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Sceptre   Listen
noun
Sceptre, Scepter  n.  
1.
A staff or baton borne by a sovereign, as a ceremonial badge or emblem of authority; a royal mace. "And the king held out Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand."
2.
Hence, royal or imperial power or authority; sovereignty; as, to assume the scepter. "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sceptre" Quotes from Famous Books



... lost to power; The ruins of ten thousand thrones thy throne; Thy crown and sceptre the dismantled tower, A place of kings, yet left to be unknown, Now with triumphing ivy overgrown— Ivy oft plucked on Victory's brow to shine— That fades in crowns of kings, preferring stone; It only prospers where ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... a brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ... happy as Keats must have been when the fragment of 'Hyperion' broke from his frail life as thunder breaks from a summer-cloud. I was as a monarch swaying a sceptre that commanded both earth and heaven; a kingdom was mine-a kingdom of golden ether, peopled with shining shapes Protean,—alas! its gates are shut upon me now, and I shall ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... but it was true. Inside an hour the strongest fortifications in England had been destroyed, and ten first-class battleships and a cruiser had been sent to the bottom of the sea, and so at last her ancient sceptre was falling from the hand of the Sea Queen, and her long inviolate domain was threatened by the armed legions of those whose forefathers she had vanquished on many a stricken field by ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... pillars of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar of Russia's sceptre, which he afterwards flung ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sceptre, orb, or mystic toy Proclaims his godship, young and warm: He sits alone, a naked boy, Clad in the beauty of his form. Dark, solemn stars, of radiance mild, His eyes illume the golden shade, And sweetest lips that never smiled The finger ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... that, in my judgment, Sir Robert Peel in all his measures, since his last appointment has shown a wise moderation and conciliatory spirit, and an anxious desire for the true welfare of the vast Empire beneath the sway of Her Majesty's sceptre. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... I hold Nothing in fee and barony of the King. Whatever the Church owns—she holds it in Free and perpetual alms, unsubject to One earthly sceptre. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... departed; and after a while came to the same place King Creon, clad in his royal robes, and with his sceptre in his hand, and set forth his counsel to the elders who were assembled, how he had dealt with the two Princes according to their deserving, giving all honour to him that loved his country, and casting forth the other unburied. And he bade them take care that this ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... ensign of sovereignty borne in the hand. It was originally a javelin without a head. Sceptres of the present time are splendidly decorated with jewellery. The annexed engraving represents two sceptres of the kings of England: the sceptre with the dove is of gold, three feet seven inches long; the circumference of the handle is three inches, and two inches and a quarter at the end of the staff; the pomel is decorated with a fillet of table diamonds and other precious stones; the mound at the top is enriched with ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... transported either from Athens or from a town of Phrygia, and was supposed to be the work of Phidias. The artist had represented the god of day, or, as it was afterward interpreted, the emperor Constantine himself, with a sceptre in his right hand, the globe of the world in his left, and a crown of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... including, if you please, your homage and mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the Child, Who looks directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude, and raises His right hand to bless, while His left rests on the orb of empire. She and her Child ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... the characters of prominent men Manufacturers of phrases More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one Necessary to let men ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... hope were with thee at thy birth, But life soon bowed thy tender form to earth, And hope forsook thee in thy hour of need. Come, for thy Saviour had His pains divine; Come, for His brow was crowned with thorns like thine, His sceptre ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... shrines. Marshals kept the lines steady, and four were in constant attendance on a gorgeous carriage, all gilt and carving (the heirloom of the parish), in which reclined the figure of a handsome lad, impersonating John the Baptist, with long golden hair, dressed in rich robes and skins— a sceptre in his hand, a snowy lamb at his feet. The rude symbolism was softened and toned to an almost poetical refinement, and gave to the harmless revels ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... at once against Eretria and Athens. And Hippias, now broken in frame, advanced in age [273], and after an exile of twenty years, accompanied the Persian army—sanguine of success, and grasping, at the verge of life the shadow of his former sceptre. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... which she adjusted around Hal's broad shoulders. It was trimmed with white fur, and was caught up on one shoulder, toga fashion, with a spray of holly. A massive gilt pasteboard crown she put on his head, and gave him a long wand or sceptre covered with gilt paper and topped with a ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... of a sanguine character, but cool and calculating, though occasionally rash. Yet, all things considered, though firm and sometimes positive in opinion, this royal native, if he live to mount the throne, will sway the sceptre of these realms in moderation and justice, and be a pious and benevolent man, and a merciful sovereign.' Fortunately, the time has long since passed when swaying the sceptre of these realms had any but a ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... father, or succeeded on the death of his father. For he would not trust the natives to nominate or elect, knowing the evil he had done, and the force he had used towards them. Manco Ccapac being now on the point of death, he left the bird indi enclosed in its cage, the tupac-yauri[57] or sceptre, the napa and the suntur-paucar the insignia of a prince, [though tyrant,] to his son Sinchi Rocca that he might take his place, [and this without the consent or election of any ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... that an English force appeared before the walls of Delhi. For four weeks the mutineers had been left in undisturbed possession of the city, a possession which was of incalculable advantage to them by adding to their moral strength the prestige of a name which has always been associated with the sceptre of Indian empire. The masters of Delhi are the masters not only of a city, but of a deeply rooted tradition of supremacy. The delay had told. Almost every day in the latter half of May was marked by a new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... are clamoring! They would see their chief in the attire of the old caliphs—the crown and sceptre await to be borne anew by a branch of the ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg

... redeeming magic the fettered colony became a daring free Republic. Abhor the sword and stigmatize the sword? No; for it scourged the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium back into their own phlegmatic swamps, and knocked their flag, and laws, and sceptre, and bayonets into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt. I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern itself, not in this Hall, but upon the ramparts of Antwerp. I learned the first article ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... When there are no more heathen—when the whole world can read the will of God by direct intuition, as though it were written in letters of fire across the firmament—then, indeed, the ballot-box may join the throne, sceptre and crown in the historical museum. But even the robust optimism of the gottestrunken Mr. Wells can scarcely conceive this millennium to be at hand. So that in the meantime it seems unwise to speak slightingly of ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... overtook a heavy laden waggon, and they were obliged to go step by step behind it, whilst, enjoying the gentleman's impatience much, and the postilion's sulkiness more, the waggoner, in his embroidered frock, walked in state, with his long sceptre ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... moon, or any star, To guide your iron footsteps as ye go; But I, your king, will marshal you to flow From shore to shore. Then bring my car of shell, That I may ride before you terrible; And bring my sceptre of the amber weed, And Agathe, my virgin bride, shall lead Your summer hosts, when these are ambling low, In azure and in ermine, to and fro." He said, and madly, with his wasted hand, Swept o'er the tuneless ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... others have winged Cupids bearing torches and bestriding dolphins, the idea being of a voyage to the Islands of the Blest. A panel shows Bacchanalian Cupids; one desires to drink, one is drinking from a crater, another, supported away, inebriated; the robed master of the feast bears a sceptre and is playing the Pan-pipes. Another relief represents a banquet in a triclinium. One man sounds a double pipe, another carries food to the guests, one of whom is singing an obscene song, which disgusts the women, who make the sign of displeasure at him. In a relief ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... white, and now she covered it with both her hands and began to cry. The picture was one of a fine-looking lady and a little girl of, it might be, seven or eight years. Not Rita and her mother, surely, for the lady wore a coronet upon her head and carried a sceptre in her hand; but the little girl looked very much as Rita must have looked at her age. It was a picture of some Spanish princess and her daughter, but like many pictures of such people that are printed, it would have served as well for a portrait of almost anybody else—particularly, as ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... Hereditary possessions, with all the tenacity of petty German princes in the midst of the Empire. Wolfert was the last of the line, and succeeded to the patriarchal bench at the door, under the family tree, and swayed the sceptre of his fathers, a kind of rural potentate in the midst of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... more, but e'en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks And does the meanest chares. It were for me To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; To tell them that this world did equal theirs Till they ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... that all the griefs and joys, Which now torment, which now beguile, Are children's hurts, and children's toys, Scarce worthy of one bitter smile. Here learn that pulpit, throne, and press, Sword, sceptre, lyre, alike are frail, That science is a blind man's guess, And ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Minos called these pale, frightened youths and sobbing maidens to his footstool, gave them each a poke in the ribs with his sceptre (to try whether they were in good flesh or no), and dismissed them with a nod to his guards. But when his eyes rested on Theseus, the king looked at him more attentively, because his face was ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Hrabanus Maurus, Notker Teutonicus; nor among the knights,—Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and their patrons, Frederick II., Hermann von Thueringen, and Leopold of Austria. The intellectual sceptre of Germany was wielded by a new nobility,—a nobility that had risen from the ranks, like the priests and the knights, but which, for a time at least, kept itself from becoming a caste, and from cutting away those roots through which it imbibed ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... angels." Slavery drags him down among brutes. (2.) "And hast crowned him with glory and honor." Slavery tears off his crown, and puts on a yoke. (3.) "Thou madest him to have dominion OVER the works of thy hands." Slavery breaks the sceptre, and casts him down among those works—yea beneath them. (4.) "Thou hast put all things under his feet." Slavery puts HIM under the feet of an "owner." Who, but an impious scorner, dares thus strive with his Maker, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... sceptre, crown and ball. You are my sceptre, crown and all, For all his robes of royal silk. More fair your skin, as white as milk. And it's O! sweet, sweet, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... explained it by saying that "the Christians believed in three gods and one God, and that made four." But there is no doubt he perfectly comprehended that the drift of the discourse was to persuade him to resign his sceptre and acknowledge ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... disgraceful homage before his wife; the gaunt figure of the stern Florentine trembled at the footsteps of the light Beatrice; the sister of Honorius, from the throne of half the world, saluted the sister of Theodosius, grasping the sceptre of the other half in her slender fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was whimsically ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... work was done on opening day. Miss Woodhull, stately and austere sat in her office directing her staff with the air of an empress. One of the old girls declared that all she lacked was a crown and sceptre, and the new ones who entered that office to be registered, "tagged" the above mentioned girl called it, came out of it feeling at least three inches shorter than when they entered. During her reign in Leslie Manor, Miss Woodhull had grown much stouter ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... relying in the dark, to exclaim, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!" Blessed Jesus! to thee are committed the reins of this universal empire. The same hand that was once nailed to the cross, is now wielding the sceptre on the throne,—"all power given unto thee in heaven and in earth." How can I doubt the wisdom, and faithfulness, and love, of the most mysterious earthly dealing, when I know that the Roll of Providence is thus ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff

... a formal throne as the Emperor's delegate had sat: the provincial delegate of the Emperor. On official occasions he would wear the official Roman garments: the orb and the sceptre were already his symbols (we may presume) as they had been those of the Emperor and the Emperor's local subordinates before him. But in two points this central official differed from the old local Governor ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... southward, pretty Little Russian girls took the place of the plainer-featured Great Russian maidens. Familiar plants caught our eyes. Mulleins—"imperial sceptre" is the pretty Russian name—began to do sentinel duty along the roadside; sumach appeared in the thickets of the forests, where the graceful cut-leaved birch of the north was rare. The Lombardy poplar, the favorite of the Little Russian poets, reared its dark columns in solitary state. At last, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... recognized saint. It must especially be realized that while this kind of glory was the highest, it was also in a sense the lowest. The materials of it were almost the same as those of labour and domesticity: it did not need the sword or sceptre, but rather the staff or spade. It was the ambition of poverty. All this must be approximately visualized before we catch a glimpse of the great effects of the story which lay behind ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... Canterbury after his return from captivity. He passed the night before at S. Swithun's Priory, and was brought thence in the morning to the Cathedral "clothed in his royal robes, with the crown upon his head, holding in his right hand a royal sceptre which terminated in a cross, and in his left hand a golden wand with a figure of a dove at the top of it, ... being conducted on the right hand by his chancellor, the Bishop of Ely, and on the left by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. These are examples of Reason's momentary grasp of the sceptre; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power. The difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, vespertina cognitio, but ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Sceptre and the Sword, Retired to the Shades of Private Life. A Spectacle So New and So Sublime Was Contemplated With the Profoundest ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... one there, on this side and that; {137} but it is always twisting, in its own inner mind and force; hence it is especially proper to use the word 'stem' of it—[Greek: stemma], a twined wreath; properly, twined round a staff, or sceptre: therefore, learn at once by heart these lines in ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... on the last day of January Charles Edward had passed away peacefully in the arms of the Duchess Charlotte; and that the drink-soiled broken body, from which she must so often have recoiled in disgust and terror, had been laid out, with the sad mock royalty of a gilt wooden sceptre and pinchbeck crown, in state in the cathedral of Frascati; when, I say, the news reached Paris, this woman, so confident of having been in the right, and who had written so frankly that if she did not hate her husband it was from mere Christian charity and the duty of forgiveness, felt ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Protestants nor reformed the Church. The settlement of the Reformation was an acknowledgment of defeat, and the result of his career was that religious division had become the law of his empire. Therefore, when the Peace of Religion was concluded, Charles V laid down the sceptre. The new empire, based on religious equality, he gave to his brother. It was only by detaching it from his hereditary dominions that he could reconstruct what had crumbled to pieces in his hands. Then he rebuilt the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... England. It was indeed and, alas! a novelty. How many, counting back to the day when the country first knew a ruler, could be so described? Had not the sceptre of England passed, almost without exception, down a line of usurpers, murderers, robbers, and butchers, and was it not a fact that the few kings who had not been knaves ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... willing to take his life for a deed of defence, orders him to go to Bagdad, to slay the favorite, sitting to the left of the Calif, and to wed the Calif's daughter Rezia. Puck resolves to make this pair suit his ends. He tells Oberon the above-mentioned story, and by means of his lily-sceptre shows Hueon and Rezia to him. At the same-time these two behold each other in a vision, so that when they awake both ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... spake Whispering; and he, his oracles explored, Shivering made answer, 'From a land accursed, O King, that shadow sweeps; therein, this hour, By sinful men sinless God's Son is slain.' Then Ulster's king, down-dashing sceptre and crown, Rose, clamouring, 'Sinless! shall the sinless die?' And madness fell on him; and down that steep He rushed whereon the Emanian Palace stood, And reached the grove, Lambraidhe, with two swords, The ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... done,—thrice has constant fortune favoured the brace of prebendaries, ere the archdeacon rouses himself to the battle; but at the fourth assault he pins to the earth a prostrate king, laying low his crown and sceptre, bushy beard, and lowering ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... mind; to him it seemed natural that at the consummation of all things Christ's Vicar should dwell at Nazareth where His King had come on earth—and that the Armageddon of the Divine John should be within sight of the scene where Christ had first taken His earthly sceptre and should take it again. After all, it would not be the first battle that Megiddo had seen. Israel and Amalek had met here; Israel and Assyria; Sesostris had ridden here and Sennacherib. Christian and Turk had contended here, like Michael and Satan, over the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... country after the accession of Kambar is as obscure as during the Hindu dynasty. It would appear, however, that the sceptre was quietly transmitted to Abdulla Khan, the fourth in descent from Kambar, who, being an intrepid and ambitious soldier, turned his thoughts towards the conquest of Kach Gandava, then held by different petty chiefs under the authority of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... suffrage of the generals and of the army committed the sceptre of the Roman empire to the hands of Valentinian, his reputation in arms, his military skill and experience, and his rigid attachment to the forms, as well as spirit, of ancient discipline, were the principal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... had never happened to any one but Alexander the Great, upon his sacrificing at the same altars. And next night he dreamt that he saw his son under a more than human appearance, with thunder and a sceptre, and the other insignia of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, having on his head a radiant crown, mounted upon a chariot decked with laurel, and drawn by six pair of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... Psal. ii. 6, lxxxix. 