Falkland, Complete

Оглавление

Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон. Falkland, Complete

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION

BOOK I

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

FROM THE LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO MRS. ST. JOHN

FROM MR. MANDEVILLE TO LADY EMILY

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON

BOOK II

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM DON ALPHONSO D’AQUILAR TO DON –

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDE VILLE

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON

BOOK III

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

BOOK IV

FROM MRS. ST. JOHN TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE

Отрывок из книги

L–, May —, 1822.

You are mistaken, my dear Monkton! Your description of the gaiety of “the season” gives me no emotion. You speak of pleasure; I remember no labour so wearisome; you enlarge upon its changes; no sameness appears to me so monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it. From the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and hermitage cannot penetrate the folds of a self-conceit, which does not envy you in your suppers at D– House, nor even in your waltzes with Eleanor.

.....

Living, then, much by myself, but reflecting much upon the world, I learned to love mankind. Philanthropy brought ambition; for I was ambitious, not for my own aggrandisement, but for the service of others—for the poor—the toiling—the degraded; these constituted that part of my fellow-beings which I the most loved, for these were bound to me by the most engaging of all human ties—misfortune! I began to enter into the intrigues of the state; I extended my observation and inquiry from individuals to nations; I examined into the mysteries of the science which has arisen in these later days to give the lie to the wisdom of the past, to reduce into the simplicity of problems the intricacies of political knowledge, to teach us the fallacy of the system which had governed by restriction, and imagined that the happiness of nations depended upon the perpetual interference of its rulers, and to prove to us that the only unerring policy of art is to leave a free and unobstructed progress to the hidden energies and province of Nature. But it was not only the theoretical investigation of the state which employed me. I mixed, though in secret, with the agents of its springs. While I seemed only intent upon pleasure, I locked in my heart the consciousness and vanity of power. In the levity of the lip I disguised the workings and the knowledge of the brain; and I looked, as with a gifted eye, upon the mysteries of the hidden depths, while I seemed to float an idler, with the herd, only on the surface of the stream.

I am approaching the conclusion of my confessions. Men who have no ties in the world, and who have been accustomed to solitude, find, with every disappointment in the former, a greater yearning for the enjoyments which the latter can afford. Day by day I relapsed more into myself; “man delighted me not, nor women either.” In my ambition, it was not in the means, but the end, that I was disappointed. In my friends, I complained not of treachery, but insipidity; and it was not because I was deserted, but wearied by more tender connections, that I ceased to find either excitement in seeking, or triumph in obtaining, their love. It was not, then, in a momentary disgust, but rather in the calm of satiety, that I formed that resolution of retirement which I have adopted now.

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