Long may he live to
show the Pantheon; and when he dies, if so disagreeable an event must
be contemplated, may he have the whole of one of these stone chambers
to himself; for nothing less could possibly contain him.
He regretted
exceedingly that we could not go up into the dome; but I had had
enough of stair climbing at Strasbourg, Antwerp, and Cologne, and not
even the prospect of enjoying his instructions could tempt me.
Now this Pantheon seems to me a monument of the faults and the
weakness of this very agreeable nation. Its history shows their
enthusiasm, their hero worship, and the want of stable religious
convictions. Nowhere has there been such a want of reverence for the
Creator, unless in the American Congress. The great men of France have
always seemed to be in confusion as to whether they made God or he
made them. There is a great resemblance in some points between the
French and the ancient Athenians: there was the same excitability; the
same keen outward life; the same passion for ideas; the same spending
of life in hearing or telling some new thing; the same acuteness of
philosophical research. The old Athenians first worshipped, and then
banished their great men, - buried them and pulled them up, and did
generally a variety of things which we Anglo-Saxons should call
fantastic. There is this difference, that the Athenians had the
advantage of coming first.
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