Essay(s) by Augustine Birrell
本书摘录:
‘Hansard‘
‘Men are we, and must mourn when e‘en the shade of that which once was great has passed away.‘ This quotation--which, in obedience to the prevailing taste, I print as prose--was forced upon me by reading in the papers an account of some proceedings in a sale-room in Chancery Lane last Tuesday,[A] when the entire stock and copyright of Hansard‘s Parliamentary History and Debates were exposed for sale, and, it must be added, to ridicule. Yet ‘Hansard‘ was once a name to conjure with. To be in it was an ambition--costly, troublesome, but animating; to know it was, if not a liberal education, at all events almost certain promotion; whilst to possess it for your very own was the outward and visible sign of serious statesmanship. No wonder that unimaginative men still believed that Hansard was a property with money in it. Is it not the counterpart of Parliament, its dark and majestic shadow thrown across the page of history? As the pious Catholic studies his A
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