Few writers so terse, compact, and clear, have been so completely free from the temptation of deliberate phrase making as Mr. Bagehot; yet few professional phrase-makers have left in the minds of their readers so many telling, forcible, and suggestive phrases; sentences in which a novel or striking thought, an impressive view of new or old truth, a principle apt to be forgotten or imperfectly appreciated, is vivified and incarnated in a few emphatic words. It would be difficult to quote any passage of ten times the length half so suggestive of the exceptional conditions that have secured to England peace and stability during the last two centuries of storm and shipwreck, revolution, and reaction abroad, any phrase so expressive of the distinctive character of the nation and its Government, as the two aptly chosen epithets employed by Mr. Bagehot--the 'dignified parts' of the English Constitution and the 'deferential tendency' of the English people. In both instances he has, as we think, overstated his point. The dignified parts of the Constitution are more real and living, are more intimately associated with the practical work of Government, than he was disposed to allow. Popular deference is paid more to truth and less to fiction than he supposed. It is eminently characteristic of the cautious English temper, the distrust of sharp contrasts and clever paradoxes engrained in his nature, that (so far as we remember) he never adopts the familiar saying of Thiers, that a constitutional Prince _regne et ne gouverne pas_. But his actual conception of the English monarchy approaches far too near that misleading and mischievous fallacy.