then forced into a rank luxuriance by the sort of life that she had seen about her. At eighteen she was a strangely amorous creature, given to fondling and kissing every one about her, with slight discrimination. From her sense of touch she received emotions ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... Ville and belfry which puts the market-house and belfry of Bruges quite in the shade from an impressive architectural point of view. There is not the quiet, splendid severity of its more famous compeer at Bruges, but there is far more luxuriance in its architectural form, and, at any rate, it was a surprise and a pleasure to find that any such splendid monument ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... wave is thrown, remote as are the fertile glades which fringe the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, still that wave of human life is destined to reach those beautiful solitudes, and to convert the wild luxuriance of their now useless vegetation into all the requirements of civilized existence. And if it be matter of desire that across this immense continent, resting on the two greatest oceans of the world, a powerful nation should arise with the strength and the manhood which race and climate and ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... as well. Much are the precious hours of youth misspent, In climbing Learning's rugged, steep ascent; When to the top the bold adventurer's got, He reigns, vain monarch, o'er a barren spot; Whilst in the vale of Ignorance below, Folly and Vice to rank luxuriance grow; 10 Honours and wealth pour in on every side, And proud Preferment rolls her golden tide. O'er crabbed authors life's gay prime to waste, To cramp wild genius in the chains of taste, To bear the slavish drudgery of schools, And tamely stoop to every pedant's rules; For seven long years ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... the supernatural beauty that comes over the island so often in rainy weather, so we basked in the vague enjoyment of the sunshine, looking down at the wild luxuriance of the vegetation beneath the sea, which contrasts strangely with the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... soil is exceedingly rich; the tobacco gardens exhibited an extreme luxuriance, and the size of the leaves formed a great contrast to the plants in the hot ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... servant Madeleine, who nursed me as a baby; of the Angora cat almost as old as she; of the big garden, so green, so enticing, which you trim with so much care, and which rewards your attention with such luxuriance. It would be so nice, dear uncle, to be ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... so unique. One is accustomed to connect with the notion of the sea bare cliffs, breezy downs, stunted shrubs struggling for existence: and instead of them behold a forest wall, 500 feet high, of almost semi-tropic luxuriance. At one turn, a deep glen, with its sea of green woods, filled up at the mouth with the bright azure sheet of ocean.—Then some long stretch of the road would be banked on one side with crumbling rocks, festooned ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... the Puritans did not set sail en masse for the Bahamas. Gorgeous were the descriptions of Virginia sent home by some of the first settlers, in which lions and tigers, and a whole menagerie of tropical animals, came in for no small share of wonder; and, as an offset to this summer luxuriance of life, most disparaging pictures were drawn of the bleak sterility of New England,—and even that which was the only compensation for this barrenness of the earth, namely, the abundance of fish in the sea, was, as respects the revenue derived from it, made an especial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... a building. It was roofless, and above the rear wall was what I recognized as tropical vegetation, mainly by its wild luxuriance. In the center of the rear wall was what seemed to be a giant stone lizard, standing on its hind legs. The one foreleg that showed was disproportionately short. The body, too, was more attenuated than ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of the town, while around to the east, south, and west, and on both sides of the little river that divides the city, roars and surges the traffic of a characteristic middle-West town. Half-way up the hill, where the few aristocrats of the place formerly lived in almost royal luxuriance and seclusion, a busy sewing-machine factory has forced its way, and with its numerous chimneys and stacks literally smoked the occupants out; at their very gates it sits like the commander of a besieging army, and about it cluster the cottages of the workmen, in military regularity. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... pronounce the name "Carntwohill," which translated means, the left-handed or inverted sickle. The expansiveness of the Lower Lake appears at first to minimise its beauty, when compared with its smaller companions. But the more its loveliness is explored, the greater the revelation of the harmony and luxuriance of the landscape. No less than thirty-five islands, like beauty spots of a fairy "drop scene," bedeck the silver sheen of its surface. The largest of these, Innisfallen, almost midway between the ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... arts; and the libertinism that brought scandal on the Christians, is converted into youthful susceptibility, led away by enchantment. The author proposed to combine the ancient epic poets with Ariosto, or a simple plot, and uniformly dignified style, with romantic varieties of adventure, and the luxuriance of fairy-land. He did what he proposed to do, but with a judgment inferior to Virgil's; nay, in point of the interdependence of the adventures, to Ariosto, and with far less general vigour. The mixture of affectation with his dignity is so frequent, that, whether Boileau's famous line ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... Whaley was admitted to the bar of Kent County on motion of his father, he stopped with his pair of horses at Doctor Voss's house, and asked Miss Marion to take a drive. She was a peerless brunette, whose dark brown curls taking the light upon their luxuriance seemed the rippling of water from the large amber wells of her eyes. In childhood she had looked with admiration on his straight, trim figure and manly courtesy, and hoped that she might find favor in his sight. For this she had put by the scant ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... the piazza of the hotel where myself and friend had our quarters. This was of immense extent, full twenty feet wide, boarded throughout, and covered by the roof of the house, which was supported by lofty pillars of pine. About these columns grew, in the greatest luxuriance, the wild vine of the country, or some other Clematis, covering them from ground to roof, and forming a continuous rich drapery throughout the whole extent of the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... The indecision of those who happen to rule at the critical time, their supine neglect, or their precipitate and ill-judged attention, may aggravate the public misfortunes. In such a state of things, the principles, now only sown, will shoot out and vegetate in full luxuriance. In such circumstances the minds of the people become sore and ulcerated. They are put out of humor with all public men and all public parties; they are fatigued with their dissensions; they are irritated at their coalitions; they are made easily to believe (what much pains are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of Yorkshire it is especially beautiful, and any one who sees the fine old trees in Wharfdale and Wensleydale will confess that, though it may not have the rich luxuriance of the Oaks and Elms of the southern and midland counties, yet it has a grace and beauty that are all its own, so that we scarcely wonder that Gilpin called it "the Venus of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... hand lies the sweep of that graceful shore to Killiney, with the Dalky Islands dotting the calm sea; while inland, in wild confusion, are grouped the Wicklow Mountains, massive with wood and teeming with a rich luxuriance. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... and communing I noticed how their church, close at hand, was built along the low banks of the torrent. I admired the luxuriance of the grass these waters fed, and the generous arch of the trees beside it. The graves seemed set in a natural place of rest and home, and just beyond this churchyard was that marriage of hewn stone and water which ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... Princes of Vegetation. But some of the most beautiful are short-stemmed and creeping; whilst others fling giant arms from tree to tree of the tropical forests, now drooping to the ground, and then climbing up again in very luxuriance of growth. Many of the rattan palms (Calamus) are of this character. They wind in and out, hanging in festoons from the branches, on which they lean in princely condescension, with stems upwards of ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... bishop of Vannes, who had never before been so perplexed. His iron will, accustomed to overcome all obstacles, never finding itself inferior or vanquished on any occasion, to be foiled in so vast a project from not having foreseen the influence which a view of Nature in all its luxuriance would have on the human mind! Aramis, overwhelmed by anxiety, contemplated with emotion the painful struggle which was taking place in Philippe's mind. This suspense lasted the whole ten minutes which the young man had ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... time that it lasts, is proportionally warmer, the thermometer rising from 70 deg. to 80 deg. above 0. Vegetation then proceeds with uncommon rapidity; the shrubs and plants expand as if by enchantment; and the country assumes the luxuriance and beauty of a European summer. Forests of pine and larch are scattered over the country, the trees of sufficient size to be used in building, or to be sawn into boards; there are also willows, birch, aspen, and alder, in ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... ground, and were shaded by a deep awning of striped blue and white canvas. Camelias, orange-trees, cactuses, and magnolias, abounded every where; tulips and hyacinths seemed to grow wild; and there was in the half-neglected look of the spot something of savage luxuriance that heightened ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... sprinkled with stones, their often barren pastures, numerous abandoned tracts overgrown with weeds, and blue-grass lush in the meadows. Along the edges of the Creek, and in little pocket bottoms, the varied vegetation has a sub-tropical luxuriance, and in this now close, warm air, there is a ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... collected[235] numerous instances to show how excessively sensitive to various influences this system is. He says:[236] "Sterility is independent of general health, and is often accompanied by excess of size, or {234} great luxuriance," and, "No one can tell, till he tries; whether any particular animal will breed under confinement, or any exotic plant seed freely under culture." Again, "When a new character arises, whatever its nature may be, it generally tends to be inherited, at least in a temporary ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... and the island lay spread out beneath them in all its luxuriance. The very first thing the men wanted to do was to try what it was like to spit down; but the girls were giddy and kept together in a cluster in the middle of the platform. The churches were counted under Karl Johan's ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... another danger to which they are exposed when driving them over new ground. There is a small plant, I forget the name of it, but it is well known to every shepherd, and grows in luxuriance along some of the river beds. It is about a foot high and has dark green leaves. If by any chance a mob of hungry sheep are driven into this plant, they will attack it ravenously, and in a few minutes they will stagger and fall as if intoxicated, and if not immediately ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... hanging full of fruits, of a size and weight so disproportioned to the stem, and from under long and rich-looking leaves, of the same yellow with the ripened fruit, and of an African luxuriance of growth, is to us one of the richest spectacles that we have ever contemplated in the array of the woods. The fruit contains from two to six seeds like those of the tamarind, except that they are double the size. The pulp ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... Liberia several visits and spent several years in its scientific exploration. The account of his investigations is most interesting. Small as is the area of the country all kinds of soil are represented, and corresponding to this variety is a remarkably rich and varied flora. Amidst this luxuriance is found an unusually large number of products of commercial value. Cotton, indigo, coffee, pepper, the pineapple, gum tree, oil palm, and many others grow wild in abundance, while a little cultivation produces ample crops of rice, corn, potatoes, yams, arrowroot, ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson

... region of remarkable luxuriance, fertility, and beauty. There were crystal streams and charming lakes. Magnificent forests were interspersed with broad and green prairies. God seemed to have formed, in these remote realms, an Eden of surpassing loveliness ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... Jefferies had a way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing; but I think I could lead anyone to Clematis Lane. I might, by the way, have remarked of South Harting that the luxuriance of the clematis in its ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... region which he now saw before him, his final home. The country, in every aspect of it, was alluring in the highest degree. Level plains, varied here and there by gentle elevations, extended around him, all adorned with groves and flowers, and exhibiting a luxuriance in the verdure of the grass and in the foliage of the trees that was perfectly enchanting to the sea-weary eyes of his company of mariners. In the distance, blue and beautiful mountains bounded the horizon, and a soft, warm summer haze floated over the whole scene, bathing the landscape ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the little garden surrounding it is crowded with a medley of old-fashioned herbs and flowers, planted long ago, when the garden was the only druggist's shop within reach, and allowed to grow in scrambling and wild luxuriance—roses, lavender, sage, balm (for tea), rosemary, pinks and wallflowers, onions and jessamine, in most republican and indiscriminate order. This farmhouse and garden are within a hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of all are the houses in which the people live, clustered in villages, as are farmhouses in almost every part of the world except in America. Surrounded in most cases by the massive luxuriance of a banana grove, the Filipino's hut stands on stilts as high as his head, and often higher. One always enters by a ladder. In most instances there are two rooms, the larger one perhaps 10 x 12 feet, and a sort of lean-to adjoining, ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... language of love and hate, of confidence and despair, is not the language of description. In this train of the religious consciousness there is occasion for whatever eloquence man can feel, and whatever rhetorical luxuriance he ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... mustangs treading them under foot. And as the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume to the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green sky star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... mail armour, which covers the mouth in a peculiar fashion, and wears a surcoat falling in simple folds, almost Greek in feeling, that are somewhat curious in connection with the rich mediaeval luxuriance of the surface ornament. On his shield are borne six heraldic leopards or lions. The slab and effigy are stone, but the base is of wood encircled by an arcade of trefoiled arches. One of its compartments protected with glass yet shows a piece of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... depose the emperors of Germany. All round the castle of Stolzenfels are the choicest flowers and shrubs; and I wish some of my horticultural friends could have seen the moss roses and fuchias in such luxuriance. We were sorry to leave the place; but the steamboat on the Rhine is as punctual as a North River boat; and we had to resume our donkeys, descend to the carriages, drive briskly, and were just in time to get on board a boat bound ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... light could not disfigure any one so absolutely beautiful as Aneta Lysle. Her delicate complexion, the wonderful purity and regularity of her features, her sweet, tender young mouth, her charming blue eyes, and her great luxuriance of golden hair made people who looked at her once long to study that charming face again ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... conditions. The