There is something pleasingly melancholy, in walking over places haunted
by history; for all of us live more in the past than the present."

"And how exactly alike in all ages," said I, "men have been. On the very
spot we are on now, how many have been actuated by the same feelings that
now actuate us--how many have made perhaps exactly the same remark just
made by you. It is this universal identity, which forms our most powerful
link with those that have been--there is a satisfaction in seeing how
closely we resemble the Agamemnons of gone times, and we take care to
lose none of it, by thinking how closely we also resemble the sordidi
Thersites."

"True," replied Vincent, "if wise and great men did but know, how little
difference there is between them and the foolish or the mean, they would
not take such pains to be wise and great; to use the Chinese proverb,
'they sacrifice a picture to get possession of its ashes.' It is almost a
pity that the desire to progress should be so necessary to our being;
ambition is often a fine, but never a felicitous feeling. Cyprian, in a
beautiful passage on envy, calls it 'the moth of the soul:' but perhaps,
even that passion is less gnawing, less a 'tabes pectoris,' than
ambition. You are surprised at my heat--the fact is, I am enraged at
thinking how much we forfeit, when we look up only, and trample
unconsciously, in the blindness of our aspiration, on the affections
which strew our path. Now, you and I have been utterly estranged from
each other of late. Why?--for any dispute--any disagreement in private--
any discovery of meanness--treachery, unworthiness in the other? No!
merely because I dine with Lord Lincoln, and you with Lord Dawton, voila
tout. Well say the Jesuits, that they who live for the public, must
renounce all private ties; the very day we become citizens, we are to
cease to be men. Our privacy is like Leo Decimus; [Note: See Jovius.]