Were no other proof forthcoming of Lorenzo's marvellous diplomatic genius than this one fact, that he checkmated the political schemes of Sixtus, and finally so neutralized his influence as to render him wellnigh impotent for evil-doing, such an achievement was sufficient to stamp him one of the greatest masters of statecraft Europe has known.

Having seen that the press could throw off, in a few days, scores of copies of any work, of which it took an amanuensis months to produce one; also that the scholars of all Italy could be furnished almost immediately, and at a low price, with the texts of any manuscript they desired, while they had to wait months for a limited number of copies whose cost was wellnigh prohibitive, he supported the new invention from the outset.

Next morning he sought in vain for the manuscript, and had wellnigh concluded with Robert Hall, who was once in a similar dilemma, that the Devil had run away with it, when the servant-girl, on being questioned, confessed that she had burnt it to kindle the fire.

At length, when my anxiety had become wellnigh intolerable, there came a brief letter to his father, announcing his marriage with the sister of his brother's wife, and his decision to enter into business with his brother.

By the time of Stephen (1135) we find the barons of England wellnigh as powerful as those of other lands.

I was hustled and wellnigh personally assaulted.

yea and dark was Uther too, Wellnigh to blackness; but this king is fair Beyond the race of Britons and of men. '

It is as though by the pressure of an electric button some giant sluice had been opened, unchaining forces over which mortal men can hardly hope to recover control and whose action it is wellnigh impossible to foresee.

To the condition of the Federal army one of their own officers testifies, and his expressions are so strong as wellnigh to move the susceptibilities of an opponent.

On the 1st of July he had successfully passed the terrible swamp, in spite of all his enemies, and his army was drawn up on the wellnigh impregnable heights of Malvern Hill.

The Federal lines had fallen back, wellnigh to the banks of the river, and there seems little room to doubt that the morale of the men was seriously impaired.

Neither the troops nor the people had perhaps penetrated the full character of Lee; and they seem to have attributed to him more reserve and less warmth and impulse than he possessed; but it was impossible for a human being, occupying so prominent a station before the general eye, to hide, in any material degree, his main great characteristics, and these had conciliated for Lee an exalted and wellnigh universal public regard.

After his most decisive successes, his pulse had remained calm; he had written of those successes with the air of one who sees no especial merit in any thing which he has performed; and, so marked was this tone of moderation and dignity, that, in reading his official reports to-day, it seems wellnigh impossible that they could have been written in the hot atmosphere of a war which aroused the bitterest passions of the human soul.

As for that sword, I may tell you that he took it away from a knight who came hither to threaten his life, and he soused that knight into the well so that he was wellnigh drowned.

The men were in high spirits notwithstanding the difficulties we had to encounter in traversing a route wellnigh impassable from the recent rains, and ankle-deep in mud.

Still, though their batteries on the bastions had been wellnigh silenced, the rebels stuck well to their field-guns in the open space before the walls; they sent a storm of rockets from one of the martello towers, and fired a stream of musketry from the ramparts and advanced trenches.

Often in fancy has my mind wandered back to those days of turmoil and excitement, when men's hearts were agitated to their profoundest depths, and our cause appeared wellnigh hopeless.

] CHAPTER V OCCUPATION OF THE CITY The renown won by our troops in 1857 is now wellnigh forgotten, and, in fact, their deeds in that distant quarter of our Empire faded into oblivion within a very short period subsequent to the capture of Delhi.

From the Jama Masjid we wandered through narrow lanes and back-slumsthe former resort of the worst characters in the cityto the Delhi and Turkoman Gates, the streets, as in other parts, being strewed with property from the wrecked houses, and wellnigh impassable.

The dockyard people are wellnigh out of their wits with the pressure put upon them, and we are ordered to be ready to sail in a week.

Once she look'd back, and when she saw him ride More near by many a rood than yestermorn, It wellnigh made her cheerful; till Geraint Waving an angry hand as who should say "Ye watch me," sadden'd all her heart again.

"And her smile it seemed half holy, As if drawn from thoughts more far Than our common jestings are." Mrs. Browning's character was wellnigh perfect.

But though Mrs. Browning wrote her "Tale of Villafranca" in full faith, after many a mile-stone in time lay between her and the fact, her friends remember how the woman bent and was wellnigh crushed, as by a thunderbolt, when the intelligence of this Imperial Treaty was first received.

While the purchase price of slaves was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenth century, slave wages were little more than doubled, for these were of course controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and fears of what the distant future might bring but by the sober prospect of the work at hand.

On the whole, whereas the plantation system cherished slavery as a wellnigh fundamental condition, town industry could tolerate it only by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive to the sharply distinctive urban needs.