Cheops's Billets-doux 



*'But is real life really prosy ? Or does it merely appear 

 so, because men and women bury all their life's truly stirring 

 incident, of highest rapture and of deepest anguish, in the 

 silent archives of the soul ; and uttering only what is com- 

 mon-place, make the faint echoes of written romance seem 

 caricature ? — or an obsolete picture of how men thought and 

 felt in ruder and more serious times ? " 



" Man is still the same. There were no black-letter 

 editions of the human heart, nor are its feelings now a bit 

 more gilt-edged or satin-wove than when Cheops wrote his 

 hieroglyphic billets-doux on papyrus." 



" The world has never changed, nor ever will. The only 

 difference is, that we see too much of what is before our 

 eyes ; and familiarity breeds contempt. Gigantic qualities 

 alone can pierce the haze of antiquity, and thence we con- 

 clude that all were then modelled on the proportions of the 

 few great men we know. And those, too — how little we 

 know them. If we were to summon up Abelard's cook- 

 maid, and ask how her master looked on that Friday after- 

 noon when he had just received Eloisa's most touching 

 letter, describing how, * as time creeps on, all human affec- 

 tions,' &c. — what account of Abelard would his cook-maid 

 give? She would probably describe him as a red-nosed 

 testy old fellow of about fifty-eight, in a greasy old soutane ; 

 and that, on the particular occasion above mentioned, he 

 was reprimanding her severely for allowing the bishop to 

 set his foot in a dish of parsnips dressed with cream." 



" To be sure. And, on the other hand, I see no reason 

 to doubt that there are Pyramuses and Thisbes who peep 

 at one another through opera-glasses instead of holes in the 

 wall ; and Romeos and Juliets who meet (whether at Devon- 

 shire House or the Whittington Club balls), and love just 

 as suddenly, desperately, and fatally." 



280 



