P.F. WILLERT Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence Zenith of Florentine Glory (A.D. 1469)

You may rest assured that for a few days, while sailing through the torrid zone, we saw four shadows of the sun, as the sun appeared in the zenith to us at midday.

While Chaucer's travels in Italy; and his early contact with this new influence are reflected in his work, yet the Renaissance did not reach its zenith in England until the time of Shakespeare.

The great luminary showed himself well above the northern horizon; and though his circuit described an arch that did not promise soon to bring him near the zenith at meridian, it was a circuit that seemed about to enclose Sealer's Land, by carrying the orb of day so far south, morning and evening, as to give it an air of travelling round the spot.

Founded A.D. 695, Shiráz reached its zenith under Kerim Khan in the middle of the eighteenth century, since when it has slowly but steadily declined to its present condition.

Thick clouds, of a horrible form, swept along the zenith with the swiftness of birds, while others appeared motionless as rocks.

All his past life seemed to be symbolized by the building-up and breaking-down of those fluctuating shapes, which incalculable wind-currents perpetually shifted and remodelled or swept from the zenith like a pinch of dust.

The Indians, who call this phenomenon Jebiug nemeiddewaud, or dancing spirits, describe it as radiating balls, streams of fire or falling stars from the zenith into the lake.

Thy sun at its zenith on earth ceased to shine, But beams with new lustre in regions divine; For ages eternal 't will ever shine on Still gath'ring new splendor from God's dazzling throne.

"This anecdote has been told and told again, but never truly; and was likewise brought forward in the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' as a joke; but it was no joke; and the plain, simple truth of the matter was thus: It chanced one night, when I was there, that there was a resplendent arch across the zenith from the one horizon to the other, of something like the aurora borealis, but much brighter.

Rome's experiment is sometimes called Graeco-Roman civilization because Greece and Italy were close geographical neighbors and also because Greek culture, which reached its zenith by 500 B.C. and was closely paralleled by the rise of Roman culture, had a profound effect in determining the total character of Roman civilization.

An irregular cloud, slender at the base, spreading on top, towered to mid zenith above the forest.