It seems as if the first words of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”— “In nova fert animus” — were the emblem of mankind. No one is touched with the admirable spectacle of the sun which rises or seems to rise every day; but everybody runs at the smallest meteor which appears for a moment in the map of vapors which surround the earth, and which we call heaven. We despise whatever is common, or which has been long known:

Vilia sunt nobis qu?cumque prioribus annis

Vidimus, et sordet quidquid spectavimus olim.

A hawker will not burden himself with a “Virgil” or a “Horace,” but with a new book, were it ever so detestable. He draws you aside and says to you: “Sir, will you have some books from Holland?”

From the commencement of ............