United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Why, the legend of King Arthur, and Chevy Chase too, of which even your fellow-sinner Sidney cannot deny that every time he hears it even from a blind fiddler it stirs his heart like a trumpet-blast. Speak well of the bridge that carries you over, man! Did you find your Redcross Knight in Virgil, or such a dame as Una in old Ovid?
"From Russia!" returned the Khan, quickly. "But you are English, are you not?" "Certainly I am." "How strong is Russia's army?" continued the Khan, after an application to the gold snuff box, and a trumpet-blast on the yellow bandanna. "Nominally about three millions." "And England?" "About two hundred thousand, not counting the reserves." "Humph!" grunted the Khan. "I believe so."
Now of a sudden above the hiss of flame, from the valley of Brand a cry went up a shout a roar of fear and amaze and thereafter rose a wild clamour; a babel inarticulate, split, ever and anon, by frantic trumpet-blast. But ever the dreadful hubbub waxed and grew, shrieks and cries and the screaming of maddened horses with the awful, rolling thunder of their fierce-galloping hooves!
The words sound like a trumpet-blast, as a summons over boundless regions of the Old World. From its cradle in Arabia, Islam has spread over all the west and centre of Asia, over the southern parts of the continent, over certain regions in south-eastern Europe, and over half Africa. It is no wonder that Mohammedan missionaries find it easy to convert the blacks of Africa.
Caroline, Lord Alphingham is a married man his wife still lives!" Had a thunderbolt fallen at her feet, or the earth yawned beneath her, not more pale or transfixed would Caroline have stood than she did as those unexpected words fell clear and shrill as a trumpet-blast upon her tortured ear.
Nor did it cease, nor yield to any trumpet-blast, but rolled on in spreading waves down every street and alley; it reached the ships in the port, and rang through the halls of the rich and the hovels of the poor; it even found a dull echo in the light-house at the point of Pharos, where the watchman was trimming the lamp for the night; and in an incredibly short time all Alexandria knew that Caesar had dealt a death-blow to the worship of the heathen gods.
A party of worshippers, in the first place, rebelled against it; these had been standing with veiled heads, near the statue of Serapis, muttering exorcisms after a Magian and howling lamentably at intervals; then a preacher, who had succeeded in collecting a little knot of listeners, bid the trumpeters cease; and finally, a party of actors and singers, who had assembled in the outer hall to perform a satira play, tried to stop them, though they themselves were making such a noise that the trumpet-blast could have affected them but little.
High merit, without doubt, there was in some of their number; but one may beg to be spared the attempt to measure or define it. To estimate a virtue involved in conditions so anomalous demands, perhaps, a judgment more than human. The Roman Church, sunk in disease and corruption when the Reformation began, was roused by that fierce trumpet-blast to purge and brace herself anew.
Uttered by every variety of voice, with every variety of accent, it filled the stifling atmosphere, and tickled many an empty brain, like the catchword political that can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller. Boys yelled it, men murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and yellow feathers screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have put many a trumpet-blast to shame.
Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens of the church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about the paled yard of obedience, picking up the barley of righteousness; Richard longed for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her sons together to a war whose battles should never cease until men were free to worship God after the light he had lighted within them, and the dragon of priestly authority should breathe out his last fiery breath, no more to drive the feebler brethren to seek refuge in the house of hypocrisy.
Word Of The Day