Vain Sentence Examples

The child tried in vain to keep up.

He tried in vain to stop the water flow.

The proprietors struggled in vain to bring about a closer union.

The convict tried in vain to escape several times from prison.

Let's not let Carlo's death be in vain.

In a vain attempt to lose some weight, I have taken to reading the labels on the food I buy.

We drove home with Betsy trying in vain to calm Molly down, telling her we weren't in any danger.

He tried in vain to persuade a policeman to let him enter Downing Street!

It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.

She tugged at his collar and he tried in vain to rise.

These hopes were vain.

Tony Blair was so vain that all he could think about was the glory of the opening ceremony.

He tried in vain to get the whole world to be won over to liberal toleration within one or two generations.

That did sound a little vain.

The American officers protested but in vain, and on the 28th they decided to retreat to the north end of the island.

In vain did Mostasim sue for peace.

Having tried in vain to secure the general recognition of Victor and Paschal in Europe, the emperor held a diet at Wiirzburg in May 1165; and by taking an oath, followed by many of the clergy and nobles, to remain true to Paschal and his successors, brought about a schism in the German church.

Other explorers had searched in vain for this river.

Vain attempts were still made to rehabilitate them, and they were, in general, more highly estimated in England than elsewhere.

Happy were the disciples in seeing and hearing what prophets and kings had looked for in vain.

On the 2nd of February 1576, after several vain attempts, he escaped from the court, joined the combined forces of Protestants and of opponents of the king, and obtained by the treaty of Beaulieu (1576) the government of Guienne.

In July of that year he went with other commissioners to Aberdeen in the vain attempt to induce the university and the presbytery of that city to subscribe the National Covenant, and in the following November sat in the general assembly at Glasgow which abolished episcopacy in Scotland.

In this we can deliberately resolve upon what is in our power; in that we are subject to the vain impulse of wishing the impossible.

In 1748 the synods of Glasgow, Perth and Lothian passed vain resolutions intended to exclude him from churches; in 1753 he compiled his hymn-book, and in 1756 opened the chapel which still bears his name in Tottenham Court Road.

In vain John hired foreign mercenaries, garrisoned his castles, and leagued himself with the king of France when the latter returned from the Crusade.

But he marched no further than Dumfries, and then turned back, on the vain pretext that he must conduct his parents funeral in person.

But his most offensive act was to promote to the position of chief councillor of the crown, and disperser of the royal favors, a clever but vain and ostentatious Gascon knight, one Piers Gaveston, who had been the companion of his boyhood, and had been banished by Edward I.

It was of Queen in vain that Edward besought her to return and to re- Isabella store him his son; she came back at last,butatthehead and of an army commanded by Roger, Lord Mortimer, the Mortimer.

Edward and the De- murder of spensers, after trying in vain.

He trumped.up a vain story that his uncle was once more conspiring against him, arrested him, and sent him HI over to Calais, where he was secretly murdered in re5venge on prison.

After a long trial, carried out with elaborate formality and great unfairness, the unhappy Joan was found guilty of proclaiming as divine visions what were delusions of the evil one, or of her own vain imagination, and when she persisted in maintaining their reality she was declared a relapsed heretic, and burnt at Rouen on the 30th of May 1431.

They borrowed his money and his armies, but fed him with vain promises and illusory treaties.

He tried in vain to establish constitutional government and religious toleration (see CROMWELL, OLIVER).

It was a time when the pen was more powerful than the sword, when a secretary of state would treat with condescension a Witty pamphleteer, and when such a pamphleteer might hope, not in vain, to become a secretary of state.

He appealed to the patriotism of his fellow-countrymen, to their imaginative love for the national greatness, and he did not appeal in vain.

But the Beauchamps returned more than once to vain attacks on the stout walls of Berkeley, and a quarrel of two generations ended with the pitched battle of Nibley Green.

He opposed in vain the massacre of St Bartholomew in his province.

Her husband, after awaiting her in vain at Ostend, went on to Paris.

Dorpat was taken, but countless multitudes were lost in vain before Riga.

It was in vain that Christian IV.

He was a man of vast physical energy, of inexhaustible mental activity, of quick passions and violent appetites; vain, restless, greedy of gold and pleasure and fame; unable to stay quiet in one place, and perpetually engaged in quarrels with his compeers.

At the Berlin Congress the Servian plenipotentiary, Jovan Ristich, in vain appealed to the Russian representatives to assist Servia to obtain better terms. The Russians themselves advised him to appeal to Austria and to try to obtain her support.

Ribot tried in vain to form a cabinet of "conciliation."

That sacred communication of His flesh and blood whereby Christ transfuses into us His life, even as if it penetrated into our bones and marrow, He in the Supper attests and seals; and that not by a vain or empty sign set before us, but there He puts forth the efficacy of His Spirit whereby He fulfils what He promises.

As late as 1622, when Sir Henry Cary, Viscount Falkland, was installed as deputy, the illustrious James Ussher, then bishop of Meath, preached from the text " he beareth not the sword in vain," and descanted on the over-indulgence shown to recusants.

Then, after Syria and China, it was the "great inspiration of his reign," the establishment of a Catholic and Latin empire in Mexico, enthusiasm for which he tried in vain from 1863 to 1867 to communicate to the French.

In vain the emperor sought in German affairs a definitive solution of the Italian question.

At last, on the 24th of August 1849, when all provisions and ammunition were exhausted, Manin, who had courted death in vain, succeeded in negotiating an honourable capitulation, on terms of amnesty to all save Manin himself, Pepe and some others, who were to go into exile.

It was in vain that the emperors tried to rivet the chains of the curia in this hereditary bondage, by attaching the small proprietor to his glebe, like the artisan to his gild and the soldier to his legion.

On both occasions General Campos tried in vain to induce the other commanders to proclaim Alphonso XII.

Compton tried, at first in vain, to pour some brandy down his throat.

The tramps repetitive inspection of their empty hats perhaps symbolizes mankind's vain search for answers within the vacuum of a universe.

These people are very vain and greedy for costly things!

