My Dickensian Paragraph

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

My paragraph:

And in these two cities, people of all condition faced their lives as they best could, with their joys and sorrows, with their loves and their aversions, with their hopes and their failures. As it was, is and ever will be. Some gentlemen were full of material things, but with a grieving soul; and the destitute, the vast majority, enduring the lack of goods with an excess of joie de vivre. In that state of things, little could  the authorities do to vary the course of events; only big noise and obscene parades. And one city tried to be the mirror of the other, establishing an insane competition leading only to counter their penuries. But behind that merrymaking, waters kept running, infants cried, beggars pleaded, lovers loved, moribund died, rats gnawed, ogres loathed, and an invisible but real web was drawn between citizens of both sides...

The original paragraph:

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face,on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. South cott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past(supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.