sterity is no better (not a bit more
enlightened or more liberal), except that you are no longer in their
power, and that the voice of common fame saves them the trouble of
deciding on your claims. The public now are the posterity of Milton
and Shakespeare. Our posterity will be the living public of a future
generation. When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect
monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday
in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living?
No!--I was complaining of this to a Scotchman who had been attending a
dinner and a subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He replied, he
would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to his monument than have given
it him while living; so that if the poet were to come to life again,
he would treat him just as he was treated in fact. This was an honest
Scotchman. What _he_ said, the rest would do.

Enough: my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain the
obscurity and quiet that I love, "far from the madding strife," in
some sequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant land! In the
latter case, I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in
Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile, in which he describes in glowing
colours the resources which a man may always find within himself, and
of which the world cannot deprive him.

"Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in
the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable parts
can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest;
lies out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken
away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such
is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world whereof
it makes the noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as
we remain in one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore
intrepidly wherever we are led by the course of human accidents.
Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we
shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall feel the same
revolution of seasons, and the same sun and moon[31] will guide the
course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will
be every where spread over our heads. There is no part of the world
from whence we may not admire those planets which roll, like ours, in
different orbits round the same central sun; from whence we may not