14, xlv. 6, Heb. i. 8. And O! this throne is a comfortable throne. Mercy and truth go before the face of the king to welcome and entertain miserable sinners, and to make access to them. And from this throne Jesus Christ holds out the sceptre of the gospel, to invite sinners, self-condemned sinners, to come to him alone, who hath gotten all final judgment committed to him, that he may give eternal life "to whom he will," John v. 21, 22. O! that is a sweet and ample commission given to our friend and brother, Jesus Christ,—power ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... lady, as she had a full right to be called if she cared for the definition, arrested all the local attention when she emerged into the summer-evening light with that diadem-and-sceptre bearing—many people for reasons of heredity discovering such graces only in those whose vestibules are lined with ancestral mail, forgetting that a bear may be taught to dance. While this air of hers lasted, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... ruffle of law or religion; the babe brought to church by his mother and kindred to have the priest-tailor sew on his new garment the ruffle of baptism; the soldier in his gaudy uniform; the king in his ermine with a crown and sceptre appended; the Nabob of Ind in his gorgeous and multi-colored robes; and the Papuan with horns in his nostrils and rings in his ears: see ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... duty on his sugar, salt and iron, and now you make him pay the postage. You will break up one half of the smaller offices, you will in ten years make the post-office the greatest organ of corruption the country has ever seen, and the man who wields its patronage can command the sceptre. By throwing it on the treasury, you destroy the responsibility of the head of the department, and in ten years you will have it cost you ten ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... take me there, that I am no Roman patriot,—I! I, who am of the House of Austria, that House that wears the crown of the Caesars, those Caesars who swayed the very imperial sceptre, who trailed the very imperial purple of old Rome! I endure the cause because it is yours. I beseech you to be faithful to it; because I should despise you, if for any woman you swerved from an object that had previously been with you holier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... Fernanda, the treasure, had kept the house in working order, and now that she had abdicated, her sceptre lay in the dust—in every sense of the word. Was it her, Sophy's, duty to raise it? She noticed quantities of litter and cobwebs in the drawing-room, but there were no flowers or knick-knacks; ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... sways his despotic sceptre over so numerous a population as this fell destroyer, in his unseen lurking places, "drinking up the very fountains of human life." But when will the sons of men learn to think? with all the blight ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... supernatural machinery of this romance, it is Cabalistical and correct. From the Spirits of the Tombs to the sceptre of Solomon, authority may be found in the traditions of the Hebrews for the introduction ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... crowns, ball, and sceptre were put together in the corner of the dell, and then the king and the queen were ready for a good game of play with the rest ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... procession neared the throne, Ferris, with his long gold sceptre, struck an attitude on one side, and Van Reypen, who carried the crown on a white satin cushion, took his place on ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... Florida to the Pole, outstretched in savage slumber along the sea, the stern domain of Nature,—or, to adopt the ready solution of the Jesuits, a realm of the powers of night, blasted beneath the sceptre of hell. On the banks of James River was a nest of woe-begone Englishmen, a handful of Dutch fur-traders at the mouth of the Hudson, and a few shivering Frenchmen among the snow-drifts of Acadia; while deep within the wild monotony of desolation, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... memory. What profits it that public executions Have ceased, that we no longer sing in public Hymns to Christ Jesus on the field of blood; That we no more are burnt in public places, Or that the tsar no longer with his sceptre Rakes in the ashes? Is there any safety In our poor life? Each day disgrace awaits us; The dungeon or Siberia, cowl or fetters, And then in some deaf nook a starving death, Or else the halter. Where are the most ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin

... will come; sceptre, uniforms, stars and courtiers all gone; still the world will not know half of the bitter wrongs of Arras. And spring will bring a new time and cover the trenches with green, and the pigeons will ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... principal lyric poet of this period. His works betray a tendency to escape from the bondage of his age, and open a new spring-time in Swedish poetry. For his own fame, and that of his age, his early death was a serious loss. Leopold (1756-1829) continued to sway the literary sceptre, after the death of Kellgren, for the remainder of the century. He is best known by his dramas and miscellaneous poems. His plays have the faults that belong to his school, but many of his poems abound with striking thoughts, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... and beautiful again. Let me call back to the desolate gardens the fair forms that are gone, and their soft voices blessing you will bring to your breast a never failing joy. Cast by your icy crown and sceptre, and let the sunlight of love fall softly ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... other influential persons. The building proposed to be called 'The Light of all Nations,' was to consist of a Doric column one hundred and twenty-five feet high supporting a lantern twelve feet in diameter, surmounted by a colossal statue of the Queen, her sceptre being the point of a lightning-conductor. This column was to rise from a base one hundred feet in height, and fifty in diameter, to be formed by a caisson composed of cast-iron plates bolted together: the part under water was to be divided into four pyramidal chambers, opening into and ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... was dissolved A.D. 1558, by Henry 8th. The common sigillum, or chapter seal, was in the reign of Henry 4th, a representation of the blessed Virgin, in a sitting posture, with the infant Christ on her left knee, and in her right hand a sceptre. The arms of this abbey were, azure a chevron argent, between three ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye

... contents of the letter were not new to him, and did not touch so tender a chord as that which thrilled and quivered in Arthur's heart as he listened to the words of his sweet child-wife, the golden haired Nina. Though dead she was all powerful yet, and Nina, from her grave, swayed a mightier sceptre than Nina living could ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... kind which was never seen before by the Abnakis, but the ears of which bent over like the wings of a hawk hovering over his prey, or or a bird settling upon its perch. The same fair hand carried the instrument wherewith it was reaped. The other hand bore a huge shell and a three-forked sceptre, emblems of her dominion upon the element, which supported the cloud upon which she came. Upon her breast she wore a shield, on which was painted the likeness of two animals, one of them wearing a shaggy mane, and both looking ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... acknowledge yourself in the government of your kingdom to be the minister of God. For where the glory of God is not made the end of the government, it is not a legitimate sovereignty, but a usurpation. And he is deceived who expects lasting prosperity in that kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God, that is, his holy word; for that heavenly oracle cannot fail, which declares that "where there is no vision, the people perish,"[1] Nor should you be seduced from this pursuit by a contempt of our meanness. We are fully conscious to ourselves how very mean and abject we are, being miserable ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... air, To thee no verdant altars rear; But, in their cells and vaults obscene, Present a sacrifice unclean; From whence unsavoury vapours rose, Offensive to