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Dilapidation

noun
1.
A state of deterioration due to old age or long use.  Synonym: decrepitude.
2.
The process of becoming dilapidated.  Synonym: ruin.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dilapidation" Quotes from Famous Books



... dilapidation, which you will observe includes the total loss of the date, signature and stamp, I am forced to the reluctant conclusion that your bankers will show a marked disinclination to honour what ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... was in the year 1797, in a small workshop and smithy situated in Wells Street, Oxford Street. It was in an awful state of dirt and dilapidation when he became its tenant. He entered the place on a Friday, but by the Saturday evening, with the help of his excellent wife, he had the shop thoroughly cleaned, whitewashed, and put in readiness for beginning ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... engraved above, and it will be seen that it has suffered some little dilapidation since the last published engraving of it. The legs have been cut down to suit the height of one of his successors in the ministry!! With regard to the pulpit, an old resident in Bedford says—The celebrated John Howard presented a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... it. In all probability, the change produced in the art of warfare, by the introduction of cannon, caused it silently to pass into insignificance, and then gradually to sink into its present wretched state of dilapidation. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, an hospital was established within its walls; and the same still subsists, but in great poverty, in consequence of the funds having been alienated, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... visions that had come to her the first day she and her father had come to the farm, and through all its dilapidation and neglect, she had seen that it could be made into a home of comfort and prosperity, and now the dream had come true. The Watson family were thriving; their farm had not failed them; comforts, and even a few luxuries were theirs, and Pearl's ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... more ancient buildings had fallen into decay and ceased to be habitable. The rapid succession of palaces, the fact that, at any rate from Sargon downwards, each monarch raises a residence, or residences, for himself, is yet more indicative of the rapid deterioration and dilapidation (so to speak) of the great edifices. Probably a palace began to show unmistakable symptoms of decay and to become an unpleasant residence at the end of some twenty-five or thirty years from the date of its completion; effective repairs were, by the very nature of the case, almost ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... loose stone walls which had here and there intersected the broad park, were, in many places, broken down, so as no longer to answer their original purpose as fences; piers were now and then to be seen, but the gates were gone; and to add to the general air of dilapidation, some huge trunks were lying scattered through the venerable old trees, either the work of the winter storms, or perhaps the victims of some extensive but desultory scheme of denudation, which the projector had not capital or perseverance to carry ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... in a court where the living green combined with age to glorify the buildings. We did not see the dilapidation, we did not smell the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A woman was lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She looked more hostilely. As the Artist ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... slowly in dozens and half dozens straggling along, no great enthusiasm apparent at all. The great majority wore corduroys of a great many varieties of color and states of preservation or dilapidation. The irrepressible small boys were clustering over the slight fence that surrounded the platform, crawling under it, roosting on top of it, squatting round my chair and smiling up at me as if they expected a universal pat on ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... mounted as a small fire-screen, perhaps for Ann Eliza's lady mama or proud grandmother. It was such human and intimate things, the mute mementoes of children who had passed, that made us begin to love Hynds House, for all its bigness and uncanniness and dilapidation. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... house. A single candle burned in the great paved kitchen, which was destitute of the customary furniture; and as the party proceeded to ascend from thence by a flight of winding stairs, a prodigious noise of rats testified still more plainly to the dilapidation of ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult. John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry, and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... it. It was a burnt red pile standing four-square on a little eminence, about the base of which the river went winding turbulently; it was turreted at each of its four angles, imposing in its way, but in a sad state of dilapidation and disrepair. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... stereotyped reflections on the vanity of human greatness, I will say that a more complete effacement is nowhere else to be seen. The whole ground, over a space five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins, which at first view, make no impression, so complete is their dilapidation." ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood, the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural, notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in Southern dwellings that the inhabitants seem to be unconscious of it. Adjacent, beyond the short avenue of orange trees by which we had approached, was a double row of negro huts, with little gardens between them, forming a rustic lane; farther on, corn and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... wooded as those of the southern anchorage; but the space was longer and narrower, and more like, what in truth it was, the estuary of a river. Right before us, at the southern end we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation. It had been a great vessel of three masts, but had lain so long exposed to the injuries of the weather, that it was hung about with great webs of dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root, and now flourished ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Dilapidation begets disrespect, and the abused and often repellent waters of the upper estuary are undoubtedly subjected to much additional miscellaneous pollution by people who believe perhaps that a little more cannot ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... recovered from the treatment they had endured in the time of the Commonwealth. Though the Parliamentary committee appointed to decide the question had happily decided against the demolition of cathedrals, they were allowed to fall into a miserable state of dilapidation and decay.] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... by no means an inviting place. It was an old stone edifice, two stories high, which had once been covered with, stucco; but the stucco had fallen off in most places, disclosing the rough stones underneath, and giving it an air of dilapidation and squalor. The front was by the road-side. A door opened in the middle, on each side of which was a small, dismal window. In the second story were two other small, dismal windows. At the end they law a window on each story, and a third in the attic. These were all small and dismal. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... dreary enough. There was no fire, and the loss of the patch of tapestry from the wall gave the whole an air of dilapidation. The wind howled fearfully in the chimney and about the door on the roof, and the rain came down on the leads like the distant trampling of many horses. But I was not in an imaginative mood. Charley was again my trouble. I could not bear him to be so miserable. Why was I not ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... thus bundled about, forever hung and unhung on hooks well or ill-spaced, handled roughly by unknowing varlets or dull soldiers, these tapestries suffered much, even to the point of dilapidation, and thus arose the need for a tape border, and thus it happens also that the relics of that time are found mainly among the religious pieces. These last found safe asylum within convent walls or in the sombre quiet of cathedral ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... and adobe brick, in a quadrangular form around an inner courtyard. The common Chinese paper which serves for window-glass had long since vanished from the ravages of time, and the finger-punches of vandals. Even here, at the yamen of the prime minister of China, dirt and dilapidation were evident on every hand. The anteroom into which we were ushered was in keeping with its exterior. The paper that covered the low walls and squatty ceiling, as well as the calico covering on the divans, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... projected institution to the daughter and to the father could not have failed to own that Mr. Slope was a man of genius. He said nothing to Mrs. Bold about the hospital sermons and services, nothing about the exclusion of the old men from the cathedral, nothing about dilapidation and painting, nothing about carting away the rubbish. Eleanor had said to herself that certainly she did not like Mr. Slope personally, but that he was a very active, zealous clergyman and would no doubt be useful ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the Vision of Alberico, preserved in the king's library at Paris, 422: of Galileo's annotations on Tasso, 444; destruction of Hugh Broughton's, by Speed, 445; destruction of Leland's, by Polydore Vergil, ib.; dilapidation of the Harleian, 446; suppression of one relating to Sixtus IV. by Fabroni, ib.; of the Marquis of Halifax suppressed, 447; Earl of Pulteney's and Earl of Anglesea's MS. Memoirs suppressed, ib.; anecdotes of the suppression of various, 448-452; mutilators ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... his finger, and the instant he touched her all dilapidation and wryness and age went from her, and she became so beautiful that one dared scarcely look on her, and so young that she seemed ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... of the profane, in the presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue. The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that so much should have survived. What remains at Nimes, after all dilapidation is estimated, is astounding. I spent an hour in the Arenes on that same sweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw that the corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... it. It was with some difficulty that I found my way to it. It stood, as I have already observed, in a meadow, and was on almost every side surrounded by majestic hills. To give any clear description of this ruined pile would be impossible, the dilapidation is so great, dilapidation evidently less the effect of time than of awful violence, perhaps that of gunpowder. The southern is by far the most perfect portion of the building; there you see not only walls but roofs. Fronting you full south, is a mass of masonry with two immense arches, other ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great empire must fall by mean reparation upon ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... traveled a little way and then tearing his clothes and marking his skin, returned, complaining that he had been set upon by the wayside, beaten, and finally robbed. His clothes were in a fine state of dilapidation after his efforts, and even his body bore marks which amply seconded his protestation. In the slush and rain of the dark village street he was finally picked up by the county treasurer seemingly in a wretched state, and the latter, knowing the generosity of White and the fact that his door was always ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... colour, stood at the doors; ragged children ran and shrieked after the coach, the church had a hole in the roof, and stood tottering in spite of rude repairs; the churchyard was trodden down by cattle, and the whole place only resembled the pictures of Irish dilapidation. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gates, each with a tower a hundred feet high on it. Your first impression must have been that Pekin is the greatest city in the world. You came in by a street two hundred feet wide, with shops on each side; but when you have seen more of it, you will find dilapidation and decay, and about the same filth you have observed in other Chinese cities. But it is one of the most ancient cities in the world, for this or another city stood here twelve hundred years before Christ. Kublai, a grandson of ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated, and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out, sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the prevalence ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... economical and military strength of the respective countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned, not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land, besides the support of its owner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... place, that if he visited the great Abbey now, he would not have noticed that look of dilapidation at which he hints—and perhaps had a right to hint—some forty years ago. Dilapidation, dirt, and negligence are as hateful to us now, as to the builder of the newest house outside. We too, for more than a generation past, have felt, in common with the rest of England ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still a suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its sordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool Dock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... polishing and beautifying the outer case of the machine, and the outer surface generally of the city of Grindwell. Where any portion of the framework has fallen into dilapidation and decay, the gaunt skeleton bones of the ruined structure are decked and covered with leaves and flowers. Old rusty boilers that are on the verge of bursting are newly painted, varnished, and labelled with letters of gold. The main-spring, which has grown old and weak, is said to be helped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... and wolves were on the floor, and there was a general air of the room being lived in—though magnificence and dilapidation mingled everywhere. The very rich brocade on one of the sofas had the traces of great rents. And while one table held cigarette cases and cigar boxes in the most exquisitely fine enamel set with jewels, on another would be things of the roughest wood. And a cabinet at the side ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... a gentleman in Monmouthshire, which exhibits the pride of ancestry in a curious point of view. His house was in such a state of dilapidation that the proprietor was in danger of perishing under the ruins of the ancient mansion, which he venerated even in decay. A stranger, whom he accidentally met at the foot of the Skyrrid, made various enquiries respecting the country, the prospects, and the neighbouring houses, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... would not now be regarded as by any means a novel one, I had thought out for myself, and which possessed for me, in consequence, the charm of originality. In these poor creatures, I thus argued, we find, amid much general dilapidation and brokenness of mind, certain instincts and peculiarities remaining entire. Here, in Angus, for instance, there is that instinctive cunning which some of the lower animals, such as the fox, possess, existing in a wonderful degree of perfection. Pope himself, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... Crusaders. The arum-fringed lane widens before the outer wall of the church, overtopped by its triangular gable. Behind this wall is a yard or atrium, the pavement grass-grown, the walls stained with great patches of mildew, and showing here and there in their dilapidation the shaft and capital of a bricked-up Ionic pillar. The place tells of centuries of neglect, of the gradual invasion of resistless fever; and it was fitly chosen, some fifty years ago, for the abode of a community of Trappists. In the reign of Innocent VIII. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... little flags stuck on long poles, which fluttered about in the breeze. According to the account of our interpreter, which had to pass from Thibetian into Hindostanee before it could clothe itself in English, the cause of this dilapidation was the state of wealth and ambition at which the Lamas had arrived, and the consequent interposition of Gulab Singh to take down their pride and ease them of a little of their wealth, both of which he accomplished in the style to which he was so partial, by slaughtering some hundreds of them ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... make them appear as disreputable as possible. I slyly enlarged the holes, wrenched off the buttons, and decorated my person lavishly with spots and stains of all kinds. Day by day I watched, with a secret joy, the rapid progress of this work of dilapidation. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot aforementioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of Simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... its few fishing-boats and litter of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you enter the long shadowy street, where red and green vegetables and fruits, purple grapes, and honey-coloured nespoli and yellow oranges are piled in the cool doorways, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... heavily thatched and suggested long disuse. Its air was less of dilapidation than desertion, and lichen and fungus played a large part in such an aspect. The walls were low, and the heavy roof was flat and sloping. As the man drew near a flight of birds streamed from its eaves, screaming their resentment at ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... rough, long and weary one. The drawing-room car was badly lighted and not heated. One feels the dilapidation of France in this wretched railway accommodation. At Vierzon we bought a pheasant, a chicken, and two bottles of wine for supper. Then we wrapped ourselves up in our rugs and cloaks ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... any difficulty in getting a shop in which to carry on your business in this district cannot say that I had. I was offered this place by the Busta trustees. It was in a state of dilapidation when I took it, and they offered it to me on condition that I would make the necessary repairs on it ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible, from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent those strongholds, Cashel, Mallow, and Tralee, from surrendering ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Councillors of State on mission in the year IX.) Report by Lacuee on the first military division. Three central schools at Paris, one called the Quatre-Nations. "This school must be visited in order to form any idea of the state of destruction and dilapidation which all the national buildings are in. No repairs have been made since the reopening of the schools; everything is going to ruin.... Walls are down and the floors fallen in. To preserve the pupils from the risks which the occupation of these ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... search. This had been patiently waited for a good while by those posted without, when suddenly, as rats are seen to issue from a rick when the ferret is in it, Johnny Darbyshire was seen ascending hurriedly a broken staircase, that was partly exposed to the open day by the progress of dilapidation, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... found such a volume it was left about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the kitchen, and even in what the clerks called the "chamber of deliberations"; and thus it obtained a mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were made. The following extracts will show to the most ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... thriving village of Pushton. But the indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse. As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... had been built in the Spanish style,—a massive, dark, grim, huge, four-sided block, the fissure-like windows of its cells looking down into the four public streets which ran immediately under its walls. Dilapidation had followed hard behind ill-building contractors. Down its frowning masonry ran grimy streaks of leakage over peeling stucco and mould-covered brick. Weeds bloomed high aloft in the broken gutters under the scant and ragged eaves. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... the Oratoire, a seminary for education, which is now suppressed. The building is immense, and admirably calculated for the purpose, but is already in a state of dilapidation; so that, I fear, by the time the legislature has determined what system of instruction shall be substituted for that which has been abolished, the children (as the French are fond of examples from the ancients) will take their lessons, like ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster Cove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. There is the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, its floors unclean, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... have originated during the day, and it is indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the theory of partial sleep has come into play; but the characteristics of the sleeping state have been found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its desire to sleep. The withdrawal from the outer world retains its significance also for our conception; though not the only factor, it nevertheless helps the regression ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... cut stone which, while showing every mark of time, proclaimed itself one of those early, carefully erected Colonial residences which it takes more than a century to destroy, or even to wear to the point of dilapidation. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... kept his hawks, grumbling all the while to himself as he surveyed the condition of each bird, and blaming alternately the carelessness of the under-falconer, and the situation of the building, and the weather, and the wind, and all things around him, for the dilapidation which time and disease had made in the neglected hawking establishment of the Garde Doloureuse. While in these unpleasing meditations, he was surprised by the voice of his beloved Dame Gillian, who seldom was an early riser, and yet ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... had but a vague idea as to the village of which he was the chief proprietor. He was aware, however, that his property there, including the old hall itself, was, to quote Mr. Ball, "somewhat out of repair"; and he rejoiced in the prospect of the opportunity its dilapidation might present of turning to good account some considerable portion of ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... field' is a grand legacy, so far as dilapidation, alas, will let it be, of the old painters. Originally a place of burial, though no longer used as such, it is enclosed by high walls and an arcade, something like the cloisters of a cathedral or college running round, and having ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... arm, I followed him into what he called "the office"—a small and dirty room, crowded with old furniture in the last stage of dilapidation. From a desk in one corner he took a large tome labelled "Stock Book," to which he referred, after glancing at a hieroglyphical device pasted on the figure which ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... defying time and the elements, and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here you may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb, which forms a precipice of fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a home on that funereal mound, where generations of children have been born, and successive lives been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... reflection. I have half a mind thus to spend one of my three remaining days. True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an absurd fable—its fatal leap the daily sport of infants—but in all ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern altitudes ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... of going to sea is keeping close to the shore Can leave it without regret Dependent upon imagination and memory Great part of the enjoyment of life Luxury of his romantic grief Picturesque sort of dilapidation Rest is never complete—unless he can see somebody else at work Won't see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner

