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But, as a means of precaution the count is diffident and suspicious the bridge is drawn at night by its keeper. The deep fosse, boggy by reason of the waters that it has drained from time immemorial and that stagnated in its bed, has so thick a layer of mud at its bottom, that any one who should attempt to cross the slough would be completely engulfed.

The other day I was at Peterborough, and strolled into the Close under a fine, dark, mouldering archway, to find myself in a romantic world, full of solemn dignity and immemorial peace. There in its niche stood that exquisite crumbled statue that Flaxman said summed up the grace of mediaeval art.

He stopped abruptly, coughed, as though he had carried his utterance beyond propriety. "The Nickles," he repeated somberly, "are worthless; they make trouble in my parish; with money they make more." The year, in the immemorial, minute shifting of season, grew brittle and cold; the dusk fell sooner and night lingered late into morning.

This little community had returned from its original habits of suburban parasitism to what no doubt had been the normal life of humanity for nearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimate contact with cows and hens and patches of ground, a life that breathes and exhales the scent of cows and finds the need for stimulants satisfied by the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders.

Our tragic even if so tenderly tragic entertainer had nothing to give us; but the immemorial cold of the enormous monastic interior in which we smilingly fasted would doubtless not have had for me without that such a wealth of reference.

From whatsoever source it may come originally, it comes to the subject as law; it therefore comes to him from the fountain of law.... The faith of Christendom has been received in England; the discipline of the Christian Church, cast into its local form, modified by statutes of the realm, and by the common law and prerogative, has from time immemorial been received in England; but we can view them only as law, although you may look further back to the divine and spiritual sanction, in virtue of which they acquired that social position, which made it expedient that they should associate with law and should therefore become law.

"You may say," he went on, "that Aristotle, Plato and Socrates accepted the fact of slavery without protest because it was an institution from time immemorial, and so the idea did not appear to them so repugnant.

There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour.

"There are two kinds of inquisition: the see of Rome lays claim to one, the other has, from time immemorial, been exercised by the bishops. The force of prejudice and of custom has made the latter light and supportable to us. It will find little opposition in the Netherlands, and the augmented numbers of the bishops will make it effective.

Why did the equal citizens of the first take it for granted that there would be slaves? Why did the equal citizens of the second take it for granted that there would not be slaves? How had this immemorial institution disappeared in the interval, so that nobody even dreamed of it or suggested it?