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But we do not know him with the least certainty, the least approach even to a guess, such buzzards and dullards and poor children of the Dusk are we, in spite of our Statistics, Unshackled Presses, and Torches of Knowledge; not eagles soaring sunward, not brothers of the lightnings and the radiances we; a dim horn-eyed, owl-population, intent mainly on the catching of mice!
In an age of many-colored absurdity, when extremes meet and contradictions harmonize, when men of gross, material aims give implicit confidence to the wildest ravings of the supernatural, and pure-minded men embrace French theories of social organization, when crowds of dullards all aflame with unexpected imagination assemble in ascension-robes to await the apocalyptic trump, and Asiatic polygamy spreads unmolested along our Western rivers, when the prediction is accomplished, "Old men dream dreams and young men see visions," and the most practical of the ages bids fair to glide ghostly into history as the most superstitious, it is well, it can but be well, to contemplate reverently that Reason, which Coleridge, after Leighton, calls "an influence from the Glory of the Almighty."
But as one of the demos of moral dullards, I get no little comfort from applying to Nietsche and Ibsen, and to certain prophet litterateurs of England, Burke's reproof of Lord Bolingbroke.
His self-love took the shape of a brilliancy that is sometimes false. He is tricked out in paste for diamonds, now and then, like a vain, provincial beauty at a ball. "A clever man would frequently be much at a loss," he says, "in stupid company." One has seen this embarrassment of a wit in a company of dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in this world of men and women.
In the darkest hours of his country's trial, he affected a serenity which he was far from feeling, so that his apparent gaiety at momentous epochs was even censured by dullards, who could not comprehend its philosophy, nor applaud the flippancy of William the Silent. He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face.
She had chosen for her teacher Apollonius, the great grammarian, who was apt to call his scholars "the dullards;" and the work which was the present object of her studies was derived from the famous library of the Serapeum, which far exceeded in completeness that of the Museum since the siege of Julius Caesar in the Bruchiom, when the great Museum library was burnt.
To this may be added the fact that these young dullards, the supply of whom is dwindling, are, on joining the service, encouraged and accepted rather with reference to their sporting and social qualities than to their military capacity. England, as a sporting, athletic, and game-loving nation, has of late years suffered many rebuffs.
She crouched still nearer, her breath and words coming hard and quick. 'Twas indeed as if she spoke to a living man who heard as if she answered what he had said. "There would be men in England who would give it me," she raved, whispering. "That would there, I swear! But there would be dullards and dastards who would not. He would give it he! Ay, mock as thou wilt!
Clearly, mankind would sustain some loss of good sense, were all the dullards and fat-wits taken away; and Sancho Panza, with his hearty, "Blessings on the man that invented sleep!" here ekes out the scant wisdom of sages.
Peel's smile was "the silver plate on a coffin", Wellington "a stunted corporal", and Disraeli "the lineal descendant of the impenitent thief." It sounds bombastic, but in those feudal forties it rang more magnificent than war. Single-voiced he overawed the host of bigots, dullards, and reactionaries.
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