Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/249

, and he returns to his natural character and his original tastes. If this were better known, young people would not be made to waste their time uselessly in fitting them for what they never can be.

“I have learned to know a man's star by his face, but not by astrological calculations, as perhaps you fancy; of that trade I have no knowledge. I have been told that the faculty which I possess is much more vague than the astrological art, and I believe it: but mine is good for a great deal, though not for calculating the exact epoch of a man's maladies or death.

“You will ask me how it is possible to know mankind by looking at their features and persons; and so thoroughly too. I answer—a gardener, when he sees twenty bulbs of twenty different flowers on the table before him, will he not tell you that one will remain so many days under ground before it sprouts, then it will grow little by little, very slowly, and in so many days or weeks will flower, and its flowers will have such a smell, such a colour, and such virtues: after so many days more, it will begin to droop and fade, and in ten days will wither: that other, as soon as it is out of the ground, will grow an inch and a half in every twenty-four hours: its flowers will be brilliant, but will have a disagreeable smell; it will bloom for a long time, and then will wither altogether in a day