Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/84

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NIGHTMARE ABBEY.
73

Mr. Flosky.

This is no play upon words, but the sober sadness of veritable fact.

The Honorable Mr. Listless.

Tea, late dinners, and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas.

Mr. Flosky.

I should be sorry if you could: I pity the man who can see the connexion of his own ideas. Still more do I pity him, the connexion of whose ideas any other person can see. Sir, the great evil is, that there is too much common-place light in our moral and political literature, and light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a great friend to enthusiasm. Now the enthusiasm for abstract truth is an exceedingly fine thing, as long as the truth, which is the object of the