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noun
Vault  n.  
1.
(Arch.) An arched structure of masonry, forming a ceiling or canopy. "The long-drawn aisle and fretted vault."
2.
An arched apartment; especially, a subterranean room, used for storing articles, for a prison, for interment, or the like; a cell; a cellar. "Charnel vaults." "The silent vaults of death." "To banish rats that haunt our vault."
3.
The canopy of heaven; the sky. "That heaven's vault should crack."
4.
A leap or bound. Specifically:
(a)
(Man.) The bound or leap of a horse; a curvet.
(b)
A leap by aid of the hands, or of a pole, springboard, or the like. Note: The l in this word was formerly often suppressed in pronunciation.
Barrel vault, Cradle vault, Cylindrical vault, or Wagon vault (Arch.), a kind of vault having two parallel abutments, and the same section or profile at all points. It may be rampant, as over a staircase (see Rampant vault, under Rampant), or curved in plan, as around the apse of a church.
Coved vault. (Arch.) See under 1st Cove, v. t.
Groined vault (Arch.), a vault having groins, that is, one in which different cylindrical surfaces intersect one another, as distinguished from a barrel, or wagon, vault.
Rampant vault. (Arch.) See under Rampant.
Ribbed vault (Arch.), a vault differing from others in having solid ribs which bear the weight of the vaulted surface. True Gothic vaults are of this character.
Vault light, a partly glazed plate inserted in a pavement or ceiling to admit light to a vault below.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vault" Quotes from Famous Books



... him into a flagged passage which smelt strongly of fungus. He went down this as far as it would go, found a flight of stone steps with a swing door a-top, pushed up here, and burst into a vast hall. It was waste and empty, echoing like a vault, crying desolation with all its tongues. There seemed to have been wild work; benches, tables, tressles, chairs, torn up, dismembered and scattered abroad. There were the ashes of a fire in the midst, some ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... of bombardment began on the 15th at 5.30 a.m. and continued until two o'clock in the afternoon. The projectiles caused fearful havoc. The vault of the commanding post, where General Leman was present with his two adjutants, was subjected to furious shocks, and the fort trembled to its foundations. Towards two o'clock, a lull occurred in the firing, and the general took advantage of it to inspect the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... disturbed as to what he should do with these precious baubles, sparkling and glinting in his hand, he knitted his brow in perplexity. He was due to leave New York at once, on orders from Wicks. No safe deposit vault was available at such an hour. He dared not leave the things behind in this room. There was no alternative, he must carry them along in ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... porcelain which are a Dyak's most prized possession. Sometimes these burial-jars are kept in the family dwelling—a rather gruesome article of furniture to the European mind—but more often they are deposited in a grave-house, a small, fantastically decorated hut or shed which serves as a family vault. But I doubt if any people on the face of the globe have so weird a custom of disposing of their dead as the Kapuas of Central Borneo, who hollow out the trunk of a growing tree and in the space thus prepared insert the corpse of the departed. The bark is carefully replaced over the opening ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... precession of the equinoxes, the pole does not always occupy the same place in the starry vault. The moderately bright star which is very justly named in the present day, the pole star, was far removed from the pole in the time of Hipparchus; in the course of a few centuries it will again appear removed from it. The designation ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... saw what appeared to be the door of an enormous safe-deposit k vault. "That," nodded "Specs," "is the door to the safe in which the Deionizer is kept. No one on earth excepting Mr. Edestone knows the combination that will open those doors. That is run by a one hundred H. P. motor in the engine room, and from it run the deionizing ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... it is hung by its bent pedicle to the fibrous wall of the cocoon. When I go to work very delicately, so as not to disturb the arrangement in knocking the nest off its support, and then extract and open the cocoon, I see the egg swinging from the silken vault. But it takes very little to make it fall. And so, most often, even though it be merely the effect of the shock sustained when the nest is removed from its pebble, I find the egg detached from its suspension-point and lying beside the larva, to which it never ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... and for a moment succeeded in holding Carthoris at bay. Then the Heliumite and the girl saw the Dusarian prince run swiftly to the opposite side of the chamber, touch something in the wall that sent a great panel swinging inward, and disappear into the black vault beyond. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... known as Mulberry Grove, above the city, on the Savannah River. The property had previously belonged to Lieutenant-governor John Graham, but was confiscated because Graham was a loyalist. Along with the property, Greene apparently took over the Graham vault in Colonial Cemetery—now a city park, and a very interesting one because of the old tombs and gravestones—and there he was himself buried. After a while people forgot where Greene's remains lay, and later, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... several Etruscan tombs, and saw their red and black scrawled pictures. One of the sepulchres was a well-jointed vault of stone with no wall-paintings. The rest had been scooped out of the living tufa. This was the excuse for some pleasant hours spent in walking and driving through the country. Chiusi means for me the mingling of grey olives and green oaks in limpid sunlight; deep leafy lanes; warm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Notre Dame Cathedral piercing the vault of one of the Chapels on the right transept and wreaking irreparable damage to the beautiful old glass of its gothic windows. This