trunk and organs shall be so much the grosser: instead of porcelain,
they are potter's earth, clay, or mud.

In modern times, no such remarkable example of this introverted mind
has occurred, as in Emanuel Swedenborg, born in Stockholm, in 1688.
This man, who appeared to his contemporaries a visionary, and elixir
of moonbeams, no doubt led the most real life of any man then in the
world: and now, when the royal and ducal Frederics, Cristierns, and
Brunswicks, of that day, have slid into oblivion, he begins to spread
himself into the minds of thousands. As happens in great men, he seemed,
by the variety and amount of his powers, to be a composition of several
persons,--like the giant fruits which are matured in gardens by the
union of four or five single blossoms. His frame is on a larger scale,
and possesses the advantage of size. As it is easier to see the
reflection of the great sphere in large globes, though defaced by some
crack or blemish, than in drops of water, so men of large calibre,
though with some eccentricity or madness, like Pascal or Newton, help
us more than balanced mediocre minds.

His youth and training could not fail to be extraordinary. Such a boy
could not whistle or dance, but goes grubbing into mines and mountains,
prying into chemistry and optics, physiology, mathematics, and
astronomy, to find images fit for the measure of his versatile and
capacious brain. He was a scholar from a child, and was educated at
Upsala. At the age of twenty-eight, he was made Assessor of the Board
of Mines, by Charles XII. In 1716, he left home for four years, and
visited the universities of England, Holland, France, and Germany. He
performed a notable feat of engineering in 1718, at the siege of
Fredericshall, by hauling two galleys, five boats, and a sloop, some
fourteen English miles overland, for the royal service. In 1721 he