... work in the spirit of that art, yet not as a servile copyist, but with freedom and originality. Meanwhile, one service that Walpole and his followers did, by reviving public interest in Gothic, was to arrest the process of dilapidation and save the crumbling remains of many a half-ruinous abbey, castle, or baronial hall. Thus, "when about a hundred years since, Rhyddlan Castle, in North Wales, fell into the possession of Dr. Shipley, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... of resemblance, and not a fault of the sculptor; but the attitude is noble, and the likeness of the head to the undisputed bust of Pompey in the Florentine gallery, struck me immediately. The Palazza Spada, with its splendid architecture, dirt, discomfort, and dilapidation, is a fair specimen of the Roman palaces in general. It contains a corridor, which from an architectural deception appears much longer than it really is. I hate tricks—in architecture especially. We afterwards visited the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... Ramleh, and the mongrel children of the town are making a great noise in the meadow below it. Our horses are enjoying their barley; and Mustapha stands at the tent-door tying up his sacks. Dogs are barking and donkeys braying all along the borders of the town, whose filth and dilapidation are happily concealed by the fig and olive gardens which surround it. I have not curiosity enough to visit the Greek and Latin Convents embedded in its foul purlieus, but content myself with gazing from my door upon the blue hills of Palestine, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... one receives upon entering the inner precincts of the kraton is of tawdriness and dilapidation. Half-naked soldiers of the royal body-guard, armed with ten-foot pikes and clad only in baggy, scarlet breeches and brimless caps of black leather, shaped like inverted flower-pots, lounge beside the gateway giving ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... the country is uninteresting except from the late events. With the exception of the first view of the plain and town of Laon, we passed village after village in the same state of ruin and dilapidation. Chavignon, about 4 miles from Laon, seemed, however, to have been more particularly the object of vengeance; it was throughout nearly a repetition of the suburbs of Soissons. Laon rises like a sort of Gibraltar from a rich and beautiful plain covered with little woods, vineyards, villages, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... viceroy Abascal, and put into a condition to be mounted with artillery. On each side commodious pathways were made, and along the inner side powder magazines were constructed. At present these fortifications are in a state of complete dilapidation. The paths, which are obstructed by rubbish, are almost impassable, and the powder magazines are destroyed. The city wall of Lima has nine gates (Portadas). Of these, six only are now open, viz., the Portadas of Maravillas, Barbones, Cocharcas, Guadelupe, Juan Simon, and Callao; ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... give—but a litigious agent suggested to him a plan for raising it, by demanding a considerable sum from the executors of the late Dr. Leicester, for what is called dilapidation. The parsonage-house seemed to be in good repair; but to make out charges of dilapidation was not difficult to those who understood the business—and fifteen hundred pounds was the charge presently made out against the executors of the late incumbent. It was invidious, it was odious for the new vicar, in the face of his parishioners, of all those who loved and respected his ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... of the shadow of the lemon-house on to the roof of the section below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I sat down. The padrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roof in the sky, a little figure of dilapidation, dilapidated as the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... formative years; how I sometimes remained away for months at a time, and how once an office boy mis-addressed me to a lady in New Jersey who very graciously herself forwarded me to my parent; how my poor parent was obliged at length by the increasing dilapidation of my appearance to go to the expense of having me completely re-typed by a public typist, and how directly after this he entirely re-wrote, expanded, and elaborated me at the instigation of one firm of publishers; how I was read by a delightful old lady who ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... services, so that the efforts of its agents cannot be ascribed to cupidity. Also it must be admitted that the kingdom of Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, thanks to the internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the previous forty years, resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual stagnation, and general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral glamour which a successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for instance, that, with all its natural advantages, Belgrade was at first sight not nearly such an attractive centre ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... small, neglected garden; in front of him, to the right, a wretched, weather-stained house, bearing every mark of poverty and dilapidation, while to the left there stretched out from the house a long glass structure, also in miserable condition—a sculptor's studio, as ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... held their annual meeting in 1853, had to borrow chairs from an adjoining office as the sheriff had walked away with their own for debt. Even a railroad with such a territory as the Hudson River Valley, and extending from New York to Albany existed in a state of chronic dilapidation; and the New York and Harlem, which had an entrance into New York City as an asset of incalculable value, was looked upon merely as a vehicle ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... nose against the window watching the ribbon of road over which anyone would come if they came. That was why she was the first of the Manor household to spy the dilapidated Ford approaching, snorting up the incline. Something about it made her think of the general dilapidation of the Forgotten Village. It might be some word! She rushed down the stairs, two steps at a time, past the startled Harkness, through the big front door. The strange-looking car had turned into the Manor gate. A man with long white whiskers was driving it. And yes, ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... she felt a chill creep to her heart. She had never imagined anything so forlorn and squalid, so wretched and comfortless. Miserable little hovels, many of them no better than pig-styes, and hardly cleaner within, were crowded together in all stages of dilapidation. Windows with scarcely a pane of glass, the chilly air kept out by old hats, bits of carpet or wads of newspaper, could be seen on all sides, with here and there, showing some remains of an orderly ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... melange of the work of at least three epochs, a not unusual feature in some of the smaller cathedrals. It has a mean little house built into its northwest corner, a crude and ugly clock-face stuck unmeaningly on its facade, and a general air of dilapidation, with respect to the statues originally contained in its archivolts and niches, which, to say the least, is not creditable to those who have been responsible for its care. It would seem that so lively and important a centre ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... dedicated to rose gardening; and a general air of exuberance about the trees and shrubs. Miss King found all this very charming. She took a walk round the pleasure grounds on the evening of her arrival, and felt that she had happened upon the Irish demesne of her dreams—a region of spacious dilapidation, exquisite natural beauty, romantic possibilities, and an inexhaustible supply of local colour; a place very different indeed from the trim Thames-side villas in which she generally spent her summer holidays. Her maid unpacked a large box of requisites for the country life supplied by the ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... cottage, or hut. My second glance showed it to be tenantless, for the thatch was partly gone, the windows were broken, and the door had long since fallen from its hinges. Yet, despite its forlornness and desolation, despite the dilapidation of broken door and fallen chimney, there was something in the air of the place that drew me strangely. It was