This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers.

It was a favourite theme of Horace and of Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson.

To its influence on the fate of great communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and counterrevolutions recorded in history.

A hundred generations have elapsed since the first great national emancipation, of which an account has come down to us.

We read in the most ancient of books that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as pierced the heavens.