Archway

“ There in that archway the dying sunlight would linger,
And tarry longest as if held by some mystical power.
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III.
And oft in the noonday of youth, when the sunlight there lay,
Have I turned my footsteps to pass by that archway, which seemed
To swing wide its portals and welcome the ebb-tide of day,
While the oak trees stood pensive, as though they inwardly dreamed. ”

“ The magnificent proportions and perfect symmetry of the archway which forms the entrance to the cave will be seen to better advantage somewhat later, when the steamer, on leaving the island, sweeps directly past the vestibule purposely to afford their passengers this opportunity; but one is never more impressed with the hugeness and stability of this gigantic structure than when measuring it by gradual approach, and looking up into its lofty Gothic vault as we glide under the enormous archway and out of the dazzling sunshine into the twilight of the deep interior. ”

“ We drove on and on, and at last we came to a heavy archway, like what you see at the entrance to a fortified town. We drove under it for the length of three or four yards in total darkness, and then we found ourselves, as well as we could see by the light of some dim lamps, in a large square court surrounded by buildings: hero we thought we wore to alight. ”

“ There may also be seen and felt boulders and rugged rocks lying about in strange disorder.
Leaving the Grand Archway by the eastern end, the excursionist descends, through a rocky defile interlaced with foliage, into a dry, stony creek, about which are growing some very rare ferns, as well as some which are common, but nevertheless beautiful, and also some handsome native creeping plants. From this point may be seen the pinnacle which rises over the archway to an altitude of about 500 feet. ”

“ I thought the Triumphal Monument to Marius even more beautiful than the Archway, and felt as angry as Marius must, that the guide-books should take it away from the hero and wrongfully call it a mausoleum for somebody else. But Mr. Dane assured me with the obstinate air people have when learned authorities back their opinions, that the Arch was really the more interesting of the two—the first Triumphal Archway set up outside Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that ”

“ The world is not worth remembering all the tune, you know. As you pass to the middle of the garden again you notice a long archway, built under a high wall. Before you enter it please first notice that fine terra-cotta statue of the Virgin and Child near it, and take off your hat in passing, as all do here. This archway passes under a road, which is screened from view by high walls on either side, which also prevent the grounds you are in from being seen from the road. ”

“ One source of danger to its rider is to be found in the low archways which span so many of the streets. They are just high enough to permit a laden Camel to pass under them, but are so low that they leave no room for a rider. The natives, who are accustomed to this style of architecture, are always ready for an archway, and, when the rider sees an archway which will not allow him to retain his seat, he slips to the ground, and remounts on the other side of the obstacle. ”

“ If an unlovely, it was in its way an impressive, structure, even though the impression was, rather of the nightmare sort. It was scarcely necessary, for Hornsey Lane has been at no time a place of great resort, and the traffic along it could have been diverted at small cost, and with little inconvenience made to cross the Archway Road by a circuitous route. Highgate Archway has now disappeared, giving place to a lighter structure, spanning the road without the support of the cumbrous old piers which, until the summer of 1900, continued to block three-fourths of p. ”

“ The shafts and piers present an astonishing variety of decoration; every inch of its surface has been worked by the sculptor's tool. Above the rounded archway rises a triangular space filled with many carvings, while the archway itself consists of several decorated semicircles, one within the other. Norman and Romanesque porches may be found of grander proportions ”

“ Suddenly the car slackened and stopped. No sign of a station. Only a rustic archway, on which was written "The Great Divide," and beneath the archway two small brooklets issuing, one flowing to the right, the other to the left.
They all left the car and stood round the tiny streams. They were on the watershed. ”

“ Those whose imaginations are aided by statistics may form a more real conception of this great natural structure by reflecting that the archway at the entrance is forty-two feet in width, and its height nearly seventy above the level of the sea, and that these vast proportions are preserved to the farther extremity of the cave, as distance of some two hundred and thirty feet. ”

“ The outside facing is generally cut so as to resemble an archway in the rock, and this is divided into squares to imitate an arch built of quarried stones. The door is always under this archway and sometimes the window of the principal room. Most of these dwellers in the rock are weavers. ”

“ She uttered these words so hopelessly, with such a wail of agony, that they seemed to echo along the archway, and to float off upon the night breeze, rising and falling, an utterance never to fade away, but to go on for ever and ever while this world lasts; to smite upon the sleeping ears of the cruel, the dissolute, and the profligate; to awaken here, perhaps, one sorrowful thought for wrong done, one thought of repentance; there, a desire to pause, ere it be too late, on the brink of some iniquity that should break a trusting woman’s heart. ”

“ Apex of Archway.
as it now stands, is 68 feet long by 25 feet wide on the outside at the east end, and 26 feet 9 inches at the west end. The total length, including the tower, is 82 feet, the height of which to the ridge is 75 feet.
The church has been greatly altered at various times; an aisle has been added on the north side, and the ancient north doorway (Fig. 178) has been disfigured and almost concealed by an outside staircase being built across it. ”

“ He may wear what he likes in the future, for I shall never drive with him again. His conduct was shocking. When we passed Highgate Archway, he tried to pass everything and everybody. He shouted to respectable people who were walking quietly in the road to get out of the way; he flicked at the horse of an old man who was riding, causing it to rear; ”

“ The present Archway was opened in 1900.
XI
East End, Finchley, to which we now come, is one of the many straggling settlements built upon Finchley Common. Stretches of fields alternate with rows of new shops and tiny old-world cottages. Here stands the “Bald-Faced Stag,” with the effigy of a stag surmounting the appropriately bald elevation of that huge and ugly public-house. The yards of monumental masons jostle it on either hand; a grim and unpleasing conjunction, and a prelude to those vast townships of p. 66London’s dead, the St. Marylebone, Islington, and St. ”

“ Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses; most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. ”

“ Coming to the bottom of the pass I crossed over by an ancient bridge, and, passing through a small town, found myself in a beautiful valley with majestic hills on either side. This was the Dyffryn Conway, the celebrated Vale of Conway, to which in the summer time fashionable gentry from all parts of Britain resort for shade and relaxation. When about midway down the valley I turned to the west, up one of the grandest passes in the world, having two immense door-posts of rock at the entrance, the northern one probably rising to the altitude of nine hundred feet. ”

“ A little beyond the Free Church manse the road ascends between stone walls, abounding in fragments of ichthyolites, weathered blue by exposure to the sun and wind; and the top of the eminence forms the water-shed in this part of the Mainland, and introduces the traveller to a scene entirely new. The prospect is of considerable extent; and, what seems strange in Orkney, nowhere presents the traveller,—though it contains its large inland lake,—with a glimpse of the sea. ”

“ Such things of course the shores of Orkney exhibit in no common measure, but to show how far they are from exhausting the coastal features of Orcadian life and scenery, it is only necessary to say that of twenty-one civil parishes in the county all but one (Harray) possess miles of sea-board, and that of the centres of population, only some two or three hamlets are inland. No spot in the Mainland is above five miles from the coast, no point in any other island more than three miles. ”

“ The west bay has no windows, but there is, as I have said, a trace of a doorway in the south wall. The other bays have each three divisions of wall arcading on marble shafts, and the east wall has four divisions of the same arcade. The spandrels of these arcades are filled in with sculptured foliage, so beautiful and delicate in its execution,264 and so nervous and vigorous in its design, that I believe it may safely be pronounced to be among the very best sculpture of the age that we have in this country. ”

“ The town of Conway has four entrances: The upper Gate, the lower, or that next to the River, a Portal between that and the Castle, and another to the Creek called Porth y felin, or the Gate to the mill. Mr. Pennant’s observation with respect to this place is this, “a more ragged Town is scarcely to be seen within, or a more beautiful one without;” the form is nearly triangular, surrounded with lofty Walls, and guarded by 24 round Towers; the lower face of the triangle borders on the River. The Castle is built on a lofty rock, at the S. E. p. ”

“ Sir Percy Blakeney's house on the river has become a historic one: palatial in its dimensions, it stands in the midst of exquisitely laid-out gardens, with a picturesque terrace and frontage to the river. Built in Tudor days, the old red brick of the walls looks eminently picturesque in the midst of a bower of green, the beautiful lawn, with its old sun-dial, adding the true note of harmony to its foregrounds, and now, on this warm early autumn night, the leaves slightly turned to russets and gold, the old garden looked singularly poetic and peaceful in the moonlight. ”

“ In the towns and villages of Orkney and Shetland, where the main street usually runs parallel to the shore, many of the houses stand with one gable towards the street and the other closely overlooking the sea, a feature which gives a distinctly foreign aspect to Lerwick and Stromness in particular. It is sober fact that in many houses in Stromness, granted a taste for fish, and a high tide at the appropriate hour, one can catch one’s breakfast from the gable windows before getting out of bed. ”

“ It was on the ruins of Aberconwy that Edward’s glorious castle rose later on to overawe the Welsh. This Castle of Conway is the most beautiful of all Henry de Elfreton’s works, I think; more beautiful in itself even than Harlech; and we can well believe, as we drive across the bridge and under the great machicolated town gate, that in early days it could only be taken by the help of guile or famine. ”

“ Very delightful indeed is a voyage in the little steamer which plies between Deganwy, Conway, and Trefriw; but it is at Conway Marsh that the river is at its noblest. When the tide is out, this is a broad, sweeping, sandy bay, with oozy spaces of bright green towards its centre; and when the [Pg 219] tide is full, it has the appearance of a large and beautiful islanded lake. The river is walled in on the Conway side, and a thick wood shadows the stream as it bends round towards the sea. ”

“ Orkney occupies the somewhat anomalous position of being a wholly insular shire whose economic interests [3] are overwhelmingly agricultural. Most of the islands are flat or low; and in several, such as Shapinsay, Stronsay, Sanday, and South Ronaldshay, the proportion of cultivated land exceeds 70 per cent. of their total areas. In the Mainland, however, there are large stretches of hill and moorland, while in Hoy and Walls the natural conditions of by far the greater portion of the island closely approximate to those of the Scottish Highlands. ”

“ We passed by the spring of old Wintringham and the Marsh at the mouth of the Ankham, which is a vast tract of land left by the sea; and came to Feriby sluice, a stately bridge of three arches, with sluices for voidance of the water into the sea, but now broken down and lying in dismal ruins by the negligence of the undertakers: whence travellers are obliged to pass the river in a paltry short boat, commanded by a little old deaf fellow with a long beard: into this boat you descend, by the steep of the river, through a deep mirey clay, full of stones and stakes ”

“ Along The Front the north bank of the river skirting the Arcadian Archipelago is high and terraced up from the water’s edge to the roadway, which follows the indentations of the shore line westward to the county seat of Glengarry. Over this road the country folk from the interior townships make their weekly pilgrimages to market the products of their farms. Facing this road also, and looking out upon the broad river, dotted with wooded islands, are the farm-houses, the small church, and the dilapidated remains of what was once a prosperous boat landing called The Front. ”

“ Sir Archy, who felt in the scene a direct acknowledgment of his appeal to Heaven, drew closer to the window, and listened. Gradually, and like one awaking from a heavy slumber, the sick man stretched his limbs, and drew a long sigh, whose groaning accent spoke of great debility and then, starting up in his bed, shouted— “It is, it is the King's warrant—who dares to oppose it. Ride in faster, men—faster; keep together here, the west side of the mountain. There—there, yonder, near the beach. ”