The imagination is a quality of the soul, not only a brilliant but an happy one, for it is more frequently the cause of our happiness, than of our misery; it presents us with more pleasures than vexations, with more hopes than fears. Men of dull and heavy dispositions, who are not affected by any thing, vegetate and pass their lives in a kind of tranquility, but without pleasure or delight; like animals which see, feel, and taste nothing, but that which is under their eyes, paws, or teeth; but the imagination, which is proper to man, transports us beyond ourselves, and makes us taste future and the most distant pleasures. Let us not be told, that it makes us also foresee evils, pains, and accidents, which will perhaps never arrive: it is seldom that imagination carries us to these panic fears, unless it be deranged by physical causes. The sick man sees dark phantoms, and has melancholy ideas; the man in health has no dreams but such as are agreeable; and as we are more frequently in a good, than a bad state of health, our natural state is to desire, to hope, and to enjoy. It is true, that the imagination, which gives us some agreeable moments, exposes us, when once we are undeceived, to others which are painful. There is no person who does not wish to preserve his life, his health, and his property; but the imagination represents to us our life, as a thing which ought to be very long; our health established and unchangeable; and our fortune inexhaustible: when the two latter of these illusions cease before the former, we are much to be pitied. * * * * * * * * * THE VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION. _OR, INTERESTING MEMOIRS OF MIGUEL, DUKE DE CA*I*A._ Unfolding Many Curious Unknown Historical Facts. _Translated from the German of Tschink._ (Continued from page 78.) The stillness of eternal rest, and the horrors of corruption which were hovering around me, whispered audibly in my ear that this was not a residence fit for living beings. “Is my tutor here?” I enquired after a dreadful pause. The Irishman remained silent, “Hiermanfor! is my tutor here?” “He is.” “Alas! then he is dead!” I stammered, staggering against a tomb-stone to support myself. The face of the Irishman began to brighten up; he took me by the hand; “Come, my Lord, and convince yourself, that even on this spot, where common men behold nothing but death and corruption, the flower of life is blooming!” With these words, he led me round the corner of a small chapel, and I beheld what at first appeared to me the delusion of a dream, my tutor standing five paces distant from me upon a tomb; he was dressed in a white garment, and seemed to await me in tranquil expectation: “Antonio! my friend!” I exclaimed, quivering with joy, and flew with expanded arms to the tomb, but shuddered with horror when I grasped through an airy phantom, instead of embracing my friend.