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More "Devastation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indignation the vexations which the jealous care of the pleasures of princes causes to be exercised on wretched peasants, forced to suffer the havoc made by game in their fields, without daring to take any other measure to prevent this devastation than that of making a noise, passing the night amongst the beans and peas, with drums, kettles and bells, to keep off the wild boars. As I had been a witness to the barbarous cruelty with which the Comte de Charolois treated these poor people, I had toward the end of Emilius exclaimed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fragments. The illustrated papers of that most Christian land which is overcome with the barbarity of sinking old hulks in a channel through which privateers were wont to escape our blockade furnished effective engravings "by our own artist" of the scene. Wholesale plunder and devastation of the chief city of the revolt followed. The rebellion was put down, and put down, we may say, without any unnecessary tenderness, any womanish weakness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... discourage others from following the example of Fossate, he was swift and terrible in his rejoinder. He seized the Citadel, and did by force what had been refused to his request. Setting at liberty the prisoners in durance there, he gave the territory over to devastation by fire ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... devastation caused me much vexation, I could not help laughing at their antics, and at the humble and submissive manner in which I had advanced to pay homage to them. I called my sons, who laughed heartily, and rallied "the prince of the monkeys" without mercy, for not knowing his own subjects. Fritz ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... the direction the shots came from, and they ripped the woods and blew up rocks and trees, and created the most terrific devastation. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... skirmish we set about burning the houses with great success, setting all in flames till we came to the church of St. Anne's, where we put up for this night, and were joined by Captain Ross, with about one hundred and twenty men of his company." The work of devastation continued the following day, until the forces reached Ange Gardien. August 28, Captain MacDonell with Captain Ross took post at Chateau Richer. September 1st, Chateau Richer was burned, and the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Seagrave, "the wreck and devastation which are here. See how the pride of man is humbled before the ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... everything before them. City, fortress, and battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls. Venice kept her brave colours streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice and Milan there was this unutterable devastation,—so sudden a change, so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the edge. The leader of the army of the Elamites had 2005 victory in battle, was master of the battlefield. The survivors of the weapons fled to seek fastnesses. The enemy seized upon gold, robbed with devastation the treasure-cities of the people, Sodoma and Gomorra. Then misery requited the great strongholds; the maidens, 2010 wives, and widows, deprived of friends, departed from their homesteads. The enemy led out with ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... intense and painful to all, for apart from the messenger of death and devastation which was about to be hurled at the Vampire, the Bellevite was in danger of being captured, and had a resolute enemy in front of her. The safety of the pet steamer depended upon the skill and judgment of a mere boy, though everybody on board had entire confidence ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... fears disturbed their security. Under the Spanish rule they were safe and happy. Then comes the gradual gathering of the cloud on the edges of their wilderness, its first fitful and irregular flashes, till it closes over their heads and bursts upon them in universal ruin and devastation. Their heroic resistance to the invasion of the United States troops follows, sublime from its very desperation. A more unequal contest was never fought. On one side one of the mightiest powers on earth, with endless stores of men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... across an especially big melon McNutt would lug it to the carriage and dump it in. And so angry and energetic was the little man that in a brief space the melon patch was a scene of awful devastation, and the surrey contained all the fruit that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... importance. In pursuance of the design of the Florentines and the king, the duke of Calabria, by the assistance of the Colonna family (the Orsini had joined the pope), plundered the country about Rome and committed great devastation; while the Florentines, with Niccolo Vitelli, besieged and took Citta di Castello, expelling Lorenzo Vitelli, who held it for the pope, and placing Niccolo ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the blighting touch of the vandal shells. The trees were shattered, the roads and paths torn up, the ponds filled with debris and the beautiful lawn pitted with craters, but in spite of all this devastation, the flowers and trees were making a brave fight to live. I could not but think, as I wandered through this place, how well the little flowers and the mighty oaks typified the spirit of France and Belgium. Sorely stricken they were—wounded unto death; but with that sublime ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to observe the sculptures on the monument,—the softly-flowing draperies which seemed more as if they had been moulded with hands than cut with a chisel. He then spoke in grievous terms of the recent devastation by the floods in Switzerland, which had also caused much damage in the plains of Lombardy. He thought that reservoirs ought to be constructed on the sides of the mountains, which would stay the force of the torrents, and hold the water until it could ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... far surpasses it in size. This latter volcano lies in a great central desert termed 'Odaxa-hraun' or 'Misdeed Lava Desert,' covering a space of 1200 square miles, and a most appropriate name it is, for the devastation caused by its last ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... into the mouth of a poor smith who refused to fasten fetters on the fallen minister words which, though probably never spoken, describe with sufficient accuracy Hubert's place in history: "Is he not that most faithful Hubert who so often saved England from the devastation of the foreigners and restored England to England?" Hubert was, as has been well said, perhaps the first minister since the Conquest who made patriotism a principle of policy, though it is easy in the light of later developments to read into his doings ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... when the Chinese captured the city through the treachery of its commander and turned the streets to rivers of blood. The Mohammedans were almost exterminated, and the ruined stone walls testify to the completeness of the Chinese devastation. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... picture of the Alps, there is presented to our view the devastation of solid rocks by agents natural to the surface of the earth; here is the degradation of mountains in the course of time. Of these ruins plains are formed below; and these plains are continually shifting their place, in affording materials ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... between the unfortunate settlement and the outside world had been cut off so that to send warnings to the communities below had been impossible. Considering the enormity of the catastrophe, it was miraculous that there had not been greater loss of life and wider spread devastation. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the boys had seen pictures in plenty of shell-smashed ruins, but the actuality of the awful devastation made them hold their breath for a moment. To think that such desolate piles of brick and mortar were once rows of human habitations, peopled with men, women and children very much like the men, women and children in their ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... villages there were living people left behind, some hundreds in Nesle and Roye, and, all told, some thousands. They had been driven in from the other villages burning around them, their own villages, whose devastation they wept to see. I met these people who had lived under German rule and talked with many of them—old women, wrinkled like dried-up apples, young women waxen of skin, hollow-eyed, with sharp cheekbones, old peasant farmers and the gamekeepers of French chateaux, and young boys and girls pinched ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... night, listening to the roaring of cannon, and figuring to ourselves the devastation that must have taken place, we find to our amusement that nothing decisive has occurred. The noise last night was mere skirmishing, and half the cannons were fired in the air. In the darkness there was no mark. But though the loss ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... allies, at the present moment, think themselves strong enough to refuse you a suspension of hostilities, what will they do, when they have their twelve hundred thousand soldiers on our territory? The dismemberment of France, the pillage and devastation of the capital, will be, perhaps, the fruit of the rash defence you propose ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the Colonne Vendome where the great Corsican in bronze gazed on a scene of wanton madness never equalled. Not even when drunken Nero mocked at the devastation of the imperial city by the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... boards flung back anyhow; table drawers and bookcases had been ransacked, and looked it; books rifled in vain were heaped in disorderly hummocks wherever there was room for them; everywhere a vandal hand had been, leaving behind a train of devastation and ruin. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands' economic development is hindered by the isolation of the country from foreign markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Manufacturing activities are limited to fruit-processing, clothing, and handicrafts. Trade deficits are made ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... hand deprecatingly. "The universal complaint, monsieur. It is the one great drawback to our Cause that we have as yet discovered no means of propagating it save only by the theory of devastation. It is only strong men and, I regret to say it, desperate men who can accept the gospel of dynamite. There are teeming millions of others ready enough to blow up society as it is at present constituted, but who shrink from the only ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... country such a crying need for—for twins, if I may put it picturesquely. In each family, in each home where there are no families, let there be two babies where there was one, for thus only can we triumph over the devastation of this war." At this moment the now considerable audience, which had hitherto been silent, broke into a shrill "'Ear, 'ear!" and Mr. Lavender, taking his hand from the acacia branch to silence them, fell off the wall into ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... traces of frenzied devastation grinned, blackened remains of a wilderness of wires, beams, sacks, broken tools, a disorder that took one's breath away and made one dizzy—all steeped in the suffocating stench of combustion, powder smoke, and the pungent, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... Academy. The truth is, it was not the conqueror, as the English pretended, but his exalted ideas of the arts, and of their value to a country, which captivated West, whose peaceful tenets led him to abhor war and devastation. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... feeling ill at ease as he always did in the presence of officialdom. The officer sat at a heavy table which had evidently been the kitchen table of the French peasant people who had originally occupied the poor cottage. Signs of petty German devastation were all about the humble, low-ceiled place, and they seemed to evidence a more loathsome brutality even than did the blighted country which Tom ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... house and lantern erected by James Ross were still in a tolerable state of preservation; but the provisions seemed to have been ransacked by foxes and bears, the recent traces of which were easily distinguished. Men, too, had had something to do with the devastation, for a few remains of Esquimaux huts remained upon the shores of the Bay. The six graves inclosing the remains of the six sailors of the Enterprise and the Investigator were recognisable by a slight swelling of the ground; ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... cherished at the outset of the expedition vanished long before our arrival in Cairo. Egypt was no longer the empire of the Ptolemies, covered with populous and wealthy cities; it now presented one unvaried scene of devastation and misery. Instead of being aided by the inhabitants, whom we had ruined, for the sake of delivering them from the yoke of the beys, we found all against us: Mamelukes, Arabs, and fellahs. No Frenchman was secure of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... measured with his eye the skulls of all who walked through the streets of Berlin. Alas! his own skull is now cleft by the Corsican sword. Four pupils of the University of Jena advance together to encounter the Emperor; at four blows he destroys them all. Blucher rushes to arrest the devastation; Napoleon strikes him to the ground, and is on the point of killing him, but Gneisenau, Ziethen, Bulow, and all the other heroes of the Prussian army, gather round him, and bear the venerable chief to a distance from the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perish in great numbers, and the eagles of the air feast upon their still quivering bodies. The wolf Fenris will now break his bands, the Midgard serpent rise out of her bed in the sea, and Loki, released from his bonds, will join the enemies of the gods. Amidst the general devastation the sons of Muspelheim will rush forth under their leader Surtur, before and behind whom are flames and burning fire. Onward they ride over Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, which breaks under the horses' hoofs. But they, disregarding its fall, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... happiness? Show how the two points of climax in event and feeling balance absolutely but do not sacrifice each other? Are Shakespeare's experiments in bold juxtaposition of extreme fortune and happiness and utterly irretrievable devastation anywhere so poignant as the arrival of Anthonio's letter at the ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... castle ruins which lie scattered about and in the vale below, form a scene of havoc and devastation, at once magnificent and impressive. The towers were blasted with gunpowder, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... the troops these few words from the letter of an officer written to one of his family will convey an idea: "I felt when I first came here that I would like to revenge myself upon these people for the devastation they have brought upon our own beautiful home—that home where we could have lived so happily, and that we loved so much, from which their vandalism has driven you and my helpless little ones. But, though I had such severe wrongs and grievances ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... toil, the wise are full of care; the good-for-nothing seek for nothing, they feed on vegetables, and roam where they list; they wander purposeless like a boat not made fast!' 