I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.

Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity; to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.