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But portions of the old battlements are interspersed with the line of homely chambers and tiled house-tops. Within the wall the town is very compact, and above its roofs rises a rock, the sheer, precipitous bluff on which stands the upper town, whose foundations impend over the highest roof in the lower.
But when fortune is dubious or adverse; when retreats as well as advances are necessary; when supplies fail, arrangements miscarry, and disasters impend, and when the struggle is protracted, men can only be persuaded to accept evil things by the lively realisation of the fact that greater terrors await their refusal. The ugly truth is revealed that fear is the foundation of obedience.
Tyranny, extravagance and bankruptcy on the part of the ruling class had wiped out the margin of plenty. Black ruin seemed to impend for all. It was a case of starve or unite against the rulers and oppressors of society. Danton, the thunderer of mighty speech, dominated these gatherings, aided and abetted by the eagle-like Desmoulins and the crafty Robespierre.
Might it not be well that the Government should avoid immediate conflict with South Carolina about Fort Sumter, though conflict with the Confederacy about Fort Pickens and the rest would still impend? Was it not possible that conflict could be staved off till an agreement could be reached with Virginia and the border States, which would induce the seceded States to return?
At the same time he attributes the success of his own violence in quelling and maltreating his opponents to the providence of God. "I do not write this narrative," he says, "from a motive of vanity, but merely to return thanks to God, who has extricated me out of so many trials and difficulties; who likewise delivers me from those that daily impend over me.
As he spoke thus, the hangings were pulled aside, and from a small door which was concealed behind them, Major Bridgenorth entered the room. He came amongst them like a new raised spirit To speak of dreadful judgments that impend, And of the wrath to come.
It looked as if some great ruin had taken place there, only it was too vast a ruin to have been the dismemberment and dissolution of anything made by man. We could now see the castle on the height pretty distinctly. It seemed to impend over the precipice; and close to the base of the latter we saw the street of a town on as strange and inconvenient a foundation as ever one was built upon.
These walls of stone, however, were not sufficiently near to permit any snows they might collect to impend over the building, but enough space was left between them and the house, to admit of a capacious yard, in which might be placed any articles that were necessary to the ordinary work, or to the wants of the sealers.
Many of the inhabitants I could not but suppose utterly insensible to the dangers which impend or ignorant of them; but more I believe are cheerful, and even gay, through a mad contempt of them.
Beyond the shadow of the tree covered islet, on the left hand, rose the town of Port au Prince, with its long streets rising like terraces on the gently swelling shore, while the mountains behind it, still gold tipped in the declining sunbeams, seemed to impend frowningly over it, and the shipping in the roadstead at anchor off the town were just beginning to fade from our sight in the gradually increasing darkness, and a solitary light began to sparkle in a cabin window and then disappear, and to twinkle for a moment in the piazzas of the houses on shore like a will of the wisp, and the chirping buzz of myriads of insects and reptiles was coming off from the island a stem of us, borne on the wings of the light wind, which, charged with rich odours from the closing flowers, fanned us "like the sweet south, soft breathing o'er a bed of violets," when a sudden flash and a jet of white smoke puffed out from the hill fort above the town, the report thundering amongst the everlasting hills, and gradually rumbling itself away into the distant ravines and valleys, like a lion growling itself to sleep, and the shades of night fell on the dead face of nature like a pall, and all was undistinguishable.
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