The ritual of weighing the soul was an iconographic topos familiar to Christianity from the ceremony of the weighing of sins at the Last Judgement.

... the same neatness as of a hospital bed, you at the desk curled carefully at the white sheets, neverthemore, it is somehow you in those letters, from that metropolis where there is only one face and you have it for the moment, and even the sense of the color of the yes eyes is enough for me.

Mrs. Palmer added, that this news, though it could scarcely be called exhilarating, had had such an effect on her elderly friends, that they had determined to set out to Bath, and, when rested, proceed thence to Exeter, in order to be nearer the place where the vessel was expected, and to be a support to Lord Meersbrook, in case of the worst.

We are accused of having persuaded Austria and Sardinia to lay down their arms when their differences might have involved the Powers of Europe in contention.