faculty Ezekiel's reed; they measure the walls, and the porches, and the threshold, and the chambers, that they may thereby estimate the utilities, not that they may get a clearer perception of the beautiful. Wonderful to them is the idea, that there may be truth and beauty, standing imperishable and beaming with radiance, and yet without the substantial and literal realization of anything which profiteth the body. What would such men make of Paradise Lost? Would not even the flute of Burns, sounding in its simplicity from his native Ayr, prove a mystery? Awakening no emotion of the heart, giving birth to no conception above this "diurnal sphere."

At the same time, it must be acknowledged, that this faculty is more frequently dormant than absent; that it wants cultivation, not existence. In almost all minds, not excepting the peasant who humbly labours among the sods of the earth, there are some feeble twinklings of this inner light. In many cases where neither of the powers exists in a remarkable degree, the power of imagination is more vigorous and active than that of reflection. Often uncultured men catch by the outward eye a glance of the charms of nature, and imagination awakens at the happy moment, and adds to the beauty of her tints.

§ 153. Disorder of the Imagination as connected with Association and excited Conceptions. As imagination, considered as a whole, implies the exercise of various subordinate powers, we may sometimes more fully understand the nature of the

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disorders to which it is found to be subject by a reference to those powers. If, for instance, the power of association be in any degree disordered, the effects of this disorder will be more or less felt in the imagination. The results of the imagination will in that case be discontinuous, bizarre, and incoherent. If the susceptibility, by which we form conceptions of absent objects, be disordered, the results of the imagination will probably be characterized by a too vivid and unnatural aspect of things. Both features seem to be combined in the following case, which Dr. Gall has extracted from Fodéré's Memoir of M. Savary: "A carpenter forty-seven years old, with every appearance of good health, was assailed by a crowd of strange and incoherent ideas. He often imagined himself fluttering in the air, or traversing smiling fields, apartments, old chateaus, woods, and gardens, which he had seen in his infancy. Sometimes he seemed to be walking in public courts, places, and other spots that were known to him. While at work, the moment he was going to strike his axe at a given place, an idea would pass through his head, make him lose sight of his object, and he would strike somewhere else. He once rose at midnight to go to Versailles, and found himself there without being sensible of having made this journey. -None of these hallucinations prevent the patient from reasoning correctly. He is astonished, and laughs at himself for all these fantastic visions, but still is unable to withdraw himself from their influence."

§ 154. Disorder of the Imagination as connected with the Sensibilities.

When the imaginative power exists in the same mind in connexion with strong sensibilities, it is sometimes the case that its operation is stimulated to an excessive and morbid degree. It is well known that men of marked imaginative genius, combined with deep sensibility, often become mentally disordered. Not that we are authorized, as a general thing, to include these among the more striking forms of insanity. Certain it is, that they generally attract but little notice. But such are the extravagant dreams in which these persons indulge; such are the wrong views of the character and actions of men which their busy and melancholy imaginations are apt to form, that they cannot be reckoned persons of truly sound minds. These instan

ces, which are not rare, it is difficult fully to describe; but their most distinguishing traits will be recognised in the following sketch from Madame de Stael's Reflections on the Character and Writings of Rousseau.

After remarking that he discovered no sudden emotions, but that his feelings grew upon reflection, and that he became impassioned in consequence of his own meditations, she adds as follows: "Sometimes he would part with you with all his former affection; but, if an expression had escaped you which might bear an unfavourable construction, he would recollect it, examine it, exaggerate it, perhaps dwell upon it for a month, and conclude by a total breach

with you. Hence it was that there was scarce a possibility of undeceiving him; for the light which broke in upon him at once was not sufficient to efface the wrong impressions which had taken place so gradually in his mind. It was extremely difficult, too, to continue long on an intimate footing with him. A word, a gesture, furnished him with matter of profound meditation; he connected the most trifling circumstances like so many mathematical propositions, and conceived his conclusions to be supported by the evidence of demonstration.

"I believe (she farther remarks) that imagination was the strongest of his faculties, and that it had almost absorbed all the rest. He dreamed rather than existed, and the events of his life might be said more properly to have passed in his mind than without him a mode of being, one should have thought, that ought to have secured him from distrust, as it prevented him from observation; but the truth was, it did not hinder him from attempting to observe; it only rendered his observations erroneous. That his soul was tender, no one can doubt after having read his works; but his imagination sometimes interposed between his reason and his affections, and destroyed their influence: he appeared sometimes void of sensibility, but it was because he did not perceive objects such as they were. Had he seen them with our eyes, his heart would have been more affected than ours."

§ 155. Other illustrations of the same subject. There is some ground for supposing that state

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ments, similar to those which have now been made, will apply, in a considerable degree, to the case of Dean Swift. Frequent attempts have been made to analyze the character of Swift, but, in general, with doubtful success. That he was, however, a person of imagination in a high, though not in the 'highest, sense of the term, cannot well be doubted. Of this his writings, and his prose more than his poetry, are a proof. Moreover, notwithstanding the asperity and repulsiveness which his character sometimes assumed, he was, in the elements of his nature, a man of generous and vivid sensibilities. It is true they were not obtruded upon the public eye, but were assiduously nourished in solitude; and, gaining strength from this solitary nurture, they had the effect to give an impulse to his imagination, by means of which the facts of friendship and enmity, of life and manners, were presented before him in a distorted and exaggerated aspect.

He had, in particular, a keen perception, arising in part from this exciting tendency of the imagination, of the follies and vices of men; but he does not appear to have understood so well the nature and extent of the sanative principle which the Christian religion furnishes: consequently, the world presented to him a' morbid appearance, “dark, with no entrance of light." Disgusted with what he saw around him, he retired into the recesses of his own bosom. No star of hope, however it should have been otherwise, arose there. The image of evil continually presented itself before him, which the imaginative power, rever relaxing from its solitary