The arts conspired to be absent; letters resided at the nearest university city; science was imported as required, in practical improvements.

There was nothing, indeed, to interfere with Elgin's attention to the immediate, the vital, the municipal: one might almost read this concentration of interest in the white dust of the rambling streets, and the shutters closed against it.

Like other movements of the single mind, it had something of the ferocious, of the inflexible, of the unintelligent; but it proudly wore the character of the go-ahead and, as Walter Winter would have pointed out to you, it had granted eleven bonuses to "capture" sound commercial concerns in six years.
In wholesome fear of mistake, one would hesitate to put church matters either before or after politics among the preoccupations of Elgin.

It would be safer and more indisputable to say that nothing compared with religion but politics, and nothing compared with politics but religion.
In offering this proposition also we must think of our dimensions.

There is a religious fervour in Oxford, in Mecca, in Benares, and the sign for these ideas is the same; we have to apply ourselves to the interpretation.