When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora's box. "What! all!" said the Prince. "Yes, all." "No," said the Prince; "curiosity must have been without.

René of Anjou [(1409-80)] painted a picture of his mistress's corpse as he found it eaten by worms on having it [her tomb] openedon his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This [is] another instance of the strange mixture of religion and gallantry in those ages.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.

At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions of Baalbec and Palmyra.

I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.