those for whom you have so much
sympathy. To-day is not the first time that man has violated his oath,
and made a traffic of obligation; one need only open a history, and read
on every page amid some noble actions, countless base intrigues and
unworthy cowardice. The Roman senate erected statues to monsters it had
dignified with the imperial purple. The middle age, which we are pleased
to look on as an epoch of faith and chivalric devotion, is everywhere
sullied by acts of felony and the consequences of mad ambition.
Civilization, while it corrected the gross errors of rude nations, also
restrained their virtues. Love of prosperity, the sensations of luxury,
bear to the wall the energetic principles of self-denial. Some
individuals, who, by their elevated position, attract attention to
themselves; here and there break a link of the moral chain; others
imitate them, and by fracture after fracture the whole series of austere
ideas is interrupted and dislocated. A few of the faithful may attempt to
preserve the remnants, but others look on them with pity, and treat this
religious faith as an anachronism. The worship of the great is destroyed,
and replaced by that of sensual enjoyments. We do not ask God to give us
the heavenly manna. We have made another God from which no prophet
can win us. We prostrate ourselves before the calf of gold. This, dear
Ireneus, must be a sad prospect for a heart like yours. That all the
respect for the past, for religion and misfortune, which exists in your
heart, should rise at the prospect of what you have read to me, I can
well enough understand. Can you however, repress the wrong which offends
you? Can the evils of which you complain be prevented? No, do what you
will, there must ever be men, over whom the passion for power will
exercise vast influence, and this feeling will always induce them to turn
from the sinking to the rising star. Even if you go to the depth of a
desert, to the jungles of an Indian archipelago, to the woods at
Caffraria, to the desert plains of North America, or to the Cordilleras,
you will not escape from the miserable spectacles of human hypocrisy. The
Turks have a proverb which says, 'Cure the hand you cannot spare.' Now we
can add to this maxim, 'Cure the hand which can serve you, satisfy your
pride, avarice and egotism.' Young and happy when you first entered on
life, dear Ireneus, you have seen much. A sudden revolution has covered
your eyes with a cloud, and