“But the charm is at length broken; a victorious climber has transcended the point at which his predecessors were arrested. Every one now does the same; such are men; they want but a precedent; as soon as it is proved that a thing is possible, it is no longer difficult. Our climber continues his success, further and further still; he is at a few feet only from the summit, but he is wearied, he relents; alas, is the prize almost in his grasp to escape from him! He makes another effort, but of no avail. He does not, however, lose ground; he reposes. In the meantime, exclamations are heard, of doubt, of success, of encouragement.
“After a lapse of two or three minutes, which is itself a fatigue, he essays again—it is in vain. He begins even to shrink—he has slipped downwards a few inches, and recovers his loss by an obstinate struggle (applauses), but it is a supernatural effort, and his last. Soon after, a murmur is heard from the crowd, half raillery, half compassion, and the poor adventurer slides down, mortified and exhausted, upon the earth. So a courtier, having planned from his youth, his career of ambition, struggles up the ladder, lubrick and precipitous, to the top, to the very consummation of his hopes, and then falls back into the rubbish from which he has issued, and they who envied his fortune, now rejoice in his fall. What lessons of philosophy in a greasy pole! What moral reflections in a spectacle so empty to the common world! What wholesome sermons are here upon the vanity of human hopes, the disappointments of ambition, and the difficulties of success in the slippery path of fortune and human greatness! But the defeat of the last adventurer has shown the possibility of success, and prepared the way for his successor, who mounts up, and perches on the summit of the mast, bears off the crown, and descends amidst the shouts and applauses of the multitude. It is Americus Vespucius, who bears away from Columbus the recompense of his toils.”
I have placed commas over a few of the preceding paragraphs, to tell you that they are taken chiefly from a French description, much prettier than any thing I could offer you of my own.
And now, farewell, Paris! thou Pandora’s box of all good and all evil, farewell! I ought not to take leave without making amende honorable for the ill I have said and thought of the French people in my fretful humours. I know some of them I cannot think ill of, for the life of me. I can scarce hate the knaves and fools on their account. Then, farewell, Paris! Thrice I have bid thee adieu, and still am lingering at thy threshold.
THE END.
LONDON: STEWART AND MURRAY, OLD BAILEY.
[1] Who would have thought that these two champions of Infidelity, who were refused Christian burial, would one day, have assigned to their remains, the first church of France, and one of the first in Christendom, as their mausoleum. I wonder if Jean Jaques, in his prophetic visions, foresaw this?
[2] A nest of students has lately been detected in this employment.
[3] Racine told the Duc de Maine, who was anxious for a place at the old Academy, that there was no place vacant; but there was no member, he said, who would not be glad to die to accommodate him—“qui ne tint à grand honneur de mourir, pour lui en faire une”—and Racine said this seriously.