Part 34
"You may remember," says Farrar, in his Silence and Voices of God, "how, in the old legend, St. Brendan, in his northward voyage, saw a man sitting upon an iceberg, and with horror recognized him as the traitor Judas Iscariot; and the traitor told him how, at Christmas time, amid the drench of the burning lake, an angel had touched his arm, and bidden him for one hour to cool his agony on an iceberg in the Arctic sea; and when he asked the cause of this mercy, bade him recognize in him a leper to whom in Joppa streets he had given a cloak to shelter him from the wind; and how for that one kind deed this respite was allotted him. Let us reject the ghastly side of the legend, and accept its truth. Yes, charity,--love to God as shown in love to man--is better than all burnt-offering and sacrifice." "In thy face," said the dying Bunsen to the wife of his heart, bending over him, "in thy face have I seen the Eternal."
When Abraham, according to another old legend, sat at his tent door, as was his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied coming toward him an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man eat, and prayed not, nor begged for blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshiped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, "I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee." God answered him, "I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonored me; and couldst not thou endure him one night?"
"Ah! poor things that we are. We are all sore with many bruises and wounds. The marvel is that our own tenderness does not make us tender to all others."
"He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault."
"I saw in Rome, once, Anstiss," said Hope, "an old coin,--a silver denarius,--all coated and crusted with green and purple rust. I called it rust; but Aleck told me it was copper; the alloy thrown out from the silver, until there was none left. Within, it was all pure. It takes ages to do it; but it does get done. Souls are like that, Anstiss. Something moves in them, slowly, till the debasement is all thrown out. Sometime, the very varnish shall be taken off."
"Day by day I think I read more plain, This crowning truth, that, spite of sin and pain, No life that God has given is lived in vain; But each poor, weak, and sin-polluted soul Shall struggle free at last, and reach its goal,-- A perfect part of God's great perfect whole."
INDEX
Abernethy, a timid lecturer, 255.
Abd-el-Lateef, anecdote of, 383.
Addison, on living and dressing according to the rules of common sense, 64; his care in composition, 127; reputed portrait of, 189; his belief in ghosts, 243; his marriage, 246; enlarges on a thought of Socrates, 374.
Advice, on asking and giving, 104.
AEschines, of Pericles and Aspasia, 41.
AEsop, fable of the travelers and the chameleon, 379.
Agassiz, had no time to make money, 139.
Aikenhead, hanged for free religious opinions, 362.
Alfieri, how he composed, 126.
Alfred, King of Denmark, story of, 165.
Alger, public opinion the atmosphere of society, 7; most men live blindly, 23; ruins, and what they symbolize, 216; on the blindness or Homer, Milton, Galileo, and Haendel, 228; on the happiness of solitude, 342; his account of the hermit of Grub Street, 343; the forest of statues on the roof of Milan cathedral, 354; the scholar's pantheon at the top of his mind, 354.
Amyot, his poverty and success, 125.
Anaxagoras, a request made by, 216; whom he believed to be most happy, 346.
Andersen, advice to, 148.
Anecdote of a singer and his wife in Leipsic, 316; of a hypochondriacal comedian, 323.
Angelo, Michel, confesses his ignorance, 29; on reforming mankind, 93; anecdote of, 168; and Raphael, 171; a gem once worn on the finger of, 178; and the Reformation, 252; the statues of, 303; and Bramante, 303; of Donatello's statue, 325; a saying of his commending moderation, 348.
Annals of the Parish, why rejected, 148.
Anson, Lord, different opinions of, 189.
Appleseed, Johnny, character and career of, 112.
Apelles and Protogenes, 171.
Apuleius, a curious fact relating to, 249.
Arago, his claim for ancient Egypt, 181.
Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay, fate of a joint play of, 255.
Archimedes, the tomb of, 215.
Arctic morality, 102.
Arctic region, small proportion of fuel used in the, 241; effect of frost in the, 301.
Arethusa, Fountain of, 302.
