'Many men, many minds;' so runs the adage. About the year 1839, a work, 'Le mariage au point de vue chrétien' was published by Madame Gasparin. The French Academy awarded a prize to the authoress for her book, but at the very same time it was inscribed by the church in the Index Expurgatorius as a prohibited treatise: such being one among the innumerable instances of difference of opinion. The disappointment of writers, too, would fill a long catalogue: there are extravagant expectations in literature as well as in mines and railways. In 1836, one M. Châtel published the 'Code de l'humanité,' which was to regenerate society. He announced himself as Primate of the Gauls, drew around him a few disciples, who remained faithful during fifteen years, when the delusion came suddenly to an end--the primate had become a postmaster. Some books, like human beings, come into the world with fortune for their nurse, others encounter difficulties at the very outset, and barely escape strangulation. According to Pliny, several thousand men were placed at the service of Aristotle during the time that his great work was in preparation, to furnish him with information and observations on all sorts of natural objects--men whose business it was to take care of cattle, fishing-grounds, and apiaries. The monarch under whose auspices it was composed gave him 800 talents (L.79,000) towards the expenses. Was ever a book brought out under more favourable circumstances? When Amari wrote his history of Sicily, he submitted it to the censorship at Palermo, and obtained leave to publish. The permission from some cause was, however, revoked before the work appeared, and the author received orders to send the whole of the copies to the police. Unwilling to make such a sacrifice, he packed the books in a case, and shipped them on board a French vessel, and at the same time sent a similar case to the authorities filled with vegetables and rubbish. He then, with a false passport, sailed for Marseilles, and eventually published his book at Paris with the imprint 'Palermo' on the title-page. It has since gone through a second edition. Some writers have said the inventing of a title, or composing of a preface, cost them more trouble or thought than any other part of their work; it might not be unfair to suppose that the subject-matter was very indifferent, or the preface very good. True it is, however, that many books do exhibit strange freaks of invention on the part of their authors, as a few specimens will exemplify. In 'The Arte of Vulgar Arithmeticke,' published in 1600 by Thomas Hylles, we find 'the partition of a shilling into his aliquot parts' thus exhibited:--