'The mountain trees,' the text goes on to say, 'lead to their own devastation; the spring (conduces) to its own plunder; and so on." And the more he therefore indulged in reflection, the more depressed he felt. "Now there are only these few girls," he proceeded to ponder minutely, "and yet, I'm unable to treat them ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... men and a crowd of women. The mob had been seen; at least there was positively one person present who had distinguished them in the extreme distance, or rather the cloud of dust which they created; there were dreadful stories of their violence and devastation. It was understood that a body meant to attack Trafford's works, but, as the narrator added, it was very probable that the greater part would cross the bridge and so on to the Moor, where they would hold ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... as barren as Sahara by reason of the devastation that Sheridan had inflicted upon it with the deliberate and merciless strategic purpose of rendering it uninhabitable and in that way making of it a no-thoroughfare for Confederate armies on march toward the country north of the Potomac, or on ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... to speak of the deplorable condition in which the inhabitants had been left by the rival armies, dividing the blame with impartial hand, and moralizing a little, as follows: "A civil war is a dreadful thing; what with the devastation of the rebels, and that of the English and Hessian troops, every part of the country where the scene of the action has been looks deplorable. Furniture is broken to pieces, good houses deserted and almost destroyed, others ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... utter disregard for danger to turn a forlorn hope into victory, and by personal example and incentive to make still richer the honourable traditions of the 17th in the face of such overwhelming odds, and amidst such overaweing devastation. In this action seven officers were killed and five wounded. Of other ranks 41 were killed, ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... current through narrow gorges. At Skardo their united stream is said, even in winter, to be 500 feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. If one of the deep gorges, as sometimes happens, is choked by a landslip, the flood that follows when the barrier finally bursts may spread devastation hundreds of miles away. To the north of the fertile Chach plain in Attock there is a wide stretch of land along the Indus, which still shows in its stony impoverished soil the effects of the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... slave laborers working with a capital in the shape of buildings, mills, fixtures, and implements, which had been accumulating during a century. Under Toussaint there were 290,000 free laborers, many of them just from the army or the mountains, working on plantations that had undergone the devastation of insurrection and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... pestilence or a plague. Moreover, it was lost sight of in the general misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants of Alexandria ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... during the hot season, as otherwise he would find no shelter. The sugar-cane is his great delight, both as being his favourite food and as affording a high, impervious, and unfrequented situation. These hogs commit great devastation, especially the breeding sows, which not only devour, but cut the canes for litter, and throw them up into little huts, which they do with much art, leaving a small entrance which they stop up at pleasure. Sows ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... moments of the tempest's wrath Sufficed to mark one dreadful path With scenes of devastation; While over piles of wild debris Rose shrieks of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the war!" he murmured, in a sort of wail or whine. "Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it. If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned. We Germans have been so misjudged. When I think of the devastation of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... the causes of devastation really is a melancholy one. Nor do I see any remedy; the most important causes will always operate. Yet, supposing the constant existence of a highly civilised people, the ravages of time might be repaired, and by defending the finest works of ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... through the West India Islands. And growing confident, a portion of them seem desperately bent on kindling the all-devouring flame in the bosom of our land. Let it once again blaze up to heaven, and another cycle of blood and devastation will dawn upon the world. For our own sake, and for the sake of those infatuated men who are madly driving on the conflagration; for the sake of human nature, we are called on to strain every nerve to arrest it. And be assured our efforts will be bounded only with our being. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... God, his neighbour, and himself, by man Force may be offer'd; to himself I say And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes By devastation, pillage, and the flames, His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites In malice, plund'rers, and all robbers, hence The torment undergo of the first round In different herds. Man can do violence To himself and his own ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... things went confusedly through Jim's mind, as he sat at his club window, staring blankly down at the dreary summer twilight in the street. The club was a temporary wooden building, roomy and comfortable enough, but facing on all four sides the devastation of the great earthquake. Here and there a small brick building stood in the ashy waste, and on the top of Nob Hill the outline of the big Fairmont Hotel rose boldly against the gloom. But, for the most part, the rising hills showed only one ruined brick ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... and seeing the processions. This prevented any lives being lost, as every one ran out of doors at the first shock, which was not very severe. The second, a few minutes afterwards, threw down a great many houses, and others, which continued all night and part of the next day, completed the devastation. The line of disturbance was very narrow, so that the native town a mile to the east scarcely suffered at all. The wave passed from north to south, through the islands of Tidore and Makian, and terminated in Batchian, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... since I heard of the measures which were adopted in consequence of the Bunker's Hill fight;" and at an earlier date he said: "I hope my countrymen (of Virginia) will rise superior to any losses the whole navy of Great Britain can bring on them, and that the destruction of Norfolk and threatened devastation of other places will have no other effect than to unite the whole country in one indissoluble band against a nation which seems to be lost to every sense of virtue and those feelings which distinguish a civilized people from the most barbarous savages." ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to these pages to dwell further on the military achievements or political intrigues of the times of which we are speaking. Humanity shudders at the perusal of the events of this war. Through the whole of its long period, Germany was a scene of devastation. In its northern and central parts, the ravages of advancing and retreating armies were repeatedly experienced in their utmost horrors: many of its finest towns were destroyed; whole villages depopulated; large territories laid waste. Frequently the women, the children, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... to strike at long range the gentlemen who formed the escort, the townspeople, the officers of the different cities she passed through, pages, populace, and servants; it was wholesale slaughter, a general devastation. By the time Madame arrived at Paris, she had reduced to slavery about a hundred thousand lovers: and brought in her train to Paris half a dozen men who were almost mad about her, and two who were, indeed, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was the capacity of man to modify nature and exploit society more publicly tested out than in the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the purposeful devastation of jungle life and village life in large parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. Reported in the public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... isolated lodges that the atrocious conspiracy of Philippe [the Duc d'Orleans] and Robespierre was formed? Is it from isolated lodges that those prominent men came forth, who, assembled at the Hotel de Ville, stirred up revolt, devastation, assassination? And is it not in the lodges bound together, co-and sub-ordinated, that the monster Weishaupt established his tests and had ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... suffered at that time more than did Weyanoke. Here, part of Grant's army crossed the James in the march upon Petersburg. While bridges were building, the Federal forces were scattered over the plantation; and when at last they crossed the river, they left devastation behind. ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... woman. No one can realize more than I the devastation and ruin alcohol in its many tempting forms has brought to the human family. Still I solemnly believe that in weakness and deterioration of health, the corset has more to answer for than intoxicating drinks." When asked how far advanced ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon;" and of the parallel passages, Micah v. 4 (5); Zech. iii. 10. It is further shown by the connection with what precedes, where great calamity, and the devastation of their whole country had been predicted to Israel,—and by the mention of the vine and fig-tree, which are characteristic of the land of Israel. The words, "For the mouth of the Lord," etc., point out the pledge, which the person ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... concert of sweet sounds; but no human voice awoke the echoes there. It was as if the earth was speaking in thankfulness to its Maker, while man,—ungrateful and unworthy man,—pursuing his ruthless path of devastation and destruction, had left no being to say, "I thank ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale.—Colton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... dress. And do the honour to the Duke's motto. I saw my little man off on Monday, after expedition over Bank and Tower. Thence to Pym's, Poultry: oysters consumed by dozings. Thence to Purcell's: great devastation of pastry. Thence to Shoreditch, where Sons calmly said: "Never mind, Papa; it is no use minding it. I shall soon be back to you," and so administered comfort to his forlorn Dad.—My salute to the Conquered One, and I am your ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... this matter. The article thus exported will do as much evil there as it would if consumed here. It will spread just as much devastation somewhere, as it would if consumed in your own family, and among your own friends and neighbors. We have only to ask, what would be the effect if it were consumed in your own habitation, in your neighborhood, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... describes how "he ordered the towns and fields of the whole district to be laid waste; the fruits and grain to be destroyed by fire or by water ... thus the resources of a once flourishing province were cut off, by fire, slaughter, and devastation; the ground for more than sixty miles, totally uncultivated and unproductive, remains bare to the present day." This is believed to have been written about 1135, and would give us grounds for believing that the desolation ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... want of trust, and resolved to pay her out in some way. I stood for an hour at the window looking absently at the lightning flashes. Then it grew lighter and lighter outside; at last the clouds parted, and the sun shone forth fresh and bright and as if wondering at the devastation the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the villages for the defense of the ministers. Consequently, the soldiers were able to retire from Loay, Maribohoc, and Loon, but always remained in Inabangan, Jagna, and Tagbilaran—not for the purpose of protecting the ministering fathers, but to prevent all devastation and disorder on the part of those who were not subdued. A general amnesty was granted to all the delinquents who had taken to the mountains. That produced many submissions, although it did not wholly extinguish an evil whose ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... numbers by other outlying bodies of the horde,—who kept falling in at various distances upon the first and second day's march. From sixty to eighty thousand of those who 20 were the best mounted stayed behind the rest of the tribes, with purposes of devastation and plunder more violent than prudence justified or the amiable character of the Khan could be supposed to approve. But in this, as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 25 malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating fury ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Great waste and devastation were committed by the Spanish soldiery; for, thinking it would be impossible to keep possession of the place, they began to destroy whatever they could not take away. Immense jars of oil were broken, costly furniture shattered to pieces, and magazines of grain broken open and their ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and women wringing their hands. In the high road lay articles of furniture, huddled together, thrown in heaps one on another, and broken into fragments in the fall. A sergeant and company of musketeers were even then in the midst of this pitiful work of devastation, turning the people out of their little thatched cottages and flinging their poor sticks of property out after them. Everywhere were tumult and ruin. Old people were lying on the cold earth by the wayside. They had been born in these houses; they had looked to die in these homes; but houses and homes ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... part of the earth's surface which they have touched. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Asia Minor was one of the most prosperous and highly civilized parts of the world;[320] and the tale of its devastation by the terrible Alp Arslan and the robber chiefs that came after him is one of the most mournful chapters in history. At the end of that century, when the Turks were holding Nicaea and actually had their outposts ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the Army, therefore, is to compel the complete cessation of all its operations and its practical disbandment, and thus to invite hordes of predatory savages from the Western plains and the Rocky Mountains to spread devastation along a frontier of more than 4,000 miles in extent and to deliver up the sparse population of a vast tract of country to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... way for America to be safe from invasion and that is for America to be ready for it. We are not ready today, we never have been ready, yet war may smite us at any time with all its hideous slaughter and devastation. Our vast possessions constitute the richest, the most tempting prize on earth, and no words can measure the envy and hatred that less rich and less favoured nations feel ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... still—Alfred's moral welfare. His early separation from his family would be a sad thing; but not half so fearful as the risk of sending him into the society of the dissolute, or, at best, the careless, where his duty will lie in scenes of bloodshed and devastation, where his employment will be to contrive and execute plans for spreading ruin and wasting life. Can we devote him to an employment like this? Some may represent the matter in a different light, and say that he is promoting ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... until he saw that his work of devastation was well under way, then he led his followers back toward the hills. At sunset he reined in upon the crest of a ridge and looked behind him into the valley. The whole sky was black with smoke, as if a city were ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... policemen one meets at every important corner we climbed the hill and left the motor among the great trees, which are still fortunately preserved. And we stood for a few minutes, gazing over miles and miles of devastation. Then, taking the motor once more, we passed through wrecked and empty villages until we came to the foot of Vimy Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette rose against the sky-line ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... opposite side, but now the Huns in the foolish arrogance of their hearts must needs swarm over the whole valley, and offer themselves and their works as targets for our searching gun-fire. On the summit of their ridge and due east of Hebuterne is Puisieux-au-Mont, in almost the same condition of devastation as Gommecourt, while further beyond, the trees of Achiet can be seen. During the summer months those who wished could reckon up the times of arrival and departure of trains at the German railhead at Achiet, for the smoke from the engines could be distinctly ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... gradual encroachments of that irresistible power had in the course of two centuries buried a large portion of the ancient Borough beneath the waves. Two existing maps of the town, one of about 1590, the other about 1790, show how extensive this devastation had been. This cause, and others arising from it, the gradual decay of the shipping and fishing industries, had left the town in the main a poor and squalid place, the scene of much smuggling and other lawlessness. Time and the ocean wave had left only "two parallel ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... it has caused in the world, diminish much of its merit in their eyes. When they would oppose the popular notions on this head, they always paint out the evils, which this supposed virtue has produced in human society; the subversion of empires, the devastation of provinces, the sack of cities. As long as these are present to us, we are more inclined to hate than admire the ambition of heroes. But when we fix our view on the person himself, who is the author of all this mischief, there is something so dazzling in his character, the mere contemplation ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... conflagration, pillage, devastation—who knows? A Mohammedan writer of the thirteenth century merely mentions it as "a great city of ruins"; and so it lay, deserted and forgotten, until a German traveller visited it in 1806; and so it lies to-day, with all ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... enough to take his leave, and hurried into the town. In front of the church he found a great many people assembled to hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When they found that he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but simply to see his stony likeness on the church, they showed neither relief nor gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for consenting to conduct the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... passed with such rapidity as scarcely to leave the impression of reality upon the mind. As soon as the sun rose in the morning, Victoire looked out for the turrets of the Chateau de Fleury, and she saw that they were safe—safe in the midst of the surrounding devastation. Nothing remained of the superb palace of Chantilly but the white arches of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Iroquois had hitherto been a standing obstacle to the progress of the young nation. Wherever they appeared, utter devastation followed, and as no precaution could prevent, and no foresight anticipate their incursions, life itself was felt by the inhabitants to hang merely on a thread. At length, sixteen of the colonists headed by ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... husbandmen fled for refuge to the towns till these in fear of famine shut their gates against them. Then in their despair they threw themselves into the woods and became brigands in their turn. So terrible was the devastation that two hostile bodies of troops failed at one time even to find one another in the desolate Beauce. Misery and disease killed a hundred thousand people in Paris alone. At last the cessation of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... ties were, you informed me that it was "what baseness," or words to that effect; and so on, until I hardly know where I am at. (Catches sight of the chest.) Hello! How did that happen to escape the general devastation? What are you going to do ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... do" she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Gaskell jumped up from his seat, saying, "Now we shall have news!" and instantly the whole party flocked round me, eager to know the truth as to the wild rumour which was all they had as yet heard of the devastation wrought by the dynamiters in London on the previous day. My morning's work had, of course, qualified me to satisfy their curiosity, but the questions they poured in upon me were so numerous and so eager that I was at last obliged to ask them to sit down, and ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... believer may be like a solitary oak in the forest—all his compeers cut down—tempest after tempest has sighed and swept amid the branches—tree by tree has succumbed to the blast—there may be nothing but wreck and ruin and devastation all around. Friend after friend has departed; some have altered towards him; kindness may have given way to alien looks and estranged affection; others are removed by distance—old familiar faces and scenes have given place to new ones;—others ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... she said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank God, I pierced beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity—the awful, poignant pity—of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her. What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... himself as authorized so to do by the rules of war: that he would set fire to all palaces, houses, and gardens; sack all the towns and villages, without sparing the most inconsiderable cottage, and subject the country to all the horrors of war and devastation. He conjured his serene highness to reflect on these particulars, and begged he would not lay him under the necessity of taking steps so contrary to his own personal character, as well as to the natural humanity of the French nation." To this letter, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the bush or tree, and throw on it a little brimstone. The vapour of the sulphur, and the suffocating fume arising from the charcoal, will not only destroy all the insects, but prevent the plants from being infested with them any more that season. Black cankers, which commit great devastation among turnips, are best destroyed by turning a quantity of ducks into the field infested by them. Every fourth year these cankers become flies, when they deposit their eggs on the ground, and thus produce maggots. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... re-entered what had been his home, its bareness made his heart sink. An hour or two had sufficed for this devastation; nothing remained upon the uncarpeted floors but the needments he would carry with him into the wilderness, such few evidences of civilisation as the poorest cannot well dispense with. Anger, revolt, a sense of outraged love—all manner of confused passions had sustained him throughout this ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... be affirmed, are so far from the truth as that which makes the Iroquois a band of treacherous and ferocious ravagers, whose career was marked everywhere by cruelty and devastation. The clear and positive evidence of historical facts leads to a widely different conclusion. It is not going too far to assert that among all uncivilized races the Iroquois have shown themselves to be the most faithful of allies, the most placable of enemies, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Mrs. Jerry's help, to make the bond of mutual liking serve very well in the place of intelligible speech. For another, the don fairly committed himself to the promise of a peon or two to help in the further devastation of the trees upon the Picardo mountain slope behind the little, natural meadow, which Jerry Simpson had so calmly appropriated ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... front seat beside Uncle Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the faded rose leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case, for upon the seat beside ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and other valuables. I ordered them to mount and march instantly, this was about nine or ten o'clock, Monday morning. I proceeded to Mr. Levi Waller's, two or three miles distant. I took my station in the rear, and as it 'twas my object to carry terror and devastation wherever we went, I placed fifteen or twenty of the best armed and most to be relied on, in front, who generally approached the houses as fast as their horses could run; this was for two purposes, to prevent their escape and strike terror to the inhabitants—on this account I never ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... Northumbrians looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done, shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose the crown than gain it so—a protest which James must have thought a piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was too solicitous for the welfare ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of such a concession being only to put an end to a bloody war more promptly, and by a remedy as violent as a devastation (aussi violent qu'une devastation), to insure tranquillity of neighborhood between two rival and newly reconciled nations, it necessarily follows that every act on the part of the subjects of the republic of Poland, contrary to such intention, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... moment, in almost every newspaper in the country,—scientific journals among the number,—abusing and ridiculing the poor farmer for destroying the birds that destroy his grain; and telling him, if he were to let the birds alone, they would eat the insects that commit far greater devastation on his precious cerealia! Conceited theorists! it has never occurred to them, that the victims of the farmer's fowling-piece—the birds that eat corn—would not touch an insect if they were starving! The farmer does not make war on the insect-eating ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... called in the Latin translation. Dupouy in "Le Moyen Age Medical," says that it commenced in the village of Peleuse, in Egypt, and followed a double course, one branch going to Alexandria and the other to Palestine. It reached Constantinople in the Spring of 543, and produced the greatest devastation wherever it appeared. In the course of the succeeding half century this epidemic became pandemic and spread over all the inhabited earth. The epidemic lasted four months in Constantinople, from 5000 to 10,000 people dying each day. In his "History of France," from 417 to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... empire