exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see our evil
affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On the Alps
the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow magnified
to a giant, so that every gesture of his hand is terrific.
"My children," said an old man to his boys scared by a
figure in the dark entry, "my children, you will never
see any thing worse than yourselves." As in dreams, so in
the scarcely less fluid events of the world every man sees
himself in colossal, without knowing that it is himself.
The good, compared to the evil which he sees, is as his
own good to his own evil. Every quality of his mind is
magnified in some one acquaintance, and every emotion of
his heart in some one. He is like a quincunx of trees,
which counts five,--east, west, north, or south; or an
initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. And why not? He
cleaves to one person and avoids another, according to
their likeness or unlikeness to himself, truly seeking
himself in his associates and moreover in his trade and
habits and gestures and meats and drinks, and comes at
last to be faithfully represented by every view you take
of his circumstances.

He may read what he writes. What can we see or acquire
but what we are? You have observed a skilful man reading
Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a
thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands and
read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. If
any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom
or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is
Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews' tongue.