The Barbarians of Gaul submitted to the orthodox dominion of the Franks; and Spain was restored to the Catholic church by the voluntary conversion of the Visigoths.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The Barbarians of Germany, still faithful to the maxims of their ancestors, abhorred the confinement of walls, to which they applied the odious names of prisons and sepulchres; and fixing their independent habitations on the banks of rivers, the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Meuse, they secured themselves against the danger of a surprise, by a rude and hasty fortification of large trees, which were felled and thrown across the roads.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

When I went to take leave of the King, he graciously presented me with a little bag of green silk, containing some of the gold and silver coin of the country,—a courtesy which was most unexpected, and for which I expressed my gratitude.
— from Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos (Vol. 1 of 2) During the Years 1858, 1859, and 1860 by Henri Mouhot

Being neighbours of the Aetolians and armed in the same way, it was thought that they would be of great service upon the expedition, from their acquaintance with the localities and the warfare of the inhabitants.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Much of the timber in this region being of greater specific gravity than water, and being of great size, their removal was a matter of great labor; but it was finally accomplished, and on the 11th of March Ross found himself, accompanied by two gunboats under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Watson Smith, confronting a fortification at Greenwood, where the Tallahatchie and Yallabusha unite and the Yazoo begins.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

He also obtained a magnificent funeral, such a one indeed as it was fit a person so beloved of God should have.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

When I get hold of the silly woman's fortune, I can be of great social utility.’
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“She was a sweet, pretty thing and he’d have walked the world over to get her a blade o’ grass she wanted.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

As he rose to his full height there was a deafening bang close to his right ear, a blinding flash, and the burning breath of gunpowder scorched his cheek.
— from Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine by R. B. (Richard Baxter) Townshend

A regular rollicking burst of good, sound, old-fashioned, honest, English laughter, which rang out clear, bright, and cheery in the frosty air.
— from Steve Young by George Manville Fenn

The flowers are small, with four pale yellow petals which lie wide open, and rising from amongst them there are yellow stamens with a bunch of green seed-vessels in the centre.
— from Flowers, Shown to the Children by C. E. Smith

A citrine brown of great service in tender drab greens, it forms with terre verte and the madder lakes rich autumnal tints of much beauty and permanence.
— from Field's Chromatography or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists by George Field

Eagerly looking from the window, my delight may be imagined when I saw immediately outside the station yard the whole battery of guns standing parked.
— from My Adventures as a Spy by Baden-Powell of Gilwell, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Baron

But as I have before observed, generally speaking, one of the most remarkable characters of the insect world, is the little space they occupy; for though they touch the vertebrate animals and even quadrupeds by their giants, yet more commonly in this feature they go the contrary way, and by their smallest species reach the confines of those microscopic tribes that are at the bottom of the scale of animal life.
— from An Introduction to Entomology: Vol. 3 or Elements of the Natural History of the Insects by William Kirby

[15] Slowly and dreadfully the twilight came as the German onslaught gathered force, and the many sounds of battle rose and rose around the men who, with the Battalion thinned to less than half their fighting forces, still resisted the massed battalions of German soldiers; but the Munsters gave themselves with courage and lavishness, strong and unconsciously splendid.
— from The Story of the Munsters at Etreux, Festubert, Rue du Bois and Hulloch by Jessie Louisa Moore Rickard

The keepers, of course, will not permit them on private property; but in all rural districts there are wide waste spaces—as where two or more roads meet—broad bands of green sward running beside the highway, and the remnants of what in former days were commons; and here the bird-catcher plies his trade.
— from The Gamekeeper at Home: Sketches of Natural History and Rural Life by Richard Jefferies