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Updated: June 27, 2025
"There's a great deal of truth in what you say," replied Franchessini; "but the man whom Maxime wants to unmask may be one of those honest mediocrities who make themselves a thorn in the side of all administrations; your most dangerous adversaries are not the giants of oratory."
Nay, ourselves, too the douce, respectable mediocrities that we are which of us but might recall some fearful outbreak whose details are mercifully unknown to the household that calls us breadwinner and chief? What marvel that up yonder the Hunter smiles? When he knows that every one in his ken, the tinker with the statesman, has caught his bugle blast and gone forth on its irresistible appeal!
This reserve on the part of one of his relatives, contrasted with the ambitious schemes which beset the new pope at every step, struck Calixtus III in a singular way: he knew the stuff that was in young Roderigo, and at a time when he was besieged on all sides by mediocrities, this powerful nature holding modestly aside gained new grandeur in his eyes so he replied instantly to Roderigo that on the receipt of his letter he must quit Spain for Italy, Valencia for Rome.
The magnificent constituency of mediocrities of which the world is made up, the people without biographies, whose lives have made a clear solution in the fluid menstruum of time, instead of being precipitated in the opaque sediment of history But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition.
Finally there are to be found, besides, certain young people, rich or poor, who embrace careers and follow them with a single heart; they are somewhat like the Emile of Rousseau, of the flesh of citizens, and they never appear in society. The diplomatic impolitely dub them fools. Be they that or no, they augment the number of those mediocrities beneath the yoke of which France is bowed down.
Ten years ago there were a good many thousands of highly respectable mediocrities living on this side of the river, but now I am told that the glory has departed from the very best of its localities, and given them up to various degrees of squalor. Vice, poverty, and misery seem to gravitate naturally southward in London. I don't know why, but they do. Well, here is the door of my humble den."
The same change of administration, in the spring of 1782, that led to the recall of the older man, brought Howe again into service, to replace the mediocrities who for three campaigns had commanded the Channel Fleet, the mainstay of Great Britain's safety.
He may sum them up as respectable, honest mediocrities trying to do their best under exceptionally difficult circumstances; he may put them lower; he may put them higher; he may differentiate between those of different nations; but there is little doubt that, with the exception of the American President, he will not be able to point to any one of the calibre of Pitt or of Bismarck or of the less severely tried Disraeli or Gladstone.
Do not you see that by your methods of teaching, framed by a Ministry for eight million scholars, who represent eight million different capacities, you only impose a system good for mediocrities, conceived by an average of mediocrities? Your school becomes a University of laziness, as your prison is a University of crime.
A succession of administrators at Government House in Cape Town ended their political career there, and left, broken in spirit, damaged in reputation. As for the local politicians, they were mostly honest mediocrities or adventurous spirits, who used their influence for their personal advantage. An exception was Mr. Hofmeyr.
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