most superficial eye recognizes this. A city is, in one respect, like a high mountain; the latter is an epitome of the physical globe; for its sides are belted by products of every zone, from the tropical luxuriance that clusters around its base, to its arctic summit far up in the sky. So is the city an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... Sophocles; but though there are some exquisite touches of landscape painting in that drama, the poet has introduced them with a much more sparing hand. It is said that Hurd pruned away a great deal more luxuriance of this kind, with which the first draught of the Elfrida was overrun; and we learn from Gray, in his admirable letter of criticism on the Caractacus, that the opening of that tragedy was, as it at first stood, even much more objectionable than at present. Such ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... his sails she brought him, but we must recollect that she was a weaver at the start of the story. At last Ulysses pushes his raft down into the fair salt sea; Ogygia, the place of nature's luxuriance and delight, is left behind; he must quit the natural state, however paradisaical, and pass to the social order, to Ithaca, though the latter be poor and rocky. Still we may well recall the fact that the island and Calypso once saved Ulysses, when wrecked ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... the figurative elocution of the Indian, so far from affording evidence of oratorical power, if it proves anything, proves the opposite. It is the barrenness of his language, and not the luxuriance of his imagination, which enforces that mode of speech.[16] Imagination is the first element of oratory, simplicity its first condition. We have seen that the Indian is wholly destitute of the former; and the stilted, meretricious, and ornate style, of even his ordinary communications, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... culture of the time. Among the men with whom Duerer found congenial companionship were Adam Krafft, the sculptor; Veit Stoss, whose exquisite carvings in wood may reflect in some measure in the wild luxuriance of the imagination which they display, the restless, "dare-devil" spirit with which his biographers invest him; Peter Vischer, the bronze founder; and last but not least. Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, whose ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... streets of the city is built almost close to the edge of the precipice, and stairs are hewn out of the solid rock, which lead to nooks in the lower precipices, in which, though there is very little soil, gardens have been formed, where fig and orange trees grow with considerable luxuriance, and greatly contribute to the beauty of the scenery. From the situation of Ronda on the top of a rock, water is scarce, and stairs are constructed down to the river, by which means the inhabitants are supplied. We descended by one flight of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... Piccolo we drove in the opposite direction to Ossero, the ancient Apsoros or Auxerrum, following a narrow road through olive-yards, along the shore or some way up the hill among a bewildering variety and luxuriance of vegetation. On the island, which is about eighteen miles long, though nowhere more than two in breadth and seldom more than one, there are three villages besides the two Lussins. They are Neresine, Chiunschi, and S. Giacomo. At Neresine we were told that there was an English-speaking ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... the feast seems to have varied in different countries; thus in Greece it was celebrated in the Spring, the moment of the birth of Vegetation; according to Saint Jerome, in Palestine the celebration fell in June, when plant life was in its first full luxuriance. In Cyprus, at the autumnal equinox, i.e., the beginning of the year in the Syro-Macedonian calendar, the death of Adonis falling on the 23rd of September, his resurrection on the 1st of October, the beginning of a New Year. This would seem to indicate that here Adonis was considered, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... inform you of my arrival in Baden, which is indeed still very empty of human beings, but with all the greater luxuriance and full lustre does Nature shine in her enchanting loveliness. Where I fail, or ever have failed, be graciously indulgent towards me, for so many trying occurrences, succeeding each other so closely, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... hollow was just as peaceful and deserted as it had been early that morning, with blackbirds building their nests in the wild luxuriance of the beech-trees. But the grass and the bushes were trampled down everywhere; the spot looked like the scene of a fight, and in the middle of the battle-field lay the carcase of poor Turk. Late that evening some soldiers came ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... luxuriance of the Irish mythology is nowhere more conspicuously displayed than when dealing with the history, habits, characteristics and pranks of the "good people." According to the most reliable of the rural "fairy-men," a race now nearly extinct, the fairies were once angels, so numerous as to have ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... excellent portraiture, dramatic vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition, simplicity of total effect, harmony in colouring, control over his own luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought grandeur in size and multitude, richness, eclat, contrast. Being the disciple of Lionardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular. As a composer, the old ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... yet a school-boy, had listened to the old man's legend of the miraculous virtues of these plants; and it took so firm a hold of his mind, that the row of outlandish vegetables seemed rooted in it, and certainly flourished there with richer luxuriance than in the soil where they actually grew. The story, acting thus early upon his imagination, may be said to have influenced his brief career in life, and, perchance, brought about its early close. The young man, in the opinion of ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which the last aspect of Zealand presents occasions one to be doubly struck by the affluent abundance and luxuriance with which Funen steps forth. Green woods, rich corn-fields, and, wherever the eye rests, noblemen's seats and churches. Nyborg itself appears a lively capital in comparison with the still melancholy Korsoeer. One now perceives people upon the great bridge of boats, on the ramparts, and in the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... so that it is seldom he has to have recourse to the forest for his maintenance. But the mountain Manbo is occasionally compelled to draw his sustenance from the various palm trees and vines that are found in such luxuriance throughout his forest domain. I have seen poisonous tubers gathered in time of famine by the Manbos of the upper W-wa region and eaten, after they had been scraped on a prickly rattan branch, and the poison had been removed by a ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... & Elden had profited not the least in these wild years of gain-getting. Their mahogany finished first floor quarters were the last word in office luxuriance. Conward's private room might with credit have housed a premier or a president. Its purpose was to be impressive, rather than to give any other service, as Conward spent little of his time therein. On Dave fell the responsibility of office management, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... into their perfect forms. Sometimes these curtains are decorated with large bell-shaped, bright-coloured flowers, sometimes with delicate sprays of white blossoms. This forest is beyond all my expectations of tropical luxuriance and beauty, and it is a thing of another world to the forest of the Upper Calabar, which, beautiful as it is, is a sad dowdy to this. There you certainly get a great sense of grimness and vastness; here you have an equal grimness and vastness with the addition of superb colour. This forest is ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... who received me in (the Jenan En neel) the garden of the Nile, a small garden adjoining the palace, containing all the fruits and plants from the Nile[103] of Egypt. The (worde fillelly) Tafilelt-rose grows in great luxuriance in this garden, resembling that of China; the odour is very grateful and strong, perfuming the air to a considerable distance. This is the rose, from the leaves of which the celebrated (attar el worde) i.e. distillation of roses is made, vulgarly ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... hair; How often to wash the hair; To improve the growth and luxuriance of the hair; To make the hair glossy; To impart curliness or waviness to the hair when it is naturally straight; On changing the color of the hair; To have elegant hair; Wild Rose curling fluid; To cause the hair to grow very thick; Lola Montez hair coloring; Hair ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... from St. Paul's all along the banks of the Missouri was very pretty. We both of us sat outside the Pullman as long as daylight lasted, feasting our eyes oh the water, trees, etc. The height and luxuriance of the latter seemed quite incomprehensible after the total absence of forest scenery for so many months. It is pretty round here; and by the time we get to the Rocky Mountains we shall have got beyond the stage of thinking a hillock a mountain, and fairish-sized trees not so wonderful after all; ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p.10 of Mr. Clouston's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... enjoyment, as the labours and occupations of the day have then ceased; and all without exception, rich and poor, flock from the town to the sweet, cool, flowery repose of the woods and vineyards, and there take their evening repast in the midst of the wild luxuriance of nature, 'health in the gale, and fragrance on the breeze.' And when the sun is gone down, they return in the cool twilight to their homes, where they find that sweet sleep which movement in the open air alone can give, and which, with our more confined British habits, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... incredible to suppose that intense and almost unceasing pain, should not partially have unnerved his mind; that he should not have directed a more undiverted concentration of thought, and revelled with more freedom and luxuriance of expression, before, rather than during the ravages of that insidious and fatal disease, under which he laboured for so many years, and which never allowed him, except when in the pulpit, to deviate from a recumbent posture. However combated by mental firmness, such perpetual suffering must ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... the wood is on fire, smouldering in dull red anger; but nobody minds. Then the swamp grows beautiful; a raised road, built by chained Negro convicts, dips down into it, and forms a way walled and almost covered in living green. Spreading trees spring from a prodigal luxuriance of undergrowth; great dark green shadows fade into the black background, until all is one mass of tangled semi-tropical foliage, marvellous in its weird savage splendor. Once we crossed a black silent ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... in her attire that indicated she was not unwilling to be thought older. Her fair flaxen hair was closely confined by a dark bandeau, such as was worn in a nation farther north by virgins only, over which a few curls strayed, in a manner that showed the will of their mistress alone restrained their luxuriance. Her light complexion had lost much of its brilliancy, but enough still remained to assert its original beauty and clearness. To this description might be added, fine, mellow, blue eyes; beautifully white, though large teeth; a regular set of features, and a person ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the picture, and contemplated the rivalry of nature with art, striving which could most delight. As my eye moved from ship to ship, from island to island, and from shore to shore—now reposing on the distant blue, then revelling in the nearer luxuriance of the forest green, I heard a step in the grass, and a little ragged fellow came up and asked me if I was the editor of the ——. I was about replying to him affirmatively, when his words arrested my attention. "A little gentleman with a hat and cane," he said, "had been ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... up it, through a dense tropical vegetation which reminded me of my Jamaica days. At the end of the ride we arrived at the Government bungalow, and found one of the most magnificent views I ever witnessed; in the foreground this tropical luxuriance, and beyond, far below, the glistening sea studded with ships and boats innumerable, over which again the Malay peninsula with its varied outline. I had hardly begun to admire the scene, when a gentleman in a blue flannel sort of dress, with a roughish beard and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... watered. Actual forests of lofty trees, forests of a West African type, are few in number, and are chiefly limited to portions of the Nyika, Angoniland and Shire Highlands plateaus, and to a few nooks in valleys near the south end of Tanganyika. Patches of forest of tropical luxuriance may still be seen on the slopes of Mounts Mlanje and Chiradzulu. On the upper plateaus of Mount Mlanje there are forests of a remarkable conifer (Widdringtonia whytei), a relation of the cypress, which in appearance resembles much more the cedar, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... capital of the Eastern Empire, where the luxuriance and magnificence of the Orient combined with the keen, quick intellectual life of the Greeks; in the circle of the imperial court, with its intrigues, its fashions, its favoritisms; at a time when outwardly much respect was paid to the forms of religious life, but when the great and vital ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... chief port of the Malacca Straits, and is an island lying just off the southern point of Asia, thirty miles long and half as wide, containing a population of about a hundred thousand. Here, upon landing, we are surrounded by tropical luxuriance, the palm and cocoanut trees looming above our heads and shading whole groves of bananas. The most precious spices, the richest fruits, the gaudiest feathered birds are found in their native atmosphere. There are plenty of Chinese ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... could call Rudham a pretty village: it was too straggling, too bare of trees, which had been planted sparsely and attained no luxuriance of growth; but it was not wholly unattractive this evening, with the setting sun turning to gold the varying bends of the river which ran through the valley, and the cottages and farmhouses dotted here and there with a not unpleasing irregularity, ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... back in his chair with a luxuriance in which it was hard to separate the cynicism and the admiration. "And can you tell us why," he asked, "you should know your own figure in a looking-glass, when two such ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... North America. The Dismal Swamp is an exception to the fertility of the surrounding country. It is a vast quagmire, composed of vegetable matter and the decayed roots of trees and plants. On the surface appear in rich luxuriance every species of aquatic plants, from the delicate green moss to the tall cypress. It covers, I was told, an area of a thousand square miles, and is forty miles long and twenty-five broad, having, however, in the centre, a lake of some size fringed to ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... another,—the Virgin of Van Eyck from the Virgin of Raphael, Rembrandt's "Pilgrimsat Emmaus" from the "Entombment" by Titian. Yet between others there are common elements of likeness. Raphael and Titian are distinguished by an opulence of form and a luxuriance of color which reveal supreme technical accomplishment in a fertile land under light-impregnated skies. The rigidity and restraint of Van Eyck and Memling suggest the tentative early efforts of the art of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... numbers of fine Islands interspersed in their courses, which being chiefly formed by the washing of the currents, consist of rich alluvial soil, producing grain, roots and grass in the greatest luxuriance. These islands may be considered as the gardens of the country, which they enrich and beautify. The rapidity of the rivers, swoln by the melting of the snow in the spring, tears away the soil in some parts, and deposits it in others; by which means their courses are gradually altered; new Islands ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... beginning, they had watched with pain rise up between them now seemed indestructible, and all their efforts only made it more obvious and more stable. It was like some tropical plant which, for being cut down, grew ever with greater luxuriance. And there was a mischievous devil present at all their conversations that made them misunderstand one another as completely as though they spoke in different