|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: with some education and small means, thought it not decorous to die
without having been a Government officer." "Every man, according to
his condition," says a contemporary writer, "wants to be something
by command of the king."
It was not merely the "natural vanity" of which M. de Tocqueville
accuses his countrymen, which stirred up in them this eagerness
after place; for we see the same eagerness in other nations of the
Continent, who cannot be accused (as wholes) of that weakness. The
fact is, a Government place, or a Government decoration, cross,
ribbon, or what not, is, in a country where self-government is
unknown or dead, the only method, save literary fame, which is left
|
