Yet we
hear the sages of the law 'delivering their _ideas_ upon the question
under consideration;' and the first speakers of Parliament 'entirely
coinciding in the _idea_ which has been ably stated by an honorable
member.'"
Whether or not the word _idea_ may be properly used in a deeper or
grander sense than that stated by Dr. Johnson, there is no doubt that
he justly condemned its use in the cases cited by him, and in similar
ones. All the four phrases _make money_, _pledge_, _line_, and _idea_,
whereupon sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer,
are still at large, and, if it be not a bull to say so, more at large
to-day than in the last century, since the area of their currency has
been extended to America, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.
VIII.
A NATIONAL DRAMA.[8]
[8] From _Putnam's Monthly_, 1857.
We are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows,
processions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more imitative
than our British cousins, that, without limiting its appeals to the
mimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory of a Simian descent
for man might find support in the features of our general life.
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