and established a republic. But throughout this period, disturbances and guerrillas scarcely ever ceased, while the gradual but sure devastation of the missions and the behavior of the authorities towards the beloved padres heightened the indignation of all noble-minded citizens and increased the unpopularity of the governors and authorities, most of ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... eminence that offered shelter. But shelter was not needed. The storm was clearly defined. Its limits were as distinctly marked by its Creator as if it had been a living intelligence sent forth to put a belt of desolation round the world; and, although the edge of devastation was not five hundred yards from the rock behind which the hunters were stationed, only a few drops of ice-cold rain fell ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... great development whose evidences to-day on every hand attest its magnitude. We have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort, lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. But it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to concrete data, and in reducing, to unfold ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... withstand the shots sent from some of the guns which have been invented, and all might be destroyed by torpedoes. We could hardly believe that some of the ships we saw were fit to go to sea. The most remarkable was the Devastation. Her free-board—that is, the upper part of her sides— is only a few feet above the water. Amidships rises a round structure supporting what is called "a hurricane-deck." This is the only spot where the officers ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... strong mound has been broken down, the waters whose amassed volume it opposed, rush forward, and, in their impetuous course, spread afar terror and devastation. On visiting the scene where this has occurred, we naturally cast our eyes in every direction, to discover the mischief which they have occasioned by their irruption; so, then, on reaching the grand theatre of the French revolution, did I look about for the traces of the havock it had left behind; ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider, redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent an unshakable ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... about 100 m. till it debouches into the Bay of Bengal. During the latter part of its course this noble river expands into a large estuary containing many islands, the principal of which is that of Dakshin Shahbazpur. The islands on the sea-front are exposed to devastation by cyclonic storm-waves. The Arial Khan, a branch of the Ganges, enters the district from the north, and flows generally in a south-easterly direction till it falls into the estuary of the Meghna. The main channel of the Arial Khan is about ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... themselves at the table, which Mirandolina had decorated with a number of wax candles stuck in the cut-glass bottles of the Count's dressing-case. Here they were speedily joined by the actress's monkey and parrot, who had soon spread devastation among the dishes. While Miranda was restoring order by boxing the monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... torches in their hands, but durst not meddle with them. There being near his Golden House some granaries, the site of which he exceedingly coveted, they were battered as if with machines of war, and set on fire, the walls being built of stone. During six days and seven nights this terrible devastation continued, the people being obliged to fly to the tombs and monuments for lodging and shelter. Meanwhile, a vast number of stately buildings, the houses of generals celebrated in former times, and even then still decorated with the spoils of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... battle was over by eleven in the morning, and in the forenoon I caused our engineers to burn a part and to sink a part of the vaunted bridge of the Khalsa army, across which they had boastfully come once more to defy us, and to threaten India with ruin and devastation."[21] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... this was especially the case with the heavy guns, the lighter and more manageable pieces were better aimed, and the round shot continually struck the men-of-war but failed to penetrate their iron sides. On the other hand, the huge shot and shell of the ironclads committed terrible devastation on the batteries. These were for the most part constructed of stone, which crumbled and fell in great masses under the tremendous blows of the English shot ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... furniture, books, and pictures; the stark and staring walls, with their stained and torn paper, were bared to the gaze of every chance passerby. Suddenly, to the yearning heart of the onlooker, a miracle appeared. The scene of devastation disappeared; there was a fragrance of honeysuckle and yellow roses in the sharp air and, in a dim, sweet, old, sheltered room stood a little girl with patched gingham gown and long smooth-hanging braids ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... It has been much talked of lately and widely endorsed by logical persons. It is perfectly in accord with the principle of self-interest and the rule of reason. There is no rational justification for the immense loss of life, suffering, destruction and devastation caused by war. The only trouble about the principle is that, as it deals with human beings, there is with this, as with other questions of conduct, that same unknown factor—the spiritual side of man's nature. One of the most fundamental feelings of manhood—true for a nation, as it is for ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... thing of the past. Fire surrounded and smoke rose in the green underbush. In a wide circuit the axes were still crashing. Those very advantages for which the place was chosen, it had been the king's first idea to abolish; and in the midst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap' and a small closed house. A mat was spread near by for Tembinok'; here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet on his head, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puny earth-dwellers. The men raised great rocks in the air and threw them with all their strength. Jerry struggled with a mammoth boulder,—Winslow leaping to his aid. They toppled it over to start an avalanche of devastation that swept into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Staffer Zuter his pot, which the honest fellow had left with us for a while, and set them on the fire for supper against my child and the maid should return. It was not long before they came through the coppice and told me of the fearful devastation which Satan had made in the village and manse by the permission of all-righteous God. My child had gathered together a few books, which she brought with her, above all, a Virgilius and a Greek Bible. And after she had told me ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... had fallen with peculiar fury on the border provinces of Leon and Estremadura, which, from their local position, had necessarily been kept in constant collision with the enemy. Its baneful effects were long visible there, not only in the general devastation and distress of the country, but in the moral disorganization, which the licentious and predatory habits of soldiers necessarily introduced among a simple peasantry. In a personal view, however, the war had terminated ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... friend, who had returned to his fatherland with a fortune acquired beyond the Atlantic. Our talented author has certainly not lost sight of the fact that Germany, as a whole, has as little recovered from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War as the eastern districts of Prussia have recovered from the effects of the war with France in the present century. Let the faults and failings of our national German character be what they may (and we should like ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... maliciously smiling at her own mischief. The land was close to me, and the vessel drifted on shore. I found that I was at the Isle of France, having, in the course of twelve hours thus miraculously shifted my position from one side of the globe unto the other. I found the island in a sad state of devastation; the labour of years had been destroyed in the fury of an hour—the crops were swept away—the houses were levelled to the ground—the vessels in fragments on the beach—all was misery and desolation. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... apprehensions; for he conjectured that the Moors were about to renew that system of defence which had been so destructive at the first onset. His suspicions were well grounded. Incontinently another ominous shout rent the air, and the tremendous fragments again rolled down, spreading devastation wherever they passed. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... will be punctually kept by Ritterdom." Here we see the strange stern, medieval, crusading atmosphere which lies behind the unpleasant combinations, so familiar to us to-day in France and Belgium, of Uhlans and religion, of culture and violence, of "Germanisation" and devastation. When we hear the German professors of to-day preaching of the spread of German culture by the German arms, and when we feel disgust at the exaggerated religious phraseology which pervades the Kaiser's oratory and seems to accord so ill with his policy ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... house, and ensconce themselves under the scaffold, where they are completely concealed by the piled-up fruits. When darkness has fallen, out comes the ghost and prowling about espies the heap of yams and taro. At sight of the devastation wrought in his field he flies into a passion, and curses and swears in the feeble wheezy whisper in which ghosts always speak. In the course of his fluent imprecations he expresses a wish that the miscreants who have wasted his substance may suffer ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the Arabs, and, as far as their horses are able to go, no settlement can endure. The entire southern slope of the Taurus, the ancient Oszoene, is dotted with indications of their devastation. Here wonderful brooks are flowing from the mountains, and a superabundant supply of water, a hot and ever bright sky, and a most fertile soil have combined in creating a paradise, if only men would not always destroy ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... prosecution of this undertaking, the artists had the mortification of witnessing the very willful devastation to which all the sculpture, and even the architecture, were daily exposed on the part of the Turks and travelers: the former equally influenced by mischief and by avarice, the latter from an anxiety to become possessed, each according to his means, of some relic, however small, of buildings or ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... successfully resisted only by large armies, and sometimes the armies were not large enough to cope with them. Again and again during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Tartar hordes swept over the country—burning the villages and towns, and spreading devastation wherever they appeared—and during more than two centuries Russia had to pay a heavy tribute ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation." ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and Frank suggested "spoons all round" for the Italian cream. A few trifles in the way of custard, fruit, and wafer biscuits were not worth mentioning; but every dish was soon emptied, and Jack said, as he surveyed the scene of devastation with great satisfaction,— ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... impression made on Rowcliffe by the Vicarage was that of a house and a household rehabilitated after a long period of devastation, by the untiring, selfless labor of a woman who was good ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... surrounding hills admonishing us that October, chill and drear, is upon us. Every thing in nature is cheerless, and, adding to nature, man has, with despoiling hands, laid waste the country for miles about our present location. Pen can not describe the devastation of an army: orchards are swept away; of fences scarce a trace is left; houses are converted into stables, fodder-cribs, and store-houses; corn-fields are used as pastures; forests must fall to supply our men with ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... obnoxious, in three rounds Hach within other sep'rate is it fram'd. To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man Force may be offer'd; to himself I say And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes By devastation, pillage, and the flames, His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites In malice, plund'rers, and all robbers, hence The torment undergo of the first round In different herds. Man can do violence ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... showing them the whole of my mind. But why should I? If I know that my cause is just, if I know that it is for the good of the world, isn't it my duty to conceal as much as I find it wise to conceal, to keep my hand to the plough, even though I drive it through the fields of devastation?" ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this does more harm than even the drought. The rivers swell, and cover with gravel and sand the narrow strips of ground, which alone are fit for cultivation. The floods also injure the irrigating ditches. Great devastation had thus been caused ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... any means a pleasure trip; but, putting all perils aside, regarding them merely as the vicissitudes of a soldier's lot, what impressed Fritz more than anything else was the ruin and devastation which, following thus in the rear of a triumphant army, he ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the people—seems to have been conscious that he was doing anything wrong in destroying the homes and the food of the wretched inhabitants, whom they alternately scourged. On the contrary, the extent of devastation which they were able to effect was supposed to put them in a better position for meeting together, and treating as honourable and gallant representatives of ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... will murder any man who attempts to drive a plough in it, together with all his family, if he can. The smallest member of this landed aristocracy of the Hindoo military class will often cause a terrible devastation during the interval that he is engaged in his bhumiawat; for there are always vast numbers of loose characters floating upon the surface of Indian society, ready to 'gird up their loins' and use ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... infinite confusions and disorder, which it has caused in the world, diminish much of its merit in their eyes. When they would oppose the popular notions on this head, they always paint out the evils, which this supposed virtue has produced in human society; the subversion of empires, the devastation of provinces, the sack of cities. As long as these are present to us, we are more inclined to hate than admire the ambition of heroes. But when we fix our view on the person himself, who is the author of all this mischief, there is something ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... rock pinnacle and stood looking somberly down at the devastation that was being wrought, with no greater beginning, probably, than a dropped match or cigarette stub. He was thinking hazily that so his old life had been swept away in the devastating effect of a passing whim, a foolish ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... this dexterity, but especially those which occurred in the celebrated case of Murdison and Millar, in 1773. These persons, a sheep-farmer and his shepherd, settled in the vale of Tweed, commenced and carried on for some time an extensive system of devastation on the flocks of their neighbours. A dog belonging to Millar was so well trained, that he had only to show him during the day the parcel of sheep which he desired to have; and when dismissed at night for the purpose, Yarrow went right to the pasture ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... in a volume of fiery smoke. The river was of a bloodish colour like the flame, and the sky over head was like the top of a pandemonium. From the Tower to St. Paul's there was one mass of fire and devastation, the heat striking in your eyes, and the air being filled with burning sparkles, and with the cries of people flying, or removing goods on the river. Ever and anon distant houses fell in, with a sort of gigantic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... lamentations of the hundreds of soldiers who had been crushed and mutilated by the "avalanche." The Tyrolese, filled with curiosity and compassion, looked down into the defile. The smoke and dust had disappeared, and they could distinctly survey the scene of horror, devastation, and death, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... indignation at finding my palings broken down, and some sugar-cane, that I had been most carefully rearing, rooted up and destroyed, while the author of the mischief, a huge sow, innocent of the restraining ring (I would have hung the ring of the 'Devastation's' best bower-anchor to her snout, had I been allowed to follow out my wishes), stood gloating over the havoc she had caused. Then, in my wrath, I had hastily loaded a carbine with a handful of salt, and prematurely converted a portion ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... in the green underbush. In a wide circuit the axes were still crashing. Those very advantages for which the place was chosen, it had been the king's first idea to abolish; and in the midst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap' and a small closed house. A mat was spread near by for Tembinok'; here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet on his head, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, a wife stretched at his back with custody of the matches and tobacco. Twenty or thirty ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had the invalid Mrs. Moses removed to its hospitable walls, before she saw, with regret, that the life she sought to save was fast passing away. The delicate frame was rapidly yielding to the devastation of consumption. All the skill and attention of kind Dr. Gibbs had proved unavailing. It was too evident that she must ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... proportions of prodigy. There was vague sensation. In one of his novels I found an introduction by Lord Roberts warning Englishmen to prepare for the German invasion planned by Mr. Le Queux for 1910! History has not yet revealed the horror and devastation of that war; but this horror and devastation lent to Mr. Le Queux's book the interest which ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the heyday of weeds of every kind, and the harvest time for the king weed of them all. Everywhere his yellow robes were hanging to poles and drying in the warm sun. Everywhere led the conquering war trail of the unkingly usurper, everywhere in his wake was devastation. The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and yellow wheat, silver-gray oats, and rippling barley had fled at the sight of his banner to the open sunny spaces as though to make their last stand an indignant appeal that all might see. Even the proud woodlands ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... supply of food, and the lurking seeds of pestilence are ready to burst into frightful activity. The famine of the present century is but too forcible and illustrative of this. It fostered epidemics which have not been witnessed in this generation, and gave rise to scenes of devastation and misery which are not surpassed by the most appalling epidemics of the Middle Ages. The principal form of the scourge was known as the contagious famine fever (typhus), and it spread, not merely from end to end of the country in which it had originated, but, breaking through ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... discussion of the relations of man to his fellow-men, which are shown to tend to the establishment of equality wherever peace is maintained, and wealth and population are allowed to grow; and to inequality, with every step in the progress of war and devastation. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... newspaper in the country,—scientific journals among the number,—abusing and ridiculing the poor farmer for destroying the birds that destroy his grain; and telling him, if he were to let the birds alone, they would eat the insects that commit far greater devastation on his precious cerealia! Conceited theorists! it has never occurred to them, that the victims of the farmer's fowling-piece—the birds that eat corn—would not touch an insect if they were starving! The farmer does not make war on the insect-eating birds. Rarely, or never, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... You can not help Leopold; but you can save him the degradation of being expelled from his throne by force of arms. The army of the duchess is true to its humblest sword. Can you say that for the army of the king? Would you witness the devastation of a beautiful city, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and irresistible ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Sulayman went on to Mt. Matutun where conditions were even worse. As he stood on the heights viewing the great devastation there was a noise in the forest and a movement in the trees. With a loud yell, forth leaped Tarabusaw. For a moment they looked at each other, neither showing any fear. Then Tarabusaw threatened to devour the man, and Sulayman declared that he ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... anything but dismal and unsightly, the stripped fields ever be green and flourishing, or the torn-up trees be ever replaced. Yet Time does it all. Come after a while to look again, and the traces of past devastation are not easy to find; nature's weaving has so covered, and nature's embroidery has so adorned, the bald places. In human life there is something like this often done; though, as I said, youth wots not of it and does not ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... leagues, burned five small deserted forts or stockaded houses, "three meeting-houses, several fine barns, about one hundred dwellings, mostly of two stories, furnished even to chests of drawers, and killed five to six hundred sheep and hogs, and about thirty horned cattle. This devastation is well worth a few prisoners or scalps." [Footnote: N. Y. Col. Docs., X. 97.] It is curious to find such exploits mentioned with complacency, as ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... enable them to enjoy life quietly for the rest of their days. The fact that in escaping they lose power does not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that such politicians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin whole continents in order ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... And she had nothing to say. She could only sit and look at him—at his beautiful youth all alight with the sudden flame of that which can set a young world on fire and sweep on its way either carrying devastation or clearing a path ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... than the various deceptions by which guilt conceals itself from the perpetrator's conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the splendor of its garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who act over an extensive sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this way; they commit wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale, that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual; but in our procession we find them linked in detestable conjunction with the meanest criminals whose deeds have the vulgarity of petty details. Here the effect of circumstance and accident is done away, and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whereupon the old one jumped down, and half-walking, half-swimming, made her way to her companions in the dining-room. The old gentleman now ascended to the garret, where from a small window he looked out upon the scene of devastation. His chief anxiety was about the foundation of the house, which, being made of a wooden framework, like almost all the others in the colony, would certainly float if the water rose much higher. His fears were ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... works upon a colossal scale; he conjures up the general out of the particular. What he sees and describes in his books is not merely this man's aspiration or that woman's destiny, but the overwhelming sweep and devastation of universal forces, the great central drama that is at the heart of all other dramas, the tragic struggles of the soul of man under the gross stupidity and obscene joking of the gods. "In the novels of Conrad," says ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... they delighted in so doing. The sisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or rain. To them "fair is foul, and foul is fair," as they "hover through the fog and filthy air." The whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind the winds,[1] cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate wrecked bodies.[2] They describe themselves as "posters of the sea and land;"[3] the heath they meet upon is blasted;[4] and they vanish "as breath into ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... very great in the tomb, and the perspiration streamed down our faces as we stood contemplating the devastation. Now the electric lamps would flash upon the gods supporting the ransacked sarcophagus, lighting for a moment their grotesque forms; now the attention would concentrate upon some wooden figure of a hippopotamus-god or cow-headed deity; and now the light ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the crucial part of the whole party was the eats and he lingered near them like a faithful sentinel. The artistic quality of these saved them from devastation. Those pyramids of luscious beauty could not be denied by human hands without showing the indubitable signs of vandalism. Their ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... during the breaking up was one which it is necessary to chronicle. Near Philip's Island, on the north side of the harbour, is situated Coal Head, where a party had been lately at work. This party, hastily withdrawn by Vickers to assist in the business of devastation, had left behind it some tools and timber, and at the eleventh hour a boat's crew was sent to bring away the debris. The tools were duly collected, and the pine logs—worth twenty-five shillings apiece in Hobart Town—duly rafted ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... southerly direction for about 100 m. till it debouches into the Bay of Bengal. During the latter part of its course this noble river expands into a large estuary containing many islands, the principal of which is that of Dakshin Shahbazpur. The islands on the sea-front are exposed to devastation by cyclonic storm-waves. The Arial Khan, a branch of the Ganges, enters the district from the north, and flows generally in a south-easterly direction till it falls into the estuary of the Meghna. