The Persian legions had restrained their course, Tents and pavilions, countless foot and horse, Clothed all the spacious plain, and gleaming threw Terrific splendours on the gazer's view.

We contrasted these sordid surroundings with the splendours of Silas Upham's front parlour, and then we stared furtively at Wilkins.

Pictorial illustration has its dangers, as we daily see in the clumsy imitators of Macaulay, who have not the fine instinct of style, but obey the vulgar instinct of display, and imagine they can produce a brilliant effect by the use of strong lights, whereas they distract the attention with images alien to the general impression, just as crude colourists vex the eye with importunate splendours.

I have introductions to all the most famous collectors, but, hearing of his splendours, I went to him first.

The glory of their son was undoubtedly only the dawn of eternal splendours, and the old people remained awed while the light from the candelabra on the table fell on them.

Upon this last topic it is the just remark of Casaubon that some instances of Caesar's munificence have been thought apocryphal, or to rest upon false readings, simply from ignorance of the heroic scale upon which the Roman splendours of that age proceeded.

As Artaban watched them, behold, an azure spark was born out of the darkness beneath, rounding itself with purple splendours to a crimson sphere, and spiring upward through rays of saffron and orange into a point of white radiance.

Canst thou forget hereditary splendours, To live obscure upon a foreign coast, Content with science, innocence, and love? ASPASIA.

Yet far more glorious in the Christian's sight Than these stern terrors of the olden time, The gentler splendours of that peaceful night, When opening clouds displayed, in vision bright, The heavenly host to Bethlehem's shepherd train, Shedding around them more than cloudless light!

SWINBURNE'S TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE Dear Heart, what thing may symbolise for us A love like ours, what gift, whate'er it be, Hold more significance 'twixt thee and me Than paltry words a truth miraculous; Or the poor signs that in astronomy Tell giant splendours in their gleaming might: Yet love would still give such, as in delight To mock their impotenceso this for thee.

All about her course the sea was spotted with wobbling splendours of the low sun, large coarse blots of glory near the eye, but lessening to a smaller pattern in the distance, and at the horizon refined to a homogeneous band of livid silver.

Thou art glorious by reason of thy splendours, and thou makest strong thy KA (i.e. Double) with, divine foods, O thou mighty one of victories, thou Power of Powers, who dost make strong thy throne against evil fiendsthou who art glorious in Majesty in the Sektet boat, and most mighty in the [=A]tet [Footnote: The Sun's evening and morning boats respectively.

But the beauties of Peterhof were quite eclipsed by the Oriental splendours of Moscow, which naturally made a great impression upon a mind accustomed to the cold sublimity of Gothic architecture at Oxford.

For the last month our thoughts have been fixed upon the Queen to the exclusion of all else; but now the regal splendours of the Jubilee have faded.

But for one moment, in this lyric passage, her soul echoes the very soul of Emily as she gathers round her all the powers and splendours (and some, alas, of the fatal rhetoric) of her prose to do her honour.

Perhaps a nation with more power of application and less of imagination would have schooled itself to the thought that these sordid, obtrusive details were the key to the splendours of the future, and would have devoted itself to the systematic amelioration of the cramped area which it had already secured for its own.

Daphnè was a little disconcerted at first by the rough uneven floor, and by the smell of the evening mealthe toasted cheese, and the little oven where the loaf was baking; but, thanks to lovethe enchanter, who has the power of transforming to what shape he likes, and can shed his magic splendours over any thingDaphnè found the cottage charming, and she was pleased with the floor, and the toasted cheese, and the oven!

IV, 1856, Chapter XX.] D. SPLENDOURS OF SUNSET

The latter was loud in expressions of admiration and sympathy as Mrs. Brady described the splendours of the past; the servant-man and the servant-maid, who, according to her, once formed portion of her establishment; the four beautiful milch cows which her husband kept, besides sheep, and a horse an' car, and "bastes" innumerable; the three little boys they buried, and then BarneyBarney, the jewel, who was now in Amerika.

Occasionally we were betrayed into buying a peasant's costume, an ikon, or an enamel, but in Moscow and Kief, the only way that we could reproduce to our friends at home the glories and splendours of these two beautiful cities was by photographs, in which the brilliancy of their colours brings back the sensations of delight which we experienced.

Pitiful years they were for the young Empress, consigned by her husband to a life that was worse than deathrobbed of her rank, her splendours, and luxuries, her very nameshe was now only Helen, the nun, faring worse than the meanest of her sister-nuns; for while they at least had plenty to eat, the Tsarina seems many a time to have known the pangs of hunger.

" Catherine, the "scullery-Empress," was dead; Eudoxia's grandson, Peter II., now wore the crown of Russia; and Eudoxia found herself transported, as by the touch of a magic wand, from her loathsome prison-cell to the old-time splendours of palacesthe greatest lady in all Russia, to whom Princesses, ambassadors, and courtiers were all proud to pay respectful homage.

Thus it was that Comte Jules' wife was transported from her poor country château to the splendours of Versailles, installed as chère amie of the Queen in place of the Princesse de Lamballe, and with the ball of fortune at her pretty feet.

So absolutely indifferent did she seem to her new splendours, that, when jealousy sought to undermine the Queen's friendship, she implored Marie Antoinette to allow her to go back to her old, obscure life; and it was only when the Queen begged her to stay, with arms around her neck and with streaming tears, that she consented to remain by her side.

But as he told me, sitting through the purple hours of the night, watching the light break in ripples and circles of colour over the sea, he regained some of the splendours of that great day, and before he had finished his tale he was right back in that fantastic world that had burst at the touch like bubbles in the sun.