s
of freemen fell at Philippi! In England, perhaps, we may have ultimately
the same struggle; in France, too (perhaps a larger stage, with far more
inflammable actors), we already perceive the same war of elements which
shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the generous Julius
with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed the colossal patricians
to make way for the glittering dwarfs of a court, and cheated the people
out of the substance with the shadow of liberty. How it may end in
the modern world, who shall say? But while a nation has already a fair
degree of constitutional freedom, I believe no struggle so perilous and
awful as that between the aristocratic and the democratic principle.
A people against a despot--_that_ contest requires no prophet; but the
change from an aristocratic to a democratic commonwealth is indeed the
wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest shadows, clouds, and darkness.
If it fail--for centuries is the dial-hand of Time put back; if it
succeed--"

Maltravers paused.

"And if it succeed?" said Valerie.

"Why, then, man will have colonised Utopia!" replied Maltravers.

"But at least, in modern Europe," he continued, "there will be fair room
for the experiment. For we have not that curse of slavery which, more
than all else, vitiated every system of the ancients, and kept the rich
and the poor alternately at war; and we have a press, which is not only
the safety-valve of the passions of every party, but the great note-book
of the experiments of every hour--the homely, the invaluable ledger of
losses and of gains. No; the people who keep that tablet well, never
can be bankrupt. And the society of those old Romans; their daily
passions--occupations--humours!--why, the satire of Horace is the glass
of our own follies! We may fancy his easy pages written in the Chaussee
d'Antin, or Mayfair; but there was one thing that will ever keep the
ancient world dissimilar from the modern."

"And what is that?"

"The ancients knew not that delicacy in the affections which
characterises the descendants of the Goths," said Maltravers, and his
voice slightly trembled; "they gave up to the monopoly of the senses
what ought to have had an equal share in the reason and the imagination.
Their love was a beautiful and wanton butterfly; but not the butterfly
which is the emblem of the soul."

Valerie sighed. She looked timidly into the face of the young
philosopher, but his eyes were averted.