The English have a plain taste. The equipages of the grandees
are plain. A gorgeous livery indicates new and awkward city-wealth. Mr.
Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of _Mister_ good against any king
in Europe. They have piqued themselves on governing the whole world in
the poor, plain, dark committee-room which the House of Commons sat in
before the fire.
Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found,
cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds the town
a chop-house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the
horizon, hills and plains, and, with them, sobriety and elevation. He
has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile
to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and
disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects
are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of
insignificant annoyances:--
"Mirmidons, race feconde,
Mirmidons,
Enfins nous commandons;
Jupiter livre le monde
Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons."[B]
[Footnote B: Beranger.]
'Tis heavy odds
Against the gods,
When they will match with myrmidons.
We spawning, spawning myrmidons,
Our turn to-day; we take command:
Jove gives the globe into the hand
Of myrmidons, of myrmidons.
What is odious but noise, and people who scream and bewail?--people
whose vane points always east, who live to dine, who send for the
doctor, who raddle themselves, who toast their feet on the register,
who intrigue to secure a padded chair and a corner out of the draught?
Suffer them once to begin the enumeration of their infirmities, and the
sun will go down on the unfinished tale.
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