somewhat roughly put together, but still very strong, and seemed, save ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... distance the fine effect produced by the light streaming from the multitude of windows, and exhibiting to the whole country round the gorgeous nature of the decorations within. To own the truth, I could scarcely forbear regretting, as I surveyed them, the gloomy dilapidation of the venerable mansion. This modernized antiquity was a very different thing from the massy grandeur of its neglected years; and I am afraid I loved the old house better with the weeds springing from its crevices, than with all this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... them, led the way around behind a barn that was skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with excitement ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... personality. Flashy male good looks got a kind of brilliancy from a set of big, strong teeth the whiter for their contrast with a black, brigand-like mustache. He was so well dressed in his cheap sport way as to be out of keeping with the dilapidation of the room, in which there was hardly a table or a chair which stood firmly on its legs, or a curtain or a covering which didn't reek with dust and germs. A worn, thin carpet gaped in holes; what had once been ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... lantern. Mr. Archer greeted him with civility; but the old man was in no humour of compliance. He guided the newcomer across the court-yard, looking sharply and quickly in his face, and grumbling all the time about the cold, and the discomfort and dilapidation of the castle. He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would like it; but in truth he could not think what brought him there. Doubtless he had a good reason—this with a look of cunning scrutiny—but, indeed, the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... she feared, with an energetic pinch, went in quickly. Little Amy had been playing in the little square hall, which was strewed with doll's clothes, and with two or three dolls in various stages of dilapidation. Some old, ragged school-books lay in a corner, the leaves out of one of which were blowing about in the wind. Even ten days of Anne Dorset's orderly reign had opened Ursula's ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... and there were only traces left of former coats of paint. Of the picket fence which had once bounded her possessions in front, not even a post remained. Years before, the slats had begun to decay, until the dilapidation became an eyesore to even Miss Elizabeth herself. But when the cow-boys in search of their charges that always pastured along the sides of the road, rattled their sticks over its surface, it became a nuisance she could no longer stand. So one morning after having been awakened ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... under the semicircular battery, to the northward of the lighthouse, and exploding, committed great damage to the enemy. At length, the fire from most of the forts being silenced, and the batteries on the mole being in a state of dilapidation, the ammunition of the attacking ships falling short, Lord Exmouth took advantage of a light air of wind off the land to cut his cables, and stand out of fire, ordering the other ships to follow his example. Severe as had been the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... enterprises which were springing up at that time. There they have since remained. Their country-houses, if inhabited at all, are occupied only for a few months in summer, and too often present a melancholy spectacle of neglect and dilapidation. In the Black-earth Zone, on the contrary, where the soil still possesses enough of its natural fertility to make farming on a large scale profitable, the estates are in a very different condition. The owners cultivate ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... their feet for six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two careful persons; while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward—a necessary precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is abjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so, than trusting ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... those villages in which the retreating Hun has left no stone unturned. With characteristic thoroughness he fired it first, then blew it up, and has been shelling it ever since. What with one thing and another, it is in an advanced state of dilapidation; in fact, if it were not that one has the map's word for it, and a notice perched on a heap of brick-dust saying that the Town Major may be found within, the casual wayfarer might imagine himself in the Sahara, Kalahari, or the south ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... palace was there; it was a house of the class which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified name. "How charming! It's gray and pink!" my companion exclaimed; and that is the most comprehensive description of it. It was not particularly old, only two or three centuries; and it had an air not so much of decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its career. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... of Parliament is over, come with their friends and families, to exercise hospitality, to spend large revenues, to diffuse information, and to improve manners? This evil is a very serious one to Ireland; and, as far as we see, incurable. For if the present large estates were, by the dilapidation of families, to be broken to pieces and sold, others equally great would, in the free circulation of property, speedily accumulate; and the moment any possessor arrived at a certain pitch of fortune, he would probably ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... sight of the house. It was a strange, desolate, yet most romantic spot. Although, seen from the road and the stream, it seemed to stand on an eminence, it was really at the bottom of a hill which encircled it on three sides, and what with its own dilapidation, its broken fences and gates, the trees which crowded about it, and the large green-grown pond in front of it, it produced a dank and sinister impression. The centre of the building, which had evidently been rebuilt about 1700, to judge from its rose-red brick, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... add that he is now following a vocation which, if less agreeable, is certainly more profitable to himself. Occasionally one of these professional bookstallers blossoms into a shopkeeper in some court or alley off Holborn; but more generally they are too far gone in drink and dilapidation to get out ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... these kindly tokens, the major went quietly into the cabin, and there occupied himself for more than an hour furbishing up a sword of uncommon size, and a three cornered hat the moths had reduced to dilapidation, though he charged it all to the bullets of the Mexicans. And when they were polished to his entire satisfaction, and he had twice or thrice thanked God that it was not the failing of politicians to turn parsons, as it was with parsons to turn politicians, he lay down upon the locker and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... for the purpose. This Turkish inefficiency has had a two-fold effect, which should not appear in the German case. Through administrative abuses intended to serve the personal advantage of the irresponsible officials, the underlying peoples have suffered a progressive exhaustion and dilapidation; whereby the central authority, the dynastic establishment, has also grown progressively, cumulatively weaker and therefore less able to control its agents; and, in the second place, on the same grounds, in the pursuit of personal gain, and prompted by personal animosities, these irresponsible ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... the enjoyment of the fake antiquities, the broken arches, pediments, columns, statues, which, in a region glutted with ruin, the landscape architect of the Villa Borghese had fancied putting about in pleasing stages of artificial dilapidation. But there was nothing faked in the dishevelled grass of the little stadium, with its gradines around the sides, and the game of tennis which some young girls were playing in it. Neither was there anything ungenuine in the rapture of the boy whom we saw racing through the dead leaves of ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... that's his name—by and by. But he's not rich; quite the contrary, he's very poor for a baronet; and I incline to think that is one of the reasons that influenced your father. Being so fond of the Elliotts, he wished to repair, in some degree, the dilapidation of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... no change of clothing, scarcely the removal of shoes. Change the box house to a tent, put the fire in the centre, and with less furniture, but no more smoke or dirt, you have the tepee home of the Indian. Match the dilapidation and the dirt, the narrow quarters and the large family, and you have the cabin home in the Georgia swamps and the lowlands of Louisiana. The conditions in the main are the same—an untutored ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various

