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No! It seems that such a tender joy would be misplaced now as much as ever during the last hundred years, to go no further back. The end of the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optimism and of dismal mediocrity in which the French Revolution exploded like a bombshell.
These remarks are applicable not only to advancement in political life, but to all competition for places of honor and dignity, nay, even for reputation in the world of science, literature and art. In learned societies, for example, mediocrity that very acceptable quality is always to the fore, whilst merit meets with tardy recognition, or with none at all.
The only people who are contented with a system of promotion by mere seniority are those who are contented with the triumph of mediocrity over excellence. On the other hand, a system which encouraged the exercise of social or political favoritism in promotions would be even worse.
The design for the Indian barracks existed complete; and middle-aged mediocrity could carry it out in a fashion, and Lucas & Enwright could carry it out better than he could carry it out himself. As for Davids, he had written. There was nothing else of importance in his office. The other competition had not been won.
Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family: I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line.
There are also some pictures above mediocrity, principally by French artists of the past school. The tower of this church is famed from the desperate resistance which was made from it by a few young men in 1832 against the king's troops. We must follow the course of the Rue St.
And, above all, there is this to be said for golfing mediocrity the bad player can make the strokes of the good player. The poor cricketer has perhaps never made fifty in his life; as soon as he stands at the wickets he knows that he is not going to make fifty to-day. But the eighteen-handicap man has some time or other played every hole on the course to perfection.
This is because Italy does not esteem mediocrity, deeming it an exceedingly poor thing; and speaks only of those, and even praises them to the skies, who, like eagles, surpass all others, and penetrating the clouds approach the light of the sun.
Let it not be believed that the man of poverty himself is excluded from happiness: mediocrity and indigence frequently procure for him advantages that opulence and grandeur are obliged to acknowledge; which title and wealth are constrained to envy: the soul of the needy man, always in action, never ceases to form desires which his activity places within his reach; whilst the rich, the powerful, are frequently in the afflicting embarrassment, of either not knowing what to wish for, or else of desiring those objects which their listlessness renders it impossible for them to obtain.
This is the true reason why 'neither gods nor men nor the columns either suffer mediocrity in singers. Upon the poet it is specially incumbent to see that he has something rare to say and some rich mode of saying it. The figurative arts need hardly be so cautioned. They run their risk in quite a different direction.
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