Various

“ The advent of genius is like what florists style the breaking of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors,—ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It is a surprise,— there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find that twice two make five. Nature is fond of what are called "gift-enterprises." ”

“ Thou hadst done best without it, Maya; the Spark abides no other fate but shining. Yet there is a little hope for thee. Wilt thou die of the bitter fire, or wilt thou turn beggar-maid? The sleep that charity lends to its couch shall rest thee; the draught a child brings shall slake thy thirst; the food pity offers shall strengthen and renew. But these are not the gifts a Princess receives; she who gathers them must veil the Crown, shroud the Spark, conceal the Curse, and in torn robes, with bare and bleeding feet, beg the crumbs of life from door to door. Wilt thou take up this trade? ”

“ And here once more we have his shell strung with vibrating thoughts that repeat the harmonies of nature. Once more his broad back stoops to the weighty problems which the planet proposes to its children. Once more the great cities are stormed—by science—beneath his coat of mail. Once more he has run the race, not against the hare only, but the whole animal kingdom, and won it, and with it the new fame which awaits him, as he leads in the long array of his fellows that are to come up, one by one, in these enduring records. ”

“ So she sat down upon a white velvet mushroom and fell to thinking, while Maya, the Princess, looked at her from the rose where she lay, and the Queen, having pushed her down robe safely out of the way, leaned her head on her hand, and very properly cried as much as six tears.
Soon, like a sunbeam, Cordis looked up. "I can give the Princess a counter-charm, Queen Lura," said she,—"but it is not sure. Look you! she will have a lonely life,—for the Spark burns, as well as shines, and the only way to mend that matter is to give the fire better fuel than herself. ”

“ Of all men then living, Crassus was best entitled to command an army employed in fighting revolted slaves. If not the greatest slaveholder in Rome, he was the most systematic of the class of owners, and knew best how to turn the industry of slaves to account. He was the wealthiest citizen of the republic. One can understand how indignant such a person must have felt at the audacity of the gladiator and his followers. As a slaveholder, as a man of property, as a lover of law and order, he was concerned at so very disorderly a spectacle as that of slaves subverting all the laws of the republic ”

“ This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.
"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I continued, "Simon, she told me wonderful things tonight, or rather was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!" ”

“ Who shall bid her move on? Mamoul has crowned her Queen of Tears, and her sublime patience and appealing have made a throne of the wayside stone on which she sits; there is no power so audacious that it would give the word to depose her; her matted gray locks and her furrowed cheeks, her sunken eyes and her hungry lips, are her "sacred ashes" of the high caste of Sorrow.
The Brahmin averts his face as he passes, and mutters, "She is as the flower which is out of reach,—she is dedicated to God." That insolent official, the Baboo's pampered durwan, sees in her only Mamoul ”

“ This Baboo comes, this Baboo rides,—he stops not, he stays not,—he is rich, he is honored. Shall a pig impede him? Shall a pig delay him? Jump, sooa. Jump!"
And thus, amid much vociferation, and unceremonious dispersing of the common herd, who dodge with practised agility right and left, the fat and elaborate coachman pulls up the spanking Arabs at our godown gate, and the Baboo alights with the air of a gentleman of thirty lachs, to the manner born; to him all this outcry is but Mamoul,—usage, custom,—and Mamoul is to him as air. ”

“ Not Cortés, not General Scott, himself, marched more gloriously along the steep and rugged road that leads from the sea-coast to the table-land, than did this son of song. Every city on his line of march was the monument of a victory, and from each one he levied tribute and bore spoils away. And the vanquished thanked him for this spoiling of their goods.
Arrived at the splendid city, at that time the largest and most populous on the North American continent, he speedily made himself master of it, a welcome conqueror. ”

“ A convulsive thrill ran through Simon's limbs. I heard a smothered sound issue from his throat, precisely like the bursting of a large air-bubble, sent up by a diver, when it reaches the surface of the water; he turned half round on his side, and as if to assist my plans more effectually, his right hand, moved by some more spasmodic impulse, clasped the handle of the creese, which it remained holding with extraordinary muscular tenacity. Beyond this there was no apparent struggle. The laudanum, I presume, paralyzed the usual nervous action. He must have died instantaneously. ”

