But our hero, Phineas Finn, as he turned his back
upon the scene of his many successes, and prepared himself for
permanent residence in his own country, was, I think, in a worse
plight than any of the reduced divinities to whom I have alluded.
They at any rate had known that their fall would come. He, like
Icarus, had flown up towards the sun, hoping that his wings of wax
would bear him steadily aloft among the gods. Seeing that his wings
were wings of wax, we must acknowledge that they were very good. But
the celestial lights had been too strong for them, and now, having
lived for five years with lords and countesses, with Ministers and
orators, with beautiful women and men of fashion, he must start again
in a little lodging in Dublin, and hope that the attorneys of that
litigious city might be good to him. On his journey home he made but
one resolution. He would make the change, or attempt to make it,
with manly strength. During his last month in London he had allowed
himself to be sad, depressed, and melancholy. There should be an end
of all that now. Nobody at home should see that he was depressed.
And Mary, his own Mary, should at any rate have no cause to think
that her love and his own engagement had ever been the cause to him
of depression.
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