In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.

It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.

Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.

It was before Deity embodied in a human form walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust.

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.