Aristotle, on proverbs, 159; logic known before, 182; fate of, 223.
Arnold, Matthew, moral rules for the sage only, 369.
Artist, an, in serpents, 300.
Aspasia and Pericles, 41.
Atterbury, Bishop, what he said of Newton, 107.
Augereau, at the coronation of Napoleon, 110.
Augustine, St., and the idea of Fourierism, 182; subtleties on the question, What then is time? 339; on a happy life, 340; a passage from his Confessions, 354.
Auld Lang Syne, 204.
Auld Robin Gray, its authorship a secret for fifty years, 254.
Aurelius, Marcus, tolerant and good to all but Christians, 33; his idea of free government, 185; his doubtful wife and bad son, 247; what he learnt from his tutor, 347; a lofty thought of, on the sacredness of life, 355.
Babinet, his opinion of a submarine telegraph, 267.
Bacon, on nature reviving--AEsop's damsel, 48; of policy and craft, 65.
Bailly, story told of, 167.
Balzac, his care in composition, 128.
Barbauld, Mrs., passage from, 296; lines by, 356.
Barere, views and conduct early and late in life, 104.
Barry, Michael J., some lines by, 120.
Barton, Bernard, his surprise at a funeral, 156.
Bathurst, Lord, and the Essay on Man, 249.
Baxter, a believer in witchcraft, 250; his views at the end of life, 268; the result, after a trial of worldly things, 326.
Bayle, on Pericles and Aspasia, 41; on the spirit of party, 61; on Machiavelli's Prince, 233; the purity of, 245.
Beattie, Dr., of a witty parson, 43.
Beaumarchais, adaptations of Tarare, 221.
Becket, Thomas a, story of the mother of, 212.
Beckford, and his romance, Vathek, 252.
Bentivoglio, misfortunes of, 262.
Beranger, refuses a legacy, 141.
Berkeley, Bishop, on being master of one's time, 136.
Bernis, Cardinal, and Madame de Pompadour, 268.
Betterton, a borrower from Steele, 169.
Beyle, Henri, a laborious writer, 125.
Beza, one of his invectives, 45; his coarse, amorous poems, 268.
Bible, the, in literature, 161; a reference to, 241.
Billingsgate, fish-woman of, 28.
Blackwood's Magazine on diversity, 5; on the inevitable and irremediable, 91; on public opinion, 361; on the adoring principle in human nature, 368.
Blake, William, artist, genius, mystic, madman, 281.
Blessington, Lady, relating to Moore, 140.
Boileau, an unwearied corrector, 126; relating to Moliere, 149.
Bolingbroke to Swift, 214.
Books never published, 194.
Boots with pointed toes believed to be the cause of the plague, 203.
Borghese, Paulo, poverty of, 261.
Borghese, Princess, anecdote of, 311.
Bossuet, confesses his insignificance, 30; appearance of his manuscript, 129.
Boswell, and intellectual chemistry, 42; on being reckoned wise, 168; the bulwark of Johnson's fame, 190; Johnson's pretended contempt of, 243.
Boyle, effect of falling water upon, 244.
Brackenridge, distrust of moderation natural, 296.
Brahe, Tycho, and the idiot Lep, 228; his terror of a hare or fox, 244.
Brain, insensibility of the, 242.
Bramah, origin of the idea of his lock, 181.
Brewster, Sir David, and the story of the falling apple, 175; on Galileo's abjuration, 223.
Bronte, Charlotte, a painstaking writer, 126; life and genius of, 276, 277, 278.
Brougham, how he composed one of his speeches, 132; a curious fact of, 254.
Brown, John, utterances and incidents of, 113; and the old engine-house, 264; and the governor of Virginia, 264; a daughter of, 265; one of his trusted men, 265.
Brown, Tom, a remark of, 121.
Browne, Sir Thomas, on self-love, 14; confesses his ignorance, 31; on a neglect of the great, 151; on maxims that will never be out of date, 159; his faith in witchcraft, 224; a lofty thought of, on the immortality of life, 355; on usurping the gates of heaven, 366; his distrust of his own judgment, 381.
