“Half-dreaming mortal, listen! It is _I_, Time, the destroyer, whose gigantic arm Lifted this pond’rous ruin from its base. Why hangs it thus, arrested in its course, In bold defiance of attraction’s law? Why, like its once proud lord, renown’d Glyndwr, Sinks not its mouldering grandeur to the ground? Behold an emblem of vitality! A type of mortal man, of thee, of all! Like this grey wall, thy tott’ring steps are staid, And on a thread thy fragile life is hung; Yet leaning, ever leaning, to the grave. One moment more, an atom of an age, This mould’ring ruin, trembling on its base, May, like the marble shafts of lone Palmyra, Be hurl’d to earth, and crumble into dust; And, like the ruin, thou!” And yet _I_ was not mad. EV. I talk not of a gentle heart like yours, fair Castaly; but of that extreme, when ideas are received by a mind nearly exhausted, and lie for a while dormant. As sleep and fatigue wear off, and consciousness returns, these images are suddenly and brilliantly lighted up. If intense impression shall have been made on the heart or mind, intense will be the abstraction of the enthusiast. Until _one_ thought is touched, the patient is sane; but, when the chord vibrates, then, as in the pathetic episode of Sterne’s Maria, the paroxysm is expended in a flood of tears, or in a mad fit, or in a gush of wildest music. To the latter cause, we owe many beauties of composition. Demarini, the Italian tragedian, acted a prison-scene before Paganini, in which, with the pathos of deep distress, the victim prayed for death. The maestro retired to bed, but not to sleep; his excited brain relieved its painful sympathies by the composition of the “_Adagio apassionato_.” Carl Maria Von Weber witnessed the waltzing of his wife with a gallant cavalier. He retired in a mood of jealous frenzy, and expressed the ideas which rankled in his heart by the “_Invitation à la Walse_.” ASTR. Well, is there not something special in all this? EV. Yes, truly,—a power imparted to some, withheld from others,—_genius_. ASTR. Yet, in explanation of this abstract reverie, the phrenologist will, I dare say, satisfy himself by merely deciding that the organ of concentrativeness is strongly developed. EV. It is clear, at least, that the deep interest of the subject of reflection overbalances the influence of the external senses. The impression of objects is either too slight, or rapid, to produce perception, or (in other words), however the impression may be imparted to the brain by the nerve, the brain is not _sensible_ of it, and there is therefore no perception.