They were projected as small things, yet had finally to be provided for as comparative monsters.

That is my own title for them, though I should perhaps resent it if applied by another critic--above all in the case of the piece before us, the careful measure of which I have just freshly taken.

The result of this consideration has been in the first place to render sharp for me again the interest of the whole process thus illustrated, and in the second quite to place me on unexpectedly good terms with the work itself.

As I scan my list I encounter none the "history" of which embodies a greater number of curious truths--or of truths at least by which I find contemplation more enlivened.

The thing done and dismissed has ever, at the best, for the ambitious workman, a trick of looking dead, if not buried, so that he almost throbs with ecstasy when, on an anxious review, the flush of life reappears.