ng before him seem to him as
Fata Morgana; ugly masks in fact, if he can but make them turn about,
but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out
his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, and his eyes
flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird; yet he is not calm
and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not
of gentle blood enough for that either. He is not exactly like anything
but himself, and therefore you cannot see him without the most hearty
refreshment and goodwill, for he is original, rich, and strong enough to
afford a thousand faults; one expects some wild land in a rich kingdom.
His talk, like his books, is full of pictures, his critical strokes
masterly; allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He
is a large subject; I cannot speak more nor wiselier of him now, nor
needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of
England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might
rather to destroy evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems
to be what Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we
make no remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though
we sometimes must for us.

* * * * *

=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 520.)

From "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."

=_211._= CONSEQUENCES OF EXPOSING AN OLD ERROR.

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone
which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the
grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its
edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told
you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick, or your
foot, or your fingers, under its edge, and turned it over as a housewife
turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this
time?" What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant
surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not
suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members
produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened
down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and
ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or
horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer
but cunningly spre