Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Sceptre   /sˈɛptər/  /skˈɛptər/   Listen
Sceptre

noun
1.
The imperial authority symbolized by a scepter.  Synonym: scepter.
2.
A ceremonial or emblematic staff.  Synonyms: scepter, verge, wand.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Sceptre" Quotes from Famous Books



... words which Worcester and the English dictionaries spell re, while Webster, the Century, and the Standard prefer er:Calibre, centre, litre, lustre, maneuvre (I. maneuver), meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, ombre, piastre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... British territory, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains; along which, if speedily and wisely opened up, must travel the commerce of China and Japan, as well as the gold of Columbia. The nation which constructs this line will, by its means, hold the sceptre of the commercial world. Brother Jonathan is well aware of the fact, and would long since have run a chain of locomotives from Atlantic to Pacific if he could; but thousands of miles of the great American desert intervene, and along the western ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

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

... weighty For shoulders of eighty— She could not sustain such a trophy: Her hand, too, already Has grown so unsteady, She can't hold a sceptre: So Providence kept her Away—poor old ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

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

... sir, my entire vocabulary is at your service in an affair of the heart." The Judge beamed on Delaven and bowed to Madame Caron as though including her in the circle where Love's sceptre is ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... incognito? A Modest Vindication of the Earl of S——y (1682), banters that nobleman by describing how "Polish Deputies were immediately sent Post incognito with the Imperial Crown and Sceptre in a Cloak-Bag". ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... was used as a cover to his real designs in life. Influential in the local politics of Harrisville he had experienced the keen pleasure of wielding the silver sceptre of power, and he longed not only to be the "power behind the throne," but to sit on the throne itself and guide the ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... the throne wi' his sceptre an' his croon, The elements o' cauld are the courtiers staunin' roun'; He lifts his icy haun', an' he speaks wi' awe profound, He chills the balmy air, and he binds the yielding ground; He calms the raging winds when they moan and loudly rave, He stops the rinnin' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... carried the sceptre, his back bent, as under too heavy a burden; he lifted it no higher than in bowing and no lower than in making a gift. His face changed, as it will with fear, and he dragged his feet, as though they ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius

... princess of great spirit, refused to endure the humiliations to which she and her husband were exposed, and wrote to Alfonso her father, after this manner: 'Many years have passed, my father, since you first wedded me to Gian Galeazzo, on the understanding that he would in due time succeed to the sceptre of his father and ascend the throne of Galeazzo and Francesco Sforza and of his Visconti ancestors. He is now of age and is himself a father; but he is not yet in possession of his dominions, and can only obtain the actual necessaries of life from the hands of Lodovico ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... the Neva by the allied fleet. A great opportunity lost. Russian caricatures during the Crimean War. Visit to Moscow. Curious features in the Kremlin, the statue of Napoleon; the Crown, Sceptre, and Constitution of Poland. Evidences of official stupidity. Journey from St. Petersburg to Warsaw. Contest with the officials at the frontier; my victory. Journey across the continent; scene in a railway carriage between Strasburg ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings: But mercy is above the sceptred sway: It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute of God himself: And earthly power doth then show likest God's, When mercy ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... laying the foundation of the new political party of America which would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the women, the Negroes," The Revolution declared, "are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers, the land monopolists, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... beyond the sea, and was as much a foreigner as Edward himself had been, and Edward's partiality for the Normans in the early years of his reign had so angered the English that Edgar's claims would on this account alone have been dismissed. Moreover, boys' hands were unfit to hold the sceptre of England in such troubled times. It was to Harold that all eyes turned. He had for years exercised at least joint authority with Edward; he was the foremost and most noble of Englishmen. He was ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... its confused and imposing style, in clothing her with sumptuous and chimerical robes, in crowning her with a fantastic mitre shaped like a Phoenician tower, such as Salammbo bore, and placing in her hand the sceptre of Isis, the tall lotus, sacred flower ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... cause is the same which, in long ages gone, Roused up your great sires, so gallantly known, When, braving the tyrant, the sceptre and throne, They rushed to the conflict, despising the odds; Armed with bow, spear, and scythe, and with sling and with stone, For their homes ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... lily served her for a sceptre; she took her seat; a rose leaf hung for a canopy over her head; the bells of the lily of the valley and the campanula sent forth their joyous chime. The bladder senna filled the air with the noise of its bursting ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen

... not Griselda, and she will explain how it would certainly all go wrong with me. But what's the good when I know it all beforehand? Have I not desired King Cophetua to take himself and sceptre elsewhere?" And then she started, having first said another word or two about the Crawley children, and obtained a promise of Puck and the pony-carriage for the afternoon. It was also almost agreed that Puck on his return to Framley should bring back the four children with him; but on this ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... What is the real life of Italy to-day? The sceptre of Commerce has passed from her; Venice is no longer the abode of merchant princes; Genoa is but the shadow of what she once was. What causes a foreign population to circulate through its cities, constantly on the wing, scattering gold ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... coronation of Charles V was to be celebrated at Aix-la-Chapelle the Marchese di Pescara was appointed ambassador to represent the House of Aragon on this brilliant occasion, when the new emperor was to be invested with the crown and the sceptre of Charlemagne. Charles had decided to journey by sea and to visit Henry VIII on the way, an arrangement of which Cardinal Wolsey was aware, although he had kept Henry in ignorance of it, according to those curious mental processes of his ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... 'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change.— No TINT of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron: —with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled!—Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... my cradle; in my youth my name was invoked by rebels against my will; imprisoned by my father, with the poison-bowl or the dagger hourly before my eyes, I was saved only by the artifice of my mother. When age and infirmity broke the iron sceptre of the king, my claims to the throne were set aside, and my uncle, El Zagal, usurped my birthright. Amidst open war and secret treason I wrestled for my crown; and now, the sole sovereign of Granada, when, as I fondly imagined, my uncle ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... leave Banbridge and the rest of the family were in Kentucky, why, the girl could be judged separately; and if Randolph should fancy her—she was not at all sure that he did—of Charlotte she had not a doubt. She had never had a doubt of any woman's attitude of readiness to grasp the sceptre, if it were only held out by her son. And she herself was conscious of something which was almost infatuation for the girl. Something about her appealed to her. She had an almost fierce impulse of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the ground that the island of Funicula was brought under the Dodopeloponnesian sceptre on September 11th, 1405, by Blagoslav the Splay-fingered, from whom it was wrested on February ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various

... silent—and misunderstood, In the white glare of Kinghood thou didst stand. The sceptre in thy hand Seemed but a flower the Fates had tossed to thee, And thou wert called, perchance half scornfully, Albert ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... acts. If they had so shrunk, he exclaimed, this is the sort of epitaph that he would expect to have written over their remains: 'Here lie the dishonoured ashes of a ministry that found England in peace and left in it war, that was content to enjoy the emoluments of office and to wield the sceptre of power, so long as no man had the courage to question their existence: they saw the storm gathering over the country; they heard the agonising accounts that were almost daily received of the sick ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... above the Tyrian purple of his toga, above the gold work and palms of his tunic, there oscillated a little ball in which there were charms against Envy. On his head a wreath concealed his increasing baldness; along his left arm the sceptre lay; behind him a boy admonished him noisily to remember he was man, while to the rear for miles and miles there rang the laugh of trumpets, the click of castanets, the shouts of dancers, the roar of the multitude, the tramp of legions, and the cry, caught ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... [Midsummer, 1532], "I went to Oxford, intending that my brother George and I should kill a buck with Sir Simon Harcourt, which he had promised me; and there at Oxford, in the said Jones's chamber, I did see certain stillatories, alembics, and other instruments of glass, and also a sceptre and other things, which he said did appertain to the conjuration of the four kings; and also an image of white metal; and in a box, a serpent's skin, as he said, and divers books and things, whereof one was a book which he said was my Lord Cardinal's, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... hump had been his property, as well as Alexandre's fleshy arms and Lacaille's gloomy face. He had done what he liked with them, stuffed his opinions down their throats, belaboured their shoulders with his sceptre. But now he endured much bitterness of spirit; and ended by quite ceasing to speak, simply shrugging his shoulders and whistling disdainfully, without condescending to combat the absurdities vented in his presence. What exasperated him more than ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... each bystander of them all Could criticise, and quote tradition How depths of blue sublimed some pall —To get which, pricked a king's ambition; Worth sceptre, crown ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... was a great wrong, and she said I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king. Should the king of the United States be greater, or more crueler, or more harder? But the king, he raised up his sceptre and said: "Thy request shall be granted unto thee—to the half of my kingdom will I grant it to thee!" Then he said he would hang Haman on the gallows he had made up high. But that is not what women come forward to contend. The ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... cannot help considering," he says, "the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;—"An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... whirlwind underground, Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven; The shape is awful like the sound, Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven. A sceptre of pale gold 235 To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud His veined hand doth hold. Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, Like one who does, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... scattered royal line at a distance. Harthaknut, whom the will of his father had called to the succession, was absent in Denmark, and Godwin caused his brother, Harold Harefoot, to be crowned in haste, though the Archbishop would not sanction the usurpation, placed the crown and sceptre on the altar, and forbade the bishops ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless'd, It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes 'Tis mightiest of the mighty, it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute of awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings: But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings: It is an attribute to God himself; And ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... must never forget that it was in their city that the first President was inaugurated, and that that President was George Washington. To New York belongs the greatest honor any American city can boast, in having placed the sceptre of government in the hands of the greatest man ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weathertanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... several upper priests wear robes, which are generally red and gold, during the service. The abbot also carries a sort of sceptre. The vestments of the clergy are said to be derived from the robes of honour which used to be given to them when ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