same bomb, which must have been of considerable size, sent debris flying into the courtyard ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... horses. Her heart felt a sudden constriction as of an iron band tightening upon it, for half a dozen mounted Indians were in hot pursuit. She saw the boy reach the nearest bronco, jerk loose the bridle rein, vault to the saddle, and gallop away, lying low on the back of the horse. The Indians fired from their horses as they rode, but the man flying for his life did not take time ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... eye was watched for the quiet sparkle that announced—and only that ever did announce it—the flashing wit within the mind, by a gay crowd of loungers at Arthur's, might be found next day rummaging among coffins in a damp vault, glorying in a mummy, confessing and preparing a live criminal, paying any sum for a relic of a dead one, or pressing eagerly forward to witness the dying agonies ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... udders that longed for the milk-pail. 'Mid these scattered, now here and now there, were numberless flocks of Sheep with fleeces white, as thou seest the white-looking stray clouds, Flock-wise spread o'er the heavenly vault when it bloweth in springtime. Coursers two times twelve, all mettlesome, fast fettered storm-winds, Stamping stood in the line of stalls, and tugged at their fodder. Knotted with red were their manes, and their hoofs all white with steel shoes. Th' banquet-hall, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... alive or dead, that she should have more glory in the grave than she appeared to have enjoyed on this side of it; and, with our united exertions, we succeeded in raising a marble slab, which surmounted a monumental vault, and was beautifully embellished with armorial blazonry, and, depositing the body inside, we replaced it again carefully. If the personage to whom it belonged happened to have a tenant of his own for it soon afterwards, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... sacred art which sprang from the development of the pointed arch. A mile farther we had to bow or heads under corniced elliptic arches in the romanesque style; and massive pillars standing out from the wall bent under the spring of the vault that rested heavily upon them. In other places this magnificence gave way to narrow channels between low structures which looked like beaver's huts, and we had to creep ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... that they could be heard pretty well, but all this did not avail to make the saddle smaller or the new horse bigger; so at last she was obliged to mount White Eagle, and to have the mortification of seeing Peggy vault lightly on the back of the black beauty. He had never been ridden before, perhaps; certainly he was not used to it, for he reared upright, and a less practised horsewoman than Peggy would have been thrown in an instant; but she sat like a rock, and stroked the horse between his ears, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... of those times was apt to expend itself quickly, and when little George's coffin, smothered under heraldic devices and funeral escutcheons, had been bestowed in the family vault, Dame Mary soon revived enough to take a warm interest in the lords who were next afterwards sent down to hold conferences with the captive; and her criticism of the fashion of their ruffs and doublets was ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stationed the strong dwarfs, Nordri, Sudri, Austri, Westri, at its four corners, bidding them sustain it upon their shoulders, and from them the four points of the compass received their present names of North, South, East, and West. To give light to the world thus created, the gods studded the heavenly vault with sparks secured from Muspells-heim, points of light which shone steadily through the gloom like brilliant stars. The most vivid of these sparks, however, were reserved for the manufacture of the sun and moon, which were placed ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... Men who through weakness or effeminacy cannot vault upon their horses' backs, teach them to kneel and so receive their riders. Similarly, some men that marry noble or rich wives, instead of making themselves better humble their wives, thinking to rule them easier by lowering them. But one ought to govern with an eye to the merit of a woman, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... although, being compelled to go it bareback, they felt some misgivings as to the result. Fred's mustang was rather under size, so that he was able to vault upon him from the ground without difficulty. After patting him on the neck and speaking soothingly to him, with a view to disarming him of all timidity, the lad leaped lightly ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... at Maria's. She kissed him as he slipped into the booth beside her. Through four drinks and a six-course dinner he watched her smile. That smile could melt down the door on a bank vault. He noticed how she laughed at all of his wisecracks. When it was her turn to talk she talked about him. She offered a toast to their closer friendship, with special emphasis on the ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg

... complied with the Giant's request; and fetching his master, they feasted and made themselves merry, whilst the poor Giant lay trembling in a vault underground. ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous

... open country, but was only gray plains of mist against a lost horizon. Sometimes even the vague outlook was obliterated by passing trains coming from nowhere and slipping into nothingness. As they crept along with the day, without, however, any lightening of the opaque vault overhead to mark its meridian, there came at times a thinning of the gray wall on either side of the track, showing the vague bulk of a distant hill, the battlemented sky line of an old-time hall, or the spires of a cathedral, but always melting back into the mist again as in ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... reached New York, warm, restless, and nigh about ready to give out, or take a friendly sunstroke and be peaceably carried away to a cool vault in ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... beings that surged around. At one moment she was conscious of some one behind who was pressing the people back and making room for her. At the next moment she was aware that through the multitudinous murmur of voices that rumbled as in a vault somebody near her ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... out into the glowing twilight, along a little woodland path with the staring people and the rustic, nestling dwellings blurring in the distance behind them. A little line of wooded hills lay ahead. The sky was like a dark vault—empty. The pastel light on the ground seemed inherent to the trees and the rocks; it streamed out like a faint radiation from everywhere. And then, as Lee gazed up into the abyss of the heavens, suddenly it seemed as though very faintly he could make ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... for the purpose, was a mouldy old church in a yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets and courts, with a little burying-ground round it, and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed by the neighbouring houses, and paved with echoing stones It was a great dim, shabby pile, with high old oaken pews, among which about a score of people lost themselves every Sunday; while the clergyman's voice ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... when the royal vault is opened for the interment of any of the royal family, Westminster Abbey is a place of great resort: some flock thither out of curiosity, others to ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... dreary drive to the distant cemetery, and she was relieved to some extent when they found themselves at the family vault. Miss Jane had always desired to be buried under the slab that covered her brother, and had directed a space left for that purpose. Now the marble was removed, and the coffins of Jane and Enoch Grey rested side by side. The voice of the minister ceased, and only little Stanley's sobs broke ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... such summons been answered with more enthusiasm. The calm had broken. The wind had come which was to carry them south into safety. With a wild cheer all sprang on deck. Working with mad haste, they flung out topsails, flying jibs and stay-sails. As they worked, the fog-bank lifted and the black vault of heaven, bespangled with the old familiar stars, rushed into view. When all was ship-shape, the Mary Thomas was lying gallantly over on her side to a beam wind and plunging ahead ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... quietude; in the south one wondrous star gleamed low on the horizon. Neither of us spoke; it was enough to drink in the beauty of such rare perfection, and I noticed how Radcliffe kept his eyes fixed upwards on the dark blue vault of space. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... something, I knew not what. At first I did not even know whether I was in the open air, or not, for I felt the wind, saw large spaces of dim light, and yet could distinguish that something like a vault impended over my head. Presently a vivid flash of lightning removed all doubt. It flickered, seemed extinguished, and flared up again, in a way to let me get some distinct ideas of the locus in quo. I had clearly blundered into the convent chapel; not upon its pavement, which was on a ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... one only hue is painted all The heavenly vault, and every other star Is touched with pallor and doth veil ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... seated with the Nation of the Bear, in whose towns their missions were established. Like all important councils, the session was held at night. It was a strange scene. The light of the fires flickered aloft into the smoky vault and among the soot-begrimed rafters of the great council- house, [ 1 ] and cast an uncertain gleam on the wild and dejected throng that filled the platforms and the floor. "I think I never saw anything ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... wait for Bellines and his torch. He chose to see what he could of the passages of his prison. If this vault in which he stood were not underground, it was the dreariest apartment from which the daylight had ever been built out. In the moment's pause occasioned by his not moving on when desired, he heard the dripping of ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... desert place I stumbled on an iron ring - The fellow of fifty built into the Quays: When, scenting a trap-door, I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade Stuck into wood. And then, The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs, Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault, So neat with niche on niche it might have been Our beer-cellar but for the rows Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars) Full to the wide, squat throats With gold-dust, but a-top A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... Springfield. She gave as a reason, that it was her desire to be laid by the side of her husband when she died, and that such would be out of the question in a public place of the kind. As is well known, the difficulty was finally settled by placing the remains of the President in the family vault at Oak Ridge, a charming spot for the home ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far, So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the splendour Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky- vault. They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks, Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild- swans, Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros; Hither ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... They searched everywhere and were much astonished to find that their prey had escaped them. Athanasius, in the meantime, warned by friends, had concealed himself in his father's tomb, a fairly large vault, where a man might remain for some time in hiding. The secret was well kept by the faithful, who brought food to the Patriarch during the night and kept him informed of all that was passing in the city. ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... these vaults. Oppressed by the ignominy of his fate, he went down, and following, carefully, to an immense depth, the winding of a stone staircase, came to an iron door, which opened, as if by a spring, when he knocked. He entered, and found himself on the brink of a deep vault. In the centre of the ceiling hung a lamp, which was nearly burnt out, and, by its flickering light, he saw, below, a huge stone table, round which many warriors, clad in armour, sate, resting, as if in slumber, their heads on their arms, which they laid crossways. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... woman of 30, who had ten children in twelve years, in the third month of her tenth pregnancy saw a child run over by a street car, which crushed the upper and back part of its head. Her own child was anencephalic and acranial, with entire absence of vault of skull. (F.A. Stahl, American Journal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the kindly support of the branch and made his way down the trunk of the tree, heaving a sigh of profound thankfulness when he reached the ground. His horse looked at him with eyes wild with terror and every muscle atwitch. It was the work of a moment to unfasten the ropes and vault in the saddle, but Wilbur needed all his horsemanship to keep the horse from bolting. Indeed, he did start to run away with the boy, but Wilbur sawed him into a more normal pace and headed him down ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... been transferred to the subterranean catacombs, which form the general charnel-house of the city. In those melancholy regions, while other relics of mortality lie exposed all around, the remains of those who perished in the massacres of September, are alone secluded from the eye. The vault in which they repose is closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes unfit to be thought of even in the proper abode of death; and which France ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... replied: "From great old age." She died on August 15, 1719, and was buried in the choir of the church of Saint-Cyr, where a modest slab of marble indicated the spot where her body reposed until, in 1794, when the church was being transformed into hospital wards, "the workmen opened the vault, and took out the body and dragged it into the court with dreadful yells and threw it, stripped and mutilated, into a hole in ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... my voice was echoed and fortified by the hollow vault. Certainly in my own ears it roared like the sound of many waters. At any rate the men stood, dumb-stricken, the tarry sailorly man a little in front with his mouth open and his yellow dog-teeth gleaming. The other, he who had given the orders, held the lantern higher ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... VII. Chapel at Westminster. No monument marks the spot where the great Minister rests amongst the monarchs whose throne he served so well. [Footnote: The name was inscribed on the site of the family vault, under Dean Stanley, in 1867. Clarendon's mother had been buried there in 1661; and afterwards his third son, in 1664. It is at the foot of the steps to Henry VII.'s Chapel.] We have endeavoured, from the varied episodes of his ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... about to heed her. In fact I couldn't stand no more religion for the moment, and I rose up and went out, and smoked my pipe behind the family vault of the Lords of the Manor, till the people had all got away after service. And then I came forth and went into the vestry. But I wasn't the first, for who should be waiting for me but my sister, Mary, and Bob Battle himself. Bob was looking out ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... wonders why her beauty doth not blaze, Gladding his gaze,— And, from his dreary watch along the rocks, Guiding him homeward o'er the perilous ways! How stands he waiting still, in a sad maze, Much wondering, while the drowsy silence fills The sorrowful vault!—how lingers, in the hope that night May yet renew the expected and sweet light, So natural ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... shiv'ring Robin, in most woeful plight, Crept into gloom and vanished from their sight. "O, Robin, Robin!" the old Witch softly cried, "Alack, I'm here!" faint voice, below, replied. "Thou dead," croaked she, "thou ghostly shade forlorn, From charnel-vault sound now thy spectral horn, Sound now thy rallying-note, then silent be Till from thy mouldering tomb ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... neighbouring nations came to join their admiration with that of her own country: This lady at the death of her husband not content with tearing her hair, or beating her breast, those common expressions of grief; but following him into the vault, where the body plac'd in a monument, she, after the Graecian custom, watch'd the corps, and whole nights and days continu'd weeping; the perswasions of parents nor relations cou'd divert her grief, or make her take anything to ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... democracy with her unbalanced friends, but it was also well for Americans to remember that she was French, and that this was France, and that in France a countess was a countess until she was buried in the family vault, whether she had chosen to live as a countess or as ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... country, compass land and sea, face a life of storms, with often but a slender chance of any result at all from their pains, whilst a foreign rascal (without any allegation of merit in his favour) shall at one bound, by planting his servility in the right quarter and at the fortunate hour, vault into an income of 25,000 francs per annum; the money, observe, being national money—yours, ours, everybody's—since at that period Ceylon did not pay her own expenses. Now, indeed, she does, and furnishes beside, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... hanging at intervals from the bottom to the top of the staircase, and pulling it away from the wall, on which it hung decidedly askew, revealed a round opening through which poured a ray of blue light which could only proceed from the vault of the adjoining study. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... quality in his nature, or otherwise hidden in its depths,—his enthusiasm. Never before did words fail him until he attempted to describe the effect of a Gothic cathedral,—the time-honored mystery of its arches, the sober radiance of its stained windows, and the solemn aspiration of its lofty vault. As Schiller says, they are the monuments of a mighty civilization of which we know ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... but intensely cold, and the vault of heaven was very dark, and blazing with stars; the sir was electrical, and flash lightning illumined the sky; this was the reflection of a storm that was not felt at Dorjiling, but which raged on the plains of India, beyond the Terai, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... scene of his mortal career—as his son had the mortification to be indebted to a stranger, now the proprietor of his ancient inheritance by purchase from the crown, for permission to lay his father's honoured remains in the vault which contained the ashes of his family for ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... tired!" he exploded. "Great Scott, you are the worst baby I ever saw! I wish to goodness you were wherever you want to be, wrapped up in cotton batting, I suppose, and tied with pink string, and laid on a shelf in a safety deposit vault. You are a regular jelly fish! I wish I had some fellow along who had a real spine! I—" he ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... Henry died, and was placed beside his Queen, Elizabeth of York, in the great vault beneath the chapel floor. His mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, was brought here three months afterwards, of whom it was said, "Everyone that knew her loved her, and everything that she said or did became her." She endowed charities, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... passage or gallery that ran round the top of the garden walls, between the cleft battlements, but she did not once look down to see what lay beneath. Her soul was drawn to the vault above her, with its lamp and its endless room. At last she burst into tears, and her heart was relieved, as the night itself is relieved ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... Church has been called unpicturesque, owing to its low central tower and insignificant pinnacles. It is, however, a huge building, and its interior is so richly decorated that it more resembles a cathedral than a parish church. It possesses the finest fan-vault in existence, covered with gilded bosses and heraldic arms. Contrasting with this wonderful richness of decoration are three plain ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... the hills, melancholy on the verge of pools, exalted when the sun is crowned in an ocean of blood-red shadows, and when it casts on the rivers its red reflection. And at night, under the moon, as it passes across the vault of heaven, you think of things, singular things, which would never have occurred to your mind under the brilliant light ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... plain, and without hieroglyphics; the more singular, as it seems to be ascertained that they were then in use. The sarcophagus rests upon an enormous granite block, which may, as suggested by Mrs. Poole, in her minute account of the interior, have been placed to mark the entrance to a deep vault or pit beneath. There are some small holes in the walls of the chamber, the purpose of which was for ventilation, as at length ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the lower branches. I separated the vegetable curtain with my hands, and entered this august temple with feelings of involuntary awe. The change from the bright sunlight to the comparative darkness beneath the leafy vault, was so great, that I at first could scarcely distinguish any thing. When my eyes got accustomed to the gloom, however, nothing could be more beautiful than the effect of the sun's rays, which, in forcing their way through the silvered leaves and mosses, took as many varieties of colour as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... prose 'Satyricon' ascribed to Petronius, whom Nero called his Arbiter of Elegance. The tale was known in the Middle Ages from the stories of the 'Seven Wise Masters.' She went down into the vault with her husband's corpse, resolved to weep to death or die of famine; but was tempted to share the supper of a soldier who was watching seven bodies hanging upon trees, and that very night, in the grave of her husband and in her funeral garments, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... who had fired them. He knew him now; it was Anton. But, fleet of foot, the half-breed had reached the stable, where a horse stood ready saddled. He saw him vault into the saddle, and he saw him vanish into the adjacent woods. Then, at last, he gave up the chase and ran ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... over his left eye as he swaggered up the alley and entered a beer vault for which the alley was really the entrance. By good luck, no customers were present, and Sam engaged in a lively conversation ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... continued to fall, now in small pieces, and again in huge flakes, till the rock and his couch became covered. 'Could the dropping be accidental?' he asked himself. 'Would the clots if undisturbed, fall so rapidly? How was it that when he first entered the vault this evening, not a ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I was being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there. I asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front of my door, and every now and then looked in through a crack—I felt terribly depressed. What ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... had with him is now known to a cent; some of it was paid to his escort, when it disbanded at and near Washington, Georgia, and at the time of his capture he had a small parcel of gold and silver coin, not to exceed ten thousand dollars, which is now retained in the United States Treasury-vault at Washington, and shown ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... and is watched with the most implicit confidence by all on board, as the only guide to safety. The same Wisdom is displayed thro out all creation; in the beauty, order, and harmony of the universe; in the planets which float in the azure vault of heaven; in the glow worm that glitters in the dust; in the fish which cuts the liquid element; in the pearl which sparkles in the bottom of the ocean; in every thing that lives, moves, or has a being; but more distinctly in man, created in the moral image of his Maker, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... flower-work that covers Saracenic architecture. Looking through