another half-century would sink without a bubble into the depths of Time.
He had enacted no laws--he had administered no state--he had composed no
books. Like the figure on a clock, which adorns the case and has no
connection with the movement, he, so prominent an or nament to time, had
no part in its works. Removed, the eye would miss him for a while; but a
nation's literature or history was the same, whether with him or without.
Some with a tithe of his abilities have the luck to fasten their names to
things that endure; they have been responsible for measures they did not
not invent, and which, for good or evil, influence long generations.
They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in
prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge.
But the orator, whose effects are immediate--who enthralls his audience
in proportion as he nicks the hour--who, were he speaking like Burke
what, apart from the subject-matter, closet students would praise, must,
like Burke, thin his audience, and exchange present oratorical success
for ultimate intellectual renown--a man, in short, whose oratory is
emphatically that of the DEBATER is, like an actor, rewarded with a loud
applause and a complete oblivion. Waife on the village stage might win
applause no less loud, followed by oblivion not more complete.

Darrell was not blind to the brevity of his fame. In his previous
seclusion he had been resigned to that conviction--now it saddened him.
Then, unconfessed by himself, the idea that he might yet reappear in
active life, and do something which the world would not willingly let
die, had softened the face of that tranquil Nature from which he must
soon now pass out of reach and sight. On the tree of Time he was a leaf
already sear upon the bough--not an inscription graven into the rind.

Ever slow to yield to weak regrets--ever seeking to combat his own
enemies within--Darrell said to himself one night, while Fairthorn's