1854, Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, Book V Chapter , When the orders to embark for Sicily arrived, and the soldier was to exchange the luxurious ease of Campania for a third campaign certainly not inferior to those of Spain and Thessaly in point of hardship, the reins, which had been too long relaxed and were too suddenly tightened, snapt asunder.
1861, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 Chapter , The magnetism of this marvellous interpreter had caught up himself, and me with him, into Dreamland, from which we gently descended at the end of Part VI., and "the spell was snapt."