It is lipped by the Babel of the living world; he is ever on the stage, and the spectators are ever ready to applaud.

Thus perpetually in the service of others self ceases to be his world; he has no leisure to brood over real or imaginary wrongs; the excitement whirls on the machine till it is worn out--" "And kicked aside," said Vane, "with the broken lumber of men's other tools, in the chamber of their son's forgetfulness.

Your man of action lasts but for an hour; the man of letters lasts for ages." "We live not for ages," answered Trevylyan; "our life is on earth, and not in the grave." "But even grant," continued Vane--"and I for one will concede the point--that posthumous fame is not worth the living agonies that obtain it, how are you better off in your poor and vulgar career of action?
Would you assist the rulers ?--servility! The people ?--folly! If you take the great philosophical view which the worshippers of the past rarely take, but which, unknown to them, is their sole excuse,--namely, that the changes which _may_ benefit the future unsettle the present; and that it is not the wisdom of practical legislation to risk the peace of our contemporaries in the hope of obtaining happiness for their posterity,--to what suspicions, to what charges are you exposed! You are deemed the foe of all liberal opinion, and you read your curses in the eyes of a nation.

But take the side of the people.

What caprice, what ingratitude! You have professed so much in theory, that you can never accomplish sufficient in practice.