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

... powers and claims; but it is not till the rise of another pope of mighty genius that they claim any consideration as important. In 461 died S. Leo; in 476 Romulus Augustulus, the last of the continuous line of Western Caesars, surrendered his sceptre to the Herul Odowakar. The barbarian governed with the aid of Roman statesmen: he fixed his seat of rule at Ravenna rather than at Rome: he showed consideration to the saintly Epiphanius, Bishop of Pavia: heretic though he was, he desired to keep well with the Catholic bishops ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... Government now became law: and the solemn inauguration of the Protector by the Parliament on the twenty-sixth of June was a practical acknowledgement on the part of Cromwell of the illegality of his former rule. In the name of the Commons the Speaker invested him with a mantle of State, placed the sceptre in his hand, and girt the sword of justice by his side. By the new Act of Government Cromwell was allowed to name his own successor, but in all after cases the office was to be an elective one. In every other respect the forms of the older Constitution were carefully restored. Parliament ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... without, but foes within. France has given me this sword, and I shall not lay it down, even if all the kings of Europe, and all the Bourbons who lie in the vaults of St. Denis, leave their graves, to demand it from me! I am the living sword of France, and never shall this sword bow before the sceptre of a Bourbon. Fresh shoots might sooner spring from the dead stick which the wanderer carries through the desert, than a Bourbon sceptre could grow from the sword of Bonaparte; and all the same, whether this Bourbon calls himself Louis XVII. or Louis XVIII.! Mark that, Fouche, and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... commanded, and waved the sceptre in a fine manner. So we followed, each tiny boy gripping my hand tight. We were all three a trifle awed. Elsbeth led us into a dark underbrush. The branches, as they flew back in our faces, left them wet with dew. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... been pleased to confer the dignity of a Full Knight Grand Commander of the First Class of the most exalted Order of the Sceptre of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... value beauty solely, it is the only aristocracy I look for; pretty women are baronesses, charming ones countesses; beauties become marchionesses, and I recognise a queen by her hands and not by her sceptre, by her brow and not by her crown. Such is my habit. Beyond this I am without prejudice; I do not disdain princesses provided they are as handsome ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

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

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

... Mark's look of astonishment when immediately afterwards a party of grotesque figures appeared clambering over the bows. The first was an old fellow with a long white beard, a gold paper crown on his head, and a sceptre in his hand, and dressed in a flowing robe painted all over with curious devices. With him came a huge woman, also wearing a crown and garments of many colours, a necklace of huge beads and a couple of clasp-knives hanging down from either side of her face to serve as ear-rings; ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and all the great bodies of the state were awaiting him in the cathedral, which had been magnificently decorated for this extraordinary ceremony. He was addressed in an oration at the door; and then, clothed with the imperial mantle, the crown on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, he ascended a throne placed at the end of the church. The high almoner, a cardinal, and a bishop, came and conducted him to the foot of the altar for consecration. The pope poured the three-fold unction on his head ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... Sun-God, had his temple at On, near by, which the Greeks called Heliopolis, or City of the Sun. The cat is sacred to Ra. As Pthah is the god of all beginnings in Lower Egypt, so Ra is the vitalizing god, the active ruler of the world, holding a sceptre in one hand and the sign of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... public trial, to the Parlement, the hereditary foes of the Court. Freteau de Saint-Just, one of the Bar, cried: 'What a triumph for Liberal ideas! A Cardinal a thief! The Queen implicated! Mud on the crosier and the sceptre!' ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... Lucien, hoping to break thick heads with his golden sceptre, "but ordinary people have neither your intellect nor your charity. No one heeds our sorrows, our toil is unrecognized. The gold-digger working in the mine does not labor as we to wrest metaphors ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... No sound save that he spoke, No sound from spirits hushed and listening nigh! His was an oath of power— A prince's pledge for vengeance to his race— To twice two hundred years of royalty— That still the unbroken sceptre should have sway, While yet one subject warrior might obey, Or one great soul avenge a realm's disgrace! It was the pledge of vengeance, for long years, Borne by his trampled people as a dower Of bitterness ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... spare men from the plough and the sword for the cultivation of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... was the fabled gold of the Tagus which attracted Jews to Lisbon in such numbers, and the general persuasion indeed is, that the yellow sands of this royal river did actually once produce sufficient gold to make a magnificent crown and sceptre for the amiable hands of that patriot sovereign, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various

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

... to take possession of her grand new bedroom and the little boudoir, where all her girlish treasures were arranged. She had not been the least impatient for her day of freedom: it would all come in good time. When the sceptre was put into her hands and her sovereignty acknowledged by the whole household, the young princess was not a bit excited. She put on her court dress and made her courtesy to her majesty with the same charming unconsciousness and ease of ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

