And now how narrow, scanty, and meagre is the record of observations, compared with the immensity that was to be observed within the bounds which I prescribed to myself! How shallow and thin a stream of thought, too,--of distinct and expressed thought,--compared with the broad tide of dim emotions, ideas, associations, which were flowing through the haunted regions of imagination, intellect, and sentiment,--sometimes excited by what was around me, sometimes with no perceptible connection with them! When we see how little we can express, it is a wonder that any man ever takes up a pen a second time. * * * * * To find all sorts of ridiculous employments for people that have nothing better to do;--as to comb out the cows' tails, shave goats, hoard up seeds of weeds, etc., etc. * * * * * The baby, the other day, tried to grasp a handful of sunshine. She also grasps at the shadows of things in candle-light. * * * * * To typify our mature review of our early projects and delusions, by representing a person as wandering, in manhood, through and among the various castles in the air that he had reared in his youth, and describing how they look to him,--their dilapidation, etc. Possibly some small portion of these structures may have a certain reality, and suffice him to build a humble dwelling in which to pass his life. * * * * * The search of an investigator for the unpardonable sin: he at last finds it in his own heart and practice. * * * * * The trees reflected in the river;--they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near them. So are we. * * * * * The unpardonable sin might consist in a want of love and reverence for the human soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths,--not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold, philosophical curiosity,--content that it should be wicked in whatever kind and degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart? * * * * * There are some faces that have no more expression in them than any other part of the body. The hand of one person may express more than the face of another. * * * * * An ugly person with tact may make a bad face and figure pass very tolerably, and more than tolerably. Ugliness without tact is horrible. It ought to be lawful to extirpate such wretches. * * * * *