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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned
with the blow-pipe, and published the result of his experiments
in one of the heaviest folios of the day. And, for all these
purposes, the gem itself could not have answered better than the
granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a
great piece of ice, which he found in a sunless chasm of the
mountains and swore that it corresponded, in all points, with his
idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if his poetry
lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of
the ice. The Lord de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where
he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled,
Twice Told Tales |
