Walter Bagehot: “He will not state his own best arguments effectively and incisively when he knows that the king would not like to hear…”

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

I cannot, therefore, join in the full cry against anomalies; in my judgment it may quickly overrun the scent, and so miss what we should be glad to find.

At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.