Chapter VIII.
"In all the declarations and allusions of the Eternal Truth this present earthly nature is spoken of as the battle-place of invisible powers, the debatable ground on which the two armies of good and evil spirits and elements are posted in hostile array against each other and perpetually coming into collision."—Schlegel.
"The shadow of a dream."—Shakespeare.
"In dreams we are true poets: we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover, they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say."—Emerson.
"A jewel in a ten-times-barred chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast."—Shakespeare.
"I have a thousand spirits in one breast, to answer twenty thousand such as you."—Id.
"Let us fear the native mightiness and fate of him."—Id.
"You fools,
I and my fellows are ministers of fate."—Id.
"A figure of sufficient impressiveness; not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so; massive stature; big massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect, 'evident workshop and store-house of a vast treasury of natural parts.'"—Carlyle.
"And forasmuch as I suppose some strangers, who happily shall chance to read these writings, may wonder what should be the reason that when my style is diverted to show those things that were done in Rome I relate nothing but of seditions, taverns, and such like base matters, I will summarily touch the causes hereof."—Amiane.
"These are the periods when fair -weather philosophers are willing to venture out, and hazard a little for the general good. But the history of human nature is so contrary to all this, that almost all improvements are made after the bitterest resistance, and in the midst of tumults and civil violence,—the worst period at which they can be made, compared to which
119
