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Updated: May 4, 2025
Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in a Raphael! keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti! which things when I beheld musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that woful Queen of Richard the Second
Should he live, and maintain his place, and bequeath his throne to his son, and that son be of an age to appreciate his position, and possessed of fair talent, he may pass for the modern Augustus; but thinking of him, and of the strange reverses of fortune that have happened since 1789 to men and to nations, we subscribe to the wisdom of the hackneyed Greek sentiment, that no man should be called fortunate until the seal of death shall have placed an everlasting and an impassable barrier between him and the cruel sports of Mutabilities which are played "to many men's decay."
He told the heroine that he had read in the stars that happiness has only one key, and that its name is 'Love, that, amidst all the mutabilities and disillusions of our life, the pure love of a man and woman alone stands firm and beautiful, alone defies change and disappointment; that it is the heaven-sent salve for all our troubles, the remedy for our mistakes, the magic glass reflecting only what is true and good.
Then let come what might on this plane of foolish contention, where we strive to cover the Immutable with the petty mask of our mutabilities. We sweat and toil for ends which we know not, and our paltry and blind decisions, our triumphs and failures, determine nothing but the degree of our own ignorance and impotence.
And Audley Egerton had no chance of return for his own seat, for the great commercial city identified with his name. Oh, sad, but not rare, instance of the mutabilities of that same popular favour now enjoyed by his successors! Where one popular hustings, on which that grave sonorous voice, that had stilled so often the roar of faction, would not be drowned amidst the hoots of the scornful mob?
Such are the mutabilities of rank and fortune. The great bulk of our peerage is comparatively modern, so far as the titles go; but it is not the less noble that it has been recruited to so large an extent from the ranks of honourable industry. In olden times, the wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source of peerages.
They too have known those mutabilities of fortune which receive illustration alike in the history of countries and in the lives of individuals.
Such are the mutabilities of rank and fortune. The great bulk of the English peerage is comparatively modern, so far as the titles go; but it is not the less noble that it has been recruited to so large an extent from the ranks of honorable industry. In olden times, the wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source of peerages.
Human nature, human temptations, human problems, are radically the same in every age, by whatsoever outward difference of words they may seem distinguished. Where is deeper philosophic thought, true or false, expressed in verse, than in Dante, or in Spenser's two cantos of "Mutabilities"? Yet if they are difficult to understand, their darkness is that of the deep blue sea.
And Audley Egerton had no chance of return for his own seat, for the great commercial city identified with his name. Oh, sad, but not rare, instance of the mutabilities of that same popular favour now enjoyed by his successors! Where one popular hustings, on which that grave sonorous voice, that had stilled so often the roar of faction, would not be drowned amidst the hoots of the scornful mob?
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