from obscurity, to be in the public eye, to make one's self
talked of--some people are so consumed with this desire that we are
justified in declaring them attacked with an itch for publicity. In
their eyes obscurity is the height of ignominy: so they do their best to
keep their names in every mouth. In their obscure position they look
upon themselves as lost, like ship-wrecked sailors whom a night of
tempest has cast on some lonely rock, and who have recourse to cries,
volleys, fire, all the signals imaginable, to let it be known that they
are there. Not content with setting off crackers and innocent rockets,
many, to make themselves heard at any cost, have gone to the length of
perfidy and even crime. The incendiary Erostratus has made numerous
disciples. How many men of to-day have become notorious for having
destroyed something of mark; pulled down--or tried to pull down--some
man's high reputation; signalled their passage, in short, by a scandal,
a meanness, or an atrocity!

This rage for notoriety does not surge through cracked brains alone, or
only in the world of adventurers, charlatans and pretenders generally;
it has spread abroad in all the domains of life, spiritual and material.
Politics, literature, even science, and--most odious of
all--philanthropy and religion are infected. Trumpets announce a good
deed done, and souls must be saved with din and clamor. Pursuing its way
of destruction, the rage for noise has entered places ordinarily silent,
troubled spirits naturally serene, and vitiated in large measure all
activity for good. The abuse of showing everything, or rather, putting
everything on exhibition; the growing incapacity to appreciate that
which chooses to remain hidden, and the habit of estimating the value of
things by the racket they make, have come to corrupt the judgment of the
most earnest men, and one sometimes wonders if society will not end by
transforming itself into a great fair, with each one beating his drum in
front of his tent.

Gladly do we quit the dust and din of like exhibitions, to go and
breathe peacefully in some far-off nook of the woods, all surprise that
the brook is so limpid, the forest so still, the solitude so enchanting.
Thank God there are yet these uninvaded corners. However formidable the
uproar, however deafening the babel of merry-andrews, it cannot carry
beyond a certain limit; it grows faint and dies away. The realm of
silence is vaster than the realm of nois