Ods zooks! it is almost as great an offence for a monikin to know more than his neighbors, as it is for him to act on his own impulses.

No--no--we are truly a free and an independent commonwealth, and we hold every citizen as amenable to public opinion, in all he does, says, thinks, or wishes." "Pray, sir, do both of the two great political lines send their tails to the same mills, and respect the same general sentiments ?" "No, sir; we have two public opinions in Leaplow." "TWO public opinions!" "Certainly, sir; the horizontal and the perpendicular." "This infers a most extraordinary fertility of thought, and one that I hold to be almost impossible!" Here the commodore and the brigadier incontinently both laughed as hard as they could; and that, too, directly in my face.
"Dear me, Sir John--why, my dear Sir John! you are really the drollest creature!"-- gasped the judge, holding his sides--"the very funniest question I have ev--ev--ever encountered!" He now stopped to wipe his eyes; after which he was better able to express himself.

"The same public opinion, forsooth!--Dear me--dear me, that I should not have made myself understood!--I commenced, my good Sir John, by telling you that we deal in duplicates, on a hint from nature; and that we act on the rotatory principle.

In obedience to the first, we have always two public opinions; and, although the great political landmarks are drawn in what may be called a stationary sense, they, too, are in truth rotatory.
One, which is thought to lie parallel to the fundamental law, or the constitutional meridian of the country, is termed the horizontal, and the other the perpendicular line.

Now, as nothing is really stationary in Leaplow, these two great landmarks are always acting, likewise, on the rotatory principle, changing places periodically; the perpendicular becoming the horizontal, and vice versa; they who toe their respective marks, necessarily taking new views of things as they vary the line of sight.