sudden offuscations and darkening of the senses.”  Too often the man of genius, with a vast and solitary power, darkens the scene of life; he builds a pyramid between himself and the sun.  Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect its feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which he has shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings.  Such is the insulating intellect in which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced.  To imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is an awful thing!  In nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.

Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of high passion and invention?  Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast, who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius than its realities.  There is a fata morgana, that throws into the air a pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows glide away.  “I have dreamt of a golden land,” exclaimed FUSELI, “and solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to its shore.”  A slight derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design to charm the world or to make it happier.  Often we hear, from the confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy imaginative existence, be assured that it is the decline of its genius.  That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FENELON, in his early youth, troubled his friends with a classical and religious reverie.  He was on the point of quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary.  The Peloponnesus opened to him the Church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piraeus where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe.  Such was the influence of the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by such a temporary delirium.

To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the self-immolation of men of genius.  Mighty and laborious works have been pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of the individual.  Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their progress.  Such men have sealed their works with their blood:  they have silently borne the pangs of disease; they have barred