Rising the next morning, he crossed the street, and passed up-stairs to his library.  The door was fastened; he applied the key, opened it, and entered.  No one was there; everything appeared in precisely the same condition in which he had left it the evening before,—­his pen lying upon the paper as he had dropped it on going out, the candles on the table and the mantel-piece evidently not having been lighted, the window-curtains drawn aside as he had left them; in fine, there was not a single trace of any person’s having been in the room.  “Had he been insane the night before?  He must have been.  He was growing old; something was the matter with his eyes or brain; anyhow, he had been deceived, and it was very foolish of him to have remained away all night.”  Endeavoring to satisfy his mind with some such reflections as these, he remembered he had not yet examined his bed-room.  Almost ashamed to make the search, now convinced it was all an hallucination of the senses, he crossed the narrow passageway and opened the door.  He was thunderstruck.  The ceiling, a lofty, massive brick arch, had fallen during the night, filling the room with rubbish and crushing his bed into atoms.  De Wette the Apparition had saved the life of the great German scholar.

Tholuck, who was walking with me in the fields near Halle when relating the anecdote, added, upon concluding, “I do not pretend to account for the phenomenon; no knowledge, scientific or metaphysical, in my possession, is adequate to explain it; but I have no more doubt it actually, positively, literally did occur, than I have of the existence of the sun im Himmel da.”

CULTURE.

The word of ambition at the present day is Culture.  Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success.  A man is the prisoner of his power.  A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar.  Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers.  It watches success.  For performance Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the performer to get it done,—­makes a dropsy or a tympany of him.  If she wants a thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any excess of power in one part is usually paid for at once by some defect in a contiguous part.

Our efficiency depends so much on our concentration, that Nature usually, in the instances where a marked man is sent into the world, overloads him with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working power.  It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.  If she create a policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions and of plots to circumvent them.  “The air,” said