Muro

“ Upon fine days this mural surface displayed much magic of varied colour; it shone cool in grey dawns, hot at noon, delicate rose and red gold under such brief gleams of sunset light as the Moor's ragged mane permitted to reach it. Stone-crops wove mellow tints into the rotting thatch above, and the moss cushions of dark and shining green were sometimes brushed and subdued by a haze or orange veil thrown over them by the colour of their ripe seed-vessels. ”

“ The floors are marble, the wainscoting of painted tiles, the walls of embroidery, still gleaming with the softened lustre of their original tints, and the lofty conical domes seem to be huge sparry crystalizations, hung with dropping stalactites, rather than any work of the human hand. Each of these domes is composed of five thousand separate pieces, and the pendent prismatic blocks, colored and gilded, gradually resolve themselves, as you gaze, into the most intricate and elegant designs. But you must study long ere you have won all the secret of their beauty. ”

“ Plaster, terra-cotta, paint, tiles, wood, iron, and brick, even when united with all the skill of the most exquisite art, cannot long resist the rapid wear and tear of such a humid climate as ours. Those unsubstantial structures, with all their dazzling incrustations, are passed or passing from the earth: nothing is lasting but hard massive stone, impenetrable cement, and scientific combinations. ”

“ Red-roofed buildings of stone and adobe entirely cover the hillside, with here and there a dome, a tower, a church steeple shooting upward, or a tell palm poking its head above a garden wall—the glittering green contrasting well with the ruddy tiles and the pink, gray, blue and yellow of the painted walls. ”

“ We stop at a wooden building with gilded pillars in a clear space of dry foot-trodden mud, surrounded with tall palms and some teak trees with grey-green leaves big as plates. The short lower wooden pillars support a gallery, and this again has other gilded pillars supporting one roof above another in most fantastic complication; green glass balustrades and seven-roofed spires wrought with marvellous intricacies of gilded teak-wood carving. Indian red underlies the gilding, and the weather has left some parts gold and some half gold and red, and other bits weather-worn silvery teak. ”

“ The roof is a perfect forest of marble pinnacles, nearly all crammed with most valuable marble statues. The celebrated marble flower-bed contains several thousand flowers, each distinct and each different in design. ”

“ Where the walls of the rooms are bare, the brick-work has a most singular appearance of freshness; the stucco also is very perfect in many parts; but the marble, of which there are evident traces on the walls of the floors, is gone. ”

“ In many gardens an abrupt change of level makes a retaining wall necessary, and when I see this built in the usual way as a solid structure of brick and mortar—unless there be any special need of the solid wall—I always regret that it is not built as a home for rock-plants. An exposure to north or east and the cool backing of a mass of earth is just what most Alpines delight in. A dry wall, which means a wall without mortar, may be anything between a wall and a very steep rock-work, and may be built of brick or of any kind of local stone. ”

“ This edifice, detached from the walls, about twenty feet, is sunk so low, that the rampart of earth behind the wall is level with the highest part of the building, so that here the sun can never penetrate, neither does any pure air ever visit this habitation, on which descend drizzling damps and eternal fogs, to such excess, that not an article of furniture can be placed beneath the roof, but in four days it becomes covered with green mould. ”

“ Broken bricks, tiles, and sculpture are so knit together by snakelike tree-roots, while shaded by their lofty branches, as to form one solid mass for hundreds of rods together, dotted here and there by simple wild flowers which modestly rear their delicate petals and perfume the air. One represents the tomb of decayed magnificence and oriental luxury, the other is the sweet and simple emblem of Nature undefiled. ”

“ The mossy walls, often scraped, the mossified pavement, the greenish tombs of marble under the maples and firs, showed the effect of shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in this climate, where wood was already rising into favor as building material, but to the detraction of picturesqueness and all the appearance of antiquity. ”

“ The roof, too, is wonderful: the most minute flowers, the most delicate tracery, are all carved exquisitely in white marble; a thousand different objects are also represented, but it would be impossible to enumerate all. ”

“ Groups of great teak pillars are so arranged that a cool and shady walk surrounds the building. The outside, with the exception of the roof, is whitewashed, and when the midday sun beats down upon the wat the place glitters and shines—one big splash of white crowned with fantastic colours. ”

“ The natural rock roof is weird and fantastic, covered with stalactic pendants, colored in all the shades of brown and green by the highly alkaline water that whispers perpetual requiem into myriad leaden gutters which carry it to the sides, and so preserve the decorations from destruction. ”

“ Muræna, mū-rē′na, n. the typical genus of Murænidæ, a family of eels, now limited to the European murry or moray (q.v.) . [Gr. muraina, a lamprey.]
Mural, mū′ral, adj. pertaining to, or like, a wall: steep: trained against a wall, as plants.—Mural circle, a large circle marked with degrees, &c., fixed to a wall, for measuring arcs of the meridian; Mural crown, a crown of gold to imitate a battlement, given among the ancient Romans to him who first mounted the wall of a besieged city; Mural painting, a painting executed, especially in distemper colours, upon the wall of a building. ”

“ In the openings of the wood there are fountains plashing into marble basins, the depths of which are shaggy with water-weeds; or they tumble like natural cascades from rock to rock, sending their murmur afar, to make the quiet and silence more appreciable. Scattered here and there with careless artifice, stand old altars bearing Roman inscriptions. Statues, gray with the long corrosion of even that soft atmosphere, half hide and half reveal themselves, high on pedestals, or perhaps fallen and broken on the turf. ”

“ The beautifully painted walls, columns, and inlaid marble or mosaic floor, combine with the deep blue sky, forming so glorious a whole that the rooflessness is forgotten, and the eye reposes with delight on the assembled harmonies. ”

