You may perhaps ask how under these disadvantageous circumstances we are able to distinguish our friends from one another: but the answer to this very natural question will be more
fitly and easily given when I come to describe the inhabitants of Flatland.
Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be
fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his sires.
So sweet a child as little Alice may
fitly talk with angels, such as the Lady Arbella had long since become.
The mountains looked surpassingly lovely, clad as they were in living, green; ribbed with lava ridges; flecked with white cottages; riven by deep chasms purple with shade; the great slopes dashed with sunshine and mottled with shadows flung from the drifting squadrons of the sky, and the superb picture
fitly crowned by towering peaks whose fronts were swept by the trailing fringes of the clouds.
But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son
fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires.
Several days of unusually mild weather
fitly ushered in a splendid Christmas Day.
But to enumerate these things were endless; I have given the rule, where a man cannot
fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.
If indeed they were
fitly trained to the practice of every human virtue, every one would readily admit that they would be useful to the government; but still it might be debated whether they should be continued judges for life, to determine points of the greatest moment, since the mind has its old age as well as the body; but as they are so brought up, [1271a] that even the legislator could not depend upon them as good men, their power must be inconsistent with the safety of the state: for it is known that the members of that body have been guilty both of bribery and partiality in many public affairs; for which reason it had been much better if they had been made answerable for their conduct, which they are not.
This evil had been felt and lamented, at least three times a day, by Isabella since her residence in Bath; and she was now fated to feel and lament it once more, for at the very moment of coming opposite to Union Passage, and within view of the two gentlemen who were proceeding through the crowds, and threading the gutters of that interesting alley, they were prevented crossing by the approach of a gig, driven along on bad pavement by a most knowing-looking coachman with all the vehemence that could most
fitly endanger the lives of himself, his companion, and his horse.
She had even some natural antipathy to that process of self-examination, that perpetual effort to understand one's own feeling, and express it beautifully,
fitly, or energetically in language, which constituted so great a part of her mother's existence.
Their modest old brown cloth binding had long been a quiet warrant of quality in the literature it covered, and now this splendid blossom of the bookmaking art, as it seemed, was
fitly employed to convey the sweetness and richness of the loveliest poetry that I thought the world had yet known.
The narrative will now be most
fitly continued in the language of the doctor's own report, herewith subjoined.