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

... more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism, they are only considered as females, and not as a part of the human species, when improvable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction, which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a feeble hand. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... down to the extinction of the office, there was no Emperor of Germany who was not of that family. Every effort to divert the office from that house ended in failure. The consequence was, that the house of Austria became the first of reigning families; and at one time it seemed about to grasp the sceptre of the world. When the Empire ceased to exist, the Austrian empire, though of later creation than the French empire of Napoleon I., had that appearance of antique grandeur which has so great an effect on men's minds. It was looked upon as ancient because the imperial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... cried the voice of the high-priest, who at this instant entered the hall, "Hold your tongue, and be not so bold as to wag it against him who is our king, and wields the sceptre in this kingdom as the Vicar ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... represents king Richard in a recumbent posture, his head supported by a square cushion, wearing a crown enriched with precious stones; his feet are supported by a crouching lion. On his left hand was a sceptre of which we only see the remains; the right hand has disappeared. The princes, mantle descends nearly to his ancles, in wide folds. It is over a tunic which reaches up to the neck, and which is bound round the body, by an embroidered ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... besides France desired Bonaparte to be their sovereign. When all the minor offices in the new Cisalpine Constitution had been filled, the Italians learnt that the real object of the convocation was to place the sceptre in Bonaparte's hands. They accepted the part which they found themselves forced to play, and offered to the First Consul the presidency of the Cisalpine State (Jan. 25, 1802). Unlike the French Consulate, the chief magistracy ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... thenke on the gouernement of the Royame and who hath thadmynystracion of Justice/ And thys shuld be by hym self pryncipally. This signefieth the appell of gold that he holdeth in his lyfte honde/ And for as moche as hit apperteyneth unto hym to punysshe the rebelles hath he y'e sceptre in his right hand And for as moche as mysericorde and trouthe conserue and kepe the kynge in his trone/ Therfore ought a kynge to be mercyfull and debonayr For whan a kynge or prynce desired or will be belouyd of his peple late ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

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

... orders; it reached the educated classes; and men who had been graduated in theology became professors of a faith which announced that Portugal was soon to be the head of the Fifth and Universal Monarchy; Sebastian was speedily to come from the Secret Island; the Queen would resign the sceptre into his hands; he would give Bonaparte battle near Evora, on the field of Sertorius, slay the tyrant, and become ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... three sons, all remarkably handsome in their persons, and in their tempers brave and noble. Some wicked courtiers made the king believe that the princes were impatient to wear the crown, and that they were contriving a plot to deprive him of his sceptre and his kingdom. The king felt he was growing old; but as he found himself as capable of governing as he had ever been, he had no inclination to resign his power; and therefore, that he might pass the rest of his days peaceably, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... spiritually a true Son of man. Thus the face that looks down from amidst the blaze, though it be 'as the sun shineth in his strength,' is the old face; and the breast which is girded with the golden girdle is the same breast on which the seer had leaned his happy head; and the hand that holds the sceptre is the hand that was pierced with the nails; and the Christ that is ascended up on high is the Christ that loved and pitied adulteresses and publicans, and took the little child in His gracious arms—'The same yesterday, and to-day, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... suited to beings perfectly innocent and pure, but not to fallen beings, as it made no provision for pardon or moral restoration. Under its authority the sinner could have no hope. Another decree provides that the Son of God shall bear the sceptre of authority—that the government shall be upon his shoulders. To this arrangement we suppose the words of the Psalmist to refer: "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... centre of the dome is a marble slab in the floor on which are the words CAROLO MAGNO, indicating the spot where the tomb of Charlemagne was located. It was probably a little chapel above ground. It was opened in 1165, and the body was found sitting on a throne, clothed in imperial robes, a sceptre in the hand, and a copy of the Gospels on the knee. The crown was on the bony brow, and his sword and other articles near him. All these relics were subsequently used at the coronation of the emperors, but are now kept at Vienna, except the throne, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

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

... he considered it dangerous to Governments, particularly to his own. Napoleon never could have conceived how it was possible that a sovereign wearing a crown and a sword could have the meanness to kneel to a Pope, or to humble his sceptre before the keys of St. Peter. His spirit was too great to admit of such a thought. On the contrary, he regarded the alliance between the Church and his power as a happy means of influencing the opinions of the people, and as an additional tie which was to attach them ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... regions of North China came at once under the direct rule of the Liao. As a whole, however, the plan failed: the feudatory Shih Ching-t'ang tried to make himself independent; Chinese fought the Liao; and the Chinese sceptre soon came back into the hands of a Sha-t'o dynasty (947). This ended the plans of the Liao to conquer ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... may appear to those who live these two centuries later, there were no jealousies, no bitterness among them. In those good days the favoured man's best friends were his beaten rivals. Kate's kingdom was not large, was not glittering, but her sceptre was mighty. It was made of tenderness ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... in lucent rays, already Brighter than gold a sceptre shineth; No warring realm shall dim its lustre, No earth-storm veil its blaze to dimness. Can it be true that, centuries ended, God's endless realm, the Hebrew, quickens Lifting its horns—though not for always? Shines in the East the sun, like noonday? Shall Hagar's wandering ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Copper nails were used to fasten the brass to the floor, which perhaps serves to show that the engraved copper plate was made at the time when the brass was replaced on the slab. A little piece of the left-hand bottom corner has been broken off, and the top of the sceptre is missing. There are no rails before the altar, but their place is supplied by three oak benches covered with white linen cloths (these may be seen in the illustration on p. 43). The use of the "houseling linen" dates back to very early times. The word "housel" for the sacrament of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins

