The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
Speech at Bristol on Declining the Poll. Vol. ii. p. 420.
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.1
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 277.
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy…. Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,—in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from
Note 1. Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors (What the discordant harmony of circumstances would and could effect).—Horace: Epistle i. 12, 19.
Mr. Breen, in his “Modern English Literature,” says: “This remarkable thought Alison the historian has turned to good account; it occurs so often in his disquisitions that he seems to have made it the staple of all wisdom and the basis of every truth.” [back]
