History has witnessed the endless productions of Shakespearean plays in every major language of the world. It is never rare to find that Mozart packs Japanese concert halls, as Japanese painter Hiroshige does Paris galleries, Unique works of this kind are different from today's popular art, even if they began as works of popular art. They have set themselves apart in their timeless appeal and will probably be enjoyed for centuries into the future.

               In a 1757 essay, the philosopher David Hume argued that because“the general principles of taste are uniform(不变的) in human nature,”the value of some works of art might be essentially permanent. He observed that Homer was still admired after two thousand years. Works of this type, he believed, spoke to deep and unvarying features of human nature and could continue to exist over centuries.

               Now researchers are applying scientific methods to the study of the universality of art. For example, evolutionary psychology is being used by literary scholars to explain the long-lasting themes and plot devices in fiction. The structures of musical pieces are now open to experimental analysis as never before. Research findings seem to indicate that the creation by a great artist is as permanent an achievement as the discovery by a great scientist.

    Pat O'Burke was a poor Irishman with a large family, and one morning, waking up very early from cold and hunger, he decided to go shooting in a wood near his cottage. The wood belonged to Lord Northwood, a rich gentleman. Pat had no right to go there, but in it there were swarms of rabbits and flocks of birds that were good to eat, and Pat determined to take the risk. Suddenly he saw the owner, with a group of friends, coming towards him in the wood. There was a look of anger on Lord Northwood's face as he caught sight of the gun in Pat's hands.

    Pat's heart sank with fear, but he saw there was no hope of escape, so he walked boldly(大胆) up to the group and said to Lord Northwood, “Good morning, sir, and what has brought you out so early this morning?”

    Lord Northwood, rather surprised, said he and his friends were taking a little exercise to get an appetite(食欲) for their breakfast. Then, looking at Pat with suspicion(怀疑), he said, “but why are you out so early in the morning?”

    “Well, sir” said Pat, “I just came out to see if I could get a breakfast for my appetite.”

    The whole crowd burst into laughter at Pat's ready wit, and with a smile Lord Northwood walked on, leaving Pat to try his luck with the rabbits.

    When her five daughters were young, Helen An always told them that there was strength in unity (团结). To show this, she held up one chopstick, representing one person. Then she easily broke it into two pieces. Next, she tied several chopsticks together, representing a family. She showed the girls it was hard to break the tied chopsticks. This lesson about family unity stayed with the daughters as they grew up.

    Helen An and her family own a large restaurant business in California. However, when Helen and her husband Danny left their home in Vietnam in 1975, they didn't have much money. They moved their family to San Francisco. There they joined Danny's mother, Diana, who owned a small Italian sandwich shop. Soon afterwards, Helen and Diana changed the sandwich shop into a small Vietnamese restaurant. The five daughters helped in the restaurant when they were young. However, Helen did not want her daughters to always work in the family business because she thought it was too hard.

    Eventually the girls all graduated from college and went away to work for themselves, but one by one, the daughters returned to work in the family business. They opened new restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even though family members sometimes disagreed with each other, they worked together to make the business successful. Daughter Elizabeth explains, “Our mother taught us that to succeed we must have unity, and to have unity we must have peace. Without the strength of the family, there is no business.”

    Their expanding business became a large corporation in 1996, with three generations of Ans working together. Now the Ans' corporation makes more than $ 20 million each year. Although they began with a small restaurant, they had big dreams, and they worked together. Now they are a big success.

    If Frida Kahlo（1907-1954） is today one of the best-known and most popular figures of 20th-century, Mexican art, it is undoubtedly because of her personality and the originality（独创性）of a body of works. Her work is, above all, the expression of a real life－a tragic and stormy life, one that challenged all conventions. The mere mention of her name excites enthusiasm and admiration, but her work is rarely exhibited, and has not been shown in France for fifteen years. The selection to go on show at the Musee de L'Orangerie includes major works by the artist, with masterpieces from the Museo Dolores Olmedo.

