En pyramid av inget

His mind as well as his house was piled up with Dresden china and illuminated through painted glass; and we look upon his heart to have been little better than a case full of enamels, painted eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, vases, and rock-crystals. This may in some degree account for his odd and quaint manner of thinking, and his utter poverty of feeling: He could not get a plain thought out of that cabinet of curiosities, his mind;--and he had no room for feeling,--no place to plant it in, or leisure to cultivate it. He was at all times a slave of elegant trifles, and could no more screw himself up into a decided and solid personage, than he could divest himself of petty jealousies and miniatures animosities. In one word, everything about him was little, and the smaller the object and the less its importance, the higher did his estimation and his praise of it ascend. He piled trifles to a colossal height--and made a pyramid of nothing \"most marvellous to see.\"