thy nicer nose. Ah! who, in our degenerate days, As nature prompts, his offering pays? Here nature never difference made Between the sceptre and the spade. Ye great ones, why will ye disdain To pay your tribute on the plain? Why will you place in lazy pride Your altars near your couches' side: When from the homeliest earthen ware Are sent up offerings more sincere, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... to break thick heads with his golden sceptre, "but ordinary people have neither your intellect nor your charity. No one heeds our sorrows, our toil is unrecognized. The gold-digger working in the mine does not labor as we to wrest metaphors from the heart of the most ungrateful of all languages. If this is poetry—to give ideas ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... interest in the animal kingdom (and I am very sorry for those who do not) should force the Lion to take off the crown, put down the sceptre, and surrender the throne to the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... divine treasures which the fugitive Greeks brought back to her bosom; heaven revealed its laws to her; the daring of her children discovered a new hemisphere; she again became sovereign by the sceptre of thought, but this laurelled sceptre ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... whose hearts rested the destinies of the New World made this the centre of activity and rule upon the continent; they lived and acted here as Anglo-Saxon blood should live and act, wherever it bears its rightful sceptre; but now one walks here as through the splendid ruins of some buried Nineveh, and emerges to find the very sunlight sad, as it reveals those who garnish the sepulchres of their ancestors with one hand, whilst with the other they stone and destroy the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... the chance to increase in vigour which would build belief in life and living, in a future, was needed as breath and air are needed—even such an one as in the past would have wielded a sort of unearned sceptre as a Head of the House of Coombe. A man born a blacksmith, if he were of like quality, would meet equally the world's needs, but each would be doing in his way his part of that work which it seemed to-day only demigod ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... throne of clouds, as Dulness look'd On her foggy and favour'd nation, She sleepily nodded her poppy-crown'd head, And gently waved her sceptre of lead, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... And for our bodies, fear not. There is such a gale rising in England as will blow out this petty breeze. A question of rights, some arrows shot, a fire and lives lost—what of that when it agitates betwixt powers temporal and spiritual, and which of them shall hold the sceptre in this mighty Britain? Martin, I have a mission for you that may lead you to a bishopric ere all is done, for that's your mind and aim, and if you would put off your doubts and moodiness you've got the brain to rule. That ship, the Great Yarmouth, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Such ill-tim'd gravity, such serious folly, Might well befit the solitary student, Th' unpractis'd dervis, or sequester'd faquir. Know'st thou not yet, when love invades the soul, That all her faculties receive his chains? That reason gives her sceptre to his hand, Or only struggles to be more enslav'd? Aspasia, who can look upon thy beauties? Who hear thee speak, and not abandon reason? Reason! the hoary dotard's dull directress, That loses all, because she hazards nothing! Reason! the tim'rous ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... of living stone, The tyrant AEolus, from his airy throne, With power imperial curbs the struggling winds, And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds: High in his hall the undaunted monarch stands, And shakes his sceptre, and their rage commands: Which did he not, their unresisted sway Would sweep the world before them in their way; Earth, air, and seas, through empty space would roll, And heaven would fly before the driving soul. ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... justitiae. The crown, if every other resource has failed the prisoner, has always the power of exercising the most amiable of its prerogatives. Though the sovereign herself condemns no man, "the great operation of her sceptre is mercy," and the chief magistrate, in the words of Sir William Blackstone, "holding a court of equity in his own breast, to soften the rigour of the general law, in such criminal cases as merit an exemption from punishment," is ever at liberty to grant a free, unconditional, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... peninsula, developed a slower but more lasting strength. Political organization seems to have been its forte, and it had set its own house in some sort of order before it was summoned by Ecgberht to assume the lead in English politics. From that day to this the sceptre has remained in his house without ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... approached M. Papirius, and began reverently to stroke his long white beard. Papirius was a minister of the gods, and looked on this touch of a barbarian hand as profanation. With an impulse of anger he struck the Gaul on the head with his ivory sceptre. Instantly the barbarian, breaking into rage, cut him down with his sword. This put an end to the feeling of awe. All the old men were attacked and slain, their vow ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... with the pedantic Socialism of Prussia. Understanding his countrymen by instinct, he did not make a parade of efficiency; for the English dislike the symbols of dictatorship much more than dictatorship. They hate the crown and sceptre of the tyrant much more than his tyranny. They have a national tradition which allows of far too much inequality so long as it is softened with a certain camaraderie, and in which even snobs only remember the coronet ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... Present—with portentous calm, Nature claims its chiefest palm; Future—ah! she trembles there, Nature quivers in despair. When the master of the scene, From the cloud-work of serene Asks her long deputed power— Takes her sceptre—bids her cower— Strips her of her ancient robe, She, who once bestrode the globe— Flings around his flaming path Crescents of destructive wrath; Tramples earth, and rolls in fire Forth the thunders of his ire. Nature sinks, no more to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various

... garrison was maintained. Within, there was an armoury, the beginning of the splendid collection which is now shown: there was a Mint for the coining of money: there were collections of tapestry, saddles, bed furniture and robes belonging to the Crown: here were kept the Crown and sceptre and insignia: here was the Royal menagerie. Here were the rooms reserved for state criminals. It was no longer the Royal Palace but the sovereign sometimes occupied the Tower. James the First was here, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... My most redoubted father, It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe: And let us do it with no show of fear; No, with no more than if we heard that England Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance: For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd, Her sceptre so fantastically borne By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, That fear attends ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... which represent the Virgin Mary kneeling before the celestial throne, while the PADRE ETERNO or the MESSIAH extends his hand or his sceptre towards her, are generally misunderstood. They do not represent, the Assumption, nor yet the reception of Mary in Heaven, as is usually supposed; but the election or predestination of Mary as the immaculate vehicle or tabernacle of human redemption—the earthly parent of the divine ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... exercise of justice goes also the manner of it. "The whole earth," and the "breath of the mouth," correspond with one another.