Trowel

“ Those who handle the trowel and the hammer act very unwisely in depreciating those who plan the structure, clear away the rubbish, and lay the foundation, or who in other ways help on the building. These illustrations require no enlargement. ”

“ The bricklayers' or plasterers trowel, used for mixing, spreading and smoothing the mortar or plaster, has a flat, triangular, oval or rectangular blade; the gardeners' trowel, for digging plants, laying or mixing mould, &c., has a semi-cylindrical blade. ”

“ TROSSŬLI. [Equites, p. 157, a.]
TRŬA, dim. TRULLA (τορύνη) , derived from τρύω, τόρω, &c., to perforate; a large and flat spoon or ladle, pierced with holes; a trowel. The annexed woodcut represents such a ladle. The trulla vinaria seems to have been a species of colander [Colum] , used as a wine-strainer.
Trua. (From the House of Pansa at Pompeii.) TRŬTĬNA (τρυτάνη) , a general term, including both libra, a balance, and statera, a steelyard. Payments were originally made by weighing, not by counting. Hence a balance (trutina) was preserved in the temple of Saturn at Rome. ”

“ “I see the green earth covered with the works of man or with the ruins of men’s work. The pyramids weigh down the earth, the tower of Babel has bored through the sky, [198] the beautiful temples and the gray castles have fallen into ruins. But of all which hands have built, what is it which has not fallen, nor shall fall? Ah, friends, throw away the trowel and the mortar! Spread your mason’s aprons over your heads and lay you down to build bright palaces of dreams! ”

“ By-and-bye you come to a landing-place, beyond which, at the extremity of a narrow passage, you behold what used to be the armoury of the castle,—an arched hall, chiselled out, like the gallery which leads to it, from the rock. Here are yet the grooves and niches within which warriors, long since dead, used to suspend their spears and battle-axes, their helmets and coats of mail; and here, in the face of the stone, are chiselled out some armorial bearings; probably the devices worn by the lord of the castle on his shield. We find a tiger couchant, for example, not ungracefully executed ”

“ Have not I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? ”

“ The throne occupied by each of them was of marble, beautifully polished, and above their heads was a plate of gold covered with hieroglyphics, and encircling this the serpent painted in the same vivid colours as those we had seen on the walls previously, but with eyes of a green stone, resembling emerald, which flashed back the light and gave them a life-like appearance. ”

“ The throne of nations, fall'n! obscured in dust;
Even yet niajestical: the solemn scene
Elates the soul, while now the rising sun
Flames on the ruins in the purer air
Towering aloft upon the glittering plain.
Like broken rocks, a vast circumference!
Rent palaces, crushed columns, rifled moles.
Fanes roll'd on fanes, and tombs on buried tombs! ”

“ On the fixt day she seeks the temple, dight
With precious jewels and with goodly gear;
Where her lord's tomb, befitting such a knight,
Built by her order, two fair pillars rear.
The holy office there, with solemn rite,
Is sung, which men and women troop to hear ”

“ I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay the effigy of a knight in complete armor. A large buckler was on one arm; the hands were pressed together in supplication upon the breast; the face was almost covered by the morion; the legs were crossed, in token of the warrior’s having been engaged in the holy war. It was the tomb of a crusader, of one of those military enthusiasts who so strangely mingled religion and romance, and whose exploits form the connecting link between fact and fiction, between the history and the fairytale. ”

“ And yet it is a very fair world, peopled with giants and fairies; where castles lift their grim, embattled towers; where magic woods and forests cast their shade, full of strange beasts; where knights ride forth with lance in rest and their armour shining in the sun. ”

“ I watch the solemn gold-stained gloom that creeps To kiss an alabaster tomb, where sleeps A lady 'twixt two knights' stone effigies, And every day in dusky glory steeps Their sculptured slumber of five centuries. ”

“ The fortress is a straight-lined structure on the summit of the immense round tower of Hadrian's tomb; and to make out the idea of it we must throw in drawbridges, esplanades, piles of ancient marble balls for cannon; battlements and embrasures, lying high in the breeze and sunshine, and opening views round the whole horizon; accommodation for the soldiers; and many small beds in a large room. ”

“ There is a stern, round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, Such as an army’s baffled strength decays, Standing with half its battlements alone. And with two thousand years of ivy grown, The garland of eternity, where wave The green leaves over all by Time o’erthrown ”

“ Its ponderous mass, blackened stone, and high dome, made it look, not like a temple, but a tomb. Methought above the portico was engraved the Hic jacet of England. We passed on eastwards, engaged in such solemn talk as the times inspired. No human step was heard, nor human form discerned. Troops of dogs, deserted of their masters, passed us; and now and then a horse, unbridled and unsaddled, trotted towards us, and tried to attract the attention of those which we rode, as if to allure them to seek like liberty. ”

“ The Tower! what memories are called up by the name! How frowning are those black battlements, how strong those rugged walls, how massive those iron-spiked gates! Every stone is historical, and every era of its existence has been marked by the mightiest changes of men, monarchs, and times; then I see the fortress, the palace and the prison of kings! ”

“ The French term for a fortified wall, forming the outer defence of a single building, is chemise. Thus, in a mount-and-bailey castle, the palisade round the tower on the mount was, strictly speaking, a chemise, while that round the bailey was a curtain. ”

“ With the sunlight on its turrets is the castle seen,
Calm and very wonderful, white above the green
Of the wet and waving forest, slanted all away,
Because the driving Northern wind will not rest by night or day.
Yet the towers are sure above, very mighty is the stead,
The gates are made of ivory, the roofs of copper red.
Round and round the warders grave walk upon the walls for ever
And the wakeful dragons couch in the ports of ivory,
Nothing is can trouble it, hate of the gods nor man's endeavour,
And it shall be a resting-place, dear heart, for you and me. ”

