If he does not recover from his attack, if the paralysis does not leave that poor brain, worn out with doing nothing, we can honestly say that he is the last of his kind.
An original and independent thinker has asserted that civilizations, societies, empires, and republics go down to posterity typified for the admiration of mankind, each under the form of some hero.Emerson would have given a place in his Pantheon to Sagan.For it is he who sustained the traditions and became the type of that distinguished and frivolous society, which judged that serious things were of no importance, enthusiasm a waste of time, literature a bore; that nothing was interesting and worthy of occupying their attention except the elegant distractions that helped to pass their days-and nights! He had the merit (?) in these days of the practical and the commonplace, of preserving in his gracious person all the charming uselessness of a courtier in a country where there was no longer a court.
What a strange sight it would be if this departing dandy could, before he leaves for ever the theatre of so many triumphs, take his place at some street corner, and review the shades of the companions his long life had thrown him with, the endless procession of departed belles and beaux, who, in their youth, had, under his rule, helped to dictate the fashions and lead the sports of a world.