—In the words "with the rod of His mouth," a tacit antithesis lies at the foundation. As kings strike with the sceptre, so He smiteth with His mouth.—[Hebrew: wbT], the ensign of royal dignity, is the symbol of the whole earthly power, which, being external and exercised by external means, must needs be limited, and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the batoon of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings—a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne—our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly-expected Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... over-awed by the pomp and splendour of royal power. The symbols of greatness, a throne, a sceptre, a purple robe, a crown, a fillet, these were sacred in their sight. These symbols, and the respect which they inspired, led them to reverence the venerable man whom they beheld adorned with them; without soldiers and without threats, he spoke and was obeyed. [Footnote: The Roman Catholic ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... much alike, these corpses. But here is one that is different. Look at the rich costume in which it is dressed. Look at its bejewelled fingers. There is no crown upon its brow. There is no sceptre in that nerveless hand. Yet it is easy to guess that this corpse, this "pocket that death has turned inside out and emptied" was once a king. Yes, this is the body of Pharaoh, the one time ruler of Egypt. But here he lies to-day among the meanest of his ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... crown and ball. You are my sceptre, crown and all, For all his robes of royal silk. More fair your skin, as white as milk. And it's O! sweet, sweet, and ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... taught the men the arts of agriculture; and his wife, Mama Oello (mama, meaning mother), initiating her own sex in the mysteries of weaving and spinning. The wise policy which regulated the conduct of the first Incas (kings, or lords), was followed by their successors, and under their mild sceptre a community gradually extended itself along the surface of the broad table-land, which asserted its superiority over ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... men of lore define The kingly state as masculine, Paiseant, martial bold and strong, The stay of right, the scourge of wrong; Hence those that England's sceptre wield, Must buckle on broad sword and shield, And o'er the land, and o'er the sea, Maintain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various

... formed of four rows of pearls interlaced with diamond leaves, with many large brilliants, one alone weighing one hundred and forty-nine grains. The girdle was a gold band, enriched with thirty-nine pink gems. The Emperor's sceptre had been made by Odiot; it was of solid silver, enlaced by a gold serpent, and surmounted by a globe on which was a miniature figure of Charlemagne seated. The hand of justice, the crown, and the sword came from ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... did a great many naughty things, there was no salvation so far as I had learned. My innumerable shortcomings and misdemeanors were to my mind so many pimples that marked my terrible depravity; and I never had the remotest idea of God except that he was a sovereign who sat with a sceptre in his hand and had his eye on me, and said: 'I see you, and I am after you.' So I used to live in perpetual fear and dread, and often I wished myself dead. I tried to submit and lay down the weapons of my rebellion, I tried to surrender everything; but it did not seem to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... clasped before her, close to the water's brim, and looked over the shining surface. She had never yet squarely faced her difficulties. Her sceptre was slipping from her; her realm, usurped at first, hers by sufferance first, but then by love of them she ruled, could hold her but a little while more. The shadow of coming eclipse made her eyes grow sombre. Doubt of the unknown made lax ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... Scotland was broken at her great loss. And well might she mourn. The sceptre which the great Wizard of the North had so long held was broken, and no successor has yet risen to uphold the fame of Auld Scotia. Nor will a successor arise. No hand like his will ever touch the harp of his ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... the dinner given by Sefton, who took the whole party in his omnibus, and his great open carriage; Talleyrand, Madame de Dino, Standish, Neumann, and the Molyneux family; dined in a room called 'the Apollo' at the Crown and Sceptre. I thought we should never get Talleyrand up two narrow perpendicular staircases, but he sidles and wriggles himself somehow into every place he pleases. A capital dinner, tolerably pleasant, and a divine evening. Went afterwards to the 'Travellers,' and played at whist, and read the new edition ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... always been to take all, to give back nothing, to constantly demand more, to begrudge others everything. Only where the New World is concerned has England, conscious of her own weakness, become less grasping, since Benjamin Franklin "wrested the sceptre from the tyrants," since the small colonies that fought so valiantly for their liberty rose to form the greatest ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... them at one mouthful; his words sound in their ears like dreadful thunder. He holds in contempt his enemies and their equipage, and demands that a hero be sent out to him from their camp; this combat is to show whose shoulders shall bear the yoke of bondage. By this means he imagines that the sceptre will soon pass from the Israelites to the Philistines. But a miracle is about to happen! When courage fails all the heroes of Israel, when the giant has only to show himself, to cause them to flee, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... impossible. Nero may be followed by another attempt at a Republic, but if any individual is to succeed him it must be a prince. Mere personal distinction, at least such as is within the bounds of real possibility, will not give the sceptre of France. It will be seized by no one who cannot pretend to an ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... dominions most thickly populated with generations of fine ships and hardy men. Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits have been performed there, within the very stronghold of his sway. The best sailors in the world have been born and bred under the shadow of his sceptre, learning to manage their ships with skill and audacity before the steps of his stormy throne. Reckless adventurers, toiling fishermen, admirals as wise and brave as the world has ever known, have waited upon the signs of his westerly sky. Fleets of victorious ships have hung upon his breath. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... disclosed a crown, a sceptre and a jeweled sword. Before them on the cushion also lay the grand badge of the Order of the Lion with a fine ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... of that mirth Which shall the hearts of all possess, When o'er a recreated earth Christ's sceptre reigns in righteousness. ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... Turin, on which the figures are destroyed; next, several fragmentary colossi of Rameses II, and in particular two gigantic upright figures, dedicated by this king, of Ptah, the god of Memphis, enshrouded in mummy-wrappings and holding a sceptre in both hands; lastly, some isolated figures, arranged in a court or a chamber. The Page 104 importance of this discovery, said Prof. Maspero, will be realised when we bear in mind that we possess no divine image ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... the natural organ of humanity, as opposed to the idea of the state as an artificial organisation: "Nothing seems to be so opposed to the purpose of government as an unnatural extension of territory of a state and a wild confusion of holding different races and nations under the sway of a single sceptre." It was this humanitarian philosophy recognising the natural rights of all nations, great or small, to freedom which inspired the first Czech regenerators such ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... to protest. Artifice must queen it once more in the town, and so, if there be any whose hearts chafe at her return, let them not say, 'We have come into evil times,' and be all for resistance, reformation, or angry cavilling. For did the king's sceptre send the sea retrograde, or the wand of the sorcerer avail to turn the sun from its old course? And what man or what number of men ever stayed that inexorable process by which the cities of this world grow, are very strong, fail, and grow again? Indeed, indeed, there is charm in every period, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... people. Now it was one of the laws of the palace that no one should approach the king in the inner court unless he had been previously called; the penalty for not obeying this law being death, unless the king should hold out the golden sceptre to the offender so that he might live. Esther knew the danger of approaching the king uncalled for, but she bade Mordecai to gather the Jews so that they might spend three days in fasting and prayer, while ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous

... in thine eyes that our King doth offer thee mercy, and that after so many provocations? Yea, he still holdeth out his golden sceptre to thee, and will not yet suffer his gate to be shut against thee: wilt thou provoke him to do it? If so, consider of what I say; to thee it is opened no more for ever. If thou sayest thou shalt not see him, yet judgment is before him; therefore trust ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... and sceptre. Give us up your souls That our long fingers wake them verily Like dulcimers and citherns and violes; Or at the burning disk of ecstasy Impose rare sigils on ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... painting for a time, and take my rest." "And so would I do, certainly," replied Giotto, "were I the King of Naples." One day the King to amuse himself, desired Giotto to paint his kingdom. The painter drew an ass carrying a packsaddle loaded with a crown and sceptre, while a similar saddle, also bearing the ensigns of royalty, lay at his feet; these last were all new, and the ass scented them, with an eager desire to change them for those he bore. "What does this signify, Giotto?" enquired the King. "Such is thy kingdom," replied Giotto, "and such ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... Universe's master ere were earthly things begun; When his mandate all created, Ruler was the name he won; And alone He'll rule tremendous when all things are past and gone; He no equal has, nor consort, He the singular and lone Has no end and no beginning, His the sceptre, might, and throne; He's my God and living Saviour, rock to which in need I run; He's my banner and my refuge, fount of weal when call'd upon; In his hand I place my spirit, at nightfall and rise of sun, And therewith my body also;—God's my ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... "Treatise on the Passions," relates the following pleasing anecdote of Robert, one of the greatest monarchs that ever swayed the sceptre of France. Having once surprised a rogue who had cut away the half of his mantle, he took no other notice of the offence than by saying mildly to him, "Save thyself, sinner, and leave the rest for another who ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... {87a} I see thine ancient race Driv'n from their fathers' realm, to make the rocks their dwelling place! I see from Uthyr's {87b} kingdom the sceptre pass away, And many a line of bards and chiefs, and princely ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... and sceptre, &c., of the Scottish kings. Well, come," said he, as he read the answer in Ellen's face, "we will go; but first let ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... and porticoes, by which had rolled the ivory chariots of Marius and Caesar, had long mouldered into dust. The laurelled fasces—the golden eagles—the shouting legions—the captives and the pictured cities—were indeed wanting to his victorious procession. The sceptre had passed away from Rome. But she still retained the mightier influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the prouder reward of an intellectual triumph. To the man who had extended the dominion of her ancient language—who had erected the trophies ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... within a dungeon vast The sounding tempest and the struggling blast Bends to his sway and bridles them with chains. They, in the rock reverberant held fast, Moan at the doors. Here, throned aloft, he reigns; His sceptre calms ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... real marble and gold, with velvet covers and great golden tassels. Then the doors of the hall were opened, and there was the court in all its splendour, and his wife was sitting on a high throne of gold and diamonds, with a great crown of gold on her head, and a sceptre of pure gold and jewels in her hand, and on both sides of her stood her maids-in-waiting in a row, each of them always one ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... who have laid down their dignities before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves while still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the exercise of authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has most exposed them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize their popularity. It is their Achilles' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... saw herself an empress. It was simply impossible for her to realise that there were eyes which could still see the head-shawl, not the crown. Her one touch of dignity was grotesque—it consisted of extending her arm like a stiff sceptre, in moments of emphasis, and literally pointing her remarks with her forefinger. Sometimes she pointed to the ceiling, sometimes to the carpet, sometimes to the walls. This digital punctuation appeared to be not only superfluous but irrelevant, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... warriors"—he goes forth with their armies, and enables them to extend their dominions—he chases their enemies before them, causes opposition to cease, and brings them back with victory to their own countries. Besides this, he helps them to sway the sceptre of power, and to rule over their subjects with authority. It seems that, from observing the manifest agency of the material sun in stimulating all the functions of nature, the Chaldaeans came to the conclusion that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... by miracle. A true relic-worship set in. The superstition of the old Greek times reappeared; the times when the tools with which the Trojan horse was made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis, the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia, when the Tegeates could show the hide of the Calydonian boar and very many cities boasted their possession of the true palladium ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... and are backed by golden circlets. They are extravagantly clothed in garments which look as if they were agitated by a violent wind; they wear helmets and partial suits of armour, and hold in their right hands something between a monarch's sceptre and a priest's staff. They have goggle eyes and open mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One, painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink; another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea- green devil, an indigo blue monster tramples on ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... your hand with the sceptre, my god of darkness, command, and I shall obey!" said Victoria, gliding down on the sofa, crossing her arms on her breast, and looking up to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... is done, we realize that as Bryant expressed it of Truth, "the eternal years of God are hers," and she needs a good many centuries to recover her stolen sceptre. The triumph of truth follows battles in which there are many defeats that seem almost fatal. What is the loss of five centuries in geographic truth to the loss of a thousand years in astronomic science? It was for more than a thousand years that the heliocentric ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various

... Rumbold, and when her husband died she had of course to leave the Bank Buildings. As her income was somewhat straitened, she was obliged to take a small house, and she was now living next door to the 'Crown and Sceptre,' the principal inn in the town. There was then no fringe of villas to Fenmarket for retired quality; the private houses and shops were all mixed together, and Mrs Hopgood's cottage was squeezed in between the ironmonger's and the inn. It was very much lower than either of its ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... he to be dethroned, to whom should the sceptre and the crown be given? Lord Bacon had a kingly soul, capacious great thoughts, and high designs, but no one who has read his metrical translation of the Psalms of David will be troubled again with doubts whether he was the writer also of "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Lear." Compared with these ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... of peers, as fully as enjoyed by the peers of England, except the right and privilege of sitting in the house of lords, and the privileges depending thereon, and particularly the right of sitting upon the trials of peers: that the crown, sceptre, and sword of state, the records of parliament, and all other records, rolls, and registers whatsoever, should still remain as they were, within that part of the united kingdom called Scotland: that all laws and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... most frequent duty, and he had enjoyed the strange mixture of ancient terms of address and titles with the modern manners of the men themselves. It had interested him to watch Baron Barrat bring out the ancient crown and jewelled sceptre which had been the regalia of all the Kings of Messina since the Crusades and spread them out upon a wicker tea-table, from which Niccolas had just removed some empty coffee-cups, half filled with the ends of cigarettes, some yellow-backed novels, and a copy of the Paris Figaro. It was also ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... not pride, doth Fancy wield The sceptre of her gorgeous realm, Whose revelations overwhelm With ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Polynesian Ethnology contains the finest collection in existence of things illustrating the life and customs of Polynesia. Among other things, the visitor is shown the personal god of war of that sovereign whose grand-child was the last to hold the sceptre of the Kanakas. There are royal documents to prove that more than one thousand men have been beheaded before this grim-faced old idol. Here, too, is the famous robe of birds' feathers, made to please the fancy of this same grim old monarch. The feathers of which this strange, but really ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley

... tri-colour flag. In the afternoon there are sports; and in the evening continuous dancing in a large marquee. One of the chief sports of the afternoon is "Shooting at the Eagle" with a cross-bow, and trying to knock off the crown or sceptre from the effigy of a bird, crowned with an eagle and holding a sceptre, stuck up on the top of a high pole. The crown or the sceptre represents a high prize, and each feather struck off represents a prize of some ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... to meet the Spaniards, and invited them to go on board his canoe. "He was seated under a silk parasol which covered him entirely. In front of him were placed one of his sons who carried the royal sceptre, two men who had each a golden vase full of water for washing the king's hands, and two others holding small gilt boxes filled with betel." Then the Spaniards made the king come on board the vessels, where they showed him ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... this waving of wands and flaunting of uniforms, all this hedonistic desire to make the most of everything, there is something altogether quiet and splendid about the sober disdain with which this simple and courteous lady in a black dress left idle beside her the sceptre of a hundred tyrants. The heart of the whole nation warmed as it had never warmed for centuries at the thought of having in their midst a woman who cared nothing for her rights, and nothing for those fantastic duties which are more ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower; here is that crying back to the antique spirit that was leavening the middle-class of France which was about to claim dominion over the land and to step to the foot of the throne and usurp the sceptre and diadem of her ancient line of kings as the Third Estate; and to come to power with violent upheaval, wading to the throne through blood and terror. Here we see Vigee Le Brun, royalist, glorifying motherhood, ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall

... Malclos; Manuo, King of Mecca; Ibrahim, King of Seville; and Almanzor, King of Cordova. Then, marching to the city of Agen, he took it, and sent word to Charles he would give him sixty horse-load of gold, silver, and jewels, if he would acknowledge his right to the sceptre. But Charles returned this answer, "that he would acknowledge him no otherwise than by slaying him whenever it should be his chance to meet him ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... republics are divided into sections bearing such blasphemous titles as "Division of the Son of God," "Division of the Good Shepherd," "Division of the Holy Lancers of Death" and "Soldiers of the Blessed Heart of Mary." These are often placed under the sceptre of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... further conversation upon that and other topics, they arrived at the place of appointment, which was a hedge school-house; one of those where the master, generally an unmarried man, merely wields his sceptre during school-hours, leaving it open and uninhabited for the rest ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton



Words linked to "Sceptre" :   scepter, sovereignty, verge, reign, bauble, staff, wand



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