These observations of a celebrated writer apply to the instance of
Lord Cadurcis; he was the periodical victim, the scapegoat of English
morality, sent into the wilderness with all the crimes and curses of
the multitude on his head. Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a
great crime: not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was
not an unprecedented offence; not his duel with her husband, for after
all it was a duel in self-defence; and, at all events, divorces
and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or
authorised the storm which was now about to burst over the late
spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis had been guilty of the
offence which, of all offences, is punished most severely: Lord
Cadurcis had been overpraised. He had excited too warm an interest;
and the public, with its usual justice, was resolved to chastise him
for its own folly.
There are no fits of caprice so hasty and so violent as those of
society. Society, indeed, is all passion and no heart. Cadurcis, in
allusion to his sudden and singular success, had been in the habit of
saying to his intimates, that he 'woke one morning and found himself
famous.' He might now observe, 'I woke one morning and found myself
infamous.
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