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Ascendent   Listen
adjective
Ascendent, Ascendant  adj.  
1.
Rising toward the zenith; above the horizon. "The constellation... about that time ascendant."
2.
Rising; ascending.
3.
Superior; surpassing; ruling. "An ascendant spirit over him." "The ascendant community obtained a surplus of wealth." "Without some power of persuading or confuting, of defending himself against accusations,... no man could possibly hold an ascendent position."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ascendent" Quotes from Famous Books



... the usurped districts should be confirmed to him, and hereditarily to his family. But, like the ten thousand military chieftains, soldiers of fortune, who have gone before him, whose faith saw their star always in the ascendant, he sighed for Tripoli, and its Bashaw's ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... the bridge with the officer of the watch for several hours, come aft with weary shoulders sagging, and go below by the saloon companionway. And Lanyard smiled knowingly and assured himself that went well—ca va bien!—his star held still in the ascendant. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... have the power to reproduce their species, and some of them to kill off surrounding objects. "The carraguata of the West Indies, clings round," says Goldsmith, "whatever tree it happens to approach; there it quickly gains the ascendant, and, loading the tree with a verdure not its own, keeps away that nourishment designed to feed the trunk, and at last entirely destroys its supporter." In our country, many gardens and fields present convincing proof of the ability of weeds to kill out the vegetables designed to ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... anger and infatuation just now in the ascendant, and of his wisdom in refusing a sally, would not call either assembly or meeting of the people, fearing the fatal results of a debate inspired by passion and not by prudence. Accordingly he addressed himself to the defence of the city, and kept it as quiet as possible, though he constantly sent ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... defiant platitudes and truisms—for almost defiantly she took the commonplace, vulgarian point of view; yet after everything she would turn with her quiet, triumphant assurance to James Houghton, and start on some point of business, soft, assured, ascendant. The others ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of one ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look, in the common features and common bearing, of all these painted generations on the walls of the residencia, the miracle started ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... climax in beauty and organisation, to dwindle and almost disappear in the last part of the Mesozoic. One Jurassic sea-lily was found to have 600,000 distinct ossicles in its petrified frame. The free-moving Echinoderms are now in the ascendant, the sea-urchins being especially abundant. The Corals are, as we saw, extremely abundant, and a higher type (the Hexacoralla) is superseding the earlier ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... we have an old formula surviving in a sham triple sale, whereby a descendant is liberated from the authority of an ascendant, or after a triple transfer and a triple manumission the son is freed from his father and stands in his ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous

... battlemented town, sloping down the mountain to the gulf, was in the hands of the Turks, who had built four fortresses and set up twelve little cannons against the Corsairs, yet Jews were largely in the ascendant, and their thirty synagogues dominated the mosques of their masters and the churches of the Greeks, even as the crowns they received for supplying the cloths of the Janissaries far exceeded their annual tribute. Castilians, Portuguese, Italians, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Dorsetshire, devolved to him. To that place he retired with his wife, on whom he doated, with a resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and intemperances to which he had addicted himself in the career of a town-life. But unfortunately a kind of family-pride here gained an ascendant over him; and he began immediately to vie in splendour with the neighbouring country 'squires. With an estate not much above two hundred pounds a-year, and his wife's fortune, which did not exceed fifteen hundred pounds, he encumbered himself with a large ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... risen himself, and have stood during the interview, but he did not know how to leave his seat. And when the Jew called him his friend, he felt that the Jew was getting the better of him—was already obtaining the ascendant. "Of course we wish to prevent this marriage," said Ziska, dashing at once ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... From the City's Records it appears that early in 1383, William Baret was alderman of Philipot's ward (Cornhill); but in the following year, when Brembre succeeded to his mayoralty, and the so-called "king's party" was again in the ascendant, Philipot again appears as alderman of his old ward, continuing in office until his death (12 Sept., 1384), when he was succeeded by John Rote.