Page:The Head - Keepsake 1834.pdf/11

Rh waits for that dark and overwhelming influence which sooner or later will darken our whole horizon. Julian arrived in Paris—his heart full of passion, and his head full of poetry—the one to be deceived, and the other to be disappointed. His wealth, his prepossessing appearance, and some scientific introductions, for his father had been the correspondent of eminent men, opened to him several of the first houses in Paris; but such society soon made him aware that he was only there on sufferance; that "thus far and no further," was the motto of aristocratic courtesy; he felt himself the equal—ay, the superior—of half the gracious coxcombs that surrounded him, and yet an accident of birth and fortune placed him at an immeasurably distance from those whose manner mocked him with the semblance of equality. It was one of the greatest vices of the old French regime, that there was no opening for the energy, the enthusiasm, or the genius, of the middle rank; that rank which in England is constantly renovating the upper classes, and which may, at least, aspire to any distinction. But in France, "the sword, gown, glory" did not "offer in exchange" for industry and talent; and a highly educated young man, of independent fortune, but of plebeian extraction,—from his wealth lacking the only pursuit allotted to his class—was like an animal in a menagerie, the most misplaced object in creation, debarred from all healthy and natural exercise, yet able to see the free boughs and far prospect while confined to a dreary perch and a narrow cage. But the tyranny of custom, like all other tyrannies, when grown quite unbearable—for it is wonderful what people will endure—had already sown the seeds of its own dissolution. Out of the hardship had grown the repining, and to repine at the exercise of an alleged right is soon to question its authority, and the first question asked shakes the whole ancient and time-honoured fabric of privilege. A fierce and restless spirit