tongues. Notwithstanding their love, they were like strangers together; they could look ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... mature not until near middle life. Her head, however, was perfection, even in girlhood, not less by its proportions than its carriage: her graceful figure bore it like the slender setting, holding up the first splendor of the peach; a head of vital and spiritual beauty, where purity and luxuriance, woman and mind, dwelt in harmony and joy. As she seemed ever to be ripening, so she seemed never to have been a child, but, with faculties and sense clear and unintimidated, she was never wanting in modesty, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... fields through which we passed when driving out to the sugar estate, the prickly pear grew close to the ground in great luxuriance, as it is seen on our Western prairies. Its thick leaves, so green as to be dense with color, impart the effect of greensward at a short distance. On close inspection it was seen to be the star cactus, which like the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... of this district has already attracted our attention; the number of deep ravines with which the whole plain is intersected. These natural clefts are marvellously lovely in their rich luxuriance of foliage, and with their precipitous sides and verdure-clad depths will recall the wonderful latomie, the ancient stone-quarries of Syracuse. Their depths are filled with orange and lemon trees, mingled with sable spires ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... Moliere, though he was more systematic in his extravagance than Shakspeare. Shakspeare's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement afforded it; and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolises a quibble. His whole object ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... few miles away are the Siberian pine, the Ayan spruce, and here and there a larch tree. Cedars and fir trees are abundant and grow to a great size. The whole appearance of the region is one of luxuriance and fertility. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... strayed to the great wood, which, considering that it almost touches the town with its boughs, is wonderfully forest-like. Not a branch being ever permitted to be lopped, the oaks and beeches retain their natural luxuriance, and form some of the most picturesque groups conceivable. In some places their straight boles rise sixty feet without a bough; in others, they are bent fantastically over the alleys, which turn and wind about just as a painter ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... of the microscopic fungus—a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... already said, it would be impossible for me to express all the joy I felt at my deliverance from the dangers I was threatened with during the lifetime of Monseigneur. My respect, esteem, and admiration for the Dauphin grew more and more day by day, as I saw his noble qualities blossom out in richer luxuriance. My hopes, too, took a brighter colour from the rising dawn of prosperity that was breaking around me. Alas! that I should be compelled to relate the cruel manner in which envious fortune took from me the cup of gladness just as I was raising it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... are bewildered by the luxuriance of creative powers and by the rioting of the fancy in all forms of beauty indiscriminately mingled. In general we detect a striving after effects not fully realised, and a tendency to indulge in superfluous ornament without ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... oaks, from Dr. Giles and Dr. Daubeny; and with reference to it, and to some remarks of Professor Henslow in the Gardeners' Chronicle, I communicated to the latter journal, last week, the fact of my having, at this present time, a bunch of that plant growing in great luxuriance on an oak ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... whole of which nearly a man like Thomas Brown has quoted in the course of his lectures—must possess no ordinary merit. Its great beauty is its richness of description and language—its great fault is its obscurity; a beauty and a fault closely connected together, even as the luxuriance of a tropical forest implies intricacy, and its lavish loveliness creates a gloom. His attempt to express Plato's philosophy in blank verse is not always successful. Perhaps prose might better have answered his purpose in expressing the awfully sublime thought ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... wasteful summer days went by, the glory of the passionate nights of July, the crisper blonde luxuriance of August. Every night there was the calling from the green plot across the Black Water. Every night Aunt Annie wandered, a withered grey ghost, along the hither side of the inky pool, looking for what she could not see and listening for that which she could ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality. The principles of our forefathers become suspected to us, because we see them animating the present opposition of our children. The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom appear much more shocking to us than the base vices which are generated from the rankness of servitude. Accordingly, the least resistance to power appears more inexcusable in our eyes than the greatest abuses of authority. All dread of a standing military ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... enough thus, but more handsome still, I am told, when the 'arrow,' as the flower is called, spreads over the cane-piece a purple haze, which flickers in long shining waves before the breeze. One only fault it has; that, from the luxuriance of its growth, no wind can pass through it; and that therefore the heat of a cane-field trace is utterly stifling. Here and there we passed a still uncultivated spot; a desolate reedy swamp, with pools, and stunted alder-like trees, reminding us again of the Deep Fens, while the tall chimneys of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... most graceful of these shrubs is the passion-flower, which, according to Descourtiz, grows with such luxuriance in the Antilles, as to climb trees by means of the tendrils with which it is provided, and form moving bowers of rich and elegant festoons, decorated with blue and purple flowers, and fragrant with ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... hoe it all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mold, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... vital in that production. Athens and Sikyou became mere provincial cities, and were shorn thenceforth of all artistic significance; and Greek art, thus deprived of the roots of its life, continued to grow for a while with a rank luxuriance of production, but soon became normal and conventional. The artists who followed Lysippos contented themselves chiefly with seeking a merely technical perfection in reproducing the creations of the earlier and more ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... from base to summit, presents, in a condensed form, an epitome, as it were, of the same kind of gradation in vegetable growth that may be observed from the Tropics to the Arctics. At the base of such a mountain we have all the luxuriance of growth characteristic of the tropical forest,—the Palms, the Bananas, the Bread-trees, the Mimosas; higher up, these give way to a different kind of growth, corresponding to our Oaks, Chestnuts, Maples, etc.; as these wane, on the loftier slopes comes in the Pine forest, fading gradually, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... grey height like a mountain amid the general level, commanding a prospect of thirty miles around. Berlin, half garden, half palace, lies at your feet, rising majestically from the sandy plain, and irregularly divided by the winding Spree. The surrounding country, by its luxuriance, gives evidence of the energy of an industrious race struggling against a naturally barren soil. Turning our eyes upwards upon the military monument which graces the summit of the hill, we cannot repress our gratification at its beauty. A terrace eighty feet in diameter rises from the bare ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... trail, whose sublime silence but a short time since was so often broken by the diabolical whoop of the savage, as he wretched the reeking scalp from the head of his enemy. Where it required many weeks of dangerous, tedious travel to cross the weary pathway to the mountains, now, in all the luxuriance of modern American railway service, the traveller is whirled along at the rate of fifty miles all hour, and where it required many days for the transmission of news, the