Walter Bagehot: “Impelling power and restraining wisdom are as opposite as any two things, and are rarely found together.”

But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.

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.

These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.

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.