Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/167

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156
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.

France is no precedent for the hopes and prospects of enlightened, feeling, and generous nations.

Mr. Cypress.

I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is a false nature: it is not in the harmony of things: it is an all-blasting upas, whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which rain their poison-dews upon mankind. We wither from our youth: we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good: lured: from the first to the last by phantoms—love, fame, ambition, avarice—all idle and all ill—one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death.[1]

Mr. Flosky.

A most delightful speech, Mr. Cypress.