When it was too late to act with effect, Desmond himself, a vain man, neither frankly loyal nor a bold rebel, took the field.

He believed in Italian unity when most men, even Cavour, regarded it as a vain thing, and his work of propaganda by means of the National Society greatly contributed to the success of the cause.

Aquitaine, hitherto the common prey of all the Frankislh kings, having in vain tried to profit by the struggles between Fredegond and Brunhilda, and set up an independent king, Gondibald, now finally burst her bonds in 670.

Louis tried in vain to satisfy his sons and their followers by repeated divisionsat Worms (829) and at Aix (831)in which there was no longer question of either unity or subordination.

In vain Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority in the capitularies of Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes (864), Gondreville (872) and Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time in exchange for assent to the royal will and renewal of oaths he had to acquiesce in.

After the death of Boniface the splendid fabric of the medieval theocracy gave place to the rights of civil society, the humiliation of Avignon, the disruption of the great schism, the vain efforts of the councils for reform, and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe and Huss.

In vain Charles tried to kindle anew the embers of former feudal intrigues; the execution of the duke of Nemours and the count of Saint P01 cooled all enthusiasm.

In vain did he get his dilatory friends, the English Yorkists, to cross the Channel; on the 29th of August 1475, at Picquigny, Louis XI.

In vain did the malcontent princes attempt to set up a new League of Public Weal, the Guerre folle (Mad War), in which the duke of Brittany, Francis II., played the part of Charles the Bold, dragging in the people of Lorraine and the king of Navarre, In vain did Charles VIII., his majority attained, at once abandon in the treaty of Sable the benefits gained by the victory of Saint-Aubin du Cormier (1488).

Vain and imaginative, Th his reputation was enormously enhanced by his Economies royales; he was no innovator, and being a true representative of the nation at that period, like it he was but lukewarm towards reform, accepting it always against the grain.

In vain Condb tried to play with the parlement of Paris the same game as with the states-general, in a sort of anticipation of the Fronde.

In vain did the grandIth pensionary of the province of Holland, Jan de Witt, Holland.

The preaching of all this generous philosophy, not only in France, but throughout the whole of Europe, would have been in vain had there not existed at the time a social class interested in these great changes, and capable of compassing them.

In vain was he offered a share in the partition of the Netherlands by way of an inducement.

It was still too early for a Fourth of August; but the queens victory was none the less vain, since Turgots ideas were taken up by his successors.

The vain attempts of the Gironde to reconcile the king and the Revolution, the ill-advised decree of the Assembly on the 8th of August, freeing La Fayette from his guilt in forsaking his army; his refusal to vote for the deposition of the king, and the suspected treachery of the court, led to the success of the republican forces when, on the 10th of August, the mob of Paris organized by the revolutionary Commune rose against the monarchy.

But theology, or the mixture of the two, he regarded as a source of evil to both - fostering the vain belief in a hostility of philosophers to religion, and meanwhile corrupting religion by a pseudo-science.

The Confederates used every effort to hold the position and all Sherman's efforts were made in vain.

But he gives us much invaluable information for which we should search the more methodical chroniclers in vain.

It was in vain that, on the death of Ladislaus, which took place unexpectedly (August 6, 1414), John was inspired with the idea of breaking his compact with Sigismund and returning to Rome, at the same time appealing to Louis of Anjou.

John was brought back to Freiburg (April 27), and there in vain attempted to appease the wrath which he had aroused by more or less vague promises of resignation.

Tulsi Das followed her, and endeavoured to induce her to return to him, but in vain; she reproached him (in verses which have been preserved) with want of faith in Rama, and so moved him that he renounced the world, and entered upon an ascetic life, much of which was spent in wandering as a preacher of the necessity of a loving faith in Rama.

Having crossed Oceanus and landed on the island, Heracles slew Orthrus together with Eurytion, who in vain strove to defend him, and drove off the cattle.

In vain the mediation of the saintly king of France, Louis IX., was invoked.

After a vain attempt to organize resistance he fled and hid in a secluded yard, where he was discovered the next day.

On this occasion he restored the system of uninominal constituencies, resisted the socialist agitation, and pressed, though in vain, for the adoption of drastic measures against the false bank-notes put in circulation by the Roman bank.

Anushirwan succeeded in 540, according to the last entry in the Edessene Chronicle, in exacting a large tribute from Edessa; but in 544 he besieged it in vain.

Having in vain attempted to keep a school for girls at Treguier, she left her native place and went to Paris as teacher in a young ladies' boarding-school.

Schiller at this period in vain sought to engage Kant upon his Horen.

But, protected by William IX., duke of Aquitaine, and soon by a great part of the southern nobility, the heretics gained ground in the south, and in 1119 the council of Toulouse in vain ordered the secular powers to assist the ecclesiastical authority in quelling the heresy.

He then endeavoured to buy off the invaders by numerous presents-30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, couches and thrones inlaid with ivory, girls and eunuchs - but all in vain.

Malatesta made more than one attempt to win back his city, but always in vain, for his subjects preferred the papal rule, and in 1528 Pope Clement VII.

Mom always told me I was vain enough to think I was the only one who could do things right.

I laughed in the pretender's face as his blood poured down his shirt and into his pants as he tried in vain to stop the flow.

Martha was more than willing to let anyone respond to her daughter's needs while she tried in vain to shake a world class hangover.

This was a truly vain individual.

She struggled in vain to break his grip, turning her head to the side to avoid his lips.

Once, in a rare instance of can­dor, she'd admitted to Dean she considered a nose job but reject­ed the idea on the basis that either people would think her vain, or it would so alter her appearance as to make her unrecognizable.

Dean and Andy Sackler spent the rest of the day trying in vain to chase down the final movements of the late Mr. Homer Flanders before the Colombians enlarged his grin.

But all his endeavors were in vain, and he almost despairedof finding her again.

Early last century there was a blind beggar who, led by his dog, tried in vain to cross a busy London street.

But are you and I putting to death selfish ambition and vain conceit?

The 3rd division along with the 12th SP Brigade tried in vain to contain the US 7th Corps advance.

It is a vain thing to urge that science has not admitted this contention, and that the statement is pure dogmatism.

In Holland, however, Dahlerus waited in vain for the promised British emissary.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal.

He had sought rest for his awakened soul in vain, even in Jerusalem at their solemn feasts.

Hanging baskets try in vain to hide the rather forlorn look of the station.

He abhorred a vain ostentation of wit in handling sacred truths, so venerable and grave, and of eternal consequence.

Walking back toward the bridge we saw black phoebe and searched in vain for a black-capped vireo.

He began to try what prayers would do, but city prayers were vain against the great rural potentate.

The God of Jacob hath openly professed we shall not seek him in vain, Isa. xlv.

The reiterated mention of the image of God is not a vain repetition.

Brandy tears a slit up the side of her denim skirt in a vain attempt to look more seductive.

For 45 minutes we hung completely stationary in mid-water, hoping in vain for the shoal to come near.

Now that it's happened, however, he's sadly proven too vain for that.

Now all this might sound quite vain and you'd be half right.

If once they seemed vain, Now surely their reality fills me - As sunlight fills the lost man who waited out the night.

They became vain in their own conceits because they chose to be great rather than humble.

He is said to have been vain and fat, and to have been so fond of display that he was nicknamed Pompicus, or the Showy (unless the epithet refers to his literary style).

The government in vain attempted to suppress the letters, and other means having failed, he was in May 1837, with Weszelenyi and several others, arrested on a charge of high treason.

The hopes of ultimate success were frustrated by the intervention of Russia; all appeals to the western powers were vain, and on the 11th of August Kossuth abdicated in favour of GOrgei, on the ground that in the last extremity the general alone could save the nation.

I indulged in no vain illusion; I believed in no miracle; I was quite sensible of the sort of hallucination into which I had fallen; I neither sought to intensify it nor to escape from it.

He died at Regensburg in 937, and his elder son, Eberhard, fought in vain to retain the duchy.

At Kandern, on the 10th of April, he made a vain effort to persuade the leaders to submit, and was about to order his troops to attack when he was mortally wounded by the bullets of the insurgents.

As Pickering was held responsible for Franklin's imprisonment, some of Franklin's followers in retaliation kidnapped Pickering and carrying him into the woods, tried in vain for nearly three weeks to get from him a promise to intercede for Franklin's pardon.

In vain the pope tried to bribe him with promises and dignities; he was determined to stand by his subjects, and was crowned king by the nobles at Palermo in 1296.

He attempted in vain to secure the election of his grandson Charles as king of the Romans, and in spite of increasing infirmity was eager to lead the imperial troops against the Turks.

The New York presbytery declined at first to unite with either party, worked in vain for reconciliation, and finally joined with the Tennents in establishing the synod of New York (1745) which was called the New Side, in contradistinction to the synod of Philadelphia, the Old Side.

The completeness of the ruin of so powerful a state - we should look in vain for an analogous case in the history of the modern world - finds an explanation in the economic conditions of the island, the prosperity of which rested upon a basis of slave-labour.

He was one of the executors of Edward IV.'s will in 1483, and the story of the future Richard III., while preparing Morton's arrest, joking with him about the strawberries the bishop grew in his garden at Holborn is well known and apparently authentic. Oxford University in vain petitioned for Morton's release, and after some weeks in the Tower he was entrusted to the duke of Buckingham's charge at Brecknock.

The chief incidents of Rhodian history during this period are a memorable siege by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 304, who sought in vain to force the city into active alliance with King Antigonus by means of his formidable fleet and artillery; a severe earthquake in 227, the damages of which all the other Hellenistic states contributed to repair, because they could not afford to see the island ruined; some vigorous campaigns against Byzantium, the Pergamene and the Pontic kings, who had threatened the Black Sea trade-route (220 sqq.), and against the pirates of Crete.

After this Cromwell had nothing left but the army with which to govern, and "henceforth his life was a vain attempt to clothe that force in constitutional forms, and make it seem something else so that it might become something else."

Again the ships returned to the rendezvous and made another splice, and again there was a break after the " Agamemnon " had paid out 146 m., and then the " Agamemnon," after again returning to the meeting-place in the vain hope that the " Niagara " might have returned there also, made for Queenstown, where she found her consort had arrived nearly a week previously.

Taxes are not sufficiently proportioned to what the land may reasonably be expected to produce, nor sufficient allowance made for the exceptional conditions of a southern climate, in which a few hours bad weather may destroy a whole crop. The Italian agriculturist has come to look (and often in vain) for action on a large scale from the state, for irrigation, drainage of uncultivated low-lying land, which may be made fertile, river regulation, &c.; while to the small proprietor the state often appears only as a hard and inconsiderate tax-gatherer.

We seek in vain an obvious motive for each separate quarrel.

In this year Lorenzo died, and was succeeded by his son, the vain and weak Piero; France passed beneath the personal control of the inexperienced Charles viii.

The king, who had sought death in vain all day, had to ask terms of Radetzky; the latter demanded Accession a slice of Piedmont and the heir to the throne (Victor of Victor Emmanuel) as a hostage, without a reservation for Emmanuel the consent of parliament.

This last fact was significant, as the new foreign secretary, a Sicilian deputy and a specialist on international politics, had hitherto been one of Signor Sonninos staunchest adherents; his defection, which was but one of many, showed that the more prominent members of the Sonnino party were tired of waiting in vain for their chiefs access to power.

In Raymond of Sabunde's form of moral argument - there must be a God to reward and punish, if human life is not to be " vain " - we see the kinship of that argument to the argument from design.

Robert claimed in vain the right to crown the German king Otto I.

He found Carlotta of Naples in France, and having again tried to win her over in vain, he had to content himself with Charlotte d'Albret, sister of the king of Navarre (May 1499).

Venice hoped to intervene in Romagna and establish her protectorate over the principalities, but this Julius was determined to prevent, and after trying in vain to use Cesare as a means of keeping out the Venetians, he had him arrested.

But the attention of the Portuguese was mainly devoted to vain attempts to maintain their monopoly of the trade of India against the powerful rivalry of the English and Dutch.

In vain the papal bull was revoked, in vain the king issued a proclamation commanding the peasantry to return to their homes under pain of death.

The Roman legates, who were absent (designedly ?) when this famous twenty-eighth canon was adopted, protested against it, but in vain, the imperial commissioners deciding in favour of its regularity and validity.

In vain the Russian diplomatists sought to overcome her opposition by dilatory negotiations, in the firm conviction that a small island kingdom in the Pacific would never have the audacity to attack a power which had conquered and absorbed the whole of Northern Asia.

Aristotle speaks of him as uneducated and simple-minded, and Plato describes him as struggling in vain with the difficulties of dialectic. His work represents one great aspect of Socratic philosophy, and should be compared with the Cyrenaic and Megarian doctrines.

Heracles pleaded in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself, to escape his father's vengeance.

Felix the procurator - a king, as Tacitus says, in power and in mind a slave - tried in vain to put down the revolutionaries.

Once more Josephus appealed in vain to John and his followers to cease from desecrating and endangering the Temple.

The following year he and his disciple Gerson formed part of the great embassy sent by the princes to the two pontiffs, and while in Italy he was occupied in praiseworthy but vain efforts to induce the pope of Rome to remove himself to a town on the Italian coast, in the neighbourhood of his rival, where it was hoped that the double abdication would take place.

This speculative mood, in which nature and beauty and earthly satisfaction appear as a vain show, is the counterpart of the former mood of sensuous enjoyment.

In 1778, when General Thomas Goddard made his bold march across India, the state of Bhopal was the only Indian power that showed itself friendly; and in 1809 when another British expedition under General Close appeared in the same parts, the nawab of Bhopal petitioned earnestly but in vain to be received under British protection.

He also attempted to form an alliance with Lafayette, but the general was as vain and as obstinate as Mirabeau himself, and had his own theories about a new French constitution.

Mahratta resistance, once aroused by him, was never extinguished, and the imperial resources were worn out by ceaseless though vain efforts to quell it.

In vain did the Austrian envoy, Cobenzl, resist the cession of the Ionian Isles to France; in vain did the Directors intervene in the middle of September with an express order that Venice must not be ceded to Austria, but must, along with Friuli, be included.

In vain did he seek to dazzle the tsar by assembling about him the vassal kings and princes of Germany; in vain did he exercise all the intellectual gifts which had captivated the tsar at Tilsit; in vain did he conjure up visions of the future conquest of the Orient; external display, diplomatic finesse, varied by one or two outbursts of calculated violence - all was useless.

In vain did the Valencians implore succour from the emir of Cordova, and from their co-religionists in other parts of the peninsula.

Among travellers Eudoxus of Cyzicus occupies a foremost rank, since, between 115-87 B.C. he visited India and the east coast of Africa, which subsequently he attempted in vain to circumnavigate by Celestial globes were made much earlier than terrestrial ones.

In vain did the pope explain his reasons and yield certain points; the fathers would listen to nothing, and, relying on the decrees of the council of Constance, which amid the troubles of the schism had proclaimed the superiority, in certain cases, of the council over the pope, they insisted upon their right of remaining assembled, hastily beat up the laggards, held sessions, promulgated decrees, interfered in the government of the papal countship of Venaissin, treated with the Hussites, and, as representatives of the universal Church, presumed to impose laws upon the sovereign pontiff himself.

A vain attempt being made in Demerara to conceal from the knowledge of the slaves the arrival of the order in council, they became impressed with the idea that they had been set free, and accordingly refused to work, and, compulsion being resorted to, offered resistance.

Ratan Singh, who succeeded his father in 1828, applied in vain in 1830 to the British government for aid against a fresh outbreak of his thakurs; but during the next five years dacoity became so rife on the borders that the government raised a special force to deal with it (the Shakhawati Brigade), and of this for seven years Bikanir contributed part of the cost.

But while Nanak had substituted holiness of life for vain ceremonial, Guru Govind Singh demanded in addition brave deeds and zealous devotion to the Sikh cause as proof of faith; and while he retained his predecessors' attitude towards the Hindu gods and worship he preached undying hatred to the persecutors of his religion.

During the last years of Cosimo's life, affairs were less under his control, and the gonfaloniere Luca Pitti, a vain and ambitious man, introduced many changes, such as the abasement of the authority of the podesta and of the capitano, which Cosimo desired but was glad to attribute to others.

Equally vain were his efforts in the same year to persuade the magistrates of Ghent to cease persecuting the Catholics in the city.

In 1008 Bruno went to the court of Boleslaus, and, after a vain effort to persuade the emperor to end the war between Germans and Poles, determined at all hazards to proceed with his mission to the Prussians.

He was imprisoned at first in Topcliffe's house, where he was repeatedly put to the torture in the vain hope of extracting evidence about other priests.

But commentators are not at one as to which countess of Salisbury was the heroine of the adventure, whether she was Katherine Montacute or Joan the Fair Maid of Kent, while Heylyn rejects the legend as " a vain and idle romance derogatory both to the founder and the order, first published by Polydor Vergil, a stranger to the affairs of England, and by him taken upon no better ground than fama vulgi, the tradition of the common people, too trifling a foundation for so great a building."

All Tarquinius's efforts to force his way back to the throne were vain (see Porsena), and he died in exile at Cumae.

In 1832 the title of "imperial chamberlain" was conferred upon him, and in 1839 he married Maria, daughter of Count Attems. After the revolution of 1848 at Vienna he represented the district of Laibach at the German national assembly at Frankfort-on-theMain, to which he tried in vain to persuade his Slovene compatriots to send representatives.

Turbulent, ungovernable, vain, often the dupe of schemers, Mackenzie united with much that was laughable not a little that was heroic. He could neither be bribed, bullied, nor cajoled.

The English right wing first appeared, tried the morass in vain, and then set out to turn it by a long detour; the main battle under the king halted in front of it, while the left wing under Antony Bec, bishop of Durham, was able to reach the head of the marsh without much delay.

In this way he is led to regard the sophist successively - (t) as a practitioner of that branch of mercenary persuasion in private which professes to impart " virtue " and exacts payment in the shape of a fee, in opposition to the flatterer who offers pleasure, asking for sustenance in return; (2) as a practitioner of that branch of mental trading which purveys from city to city discourses and lessons about " virtue," in opposition to the artist who similarly purveys discourses and lessons about the arts; (3) and (4) as a practitioner of those branches of mental trading, retail and wholesale, which purvey discourses and lessons about " virtue " within a city, in opposition to the artists who similarly purvey discourses and lessons about the arts; (5) as a practitioner of that branch of eristic which brings to the professor pecuniary emolument, eristic being the systematic form of antilogic, and dealing with justice, injustice and other abstractions, and antilogic being that form of disputation which uses question and answer in private, in opposition to forensic, which uses continuous discourse in the law-courts; (6) as a practitioner of that branch of education which purges away the vain conceit of wisdom by means of crossexamination, in opposition to the traditional method of reproof or admonition.

Martha looked bewildered as she tried in vain to quiet Claire.

Of all the hard headed, vain...

Now who's being vain?

Don't be so vain.

Maybe she was being vain.

He sought at first in vain.

In vain the fiery young soldier strove to break loose from the shackles which hampered him.

In 1400 and again in each of the two following autumns Henry invaded Wales in vain.

In 1866 Bennigsen used all his influence to keep Hanover neutral in the conflict between Prussia and Austria, but in vain.

Berenice, who was fulfilling a Nazarite vow, interposed in vain.

Bathsheba's influence added a new element of danger to the usual jealousies of the harem, and two of David's sons perished in vain attempts to claim the throne, which she appears to have viewed as the rightful inheritance of her own child.

In 1790 he conducted the military operations on the Dniester and held his court at Jassy with more than Asiatic pomp. In 1791 he returned to St Petersburg where, along with his friend Bezborodko (q.v.), he made vain efforts to overthrow the new favourite, Zubov, and in four months spent 850,000 roubles in banquets and entertainments, a sum subsequently reimbursed to him from the treasury.

It was in vain that the heroic grand master, Henry of Plauen (1410-1413) sought to stem the tide of disaster; he was deposed by the chapter of the Order for his pains.

It is vain now to look for Ahab's palace or Naboth's vineyard.

Heracles sought him in vain, and the answer of Hylas to his thrice-repeated cry was lost in the depths of the water.

But, although the legend is first told in Alexandrian times, the "cry of Hylas" occurs long before as the "Mysian cry" in Aeschylus (Persae, 1054), and in Aristophanes (Plutus, 1127) "to cry Hylas" is used proverbially of seeking something in vain.

But for several years he searched in vain for the means of concatenation.

With the assistance of neighbouring princes and of many of the influential Dihkans, Mahmud collected a vast amount of materials for the work, and after having searched in vain for a man of sufficient learning and ability to edit them faithfully, and having entrusted various episodes for versification to the numerous poets whom he had gathered round him, he at length made choice of Firdousi.

In vain did Sieyes modify his scheme so as to provide for two consuls, one holding the chief executive powers for war, the other for peace.

Feuerbach labours under the same difficulty as Fichte; both thinkers strive in vain to reconcile the religious consciousness with subjectivism.

He rushed to Antwerp when there were hopes of saving it from the Germans, but though he exerted himself indefatigably both in diplomacy and in the actual work of defence, and sent a British naval division to help, the effort was in vain.

In 1816 Vieillot published at Paris an Analyse d'une nouvelle ornithologie elementaire, containing a method of classification which he had tried in vain to get printed before, both in Turin and in London.

The position of the Franks in the Holy Land was not improved by the attack on Damascus; while the ignominious failure of a Crusade led by two kings brought the whole crusading movement into discredit in western Europe, and it was utterly in vain that Suger and St Bernard attempted to gather a fresh Crusade in 1150.

It was in vain that the popes sought to gather a new Crusade for its recovery; Pius II., who had vowed to join the crusade in person, only reached Ancona in 1464 to find the crusaders deserting and to die.

He was grave and gay, affable and dignified, cruel and gentle, mean and generous, eager for fame yet not vain, impulsive and cautious, secretive and open.

But " alchemy " was something more than a particularly vain and deluded manifestation of the thirst for gold, as it is sometimes represented; in its wider and truer significance it stands for the chemistry of the middle ages.

They attacked him unsparingly, but in vain.

He uttered no vain regrets, but the position was a trying one.

He did his best, but all was in vain.

After a vain attempt to expel the garrison in 287, the Athenians regained their liberty while Macedonia was thrown into confusion by the Celts, and in 279 rendered good service against the invaders of the latter nation with a fleet off Thermopylae.

The Somali love display; they are inordinately vain and avaricious; but they make loyal and trustworthy soldiers and are generally bright and intelligent.

When the colonists found protests at Paris unavailing, they turned to the idea of independence, but sought in vain the armed support of the British at Pensacola.

The burden of maintaining it, however, proving too great for the society's means, appeal was made in vain to government for national support, and the station was closed in 1904.

This effort to shelve the dispute was quite in vain.

A renewal of the crusade proving equally vain, in 1247 Pope Innocent III.

In that year a horde, variously estimated at from two to four thousand souls, with their flocks and their slaves, driven originally from their Central Asian homes by the pressure of Mongol invasion, and who had sought in vain a refuge with the Seljukian sultan Ala-ud-din Kaikobad of Konia, were returning under their chief Suleiman Shah to their native land.

All attempts to arrange a truce between the two intractable conquerors were in vain.

Shortly after Murad's accession the emperor Manuel, having applied in vain for the renewal of the annual subsidy paid him by the late sultan for retaining in safe custody Mustafa, an alleged son of Bayezid, released the pretender.

The efforts of Ladislaus of Hungary to mediate were vain, and the years 1497 and 1498 were marked by a terrible devastation of Poland by the Ottomans; only the bitter winter, which is said to have killed 40,000 Turks, prevented the devastation from being more complete.

The diplomacy of Europe had been searching in vain since the autumn Accession of 1875 for the means of inducing Turkey to institute of Abd-u1- effective administrative reforms and to grant to Hamid 11., its European provinces that autonomy which now 1876.

It was in vain that Sigismund journeyed to Perpignan, and that the kings of Aragon, Castile and Navarre ceased to obey the aged pontiff.

In the " Kongespeil " (King's mirror) of the 13th century it is stated that the old Norsemen tried in vain to raise barley.

He endeavoured also to rouse the French peasantry against the Allies, but in vain, for Wellington's justice and moderation afforded them no grievances.

The almost uninterrupted series of victories of the Hussites now rendered vain all hope of subduing them by force of arms. Moreover, the conspicuously democratic character of the Hussite movement caused the German princes, who were afraid that such views might extend to their own countries, to desire peace.

Crossing to the mainland, he tried in vain to raise the clans, and on the 27th of April he was surprised and routed at Carbiesdale in Ross-shire.

All hope of an accommodation was, however, in vain.

After the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston in April 1865, President Davis attempted to make his way, through Georgia, across the Mississippi, in the vain hope of continuing the war with the forces of Generals Smith and Magruder.

The protest made by the Natalians against the settlement was in vain.

Since then, says their regretful pupil, " less time and less care have been bestowed on grammar, and persons who profess all arts, liberal and mechanical, are ignorant of the primary art, without which a man proceeds in vain to the rest.

It was in vain that he married his daughter Mary to the Protestant prince of Orange in 1677.

Restored when the emperor was excommunicated, he treated in vain with Frederick for the erection of Austria into a kingdom.

But he was inordinately vain, and totally unscrupulous in gaining money, in attacking an enemy, or in protecting himself when he was threatened with danger.

Snorre the Icelander tells us that the Danes fortified Southwark with ditch and rampart, which the English assailed in vain.

President Kruger protested in vain against this annexation, Great Britain being determined to prevent another Power establishing itself on the south-east African seaboard.

On the 9th of February 1792, he succeeded in having a law passed sequestrating the possessions of the émigrés, and demanded, though in vain, the deportation of refractory priests to French Guiana.

In 1876 Sayce pointed out the resemblance between certain Hittite signs and characters in the lately deciphered Cypriote syllabary, and suggested that the comparison might lead to a beginning of decipherment; but the hope has proved vain.

His friends tried in vain to obtain his appointment as minister of the marine; and he failed to obtain even a post as officer.

After in vain attempting to obtain an apology for " the unparalleled outrage against a friendly power " he issued on the 10th of December a solemn hatti sheriff summoning the faithful to a holy war.

In vain the powers, now united in their views, warned him of the probable consequences of any aggressive action on his part.

After the expulsion of the Tarquins the chief events in Etruscan history are the vain attempt to re-establish themselves in Rome under Lars Porsena of Clusium, the defeat of Octavius Mamilius, son-in-law of Tarquinius Superbus, at Lake Regillus, and the treaty with Carthage.

The end of ethical endeavour is the conclusion that all endeavour is vain and illogical.

From such a mass of authorities it would be vain here to make selections, but mention may be made of Fairholt's capital gossiping work, Tobacco, its History and Associations (2nd ed., 1876).

In 624 he advanced into northern Media, where he destroyed the great fire-temple of Gandzak (Gazaca); in 626 he fought in Lazistan (Colchis), while Shahrbaraz advanced to Chalcedon, and tried in vain, united with the Avars, to conquer Constantinople.

The Latin church tried in vain during the Crusades to secure their adhesion to Rome.

In France not even the saintly King Louis IX., who made several vain attempts to mediate, approved the pope's attitude; and the failure of the crusade which, in 1248, he led against the Mussulmans in Egypt, was, with reason, ascribed to the deflection of money and arms from this purpose to the war against the emperor.

But it was in vain that on becoming a deputy Hecker endeavoured to carry out its impracticable provisions.

But the fact that careful and repeated search for a mass of matter sufficient to produce the desired effect has been in vain, affords additional evidence of its non-existence.

Nevertheless, disdaining to recognize the enmity of a mere monk, he tried, but in vain, conciliatory measures.

Twice she returned to Sweden (1660 and 1667) in the vain hope of recovering the succession, finally settling in Rome, where she died on the 19th of April 1689, poor, neglected and forgotten.

In September 1713 Swift came to London, and made a last but vain attempt to reconcile his two friends.

In March 1715 he in vain attempted to defend the late ministry in the new parliament; and on the announcement of Walpole's intended attack upon the authors of the treaty of Utrecht he fled in disguise (March 28, 1715) to Paris, where he was well received, after having addressed a letter to Lord Lansdowne from Dover protesting his innocence 2 Hist.

He then retired to his estate in the Posen province, and occupied himself in writing pamphlets, memoirs, &c. When his estates passed into the grand duchy of Warsaw, he chose to remain a Prussian subject, and on the outbreak of the war of liberation he asked in vain for a post on the Prussian staff.

It was in vain to complain, saying, " Every one that doeth evil is good in the eyes of Yahweh," or " Where is the God of judgment ?

It would be vain to form hypotheses as to the conditions or faculties which make vue a distance possible.

Papias, his ETaZpos (Irenaeus), turns in fact from " the vain talk of the many, and from the " alien commandments " to such as were " delivered by the Lord to the faith," offering to the Christian world his Interpretation of the Lord's Oracles based upon personal inquiry from those who " came his way," who could testify as to apostolic tradition.

Having taken the speaker's chair and looked round in vain to discover the offending members, Charles turned to Lenthall standing below, and demanded of him "whether any of those persons were in the House, whether he saw any of them and where they were."

He was a spectator of the riot of St Giles's, Edinburgh, on the 23rd of July 1637, endeavoured in vain to avoid disaster by concessions, and on the taking of the Covenant perceived that "now all that we have been doing these thirty years past is thrown down at once."' He escaped to Newcastle, was deposed by the assembly on the 4th of December on a variety of ridiculous charges, and died in London on the 26th of November 1639, receiving burial in Westminster Abbey.

The tone of the "Panegyric" certainly lends itself to the supposition of some historians that Trajan was inordinately vain.

Thus a comet may be encountered in the morning dawn or evening twilight, and without such an adjunct the astronomer may lose the whole available opportunity for observation in the vain endeavour to find a suitable comparison-star.

When the Mongol conquests threw Asia open to Frank travellers in the middle of the 13th century their minds were full of Prester John; they sought in vain for an adequate representative, nor was it in the nature of things that they should not find some representative.

Wherefore let us forsake their vain doing and their false teaching and turn unto the word which was delivered unto us from the beginning."

In 1408, however, the clergy of the city and archiepiscopal diocese of Prague laid before the archbishop a formal complaint against Huss, arising out of strong expressions with regard to clerical abuses of which he had made use in his public discourses; and the result was that, having been first deprived of his appointment as synodal preacher, he was, after a vain attempt to defend himself in writing, publicly forbidden the exercise of any priestly function throughout the diocese.

The sentence he expected was pronounced on the 6th of July in the presence of Sigismund and a full sitting of the council; once and again he attempted to remonstrate, but in vain, and finally he betook himself to silent prayer.

A third of the leading brigade (British) was killed and wounded in the vain attempt to break through the strong defences of the village, and some French squadrons charged upon it as it retired; a colour was captured in the melee, but a Hessian brigade in second line drove back the cavalry and retook the colour.

In this, a genuine work of the Renaissance, Cano endeavours to free dogmatic theology from the vain subtleties of the schools and, by clearing away the puerilities of the later scholastic theologians, to bring religion back to first principles; and, by giving rules, method, co-ordination and system, to build up a scientific treatment of theology.

At the extraordinary assembly of the clergy in 1782 he made various proposals, by one of which he sought, though in vain, to redress the most glaring grievances of the underpaid cures.

He had, however, already begun to look sourly upon Aristotle and the current scholastic theology, which he believed hid the simple truth of the gospel and the desperate state of mankind, who were taught a vain reliance upon outward works and ceremonies, when the only safety lay in throwing oneself on God's mercy.

The modern scholar as he reviews the period of the Protestant Revolt looks naturally, but generally in vain, for those rationalistic tendencies which become so clear in the Soc latter part of the 17th century.

The commonwealth has expended large sums since 1890 in a vain attempt.

He appealed from Morgan's sentence to Pole as papal legate, but in vain, and was burnt at Caermarthen on the 30th of March 1555.

The landgrave of Hesse brought the two Reformers together in vain at Marburg in October 1529, and the whole Protestant movement broke into two camps, with the result that the attempt made at Schmalkalden in 1530 to form a comprehensive league of defence against all foes of the Reformation was frustrated.

But Lobau's heroic efforts had not been in vain; they had given his master time to make his last effort against Wellington; and when the Guard was beaten back the French troops holding Plancenoit kept free the Charleroi road, and prevented the Prussians from seizing Napoleon's line of retreat.

In vain Edward Gibbon Wakefield, organizer of colonizing associations, prayed and intrigued for permission to repeat in New Zealand the experiment tried by him in South Australia.

Fesch sought in vain to reconcile the two potentates.

On the 8th of February 1871 he was elected a member of the National Assembly, in which he maintained that the republic was "the necessary form of national sovereignty," and voted for the continuation of the war; yet, though a member of the extreme Left, he was too clear-minded to sympathize with the Commune, and exerted his influence in vain on the side of moderation.

This family, so commonly called Lynceidae, contains a large number of genera, among which one may usually search in vain, and rightly so, for the genus Lynceus.

After in vain attempting to conciliate Vitellius by the offer of a share in the empire, Otho, with unexpected vigour, prepared for war.

In 1758 and again in 1760 the Russians besieged Kolberg in vain, but in 1762 they succeeded in capturing it.

He means that the logical analysis of demonstration in the Analytics would teach them beforehand that there cannot be demonstration, though there must be induction, of an axiom, or any other principle; whereas, if they are not logically prepared for metaphysics, they will expect a demonstration of the axiom, as Heraclitus, the Heraclitean Cratylus and the Sophist Protagoras actually did, - and in vain.

Having married an accomplished young nobleman, Nicephorus Bryennius, she united with the empress Irene in a vain attempt to prevail upon her father during his last illness to disinherit his son and give the crown to her husband.

After making vain complaints in the senate, he shut himself up in his own house during the remaining eight months of his consulship, taking no part in public business beyond fulminating edicts against Caesar's proceedings, which only provoked an attack upon his house by a mob of Caesar's partisans.

But Supposing The Instant Of The Sun'S Entering Into The Sign Libra To Be Very Near Midnight, The Small Errors Of The Solar Tables Might Render It Doubtful To Which Day The Equinox Really Belonged; And It Would Be In Vain To Have Recourse To Observation To Obviate The Difficulty.

President Hayes endeavoured in vain to induce Congress to appropriate money for a Civil Service Commission; and whenever he made an effort to restrict the operation of the traditional "spoils system," he met the strenuous opposition of a majority of the most powerful politicians of his party.

Charles V.rpressed in vain upon him the archbishopric of Cambrai, but Blosius studiously exerted himself in the reform of his monastery and in the composition of devotional works.

He sought in vain for an unprotected point.

In the terrible crisis of affairs preceding the French Revolution, when minister after minister tried in vain to replenish the exhausted royal treasury and was dismissed for want of success, Calonne was summoned to take the general control of affairs.

He sought to remedy the evil by liaisons with two of the most beautiful of his countrywomen, Barbara Gizanka and Anna Zajanczkowska, the diet undertaking to legitimatize and acknowledge as his successor any heir male who might be born to him; but their complacency was in vain, for the king died childless.

The decree of the 10th of September 1866 formally annexed Hanover to Prussia, when it became a province of that kingdom, while King George from his retreat at Hietzing appealed in vain to the powers of Europe.

In 1872 a correspondent had remonstrated with him in vain as to taking "usury," i.e.

Australia has not learnt the lesson of Canada in vain.

It was in vain that Groot emitted a Publica Protestatio, in which he declared that Jesus Christ was the great subject of his discourses, that in all of them he believed himself to be in harmony with Catholic doctrine, and that he willingly subjected them to the candid judgment of the Roman Church.