... Royal place; A gentle lady; and the hand That sways the sceptre of this land, How frail and weak! Soft is the voice, and fair the face: She breathes amen to prayer and hymn; No wonder that her eyes are dim, And pale ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... great white house of Kings and, entering the portals where none are worthy to follow, shalt make obeisance alone to all the elder Kings of Zarkandhu, whose bones are seated upon golden thrones grasping their sceptres still. Therein thou shalt go with robes and sceptre through the marble porch, but thou shalt leave behind thee thy gleaming crown that others may wear it, and as the times go by come in to swell the number of the thirty Kings that sit in the great white house on golden thrones. There is one doorway in the great white house, and it stands wide with ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... spake with his mouth, vanished the garment; Again he commanded, and the garment appeared. When the gods, his fathers, saw thus his word fulfilled, Joyful were they and did homage: Marduk is king. On him conferred sceptre and throne.... Gave him invincible arms to crush them that hate him. Now go and cut short the life of Tiamat, May the winds into a secret place carry her blood. The ruler of the gods they made him, the gods, his fathers, Wished ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... prayer? Remove the pendulum of conventional routine, and the mental machinery runs on with a whir that gives a delightful excitement to sluggish temperaments, and is, perhaps, the natural relief of highly nervous organizations. The tyrant Will is dethroned, and the sceptre snatched by his frolic sister Whim. This state of things, if continued, must become either insanity or imposture. But who can say precisely where consciousness ceases and a kind of automatic movement begins, the result of over-excitement? The subjects ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... of a petty district, or a single city, when not supported, as in modern Europe, by the contagion of monarchical manners, holds the sceptre by a precarious tenure, and is perpetually alarmed by the spirit of mutiny in his people, is guided by jealousy, and supports himself by ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... slaves, Did you not, ages past, consign your lives, Liberties, fortunes, to Imperial hands, Made them the guardians of your sickly years? And now you're grown up to a booby's greatness, What, would you wrest the sceptre from his hand? Now, by the majesty of kings I swear, You shall as soon be ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... dominions. In America, the Congress of the United States passed a law prohibiting the African Slave-Trade after the year 1808, the period indicated in the Constitution,—the law taking effect a few years later. Napoleon, restored from his first banishment, and once more wielding the sceptre of power, caused a law to be passed forbidding the trade in the French Colonies. The friends of the negro were everywhere high in hope that the days of Slavery were numbered. Starved out, the monster must inevitably die. So sure were they of this result, that in England their efforts had all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... election is very true, for the survival of the fittest is the proclaimed law of Heaven. There is power in land possession and there is power in number, and if these two factors maintain their force for one hundred years, then we infer of certainty that the sceptre of rule and destiny of the world will be in the hands of Israel, unless the laws of nature are reversed, and the promises of God fail. The Word of God cannot fail or return unto Him void; it must accomplish that whereunto He sent it and prosper in things designed, or as Jeremiah xxiii. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... the economic contradictions value is that which, dominating the others and summing them up, holds in a sense the sceptre of society, I had almost said of the moral world. Until value, oscillating between its two poles,—useful value and value in exchange,—arrives at its constitution, thine and mine remain fixed arbitrarily; the conditions ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in elder Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,—all the parts adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the heroic sceptre:—in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the independence ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... of fame he sacrificed many interests and friendships. He was not less jealous of a rival in his chosen career than any of the leaders of party and candidates for popular favor. He could not endure competition for the throne of eloquence and the sceptre of persuasion. It was on this account perhaps that he sought his associates among the young, from whose rivalry he had nothing to fear, rather than from his own contemporaries, the candidates for the same prize of public admiration which he aimed at securing for himself. From his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... affectionate phraseology of her note of invitation, her fair cheek burned with an intolerable sense of humiliation. Was it partition, or total loss, of her precious kingdom? In after years, she designated this Christmas as the era when the "sceptre departed from Judah;" but putting away the chagrin, and sealing the well of bitterness in her heart, she exchanged holiday greetings, and proudly wore her royal robes throughout the day, holding sternly off the spectre, which grimly bided its ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... in some pocket of your brain A care for me; wherefore my gratitude For your attention is commensurate With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings; We are as royal as two ditch-diggers; But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days When first a few seem all; but if we live, We may again be seen to be the few That we have always been. These are the days When men forget the ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... which were exhibited alive the next day before a good many people interested in the purification of the Thames. As a further proof I forwarded the big eel to the previous chairman of the London County Council, under whose sceptre the marked improvement in the river began first to be felt, and begged his acceptance of it as a tribute from the river. Then I arranged to be at the old ferry next ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

