this state of disagreeable
vacation, says Helvetius, he was struck with the uniform motion of the
pendulum of the clock in the hall. His curiosity was roused; he
approached the clock-case, and studied its mechanism; what he could
not discover he guessed at. He then projected a similar machine, and
gradually his genius produced a clock. Encouraged by this first
success, he proceeded in his various attempts; and the genius which
thus could form a clock, in time formed a fluting automaton.

If Shakespeare's imprudence had not obliged him to quit his wool trade
and his town; if he had not engaged with a company of actors, and at
length, disgusted with being an indifferent performer, he had not
turned author, the prudent wool-seller had never been the celebrated
poet.

Accident determined the taste of Moliere for the stage. His
grandfather loved the theatre, and frequently carried him there. The
young man lived in dissipation; the father, observing it, asked in
anger if his son was to be made an actor. "Would to God," replied the
grandfather, "he was as good an actor as Montrose." The words struck
young Moliere; he took a disgust to his tapestry trade; and it is to
this circumstance France owes her greatest comic writer.

Corneille loved; he made verses for his mistress, became a poet,
composed 'Melite,' and afterwards his other celebrated works. The
discreet Corneille had remained a lawyer.

Thus it is that the devotion of a mother, the death of Cromwell,
deer-stealing, the exclamation of an old man, and the beauty of a
woman, have given five illustrious characters to Europe.

We owe the great discovery of Newton to a very trivial accident. When
a student at Cambridge, he had retired during the time of the plague
into the country. As he was reading under an apple-tree, one of the
fruit fell, and struck him a smart blow on the head. When he observed
the smallness of the apple, he was surprised at the force of the
stroke. This led him to consider the accelerating motion of falling
bodies; from whence he deduced the principle of gravity, and laid the
foundation of his philosophy.

Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish gentleman who was dangerously wounded at
the siege of Pampeluna. Having heated his imagination by reading the
Lives of the Saints, which were brought to him in 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