Walter Bagehot: “I reply that the voluntary composition of constituencies appears to me inconsistent with the necessary prerequisites of…”

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 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.

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

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