But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate, or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. The place was worthy of such a trial. All men have a vein of Quixotry somewhere in their nature.
Every legislative act presupposes a diagnosis and a prognosis.
Discipline of physical science, however, would help to show them the utter inadequacy of calculating consequences based on simple data. And if there needs proof that calculations of consequences so based are inadequate, we have it in the enormous labor annually entailed on the Legislature in trying to undo the mischiefs it has previously done. It has been said that they like incident, not character. 19K Thackeray Thackeray writes his essay in praise of Washington Irving and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Our steamer moved out at midnight, in a drive of wind and rain.