Recently added books

Louis Lambert

Creator: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850
Translator: -
Contributor: -
Editor: -


Brand new books:


the confidence and respect he inspired. For whole days he would sit immovable in his armchair. This state of rapt meditation often came upon him since his wife's death; he had been attached to her in the truest and most faithful affection. This discussion was held in his presence, but he did not seem to give much heed to it. "My children," said he, when he was asked for his opinion, "this is too serious a matter for me to decide on alone. I must go and consult my wife." The old man rose, took his stick, and went out, to the great astonishment of the others, who thought him daft. He presently came back and said: "I did not have to go so far as the graveyard; your mother came to meet me; I found her by the brook. She tells me that you will find some receipts in the hands of a notary at Blois, which will enable you to gain your suit." The words were spoken in a firm tone; the old man's demeanor and countenance showed that such an apparition was habitual with him. In fact, the disputed receipts were found, and the lawsuit was not attempted.
The Vale of Cedars

THE VALE OF CEDARS; or, The Martyr BY GRACE AGUILAR, AUTHOR OF "HOME INFLUENCE," "WOMAN'S FRIENDSHIP," ETC. 1851 "The wild dove hath her nest--the fox her cave-- Mankind their country--Israel but the grave." BYRON.
This event, under his father's roof and to his own knowledge, when Louis was nine years old, contributed largely to his belief in Swedenborg's miraculous visions, for in the course of that philosopher's life he repeatedly gave proof of the power of sight developed in his Inner Being. As he grew older, and as his intelligence was developed, Lambert was naturally led to seek in the laws of nature for the causes of the miracle which, in his childhood, had captivated his attention. What name can be given to the chance which brought within his ken so many facts and books bearing on such phenomena, and made him the principal subject and actor in such marvelous manifestations of mind? If Lambert had no other title to fame than the fact of his having formulated, in his sixteenth year, such a psychological dictum as this:--"The events which bear witness to the action of the human race, and are the outcome of its intellect, have causes by which they are preconceived, as our actions are accomplished in our minds before they are reproduced by the outer man; presentiments or predictions are the perception of these causes"--I think we may deplore in him a genius equal to Pascal, Lavoisier, or Laplace. His chimerical notions about angels perhaps overruled his work too long; but was it not in trying to make gold that the alchemists unconsciously created chemistry? At the same time, Lambert, at a later period, studied comparative anatomy, physics, geometry, and other sciences bearing on his discoveries, and this was undoubtedly with the purpose of collecting