I will not tell thee the anguish I
felt, Adelheid, when the truth was at length revealed! Of all the
cruelties inflicted by society, there is none so unrighteous in its nature
as the stigma it entails in the succession of crime or misfortune: of all
its favors, none can find so little justification, in right and reason, as
the privileges accorded to the accident of descent."
"And yet we are much accustomed to honor those that come of an ancient
line, and to see some part of the glory of the ancestor even in the most
remote descendant."
"The more remote, the greater is the world's deference. What better proof
can we have of the world's weakness? Thus the immediate child of the hero,
he whose blood is certain, who bears the image of the father in his face,
who has listened to his counsels, and may be supposed to have derived, at
least, some portion of his greatness from the nearness of his origin, is
less a prince than he who has imbibed the current through a hundred vulgar
streams, and, were truth but known, may have no natural claim at all upon
the much-prized blood! This comes of artfully leading the mind to
prejudices, and of a vicious longing in man to forget his origin and
destiny, by wishing to be more than nature ever intended he should
become.
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