Bruce, and the story of the spider, 165; death of, 260.
Brunel, a remark of, relating to Pompey's Pillar, 181.
Brunelleschi, and the story of the egg, 166.
Buffon, his manner of composing, 128.
Buelow, effects of his stopping practice, 130.
Bulwer, on truth, 4; anecdote of Kean, 13; relating to Calvin and Torquemada, 46; his description of a superior man, 68; on the English language, 158; on the language of Spain, 158; on La Rochefoucauld, 234; of Descartes, 238; looking from the window of his club, 338; paraphrase from Phaedrus, 374.
Bunsen, dying exclamation of, 387.
Bunyan, wrote Pilgrim's Progress in prison, 135.
Burke, no great fire without great heat, 46; a remark of on idleness, 122; how he worried his printer, 132; at Beaconsfield, 154; his tribute to John Howard, 231; his great care as a writer, 249; his style in youth and old age, 254.
Burnet, Bishop, his estimate of Newton, 107; on Lord Rochester, 236.
Burns, characterizes woman, 3; remarks of and by, 123; his poverty and pride, 137; advised to imitate Mrs. John Hunter, 145; confidence in his own powers, 150; tribute of Hawthorne to, 153; the Scotsman's religion, 174; a complaint of himself, 244; pronounced incapable of music, 263; on sensibility, 314; his constitutional melancholy, 315; lines by, 344; his gospel of charity, 376.
Burton, naught so sweet as melancholy, naught so damned as melancholy, 314; on content and true happiness, 325.
Butler, misery of, 315.
Byron, some lines by, 150; criticises mythology, 187; a peculiarity of, 244.
Caesar, Augustus, his fear of thunder, 244.
Caesar, Julius, the corpse of, 222; ambition of, criticised by Pascal, 353.
Cagliostro, Lavater duped by, 258.
Calamities sometimes blessings, 226.
Caligula and his horse, 99.
Caliph, memorial of an illustrious, 333.
Callcott, his picture of Milton and his daughter, 175.
Calvin, occasional violence of, 45.
Camoens, poverty of, 134, 261.
Campbell, his difficulty in finding a bookseller, 133; Scott and Hohenlinden, 150; and Prof. Wilson, 268.
Candide's supper at Venice with the six kings, 333.
Canova exhibiting his paintings, 261.
Canute, the story of, 166.
Captain of Virginia militia, exclamation of, 119.
Carlyle, legend of Moses and the Dead Sea people, 49; on the effects of custom, 64; fastidiousness as a writer, 130; his opinion of a hero, 232; compares men to sheep, 295.
Cashmere shawls, 180.
Castelar, a republican's opinion of Rome, 307; on the unhappiness of life, 337; pleads for universal toleration, 361.
Cato, how he was estimated by contemporaries, 144; learned Greek after he was seventy, 267.
Cecil, sorrowed in the bright lustre of a court, 334.
Cervantes, poverty of, 134; planned and commenced Don Quixote in prison, 135; a curious fact of, 191; his wretchedness and melancholy, 315.
Chalmers, as to certain of his compositions, 254; and the views of Malthus, 263.
Change, anecdotes and facts illustrating, 9, 10, 11.
Channing, on establishing a new society, 386.
Chapman, Jonathan, known as Johnny Appleseed, 112.
Charlemagne, a story of the daughter of, 165.
Charles I., a story told of, 167.
Charles II., his criticism of Sir Matthew Hale, 3; touching for the evil, 224; and Cromwell, 304; and Wycherley, 304; the name given him by one who knew him, 304; manner of his death, 304; character of, drawn by Macaulay, 306.
Charles XII., of Sweden, anecdote of, 167.
Charity, Christian, a story illustrating, 357.
Chaulnes, Duke de, and Johnson, 370.
Chaumette, devoted to an aviary, 99.