    The life and work of Frida Kahlo cannot be separated from those of her companion Diego Rivera（1886-1957）. Together they became figures of legend, and both have a place in the pantheon of 20th-century Mexican artists. Famous for his large wall paintings, Rivera's easel paintings, drawings and prints, which form a large part of his artistic production, are less well-known to the public in Europe. The exhibition aims to trace his artistic career from the early Cubist images, revealing his links with the Paris artists whose works are a key element in the Orangerie collections, to the paintings that established him as the founder of the 20th-century school of Mexican art. His travels throughout Europe influenced his vision and his skills without ever distancing him from his roots, thus confirming his place in history as the founder of the nationalist school.

    The exhibition devoted to the legendary couple Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo presents their works together, as if to confirm the impossibility of their divorce that was in fact finalized（定下来）but reconsidered after just one year apart. It also gives us a better view of their respective artistic worlds, so different and yet so complementary（互补的）, through the deep-rooted attachment they shared to their country.

    Charity is simple in theory：A heart warms, a hand reaches out. In practice, though, charity can become a troubled mix of motives and consequences. Giving can be driven by guilt, duty, praise, or perhaps the hope that giving will somehow make up for past cruelty or ignorance. Too little charity is far less than valuable. Too much can cause dependence which makes the receiver continuously ask for more.

    Giving from the heart is good. But critics have long worried about misdirected charity that does more harm than good. In his 2012 book, "Harmful Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help（And How to Solve the Problem）, "Robert Lupton, an experienced social worker of 40 years of community work in inner-city Atlanta, argues that charity must not do for the poor what they can do for themselves.

    Due to emergencies such as natural disasters, the afterward financial aid is greatly welcome. Mr. Lupton advocates it should focus on the development of self-supporting. The task can be carried out via, for instance, offering microloans, hiring local builders and suppliers, and trying to found self-supported, locally owned and operated enterprises. What seldom works, he argues, are untargeted handouts from far-off providers and the sudden arrival of inexperienced volunteer-tourists hoping to earn personal reputation by digging wells or mending roofs that locals are perfectly able to take care of themselves.

    Getting charity right isn't easy. But from money raising to the boom in volunteering among Millennials（千禧一代）, from the increasing worldwide willingness to give to the efforts by charity organizations to become more effective and fruitful, there is strong evidence that human beings' ability of taking care of others is growing along with their ability to help without harming.

    Charity can be as simple as holding the door for a stranger and as complex as a global campaign to get rid of malaria（疟疾）.Charity works best when it returns the weak to strength, when it helps a small town shaken by a heavy earthquake get back on its feet. A successful charity is one that eventually is no longer needed.

Richard Holmes, a British author and academic, is something of a Romantic, famous for biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his last book, "The Age of Wonder", he wrote about science and Romanticism and their common commitment to discovery. In his new book, "Falling Upwards", he combines the two again to tell the stories of Europe's early balloonists (气球飞行者).

Mr Holmes's love of balloons was aroused at a village festival and his enthusiasm is one of the book's many pleasures. He refers to the cheerful tone used in many first-hand ballooning stories, and applies it in this second-hand account. He describes men and women wrapped up in fur coats under their hydrogen-filled balloons, enjoying cold chicken and champagne and looking back to earth to see mankind "for what it really is."

Mr Holmes makes much of the strange side of ballooning, but the book is at its best when examining its more serious applications. In the American civil war, for example, both North and South put observers in balloons to spy on enemy movements. And during the Prussian attack on Paris in 1870-71， balloonists managed to fly out of the city to communicate with the French government in exile (流亡) in Tours.

"Falling Upwards" contains much of the historian's writing characteristics, such as footnotes and bibliography (文献书目), but its epilogue (后记) refers modestly to what has gone before as "a series of true balloon stories". It does touch on the more technical aspects of ballooning, and says little about the French Montgolfier brothers who are credited as its inventors. That though seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work. Mr Holmes's tale ends at the start of the 20th century when the business of flight was being handed over to the airship and the airplane.