events of the whole civilized world, as they hourly ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... had been the country home of a few families for almost two generations, the first of the great places having been developed in the seventies when the railroad fortunes were being made. Besides these older estates, which were marked by the luxuriance of their planting and by the ugliness of their houses, there was a growing number of smaller, more modern estates with attractive houses, and also a little settlement "across the tracks" of trades-people and servants. Except for the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... Rarely is the maze broken by a clearing, and where it is so, is seen a chaos of mouldering tree-trunks, uprooted by the frequent tornados, and piled up like some artificial fortification. The wild luxuriance of the place reaches its acme in the neighbourhood of the cypress swamp, but on the further side of that it assumes a softer character, and the perplexed wanderer through these beautiful scenes finds himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... disappearing on our approach. Saw on the further shore a piteous sight, whereat our hearts burned to follow the redskins and chastise their devilish malice. A woman was bound to a stake, her face fallen forward in the water, and a wonderful luxuriance of dark hair spread about her and floating on the current. Swam across the river, with those of my men following who could, and, plunging beneath the tide, cut her bonds. But found the life had fled, at which we wondered; for had she held her head erect ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... susceptibility, they are in practice honoured as godlings. The bare simplicity of the Arabian faith has not proved satisfying to other nations, and Turks, Persians and Indians, even when professing orthodoxy, have allowed embellishments and accretions. Such supplementary beliefs thrive with special luxuriance in India, where a considerable portion of the Moslim population are descended from persons who accepted the new faith unwillingly or from interested motives. They brought with them a plentiful baggage of superstitions ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... island of Cuba. In her new home Clotelle found herself saluted on all sides by the fragrance of the magnolia. When she went with her young mistress to the Poplar Farm, as she sometimes did, nature's wild luxuriance greeted her, wherever she ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... veteran angel, without a nose, and having only one wing, who had the merit of having maintained his post for a century, while his comrade cherub, who had stood sentinel on the corresponding pedestal, lay a broken trunk among the hemlock, burdock, and nettles, which grew in gigantic luxuriance around the walls of the mausoleum. A moss-grown and broken inscription informed the reader, that in the Year 1650 Captain Andrew Bertram, first of Singleside, descended of the very ancient and honourable house of Ellangowan, had caused this monument to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... abode of cities in which they enjoy the comforts of social intercourse. And, indeed, what art do we find coeval with the world, and what is there of which the value is not enhanced by improvement? Why do we restrain the luxuriance of our vines? Why do we dig about them? Why do we grub up the bramble-bushes in our fields? Yet the earth produces them. Why do we tame animals? Yet are they born with intractable dispositions. Rather let us say that that ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... upon extended as far as the inlets which communicated with this great navigable stream; to the south and south-westward ran the Glenelg, meandering through as verdant and fertile a district as the eye of man ever rested on. The luxuriance of tropical vegetation was now seen to the greatest advantage, in the height of the rainy season. The smoke of native fires rose in various directions from the country, which lay like a map at our feet; and when I recollected that all these natural riches of soil ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... world: and as from sea to sea he establishes his reign by bloodless victories, he is attended by Fauns and Satyrs and the jovial Pan; wine and honey are his gifts; and all the earth is glad in his gracious presence. Hence he was ever associated with Oriental luxuriance, and was worshipped even among the Greeks with a large infusion of Oriental extravagance, though tempered by the more ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... a succession of narrow gorges and capricious windings, out of which it emerged into a most charming region, where grand trees, not closely planted, but in scattered groups, were growing with absolutely tropical luxuriance. As the party drove on they stumbled upon a little native boy lying fast asleep beneath the shade of a magnificent banksia. He was dressed in European garb, and seemed about eight years of age. There was no mistaking the characteristic features of his race; ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus—the trip across the lake and down the San Juan River—a brand-new experience, between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The luxuriance got ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... may seem, there are still many persons of ample means, and some education, who, although they would be horrified at the very thought of admitting to the home a cheap rug or vase, to destroy the harmony and bring discord and confusion into the luxuriance of the furnishings, yet will nonchalantly tolerate the incongruity of a miserable fragment of a library made up of the cheapest and meanest editions to be found in the market, such as would be scorned by those of the most limited means and plebeian tastes. These ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... relic left of its existence; a fragment of stone or concrete substance inscribed with the figures of its period? Is it possible that everything has been buried from the sight of modern man, under the rank luxuriance of grass and bush? Or is it not I who vainly dream under the impression of the forest's mute grandeur and the thousands of voices that to-day awake its echoes and to-morrow ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... more words we rode into the forest which lay between Clayville and Moore's plantation. Through the pine barrens ran the road, and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers. The sweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfect blossom. Here and there an aloe reminded ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... totally different styles;—the one being fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a snowy skin tinged with delicate bloom, like that of roses seen through milk, to borrow a simile from old Anacreon; while the other far eclipsed her in the brilliancy of her complexion, the dark splendour of her eyes, and the luxuriance of her jetty tresses, which, unbound and knotted with ribands, flowed down almost to the ground. In age, there was little disparity between them, though perhaps the dark-haired girl might be a year nearer twenty than the other, and somewhat more of seriousness, though not much, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... how rich is vegetation all along the Frith, until we reach the sandy downs from Ardrossan to Ayr. All evergreens grow with great rapidity: ivy covers dead walls very soon. To understand in what luxuriance vegetable life may be maintained close to the sea-margin, one must walk along the road which leads from the West Bay at Dunoon towards Toward. We never saw trees so covered with honeysuckle; and fuchsias a dozen feet in height are ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... made upon me by this long and tedious journey across the island, pleasure and pain were constantly mingled. On one hand was the wonderful beauty of the scenery, the luxuriance of the vegetation, and the bracing warmth of the climate, while the United States were going through a winter more than ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... bright sheet of glass; and the hills were blue in the morning light, and the sunshine everywhere was delightsome. The beautiful trees of Melbourne waved overhead; American elms hung their branches towards the ground; lindens stood in masses of luxuriance; oaks and chestnuts spotted the rolling ground with their round heads; and English elms stood up great towers of green. The September sun on all this and on the well kept greensward; no wonder Daisy said it was pretty. But Preston was ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... with