...
[Here my modesty refuses to copy the text before me]. There is but
one opinion upon this subject. Royalists and democrats, disciples
of tradition or fanatics of fancy, _voltigeurs_ of the old
monarchy or reformers of the future, are all unanimous in
saluting, as a rising glory of our literature, the pure and noble
talent which.... [Here my modesty again refuses to copy the text
before me].
"P.S. I send you herewith two copies of my works, which I submit
to your able and kind criticism."
Nor were appeals like these the only sort of seduction to which I was
exposed when I became the literary critic of "L'Assemblee Nationale."
The eminent men, sublime philosophers like Monsieur Victor Cousin and
Monsieur de Remusat, incomparable historians like Monsieur Guizot,
Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur de Barante, admirable literary men like
Monsieur Villemain and Monsieur de Salvandy, (all of whom had spent
their lives in laying down political maxims, and in expressing their
astonishment that French heads were too hard or French nature too fickle
to conform French life to the profound maxims which they, the former,
had weighed and meditated in the silence of their study,) who had for
eighteen years ruled France, found themselves, one February morning in
1848, stripped of power and of place.
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