this into the violet ambuscade, the eye falls upon colonnades, light slender shafts a foot in diameter, that seem to support the paly-golden, lustrous roof. It is curiously like a vast temple, spreading every way in vault and colonnade, on which religious enthusiasm or barbaric royalty has worked with a reckless waste of art and labor. Nor is it the cold and shapely beauty of the stone: it seems to be a temple built of many-colored glass. To understand the magnificence of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... on any point of the earth and look up, the heavenly bodies appear as though they were situated upon the surface of a vast hollow sphere, of which your eye is the center. Of course this apparent concave vault has no existence and we cannot accurately measure the distance of the heavenly bodies from us or from each other. We can, however, measure the direction of some of these bodies and that information is of tremendous value to us in helping us to fix ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... method of determining who shall be "It" for a game is for the players to race to a certain point, the last one to reach it being "It." Or one of a group of players deciding on a game may say "Last over the fence!" when all climb or vault over a fence, the last one over being "It." In the gymnasium this method is sometimes used when the players are grouped in the center of the floor. Upon hearing the shout "Last over!" they all scatter and jump over any available ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... Cluid, North Wales, Brynbella, or the beautiful brow, making the name half Welsh and half Italian, as we were." Here they lived, with occasional visits to other places, during the remainder of Piozzi's life. "Our head quarters were in Wales, where dear Piozzi repaired my church, built a new vault for my old ancestors, chose the place in it where he and I are to repose together..... He lived some twenty-five years with me, however, but so punished with Gout that we found Bath the best wintering-place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... represented at these rites by a few of its more zealous members. There is first of all the Honey-bee, the sworn enemy of strikes, who profits by the least lull of winter to find out if some rosemary or other is not beginning to open somewhere near the hive. The droning of the busy swarms fills the flowery vault, while a snow of petals falls softly to the foot of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... be the life to which it leads. And though Enoch and Elias went into the temple through a gate which certainly may be called Beautiful, the rest of us have to find our way to it through Ezekiel's low-bowed door and the vault full of creeping things and all manner of abominable beasts. Nevertheless, there is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else. It was in obedience to this wise regulation that the other morning found ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a while, the nerves of the country were strained by the alarm which seemed to tell that a grave would have to be dug for the new King before the body of the late sovereign had grown quite cold in the royal vault. It would be idle, at this time of day, to affect any serious belief that the grief of the British people at this sudden taking off, had it come to pass, would have exceeded any possibility of consolation. George the Fourth was an ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... door in the man's face, and opened the letter. At the first line, he began to vault around the room like a rope-dancer and thundered out, at the top of his voice, this romantic ditty, which indicated with him the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... prince had been sent away, officers were dispatched to take possession of his palace, and to make an inventory of the property contained in it. The officers found a vast amount of treasure. Among other things, they discovered a strong box buried in a vault, which contained an immense sum of money. There were four hundred vessels of silver of great weight, and many other rich and costly articles. All these things were confiscated, and the proceeds put into ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... bungalow, a comfortable place, not glaringly out of keeping with the surroundings, and then motored to Akbar's tomb—another piece of colossal magnificence. I was awed by it. Out of the glaring sunshine we went down a long dark passage to a great vault, where the air was cold with the coldness of death. It was completely dark except for one ray of light falling on the plain marble tomb. An old Mohammedan crooned eerily, impressively, a lament which echoed round and round the vault. The Mohammedans and the Scots have ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... not enough to awaken but enough to protect: how he worshipped toward that lamp tended by the Sleepless! There were summer noons when he would be lying under a solitary tree in a field—in the edge of its shade, resting; his face turned toward the sky. This would be one over-bending vault of serenest blue, save for a distant flight of snow-white clouds, making him think of some earthward-wandering company of angels. He would lie motionless, scarce breathing, in that peace of the earth, that smile ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... ashes and sand that seemed to destroy and bury the monuments of the mighty empires of the ancient world, but which have kindly covered and preserved them, just as we put our treasures away in some safety-vault while absent on a long journey. The fire burned the upper wooden walls of the city, and it fell in ruins, but under those ruins, covered by that ashes, were preserved for two thousand, three thousand, five thousand years uninjured, the choicest sculpture and the most precious records of ancient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... happened before. Winter quarters were built near his tomb, for the shelter of a special constabulary. Since A.T. Stewart's death, there had been no certainty as to where his remains were. Abraham Lincoln's sepulchre was violated. Only a week before Mr. Vanderbilt's death, the Phelps family vault at Binghamton, New York, was broken into. Pinkerton detectives surrounded Mr. Vanderbilt's body on Staten Island. Wickedness was abroad in