an olive complexion, long dark hair, and very thick bushy whiskers meeting under his chin. He wore no neckerchief, as he had been playing rackets all day, and his Open shirt collar displayed their full luxuriance. On his head he wore one of the common eighteenpenny French skull-caps, with a gaudy tassel dangling therefrom, very happily in keeping with a common fustian coat. His legs, which, being long, were afflicted with weakness, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Accordingly his doctrine spread with great rapidity, and for a long time it seemed likely to prevail over Brahmanism. But various causes gradually combined against it. Partly, it was overwhelmed by its own luxuriance of growth; partly, Brahmanism, which had all along maintained an intellectual superiority, adopted, either from conviction or policy, most of the principles of Buddhism, and skillfully supplied some of its main deficiencies. Thus the Brahmans retained their position; ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... Authors appear to me to resemble those who make themselves fine, instead of being well dressed or graceful; yet the Mischief is, that these Beauties in them, which I call Blemishes, are thought to proceed from Luxuriance of Fancy and Overflowing of good Sense: In one word, they have the Character of being too Witty; but if you would acquaint the World they are not Witty at all, you would, among many ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of these Anti Peripatetic parts contains 18 divisions; the second, 27 which include every incident, episode, &c. introduced into the poem. This arrangement gives it very much the appearance of a journal versified, and effectually precludes any imputation of luxuriance of ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... salt, which seem to indicate that the whole surface was covered by the sea at no distant geological date. The barren tracts are, however, exceptional and a far larger area is richly fertile. Some districts, indeed, such as the Vega of Granada, are famous for the luxuriance of their vegetation. The Guadalquivir (q.v.) rises among the mountains of Jaen and flows in a south-westerly direction to the Gulf of Cadiz, receiving many considerable tributaries on its way. On the north, its valley is bounded by the wild Sierra Morena; on the south, by the mountains of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... he likewise fell. Will it be the captain next, or I, or the only other remaining prisoner? The latter was seized: he looked up to the bright blue sky; to the green woods, waving with rich tropical luxuriance of foliage; to the dark faces of the surrounding multitude; and then at us two, his companions in misfortune; and I shall never forget the look of anguish and terror I saw there depicted. He saw no help, no chance of escape; in another instant he also was ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... a vivid dream. He dreamt that he was in a garden, where nothing but lilac grew—grew with a luxuriance he could not have believed possible, and on fantastic bushes: there were bushes like steeples and bushes smaller than himself, big and little, broad and slender, but all were of lilac, and in flower—an extravagant profusion of white and purple blossoms. He gazed round him in delight, and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Praxiteles—a form so faultlessly moulded that every movement presented some new and unpremeditated grace. What added to the surpassing richness of her beauty was her hair, which, black, glossy, and of eastern luxuriance, and seemingly disdaining the girlishness of curls, reposed in broad Grecian bands, across a brow, the intellectual expression of which they contributed to form. Yet, never did woman exhibit in her person and face, more ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... of Fuzby was a pestilential spirit of gossip. There was no lying scandal, there was no malicious whisper, that did not thrive with rank luxuriance in that mean atmosphere, which, at the same time, starved up every great and high-minded wish. There was no circumstance so minute that calumny could not insert into it a venomous claw. Mr Kenrick was one of the most exemplary, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... possessed of an uncommon share of beauty, set off, on the present occasion, by every aid that a splendid and elaborate toilette could impart; her features were perfect, her form tall and symmetrical, her hair was in the richest style of luxuriance; but by way of drawback to so many advantages, both her hands and feet were large and coarse. I had expected to have found her timid, yet exulting, but she seemed languid and dejected even to indisposition. I attributed the lassitude and heaviness which hung ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... their children, should not cut their hair at certain periods of the year (during the superstitious time of full moon), in order to increase its length and luxuriance as they bloom into womanhood, and manhood. This habit of cutting the hair of children brings evil in place of good, and is also condemned by the distinguished worker in this department, Professor Kaposi, of Vienna, who states that it is well known that the hair of women who ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... figure stood out tall and strong, every line of weariness gone. Hate, loathing, scorn, one might read plainly there, but no trace of fear or despair. She might have been a lioness defending her young. Her splendour of dark auburn hair, escaped and fallen free to her waist, fascinated me with the luxuriance of its disorder. Volney's lazy admiration quickened to a deeper interest. For an instant his breath came faster. His face lighted with the joy of the huntsman after worthy game. But almost immediately he recovered his aplomb. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... to Unyanyembe; attack of fever; Christmas-day at Ujiji; the departure; meet with Mohammed bin Gharib; Sirgunga, beautiful aspect of; sport at Urimba; homeward bound; an elephant herd; Ukawendi, luxuriance of its vegetation; painful march to Imrera; a giraffe shot; severe attack of fever, the Doctor's prescription; the caravan attacked by bees; Mrera, meeting with caravan sent by Sayd bin Habid, exchange of news, encounter a lion; Ugunda, the deserter Hamdallah retaken; ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... town was cleared of all trees and undergrowth, but for most of the space was covered with bright green grass; the whole having the appearance of a well-kept lawn that had been artificially sodded or strewn with seed, which flourished with the luxuriance of every species of ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... scrupulous adherence to a sense of duty. At the age of nine he reads Latin and Greek with tolerable facility, and achieves dramatic compositions which excite the admiration of the father,—a thoroughly competent, unless partial, critic. This luxuriance of fancy is judiciously received; no display is made of it, and Arthur is sent to school at Putney, where he remains for two years. The common routine of English education is more than once broken by tours upon the Continent. When the boy leaves Eton in 1827, his father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... three shots, two being brought to the ground each time we fired. We did not forget the crocodiles, nor did Aboh, who was very wary when picking up the birds. As we made our way through the forest, I was especially struck by the variety and luxuriance of the trees and shrubs, the number of vines which hung from the branches in wreaths and festoons, the length of the leaves, some rising from the ground, others forming crowns on the summits of tall trees, surmounted by flowers of bright red ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... of tropical luxuriance; cattle and sheep were feeding upon the abundant grasses; but they suddenly took to their heels, with uplifted tails and terrified eyes, at the sight of his white face, a spectacle never before seen on this oasis, peopled hitherto exclusively ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... God, believe also in Christ.' For unless we trust we shall certainly be troubled. The state of man in this world is like that of some of those sunny islands in southern seas, around which there often rave the wildest cyclones, and which carry in their bosoms, beneath all their riotous luxuriance of verdant beauty, hidden fires, which ever and anon shake the solid earth and spread destruction. Storms without and earthquakes within—that is the condition of humanity. And where is the 'rest' to come from? All other