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We cannot stifle it; we may hush it, and follow our idle joys, but the day comes when we bend our head with Antinous and Solomon and the rest of them, and sigh out our vanitas, vanitas also, in the great weary chorus. No need, alas! for a Hawthorne, or Byron, or even a Shakspeare to interpret what the Antinous says for us. Our own hearts do it.
Only last night he reminded me of an illustration of the vanitas vanitatum of human fame and national gratitude, to be found over yonder in the necropolis.
Vanitas vanitatum! Under the thirsty soil, under the ill-paved streets, under the arid turf, the Legions lay dead, with the Carthaginians they had borne down under the mighty pressure of their phalanx; and the Byzantine ranks were dust, side by side with the soldiers of Gelimer.
The goddesses, nymphs, and women of this time bear a sort of general family resemblance to her and to each other. This piece illustrates the preferred type of Titian's old age, as the Vanitas, Herodias, and Flora illustrate the preferred type of his youth; as the paintings which we have learnt to associate with the Duchess of Urbino illustrate that of his middle time.
I am not going to describe either the guests or the dinner. All provincial parties bear the strictest family resemblance, and I am not aware that an East Anglian banquet offers any exception to the rule. There was the usual country baronet and his wife; there were the usual country parsons and their wives; there was the sempiternal turkey and haunch of venison. Vanitas vanitatum.
His excellency Colonel Rawdon Crawley died of yellow fever at Coventry Island, six weeks before the death of his brother Sir Pitt, who had succeeded to the title. Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Anna Karenina
Thackeray needed no railway accident to remind him of "The End," and two lines before the close of "Vanity Fair" we find him writing in the prime of his life, "Ah, vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire, or, having it, is satisfied?"
They liked the music: would they not come and hear it again? When they had departed with Mr. Honeyman, Clive could not help saying to Uncle James, "Why are those people always coming here; praising me; and asking me to dinner? Do you know, I can't help thinking that they rather want me as a pretender for Miss Sherrick?" Binnie burst into a loud guffaw, and cried out, "O vanitas vanitawtum!"
The selfish languor and indifference of to-day's possession is the consequence of the selfish ardor of yesterday's pursuit: the scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude of the sick appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of the career of the needy struggler: our mental changes are like our gray hairs or our wrinkles but the fulfillment of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that which is snow-white now was glossy black once; that which is sluggish obesity to-day was boisterous rosy health a few years back; that calm weariness, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was ambition, fierce and violent, but a few years since, and has only settled into submissive repose after many a battle and defeat.
Such of us as make our dwelling-place in the world of the three dimensions, grow weary of the sameness and the staleness of it all, and drearily echo the Preacher's Vanitas vanitatum; but such of us as have entered into the fourth dimension, and have caught glimpses of the ideal which is concealed in all reality, do not trouble ourselves over the flight of time, for we know we have eternity before us; and so we are content to wait patiently and joyfully, in sure and certain hope of that better thing which, without us, can not be made perfect.
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