Ah, poet! Ah, Milton! Ah, Juvenal!--ah, you keep up resistance! ah, you perpetuate disinterestedness! ah, you bring together these two firebrands, faith and will, in order to make the flame burst out from them! ah, there is something of the Vestal in you, old grumbler! ah, you have an altar,--your country! ah, you. have a tripod,--the ideal! ah, you believe in the rights of man, in emancipation, in the future, in progress, in the beautiful, in the just, in what is great! Take care; you are behindhand. All this virtue is infatuation. You emigrate with honour; but you emigrate. This heroism is no longer the fashion. It no longer suits our epoch. There comes a moment when the sacred fire is no longer fashionable. Poet, you believe in right and truth; you are behind your century. Your very eternity causes you to pass away. So much the worse, without doubt, for those grumbling geniuses accustomed to greatness, and scornful of what is no longer so. They are slow in movement when shame is at stake; their back is struck with anchylosis for anything like bowing and cringing. When success passes along, deserved or not, but saluted, they have an iron bar keeping their vertebral column stiff. That is their affair. So much the worse for those people of old-fashioned Rome. They belong to antiquity and to antique manners. To bristle up at every turn may have been all very well in former days. Those long bristling manes are no longer worn; the lions are out of fashion now. The French Revolution is nearly seventy-five years old. At that age dotage comes. The people of the present time mean to belong to their day, and even to their minute. Certainly, we find no fault with it. Whatever is, must be. It is quite right that what exists should exist The forms of public prosperity are various. One generation is not obliged to imitate another. Cato copied Phocion; Trimalcion is less like,--it is independence. You bad-tempered old fellows, you wish us to emancipate ourselves? Let it be so. We disencumber ourselves of the imitation of Timoleon, Thraseas Artevelde, Thomas More, Hampden. It is our fashion to free ourselves. You wish for a revolt; there it is. You wish for no insurrection; we rise up against our rights. We affranchise ourselves from the care of being free. To be citizens is a heavy load. Eights entangled with obligations are restraints to whoever desires to enjoy life quietly. To be guided by conscience and truth in all the steps that we take is fatiguing. We mean to walk without leading-strings and without principles. Duty is a chain; we break our irons. What do you mean by speaking to us of Franklin? Franklin is a rather too servile copy of Aristides. We carry our horror of servility so far as to prefer Grimod de la Reynière. To eat and drink well, there is purpose in that. Each epoch has its peculiar manner of being free. Orgy is a liberty. This way of reasoning is triumphant; to adhere to it is wise. There have