_Importance of this Power._--The value of this power to the mind is inestimable. Without it, the passing moment, the impression or sensation of the instant, would be the sum total of our intellectual life, of our conscious being. The horizon of our mental vision would extend no further than our immediate present perceptions. The past would be a blank as dark and uncertain even as the future. Conception lights up the otherwise dreary waste of past existence, and reproducing the former scenes and objects, gives us mental possession of all that we have been, as well as of the present moment, and lays at our feet the objects of all former knowledge. The mind thus becomes in a measure independent of sense and the external world. What it has once seen, heard, felt, becomes its permanent acquisition, even when the original object of perception is for ever removed. I may have seen the grand and stately minster, or the snowy Alp but once in all my life, but ever after it dwells among my conceptions, and in after years, on other continents, and amid far other scenes, that vision of beauty and grandeur passes before me as an angelic vision; that succession of sweet sounds traverses again the silent chambers of the brain, with all the freshness of first reality. It is only a conception now, but who shall estimate the worth of that simple power of conception? _The Talent for Description as affected by this Power._--The following remarks of Mr. Stewart illustrate happily one of the many uses to which this power is subservient: