Barbaric King

In the very olden time, there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of [distant:distance] Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammelled, as became the half of him which was [barbaric:cruel] . He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly [given:gone] to self-communing; and, when he and himself agreed upon any thing, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems [moved:changed] smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight, and [crush:cool] down uneven places.