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... for you are a magnificent instrument of ruin and devastation. Yet it will be by means of you that I shall crush all those who have been an obstacle in my pathway; I take you, not for my wife, but for my slave, and you ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... not their purpose to interfere with the existing laws and customs which are wholesome and beneficial to the people, so long as they conform to the rules of the military administration, order, and justice. This is not a war of devastation and desolation, but one to give all within the control of the military and naval forces the advantages ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... proceeding to new excesses. Some of these wretches, still further excited by the little man with the ferret's face, a secret emissary of Baron Tripeaud, now rushed in a mass towards the workshops of M. Hardy. Then began a lamentable devastation. These people, seized with the mania of destruction, broke without remorse machines of the greatest value, and most delicate construction; half manufactured articles were pitilessly destroyed; a savage emulation seemed to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... colours are still fresh and bright. The brickwork is perfectly solid and firm, and appeared as if finished yesterday. On the whole the impression on my mind was, that not the slow and gentle hand of time, but sudden rapine and violence had caused the devastation around us; and looking into Nardini on my return, I found that the baths of Titus were nearly entire in the thirteenth century, but were demolished with great labour and difficulty by the ferocious Senator Brancaleone, who, about the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest conquerors of all; for they hold the longest the soil that they have once possessed. How mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of these tremendous aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of nature, triumphantly bricklaying beauty wherever they go! What dismantled castle, with the enemy's flag flying ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... catalogue is thus rendered of very little use. The building itself is a large and admirable structure, well adapted to the purpose, quite worthy to contain the choice art treasures beneath its roof. When the French were masters in Spain they proved to be terrible iconoclasts, leaving marks of their devastation nearly everywhere in one form or another. Not content with stealing many unequaled works of art of priceless value, they often wantonly destroyed what it was impossible to carry away. In the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, at ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Achaian wall Meets us beyond. No chariot may descend 80 Or charioteer fight there; strait are the bounds, And incommodious, and his death were sure. If Jove, high-thundering Ruler of the skies, Will succor Ilium, and nought less intend Than utter devastation of the Greeks, 85 I am content; now perish all their host Inglorious, from their country far remote. But should they turn, and should ourselves be driven Back from the fleet impeded and perplex'd In this deep ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... S. Rosa de Viterbo: Elucidario das Palavras etc., I, 470. In many parts of Persia, the land belongs to anyone who has provided it with water by canals or wells. (Fraser, Journey in Chorasan, ch. 7.) Especially after the Mongolian devastation about the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was decreed that land which had remained uncultivated for a long time should belong to the person who made it productive. (d'Ohsson, Hist. des Mongols, IV, 418.) Similarly, in the time of the ancient Persians (Polyb., X, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... door of his spirit. The indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... law rules supreme. Dense clouds of smoke are rising from sacked and ruined warehouses and from long trains of burning cars. Here and there little groups of striking employes have gathered, holding aloof from the reckless and infuriated mob, appalled at the sight of riot and devastation resulting from their ill-advised action. Many of their number, conscious of their responsibility for the scenes of bloodshed and pillage and wanton destruction of property, public and private, would now gladly undo their work and array themselves ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... desert. The resistance of Edessa, and the deficiency of spoil, inclined the mind of Cabades to peace: he sold his conquests for an exorbitant price; and the same line, though marked with slaughter and devastation, still separated the two empires. To avert the repetition of the same evils, Anastasius resolved to found a new colony, so strong, that it should defy the power of the Persian, so far advanced towards Assyria, that its stationary troops might defend ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... took counsel with them, and then collecting all the men-at-arms within his reach, he fell upon the neighbouring provinces and executed a fearful vengeance, both with fire and sword, upon the innocent inhabitants. How long this rage for devastation might have lasted cannot be told, but Dom Pedro was at length brought to a better mind by Goncalo Pereira, Archbishop of Braga, who, by the help of the Queen, succeeded in establishing peace between father ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... a field for the display of his powers as no architect in the history of the world ever possessed. Similar allowance must be made for Cromwell. If he erected little that was new, it was because there had been no general devastation to clear a space for him. As it was, he reformed the representative system in a most judicious manner. He rendered the administration of justice uniform throughout the island. We will quote a passage from his speech to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... broke into the city, and for six days worked their will upon their enemies, slaying many of them, pillaging and burning their houses, while Charles looked on with apparent unconcern at the wide-spread ruin and devastation. New priors, all of them from the party of the Neri, entered upon office in mid-November, and a new Podesta, Cante dei Gabrielli of Agobbio, was charged with the administration of justice. The persecution of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... zealous to promoting the reformed doctrines, and exploding the errors of popish idolatry, was summoned, among others, before the persecuting bishop of Winchester, and other commissioners set apart for the abominable work of devastation and massacre. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... heart longs day and night for the meeting with you—for the meeting that is like all-devouring death. Sweep me away like a storm; take everything I have; break open my sleep and plunder my dreams. Rob me of my world. In that devastation, in the utter nakedness of spirit, let us become one in beauty. Alas for my vain desire! Where is this hope for union ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... Mohammedan war, when the Chinese captured the city through the treachery of its commander and turned the streets to rivers of blood. The Mohammedans were almost exterminated, and the ruined stone walls testify to the completeness of the Chinese devastation. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... us; none could gainsay our sovereign's words. Sullen to the last, the only symptom of gratitude he vouchsafed was to mutter forth, in, answer to the Bruce's warning words to hie him to his comrades in Buchan, and bid them, an they feared fire and devastation, to fly without delay, 'Aye, only thus mayest thou hope to exterminate the traitors; pity none, spare none. The whole district of Buchan is peopled by the Comyn, bound by this oath of blood,' ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... away, in order that they might get his fine skin. The ant-eaters, both of which were now dead, he left behind, as he saw that the termites were crawling thickly around them, and had already begun their work of devastation. Strange to say, as the party returned that way, going to dinner, not a vestige remained either of the ais or the ant-eaters, except a few bones and some portions of coarse hair. The rest of all these animals had been cleared off by the ants, and carried ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... when the council broke up, to the guard house, under an escort of soldiers! This impolitic official ought to have remembered that the fire was even then ready for the kindling, which finally burst out in such fearful devastation over his devoted State; that it was enough to have cheated the Indians, without thus inflaming their already excited passions, by heaping so great an indignity upon the person of their chief. But he was regardless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... finer lights that are shed from the imaginations of men. In my reading at this time I delighted to follow from out of Arabian sands the feet of the armed believers, and to stand in the broad, manifest storm-track of Tartar devastation; and thus, though surrounded at Constantinople by scenes of much interest to the “classical scholar,” I had cast aside their associations like an old Greek grammar, and turned my face to the “shining Orient,” forgetful of old Greece and all the pure wealth she left to this matter-of-fact-ridden ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the devastation caused by the rising of the water shortly before my arrival. The Moldau had overstepped its banks in so turbulent a manner, as to carry along with it several small houses, and even a little village not far from Prague, besides damaging all the dwellings upon its banks. The ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... wounds and death. Others rushed back into their trenches, crowding and treading upon one another. But even here they were not safe from the great tanks, which lumbered down into the trenches and up on the other side, leaving devastation in their wake, spitting out flame from the guns they carried, while they themselves in their iron armor went ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... this periphrastic conjugation, see Zumpt, S 498. Sallust states that he wishes to describe this war separately, because during its progress there was kindled at Rome that struggle between the populares and the optimates, which was in the end carried on with such senseless vehemence, that only the devastation of Italy put a stop to the civil discord (studiis civilibus), and that only a military despotism (first of Caesar, and afterwards of the triumvirs) was able to restore peace. This part of the description of the Jugurthine war, accordingly, is of the greatest importance, in forming a ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... devoured it more slowly, while the great volume of the fire swept around over the plain. Long did the light of the burning home blight the eye of the lone woman after the flames had done their worst on the prairie around her and gone on bearing ruin and devastation to the southern plains ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... century was thenceforth easily drawn away from home. One generation of continuous warfare throughout all Germany, followed by another generation of intermittent invasion from France, and closed by a crisis of rapine and devastation, made hundreds of thousands of the German people homeless, despairing, and eager for escape. It was this situation of the people, combined with the religious condition before described, that made Germany the best recruiting-ground ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... policy took a very subordinate place, and Henry turned his attention to the cultivation of his own garden instead of seeking to annex his neighbour's. It is possible that he was (p. 150) better employed in wasting his people's blood and treasure in the futile devastation of France, than in placing his heel on the Church and sending Fisher and More to the scaffold; but his attempts to reduce Ireland to order, and to unite England and Scotland, violent though his methods may have been, were at least more sane than the quest for the crown of ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Eusebius, where is now your burst of philanthropy—where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have made, had you been armed with thunder—thunder, I say, for yours would have been no silent devastation among the villains. No Warnerian silent blazeless destruction would suit your indignation—in open day, and with a shout, would you do it, and in such wise would you suffer, if needs must, with Ajax's prayer in your mouth—"En de Phaei kai olesson." But for a grand picture of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... Now when Liutprand heard that the Saracens, when Sardinia had been laid waste, had also polluted those places where the bones of the holy bishop Augustine, on account of the devastation of the barbarians, had formerly been transported and solemnly buried, he sent thither and when he had given a large sum obtained them and transported them to the city of Pavia, where he buried them with the honor due so great a father.(287) ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... this vanity of his to get rid of him. In the neighboring country there is an ugly Troll, who is the terror of the whole neighborhood. He devours all the cattle for ten leagues about, and commits unheard-of devastation everywhere. Now Thumbling has said a great many times that, if he wanted to, he would make this ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... a sight was now presented to the view of the travellers; what a scene of devastation was that which lay outspread around them! The long grass was pressed so flat to the ground that it would scarcely have afforded cover to the smallest animal; stately trees were lying prostrate, either uprooted altogether, or their massive trunks snapped short off, whilst others ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... for the signal cry, "Long live King Joas!" My father wills that Zachariah guard The king, forbidden to expose himself. Meanwhile the queen, with poniard in her hand, Laughs at the feeble check of our brass gates. To crush them she attends the fatal engines, Breathing, in short, but blood and devastation. Some priests, my sister, at the first proposed, That in a secret cave, our fathers' dug, The precious ark at least should be concealed. "O base insulting fear my father cried, The ark which caused so many gorgeous towers To fall, and forced the Jordan's backward course; ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... many other South Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands' economic development is hindered by the isolation of the country from foreign markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Manufacturing activities are limited to fruit-processing, clothing, and handicrafts. Trade deficits are made up for by remittances from ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... world had been cut off so that to send warnings to the communities below had been impossible. Considering the enormity of the catastrophe, it was miraculous that there had not been greater loss of life and wider spread devastation. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... down and looked about me in gloomy despair. No words can describe the scene, unless we devote a whole page to repeating the word "dismal." Devastation always appears to be more complete of a morning I have observed in my years of experience. A plasterer's scaffolding that looks fairly nobby at sunset is a grim, unsightly skeleton at breakfast-time. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... treads on the heels of the other. The woods were more variegated, interspersed with shrubs. We no longer passed through forests of vast pines stretching along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks, ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the greater part of the oak-planks, I am informed, come from ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... way across the continent of North America Hollister grew more and more restive under the accumulating knowledge that the horrible devastation of his features made a No Man's Land about him which few had the courage to cross. It was a fact. Here, upon the evening of the third day in Vancouver, a blind and indescribable fear seized upon him, a sickening conviction ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was now a coadjutor with that of England in the devastation of Germany. The throne of Frederic II. was the exponent and defender of the hollow creed. The military successes of that king gave him an authority that few monarchs have been able to wield, while his well-known literary taste and capacity enlisted the admiration ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... soaring to a considerable height, now driven down to earth by fitful gusts of wind. In their sinuous course these smoke-clouds resemble the genii of fable, who spread over the earth carrying death and devastation. ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... the country with grief and consternation; and, as the year 1675 drew towards a close, the conviction became general, that the crisis of the fate of the colonies was near at hand. The Indians were carrying all before them. Philip was spreading conflagration, devastation, and slaughter around the borders, and striking sudden and deadly blows into the heart of the country. It was evident that he was consolidating the Indian power into irresistible strength. Among papers on file in the State House is a letter addressed to ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... in the neighbourhood from the tops of which bonfires occasionally blaze forth. Further off, but rising still higher, is the glittering cone of Cotopaxi, which, like a tyrant, has made its power felt by the devastation it has often caused in the plains which surround its base: while near it rise the peaks of Corazon and Ruminagui. Far more dreaded than their fires is the quaking and heaving and tumbling about of the earth, shaking down as it does human habitations and ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Longstreet were now joined under the personal eye of Lee, who rode with his two generals. Ewell was still ahead. Finally they came to Chambersburg, which the Southern advance had reached earlier in the month, and Lee issued an order that no devastation should be committed by his troops, an ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of his danger, for he had a private intimation that the king's vizirs were consulting together on the expedience of securing his person, under the apprehension that Zohak would be invading the country, and consigning it to devastation and ruin, if his retreat was discovered. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... throw on it a little brimstone. The vapour of the sulphur, and the suffocating fume arising from the charcoal, will not only destroy all the insects, but prevent the plants from being infested with them any more that season. Black cankers, which commit great devastation among turnips, are best destroyed by turning a quantity of ducks into the field infested by them. Every fourth year these cankers become flies, when they deposit their eggs on the ground, and thus produce maggots. The flies on their first appearance settle on the trees, especially the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... was detained as a hostage by the Turks. The Mirdites consequently refused to contribute their customary contingent to the Turkish army, and eventually Prenk was restored. His ambiguous conduct, however, led to the despatch of two expeditions against the Mirdites and the devastation of their territory. In 1880 Prenk was kidnapped by the Turkish authorities and exiled to Anatolia; another member of the ruling family was appointed kaimakam, but the Mirdites refused to obey him, and their district has ever since ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... some of the trees which had been broken, this terrific storm appeared to have taken place about two years ago. Not a tree had been left standing in the part where we crossed, nor could we tell how far the devastation had extended to the south-west; but the ground to the north and east being swampy, and covered only with small Melaleucas and Banksias, the wind had not taken much effect. Many of the trees in the middle ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... heard a young Greek observe, in common with many of his countrymen—for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion—thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri[205], is the agent of devastation; and like the Greek finder[206] of Verres in Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel[207], who wishes ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... were able, above the distant roar, to hear ordinary sounds, which had not been the case when the attack started. The sun was well up now, and the day gave promise of being a fine one—hot, too. And on such a scene the sun shone! Death and devastation brought on ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... country four leagues around Constance was laid waste by lightning and tempest, and two women being, by fair means or foul, made to confess themselves guilty as the cause of the devastation, suffered death. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the forces hereby called forth, will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens of any part of the country; and I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid, to disperse and retire peaceably to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Romans conquering and colonizing Gaul, Spain, Britain, the Danubian Principalities and Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa. Then again, at a later time, follow the great ethnic convulsions of Eastern Europe, and the devastation and re-population of the ancient seats of civilization by Goths, and Lombards, and Vandals, and Saxons; while at the same time, and for many centuries to come, the few strongholds of civilization in the East were again and again overwhelmed by the irresistible waves of Hunnish, Mongolic, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... reported, that Dundonald's device would not merely defeat but annihilate and sweep out of existence any hostile force, whole armies and navies. 'No power on earth could stand against it,' said the old fellow, and the five experts backed him up. But they considered that the devastation would be inhuman beyond permissible warfare. Not war, annihilation. In fact, they shelved it because it was too efficient. There was great need of means for fighting Napoleon just then, so they gave it up reluctantly, but it was a ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... right and left. Talk about the flowers that bloom in the spring,—why, I never saw such a wreck, and I am fully convinced that there is nothing that will stop a thoroughly well-bred bull but a full-bred South American cactus. [Laughter.] I went down to look at the ruins and the devastation that this animal had made, and I found him quietly eating black Hamburg grapes. I don't know anything finer than black Hamburg grapes for Alderney bulls. A friend of mine, who was chaffing me for my farming proclivities, said: "I see you have got in some confusion here. It ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Devastation and plunder, revenge and gain, not permanent conquest, were his objects; and hence his course was everywhere marked by ruin and carnage, by smoking towns, ravaged fields, and heaps of slain. His cruelties have no doubt been exaggerated; but when we hear that he filled the ravines and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... are not too exacting with respect to such as are unnecessary, especially since heretofore these rites have, to a great extent, remained in the churches of these regions.... We know that much is said against this moderation, but the devastation of the churches, such as is taking place in Swabia, would be a still greater offense." (7, 251ff.) The plan of Melanchthon therefore was to yield in things which he regarded as unnecessary in order to maintain the truth and ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... length, I mentioned and deplored the ignorance in which I had been kept respecting my brother's destiny, and the circumstances of our misfortunes. I entreated him to tell me what was Wieland's condition, and what progress had been made in detecting or punishing the author of this unheard-of devastation. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... here referred to, first and foremost, that we may pay some tribute, if only in thought, to these and our other brave allies who have suffered loss incalculable, and in the second place to direct our attention to our own more fortunate position and to remind us that amid all the devastation, the War is being commemorated by works of beneficence and mercy, works intended to show our sympathy for suffering and our gratitude to the God who is supporting us ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... German gunners. Dodging an army-truck and rounding one of those military traffic policemen one meets at every important corner we climbed the hill and left the motor among the great trees, which are still fortunately preserved. And we stood for a few minutes, gazing over miles and miles of devastation. Then, taking the motor once more, we passed through wrecked and empty villages until we came to the foot of Vimy Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette rose against the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... (a basket), far surpasses it in size. This latter volcano lies in a great central desert termed 'Odaxa-hraun' or 'Misdeed Lava Desert,' covering a space of 1200 square miles, and a most appropriate name it is, for the devastation caused by its last flood of ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... consequence of their having passed such a number of years without waging war on their own account, were all in disorder and confusion, without established officers and without command. Some advised to give battle, others to defend the camp; the greater part were influenced by concern for the devastation of their lands, likely to take place, and the consequent destruction of their cities, left with weak garrisons. Among a variety of propositions, one, however, was heard which, abandoning all concern for the public interest, tended to transfer every man's attention to the care of his private ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... gained money, experience, and strength. He never went to Goeschenen, but once a year he went to the "sacred wood" to contemplate the devastation, as he said. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... living in security and indolence, they only become weaker and more depraved; or the worse than uselessness and injustice, the positive insanity and barbarity of preparations for war and of wars, causing devastation and ruin, and having no kind of justification. Yet these forms of violence continue and are supported by the very people who see their uselessness, injustice, and cruelty, and suffer from them. If fifty years ago the idle rich man and the illiterate ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... bowing everything before them. City, fortress, and battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls. Venice kept her brave colours streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice and Milan there was this unutterable devastation,—so sudden a change, so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking false oath of its being night when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... masses of the castle ruins which lie scattered about and in the vale below, form a scene of havoc and devastation, at once magnificent and impressive. The towers were blasted with gunpowder, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... destitute of will and of the means of resistance, but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer. He centralized, in a manner hitherto unknown in the West, the whole judicial and political administration. No office was henceforth to be filled by popular election, under penalty of the devastation of the offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants. The taxes, based on a comprehensive assessment, and distributed in accordance with Mohammedan usages, were collected by those cruel and vexatious methods without which, it is true, it is impossible ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... of an armistice. The hysteric Greeley had put it into a personal letter to Lincoln. "I know that nine-tenths of the whole American people, North and South, are anxious for peace—peace on any terms—and are utterly sick of human slaughter and devastation. I know that, to the general eye, it now seems that the Rebels are anxious to negotiate and that we repulse their advances. . . . I beg you, I implore you to inaugurate or invite proposals for peace forthwith. And in case peace can not now ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... of this principality,—the father of our princess,—became incensed over the depredations of the Axphain soldiers who patrolled our border on the north. He demanded restitution for the devastation they had created, but was refused. Graustark is a province comprising some eight hundred square miles of the best land in this part of the world. Our neighbor is smaller in area and population. Our army was better equipped but not so hardy. For several months the fighting in ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... smiled. For what can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... requested her husband to attend to. He readily promised this, and Mrs. Mudge supposed it done, until that same morning, her sharp eyes had detected old Brindle munching the treasured cabbages with a provoking air of enjoyment. The angry lady seized a broom, and repaired quickly to the scene of devastation. Brindle scented the danger from afar, and beat a disorderly retreat, trampling down the cabbages which she had hitherto spared. Leaping over the broken fence, she had just cleared the gap as the broom-handle, missing her, came forcibly down upon the rail, and ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... convulsions in Europe threaten destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a gregarious mood, yearning for the society of their fellow creatures; but in about three minutes the talk was running on pheasants. Mr. Carrington did not like pheasants, except from the point of view of eating; and he dwelt at length on the devastation the sacred bird was working in the English countryside: villages were being emptied and let fall to ruin that it might live undisturbed; the song-birds were being killed off to give ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... three seated themselves at the table, which Mirandolina had decorated with a number of wax candles stuck in the cut-glass bottles of the Count's dressing-case. Here they were speedily joined by the actress's monkey and parrot, who had soon spread devastation among the dishes. While Miranda was restoring order by boxing the monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... these did in fact produce injurious effects directly calculable in human lives, in money, and in the waste and devastation of war, is a fact which will claim the attention of the reader on a subsequent occasion. They came not merely from the mouths of the Irish Nationalists, and of advanced Radicals such as Mr. Lloyd-George ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... is no soil," said the President, shuddering at the recollection of the devastation he had witnessed. "It has all ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... profits are to be acquired in tropical Africa under a trade system. If, on the other hand, the methods they are prepared to adopt are the methods King Leopold and his other concessionaires have adopted for the past thirteen years, devastation and destruction, and the raising of more large bodies of soldiers, are their essential accompaniments; and the widening of the area of the ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... the history of this country such a crying need for—for twins, if I may put it picturesquely. In each family, in each home where there are no families, let there be two babies where there was one, for thus only can we triumph over the devastation of this war." At this moment the now considerable audience, which had hitherto been silent, broke into a shrill "'Ear, 'ear!" and Mr. Lavender, taking his hand from the acacia branch to silence them, fell off the wall into the garden. Seeing her master thus vanish, Blink, who ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Front is a strange compound of the grave and the gay. One of the most appealing features is witnessed in the sad lot of the Belgian refugees, who, often at a moment's notice, have fled from their homes, leaving all their property to the devastation of war. I have frequently seen mournful processions on the road, consisting of old and young. It is heartrending to witness the pitiable look of an aged couple, who through a long life have lived in some happy ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... There was a general feeling throughout the city and all classes, that this time it was to be an affair of Alaric or Genseric, or the Constable of Bourbon; no negotiations, no compromises, no conventions, but slaughter, havoc, a great judicial devastation, that was to extirpate all signs and memories of Mediaeval and Semitic Rome, and restore and renovate the inheritance of the true offspring of the she-wolf. The very aspect of the place itself was sinister. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... hour of pastoralism had come, and while the ladies and gallants of the court were playing the parts of Watteau swains and shepherdesses amid the trim hedges and smooth lawns of Versailles, the gates were already bursting before the flood, which was to sweep in devastation over the land, and to purge the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Padre Bona, fell back to strengthen Victor. A furious cannonade along the whole front of that position ensued; the tirailleurs of either army posted themselves along the margins of the ravine, and fired incessantly at each other, their pieces almost touching. Cannon and musketry spread devastation everywhere—for the armies were but a few toises apart. For more than two hours Victor withstood singly the vigorous assaults of a far superior force; Marengo had been taken and retaken several times, ere Lannes received orders to reinforce him. The ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... sudden devastation which sometimes arises from this long stagnant matter, when liquified too hastily: how long, how many years the impacted matter will continue quiet in a schirrous tumour of the breast; but being once put in motion, whether from accident, or in the course of nature, ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... apprenticeship. The noon-day sun is not clearer than the fact, that no preparation was required on the part of the slaves. It was the dictate of an accusing conscience, that foretold of bloodshed, and burning, and devastation. Can it be supposed to be an accidental circumstance, that peace and good-will have uniformly, in all the colonies, followed the steps of emancipation. Is it not rather the broad seal of attestation to that heaven born principle, "It is safe to do right." Dear brother, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... comes from far off. Like a signal gun for the battle of the winds to begin, it appeared to awaken them from their lethargy, and one awful, warring hurricane swept over a whole city, producing more devastation in the four or five minutes it lasted, than would a ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... describe stock conditions drew exhaustively on such terms as "tornado," "blizzard," "simoon," "maelstrom," "cyclone," "landslide," "avalanche," and whatever else in the English language means death and devastation. No one found fault of those similes, which were justified of the hopeless truth. Values were beaten as flat as a field of turnips. The best feature was that no banks failed; two or three of the weaker sisters wavered, but the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... stepped out of the carriage, and was seized upon by this band of thieves. Guided by that same strange and wonderful instinct which has so often caused women in times of war to turn against the assailants of their men or devastation of their homes, Crystal picked up the weapon without a moment's hesitation; she knew that it was loaded, and she knew how to use it. Even as the masked man moved away into the darkness, she fired in the direction whence his ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... rebellions and of invasions by foreign foes, which stripped the Moguls of their wealth and destroyed their resources. First came the Persians; then the Afghans, who plundered the imperial capital, desecrated tombs and temples, destroyed the fortresses and palaces and left little but distress and devastation when they departed. One by one the provinces separated themselves from the empire and set up their own independence; until in 1804 the English took possession of the remnant and have maintained their ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... After the frightful devastation of Germany by the religious dissensions of the early part of the seventeenth century and the Thirty Years War, it fell to Frederick the Great, not only to lay a firm foundation for the Prussian State but to elevate it definitely as a rival to Austria in the leadership of Germany. ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... asks—What forests can stand before such invaders? How is it that vegetation is not eaten off the face of the earth? Surely nowhere but in the tropics, where the recuperative powers of nature are immense and ever active, could such devastation ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... summits graceful undulations of snow. The house and lantern erected by James Ross were still in a tolerable state of preservation; but the provisions seemed to have been ransacked by foxes and bears, the recent traces of which were easily distinguished. Men, too, had had something to do with the devastation, for a few remains of Esquimaux huts remained upon the shores of the Bay. The six graves inclosing the remains of the six sailors of the Enterprise and the Investigator were recognisable by a slight swelling of the ground; they had ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... signal example was made by a handful of your Majesty's troops opposed to a riotous multitude which had burnt houses and spread devastation, and Sir James Graham encloses a letter from Captain Powys giving a description of the occurrence. The effect of this example has been that yesterday throughout this district no ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... is a large stuffed dog (very much resembling a wolf, and having its propensities), which some years ago spread devastation amongst the flocks of sheep in this neighbourhood: a reward was offered for its destruction, and, though hunted by men and dogs, its caution and swiftness eluded their pursuit, till it was found asleep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... waste, even as if your pastime had consisted not in harmless novelty and display, in gentlemanly games or good-humoured sport, but in destruction and devastation for their own sake. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... had not suffered any damage. The gates were closed, and the animals had not been able to disperse in the forest. Nor could they see traces of any struggle, any devastation, either in the hut, or in the palisade. The ammunition only, with which Ayrton had been ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... arrival, and before the excitement had completely worn off the village was again taken off its feet by unexpected news of stupendous import, even as of old Pompeii was overthrown by a second earthquake before it had wholly recovered from the devastation caused by the first. The shock was indeed a severe one. The Juxon estate was reported to be out of Chancery, and a new squire was coming to take up his ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... a peculiar droning, humming sound, mingled with a subdued crashing and roaring of the mountain forest, which lay about a quarter of a mile astern of us—the noise one hears when a mighty bush fire is raging in Australia, and a sudden gust of wind adds to its devastation—and then in another half a minute the brig spun round like a top to the fury of the first blast, and we were enveloped in a blinding shower of leaves, twigs and salty spray. She brought up to her anchors with a jerk that nearly threw everyone off his feet, and then in an incredibly short ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... very different guise from that expected. While M. de Denonville remained in daily hopes of receiving a deputation of ten or twelve of the Indians to treat for peace, he was astounded by the sudden descent of 1200 warriors upon the island of Montreal.[405] Terrible indeed was the devastation they caused; blood and ashes marked their path to within three leagues of the territory, where they blockaded two forts, after having burned the neighboring houses. A small force of 100 soldiers and 50 Indians, imprudently sent against these fierce marauders, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... instance, who visited the Parthenon before it had been dismantled, and, afterwards, was present at the removal of metopes; and Hughes, who came after Byron (autumn, 1813)—make use of such phrases as "shattered desolation," "wanton devastation and avidity of plunder." Even Michaelis, the great archaeologist, who denounces 'The Curse of Minerva' as a "'libellous' poem," and affirms "that only blind passion could doubt that Lord Elgin's act was an act of preservation," ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Pitt, Fox, and a crowd of their followers, in the senate of England, and the almost fiendish vividness of the republican oratory, have remained without equals, and almost without imitators—the brilliancy of French soldiership, in a war which swept Europe with the swiftness and the devastation of a flight of locusts—the British campaigns of the Peninsula, those most consummate displays of fortitude and decision, of the science which baffles an enemy, and of the bravery which crushes him—will be lessons to the soldier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... plenty and richness, and the vines were clustering round their poles like the hops in the gardens of Kent. It is impossible to describe the feeling of absolute refreshment which such a sight stirred up in men who, for so long a time, had looked upon nothing but ruin and devastation. It is true that with respect to grandeur, or even beauty, the scenery through which we now travelled was not to be compared with the sublime passes of the Pyrenees, or with many spots which we had beheld; but in truth, a hamlet uninjured and tenanted ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Truce? No, all this is a mere pretence, and if we are deceived by it, we shall be led on step by step to deeper and still deeper humiliation. It may seem a hard thing to give up the fair land of Attica to pillage and devastation. But think how far greater was the sacrifice made by our grandsires, who refused the fairest offers from Persia, and gave up all they had, rather than betray the common cause. Athens and Attica were then all the country they had, and these lost they had nothing left ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... English lyrical feeling," says Ten Brink, citing the lines that immediately follow sw n, "is fond of the image of physical destruction"; but I do not think these lines have a merely figurative import. The reference is to a period of real devastation, antedating the Danish incursions. "We might fairly find such a time in that parenthesis of bad government and of national tumult which filled the years between the death of Aldfrith in 705 and the renewed peace of Northumbria under Ceolwulf in the years that followed ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... have been observed and scrutinized by the most learned—their nature has been studied; various experiments have been tried to prevent their depredations; but after all, the monster in gaudy hue marches onward, committing the greatest havoc and devastation, with but little molestation. I have lost my whole stock at least four times since 1808, as I supposed by the moth. I tried all the experiments recommended in this and other countries, that came to my knowledge; but after all, I could not ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
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