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Title: The Elysian Fields Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley Date: 1880 Language: en Topics: essays Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prose_Works_of_Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/The_Elysian_Fields,_A_Lucianic_Fragment
I am not forgetful in this dreary scene of the country which whilst I
lived in the upper air, it was my whole aim to illustrate and render
happy. Indeed, although immortal, we are not exempted from the
enjoyments and the sufferings of mortality. We sympathize in all the
proceedings of mankind, and we experience joy or grief in all
intelligence from them, according to our various opinions and views. Nor
do we resign those opinions, even those which the grave[1] has utterly
refuted. Frederic of Prussia has lately arrived amongst us, and persists
in maintaining that "death is an eternal sleep," to the great
discomfiture of Philip the Second of Spain; who on the furies refusing
to apply the torture, expects the roof of Tartarus to fall upon his
head, and laments that at least in his particular instance the doctrine
should be false.—Religion is more frequently the subject of discussion
among the departed dead, than any other topic, for we know as little
which mode of faith is true as you do. Every one maintains the doctrine
he maintained on ​Earth, and accommodates the appearances which surround
us to his peculiar tenets.—
I am one of those who esteeming political science capable of certain
conclusions, have ever preferred it to these airy speculations, which
when they assume an empire over the passions of mankind render them so
mischievous and unextinguishable, that they subsist even among the dead.
The art of employing the power entrusted to you for the benefit of those
who entrust it, is something more definite, and subject as all its
details must ever be to innumerable limitations and exceptions arising
out of the change in the habits, opinions of mankind, is the noblest,
and the greatest, and the most universal of all. It is not as a queen,
but as a human being that this science must be learned; the same
discipline which contributes to domestic happiness and individual
distinction secures true welfare and genuine glory to a nation.—
You will start, I do not doubt, to hear the language of philosophy. You
will have been informed that those who approach sovereigns with warnings
that they have duties to perform, that they are elevated above the rest
of mankind simply to prevent their tearing one another to pieces, and
for the purpose of putting into effect all practical equality and
justice, are insidious traitors who devise their ruin. But if the
character which I bore on earth should not reassure you,[2] it would be
well to recollect the circumstances under which you will ascend the
throne of England, and what is the spirit of the times. ​There are better
examples to emulate than those who have only refrained from depraving or
tyrannizing over their subjects, because they remembered the fates of
Pisistratus[3] and Tarquin. If[4] generosity and virtue should have
dominion over your actions, my lessons can hardly be needed; but if the
discipline[5] of a narrow education may have extinguished all thirst of
genuine excellence, all desire of becoming illustrious for the sake of
the illustriousness of the actions which I would incite you to perform.
Should you be thus—and no pains have been spared to make you so—make
your account with holding your crown on this condition: of deserving it
alone. And that this may be evident[6] I will expose to you the state in
which the nation will be found at your accession, for the very dead know
more than the counsellors by whom you will be surrounded.
The English nation does not, as has been imagined, inherit freedom from
its ancestors. Public opinion rather than positive institution maintains
it[7] in whatever portion it may now possess, which is[8] in truth the
acquirement of their own incessant struggles. As yet the gradations by
which this freedom has advanced have been contested step by step.
[1] Cancelled reading, even when the grave.
[2] After reassure you there is a cancelled reading in the MS.—you
recollect yourself, & if the prejudices of the age have not deprived you
of all that learning…
[3] Pisistratus is probably a slip for the sons of Pisistratus.
[4] Cancelled reading, But if these motives.
[5] Cancelled readings, lessons for discipline; and is to prevent for
may have extinguished in the next line.
[6] Cancelled reading, evident to you.
[7] In the MS. them is struck out in favour of it
[8] Cancelled readings, and this has been, and in the same line conquest
for acquirement.