After that I to Westminster to White Hall, where I saw the Duke de Soissons go from his audience with a very great deal of state: his own coach all red velvet covered with gold lace, and drawn by six barbes, and attended by twenty pages very rich in clothes.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

the river very crooked much divided by islands, shallow rocky in many plases and very rapid; insomuch that I have my doubts whether the canoes could get on or not, or if they do it must be with great labour.—Capt.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

" "There was four or five gentlemen as took tickets for the 3.30 up," said the clerk rather vaguely, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder at his wife, who looked by no means pleased at this interruption to the harmony of the tea-table.
— from Lady Audley's Secret by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon

The only resolute, vehement, conscientious champion of Russell, Napoleon, and Jefferson Davis was Gladstone.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

La Mancha as the knight's country and scene of his chivalries is of a piece with the pasteboard helmet, the farm-labourer on ass-back for a squire, knighthood conferred by a rascally ventero, convicts taken for victims of oppression, and the rest of the incongruities between Don Quixote's world and the world he lived in, between things as he saw them and things as they were.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

S. parazonium, stat inter duos fluvios humi jacentes, et ab accedente retro Victoria coronatur.
— 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

A.—‘The first of these I saw I remember very clearly, and the manner of its appearance: there was at first a dazzle of light, and then I saw that this came from the heart of a tall figure with a body apparently shaped out of half-transparent or opalescent air, and throughout the body ran a radiant, electrical fire, to which the heart seemed the centre.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

But admonition and reproof, when passion is at its height and swelling, does little or no good, but resembles very closely those strong-smelling substances, that are able to set on their legs again those that have fallen in epileptic fits, but cannot rid them of their disease.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch

The ice cream is a rich vanilla cream made with the yolks of the eggs; it is served in a very large sunshine cake,—that is, an angels' food with the yolks of the eggs added,—which has been turned upside down and had the entire centre cut out, leaving only a ring of the cake.
— from Gala-Day Luncheons: A Little Book of Suggestions by Caroline French Benton

“It’s growing late, and it’s really very compromising for a lone, lorn widow to remain so long en tête-à-tête with a fascinating person like yourself.”
— from The Bishop's Apron: A study in the origins of a great family by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham

The 30 of August we receiued very certaine newes out of Portugal, that there were 80 ships put out of the Groine laden with victuals, munition, money and souldiers, to goe for Britaine to aide the Catholiques and Leaguers of France against the king of Nauarre.
— from The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 07 England's Naval Exploits Against Spain by Richard Hakluyt

In the X and XI centuries she built her fine Cathedral with its Cloisters, and in 1179 she was still great enough to excite the covetousness of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse.
— from Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 by Elise Whitlock Rose

Gentlemen were leaving off the picturesque costumes of the past,—the cocked hats, elaborate wigs, silk stockings, ruffles, velvet coats, and swords,—and gradually putting on the plain democratic garb, sober in cut and color, by which we know them to-day.
— from The Leading Facts of English History by D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery

Jamque novos laxari sinus, animæque latentis Arcanas reserare vias, cœlosque recessus Fas aperire tibi, totamque secludere mentem.
— from Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3) by Thomas Brown

Lempa River, v., chap.
— from The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 5, Primitive History The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 5 by Hubert Howe Bancroft