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If you looked into the whole comet-like eccentric orb of the human character; if you compared all the struggling contrariety of principle and of passion; the clashing of opinion and of action, of resolution and of performance; the victories of evil over the propensities to good; if you contrasted the splendid virtue with the disorderly vice; the exalted generosity with the selfish narrowness; the provident bounty with the thoughtless prodigality; the extremes of all that is dignified, with the excesses of all that is abject, would you not exclaim, in the very spirit of Pascal, O! the grandeur and the littleness, the excellence and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness of man!

And to consider the contrariety of mens Opinions, and Manners in generall, It is they say, impossible to entertain a constant Civill Amity with all those, with whom the Businesse of the world constrains us to converse: Which Businesse consisteth almost in nothing else but a perpetuall contention for Honor, Riches, and Authority.

The Nazarene had never harmed the people; far the greater part of them had never seen him except in this his hour of calamity; yet singular contrariety! they loaded him with their curses, and gave their sympathy to the thieves. The supernatural night, dropped thus from the heavens, affected Esther as it began to affect thousands of others braver and stronger.

But if woman be given at times to that contrariety of thought and perversity of mind which sometimes passeth our understanding, it must be recollected in her favor that she was created out of the crookedest part of man. The Rabbins have a different theory regarding creation. They go back to the time when we were all monkeys.

Some others, again, have obtained their denominations by way of antiphrasis, or contrariety; as Absinth, because it is contrary to Psinthos, for it is bitter to the taste in drinking; Holosteon, as if it were all bones, whilst, on the contrary, there is no frailer, tenderer, nor brittler herb in the whole production of nature than it.

Common reason and humanity will have some influence upon mankind, whatever becomes of speculations; but, so far as the interests of virtue depend upon the theory of it being secured from open scorn, so far its very being in the world depends upon its appearing to have no contrariety to private interest and self-love.

Man has ceased to study nature, that he might, recur by thought to a substance which possesses nothing in common with her; this substance he has made the mover of nature, without which she would not be capable of any thing; to whom every thing that takes place in her system, must be attributed; the conduct of this being has appeared mysterious, has been held up as marvellous, because he seemed to be a continual contradiction: when if man had but recurred to the immutability of the laws of nature, to the invariable system she pursues, all would have appeared intelligible; every thing would have been reconciled; the apparent contrariety would have vanished.

But, by a strange contrariety of fate, to Bramante and San Gallo fell respectively the planning and the spoiling of S. Peter's. It was only in extreme old age that Michael Angelo crowned it with that world's miracle, the dome.

He only can say in his vindication that he faithfully determined for a time to govern himself in his second volume by the opinions passed upon his first; but he was soon brought to a stand by the contrariety of excellent counsel.

He has indeed been a real comfort to me under this sad contrariety of events. I have placed Monsieur Le Duc, and the rest of the party, at cards, to send these lines in time pour ton réveil demain. Encore adieu, ma très chère! Write every hour of the day, and send your letters to Mr. Maxwell. "Wednesday morning.