It lay like a lonely, luminous raft, in the midst of a black sea.

This society of the future was not slow to sprout and grow in the midst of that feudal system so turbulent, so oppressive, so detested.

"The bishop," he says, "took his place, together with the duke, in the midst of the assembly, and said to them, 'I come and sit down amongst you to treat of the affairs of the state.

In the midst of what gloom or of what light?

Have we not in the very midst of us the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ?"

However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting irregularities, made itself felt, and found zealous advocates.

They occupied the first rank in feudal society and a rank unique in the body politic such as it was slowly becoming in the midst of reminiscences and traditions of the Jewish monarchy, of barbaric kingship, and of the Roman empire for a while resuscitated by Charlemagne.

To Christianity it was that the middle ages owed knighthood, that institution which, in the midst of anarchy and barbarism, gave a poetical and moral beauty to the period.

But a few days afterwards he summoned, at Avranches according to some, and at Bayeux according to others, and, more probably still, at Bonneville-sur-Touques, his Norman barons; and, in the midst of this assembly, at which Harold was present, William, seated with his naked sword in his hand, caused to be brought and placed upon a table covered with cloth of gold two reliquaries.

Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of the consternation.

There were, at one and the same time, elements of government and resistance, causes of fusion and unity in the very midst of the struggle.

To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of Olives, Calvary, and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days, and in the midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion with the early Christians.

And it was at a critical period, in the midst of the pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the expectation of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming of the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened for purchasing remission of their sins by delivering other Christians from suffering, and by avenging the wrongs of their creed.

The Pope went out of the church wherein the Council was assembled and mounted a platform erected upon a vast open space in the midst of the throng.

" From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general shout, "God willeth it!

Godfrey galloped up, and, with some fifty of his knights, preceding the rest of his army, was the first to throw himself into the midst of the Turks. Towards mid-day the whole of the first body arrived, with standards flying, with the sound of trumpets and with the shouting of warriors.

They were thus and all on a sudden besieged in their turn, having even in the very midst of them, in the citadel which still held out, a hostile force.

There were seen the very strongest, those whom their signal valor had rendered illustrious in the midst of the army, now supported on crutches, dragging themselves half-dead along the streets and in the public places; and, if they did not speak, at any rate they showed themselves, with countenances irrecognizable, silently begging alms of every passer-by.

In the midst of the Room was a little Japan Table, with a Quire of gilt Paper upon it, and on the Paper a Silver Snuff-box made in the Shape of a little Book.

How pleasing would it be to hear that the same Man who had carried Fire and Sword into the Countries of all that had opposed the Cause of Liberty, and struck a Terrour into the Armies of France, had, in the midst of His high Station, a Behaviour as gentle as is usual in the first Steps towards Greatness?

GHEEL (12), a town in Belgium, situated on a fertile spot in the midst of the sandy plain called the Campine, 26 m. SE. of Antwerp; it has been for centuries celebrated as an asylum for the insane, who (about 1300) are now boarded out among the peasants; these cottage asylums are under government control, and the board of the patients in most cases is guaranteed.

MECCA, the birthplace of Mahomet, the Holy City and Keblah of the Moslems, the capital of Hedjaz and the true capital of Arabia; in the midst of sandy valleys, and 60 m. distant from Jeddah, its port; a city to which every true Mussulman must make a pilgrimage once in his life; has a population which varies from 30,000 to 60,000.

In the midst of this festivity, the young merchant's eyes filled suddenly with tears, and involuntarily two or three drops trickled down

His first landing on the Philippines was March 12th, 1521, less than thirty years after Columbus appeared in the West Indies, believing that he was in the midst of the ancient East Indies, and judging from the latitude in the neighborhood of the island empire of the Great Kahn.

The Commander-in-Chief founded and established a town on the very site of Manila (of which Rajamora made a donation to the Spaniards for that purpose), on account of its being strong and in a well provisioned district, and in the midst of all the isles (leaving it its name of Manila, which it held from the natives).