—Letter Book ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... through successfully. I was in the road on Monday night with the cargo. I was keeping abreast of the wagon, in my buckboard, away to the south of it. I intended to make a quiet dash while you were busy with the boat and wagon. But my star was not in the ascendant. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... wood lasted the flame was in the ascendant, and nobly it did its work. Whatever could be done by bright radiance and far- penetrating lustre was done here. If that ship which had passed held any men on board capable of feeling a human interest in the visible signs of calamity at sea, they would be able to read in this flame that ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... Henry the Eighth, it is not the superficial though very English splendour of the king himself, but the really potent and ascendant nature of the butcher's son on the one hand, and Katharine's subdued reproduction of the sad fortunes of Richard the Second on the other, that ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... was now in the ascendant. He was soon delegated to various pleasant duties, among which was the delivery of lectures on botany and mineralogy in the "auditorium illustre" at Stockholm. He at this time founded the "Swedish Scientific Academy," and was its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... Like many others, he became a fugitive and a wanderer. Unsuccessful patriotism reduced the companion of royalty to be a pensioner on the charity of the friends of Poland in London. 1848 gave Bern once more a career. He went to Vienna, and when the people were in the ascendant, in October, he held a command. But the Viennese could not trust the Pole. Incompetent men were placed over him. Vienna fell before the artillery of Windischgratz and Jellachich in November. Slaughter, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... that vessels in olden days were named for animals, etc. They bore at the prow the carved effigy of the namesake, and if the Great Bear, for example, made several very happy voyages by setting out when a certain constellation was in the ascendant, that constellation might become known as the Great Bear's constellation. Certainly, there is nothing in its shape to justify the name. Very few of the constellations indeed are like the thing they ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... thoughts can be allured to dwell? Delany is willing to think that Swift's mind was not much tainted with this gross corruption before his long visit to Pope. He does not consider how he degrades his hero, by making him at fifty-nine the pupil of turpitude, and liable to the malignant influence of an ascendant mind. But the truth is that Gulliver had described his yahoos before the visit; and he that had formed those images ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... introduced had been followed by fresh detachments; they had attacked and beaten the aedui, out of whose territories they intended to carve a settlement for themselves. They had taken hostages from them, and had broken down their authority, and the faction of the Sequani was now everywhere in the ascendant. The aedui, three years before Caesar came, had appealed to Rome for assistance, and the Senate had promised that the Governor of Gaul should support them. The Romans, hoping to temporize with the danger, had endeavored to conciliate Ariovistus, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... 1686, M. Claude's account of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was burnt in the Old Exchange, "so mighty a power and ascendant here had the French ambassador." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... own;—and of all men certainly not in Brotherton's." Nevertheless, the migration went on, and early in July the Marchioness was once more in possession of her own room at Manor Cross, and Mrs. Toff was once again in the ascendant. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... room. Just before his eyes was a little round window in the wall, and through it filtered a feeble daylight when his feet were ascendant, and when his head was uppermost he glimpsed racing, green water on the other side of the thick glass circle. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and THE CLERK WHO RAISED THE PSALMS, to witness that I did give myself away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to be forgotten'; and already, in 1675, the birth of my direct ascendant was registered in Glasgow. So that I have been pursuing ancestors too far down; and John the land-labourer is debarred me, and I must relinquish from the trophies of my house his RARE SOUL- STRENGTHENING AND COMFORTING CORDIAL. It is the same case with the Edinburgh bailie and the miller ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the stars; of the ascendant, was a lady, who took the field with an eclat, a brilliancy, and bustle, which for a time fixed the attention of all upon herself. Although a fine woman, in the strictest sense of the term, and still handsome, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various

