WeRead
Powered by ReaderPub
A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.
When Morusi, the Interpreter of the Ottoman Porte, was ordered to be beheaded, the Sultan Mahmoud, being desirous of seeing his blood flow, expressly forbade the executioner letting the axe fall till he perceived a certain blind of the harem drawn up; and he had the cruelty to allow the wretched Morusi to wait a whole hour in this dreadful situation before he gave the appointed signal. Buonaparte repeated this anecdote as an “affaire de jalousie.”