is duties in a single day; another in a week;
while it may require the whole life of the third to perform the
journey. Many members of Congress make speeches in circles, whether
arguing abstruse points of constitutional law, or the claims of a party
candidate; as do lawyers their cases at the bar, proving the foregoing
proposition by the following, and inferring the following from the
foregoing. Cast a stone into a lake or a mill-pond, and it will produce
a succession of motions, circle following circle in order, and
extending the radius until they disappear in the distance. The
political movements of nations are circular. Under the severe pressure
of despotism the people rise in their fury, and snap their chains
asunder. A republic follows; degenerating first into a rude and wild
democracy; and thence into a cruel and more turbulent anarchy. As a
relief from the evils of this, the people, sighing for repose, fly back
again into the arms of despotism. But with a people who have once
tasted the sweets of liberty, this kind of tranquillity is short.
Maddened by wrongs, real or supposed, they are soon prepared again to
rush into the death-dance of revolution. The "one eternal principle" of
the Chinese, forming "the first link in the great material chain" of
their system, is represented by a circle. Time wings his flight in
circles, and every year rolls round within itself. Hence the poets sing
of "the circling years." The sun turns round upon his own axis; and the
moon "changes monthly in her circled orb." The other celestial bodies
all wheel their courses in circles around the common centre. The moons
of Jupiter revolve around him in circles, and he carries them along
with him in his periodical circuit round the sun. Saturn always moves
within his rings, and thus adorned himself, walks in circles through
the regions of space:--

"And other planets circle other suns."

A ship on the ocean, though apparently bounding over a plain of waters,
rides in fact upon the circumference of a circle around the arch of the
earth's diameter. The brisk swallow cuts the air in circles; the
vampire wheels circularly about your head; the timid hare flees the
ravenous pack of the sportsman in a winding course, until in despair it
returns to die in its form. The lunar circle betokens a
tempest;--modern writers on pneumatics affirm every breeze that blows,
from the gentle-breathing zephyr to the rude northeastern blast, to be
a whirlwind