Cheops, ring of, 178.
Chesterfield, a remark on, 190; speeches of, written by Johnson, 248.
Chillingworth, at last confident of nothing, 258.
China, scarcity of labor in, 240.
Chinese rebuke of Christians, 101.
Chrysippus, of misers, 72.
Cicero, of the man and his eggs, 6; his experience at a watering-place, 16; how laboriously he prepared his speeches, 131; the diminutive copy of the Iliad he saw, 178; on universal brotherhood, 185; hunting the tomb of Archimedes, 215; timidity of, 262.
Clairvoyance, very old, 183.
Coal, a man executed for burning it, 202.
Cobbe, Frances Power, on the Christian movement, 370.
Cobbett, revisits the scenes of his boyhood, 220.
Cockburn, Lord, anecdote of Dr. Henry, 80.
Coleridge, one just flogging he received, 21; horrified by the exclamation of a boy, 22; some devil and some god in man, 42; anecdote of a dignified man, 69; on doing good, 93; of traders in philanthropy, 97; project of pantisocracy, 102; fears he has caught the itch, 103; gained little by his writings, 133; what he thought a sufficient income, 138; of Goethe, 147; intellect of, 151; comparison of Shakespeare with Milton, 152; on Shakespeare and Homer, 152; at York minster, 196; a remark of, in one of his lectures, 200; and John Chester, 211; curious facts relating to, 250; and the House that Jack built, 268; on certain smells, 302; his summing up of life, 336; remark on Horne Tooke, 378; remark on toleration, 383.
Columbus, and the egg, 166; fact relating to, 259.
Commodus, tolerant to Christians, 247.
Common sense defined, 7.
Communist, a, defined, 105.
Conciergerie, flirting and love-making in the, 35.
Confucius, describes the conduct of the superior man, 23; his joy in frugality, 136; and the Golden Rule, 185; anecdote of, 373.
Congreve, what the one wise man knew, 32.
Conscience, 22.
Corey, Giles, pressed to death, 60.
Corneille, his poverty, 134; what Napoleon said of him, 153; tiresome in conversation, 260.
Cornwall, Barry, his fear of the sea, 251.
Correggio, no portrait of, 262.
Corwin, Thomas, anecdote of, 168.
Cottle, Joseph, relating to Coleridge, 22; of Coleridge at York minster, 196; lines by, admired by Coleridge, 378.
Couthon, devoted to a spaniel, 99.
Cowley, a curious fact of, 245.
Cowper, his poems and their publisher, 192; his mental malady, 226; the ballad of John Gilpin, 227; the poor school-master, Teedon, 228; his attempt at suicide, 246; his giggling with Thurlow, 246; the sanest of English poets, 254; fancied himself hated by his Creator, 259; a melancholy confession of, 317.
Crabbe, wrote and burned three novels, 259.
Credulity, 20, 224.
Creed, in the biliary duct, 8; referred to in the rebuke of a clergyman, 20.
Crichton, curious achievement of, 264.
Cromwell, his distrust of popular applause, 298; and Charles II., 304; and Milton, 304; how estimated when flattery was mute, 304; manner of his death, 304.
Crowne, John, reading by lightning, 46.
Cumberland, and Sheridan, 9; describes Soame Jenyns, 236; Goldsmith and his comedy, 270; the dinner at the Shakespeare tavern, 271; predicament of an artist in serpents, 300; a reflection on old age, 332; on a man gifted with worldly qualities, 350; remark on Bubb Doddington, 378.
Curing public evils, 25.
Curiosity, 17, 32.
Curran, contest with the fish-woman, 28; remark to Phillips about his speeches, 249; melancholy nature of, 314.
Curtis, George William, castles in Spain, 327.
Cushman, Charlotte, anecdote related by, 35.
Custom, doth make cowards of us all, 64.
Daguerre, his discovery anticipated, 181.
Damascus blades of the Crusades, 180.
