At one moment he was conspiring and hoping; at another, despairing and endeavouring to conciliate his beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work.

Below the masterful nose the frown may be said to be merely threatening; above the firm upper lip it assumes a quality of such dourness as to resemble a scowl.

For miles the sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs, which, lashed with wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly threatening and stern.

Meanwhile, it is true, the military preparations for a death-struggle of empires still go on, and the problem even of peaceful immigration becomes yearly more threatening, now that shipping companies can land tens of thousands of Chinese or Indian labourers for a pound or two a head at any port in the world.