Explore "Ernest Maltravers Book V" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"And crowds commencing mere vexation, Retirement sent its invitation. " -- SHENSTONE.
THE tench, no doubt, considers the pond in which he lives as the Great World. There is no place, however stagnant, which is not the great world to the creatures that move about, in it. People who have lived all their lives in a village still talk of the world as if they had ever seen it! An old woman in a hovel does not put her nose out of her door on a Sunday without thinking she is going amongst the pomps and vanities of the great world. /Ergo/, the great world is to all of us the little circle in which we live. But as fine people set the fashion, so the circle of fine people is called the Great World /par excellence/. Now this great world is not a bad thing when we thoroughly understand it; and the London great world is at least as good as any other. But then we scarcely do understand that or anything else in our /beaux jours/, -- which, if they are sometimes the most exquisite, are also often the most melancholy and the most wasted portion of our life.