cording to their different
characters.

* * * * *

Many persons, without a consciousness of so doing, to contribute to some
one end; as to a beggar's feast, made up of broken victuals from many
tables; or a patch carpet, woven of shreds from innumerable garments.

* * * * *

Some very famous jewel or other thing, much talked of all over the
world. Some person to meet with it, and get possession of it in some
unexpected manner, amid homely circumstances.

* * * * *

To poison a person or a party of persons with the sacramental wine.

* * * * *

A cloud in the shape of an old woman kneeling, with arms extended
towards the moon.

* * * * *

On being transported to strange scenes, we feel as if all were unreal.
This is but the perception of the true unreality of earthly things, made
evident by the want of congruity between ourselves and them. By and by
we become mutually adapted, and the perception is lost.

* * * * *

An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making all the
images that have been reflected in it pass back again across its
surface.

* * * * *

Our Indian races having reared no monuments, like the Greeks, Romans,
and Egyptians, when they have disappeared from the earth, their history
will appear a fable, and they misty phantoms.

* * * * *

A woman to sympathize with all emotions, but to have none of her own.

* * * * *

A portrait of a person in New England to be recognized as of the same
person represented by a portrait, in Old England. Having distinguished
himself there, he had suddenly vanished, and had never been heard of
till he was thus discovered to be identical with a distinguished man in
New England.

SAINTE-BEUVE.

The lives of French men of letters, at least during the last two
centuries, have never been isolated or obscure. Had Rousseau been born
on the borders of Loch Lomond, he might have proved in his own person,
and without interruption, the superiority of the savage state; and after
his death the information in regard to him would have been fragmentary
and uncertain. But born on the shores of Lake Leman, centralization laid
its grasp upon him, drew him into the vortex of