Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/14

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6
PAUL CLIFFORD.

you meet to-morrow? Public men are only praised by their party, and their party, sweet Lucy, are such base minions, it moves one's spleen to think one is so little as to be useful to them. Thus a good name is only the good name of a sect, and the members of that sect are only marvellous proper knaves."

"But posterity does justice to those who really deserve fame."

"Posterity! Can you believe that a man who knows what life is, cares for the penny whistles of grown children after his death? Posterity, Lucy,—no! Posterity is but the same perpetuity of fools and rascals; and even were justice desirable at their hands, they could not deal it. Do men agree whether Charles Stuart was a liar or a martyr? for how many ages have we believed Nero a monster! A writer now asks, as if demonstrating a problem, what real historian could doubt that Nero was a paragon? The Patriarchs of Scripture have been declared by modern Philosophy to be a series of astronomical hieroglyphs; and with greater show of truth it has been declared that the Patriot Tell never existed. Pos-