United States or Somalia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They might be the fathers and founders of a new nationality, but they might also be simply mischief-makers, whose insignificance and powerlessness were their sole protection, who were not important enough for "either a traitor's trial or a traitor's doom." Mr. Goldwin Smith's reply to this attack was that he was an advocate, not of revolution but of evolution.
Whatever approaches it of another scale and kind is dwarfed to insignificance. The Sub-Treasury of the United States, for instance, looks like a foolish plaything beside its august neighbours. Where sky-scrapers are there must be no commemorative statues, no monuments raised to merely human heroes. The effigy of Washington in Wall Street has no more dignity than a tin soldier.
After toiling up the ladder-like paths which lead from the plain to the summit of the bluff, and passing through the grand mediæval gateway along the slanting streets, where even the peasants dismount and walk beside their donkeys, seeing nothing within the whole small compass of the walls save what speaks of the narrowest and humblest life in the most remote of hill-fastnesses, a few deserted and dilapidated palaces alone telling of a period of importance long past, nothing can describe the effect of coming out of this indigence and insignificance upon the silent, solitary piazza where the incomparable cathedral rears its front, covered from base to pinnacle with the richest sculpture and most brilliant mosaic.
The concurrence of these two decisive incidents, and the confusion which ensued in the political and economical conditions, rapidly reduced the Isthmus and its approaches to an insignificance from which the islands have not yet recovered. The Isthmus is partially restored.
This settled the matter; and then other delegations followed, till Lincoln's score rose to 354. At once the "enthusiasm" of 10,000 men again reduced to insignificance a "herd of buffaloes or lions." When at last quiet was restored, William M. Evarts, who had led for Seward, offered the usual motion to make the nomination of Abraham Lincoln unanimous. It was done.
Paul would have felt depressed, had he, in like manner, taken the Name for which he lived upon his lips in vain and to render that name futile by reason of our spiritual insignificance is surely the worst form of profanity but he felt depressed in the way that a gentleman might who, having various interests at heart, had failed in a slight attempt to promote one of them.
The administration which he had formed had never been, at any one moment, entirely changed. But there had been so many losses and so many accessions, that he could scarcely recognize his own work. Charles Townshend was dead. Lord Shelburne had been dismissed. Conway had sunk into utter insignificance. The Duke of Grafton had fallen into the hands of the Bedfords.
And, after all, the old lay-sister and her spurious vision faded into insignificance in view of the one supreme question: What course would Hugh take? Would he keep silence and thus tacitly become a party to the deception; or would he, at all costs, tell her the truth?
All the small daily happenings which had once sufficed to fill the hours now appeared to her in their deadly insignificance; and for the first time in her long years of drudgery she rebelled at the dullness of her life. With Evelina such fits of discontent were habitual and openly proclaimed, and Ann Eliza still excused them as one of the prerogatives of youth.
A strict and absolute acceptance of the truths of Christianity as she defined them, and a humble obedience to the clergy were made the sole and necessary conditions of salvation. A questioning of those truths or a violation of that obedience was a crime before which murder and license faded into insignificance.
Word Of The Day