... beginning much concerned with Macedonia. And so it was towards the end. Very wretched was the lot of the Macedonian Slavs—occasionally the Exarchists and occasionally the Patriarchists were in the ascendant, but while in religious matters the Greeks clung by all possible means to their ancient, privileged position, so the Turks maintained in secular affairs the sorry plight of their Slav raia. The Macedonian Slavs, when the rest of Europe began to listen to their cries, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... that no proceedings shall be taken against them. Anything can be done with money in Spain. There are many upright and honourable Spaniards, but very few of them take any part in public affairs, and would not associate with such men as those who are in the ascendant in all the provincial juntas, and even in the ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... portion of this session was wasted in discussing the insolence exhibited by the agents of the ascendant party in Dublin. Lord Wellesley had prohibited the Orange faction to dress up the statute of King William in College Green: a ceremony which perpetuated animosity and frequently led to strife and bloodshed. This gave the Orangemen great offence; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... nature." One year there is a plague of field-voles, perhaps next year "grouse disease" is rife; in one place there is huge increase of starlings, in another place of rabbits; here cockchafers are in the ascendant, and there the moles are spoiling the pasture. "But while the parts fluctuate, the fauna as a whole follows a path of its own. As well as internal tides which swing to and fro about an average level, there is a drift which carries the fauna ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... is the kind of woman that you will fall violently in love with, some day, Dick. It will be your punishment." She had fully recovered by now, and the old-time raillery was in the ascendant. "Oh, she has read you fairly well. You are good and kind and wise, but these virtues are not of equal weight. Your goodness and wisdom will never catch up with your abundant kindness. I've a good deal to thank you for, Dick; a ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... ill-humour, taking root in a nature wherein the animal is already ascendant, has led by downward paths to the Goat-Foot, in whom the submerged human system peeps out but fitfully, at exalted moments. He, the peevish and irascible, shy of trodden ways and pretty domesticities, is ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... and peace among his brethren in the ministry. He vigorously contributed to the recovery of the humanity of Christianity, which had been much lost in the differences of the times, and the animosities which followed thereupon. These virtues and graces had such an ascendant in his soul, that when he carried coals about with him, taken from the altar to warm the souls of all, with whom he conversed, with love to God, his truths, interests and people, so he carried sanctuary water about with him to cool and extinguish ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... these years. The Second Empire, with its swarm of hastily-enriched adventurers, had already done much to beautify and improve the city. Life was more than ever gay in this the chief home of pleasure-seekers. Luxury of the showiest kind everywhere in the ascendant; smart equipages and gaily-dressed crowds, the shop-fronts glittering with artistic treasures, everyone outwardly happy, and ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... moon on its fourteenth night. The lieges of the realm congratulated one another thereanent and the King commanded an assembly of his Olema and philosophers, astrologers and horoscopists, whom he thus addressed, "I desire you to forecast the fortune of my son and to determine his ascendant[FN154] and whatever is shown by his nativity." They replied "'Tis well, in Allah's name, let us do so!" and cast his nativity with all diligence. After ascertaining his ascendant, they pronounced judgement in these words, "We see his lot favourable and his life viable and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... discovered, which had a counter-revolution for its object. I say a counter-revolution, for you ought to have heard that great political changes have occurred in Switzerland since 1830, France always giving an impulse to the cantons. Democracy is in the ascendant, and divers old opinions, laws, and institutions have been the sacrifice. This, in the land of the Burgerschaft, has necessarily involved great changes, and the threatened plot is supposed to be an effort ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... become, since the time of Bacon, the preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... semi-barbarous chieftains. A battle, with from one to two thousand men on each side, took place in Islay in 1598. The power of the Islay Macdonalds ultimately passed into the hands of the Campbells, who have since been the ascendant family in these ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... any serious injury. They would have killed him afterwards, but for the interference of the Chicasaw, who, by some means, had gained an ascendancy over the Red-Hand! In the breast of this desperate woman burned alternately the passions of love and revenge. The former had been for the time in the ascendant; but she had saved the captive's life, only in the hope of making him her captive. She had carried him to the copse, where he had passed the night in her company—one moment caressed and entreated— in the next reviled, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... children, and their fathers paid them little attention. The family instinct appears in conditions of higher culture, in Judea, Greece, Rome and ancient Germany. Procreation instead of lust was there the aim of marriage. To-day, mere sentiment is so much in the ascendant that both these elements are often absent. There is warm affection without even instinctive knowledge of the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... than for that which is produced or amended according to a universal law of taste. Rhythm lay yet in the cradle, and no one knew of a method to shorten its childhood. Poetical prose came into the ascendant. Gessner and Klopstock excited many imitators: others, again, still demanded an intelligible metre, and translated this prose into rhythm. But even these gave nobody satisfaction, for they were obliged to omit and add; and the prose original always passed ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... the series of massacres which reduced these warlike savages, the Hurons, from their high estate to that of a dispersed, nomadic tribe, and placed the Iroquois or Mohawks, at one time nearly destroyed by the Hurons, in the ascendant. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... it? Nothing must be allowed to trouble Miss Graham of Bourhill. Her star should always be in the ascendant,' ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... Meanwhile prose imaginative literature was ably supported by Sophus Schandorph (1836-1901), who had been entirely out of sympathy with the idealists, and had taken no step while that school was in the ascendant. In 1876, in his fortieth year, he was encouraged by the change in taste to publish a volume of realistic stories, Country Life, and in 1878 a novel, Without a Centre. He has some relation with Guy de Maupassant as a close analyst of modern types of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... head; the Queen of Scots was found to have been mixed up with the plots to murder Elizabeth; and Elizabeth at last took courage and recognised James. Supplies of money ceased to come from abroad, and gradually the tide turned. The Protestant cause once more grew towards the ascendant. The great families one by one came round again; and, as the backward movement began, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew gave it a fresh and tremendous impulse. Even the avowed Catholics—the Hamiltons, the Gordons, the Scotts, the Kers, the Maxwells—quailed before the wail ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... story of myself and Mary is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarce conscious effort to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances, and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendant upon a vast hillside; I take up our intimacy for an instant and hold it under a lens for you. I become more than myself then, and Mary stands for innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just a part of that same history that made Edmond ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... was at home. Good fortune number two! Matty's star was surely in the ascendant! Matty sent in her card, and the nice old lady presented herself at once, remembered who Matty was, remembered how much business Mr. Molyneux used to bring to the office, and how grateful Mr. Gilbert always was. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... Grecophils (who desire that these countries should have no mandate, but should act in a friendly spirit towards an independent Albania). Meanwhile the Italophils, nearly all of them on Italy's pay-roll, were, till a few months ago, in the ascendant, and their attitude towards the other party was relentless.] One Alush Ljocha, for example, said that he thought it would be well if Yugoslavia and Albania lived on friendly terms with one another. Because of this—the Government ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... half amused, half pained, but his evil star was in the ascendant. Had he known it, he would have been plain and natural, for at no time had the girl ever been so near to him. Instead, he made some laughing remark, which sounded harshly flippant in her ears. She looked at him reproachfully; it was cruel to treat ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... to talk with Webb for the next few days. He had seen the cloud on Burt's brow, and had observed that he was suspicious, unhappy, and irritable; that reason and good sense were not in the ascendant; and he understood his brother sufficiently well to believe that his attack must run its natural course, as like fevers had done before. From what he had seen he also thought that Amy could deal with Burt better than any one else, for although high-strung, he was also manly and generous ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... given in charge of the King's son Wenceslaus, who was crowned as King of that country and resided some time at Ofen. Wenceslaus had taken a Polish Princess to wife after the death of Gutta, and had thus reinforced his connection with a Slavonic neighbour, but Germanism was in the ascendant in Bohemia and the hand of Habsburg was stretched out over it. It was yet some centuries before the power of the Habsburg should become absolute in the lands of the P[vr]emysl dynasty, but that family's ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... for its successful realization two important military essentials, viz., good luck and skilled disciplined organization, and they were both forthcoming to a marked degree at the hour needed. Our luck was in the ascendant by the marvelous spell of calm weather which prevailed. But we were able to turn to the fullest advantage these ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... with his father and brothers was away in exile," Wulf said rather shortly, for that visit had been a most unpleasant one to Englishmen. It had happened when the Norman influence was altogether in the ascendant. The king was filling the chief places at court and in the church with Normans, had bestowed wide domains upon them, and their castles were everywhere rising to dominate the land. Englishmen then regarded with hostility this visit of the young Norman duke with his great ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... attach to the act. I still loved her in spite of myself. I could not live in peace without her, and I determined without delay to offer her my hand, heart, and fortune. I set out for Boston, and on my arrival instantly proceeded to the residence of Judge . Again my evil star was in the ascendant. Desolation and death presided in Judge 's family. The ominous badge of mourning greeted me at the threshold; Laura's mother had just been consigned, broken-hearted, to the cold grave. The venerable Judge bowed his hoary head to the blows that Providence ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... not mastered by it, perhaps he might have turned it to account at a critical juncture, and laid it aside when the necessity to employ it had gradually been removed. But, alas! he gave way little by little to the encroachments of an evil power with which, when once it had gained the ascendant, he fought down to his dying day ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... absence from the council of the Confederation, that measure of fatal rashness was adopted, of which he became the first victim; although it was his discretion and ability that kept the "Jacquerie," who then obtained the ascendant, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... accounts now given by Peggy, the warfare between Ooroony and Waally had been kept up with renewed vigour, subsequently to the escape of Jones and her own husband. Fortune had proved fickle, as so often happens, and Waally got to be in the ascendant. His enemy was reduced to great straits, and had been compelled to confine himself to one of the smallest islands of the group, where he was barely able to maintain his party, by means of the most vigilant watchfulness. This left Waally at liberty to pursue his intention of following ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... seemed as if he were right. From the moment the paper had taken up his cause, Kid Brady's star had undoubtedly been in the ascendant. People began to talk about him as a likely man. Edgren, in the Evening World, had a paragraph about his chances for the light-weight title. Tad, in the Journal, drew a picture of him. Finally, the management of the Highfield Club had signed him for a ten-round bout ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Eighteen Hundred Twenty; and at that time the stars of the Irish schoolmaster were in the ascendant. For a space of forty years—say from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Forty-five—eighty per cent of all graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, came straight to America ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... must elevate and edify." Hudson wrote: "The common view that the primitive ages of the world were ages of colossal individualism is grotesquely unhistorical; they were, on the contrary, ages in which group-life and group-consciousness were in the ascendant." "Quite true," notes Paul. "See Maine's 'Ancient Law,' where he points out that ancient history has nothing to do with the individual but only with groups." Another annotated book is Maeterlinck's "Wisdom and Destiny." To Maeterlinck's remark, "It is often of better avail from the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... beyond the confines of logic and wit. At the same time, Voltaire was an energetic protagonist for verse, and he did very much to prevent the abandonment of this instrument at a time when prose, in such hands as those of Montesquieu and Buffon, was manifestly in the ascendant. He earnestly recommended the cultivation of a form in which precision of thought and elegance of language were indispensable, and he employed it in tragedies which we find it impossible to read, but which enchanted the ear and ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... was at his service if he felt disposed to accept it. The tears came into the stout old warrior's eyes at this sudden sunshine of royal favor, and Helen kissed old Wardlaw of her own accord; and the star of the Wardlaws rose into the ascendant, and for a time Robert Penfold seemed to ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... masculine intellect in Chinese studies. But there was a still more effective cause. The position of women in ancient Japan was very different from what it afterwards became when Chinese ideals were in the ascendant. The Japanese of this early period did not share the feeling common to most Eastern countries that women should be kept in subjection and as far as possible in seclusion. Though the morality which the Heian literature reveals ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... secret of his joyfulness. His biographer well remarks, "Beyond all doubt the inalienable treasure and guarantee of cheerfulness, being reconciliation to God, was in that heart, whose pulsations are still beating in the leaves of this book. In his sky the star of hope was always in the ascendant. The aspect which life had to him, notwithstanding all his suffering, was green and cheerful. He was wont to view things on the sunny side, or if a cloud ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... which they did not understand, as indeed Corneille never deviated so far from these rules as, in the train, no doubt, of his Spanish model, he does in this very piece; in one word, the French Tragedy would have become national and truly romantic. But I know not what malignant star was in the ascendant: notwithstanding the extraordinary success of his Cid, Corneille did not go one step further, and the attempt which he made found no imitators. In the time of Louis XIV. it was considered as a matter established beyond dispute, that the French, nay generally the modern European history was not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... fancy; but L600 a year might do better than purchase so many incumbrances. Depend upon it, the late lamented will remain in the ascendant till ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... proceeded to obey it. He rang the bell and desired the servant to inform his master that if it suited his lordship, he, Mr Slope, was ready to wait upon him. The servant, who well understood that Mr Slope was no longer in the ascendant, brought back a message, saying that, 'his lordship desired that Mr Slope would attend him immediately in his study.' Mr Slope waited about ten minutes more to prove his independence, and then went into the bishop's room. There, as had expected, he found ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... fraction of the world is seldom without its gloves, its touch nevertheless had soiled her nature. Her face did not express any active or malignant principle of evil; but a close observer, like Van Berg, in whom the man was in the ascendant over the animal, could detect the absence of the serene, maidenly purity of expression, characteristic of those girls who have obtained their ideas of life from good mothers, rather than from French novels, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... Republican party of the old school had been snuffed out by the same event. The new democracy, whose claims to rule were based, not on the policy of peace or restricted powers, but on the seductive glitter of military glory, was in the ascendant, and General Jackson was the favorite of the hour. New combinations became necessary, and Mr. Gallatin was requested to withdraw from the ticket, and make room for Mr. Clay, whose great western influence it was hoped would save it from defeat. This he gladly did in a declaration of October 2, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... notwithstanding the yearly increased ratio of new comers, and, moreover, where all are diligently employed in the onward march to happiness and independence, we may truly be thankful to a superintending Providence, that prosperity is in the ascendant." ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... been effected by any other means than those which Pitt adopted. It was better by giving these greedy politicians their price to put an end to a system maintained by perpetual corruption, worked in the interests of an ascendant minority, distrusted by the mass of the people, incapable of affording the country the blessings of domestic peace, and dangerous to the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... was clearly born when Venus was in the ascendant," said Mrs. Smith. "You clergymen usually are, I believe, Mr. Robarts." So that Mrs. Proudie's carriage was by no means the dullest as they drove into Barchester that day; and by degrees our friend Mark became accustomed to his companions, and before they reached the palace he acknowledged ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... day sacred to the death of the sun, on which had been paid a sacrifice of death to evil powers. Though overcome at Moytura evil was ascendant at Samhain. Methods of finding out the will of spirits and the future naturally worked better then, charms and invocations had more power, for the spirits were near to help, if care was taken not to anger them, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... browbeating and threats was invoked. I had no taste for politics, and had determined to devote myself entirely to my profession. I was especially anxious to avoid any strife with the Whigs, who were overwhelmingly in the ascendant in Eastern Indiana, and in whose ranks were most of my clients and best friends. But the party leaders talked to me in the imperative mood. They saw my embarrassment, and seemed determined to coerce me into submission by the supposed extremity of my situation; and I was obliged to offer ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... her as it did before, and will again; their great alliance against the Ottoman brought her everything, and him nothing. Still, no foreigner ever dazzled her as he, who could so little impose himself on his age. "He will live unrivalled," she wrote in her enthusiasm; "his star is in the ascendant, he will leave all Europe behind!" A wandering star, alas! He will go before her to the grave, the great failure of his generation, in the bitterness of death dictating that saddest of epitaphs, "Here lies one who never fulfilled an aim." Impar congressus! like Michelet's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... aware of the simmering discontent which his rigid discipline was arousing. He regretted it, but he was hopeful that the better element among the men would yet gain the ascendant. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... confession et dans certains cas de penitence publique, le clerge imposoit pour satisfaction un pelerinage a Jerusalem, ou un temps fixe de croisade. Plusieurs fois meme les papes employerent tous les ressorts de leur politique et l'ascendant de leur autorite pour renouer chez les princes chretiens quelqu'une de ces ligues saintes, ou leur ambition avoit tant a gagner sans ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... Keller, to whom he had been introduced when he was a chorister at St Stephen's. According to Dies, Haydn had lodged with the Kellers at one time. The statement is doubtful, but in any case his good stars were not in the ascendant when it was ordained that he should marry ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... night drew on; still we were in Scotland. Scotch ballads, Scotch tunes, and Scotch literature were in the ascendant. We sang "Auld Lang Syne," "Scots wha ha'," and "Bonnie Doon," and then, changing the key, sang ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... that breakfast, walked about the gardens with him all the morning, and my mother wrote to my aunt, I believe, that she was booked. Then at this Bryanstone soiree, the next night, Fitzhugh was in the ascendant—poor St. Erme could not so much ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... whose power on the ocean is so ascendant, it was deemed not inconsistent with that condition to state explicitly that on her rescinding her orders in relation to the United States their trade would be opened with her, and remain shut ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... early Christian enthusiasm died away. The incursions of barbarian tribes from the North and East, and later of Moors and Arabs from the South, familiarized the European peoples with the ideas of bloodshed and violence; gross and material conceptions of life were in the ascendant; and a romantic and aspiring Christianity gave place to a ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... darker bread, and the browner flour—and dyspeptic old gentlemen or mammas who have over-pampered their sickly darlings, listen to his fervid warnings, and the star of the brown loaf is for a month or two in the ascendant. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... be expected of his princely nature, they said. The Tinleys, of Bloxholme, worshipped him for his wealth; the ladies of Brookfield assured their friends that the fact of his being a money-maker was redeemed in their sight by his devotion to music. Music was now the Art in the ascendant at Brookfield. The ladies (for it is as well to know at once that they were not of that poor order of women who yield their admiration to a thing for its abstract virtue only)—the ladies were scaling society by the help of the Arts. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... openly that Christ and His saints were asleep"; in 1141 Matilda won the battle of Lincoln and for a few months ruled the country, but "as much too harsh as Stephen was too lenient," she rapidly became unpopular, and Stephen was soon again in the ascendant; the successes of Henry, son of Matilda, led in 1153 to the treaty of Wallingford, by which it was arranged that Stephen should retain the crown for life, while Henry should be his heir; both joined in suppressing the turbulent barons and the "Adulterine Castles"; more fortunately ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the gesture, and a sudden hush fell upon the company. If these two touched hands, then in that moment would be spanned the distance between the star in the ascendant and the wavering marsh-light, between the sea-colossus and his one-time rival, now so long overwhelmed ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... plans half a dozen times before he reached the square; but that of telling the admiral under a pledge of secrecy was in the ascendant when the cab drew up at ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... coleopterous about the flowers, that it might be questioned whether their buds and blossoms made up for these unpleasant animal combinations,—especially as the smell of whale-oil soap was very commonly in the ascendant over that of the roses. It had its patch of grass called "the lawn," and its glazed closet known as "the conservatory," according to that system of harmless fictions characteristic of the rural imagination and shown in the names ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... must follow. —National voices, distinct yet dependent, Ensphering each other, as swallow does swallow, With circles still widening and ever ascendant, In multiform ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... exceeded