s, which has both an indestructible
hope in the Future, and an indestructible tendency to persevere as
in the Past, must Innovation and Conservation wage their perpetual
conflict, as they may and can. Wherein the 'daemonic element,' that
lurks in all human things, may doubtless, some once in the
thousand years--get vent! But indeed may we not regret that such
conflict,--which, after all, is but like that classical one
of 'hate-filled Amazons with heroic Youths,' and will end in
embraces,--should usually be so spasmodic? For Conservation,
strengthened by that mightiest quality in us, our indolence, sits for
long ages, not victorious only, which she should be; but tyrannical,
incommunicative. She holds her adversary as if annihilated; such
adversary lying, all the while, like some buried Enceladus; who, to gain
the smallest freedom, must stir a whole Trinacria with it Aetnas.

Wherefore, on the whole, we will honour a Paper Age too; an Era of hope!
For in this same frightful process of Enceladus Revolt; when the
task, on which no mortal would willingly enter, has become imperative,
inevitable,--is it not even a kindness of Nature that she lures us
forward by cheerful promises, fallacious or not; and a whole generation
plunges into the Erebus Blackness, lighted on by an Era of Hope? It
has been well said: 'Man is based on Hope; he has properly no other
possession but Hope; this habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.'

Chapter 1.2.IV.

Maurepas.

But now, among French hopes, is not that of old M. de Maurepas one of
the best-grounded; who hopes that he, by dexterity, shall contrive to
continue Minister? Nimble old man, who for all emergencies has his light
jest; and ever in the worst confusion will emerge, cork-like, unsunk!
Small care to him is Perfectibility, Progress of the Species, and
Astraea Redux: good only, that a man of light wit, verging towards
fourscore, can in the seat of authority feel himself important among
men. Shall we call him, as haughty Chateauroux was wont of old, 'M.
Faquinet (Diminutive of Scoundrel)'? In courtier dialect, he is now
named 'the Nestor of France;' such governing Nestor as France has.

At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say where the Government
of France, in these days, specially is. In that Chateau of Versailles,
we have Nestor, King, Queen, ministers and clerks, with paper-bundles
tied in tape: but the Government? For Government is a thing that
governs, th