Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 18, 1841 by Various
page 13 of 65 (20%)
page 13 of 65 (20%)
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When the perennial Faustus, ever-resident in the questioning spirit of
immortal man, attempts his first outbreak into the domain of unlimited inquiry, unless he take heed of the needfully-cautious prudentialities of mundane observance, there infallibly attends him a fatal Mephistophelean influence, of which the malign tendency, from every conclusion of eventuality, is to plunge him into perilous vast cloud-waves of the dream-inhabited vague. Let, then, the young student of infinity ----, &c. &c. FLIGHT THE FIFTH. Inarched within the boundless empyrean of thought, starry with wonder, and constellate with investigation; at one time obfuscated in the abysm-born vapours of doubt; at another, radiant with the sun-fires of faith made perfect by fruition; it can amaze no considerative fraction of humanity, that the explorer of the indefinite, the searcher into the not-to-be-defined, should, at dreary intervals, invent dim, plastic riddles of his own identity, and hesitate at the awful shrine of that dread interrogatory alternative--reality, or dream? This deeply pondering, let the eager beginner in the at once linear and circumferent course of philosophico-metaphysical contemplativeness, introductively assure himself that ----, &c. &c. FINAL FLIGHT. As, "in the silence and overshadowing of that night whose fitful meteoric fires only herald the descent of a superficial fame into lasting oblivion, the imbecile and unavailing resistance which is made against the doom must often excite our pity for the pampered child of market-gilded popularity;" and as "it is not with such feelings that we behold the dark thraldom and |
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