of the Saints during his illness, instead of a romance, he
conceived a strong ambition to be the founder of a religious order;
whence originated the celebrated society of the Jesuits.

Rousseau found his eccentric powers first awakened by the advertisement
of the singular annual subject which the Academy of Dijon proposed for
that year, in which he wrote his celebrated declamation against the arts
and sciences. A circumstance which decided his future literary efforts.

La Fontaine, at the age of twenty-two, had not taken any profession, or
devoted himself to any pursuit. Having accidentally heard some verses of
Malherbe, he felt a sudden impulse, which directed his future life. He
immediately bought a Malherbe, and was so exquisitely delighted with
this poet that, after passing the nights in treasuring his verses in his
memory, he would run in the day-time to the woods, where, concealing
himself, he would recite his verses to the surrounding dryads.

Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on
account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book De Sphaera having been
lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a
course of astronomic studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural
history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of
Willoughby's work on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table
of his professor, Reaumur's History of Insects, which he read more than
he attended to the lecture, and, having been refused the loan, gave such
an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet, that he hastened to obtain a
copy; after many difficulties in procuring this costly work, its
possession gave an unalterable direction to his future life. This
naturalist indeed lost the use of his sight by his devotion to the
microscope.

Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar accident. "I
found a work of De Foe's, entitled an 'Essay on Projects,' from which
perhaps I derived impressions that have since influenced some of the
principal events of my life."

I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham to write his
_Schoolmaster_, one of the few works among our elder writers, which we
still read with pleasure.

At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil, at his apartments at Windsor, a
number of ingenious men were invited. Secretary Cecil communicated the
news of the morning, that several scholars at Eton had run away on
account of their master's severity,