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Cornugaya Directory 01
Page 05
Handel, of course, is Madame Patey. Give Madame Patey Handel's wig
and clothes, and there would be no telling her from Handel. It is
not only that the features and the shape of the head are the same,
but there is a certain imperiousness of expression and attitude
about Handel which he hardly attempts to conceal in Madame Patey.
It is a curious coincidence that he should continue to be such an
incomparable renderer of his own music. Pope Julius II. was the
late Mr. Darwin. Rameses II. is a blind woman now, and stands in
Holborn, holding a tin mug. I never could understand why I always
found myself humming "They oppressed them with burthens" when I
passed her, till one day I was looking in Mr. Spooner's window in
the Strand, and saw a photograph of Rameses II. Mary Queen of Scots
wears surgical boots and is subject to fits, near the Horse Shoe in
Tottenham Court Road.
And thus the mystery of life is again repeated. The union of the
living, microscopic bodies of the fertilizing principle with the new
laid egg is followed by the growth of the two elements into a living
creature, able to eat, to breathe, to see, to feel. In some unknown
way the atom of fertilizing principle seems to have contained the
whole life of the father-frog, for it can give to his sons and
daughters any of his peculiarities, either of color, form, motion, or
disposition; and the tiny egg seems to have contained the whole life
of the mother-frog, and can give to her sons and daughters any of her
peculiarities; though, as is true of all inheritance, the tadpoles, as
the young frogs are called, share the natures of both parents,
inheriting some peculiarities from the father and others from the
mother.
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