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Parisians, the — Volume 02 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 72 of 77 (93%)
observation. You say truly that the course of modern civilization has
more or less affected the relative position of woman cultivated beyond
that level on which she was formerly contented to stand,--the nearer
perhaps to the heart of man because not lifting her head to his height,
--and hence a sense of restlessness, uneasiness; but do you suppose that,
in this whirl and dance of the atoms which compose the rolling ball of
the civilized world, it is only women that are made restless and uneasy?
Do you not see amid the masses congregated in the wealthiest cities of
the world, writhings and struggles against the received order of things?
In this sentiment of discontent there is a certain truthfulness, because
it is an element of human nature, and how best to deal with it is a
problem yet unsolved; but in the opinions and doctrines to which, among
the masses, the sentiment gives birth, the wisdom of the wisest detects
only the certainty of a common ruin, offering for reconstruction the same
building-materials as the former edifice,--materials not likely to be
improved because they may be defaced. Ascend from the working classes to
all others in which civilized culture prevails, and you will find that
same restless feeling,--the fluttering of untried wings against the bars
between wider space and their longings. Could you poll all the educated
ambitious young men in England,--perhaps in Europe,--at least half of
them, divided between a reverence for the past and a curiosity as to the
future, would sigh, 'I am born a century too late or a century too
soon!'"

Isaura listened to this answer with a profound and absorbing interest.
It was the first time that a clever young man talked thus sympathetically
to her, a clever young girl.

Then, rising, he said, "I see your Madre and our American friends are
darting angry looks at me. They have made room for us at the table, and
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