“ Each king had his own little kingdom, with his chief town, walled with huge walls of enormous stone. Many of these walls are still standing, though the grass has grown over the ruins of most of them, and in later years, men believed that those walls must have been built by giants, the stones are so enormous. Each king had nobles under him, rich men, and all had their palaces, each with its courtyard, and its long hall, where the fire burned in the midst, and the King and Queen sat beside it on high thrones, between the four chief carved pillars that held up the roof. ”

“ Thus shall we avenge the death of our ancestors. And at the summit of our tower we will place an image of our god with a sword in his hand, and he shall fight for us. Thus shall we obtain a great name, and reign over the universe. ”

“ But the horse never stopped nor looked behind, [Pg 80] till in the dark of the night he reached the castle of the king of the oak windows.
'We are at the end of the journey,' said the horse, 'and you will find the Sword of Light in the king's own chamber. If it comes to you without scrape or sound, the token is a good one. At this hour the king is eating his supper, and the room is empty, so none will see you. The sword has a knob at the end, and take heed that when you grasp it, you draw it softly out of its sheath. ”

“ Some part of the edifice had been a baronial chapel, and here were effigies of warriors stretched upon their beds of stone with folded hands--cross-legged, those who had fought in the Holy Wars-- girded with their swords, and cased in armour as they had lived. ”

“ And every house he saw was full of men, and arms, and horses. And they were polishing shields, and burnishing swords, and washing armor, and shoeing horses. And the knight and the lady and the dwarf rode up to the castle, that was in the town, and every one was glad in the castle. ”

“ Such was the palace of the king. Below it lay many poorer houses, inside the walls and out. We can imagine men and women walking about this city. We raise the warriors from their graves. They carry their golden cups in their hands. Their rings glisten on their fingers, and their bracelets on their arms. Perhaps, instead of the golden armor, they wear breastplates of bronze of the same shape, but these same swords hang at their sides. We look at their golden masks and see their straight noses and their short beards. ”

“ Ay," continued I, as we entered the first immense tomb, "these were kings and princes who lie here; men who won their kingdoms at the sword's point, and kept them,—how different to the present degenerate race, who are indebted for the bread they eat to the generosity of the Feringhees!" ”

“ Amid the clouds, cloud-formed castles turreted with gold, and temples, sustained by pillars which seemed of fire, arose, spread, united, brightened, divided, and sunk again. Imagination could fancy them dissolving in the intensity of their own lustre. ”

“ The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. ”

“ The splendidly dressed troops that line the nave of the cathedral, the variety and richness of vestments which clothe the various church and lay dignitaries, abbots, priests, canons, prelates, cardinals, doctors, dragoons, senators, and grenadiers, which march in procession, complete, as they proceed up the vast space of this wondrous temple, a spectacle nowhere to be equalled within the pale of European civilisation. ”

“ At night the wood and water nymphs revel in its shining waves, in which many fortresses and castles are reflected as witnesses of the past glory of knighthood and the vanished warlike fame of bygone ages. ”

“ At one end of that old, cold, glassy, glittering, ghostly, marble hall there stands a throne, on which a white marble king ought to sit with his white legs gleaming down into the white marble below, and his white eyes looking at a great white marble Atlas, who bears on his icy shoulders a blue globe as big as the full moon. ”

“ Bows of queer-shaped trees are on each side of us; up yonder, in front, is a graveyard on a braeland; farther to the right a tall church spire, and flanking all, and peeping through the greenery of trees, is the ruined castle. ”

“ A friendless king sitting on the hard stone floor of the Tower, after years spent on board of an elastic throne with rockers under it, would move even the hardened historian to tears. (A brief intermission is here offered for unavailing tears.) ”

“ The Templars were now destined to meet with a more formidable opponent than any they had hitherto encountered in the field, one who was again to cause the crescent to triumph over the CROSS, and to plant the standard of the prophet upon the walls of the holy city. ”

“ No warder's horn summons the man-at-arms to the battlements above; no drawbridge falls, with ringing clang, over the castle moat, or pointed portcullis slowly raises its iron fangs to admit us; but for hundreds of years have hundreds of feet pressed that threshold of stone—the feet of those of our own time, and of those who slumbered in the dust hundreds of years ere we trod the earth ”

“ There are castles with their moats and battlements, and monasteries with their cloistered arches; there are knights in armor riding, and lords and ladies gorgeous in strange garments, and monks in their dull gowns, and the sturdy peasant working in the field ”

“ After giving the matter deep thought, the King resolved to go to the Purple Dragon and oblige it to give up the wood-chopper's head.
So all the fighting men in the kingdom were got together, and, having picked ripe swords off the sword-trees, they marched in a great body to the Dragon's castle. ”

“ Your gods may not prevail with the dwarfs; but they may go to these honest giants who will give a day's work for a day's pay, and induce them to build for Godhead a mighty fortress, complete with hall and chapel, tower and bell, for the sake of the homesteads that will grow up in security round that church-castle. ”

“ The throne-room is immense, with marble columns down each side. All the men are ranged on one side, all the women on the other, and the new presentations, with their Ambassadors and Ambassadresses, nearest the throne. ”

“ At last a young straightforward gentleman in chain armour, who has only one idea in his head, and that one connected with a young lady who is a prisoner in the castle, puts his lance in rest, and charges full at dragons, giants, moats, portcullises, and all the necromantic arrangements, and hey, presto! they fade into empty air. ”