y and irremediable penury are
alike unknown. The sentiment of ambition is universal, but the scope
of ambition is seldom vast. Each individual stands apart in solitary
weakness; but society at large is active, provident, and powerful: the
performances of private persons are insignificant, those of the State
immense. There is little energy of character; but manners are mild, and
laws humane. If there be few instances of exalted heroism or of virtues
of the highest, brightest, and purest temper, men's habits are regular,
violence is rare, and cruelty almost unknown. Human existence becomes
longer, and property more secure: life is not adorned with brilliant
trophies, but it is extremely easy and tranquil. Few pleasures are
either very refined or very coarse; and highly polished manners are as
uncommon as great brutality of tastes. Neither men of great learning,
nor extremely ignorant communities, are to be met with; genius becomes
more rare, information more diffused. The human mind is impelled by the
small efforts of all mankind combined together, not by the strenuous
activity of certain men. There is less perfection, but more abundance,
in all the productions of the arts. The ties of race, of rank, and of
country are relaxed; the great bond of humanity is strengthened. If
I endeavor to find out the most general and the most prominent of all
these different characteristics, I shall have occasion to perceive, that
what is taking place in men's fortunes manifests itself under a thousand
other forms. Almost all extremes are softened or blunted: all that was
most prominent is superseded by some mean term, at once less lofty and
less low, less brilliant and less obscure, than what before existed in
the world.

When I survey this countless multitude of beings, shaped in each other's
likeness, amidst whom nothing rises and nothing falls, the sight of such
universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am tempted to regret
that state of society which has ceased to be. When the world was full of
men of great importance and extreme insignificance, of great wealth and
extreme poverty, of great learning and extreme ignorance, I turned aside
from the latter to fix my observation on the former alone, who gratified
my sympathies. But I admit that this gratification arose from my own
weakness: it is because I am unable to see at once all that is around
me, that I am allowed thus to select and separate the objects of my
predilection f