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.

Æschines, of Pericles and Aspasia, 41.

Æsop, 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 Händel, 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—Æsop'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.

Barère, 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 à, story of the mother of, 212.

Beckford, and his romance, Vathek, 252.

Bentivoglio, misfortunes of, 262.

Béranger, 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 Molière, 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.

Brontë, 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.

Bülow, 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 Phædrus, 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.


Cæsar, Augustus, his fear of thunder, 244.

Cæsar, 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.

Camoëns, 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;