The Roman consuls were chosen by annual election; whence it is clear that England should have, if not an annual, at least a triennial parliament.

He acknowledges that the past in some degree unknown determines the present.

He has some not unhappy remarks upon the evils of an attitude which fails to look upon events from a larger aspect than their immediate environment.

But his history is intended less to illustrate the working of principle than to collect cases worthy of citation.

Time and space do not exist as categories; he is as content with a Roman anecdote as with a Stuart illustration.