I recollect that one fine night, when he was on deck with some persons who were arguing in favour of materialism, Bonaparte raised his...

We should see this most clearly, if it were possible that some god should carry us away from these haunts of men, and place us somewhere...

The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and somber California, when that man has seen New England’s meadow-expanses and her maples, oaks, and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes very near being funny—would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic. No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The topics are not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beauti

I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence—a little trifle of a centre table—whose top was made of some sort of precious polished stone, and in the stone was inlaid the figure of a flute, with bell-mouth and a mazy complication of keys. No painting in the world could have been softer or richer; no shading out of one tint into another could have been more perfect; no work of art of any kind could have been more faultless than this flute, and yet to count the m

When Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C., the world was old. More significant, the world knew its antiquity. Its scholars had compiled long dynastic lists, and simple addition appeared to prove that kings whose monuments were still visible had ruled more than four millenniums before. Yet earlier were other monarchs, sons of gods and so themselves demigods, whose reigns covered several generations f present-day short-lived men. Even these were preceded, the Egyptians believed, b

I have heard of a gentleman, who underwent seven years’ close confinement, in the Bastille, at Paris. He was a man of sense, he was a thinking man; but, being deprived of all conversation, to what purpose should he think? For he was denied even the instruments of expressing his thoughts in writing. There is no burden so grievous to man as time that he knows not how to dispose of. He was forced at last to have recourse to this invention; he daily scattered pieces of paper abou

E. “Said the Holy One, blessed be he, to her, ‘My daughter, I have created twelve constellations in the sky, and for each constellation, I have created thirty hosts, and for each host, thirty legions, and for each legion, thirty cohorts, and for each cohort, thirty maniples, and for each maniple, thirty camps, and to each camp I have attached three hundred sixty-five thousands of myriads of stars, matching the days of the solar year, and it is only for your sake that I creat

Linus (of Thebes) again was (so it is said) the son of Hermes and the Muse Urania. He composed a poem describing the creation of the world, the courses of the sun and moon, and the growth of animals and plants. His poem begins with the line: