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
determined 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 daytime 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,'--of 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, but found 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 Defoe'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 most curious and useful treatises among our
elder writers.

At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil during the plague in 1563, at
his apartments at Windsor, where the Queen had taken refuge, 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, which he condemned as a great error in the
education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary; severe
in