Walter Bagehot: “Commerce brings this mingling of ideas, this breaking down of old creeds, and brings it inevitably.”

It is natural that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities.

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.

The casual line was traced according to the strength of deceased combatants; succeeding generations fought elsewhere; and the hesitating line of a half-drawn battle was left to stand for a perpetual limit.

I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.