that of all orators contemporary with me; by the integrity of my life, my moderation, and my prudence; but, above all, by my artful management of the people, whose power I increased that I might render it the basis and support of my own, I gained such an ascendant over all my opponents that, having first procured the banishment of Cimon by ostracism, and then of Thucydides, another formidable antagonist set up by the nobles against my authority, I became the unrivalled chief, or rather the monarch, of the Athenian Republic, without ever putting ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... his power ascendant in the human mind, he still wishes an addition to that power, by uniting another. Thus the Bishop of Rome, being master of the spiritual chair, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... pouch sus- pended from her girdle, had command of the platform; and as soon as the car was full she jolted us into the town through clouds of the thickest dust I ever have swallowed. I have had occasion to speak of the activity of women in France, - of the way they are always in the ascendant; and here was a signal example of their general utility. The young lady I have mentioned conveyed her whole company to the wretched little Hotel de France, where it is to be hoped that some of them found a lodging. For myself, I was informed that ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... ventures to vanquish others.[85] In this connection, persons conversant with (the occurrence of) ancient cycles recite some verses which were sung in days of old by king Amvarisha who had acquired a tranquil soul. When diverse kinds of faults were in the ascendant and when the righteous were afflicted, Amvarisha of great fame put forth his strength for assuming sovereignty.[86] Subduing his own faults and worshipping the righteous, he attained to great success and sang ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... endeavouring to imitate. But the love of the marvellous, the deeper sensibility, the higher reverence for womanhood, the characteristic spirit of sentiment and courtesy,—these were the heir-looms of nature, which still regained the ascendant, whenever the use of the living mother-language enabled the inspired poet to appear instead ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... antagonism of the movement, from its inception, to the liberal spirit of the age. By inner logic Newman found himself at last in the Roman Church. Yet the Anglo-Catholic movement is to-day overwhelmingly in the ascendant in the English Church. The Broad Churchmen of the middle of the century have had few successors. It is the High Church which stands over against the great mass of the dissenting churches which, taken in the large, can hardly be said to ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... Palmifera' and 'Astarte Syriaca'; and I wore miraculously limp, draggled skirts, that tangled about my feet tight as the robes of Burne Jones' 'Vivien.' Next season the star of ceramics and bric-a-brac was in the ascendant, and I ran the gamut of Satsuma, Kyoto, de la Robbia, Limoge and Gubbio; of niello, and millchori glass, of Queen Anne brass and Japanese bronze; while my snuff boxes and my 'symphony in fans' graced all the loan exhibitions. Soon after, a celebrated scientist from ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... away, seeing that Wilton's star happened to be in the ascendant. Had he known how much it was so, however, having often heard the Earl speak sharply and discourteously to the young gentleman, he would have been more surprised even than he was at the change which had taken place. The moment he was gone, and the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men. If it be so, surely this influence runnes all along through North Wilts, the vale of Glocestershire, and Somersetshire. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... the old and famous city of Metz. But it looked drear and abandoned- as everywhere during my journey. Nothing was yet restored, for confidence was wanting in the state of things. Wellington and Blcher, the lords of the ascendant, seemed alone gifted with the Power of foreseeing, as they had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... England to any means, however arbitrary, by which it had been attained. But the calamities, and, at last, the hopelessness of the conflict, inclined them to moralize upon its causes and character. The hour of Lord North's ascendant was now passing rapidly away, and Mr. Sheridan could not have joined the Opposition, at a conjuncture more favorable to the excitement of his powers, or more bright in the views which it opened upon ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... hours without interruption. They manage the matter otherwise in France, where ladies are the lords of the ascendant. I returned from my visit to my solitary work and solitary meal. I eked out the last two hours' length by dint of smoking, which I find a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... will of all-dominant man. He was not accustomed to have a woman look him fairly in the eye and speak in tones, not of bootless fury, but of superior scorn. And his answer was painfully lacking in the ascendant volubility which ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis



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