“All efforts, however, for a long time prove ineffectual. There seems to be an ultimate point, which no one can scan, the measure and term of human strength; and to overreach it is at last deemed impossible. Now and then a pretender essays his awkward limbs, and reaching scarce half way even to this point, falls back clumsily amidst the hisses and laughter of the spectators; so in the world empirical pretension comes out into notoriety for a moment only to return with ridicule and scorn to its original obscurity. “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: farther and farther still; he is 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 it is of no avail. He does not, however, lose ground: he reposes. In the mean time, 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 downward a few inches, and recovers his loss by an obstinate struggle (‘_applause_!’—‘_sensation_!’), but it is a supernatural effort, and—his last. Soon after a murmur is heard from the crowd below, half raillery and 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, lubric 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 paths of fortune and human greatness! But the very 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 applause of the multitude. It is Americus Vespucius who bears away from Columbus the recompense of his toils!” So much for climbing a greased pole in reflective, philosophical Paris! ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