Paracelsus, persecution of, 201.
Paradise and Paris, 308.
Paradise Lost, slow sale of, 133.
Park, Mungo, and the sable chief, 27.
Pascal, of vanity, 13;
on our love of wearing disguises, 66;
maxims of conduct, 159;
twenty days perfecting one letter, 126;
vanity of the world, 240;
Solomon and Job on human misery, 337;
the present never the mark of our designs, 339;
a great advantage of rank, 353;
remark on the ambition of Cæsar, 353;
the two extremities of knowledge, 354;
maxims and first principles subject to revolution, 360;
the choice of a profession, 377.
Paul, St., effects of his preaching at Ephesus, 362.
Paul, Jean, a curious fact about sheep, 296;
his comic romance, Nicholas Margraf, 318.
Paul and Virginia, pronounced a failure, 148;
origin of an English translation of, 248.
Payne, and Home, Sweet Home, 205.
Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, 249.
Penn, a curious statement relating to, 257.
Pepys, his opinion of Hudibras, 146;
the poor widow in Holland, 325.
Pericles and Aspasia, 41.
Persian, passage from the, 344.
Persius, chastity and modesty of, 261.
Peruvian bark, an invention of the devil, 201.
Peterborough, of Fénelon, 373.
Petrarch, his sonnets, 190;
despised Dante, 199;
a curious fact of, 253;
an exclamation of, 355.
Petrified trees in the Andes, 108.
Phædrus, apologue of the two sacks, 374.
Phidias, his reported service to Pericles, 41;
his sitting statue of Jupiter, 261.
Philanthropic man, a, not a philanthropist, 113.
Philanthropists, malicious, anecdotes of, 96, 97.
Philanthropy, traders in, wrong in head or heart, 97.
Philip III. and Don Quixote, 314.
Phillips, Wendell, on borrowing in literature, 162;
on the lost arts, 177;
curious statements relating to, 237.
Philosophy, molecular, 6.
Pitt, authorship of a famous speech of, 248.
Plague, curious superstitions as to the cause of the, 203.
Plato, evidence of great care in the composition of his Republic, 125;
accused of envy, lying, etc., 144;
timidity of, 262.
Playfair, a strange fact of, 258.
Plays of the stage and of literature, 207.
Pliny, opinion of the Christian religion, 266;
questions nature, 337;
a custom of the Thracians, 339.
Plutarch, of self-love, 13;
without a biography, 262;
strange omission of, 265;
learned Latin after he was seventy, 267;
on the universality of religion, 368.
Poe, of God and the soul, 32;
and the Swedenborgians, 188;
the grand duke of Weimar's criticism of the Raven, 317;
lines by, 329;
what he thought a strong argument for the religion of Christ, 359.
Pompadour, Madame de, and Cardinal Bernis, 268;
her life an improbable romance, 336.
Pompey, career and end of, 222.
Pontifical army, soldiers of the, 241.
Pope, of every year of a wise man's life, 8;
opinion of Newton, 107;
an unwearied corrector, 126;
tradition of at Twickenham, 154;
anecdote of, 168;
Johnson's Latin version of his Messiah, 176;
and Gay and Arbuthnot, fate of a joint play of, 255;
timidity of, 262.
Poussin, reply to a person of rank, 121;
story told of, 175;
reply to Cardinal Mancini, 349.
Poverty, fine horror of, 73;
and parts, 121;
necessary to success 121;
amusing evidence of, 124.
Prayer, the, said to have been in use by the Jews
for four thousand years, 185.
Preaching, remarks of Thoreau on, 94;
Lincoln's horror of being preached to, 94;
virtue takes no pupils, 95.
Presbyterian Holdenough and Episcopalian Rochecliffe, 366.
Prescott, of the Aztec priests, 33;
a statement of, 240.
Procter, of Lamb's tragedy, 272.
Protogenes, and Apelles, 171.
Prout, Father, and Moore, 176.
Psalmanazar and Johnson, 250.
Public opinion, 71, 361.
Publius Syrus, sayings of, 48, 158, 226.
Puritanism in New England, 36.
Pyramids, story of the erection of one of them, 253.
Pythagoras, a curious statement relating to, 250.
Rabelais, a strange fact relating to, 190;
knew Rome, 308.
Racine and Louis XIV., 134.
Radbod, at the baptismal font, 100;
declines the Christian's heaven, 100.
Radcliffe, Mrs., an interesting fact of, 255.
Railroads and rain, 209.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 135.
Randolph, John, his first public speech, 264.
Raphael, story of and Michel Angelo, 171;
his Transfiguration, 197.
Rawlinson, the stone he brought from Nineveh, 179.
Récamier, Madame, and Madame de Staël, 172;
sits and muses on the shore of the ocean, 336.
Reformers, stories of, 96, 97.
Reign of Terror, incident during the, 40.
Religion, a subject proscribed in general society, 242;
if charity were made the principle of it instead of faith, 357;
two religions, the religion of amity and the religion of enmity, 365.
Renous and his caterpillars, 267.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, story related of, 174;
his colors fading, 179;
inquires in the Vatican for the works of Raphael, 197;
critical remark of, 197;
and Hogarth, 197;
his portrait of Bott, alongside of Goldsmith, 200.
Richard Cœur de Lion and Saladin, 180.
Richardson, man's resemblance to a statue made to stand against a wall, 2.
Right, too rigid, hardens into wrong, 96.
Robertson, F. W., from his sermon on the Tongue, 365.
Robertson, advised against writing his history of Charles V., 148.
Robespierre, defends Franklin's lightning-rods, 203;
and Frederick, 238;
what was found in his desk, 256;
Madame Roland to, 298.
