FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100  
101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>   >|  
life and death. Everything "is in a concatenation accordingly." The day gets brighter, brighter, brighter, till it's night. The summer gets hotter, hotter, hotter, till it bursts. The fruit gets riper, riper, riper, till it tumbles down and rots. Ask me a question or two about fresco--will you be so good? All the houses are painted in fresco hereabout--the outside walls I mean; the fronts, and backs, and sides--and all the colour has run into damp and green seediness, and the very design has struggled away into the component atoms of the plaster. Sometimes (but not often) I can make out a Virgin with a mildewed glory round her head; holding nothing, in an indiscernible lap, with invisible arms; and occasionally the leg or arms of a cherub, but it is very melancholy and dim. There are two old fresco-painted vases outside my own gate--one on either hand--which are so faint, that I never saw them till last night; and only then because I was looking over the wall after a lizard, who had come upon me while I was smoking a cigar above, and crawled over one of these embellishments to his retreat. There is a church here--the Church of the Annunciation--which they are now (by "they" I mean certain noble families) restoring at a vast expense, as a work of piety. It is a large church, with a great many little chapels in it, and a very high dome. Every inch of this edifice is painted, and every design is set in a great gold frame or border elaborately wrought. You can imagine nothing so splendid. It is worth coming the whole distance to see. But every sort of splendour is in perpetual enactment through the means of these churches. Gorgeous processions in the streets, illuminations of windows on festa nights; lighting up of lamps and clustering of flowers before the shrines of saints; all manner of show and display. The doors of the churches stand wide open; and in this hot weather great red curtains flutter and wave in their palaces; and if you go and sit in one of these to get out of the sun, you see the queerest figures kneeling against pillars, and the strangest people passing in and out, and vast streams of women in veils (they don't wear bonnets), with great fans in their hands, coming and going, that you are never tired of looking on. Except in the churches, you would suppose the city (at this time of year) to be deserted, the people keep so close within doors. Indeed it is next to impossible to go out into the heat. I have
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100  
101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

churches

 

fresco

 

painted

 
brighter
 
hotter
 

people

 
design
 

church

 

coming

 

splendour


perpetual
 

enactment

 

distance

 

Gorgeous

 

processions

 
streets
 

illuminations

 

chapels

 

deserted

 
suppose

edifice

 
Indeed
 

impossible

 

border

 

windows

 

imagine

 

splendid

 
wrought
 

elaborately

 

nights


palaces

 

weather

 

curtains

 

flutter

 

streams

 

pillars

 

strangest

 

kneeling

 

figures

 

queerest


clustering

 

flowers

 

Except

 

passing

 

lighting

 

shrines

 
bonnets
 

display

 

saints

 

manner