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

... they were what the crown is to the king, the cloak of purple to the general, the cowl to the priest, the trumpet to the augur. Indeed the Cynic Diogenes, when he disputed with Alexander the Great, as to which of the two was the true king, boasted of his staff as the true sceptre. The unconquered Hercules himself, since you despise my instances as drawn from mere mendicancy, Hercules that roamed the whole world, exterminated monsters, and conquered races, god though he was, had but a skin for raiment and a ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... not merely a cocked-hat and walking-stick to his story, but embellished it with a crown, sceptre, and royal robes of the most gorgeous colours. It was wonderful what he had done; the furious conduct of the rhinoceros, the daring he had displayed, the precision with which he had sought out vital parts to aim at. A more ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... our better part of man, we crouch before the imagination of it, it assumes the shape of the skeleton monarch who takes the world for his empire, the electric fluid for his chariot, and time for his sceptre. In the contemplation of death, hitherto, fancy inspired by fear has been by far too much the prominent faculty and impulse. The literature of the subject is usually ghastly, appalling, and absurd, with point of view varying from that of the credulous Hindu, personifying death as ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... wits taste, his courtiers dress; ordering deserts to become gardens, turning villages into palaces at a breath; and indeed the august figure of the man, as he towers upon his throne, cannot fail to inspire one with respect and awe:—how grand those flowing locks appear; how awful that sceptre; how magnificent those flowing robes! In Louis, surely, if in any one, the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had chosen, lay upon a velvet cushion, a small golden crown, and a sceptre: in Labakan's, a large needle, and a little linen thread. The sultan commanded both to bring their caskets before him: he took the little crown from the cushion in his hand, and, wonderful to see! it became larger and larger, until it reached ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... years after his death. According to an ancient local legend, James, who died at Saint Germain-en-Laye, hid away somewhere in the neighbourhood of the monastery of Triel, the royal crown of England, the sceptre, and other baubles of a total value of some L2,000,000. For more than forty years past the owners of the estate on which are the ruins of the monastery, have sought for the regalia by digging long trenches in all directions, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... of his residence in England, the author renewed his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house, on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre"); spent some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in London of seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great novelist, in the sad eclipse of his powers, was staying in the city, on his way to Italy, and Mr. Lockhart asked ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... From the world's almost exiled, Of all ornaments despoiled. Perfumes bathe Him not, new-born, Persian mantles not adorn; Nor do the rich roofs look bright With the jasper's orient light. Where, O royal Infant, be Th' ensigns of Thy majesty; Thy Sire's equalizing state; And Thy sceptre that rules fate? Where's Thy angel-guarded throne, Whence Thy laws Thou didst make known, Laws which heaven, earth, hell, obeyed? These, ah! these aside He laid; Would the emblem ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... in the overthrow of Gregory's pride. Matilda undertook to plead his cause before the Pontiff. But Gregory was not to be moved so soon to mercy. 'If Henry has in truth repented,' he replied, 'let him lay down crown and sceptre, and declare himself unworthy of the name of king.' The only point conceded to the suppliant was that he should be admitted in the garb of a penitent within the precincts of the castle. Leaving his retinue outside the walls, Henry entered the first series of outworks, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... Mariner who first unfurl'd An eastern banner o'er the western world, And taught mankind where future empires lay In these fair confines of descending day; Who sway'd a moment, with vicarious power, Iberia's sceptre on the new found shore, Then saw the paths his virtuous steps had trod Pursued by avarice and defiled with blood, The tribes he foster'd with paternal toil Snatch'd from his hand, and slaughter'd ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... parcel of this Union, it could not, nor would the North consent that it should, be permanently under bayonet rule; and so soon as bayonets were gone, fair means or foul would speedily remove the sceptre from colored hands. Precisely this happened. In State after State, the whites, without the slightest formal change of constitution or law, recovered their ancient ascendency. Where their aims could not be realized by persuasion ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth, this is a brave and worthy lad!' exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with his sceptre, which was ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier

