here, who did not
turn his back on the pursuit of a government appointment in order to
return to rhyming, sculpture and painting. And from that moment the
following aphorism has won general acceptance, that the superiority of
the politician is only mediocrity raised to its highest power.

This is the great benefit that we owe to this eminent monarch. The lofty
purpose of his reign has been revealed by the posthumous publication of
his memoirs. Of these writings with which we can so ill dispense, we
have only left this fragment which is well calculated to make us regret
the loss of the remainder: "Who is the true founder of Sociology?
Auguste Comte? No, Menenius Agrippa. This great man understood that
government is the stomach, not the head of the social organism. Now, the
merit of a stomach is to be good and ugly, useful and repulsive to the
eye, for if this indispensable organ were agreeable to look upon, it
would be much to be feared that people would meddle with it and nature
would not have taken such care to conceal and defend it. What sensible
person prides himself on having a beautiful digestive apparatus, a
lovely liver or elegant lungs? Such a pretension would, however, not be
more ridiculous than the foible of cutting a great dash in politics.
What wants cultivating is the substantial and the commonplace. My poor
predecessors." ... Here follows a blank; a little further on, we read:
"The best government is that which holds to being so perfectly humdrum,
regular, neuter, and even emasculated, that no one can henceforth get up
any enthusiasm either for or against it."

Such was the last successor of Semiramis. On the re-discovered site of
the Hanging-gardens he caused to be erected, at the expense of the
State, a statue of Louis Philippe in wrought aluminium, in the middle of
a public garden planted with common laurels and cauliflowers.

The Universe breathed again. It yawned a little no doubt, but it
revelled for the first time in the fulness of peace, in the almost
gratuitous abundance of every kind of wealth. It burst into the most
brilliant efflorescence, or rather display of poetry and art, but
especially of luxury, that the world had as yet seen. It was just at
that moment an extraordinary alarm of a novel kind, justly provoked by
the astronomical observations made on the tower of Babel, which had been
rebuilt as an Eiffel Tower on an enlarged scale, began to spread among
the terrified populations.