The world grows tired of admiring, and delights to limit its admiration.
"Garrick," said Hazlitt, "kept up the fever of public admiration as long
as anybody, but when he returned to the stage after a short absence no
one went to see him." "The old Earl of Norwich, who," said Sir William
Temple, "was esteemed the greatest wit in Charles the First's reign,
when Charles the Second came to the throne was thought nothing of."
Happy if the world's favorite to-day be not its victim to-morrow.
Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with such enthusiasm
that Bourrienne said to him, "It must be delightful to be greeted with
such demonstrations of enthusiastic admiration." "Bah!" replied
Napoleon, "this same unthinking crowd, under a slight change of
circumstances, would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold." "I
have," said an eminent American general to Baron de Huebner, "the
greatest horror of popular demonstrations. These very men who deafen you
with their cheers to-day are capable of throwing stones and mud at you
to-morrow." Mirabeau, on a famous occasion, amid the threatening clamors
of an angry crowd, said, "A few days ago I too was to be carried in
triumph, and now they are bawling through the streets, 'the great
treason of the Count of Mirabeau.' This lesson was not necessary to
remind me that the distance is short between the Capitol and the
Tarpeian Rock." "What throngs! what acclamations," exclaimed the
flatterers of Cromwell, when he was proclaimed Protector of the
Commonwealth of England. Cromwell replied, "There would be still more,
if they were going to hang me." The multitudes that went before and that
followed Christ into Jerusalem, crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David:
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the
highest," "cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them,
Why, what evil hath he done? and they cried out the more exceedingly,
Crucify him." Madame Roland wrote from her prison-cell to Robespierre,
"It is not, Robespierre, to excite your compassion, that I present you
with a picture less melancholy than the truth. I am above asking your
pity; and were it offered, I should perhaps deem it an insult. I write
for your instruction. Fortune is fickle; and popular power is liable to
change." "Society," said Macaulay, writing of Byron, "capricious in its
indignation, as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage
with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshiped with an
irrational idolatry. He was persecuted with an irrational fury." Junius,
in the celebrated letter, warns the king that "while he plumes himself
upon the security of his title to the crown, he should remember that, as
it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another." The Jews,
said Luther, have a story of a king of Bashan, whom they call Og; they
say he had lifted a great rock to throw at his enemies, but God made a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account