Dante, a story told of, 170; the prodigal and the avaricious together, 302.
D'Arblay, Madame, and Mrs. Barbauld's stanza on Life, 356.
Darwin, cattle in East Falkland Island, 10; earthquake at Talcahuano, 17; a curious fox on the island of San Pedro, 18; conduct of the Fuegians, 27; petrified trees on the Andes, 108; conduct of the New Zealand chief, 211; the three years' drought in Buenos Ayres, 222; sound and silence in the forest of Brazil, 301.
D'Alembert, declines the favors of royalty, 141.
De Coverley, Sir Roger, cause of the death of, 373.
De Foe, rules from the Complete English Tradesman, 86.
De l'Isle and the Marseillaise, 205, 248.
Della Valle, conduct of the women at Goa, 34; his own strange conduct, 35.
Demetrius, and his father, 166; a story told of, 167.
Democritus, thought to be a madman, 144.
Demosthenes, gloried in the smell of the lamp, 131; timidity of, 262.
Denham, curious facts relating to, 235; anecdote of, 235.
De Quincey, no thought without blemish, 90; his estimate of Goethe, 146; of Milton, 152.
Descartes, modesty of, 238.
De Retz, statement of, 234.
Desert, painful silence of the, 301.
De Stael, Madame, criticism of Godwin, 98; and Madame Recamier, 172; Talleyrand's reply to, 187; Napoleon's hatred of, 253; mourns the solitude of life, 335.
De Tocqueville, character of the French, 40; remark of an old lady to, 75; story told to by Rulhiere, 77; on old age, 333; some wise observations on life, 341.
Devil, the Reformation and the, 204; the priest and the, 204.
Dickens, his care in composition, 128.
Digby, an illustration from, 11.
Dignity, assumed, described, and satirized, 67, 68, 69, 70.
Diminutive writing and printing, 178.
Diogenes, banished for counterfeiting, 260.
Dionysius, story of, 166.
Disraeli, Isaac, his sketch of Audley, 73; anecdote of, 138; on proverbs, 159; on men of genius, 232.
Disraeli, Benjamin, on the limits of human reason, 62.
Diversity, 4, 5.
Doddington, Bubb, characterized by Cumberland, 378.
Doing good, Lamb on, 89; difficulty of, 93; remark of Coleridge, 93; passages from Thoreau, 93.
Domitian, amused himself catching flies, 263.
Drake, and the origin of the Culprit Fay, 193.
Drummond, the sonorous laugher, 271.
Dryden, criticises the judges of his day, 3; anecdote relating to, 154; a curious fact of, 255.
Duchatel, his poverty and renown, 125.
Dunbar, neglect of the poems of, 199.
Dutch Ambassador and the King of Siam, 101.
Dyer, George, his experience while usher, 88; an associate of Lamb's, 284; his biography of Robinson, 284; his absent-mindedness, 284; anecdotes of, 285, 286.
Eckermann, describes a scene on the Simplon, 350.
Edwards, Jonathan, effect of his work on Original Sin, 56; curious fact relating to, 266.
Egypt, hospitals for cats in, 99; ventilation in the pyramids of, 181; the railroad dates back to, 181; social questions discussed to rags in, 181.
Eldon, Lord, an anecdote he was fond of relating, 76; a remark in old age, 104; and Bessy Surtees, 246; his daughter's elopement, 246; a curious experience of, at Oxford, 246.
Elizabeth, Queen, a curious fact of, 245.
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, passion necessary to revolution, 46.
Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, defines a communist, 105.
Eloquence, a rude specimen of, 313.
Emerson, a man like a bit of Labrador spar, 3; the soul not twin-born, 5; life a series of surprises, 24; confesses his ignorance, 32; on the good of evil, 40; few spontaneous actions, 64; on reforming, 90; is virtue piecemeal? 93; of one that would help himself and others, 105; the martyrdom of John Brown, 119; advantages of riches not with the heir, 121; personal independence, 138; of Shakespeare, 153; of the theory and practice of life, 240; the plant papyrus, 241; relating to Columbus, 259; the difference between the wise and the unwise, 354; effects of an acceptance of the sentiment of love, 359.
