The meditations of genius.--A work on the art of meditation not yet produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination. --Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the foundation of genius. --Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary character.--And to assist their studies.--The meditations of genius depend on habit.--Of the night-time.--A day of meditation should precede a day of composition.--Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts never written.--The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places. --Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries. --Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius. A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the characteristics of genius. To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination. There is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our hearts; he who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move the other, knows how to feel. A work on the art of meditation has not yet been produced; yet such a work might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more than one solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced a great system. Thus probably we owe ADAM SMITH to the French economists. And a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery. Thus GIRARD, taking advantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced his "Synonymes." But while, in every manual art, every great workman improves on his predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of practice, and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with the materials they are working on. Certain constituent principles of the mind itself, which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer many important regulations in this desirable art. We may even suspect, since men of genius in the present age have confided to us the secrets of their studies, that this art may be carried on by more obvious means than at first would appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical habits. A mind well organised may be regulated by a single contrivance, as by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery by which we track the flight of time. Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insulated facts, which may hereafter enter into an experimental history.