circumvallations

A man naturally thinks it will go hard with him if he cannot be good and fortunate and happy within such august circumvallations.

Virginibus Puerisque and other papers 2005

In front of the table benches arranged in zigzag form, like the circumvallations of a retrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and curtains set apart for the use of the members of the club; and on this especial evening one might say, “All the world was on the ramparts.”

From the Earth to the Moon 2003

Pretty Prudence, like a beleaguered city hard bested, kept the enemy Spikeman at bay; nor did he, with all his parallels and circumvallations, make any progress.

The Knight of the Golden Melice A Historical Romance John Turvill Adams

At Weymar all the world is out of doors, and the town is pretty full of nothing, offering to the curiosity of travelers only the trenches and practical circumvallations in honor of gas-lighting which they are going to start in October.

Letters Liszt, Franz 1893

Elsewhere the tomb, instead of developing as a tumulus or barrow, produced the effect of greatness by huge circumvallations of earth, and massive walls of stone.

Early Bardic Literature, Ireland. Standish O'Grady 1887

Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously about for what should be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her babe?

The Dynamiter Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

A man naturally thinks it will go hard within such august circumvallations.

The Pocket R.L.S., being favourite passages from the works of Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

Instead of this, with the exception of some two or three harmless sorties, they have been allowed slowly to inclose us in a net of circumvallations.

Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris Henry Labouchere 1871

Its circumvallations haunted you until you came to the next station.

Stories in Light and Shadow Bret Harte 1869

These singular circumvallations sometimes enclosed a hundred and fifty acres of ground.

Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851