“ When the student has once found them out, he laughs at the pretensions of erudition, and strides gayly up and down great libraries, feeling that the most blustering folio of them all will turn as pale as if it were bound in law-calf, if he only lay his hand on its shoulder.
Nor, lastly, can any elevation of aim, any thirst for the divine springs of knowledge, enable a man to dispense with the sober habits of observation and the positive acquirements that must give him the stamina to attempt the higher flights of thought. The eagle's wings are nothing without his pectoral muscles. ”

“ I would have given my own to enjoy one such moment of intoxication and delight.
Breathless with gazing on this lovely wonder, and forgetful for an instant of everything save her presence, I withdrew my eye from the microscope eagerly,—alas! As my gaze fell on the thin slide that lay beneath my instrument, the bright light from mirror and from prism sparkled on a colorless drop of water! There, in that tiny bead of dew, this beautiful being was forever imprisoned. The planet Neptune was not more distant from me than she. I hastened once more to apply my eye to the microscope. ”

“ Such a man was Aristotle. The slender and close-shaven fop, with the showy mantle on his ungraceful person and the costly rings on his fingers, who hung on the lips of Plato for twenty years, and trained the boy of Macedon to whatever wisdom he possessed,—whose life was set by destiny between the greatest of thinkers and the greatest of conquerors,—seems to have borrowed the intellect of the one and the universal aspirations of the other. But because he invaded every realm of knowledge, it must not be thought he dealt with Nature at second-hand. ”

“ She wondered whether Cornelia and Helen would be ashamed of knowing a milliner's apprentice, if they should chance to see her in Hartford.
What would her schoolmates say? and would her hero despise a girl that worked for a livelihood? Then she whimpered a little, thinking how lonesome she would be, for a while, among strangers; but it was a kind of lamentation that differed widely from the frantic weeping of the morning. Then, all at once, a doubt began to depress her new-born hopes. Could she get a place? She was a stranger in Hartford, and beyond that city she dared not send her thoughts. ”

“ Why, my dear, there are a hundred girls in this town, many of whom excel you in everything which men think desirable in a wife, except, perhaps, the poor, perishable quality of beauty,— girls of good family, rich, or likely to be so, intelligent, well educated, some of them, to say the least, almost as pretty as you, any one of whom would think herself honored by this offer which you despise; for most people are aware that to be a minister's wife, in New England, is, my dear, to occupy, as I have just said, the very summit of the social structure. ”

“ Still, let us recognize the limitation, and not forget that the pursuit which may be fitting and praiseworthy toil for one class of minds may be ignoble indolence for another. We must remember, on the other hand, that, however humble may be the intellectual position of the man of science or knowledge, in distinction from wisdom, the results of his labors may be of the highest importance. The most ignorant laborer may get a stone out of the quarry, and the poorest slave unearth a diamond. ”

“ These are the three great questions that arise in the soul of every race and of every thinking being. He who looks at either of them with the least new light, though he whisper what he sees ever so softly, has the world to listen to him. No matter how he got his knowledge nor what he calls it; it belongs to mankind. But "Science" has been mainly engaged with another question, in itself of very inferior interest, namely, How?
We must be permitted to speak of "Science" in our freest capacity, and will endeavor not to abuse our liberty. ”

“ Queen Lura tried to faint,—she knew it was proper,—and the grand-equerry rang all the palace bells in a row. Anima gave no glance at the little Princess, who still sat upright in Mrs. Lita's petrified arms, but went proudly from the hall alone.
The flower-fairies dropped their wands with one sonorous clang upon the floor, and with bitter sighs and wringing hands flitted one after another to the portal, bewailing, as they went, their wasted gifts and powers.
"Why should I give her beauty?" cried the Fairy Rose; "all eyes will be dazzled with the Spark; who will know on what form it shines?" ”

“ We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. ”

“ It is probable that justice has never been done to Crassus as a military man. Roman writers were not likely to deal fairly with a man who closed his career so fatally to himself, and so disgracefully in every way to his country. It was his misfortune— a misfortune of his own creating—to lead the finest Roman army that had ever been seen in the East to destruction, in an unjust attack on the Parthians. Had he succeeded, the injustice of his course would have been overlooked by his countrymen; but they never could forgive his defeat. ”