1. It is thought by some people that all those stars which you see
glittering so restlessly on a keen, frosty night in a high latitude, and
which seem to have been sown broadcast with as much carelessness as
grain lies on a threshing-floor, here showing vast zaarahs of desert
blue sky, there again lying close, and to some eyes presenting
"The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest,"
are, in fact, gathered into zones or _strata_; that our own wicked
little earth, with the whole of our peculiar solar system, is a part of
such a zone; and that all this perfect geometry of the heavens, these
_radii_ in the mighty wheel, would become apparent, if we, the
spectators, could but survey it from the true center; which center may
be far too distant for any vision of man, naked or armed, to reach.--_De
Quincey_
2. On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off,
they [our fathers] raised their flag against a power to which, for
purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her
glory, is not to be compared--a power which has dotted over the surface
of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts; whose
morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours,
circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial
airs of England.
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