“_23 May._--I am happy because of the air that I breathe and the birds that are singing; but inspiration passes away through the senses. Each season has not merely special forms of sensation, but a certain way of understanding life which is peculiar to it.... “_17 May._--Irresistible pleasure of thought: inspiration.... “_4, 16, 17 October._--Empty of ideas; sad.... “_1816, 25 January._--Sad and idle. My life is useless.... “_24 April._--I am another man. Every day seems a feast day. At this time of the year something seems to lift the soul to another region, and to give it strength to surmount all impediments.... “_1817, 13 April._--Excited.... “_7 May._--Working on Condillac.... “_10, 18 July._--Marvellous activity.... “_12 October._--Am transformed; thought turns to commonplace triviality.... “_22, 23, 28 November._--Sterile agitation. Alteration of all my mental faculties.... “_1818, 1 April._--Northerly wind. Am weary, sad, suffering, stolid.... “_1820, 31 March._--At this time of the year it always happens to me that body and mind are alike heavy; I have the consciousness of my degradation.... “_1821, May._--All this month I am sad, and yield to external causes like a marionette.... “_21 October._--I feel myself newborn. I was returning to work, but the weather has changed; the wind has turned to the south; it is strong, and I am another man. I feel inert, with a distaste for work, and inclined to those sad and melancholy fantasies which are always so fatal to me....” Alfieri wrote, “I compare myself to a barometer. I have always experienced more or less facility in writing, according to the weight of the air; absolute stupidity in the great solstitial and equinoxial winds, infinitely less perspicacity in the evening than in the morning, and a much greater aptness for creation in the middle of the winter or of summer than in the intermediate seasons. This has made me humble, as I am convinced that at these times I have had no power to do otherwise.” Monod says that the phases of Michelet’s intellectual life followed the course of the seasons.[189] Poushkin’s poetic inspiration was greatest during dark and stormy nights. We catch a glimpse in these facts of an appreciable influence of barometrical conditions upon men of genius as upon the insane.