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Excerpt from A History of the French Revolution, Vol. 2 of 3
I regret, but can hardly apologize for, the delay in the publication of the present Volume. A Paradise haunts the dreams of the Historian, as well as of the Lover and the Fool. To glide through happy, laborious years in the eloquent silence of his library, free from the necessity for that ungrateful literary drudgery, from which he escapes only by fits and starts - in feverish haste, the balance and continuity of his ideas well-nigh lost, - to some cherished work, often laid aside, long neglected, and at last almost despaired of; to feel himself, as it were, a lily of the field, neither bound to toil nor spin Solomon-raiment for himself, but only for his thoughts; to enjoy the inestimable boon of scholarly leisure, roaming through archives and collections, with no call to grudge the hours which slip by as one investigation branches off into a hundred equally as enticing, ruminating some doubtful point, or rounding some awkward period in his twilight garden or beside his friendly study fire; to concentrate his every thought upon the magnum opus, towards which all his studies have for years been tending, which he sees daily growing under his pen, big with the promise of future fame; ever busily improving, reviewing, and revising, till shortly he becomes his best, and gives of his best to the world, and of his best only.
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