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There was a feast that night, but the truth is that life was one constant vicissitude, an unfailing series of ups and downs, of jolly happy-go-lucky rejoicings with comrades who were equally careless with myself, and of alternating spells of hardship. "Literature," said Sir Walter, "is an excellent walking stick but a very bad crutch," and so in truth I have found it all my days.

For the spread of this message He offered His life and bore every vicissitude.... He was always under the threat and menace of the sword, yet He uplifted the standard of divine teachings and flooded the world of the East with illumination.

The fathers, affected at the vicissitude of human greatness, seeing that a nation abounding in wealth, noted for luxury and pride, from which a little time since their neighbours had solicited assistance, was now so broken in spirit, as to give up themselves and all they possessed into the power of others; moreover, their honour also seemed to be involved in not betraying those who had surrendered, nor did they consider that the people of the Samnites would act fairly, if they should attack a territory and a city which had become the property of the Roman people by a surrender.

How else, as the Moon waxes and wanes, as the Sun approaches and recedes, can it be that such vicissitude and alternation is seen in earthly things? "If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls?

From under the brim of his coonskin cap his piercing gray eyes kept watch with a quiet alertness expecting no danger, indeed, and fearing none, but trained to cool readiness for every vicissitude of the wild.

From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The color was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its color and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose.

The way was not long; the weather, though cold, was wholesome and serene. My spirits were high, and I saw nothing in the world before me but sunshine and prosperity. I was conscious that my happiness depended not on the revolutions of nature or the caprice of man. All without was, indeed, vicissitude and uncertainty; but within my bosom was a centre not to be shaken or removed.

Their vexatious inroads were changed into formidable irruptions, and, after a long vicissitude of mutual calamities, many tribes of the victorious invaders established themselves in the provinces of the Roman Empire.

Then what historical associations, straggling away across three thousand years to when Perugia was one of the thirty cities of Etruria, and kept her independence through every vicissitude until Augustus starved her out in 40 B.C.! Portions of the wall, huge smooth blocks of travertine stone, are the work of the vanished Etruscans, and fragments of several gateways, with Roman alterations.

Great part of Tartary lies under the same parallels with Greece, Italy, and Spain; but the climates are found to be different; and while the shores, not only of the Mediterranean, but even those of the Atlantic, are favoured with a moderate change and vicissitude of seasons, the eastern parts of Europe, and the northern continent of Asia, are afflicted with all their extremes.