The world has grown apathetic and purblind. Critics rage and quarrel before a canvas, but the nations do not care; quarries of marble are hewn into various shapes, and the throngs gape before them and are indifferent; writers are so many that their writings blend in the public mind in a confused phantasmagoria, where the colours run into one another, and the lines are all waved and indistinct; the singer alone still keeps the old magic power, "The beauty that was Athens, once the glory that was Rome's," still holds the divine Cadmus, still sways the vast thronged auditorium, till the myriads hold their breath like little children in delight and awe. The great singer alone has the magic sway of fame; and if he close his lips, "The gaiety of nations is eclipsed," and the world seems empty and silent, like a wood in which the birds are all dead.
IN A WINTER CITY.
The Duc found no topic that suited her. It was the Corso di Gala that afternoon, would she not go?
No: her horses hated masks, and she hated noise.
The Veglione on Sunday—would she not go to that?
No: those things were well enough in the days of Philippe d'Orléans, who invented them, but they were only now as stupid as they were vulgar; anybody was let in for five francs.
Did she like the new weekly journal that was electrifying Paris?
No: she could see nothing in it: there was no wit now-a-days—only personalities, which grew more gross every year.