defences are weak and poor. We have heard about 'pills ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... typical of what this Society should require in regard to all Earth's other features in order to make our Geography complete. As men have pictured the loveliness of England, the fairness of France, the brilliance of Greece, so we want them to picture the spaciousness of Arabia, the luxuriance of Brazil, and the sublimity of the Himalaya. For not till that has been done will our Geography be complete. But when that has been accomplished and the quest for Beauty is being pushed to the remotest lands and Earth's farthest corners, even the British schoolboy will love his Geography, and ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... common in Palestine and the East,'" Miss Harson continued to read, "'and flourishes with the greatest luxuriance in those barren and stony situations, where little else will grow. Its large size and its abundance of five-lobed leaves render it a pleasant shade-tree, and its fruit furnishes a wholesome food very ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... remember those who deceived us, those who made us suffer, and in these hours faces, fragments of faces, rise out of a past, the line of a bent neck, the whiteness of a hand, and the eyes. I remember her eyes; one day in an orchard, in the lush and luxuriance of June, her husband was walking in front with a friend, and I was pleading. "Well," she said, raising her eyes, "you can kiss me now." But her husband was in front, and he was a thick-set man, and there was a stream, and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... course, And seize its spokes with human arm. Vain thought! Already thousands have your kingdom fled In joyful poverty: the honest burgher For his faith exiled, was your noblest subject! See! with a mother's arms, Elizabeth Welcomes the fugitives, and Britain blooms In rich luxuriance, from our country's arts. Bereft of the new Christian's industry, Granada lies forsaken, and all Europe Exulting, sees his foe oppressed with wounds, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... distinguished," concludes this writer, "from the farms of other citizens by the superior size of their barns, the plain but compact form of their houses, the height of their enclosures, the extent of their orchards, the fertility of their fields, the luxuriance of their meadows, and a general appearance of plenty and neatness in everything that belongs to them."[26] Rush's praise of the German mechanics is not less stinted. They were found in that day mainly as "weavers, taylors, tanners, shoe-makers, comb-makers, smiths of all kinds, butchers, paper makers, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... immediately noticed the scarcity of trees, while "the abundance of every kind of animal life crowded into a small space was here very striking, compared with the sparse manner in which it is scattered in the virgin forests. It seems to force us to the conclusion that the luxuriance of tropical vegetation is not favourable to the production of animal life. The plains are always more thickly peopled than the forest; and a temperate zone, as has been pointed out by Mr. Darwin, seems ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... emerald plains, spreading their magnificent branches to the sunlight, and telling of the kindly soil that nourished them. Along the fences wild hops festooned themselves in graceful wreaths of wild luxuriance. A few clumps of cranberry bushes had also been permitted to remain, notwithstanding the American's antipathy to trees or bushes is such, that his axe, which he hardly ever stirs without, is continually flying about him; but this berry, one amongst ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... the growth of the Island, were tied together at the tops, by creepers running out from their branches, forming the most graceful festoons, and often peeping over the tops of the trees, as if to exult in their own luxuriance. ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... the two could not have been more striking. The soft, delicate, well-groomed figure of Blanch, the accomplished woman of the world, with eyes intoxicating as wine and a glowing wealth of golden hair, tempting and alluring as the luxuriance of old Rome at the height of her triumphs before her decadence set in—the last fair breath of her ancient glory—the best and fairest that modern civilization had produced. She had no need of the artificial head-gear and upholstery ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... speculates cleverly and daringly on the scientific advance of the earth, and he revels in the physical luxuriance of Jupiter; but he also lets his imagination travel through spiritual realms, and evidently delights in mystic speculation quite as much as in scientific investigation. If he is a follower of Jules Verne, he has not forgotten also to ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... luxuriance, whose incessant play in tropes, metaphors, and analogies, frequently causes his speeches to gleam on the intellectual eye, as Aeschylus says the ocean does, when the Sun irradiates its bosom with the "anerithmon gelasma" of countless beams. 5. His positive acquirements in all the varied ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... peculiar advantages and beauties. There is no desert so barren, no mountains so bleak, no woods so wild that to those who dwell therein their home is not beautiful. The Esquimau would not exchange his blinding waste of snow and dark fields of water for the luxuriance of tropic vegetation. Why should we exchange the glories of the land we live in for the footworn and sight-worn, the thumbed and fingered beauties of other lands? If we desire novelty and adventure, seek it in the unexplored regions of the great Northwest; if we crave grandeur, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... endless sky of light. Hence the almost tropical vegetation that so amazed us at times in this ice-bound land. For though the Gulf of Bothnia is frozen for many months, and the folk walk backwards and forwards to Sweden, the summer bursts forth in such luxuriance that the flowers verily seem to have been only hiding under the snow, ready to raise their heads. The land is quickly covered by bloom as if kissed by fairy lips. And the corn is ripe and ready for cutting before the first star is seen to twinkle ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... the combined action of wind, birds and sea currents, as means of transport. The process will continue, and he concludes:—"At last after a long interval the vegetation on the desolated island will again acquire that wealth of variety and luxuriance which we see in the fullest development which Nature has reached in the primaeval forest in the tropics." (Op. cit. page 72.) The possibility of such a result revealed itself to the insight of Darwin with little encouragement or support from ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... training which he received in general knowledge entirely failed to implant in him the dispositions of a scholar or thinker. His nature was perhaps a soil unfavourable to such growths, and certainly already preoccupied by a vegetation the luxuriance of which excluded, dwarfed, or crushed everything else. The truth of these remarks is proved by Chopin's letters and his friends' accounts of his tastes and conversation. In connection with this I may quote a passage from a letter which Chopin wrote immediately before starting on his Berlin ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power: let us live as men who are sometime to grow old, and to whom it will be the most dreadful of all evils to count their past years by follies, and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health, only by the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... forces itself in the midst of all this "ironic" waiting on the part of the Persians in Spartan durance for a future apotheosis of splendour and luxuriance,—what is the moral? "Hunger now and thirst, for ye shall be filled"—is that it? Well, anyhow it's parallel to the modern popular Christianity, reward-in-heaven theory, only on a less high level, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... would plant a rose-tree over his remains, and some day, as Lilian and I, in the noontide of our domestic bliss, stood before it admiring its creamy luxuriance, I might (perhaps) find courage to confess that the tree owed some of that luxuriance to the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various



Words linked to "Luxuriance" :   copiousness, luxuriant, abundance



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