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It was such a trifling thing after all. I was bicycling very pleasantly down a country road to-day, when one of those small pungent beetles, a tiny thing, in black plate-armour, for all the world like a minute torpedo, sailed straight into my eye. The eyelid, quicker even than my own thought, shut itself down, but too late.

Gian Bellini carried her to Venice, to lead Scythians in trousers against Theseus in plate-armour and a blazoned shield. Giorgione set her burning in the shade, trying to cool her golden flank in deep mosses by a well. All this, and much more, Ippolita endured because she was a good as well as a beautiful girl.

Not as yarns like that affect me; but, you see, some skulls is thick as plate-armour, and some is thin as egg-shells: and when the thin 'uns gets afloat with corpses, why, it's a chest of shiners to a handspike as they cracks now, ain't it?" "Dan, this is the most astounding story that I have yet heard. Would you make it plainer? for, upon my life, I can't read your course!"

It was a knight on horseback, in plate-armour, and the armour looked as if it had really seen service. The horse was a massive white beast, rather of the cart-horse type, but not so "hairy in the hoof"; the background was a wood, chiefly of oak-trees; but the undergrowth was wonderfully painted. I felt that if I looked into it I should see every blade of grass and every bramble-leaf.

My tongue pads slowly under this new language, And starts and stumbles at these uncouth phrases. They may be great in worth and weight, but hang Upon the native glibness of my language Like Saul's plate-armour on the shepherd boy, Encumbering and not arming him.

These works proved, to her perfect satisfaction, not only that the Esmonds were descended from noble Norman warriors, who came into England along with their victorious chief, but from native English of royal dignity: and two magnificent heraldic trees, cunningly painted by the hand of the Colonel, represented the family springing from the Emperor Charlemagne on the one hand, who was drawn in plate-armour, with his imperial mantle and diadem, and on the other from Queen Boadicea, whom the Colonel insisted upon painting in the light costume of an ancient British queen, with a prodigious gilded crown, a trifling mantle of furs, and a lovely symmetrical person, tastefully tattooed with figures of a brilliant blue tint.

This grand style of armour was in use from the time of the Conquest, and was most effective in the way of protection, as it was fitted by its flexibility to give full play to the energetic action of the wearer. It was infinitely superior to the senseless plate-armour that was used, at a subsequent period, to encase soldiers like lobsters.