Robinson, Henry Crabb, his partiality for the Book of Revelation, 20;
how he reconciled himself to his ignorance, 29;
rebuke of spiritual pride, 52;
the Mahometan's heaven and the Christian's hell, 55;
his opinion of Edwards' Original Sin, 56;
Jeffrey's portrait, 189;
at the Fountain of Arethusa, 302.
Robinson, Robert, remark of relating to the Trinity, 20;
Dyer's biography of, 284.
Rochester, Lord, the last year of the life of, 236.
Rodgers, Judge, the dying Scotsman's tribute to Burns, 174.
Rogers, his care in composition, 129;
his proposition to Wordsworth, 137;
remark on Sydney Smith, 151;
anecdote of relating to Dryden, 154;
amusing incident of, 155;
pretty story of a little girl, 359.
Roland, Madame, to Robespierre, 298.
Rollo, Duke of Normandy, story told of, 165.
Roman emperor, curious use of the marble head of a, 302.
Romanianus, with only a name, 262.
Rome, a bitter republican's opinion of, 307.
Rösch, on effects of occupation on the mind, 378.
Rough and Godwin, 311.
Rousseau, a saying of, 103;
and Voltaire, 198;
cause of his cynicism, 245;
a painstaking writer, 248;
fancied himself the object of all men's hatred, 259;
his preaching and his practice, 268.
Rubens, a complaint of, 30.
Rulhière, story of a Russian friend of, 77;
and Madame Geoffrin, 170;
guilty of only one wickedness, 375.
Ruskin to his students, 179.
Russell, Lord John, his definition of a proverb, 159.
Rutherford, Samuel, and Archbishop Usher, 357.
Saadi, the traveler and the bag of pearls, 122;
description of a drink, 184;
verse of the elephant-driver, 372;
reply of the piece of scented clay, 373;
Abraham and the old man who worshiped the fire only, 387.
Sachs, of earth and heaven, 325.
Sainte-Beuve, fastidiousness as a writer, 126.
Saint Simon, story of two sisters, 34;
of the dying duchess, 75.
Saladin and Richard Cœur de Lion, 180.
Sanson, the hereditary executioner, 259.
Saurin, advice to Montesquieu, 148.
Savage, corrects a lady's judgment of Thomson, 188;
tribute of Johnson to, 236;
with Johnson all night in London streets, 243.
Saxe, Marshal, his terror of a cat, 244.
Scaliger, his opinion of Montaigne, 147;
a peculiarity of, 244;
difficulty in communicating his knowledge, 258.
Scaramouche, snuff of a thousand flowers, 300.
Scargill, of the English, Scotch and Irish, 302.
Scarron, wretchedness of, 320.
Schedone, of a painting by, 326.
Schiller, Indian Death Song, 147;
Joan of Arc, Don Carlos, and Tell, 174;
the scent of rotten apples a necessity to, 244;
a curious fact relating to, 251.
Scott, story of a placid minister near Dundee, 50;
how estimated by his neighbors, 144;
failure of Waverley predicted, 148;
Campbell and Hohenlinden, 150;
Burns and the mouse, 150;
meeting of Richard and Saladin, 180;
how he discovered his talents, 191;
the authorship of Old Mortality, 201;
never saw Melrose Abbey by moonlight, 251;
remarkable industry of, 266;
a sad bit of self-portraiture, 317;
a strange fact relating to the Bride of Lammermoor, 318.
Scott, General, a sculptor's story of, 173.
Seeing, limits to, 12;
action of seeing outward, 12.
Selden, a remark on marriage, 240.
Selwyn, his reply on being charged with a want of feeling, 53;
of vices becoming necessities, 65.
Seneca, an usurer with seven millions, 245;
a maxim of, 349.
Shakespeare, Johnson's tribute to, 152.
Sharp, on the difficulty of doing good, 22.
Shelley, sighs to Leigh Hunt, 357.
Shenstone, splendid misery of, 246.
Sheridan, sarcasm upon Cumberland, 8;
fastidiousness as a writer, 127;
how he elaborated his wit, 129;
a curious fact of, 267.
Sherlock, consolation for the shortness of life, 332.
Siddons, Mrs., confesses her ignorance, 30.
Sidney, Algernon, remark of Evelyn relating to, 189.
Silenus, of Jove and Mercury, 92.
Simonides, replies to Hiero, 31, 348;
fable of the crab and the snake, 364.
Small-pox, goddess of, worshiped and burned in China, 36.
Smith, Adam, a laborious writer, 129.
Smith, Sydney, how he was cured of shyness, 15;
his objection to Scotch philosophers, 93;
advice to the Bishop of New Zealand, 99;
the Suckling Act, 103;
remark to his brother, 169;
a phrenologist pronounces him a great naturalist, 188;
authorship of the Plymley Letters, 201;
resorted to Dante for solace, 267;
on getting human beings together who ought to be together, 341.
Smollett and his dependents, 199;
private character of, 245.
Socrates, reply to Menon, 6;
the hardest of all trades, 25;
called illiterate, 144;
to his judges, 174;
idolatry of, 243;
timidity of, 262;
a poor accountant, 263;
learned music after he was seventy, 267;
enlargement of a thought of, 374.
Solomon, there is no new thing, 186;
his wicked son, 247;
what he said of laughter, 314.
Somerset, duke of, 69.
Sophocles, considered a lunatic, 144.
Soul, purification of the, illustrated by the old coin, 388.
Southey, story of Vergara and the seventh commandment, 17;
to Cottle of the meanness of an Englishman at Lisbon, 88;
not ashamed of his radicalism, 104;
declines the editorship of the Times, 141;
unknown to his neighbors, 145;