From the 8th of July to the 22nd of September 1695 the Muscovites attempted in vain to capture Azov.

A horn with a baldric and the motto "Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain" forms the mayor's badge.

Without ceasing to be the congregation of Jehovah, it would claim for itself all the hopes of an ideal state over which Greek philosophers had sighed in vain.

In the Hellenistic period Corcyra was exposed to attack from several sides; after a vain siege by Cassander it was occupied in turn by Agathocles and Pyrrhus.

There followed fifteen years of vain struggle in France, and growing disorder at home.

Next day the duke of Devonshire resigned, a step somewhat bitterly resented by Mr Balfour, who clearly thought that his sacrifices in order to conciliate the duke had now been made in vain.

After his fall he created the lower heavens and the earth and tried in vain to create man; in the end he had to appeal to God for the Spirit.

After Martin's death the last popes of the 13th century, and notably Boniface VIII., in vain thought to find in another Capetian, Charles of Valois, the man who was to re-establish the Latin dominion at Byzantium.

The feud between Italian and Frenchman broke out in a violent form; and it was in vain that St Catherine of Siena proffered her mediation in the bloody strife betwixt the pope and the Florentine republic. The letters that she addressed to the pontiff, on this and other occasions, are documents, which are, perhaps, unique in their kind, and of great literary beauty.

It was in vain that Carlo di Malatesta, a stanch adherent of Gregory, sought at the eleventh hour to negotiate a compromise between Gregory and the synod.

It was in vain that this cultured prince, imbued with the principles of humanism, represented to the cardinals that this new path would lead quickly to the goal, but that this goal could not be unity but a triple schism.

Unfortunately, it was all in vain.

Political differences, and the transference of the council to Bologna in 1547, brought the pope into sharp collision with the emperor, who now attempted by means of the Interim to regulate the religious affairs of Germany according to his wishes - but in vain.

These aggressions of monarchy and the episcopate were rendered vain, outside the Habsburg dominions, by the revolution; and to the Habsburg dominions the clerical revolution of 1790 caused the loss of what is to-day Belgium.

He endeavoured, but in vain, to detect any change in the lines of the spectrum of a flame when the flame was acted on by a powerful magnet.

In 1819 he was returned to the Chamber of Deputies, and proved so formidable an opponent that the government made a vain attempt to exclude him from the Chamber on the ground of his Swiss birth.

By1185-1186Saladin had made Egypt supreme over all these principalities, thus achieving what the XVIIIth and XIXth Egyptian dynasties had attempted in vain.

Here they were finally stopped by the Tibetans, and after a delay of six weeks passed in vain attempts to obtain permission to go to Lhasa, they were only allowed to proceed to Nagchuka on the Sining-Lhasa road, and to continue by the Gyade route to Yekundo, near the upper Dre chu, and thence to Sining in Kansuh.

Baron de Henouville, unsuccessfully attempted "to reduce the base of alum" to a metal, and shortly afterwards various other investigators essayed the problem in vain.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Rather than acknowledge him, the duke of Lotharingia-, or Lorraine, transferred his allegiance to Charles the Simple of France; and it was in vain that Conrad protested and despatched armies into Lorraine.

At a diet in Tribur he humbled himself before the princes, but in vain.

The emperor made stupendous efforts to secure for Victor and then for his successor, Paschal III., recognition by the sovereigns of Europe, but in vain; and almost the only support which the anti-pope received came from the German clergy.

For a time Adolph and his friends, who were mainly princes of the Rhineland, sought in vain for a new king.

After his return to Germany he had to face the hostility of many of the princes, and this contest, together with vain attempts to restore order, occupied him until his death in May 1410.

Hamburg was to remain outside until 1883; but practically the whole of what now is Germany was thus included in a union in which Prussia had a predominating influence, and to which, when too late, Austria in vain sought admission.i Even in the earlier stages of its development the Zoilverein had a marked effect on the condition of the country.

In vain the assembly protested and continued its sittings, going even so far as to forbid the payment of taxes while it was subjected to illegal treatment.

All these efforts have been in vain.

The budget was torn to pieces in the committee selected to report on it; the Liberal members, after a vain protest, seceded; and the Conservative majority had a free hand to amend it in accordance with their views.

He is a good representative of the type of the grands seigneurs holding advanced and liberal ideas, who helped to bring about the movement of 1789, and then tried in vain to arrest its course.

In the western country numerous posts were founded, wherein fur-trader and missionary were often at variance, the trader finding brandy his best medium of exchange, while the missionary tried in vain to stay its ravages among his flock.

In Boston, then a great cotton mart, he tried in vain to procure a church or vestry for the delivery of his lectures, and thereupon announced in one of the daily journals that if some suitable place was not promptly offered he would speak on the common.

He renewed the ban against Peter the Cruel of Castile, and interfered in vain against Peter IV.

We do not look in vain for notable names in Hellenistic literature and philosophy produced on an Asiatic soil.

To attempt any complete list of the tribes inhabiting Northern Nigeria would be vain.

About six weeks after, the Arnaut (or Albanian) soldiers in the service of Khosrev tumultuously demanded their pay, and surrounded the house of the defterdr (or finance minister), who in vain appealed to the pasha to satisfy their claims. The latter opened fire from the artillery of his palace on the insurgent soldiery in the house of the defterdgr, across the Ezbekia.

In vain the khedive and his prime minister, Sherif Pasha, threatened to resign, and the latter actually carried out his threat.

The latter expelled them from their kingdom, and in 814 Reginfridus fell in a vain attempt to regain it.

The power of the Hansa had gone; the Dutch were enfeebled by their contest with Spain; England's sea-power was yet in the making; Spain, still the greatest of the maritime nations, was exhausting her resources in the vain effort to conquer the Dutch.

The same vain endeavour of Denmark to preserve her neutrality led to the second breach with England.

Urban was vain, self-willed and extremely conscious of his position; he accepted the papacy chiefly as a temporal principality, and made it his first care to provide for its defence and to render it formidable.