Epictetus, on forgiving injuries, 185.
Epicurus, his name a synonym for sensuality, 261; his moderation, 349.
Erasmus, on self-love, 12; two natures in Luther, 47; of the Colloquies of, 193; effect of the smell of fish upon, 244; and Luther, 308; what he said of Luther, 309.
Erskine, a severe corrector, 132.
Essay on Man, curious statement relating to, 249.
Esquirol, effects of occupation, 378.
Euclid, stereoscope known to, 181.
Evelyn, observation on Jeffreys, 189; his argument against solitude, 244.
Evil, ceremony of touching for the, 224.
Extremes, law of, 295; meeting of in morals and legislation, 304.
Fairy's funeral, description of a, 293.
Falstaff, dress to represent, 69.
Faraday, curious fact relating to, 253.
Farrar, legend of St. Brendan and Judas Iscariot, 387; of the purification of souls, 388.
Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius, 247.
Fenelon, and the publication of Telemachus, 193; on a violent zeal that we must correct, 363; anecdotes of, 373.
Fielding, a curious fact relating to, 191; and Richardson, 199; on our faults, and the difficulty of amending them, 338.
Fittleworth, rector of, how he lost his living, 37.
Fitzherbert and Townshend, 211.
Flaxman, of the Graces and the Furies, 10; determines the sex of a statue, 187; strange fact of the wife of, 226.
Foote, how he took off the Dublin printer, 78; a story of, 164; a remark on the death of, 265.
Forster, relating to Goldsmith, 156.
Foster, record of a reflective aged man, 7; analysis of an atheist, 19; story of the devil turned preacher, 43; on self-idolizing dreamers, 91; care in composition, 129; tribute to John Howard, 229; on a violation of the laws of goodness, 240; origin of his essays, 246.
Fournier, devoted to a squirrel, 99.
Fox, fastidious in composition, 126.
Francis, Sir Philip, and Junius, 257.
Franklin, Dr., his advice to the three sages, 367; doubted his own judgment as he grew older, 381.
Frederick the Great, a story told of, 167; and Robespierre, 238.
Frederick William, canes a Jew in a street of Berlin, 51.
Froissart, of a reverend monk, 48.
Froude, terrible story related by, 57; human things and icebergs, 109; a reflection of, applied to John Brown, 119; of fortune and rank, 121; prosperity consistent with worldliness, 349; the Scots a happy people, 350; on putting to death for a speculative theological opinion, 363; how the laity should treat the controversial divines, 367.
Fuller, Margaret, on Goethe, 105; few great, few able to appreciate greatness, 143.
Fuller, Thomas, statement relating to Rabelais, 190; curious fact relating to Wolsey, 224; the Holy Ghost came down not in the shape of a vulture, 359; he shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault, 388.
Fuseli, a habit of in sketching, 2.
Gainsborough, a remark on painting and engraving, 198.
Galileo, ceremony of abjuration, 223; blindness of, 228.
Galt, an observation by, 110; Annals of the Parish, 148.
Garrick, variety of his countenance, 10; a story of his acting, 78; the public grew tired of admiring him, 297.
Gaskell, account of the death of a cock-fighting squire, 38; anecdote of Grimshaw, 55.
Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot, fate of a joint play of, 255.
Gems, imitations of, 177; cabinet of in Italy, 178.
Genius, our obligations to, 161.
Geoffrin, Madame, and Rulhiere, 170.
Gertrud bird, 79.
Giardini, of playing the violin, 130.
Gibbon, his fastidiousness as a writer, 125; review of the series of Byzantine emperors, 219.
Gladstone, interesting reply of, 263.
Glass in Pompeii, 177.
Godwin, Madame de Stael's criticism of, 98; a good husband and kind father, 255; and Rough, 311.