... weather might be attributed most of the annual ranching failures in the West. The MacDavid establishment bore a well-ordered aspect, unlike many of the unthrifty, ramshackle ranches, of his neighbours. The fencing was of the best, and there were no signs of decay or dilapidation in any of the buildings. Dwarf pines were planted about and a Morning Glory vine over-ran the house, giving the place an air of restful domesticity. As they entered the store the trio noticed a saddle-horse tied to the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... Trahoir was a small irregularly shaped space, surrounded by miserable hovels, with high pointed roofs, most of which were in a state of dangerous dilapidation; the broken casements in every instance replaced by rags or straw; the doors ill-hung and swinging upon their rusty hinges, and the whole of the buildings lost in dirt and wretchedness. The inhabitants of this filthy nook were ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... rank vegetation; the water-furrows unclean and unattended, emitting offensive and unhealthy stenches; the houses showing evident signs of dilapidation and decay; the side paths, in many places, dangerous to pedestrians—in fact, everything the eye can rest upon indicates the downfall which has overtaken this once prosperous city. The visitor can, if he be so minded, betake himself to the outskirts and suburbs, where he will perceive the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... of Loglukabad are in an advanced state of dilapidation, and do not repay the trouble of a journey of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... chimney, the din of the workman's hammer, and the dull heavy sound of the bellows, is distinguished as the abode of the village Vulcan; while the surrounding yard, with drays in various stages of dilapidation, wheels, poles, axles, and other dismemberments strewing the ground, presents the appearance of a perfect vehicular golgotha. With one or two wool-laden drays drawn up before a public-house, in which the guardians ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax—the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles—the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles—that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and envy—not the envy of the poor at the sight of opulence and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... and his wife had removed after the death of the elder Hollis), the stable, and one other building for the storing of miscellaneous articles. Hollis inspected them all and was not quite convinced that they had reached the stage of dilapidation suggested by Judge Graney. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... barn on my father's farm. It was almost a ruin. One end of the roof had fallen in, pretty much all the windows were gone, and there was a general air of dilapidation about the place. A dwelling-house, to which it was an appendage, had been burned and not rebuilt, and the barn had been left to fight a battle with the elements and other foes in pretty ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... appearance of respectability by a judicious and persevering use of needle and thread. But boots, especially boys' boots, are unmanageable in a woman's hands, and, indeed, in any hands beyond a certain stage of dilapidation; and every one knows, that whatever else may be old, and patched, and shabby, good boots are absolutely indispensable to the keeping up of an appearance of respectability, and, indeed, one may say, with some difference, to the keeping of a lad's self-respect. The ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... interwoven sickly streaks of yellow. The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet. No one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and, long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, no preparations whatever had been made for his reception. Four years had passed over these chambers without leaving any further trace of their presence than ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... all of wicker, and though in various stages of dilapidation, were cool and comfortable. A table in the center was covered with a white cloth, and the sofa pillows were in ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... island), and his active factor, Mr. Philipps, having been directed to the subject, all such desecration has been put an end to, and the whole building has been repaired in such a way as to retard its dilapidation. The plans required for its proper repair were kindly drawn out by my friend Mr. Brash of Cork, a most able architect and archaeologist, who had performed on various occasions previously a similar duty in reference to the restoration ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... pipe the opening bar of the Beethoven C minor Symphony No. 5. We met nobody the whole way except a man with a cartload of wood, who greeted the Oberforster with immense respect, and some dilapidated little children picking wild strawberries. I wanted to remark on their dilapidation, which seemed very irregular in this well-conducted country, but thought I had best leave reasoned conversation alone till I've had time to learn more German, which I'm going to do diligently here, and till the Oberforster has discovered he needn't shout in order to make me understand. ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... the next two years be engaged, for the municipality of the city. The window is, as regards dimensions, the finest in all Italy—a noble work of the later but still brilliant period of the art. The state of dilapidation into which it had been allowed to fall was such that, coming restored as it will from Signor Moretti's workshop, it will in many parts be almost equivalent to a new work. The five or six full-sized figures which we saw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... his eyes became, accustomed to the tobacco smoke, he surveyed the room. There was a bowl on the floor, the chair where it belonged being occupied. There was a very inhospitable looking bed, two shake-downs, and four Windsor chairs in more or less state of dilapidation—all occupied likewise. A country glass lamp was balanced on a rough shelf, and under it a young man sat absorbed in making notes, and apparently oblivious to the noise around him. Every gentleman in the room was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... hid the dilapidation of her tailor-made, which looked the fresher for being pressed under the mattress; she always travelled boot-trees, so her shoes were all right, and the two Jacob's ladders, falling on the outside of her stockings, looked just like clocks ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... they soon came in sight of a deserted house. It evidently had been abandoned, for it was in a bad state of dilapidation. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... let you have an outfit, Mr. Brooke; though we are, most of us, reduced pretty well to our last garments. What with the jungle and what with the damp, we have nearly all arrived at the last state of dilapidation; but I am sure the general would like to see ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... other; the tall, sharp, white church spire contrasting beautifully with the dark back-ground of trees. It was delightful to see all the houses and cottages looking trim and neat, and in perfect order and repair. There was no such thing as dilapidation or poverty apparent, and the necessary repairs being so easily made, and the paint-brush readily available, all looked in the most perfect order. We could do little else than admire the scenery, and arrived at Boston at about six o'clock; the last few minutes ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... period, the usual atmospheric causes of decay. The painting which appeared to me to have been the longest executed was the one clothed in the long red dress, but I came to this conclusion solely from its state of decay and dilapidation, and these may possibly have misled me very much; but, whatever may have been the age of these paintings, it is scarcely probable that they could have been executed by a self-taught savage. Their origin therefore I think must still ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... her dignity, which would have been endangered had she reduced herself to the necessity of having frequent recourse to parliamentary supplies. In consequence of this motive, the queen, though engaged in successful and necessary wars, thought it more prudent to make a continual dilapidation of the royal demesnes,[*] than demand the most moderate supplies from the commons. As she lived unmarried, and had no posterity, she was content to serve her present turn, though at the expense of her successors; who, by reason of this policy, joined to other circumstances, found ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... at him with maternal anxiety, quite upset. And, indeed, however proud and lofty his figure, his handsome regular face did seem to her paler than usual. It was as if the nobility of the facade had, in some degree, ceased to hide the irreparable dilapidation within. And given his real good nature, it must be true that he suffered—suffered by reason of his useless, wasted life, by reason of all the money he cost his impoverished mother, and of the needs that were at last driving him to marry that wealthy deformed girl, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... acknowledged right to a seat in cortes, possessed by every city which had once been represented there, and this equally whether summoned or not, if we may credit Capmany, [51] must have gone far to preserve the popular branch from the melancholy state of dilapidation to which it was reduced in Castile by the arts of despotic princes. Indeed, the kings of Aragon, notwithstanding occasional excesses, seem never to have attempted any systematic invasion of the constitutional rights of their subjects. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... United States. Although this country returned all mission buildings to the control of the Church, their reason for being had vanished; they were sold, or destroyed, or feebly maintained on funds insufficient to forestall dilapidation. Fortunately the Franciscan friars had built for beauty as well as for use; the architecture which they devised in skillful adaptation of their native Spanish type displayed originality and picturesque ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... defoedation^, poisoning, venenation^, leaven, contamination, canker, corruption, adulteration, alloy. decline, declension, declination; decadence, decadency^; falling off &c v.; caducity^, decrepitude. decay, dilapidation, ravages of time, wear and tear; corrosion, erosion; moldiness, rottenness; moth and rust, dry rot, blight, marasmus^, atrophy, collapse; disorganization; delabrement &c (destruction). 162; aphid, Aphis, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... serpents. The remnant of an sitar, or high place, occupies the centre of the cloistered quadrangle. The rest of the edifice is taken up with courts, palaces, detached temples, open divans, baths, and streets of priestly cells, or houses, in a greater or less degree of dilapidation." ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Tuilerie," larger and more convenient, but a thoroughly banale maison bourgeoise, devoid of charm and picturesqueness, close to the main road, and without a garden; moreover, in an inconceivable state of dirtiness and dilapidation. I felt horror-struck at the notion of removing to such a place; however, I was at last obliged to submit to fate. My husband, though very disinclined to a move, thought that since it could not be avoided, it was as well to make it as easy, cheap, and rapid as possible. He ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... was remarkable chiefly for the extent of the gardens attached to the house, and for the singularly advanced state of dilapidation in which everything was allowed to remain. Beyond the gardens the woods stretched down to the sea, unpruned and thick with a heavy undergrowth; from the road the gardens were hidden by thick hedges, and by the forbidding gray front of the building. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... Moreover, with the practice of delaying possession under foreclosure, appointing receivers in the interest of the debtor, etc., he is in many States so delayed in getting possession of his security that by the time he acquires it he will find it burdened with overdue taxes and in a state of general dilapidation. We have already alluded to the practice in California of compelling the executor of a mortgage to submit himself to the jurisdiction of the local public administrator, which practically results in a sequestration of a considerable ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half dollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was all about. Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the cart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had ever seen and the most determined and ungovernable; and when at last it abated its fury and dispersed, it had not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... beer, at prices within their means, and from generation to generation it has remained a favorite resort in Munich for lovers of good beer. In spite of its remaining, as of yore, a place of rude benches beneath equally rude, open sheds, with cobwebs festooning the rafters and a general air of dilapidation about it; in spite of the innovation of dozens of modern beer-gardens with waving palms, electric lights, military music, and all modern improvements, the Konigliche Hofbrauhaus is daily and nightly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... then went with him to McComb, a village in southern Mississippi, which had been, in the days of slavery, a somewhat famous resort, but which had lost its prestige, and entered upon a general decline; the hotel and all its surroundings presenting the appearance of general dilapidation. I remained here with the doctor for two weeks—until they succeeded in getting another person to care for him. I then took a run down to ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes

... church, with a conspicuous tower or spire; but in how many villages in this riding do you find no church at all, as in the case of Staithes and Runswick? Many of the old churches of Yorkshire were in a state of great dilapidation at the beginning of last century, and a great effort having been initiated by the then Archbishop, a fund was instituted to help the various parishes to restore their buildings. It was a period when architecture was at a low ebb, and the desire to sweep away antiquity was certainly strong, for ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... restoration was set on foot in 1864, and Sir Gilbert Scott reported that L15,000 was necessary to make good the dilapidation and decay which extended, in his opinion, from the foundations to the roof. The necessary amount was not forthcoming for several years. Then a new committee was appointed, with Sir Edmund Lechmere as its chairman. In 1875 the restoration began, the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... and wet with slimy tricklings from its leaky roof; the wind and rain drove with a mournful howl down through its chimney-hole; its door was gone, and it presented altogether a dismal picture of neglected dilapidation. Nothing daunted, Viushin tore down another section of the ruined side to make a fire, hung over teakettles, and brought our provision boxes under such shelter as the miserable hut afforded. I never ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... volume of waters down the rocky sides of the sierra, which, mingling with those of the vega, inundated the camp of the besiegers, and swept away most of the frail edifices constructed for the use of the common soldiery. A still greater calamity befell them in the dilapidation of the roads, which, broken up or worn into deep gullies by the force of the waters, were