“ Great slabs of marble, squared fragments of wall and triangular pieces of roofing, are scattered about, half-buried in the earth. I have often, continued the young man, ‘passed hours at a time in examining the combats and the games, the dances and the processions, the beautiful and ludicrous figures which are sculptured there. ”

“ The inclined marble slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery; the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved. Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs. ”

“ Can the stories we have all been taught be true? Leaving beauty altogether out of the question, here you are in the midst of the wreck of one of the largest buildings you ever were in. You see that it was built of blocks of white marble; that the columns are formed of these blocks, each some four feet high, and so beautifully fitted together that at the distance of two thousand years you very often cannot find the joints, except where the marble is chipped. ”

“ The outside walls shall be faced with slabs or blocks of marble or granite, not less than two feel thick, and fastened together with clamps securely sunk therein,–they shall be carried up flush from the recess of one foot formed at the first floor where the foundation outside wall is reduced to two feet: The floors and landings as well as the roof shall be covered with marble slabs, securely laid in mortar; the slabs on the roof to be twice as thick as those on the floors. ”

“ At one place the sidewalk is of concrete, at another it is of wood, and a little further on it is of mud. Many of the houses are built of sheets of corrugated iron, their walls wrinkled up like a washboard, and all have roofs of this material. ”

“ A circular mud wall about four feet high, upon which is placed a conical roof, composed of the bamboo cane, and thatched with grass, forms alike the palace of the king, and the hovel of the slave. Their household furniture is equally simple. ”

“ The black oak rafters of the roof, polished as it were by age, meet overhead unconcealed by ceiling. Upon the wall in one place a figure seems at the first glance to be in the act to glide forth like a spectre from the solid stone. ”

“ And as the moonlight glints hither and thither, almost you will believe that the walls and the streets and the pavements of the place are spread with sheets—sheets shot with coal-black shadows which make the wooden roofs look all the brighter under the slanting beams of the pale luminary. ”

“ In plainer dwellings they were covered with a mixture of fragments of stone and mortar, or with pavement of brick, stone, or common tiles. But in great mansions the floor was one of the special points for display. It was either formed of white, black, or colored marbles, arranged in a check pattern, or it was a specimen of elaborate inlaid work. The tesselated pavements, of which so many remains exist, display two varieties. The first, or plainer kind, is formed of tiles moulded into various forms of animals, flowers, or such devices, each tile being a perfect figure in itself. ”

“ The walls of houses, palaces, or towers, are coloured blue, yellow, green, or orange, and frequently adorned with fresco-painting. The glare of the sunlight on white walls is feared, as injurious to the sight, and hence they are all tinted. No smoke is visible, nor yet a single chimney. Flat roofs are universal, with their parapets of stone or iron, and their urns with bronze flames. ”

“ Who among modern architects would dare to plant two single pillars before a pyramidal gateway of solid masonry, and then inclose them in a plain wall, rising to half their hight? Yet here the symmetry of the shafts is not injured by the wall in which they stand, nor oppressed by the ponderous bulk of the pylon. On the contrary, the light columns and spreading capitals, like a tuft of wild roses hanging from the crevice of a rock, brighten the rude strength of the masses of stone with a gleam of singular loveliness. ”

“ A piece of white marble often forms the centre to some device; where the flooring in a garden happens to be uniform in colour, a pattern is formed by a sprinkling of sand, which seems to lie as a part of the flooring unmoved under a fresh blowing wind.... ”

“ The floors are marble or stucco--the roofs beams of pale blue wood placed transversely, and the whole has an air of agreeable coolness. Every thing is handsome without being gaudy, and admirably adapted for the climate. ”

“ The space between the wall and the house was thickly overgrown with nettles to nearly the height of a man, but there was no sign of any useful plant, and even the roof of the building, which was of red tiles and intact, had none of that kindly covering of house-leek, stone-crop, and moss, which always decks such spaces with beauty in the country. ”

“ Hedges and wall-like dividing lines of green living things will now and then be useful, and even may be artistically used; they are sometimes, however, used where a wall would be better, walls having the great advantage of not robbing the ground near. A wall is easily made into a beautiful garden with so many lovely things, too, from great scrambling yellow Roses to alpine flowers. To any one with the slightest sympathy with Nature or art these things need not be said. ”

“ The foundation walls are nearly two feet in thickness, resting upon planks or stakes, which constitute also their floors. In the houses of one story only, the walls, which in all cases are plastered with extreme neatness both externally and within, after rising about two feet perpendicularly, approach each other, so as at length to constitute, in closing, a species of dome. In the application of the mortar to their habitations, the tails as well as feet of the beavers are of essential service. ”

“ When peasants live beneath these roofs of nature's providing, they simply wall up the face and ends to form houses of the cheapest description of construction, with the earth as the floor, and one wall and the roof of living rock, into which they burrow to form cupboards, bedplaces, and cellars. ”

“ We have several times alluded to the extreme richness and variety of hill foregrounds, as an internal energy to which there must be no contrast. Rawness of colour is to be especially avoided, but so, also, is poverty of effect. It will, therefore, add much to the beauty of the building, if, in any conspicuous and harsh angle or shadowy moulding, we introduce a wreath of carved leaf-work, in stone, of course. ”

“ The first remarkable point of the building is the roof. It generally consists of tiles of very deep curvature, which rib it into distinct vertical lines, giving it a far more agreeable surface than that of our flatter tiling. The form of the roof, however, is always excessively flat, so as never to let it intrude upon the eye; and the consequence is, that, while an English village, seen at a distance, appears all red roof, the Italian is all white wall ”