all directions, and there were but fifteen years of the nineteenth century left in which to ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... afterwards that Rolette had carefully deposited the bill in the vault of Truman M. Smith's bank, and had passed the time in the upper story of the Fuller House, where his friends made him very comfortable. Some ineffectual efforts have been made since to remove the capital to Minneapolis and elsewhere, but the treaty, made by the pioneers in 1849, locating it ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... joy. No spot in all God's green earth at that moment held in his eyes such vivid charm and interest. Ten minutes later no spot in all the world seemed so barren and desolate. The sunshine, the sailing clouds in the vault of blue, the chasing shadows along the slopes, the streaming colors of blue and white and scarlet at the tip of the swaying staff, the glint and sparkle of the accoutrements of the guard, the gaudy lining of the troopers' capes, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... of the true metal in him than he himself was aware of. Without saying a word about it, he resolved not to wait for the result of this slow process of growth, but to jump, vault, or fly out of the boastful period of life, by hook or by crook, and that without delay. And he succeeded! Not all at once, of course. He had many a slip; but he persevered, and finally got out of it much sooner than would have been the case if ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... in the diminutive semi-gothic type that had done duty since the days of Caxton, and the woodcut borders being made up of odds and ends that happened to be handy. His rapidly increasing business had already compelled him to lease from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's a vault under the churchyard, and two sheds adjoining the church, and in addition to this he now took a room at Stationers' Hall at a rental of 20s. ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... mysterious gloom, the scenery reared up like fortifications, the bareness of the floor, the endless number of weights, ropes, trees, borders, battens overhead, the yawning house completely dark, the silence, broken by the creaking of the floor, and the vault-like chill that one felt—all this together awed me. It did not seem to me as if I were entering the brilliant ranks of living artistes who every night won the applause of the house by their merriment or their sobs. No, I felt as though I were in the tomb of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... by challenging our conventional wisdom. There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. Already, pushing down tax rates has freed our economy to vault forward to record growth. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... some hammocks, and in them one watch tries, and, what is more, succeeds in sleeping, though the men moving about bump them with head and elbows at every turn, and the low and narrow vault is full of the hum and purr of machinery. In length the vault is about ten feet, but if a man of normal stature stands in the middle and raises his arms to about half shoulder height his hands will touch the cold, moist steel walls on either side. A network of ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... its excellent Index, we are enabled, by Cunningham's Handbook of London, to inform him that Vanburgh was buried in the family vault of the Vanburghs ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... Bartlett, which his son-in-law and murderer had pulled down. There he had been heard 'breathing heavily,' and had been seen asleep upon his bed, long after he was smothered in his own pillows, and his body shut up in the family vault. At least, so it was said, and at that particular moment we felt no comfort from the fact that Miss Lucy had said that 'of course it wasn't true.' I said something, to which Fatima made no reply, and ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... sky"; from the same primitive Indo-European root come the Latin words dies (day), deus or divus (god); the dark sombre vault of heaven is Varuna, the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... the earth, and the blue vault of heaven was studded with its myriad lamps. The new moon glittered like a golden thread—low in the west—and seemed almost to rest upon the bosom of the stream, as it curved in the distance to meet ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... mind, and he knew it was he alone who was sought. He tried to escape by the windows, but here the bars were but too firm. Then he seized the tongs, and tore up a board in the floor, by which he let himself down into the vault below, just as the murderers came rushing along the passage, slaying on their way ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... sorry!" said she. "You see, we've let that vault to Mrs Skinner—leastwise, Mrs Bright, she is now—o' King Street, to store her coals. Her new husband's a coal-seller, see you. You should have had it, as sure as can ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... barricade of cloud which veiled the moon's passage up the western sky has sunk riven at her feet. She herself shines forth in unbroken radiance, and a double lunar rainbow, in all its spectral grandeur, spans the vault of heaven. There is a sense as of a heavenly presence about to emerge upon the arc. Then the rapture overflows the spectator's brain, and the Master, arrayed in a serpentining garment, appears in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... market folks we wandered into the old Cathedral of St. Denis. Deep in the sombre shadows of the crypt a light gleamed faintly through a narrow slit in the stone wall. Approaching, we looked into a gloomy vault wherein, just visible by the ray of a solitary ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... a long time. Once more he stole over to the safety vault containing his Ideal. It was at a time when he had suffered a severe business loss. With great yearning in his breast, he lifted the cover of the case. He was worn from practical life and his heart and head felt heavy. He found the case empty. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... duplicate copies of the inscription in wax, and transmitted them to Europe. The inscription consists of twenty-three letters, together with a pictorial device, apparently a man's head on a pike. It is made on a small hard stone, of an oval shape, and was found in a vault along with human bones, sea shells, and various ornaments of a rude age. Professor Charles Rafn, of Copenhagen, deems the character Celtiberic. I have recently received a memoir from M. Jomard, at Paris, (the sole survivor of Bonaparte's scientific corps in Egypt,) who considers ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... the old church in Santo Domingo was undergoing repair when the workmen came upon a leaden box containing the undoubted remains of the first Duke of Veragua. Breaking through the wall of the vault they found themselves in a larger one, and here was a box two feet long, enclosing a skull, bones, dust, jewelry, and a silver plate bearing the words "C. Colon," and on the end of the box, according to some witnesses, the letters "C. C. A.," meaning Christopher ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the tiniest fraction of a second, the ship was gone; it shrank to a point, and was invisible in the blue vault ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... flour,—some were attacked with blindness, some with acute mania, and some with a prostrating insensibility. Those who now remained in the ranks were clad in rags and scarcely recognizable as soldiers. It seemed, therefore, as if such an appeal could only awaken an echo in an empty vault; but such was the French character that, desperate as were the circumstances, the cry was heard. The response was grim and sullen, but the call was not in vain; and reaching Orcha on the nineteenth, there was still an army. As yet, however, there ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... year that they came to "Mon Repos" and arrested papa, and maman, and us four young ones and dragged us to Paris, where we were imprisoned in a narrow and horribly dank vault in the Abbaye, where all day and night through the humid stone walls we heard cries and sobs and moans from poor people, who no doubt were suffering the same sorrows and the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... "Father forgive them, they know not what they do." Then under the spell of Cameron's speech, they looked into the empty tomb and felt their hearts throb in ecstasy, as the full meaning of that silent vault burst upon them. Looking up they saw their risen Lord seated at the right hand of the Father, glorified with the glory that was his in the beginning; and then, then, they looked where the Master pointed, to the starving, shivering, naked ones of earth, and heard with new understanding, those oft ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... await the issue of the conference. After two dreadful hours of suspense, every second marked out by the beating of his heart, Charles fancied he heard the sound of a door very carefully opened; the feeble ray of a lantern in the vault scarcely served to dispel the darkness, but a man coming away from the wall approached him walking like a living statue. Charles gave a slight cough, the sign agreed upon. The man put out his light and hid away the dagger he had drawn in case of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... order to prevent the dampness of the subsoil from penetrating the chamber, the walls had been laid in hydraulic cement and were very thick, and the floor was likewise protected. In order that the room might serve also as a vault equally proof against violence and flames, for the storage of valuables, I had roofed it with stone slabs hermetically sealed, and the outer door was of iron with a thick coating of asbestos. A small pipe, communicating with a wind-mill on the top of the house, insured the renewal ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... separate apartments of the villa, silvered gray where moonlight touched them. Flat and sloping and towered were these, and broken by the intervals of the courts, where was massed the heavy blackness of foliage. The night air swept cool around him; above him was the high vault of heaven, cloudless now, where a young moon rode in the loneliness of space. To his left as he stood was the squat dome of the Hall of Columns, with light showing through the series of narrow windows which encircled it. And these windows ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... right angles with that of the stars. Periods of revolutions of bi-colored double stars. Canopy of stars; openings in the stellar stratum. Events in the universe; the apparition of new stars. Propagation of light, the aspect of the starry vault of the heavens conveys to the mind an idea of inequality of time — p. ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... the apse is solid wall, rather longer than the distance between the central lines of adjoining piers. Here are two massive half-pillars, reaching to the roof, undoubtedly meant to be crowned with a round arch like those to the transepts; and this seems to shew that the intention was to vault the apse with stone. The apse is by far the best large Norman apse remaining in this country. At Norwich, where is the only possible rival, the lower part only is semicircular and original, the whole of the upper part being of Decorated date, and ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... auction-room. At comparatively slight expense, if you can spare Mr. Fleet to help me during the time when business is dull, I can make the house such a gem of artistic elegance that it will be noted throughout the city, and next fall some rich snob, seeking to vault suddenly into social position, will give just what you are pleased to ask. In the meantime we have a retired ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... as at the funeral of Queen Anne, where she still lies and reposes. The King had wished to carry her body to Chartres, and thence to Saint Denis, to place it by the side of the King her husband, in the same imposing vault which he had caused to be built, but the ensuing ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various



Words linked to "Vault" :   burial chamber, bound, vault of heaven, pole vault, hurdle, vaulter, jump, fenestella, jumping, spring, bank building, sepulchre, vaulting, columbarium, burial vault, bank vault, strongroom, barrel vault, charnel, leap, sepulcher, lunette, charnel house



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