rendered perfectly impassable. All communication was of course suspended with Jaen, and a temporary interruption of the convoys filled the camp with consternation. This disaster, however, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... residence of the first Duke of Touraine, Archibald the Tineman. It had been occupied by the English for military purposes during their tenancy of the city, and now that they were gone, it had escaped by its very dilapidation the fate of the other possessions of the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... recently been presented to parliament, setting forth the general mismanagement, misapplication of money, dilapidation of property, and various grievances sustained in consequence of the usurped authority of certain self-elected magistrates in the royal burgs of Scotland. On the 18th of April Mr. Sheridan made a motion for an inquiry into the grievances thus complained ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... this spectacle of torn garments, tattered hats, and brandished clubs—not forgetting the tatterdemalion negro children, who ran after the crowd in the last state of dilapidation, and he will have some slight idea of the masquerade, over which rode, in supreme majesty, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... their former ornamental accessories, would have been regarded and inveighed against as a popish and superstitious innovation; and a charge of this kind was at a later period preferred against Archbishop Laud. Parochial churches were, therefore, now repaired when fallen into a state of dilapidation, in a plain and inelegant mode, in complete variance with the richness and display observable in the style just ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... turned their backs upon the Tower, refused to live in it, and, failing to find a tenant of the gentry class, let part of it to the farmer, and put in a gardener as caretaker. Yet a certain small sum had always been allowed for keeping it in repair, and it was only within the last few years that dilapidation had made head. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Machiavelli, who says, in his "History of Florence," that nearly all the barbarian invasions of Italy were by the invitations of the pontiffs, who called in those hordes! It was not the Goth, nor the Vandal, nor the Norman, nor the Saracen, but the popes and their nephews, who produced the dilapidation of Rome! Lime-kilns had been fed from the ruins, classical buildings had become stone-quarries for the palaces of Italian princes, and churches were ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... coat was buttoned close up to the chin, with a blaz-, ing swab on the right shoulder, while a laced cocked hat and dress sword completed his equipment. But, alas! when we were accounted for on board of the old Torch, there was a fearful dilapidation of his external man. First of all, his inexpressibles were absolutely tom into shreds by the briers and prickly bushes through which we had been travelling, and fluttered from his waistband like the stripes we see depending from an ancient Roman or Grecian ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... looked backward on a last vision of orange ramparts under a night-blue sky sprinkled with stars; ahead, over gardens still deep in shadow, the walls of Sale were passing from drab to peach-colour in the eastern glow. Dawn is the romantic hour in Africa. Dirt and dilapidation disappear under a pearly haze, and a breeze from the sea blows away the memory of fetid markets and sordid heaps of humanity. At that hour the old Moroccan cities look like the ivory citadels in a Persian miniature, and the fat shopkeepers riding out to their vegetable-gardens like Princes sallying ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... your dilapidation, My memory kindles with joy, To think that the foes of our nation, No longer these valleys destroy; By sowing his fields in the winter, In hope of a rich harvest-home, The husbandman now feels no terror Of war with its ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... the world. He could, by every evidence he gave, perform no mere commonplaces of virtue or of vice. The world's ways would not assign his limitation. He was capable of devising and of executing great things,—and had proved the power; and to this his presence testified, even in dilapidation and listlessness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... old maid-servant, opened the door, and in the spacious, dusky entrance-hall, where the bales of leather were packed closely together, did not notice the dilapidation of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... before it will be accepted. Sooner or later, indeed, it will be accepted. For though most of our buildings seem even in decay to resist the harmonizing hand of Nature, and to grow only ghastly and not venerable in dilapidation, yet leave them long enough and what of beauty was possible to them will appear, though it be only a crumbling heap of bricks where the chimney stood, or the grassy slope where the cellar-wall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... outline approximating to that rudely indicated at C in the next figure, are in reality buttresses projecting from an intermediate ridge. Let A be supposed to be a castle wall, with slightly elevated masses of square-built buttresses at intervals. Then, by a process of dilapidation, these buttresses might easily be brought to assume in their perspective of ruin the forms indicated at B, which, with certain modifications, is the actual shape of the Chamouni aiguilles. The top of the Aiguille Charmoz is not the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... Swinton friends; family connections, and some interested considerations of Middleton the Commissioner, joined to procure his safety, and he was dismissed, but after a long imprisonment, and much dilapidation of his estates. It is said that Swinton's admonitions, while confined in the Castle of Edinburgh, had a considerable share in converting to the tenets of the Friends Colonel David Barclay, then lying there in the garrison. This was the father of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... "Tribunal," which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dak Bungalow for wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others, which had been decent buildings generations gone by, lapsed into a wretched state of dilapidation. In some villages there was no Tribunal at all, and the official business had to be transacted in the municipal Governor's house. I first visited Calamba (La Laguna) in 1880, and for 14 years, to my knowledge, the headmen had to meet in a sugar-store in lieu of a Tribunal. In San Jose de Buenavista, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... Athaliah, that wicked woman, had broken up the house of God,' says Chronicles. The dilapidation had not been complete, but had been extensive, as may be gathered from the large expenditure recorded in this passage for repairs, and the enumeration of the artisans employed. No doubt Joash was guided by Jehoiada in setting about the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... time old buildings undergo no perceptible change, any more than old trees; and after they have begun to feel the touch of decay, it is long before they look melancholy; for while they continue to be used, they cannot help looking cheerful, and even dilapidation is painful only when felt to be lifeless. The house now in ruins, that we passed a few hundred yards ago without your seeing it—we saw it with a sigh—among some dark firs, just before we began to ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... only as her property, and so it was named. A hill sloped gently for half a mile, traversed by a roadway of dry, grey sand, flanked on either side by a split-rail snake fence, gradually widening into an open space in front of the tavern. The tavern had reached an advanced stage of dilapidation. A rickety verandah in front shaded the first story, and a gable projected from above, so that the sill almost touched the ridge-board. A row of open sheds, facing inwards, ranged along one side of the yard, terminated by a barn, which originally had been a low log structure, ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer



Words linked to "Dilapidation" :   deterioration, decrepitude, decay, impairment, dilapidate



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