Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
We do not, however, think it necessary to enter into any elaborate
exposition of the idleness of the peace movement. So long as the
gentlemen who have gratuitously constituted themselves a congress
exhibit so much common sense as to retain the semblance of consistency,
we should hardly feel ourselves called upon to interfere in any way
with their arrangements. We should be the last people in the world to
grudge to Mr Ewart, or any other senator of such limited calibre, the
little notoriety which he may chance to pick up by figuring in Paris as
a champion of pacific fraternity. The paths towards the Temple of Fame
are many and devious; and if a man feels himself utterly wanting in
that intellectual strength which is necessary for attaining the summit
by the legitimate and beaten road, he is certainly entitled to clamber
up to any odd pinnacle from which he can make himself, for a moment,
the object of observation. In minor theatres, it is not uncommon to
find a broken-down tragedian attempting to achieve some popularity in
a humble line, by jumping as Harlequin through a clock, or distorting
his ochre-coated visage by grinning magnanimously as the clown. To such
feats no fair exception can be taken; and we doubt not that a roar of
laughter, proceeding from the throats of the most ignorant assemblage
of numskulls, is as grateful to the ears of the performer as would
be the applause of the most enlightened and fastidious audience. We
believe that, in the case of the Congress, audience and orators were
extremely well suited to the capacity of each other. The people of
Paris, who drank in the rolling periods of the pacificators, were
exceedingly amused with the exhibition; and testified their delight, by
greeting the reproduction of the farce, in the shape of a Vaudeville at
the Théâtre des Variétés, with unextinguishable shouts of laughter!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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