It was about the time of some serious disturbances in France; and those events naturally suggested themselves, at least to the three gentlemen, as the most interesting topic of the day. "What think you, then, Mr. Burrel," demanded Sir Sidney Delaware, "of La---- coming forth in his old age to renew the scenes which, in his youth, he first excited, and then lamented?"
"The great misfortune is," replied Burrel, "that his name should be able to do so much, when he himself is unable to do any thing."
"You mean that he is in his dotage," said Captain Delaware. "Is it not so?"
"I mean merely," replied Burrel, "that he is in that state of mental decrepitude where the plaudits of a mob of any kind, either of porters or peers, would make him commit any folly for the brief moment of popularity. With poor old La---- it is only now the fag-end of the great weakness of his life, vanity--that sort of gluttonous vanity that can gorge upon the offal of base and ignorant applause."
"Ay, there lies the fault," replied Sir Sidney Delaware. "The man who seeks the applause of the good, the wise, and the generous, is next in honorable ambition to him who seeks the approbation of his God; but he whose depraved appetite finds food in the gratulating shout of an assemblage of the ignorant, the base, and the vicious--like--like--I could mention many, but I will not--he, however, who does so, is a moral swine, and only swills the filth of the public kennel in another sense."
"Papa, papa!" cried Blanche Delaware. "In pity, let me finish breakfast before you indulge in such figures of rhetoric. William, in mercy change the subject! Can not you tell us some of the pretty stories about Sicily and its beloved _Mongibeddo_, with which you charmed my ears when first you came from the Mediterranean?"
"Not I, indeed, Blanche!" replied her brother; "for, on the faith of those stories, you had nearly persuaded my father to go abroad, which would not suit my views of promotion at all."
"And did Miss Delaware really wish to visit foreign lands?" demanded Burrel. "We should not easily have forgiven you."
"It was but to see all those things one dreams so much about!" replied Blanche Delaware, "and to return to my own land after they were seen; for I can assure you, I have neither hope nor wish ever to find any country half so fair in my eyes as our own England."
"That is both just and patriotic," answered Burrel; "more than one-half of what we like in any and every land, is association, and if, without one classic memory of the great past, you were to visit Italy itself, half the marvels of that land of beauties would be lost. The Colosseum would stand a cold brown ruin, cumbering the ground; Rome, a dull heap of ill-assorted buildings; the Capitol a molehill; and the Tiber a ditch. But under the magic wand of association, every thing becomes beautiful. It is not alone the memories of one age or of one great epoch that rise up to people Italy with majestic things; but all the acts of glory and of majesty that thronged two thousand years, before the eye of fancy, walk in grand procession through the land, and hang a wreath of laurels on each cold ruin as they pass. Yet it is all association; and where can we find such associations as those connected with our native land?"