... have worshipped his Creator in any form he thought proper. That a Protestant king was all that was necessary to quiet the nation, is fully disproved by the present state of the country, now that the sceptre has been, for some years, swayed by King William, it being, at this moment, in a state very nearly ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the same manner of resistance, as would have been just in our ancestors, when the bloody foot prints of the first remorseless soul thief was placed upon the shores of our fatherland. The humblest peasant is as free in the sight of God, as the proudest monarch that ever swayed a sceptre. Liberty is a spirit sent out from God, and like its great Author, is no respecter ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... tradition states, in the Eagle Tower, not then built), April 25, 1284; crowned at Westminster Abbey, August 6, 1307, by the Bishop of Winchester, acting as substitute for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The gilt spurs were borne by William le Mareschal; "the royal sceptre on whose summit is the cross" by the Earl of Hereford (killed in rebellion against the King) and "the royal rod on whose summit is the dove" by Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Earl: the Earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, and Warwick—of whom the first was beheaded for treason, and the third ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... of England. One of the latter is by Richard Coeur de Lion, and his seal of red wax still remains appended to it, in fine preservation. The seal, on one side, represents the king seated upon his throne, with a pointed beard, having his crown on his head, and a sword in one hand, and sceptre in the other: on the other side, he is on horseback, with his head covered with a cylindrical helmet, surmounted with a very remarkable crest, in the form of a fan: on his shield are plainly distinguishable the three lions of England.—From among the charters granted by the Tancarville ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... torn red cloak of a Bedouin for royal purple, they plucked thorns from a hedge in the neighbouring garden, wove them into a crown, and set it on His head. They broke off a dry reed and put it into His hand as a sceptre. They anointed His cheek with spittle. And then they bowed down to the ground before Him, and sang in a shrill voice: "Hail to Thee, O anointed Messiah-King!" and put out ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... throne not only of Babylonia, but of the Babylonian empire as well. It was never forgotten that Babylonia had once been the mistress of Western Asia, and it was, accordingly, the sceptre of Western Asia that was conferred by Bel Merodach upon his adopted sons. Like the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, Babylonian sovereignty brought with it a legal, though shadowy, right to rule over the civilized kingdoms of the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... learn to do without friends, for where can he find a friend worthy of him, or a king worthy of sharing his moral sceptre? The friend of the truly noble must be as truly noble as himself, and such a friend the genuine Cynic cannot hope to find. Nor must he marry; marriage is right and honourable in other men, but its entanglements, its expenses, its distractions, would render impossible a life devoted to the service ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... whom monarchs must bow? Ah! no: for his empire is known, And here there are trophies enow; Beneath the cold dead, and around the dark stone, Are the signs of a sceptre that none may disown. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... said that she had been born in Africa, and had been a princess in her own country; and, indeed, she bore herself like one now, and held up her orange-turbaned head as if it were crowned, and bore her candle like a flaming sceptre which brought out strange gleams of color and metallic lustres from her garments and the rows of beads on her ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... gave away his own honour lay hidden, which he gave away with me. And I could have forgiven him for giving me away, but who could forgive the King who valued his own honour less than his own life? And to the King I was never more than a necessary ornament, a thing like a sceptre and a throne, and a mere piece of royal furniture: whereas I am more than the life of Narasinha, and the ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... and my King, Thy sceptre and thy sword I sing; Thine is the victory, and I sit A ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... to be believed, she was also, during this period, presented to King Charles X by the British Ambassador. On the evidence of dates, however, this could not have been the case, for Charles had relinquished his sceptre and fled to England long before Lola ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... conductor performed his promise with great punctuality. He pointed out almost every individual of both sexes, and generally introduced them to our notice, with a flourish of panegyrick — Seeing the king approach, 'There comes (said he) the most amiable sovereign that ever swayed the sceptre of England: the delicioe humani generis; Augustus, in patronizing merit; Titus Vespasian in generosity; Trajan in beneficence; and Marcus Aurelius in philosophy.' 'A very honest kind hearted gentleman (added my uncle) he's too good for the times. A king of England should have a spice of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... the moral is quite clear: To elevate the lowly above their proper sphere Involves no less a peril than rashly tumbling down The great who rise to power by deeds of just renown. Permit the base-born yokel untutored sway to urge, The sceptre of dominion as soon becomes a scourge. Let once despotic power drive justice from the realm, In every peaceful hamlet a Nero grasps the helm. Could Phalaris or Caius in days of yore have been More merciless a tyrant than him we here have seen? Before the seat ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... for a sceptre and a crown. It gives a strange new thrill to life, to realize that we may be just as ambitious as we please, that we may long earnestly for high things, and work for them, if our inmost desire is not for self but for God. This ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... of Cyrus king of kings, healed by Greek science of a morbid breast, gave lord Dareios neither love nor rest till he fulfilled her vain imaginings. "Sir, show our Persian folk your sceptre's wings! Enlarge my sire's and brother's large bequest. This learned Greek shall guide your galleys west, and Dorian slave-girls grace our banquetings." So said she, taught of that o'er-artful man, the Italiote ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... noble statue of Margaret of Anjou, a regal figure, wearing the crown and bearing the sceptre of which she was so soon deprived by Edward IV. When she went to England, as the bride of Henry VI, she was received with rejoicings and the London streets were decorated with the Marguerite flower in her honor. No man, it was said, surpassed Margaret in courage, and no woman in beauty, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... whose rich widowed mother dressed her exquisitely, and who was studying French, and could play the violin. But Mrs. Apostleman was an old woman now, and had been playing the game a long time, and she was glad to put the sceptre into younger hands. And she could have put it into none more competent than those ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... Nothing had added more lustre to the rising glory of the capital than the possession of the magnificent institution of learning, the foundation of which was lost in the mist of remote antiquity. Older than the race of kings who had for centuries held the French sceptre, the university owed its origin, if we are to believe the testimony of its own annals, to the munificent hand of Charlemagne, in the beginning of the ninth century. Careful historical criticism must hesitate to accept as conclusive the slender proof offered in ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... The host there marched, and to Iceland came. The king was named AElcus, high man of the land, he heard the tiding of Arthur the king; he did all as a wiseman, and marched against him anon; anon forth-right, with sixteen knights; he bare in his hand a mickle wand (sceptre) of gold. So soon as he saw Arthur, he bent him on his knees, and quoth these words to him—the king was afraid:—"Welcome, sir Arthur! welcome, lord' Here I deliver thee in hand all together Iceland, thou shalt be my high king, and I will be thy underling. I will obey thee, as man shall ...
— Brut • Layamon

