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Updated: May 7, 2025
Sympathy with or opposition to an author prompts those thus situated to write criticism; a dominant sentiment inspires poetical composition; and usually an impressive experience suggests adventure in the field of fiction: but we find educated men, in independent circumstances, not remarkable for sensibility to Nature, acute critical perception, or dramatic talent, whose literary aspirations are vague, and who desire to be occupied eligibly, turn to History as the most available vantage-ground, busy themselves with wars and councils that happened ages ago, with kings and soldiers, institutions and adventures, politics and dynasties, so far removed from the associations and interests of the hour, that only a scholar's enthusiasm or ambition could sustain the research or keep alive the enterprise thus voluntarily assumed.
Moreover, the rain-drippings scarcely or in no wise touched him, while, in general, he appeared to have developed to the full an aptitude for vagrancy as a permanent condition, and for the allowing of no unpleasant circumstance to debar him from invariably finding the most convenient vantage-ground at a given juncture.
But his success had lost him his own vantage-ground, and he knew that he was going down into the swirling waters beneath, close by the broken boat that was still being dashed about by the waves. Unexpected circumstances had detained Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter in London long after everybody else had left, but at length they were ready to start for their projected trip into Switzerland.
Their field of battle is generally the air; and their contest is managed in the most scientific and elegant manner; wheeling round and round each other, and towering higher and higher, to get the vantage-ground, until they sometimes disappear in the clouds before the combat is determined.
Once on a time, before the dark catalogue of vices was made complete by the wicked inventions of men, or the evil made to counterbalance the good in the world, the Arch Enemy of mankind, deeply sensible of the vantage-ground occupied by the antagonistic Being, and anxiously casting about him for the means of securing an equilibrium of power, called around him a small company, consisting of those of his Infernal subjects whom he had previously noted for their excellence, in subtility and devilish invention, and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts, ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own.
For Miss Nipper, in her burning zeal, disparaged Miss Tox as a crocodile; yet her sympathy seemed genuine, and had at least the vantage-ground of disinterestedness there was little favour to be won by it. And was there no one nearer and dearer than Susan, to uphold the striving heart in its anguish?
Madame de Verneuil wept and argued in vain. Jeannin was indeed too subtle an antagonist to afford her one inch of vantage-ground; and he so thoroughly undermined the reasonings which she advanced, that, wearied and discouraged, she at length consented to forego her claim.
Now, having reached the highest point of the ascent, he paused, standing on the grass of the heath, and turning round, with his back to the country, looked down upon the town. There is no better place from which to survey London. To impress a stranger with any sense of the charm of London as a whole, let him be taken to that vantage-ground and bidden to gaze.
A few receptive minds, cognizant of new observations that refute an old generalization, accept new laws, and, from the vantage-ground thus gained, reach out after yet other truths. But, for the most part, the new laws thus accepted by the leaders remain unknown to the people at large for at least one or two generations.
From this agreeable vantage-ground we set out upon many pleasant expeditions into the countryside, returned the visits of our neighbors, and attended the chapel at the Crossways in truly rural style. Nothing amused us as much, though, as the negro servants.
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