Fato, Fortuna, Predestinazione,
Sorte, Caso, Ventura, son di quelle
Cose che dan gran noja a le persone,
E vi si dicon su di gran novelle.
Ma in fine Iddio d'ogni cose é padrone:
E chi é savio domina a le stelle;
Chi non é savio paziente e forte,
Lamentisi di se, non de la sorte.
ORL. INN.
“Pappa, it's a breathless chapter!” says one whose eyes when they are turned toward me I never meet without pleasure, unless sorrow has suffused them, or illness dimmed their light.
Nobody then can give so much effect to it in reading aloud as the Lord Chancellor Brougham and Vaux, he having made a speech of nine hours long upon the state of the law and thereby proved himself to be the most long-winded of living men. And fit it is that he should be so; for there are very few men to whom whether he be right or wrong, it can be so well worth while to listen.
Yet give me space a while for to respire,
And I myself shall fairly well out-wind.1
1 HENRY MORE.
For I have read no idle or unprofitable lesson in this remuneration. Were we thus to retrace the course of our own lives, there are few of us who would not find that that course had been influenced, and its most important events brought about, by incidents which might seem as casually or capriciously connected as the seventeen links of this mental chain. Investigate any thing backward through seventeen generations of motives, or moving causes, whether in private, or in public life: see from what slight and insignificant circumstances friendships have originated, and have been dissolved; by what accidents the choice of a profession, or of a wife, have been determined, and on how inconsiderable a point the good or ill fortune of a life has depended;—deaths, marriages, wealth or poverty, opinions more important than all other things, as in their consequence affecting our happiness not only here but hereafter; victories and defeats, war and peace, change of ministries and of dynasties, revolutions, the overthrow of thrones, the degradation and the ruin and the destruction and the disappearance of nations! Trace any of these backward link by link, and long before we are lost in the series of causes, we shall be lost in thought and in wonder; so much will there be to humble the pride of man, to abate his presumption, and to call for and confirm his faith.
On dit que quand les Chinois, qui n'ont pas l'usage des horologes, commencerent à voir ces rouës, ces balanciers, ces volans, ces contrepoids, et tout l'attirail de ces grandes machines, considerant les pieces à part et comme desmembrées, ils n'en firent pas grand estat, pource qu'ils ne sçavoient à quel usage devoient servir toutes ces pieces: mais comme elles furent montées, et qu'ils oüyrent les heures sur le tymbre, ils furent si surpris d'estonnement, qu'ils s'assembloient à trouppes pour voir le mouvement de l'aiguille, et pour entendre les heures; et appellerent ces machines en leur langue, LE FER QUI PARLE. Je dis que qui considera les parties de la Providence Divine comme desmembrées et à piece, tant de ressorts, tant d'accordans divers, tant d'evenemens qui nous semblent casuels, ne se pourra jamais imaginer la beauté de cette machine, la sagesse de cette Providence, la conduitte de ce grand corps; à cause qu'on fait tort à un ouvrage fait à la Mosaíque de le voir à lambeaux; il le faut voir monté et rangé par le menu pour marquer sa beauté. Mais quand on entend l'heure qui sonne sur le tymbre, on commence à cognoistre qu'il y avoit au dedans une belle et agreable police qui paroist au dehors par la sonnerie. Ainsi en est il à peu pres de la vie d'un homme.2
2 GARASSE.