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

... Algonkins;[92-3] on a mountain near the north star the Dakotas thought Heyoka dwelt who rules the seasons; and the realm of Mictla, the Aztec god of death, lay where the shadows pointed. From that cheerless abode his sceptre reached over all creatures, even the gods themselves, for sooner or later all must fall before him. The great spirit of the dead, said the Ottawas, lives in the dark north,[93-1] and there, in the opinion of the Monquis of California, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... this couching is to be seen in use upon drapery. It is taken entirely over the exterior surface of the cloak, and upon the crown, sceptre, and model of the church. The lines expressing the folds of drapery are in this case shown by the couching at these places being taken in a different direction. Fine gold passing is used for the couched thread, much finer than can possibly be shown ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... the most striking signs of the lost sensation and deadened intellect of the nation at that time; a numbness and darkness more without hope than that of the grave itself, holding and wearing yet the sceptre and the crown like the corpses of the Etruscan kings, ready to sink into ashes at the first unbarring of the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... guiltiness in that craft, their power is then no greater than before that ever they meddled with their master. For where God begins justly to strike by his lawful lieutenants, it is not in the devil's power to defraud or bereave him of the office or effect of his powerful and revenging sceptre.' Thus I am safe; and I shall take care to go armed with a proper warrant, which I shall obtain from a magistrate, my honoured friend and singular good client, Master Roger Newell. This will obtain me such assistance as I may require, and for due observance of my authority. I shall likewise ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the print of the nail; He never forgets Calvary and the blood; He never spends one hour without stooping to do the most menial work of cleansing filthy souls. And it is because of this humility He sits on the Throne and wields the sceptre ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

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

... Some of the chroniclers indeed assert that Malcolm was illegitimate and Donald Bane the rightful heir to the crown. He was, at all events, a pretender kept in subjection while Malcolm's strong hand held the sceptre, but ready to seize the first opportunity of revolution. No doubt the news of the King's death, and of that of his heir, would run like wildfire through the country; but it would seem that the attempt of Donald must have been already organised, since his siege of Edinburgh, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

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

... wide kitchen at Heathknowes, where all the business of the house was transacted, fell with little raps of defiance, curt and dry. Her nose in the air told of contempt louder than any words. She laid down the porridge spurtle like a queen abdicating her sceptre. She tabled the plates like so many protests, signed and witnessed. She swept about the house with the glacial chill which an iceberg spreads about it in temperate seas. Her displeasure made winter of our content—of all, that is, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... to take his overcoat and hat and cane, and place them as carefully in the clothes press as if they had been the robe, crown, and sceptre of a king. Then she would sit in her little chair, and take her sewing, or knitting, or embroidery, and pretend to be all absorbed in it, while she was listening eagerly to every word that Marcus addressed ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... each other's eyes the heroes were awed before Aietes as he shone in his chariot, like his father the glorious Sun; for his robes were of rich gold tissue, and the rays of his diadem flashed fire; and in his hand he bore a jewelled sceptre, which glittered like the stars; and sternly he looked at them under his brows, and sternly he ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... garter. During the year of his magistracy, he is obliged to live so magnificently, that foreigner or native, without any expense, is free, if he can find a chair empty, to dine at his table, where there is always the greatest plenty. When the mayor goes out of the precincts of the city, a sceptre, a sword, and a cap, are borne before him, and he is followed by the principal aldermen in scarlet gowns, with gold chains; himself and they on horseback. Upon their arrival at a place appointed for that purpose, where a tent is pitched, the mob begin to wrestle before them, two at a time; ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... through the right ways, and showed him the kingdom of God, made him honorable in his labors, and accomplished his works. She kept him safe from his enemies, and gave him a strong conflict that he might overcome; and in bondage she left him not till she brought him the sceptre of the kingdom, and power against those that oppressed him, and gave him everlasting glory."—Wisdom x. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... the Emperor is adorned with diamonds of an extraordinary size, and the Imperial sceptre contains the largest in the world, the Kohinoor excepted; it was purchased by the Empress Catherine for 450,000 ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood

... of the gateway gods Ni-[o] (two Kings, Indra and Brahma) "bears in his hand the tokko (Sanskrit vagra), an ornament originally designed to represent a diamond club, and now used by priests and exorcists, as a religious sceptre symbolizing the irresistible power of prayer, meditation, and incantation."—Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis



Words linked to "Sceptre" :   bauble, staff, reign, sovereignty



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com