Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its image in a glass, perplexed some philosophers? and it is well known how far the ideal philosophy has been carried by so fine a genius as Bishop BERKELEY.  “All are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sensorium!” exclaimed the enthusiast BARRY, who only saw pictures in nature, and nature in pictures.  This faculty has had a strange influence over the passionate lovers of statues.  We find unquestionable evidence of the vividness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, vying with that of reality.  EVELYN has described one of this cast of mind, in the librarian of the Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at Rome.  To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were living persons, often kissing and embracing them.  A similar circumstance might be recorded of a man of distinguished talent and literature among ourselves.  Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues; but the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irresistible ideal presence is comprehended; the visions which now bless these lovers of statues, in the modern land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal force in ancient Greece.  “The Last Judgment,” the stupendous ideal presence of MICHAEL ANGELO, seems to have communicated itself to some of his beholders:  “As I stood before this picture,” a late traveller tells us, “my blood chilled as if the reality were before me, and the very sound of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears.”

Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose impressions of objects never rise beyond those of memory and reflection, which know only to compare, and not to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the ideal presence; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it is his happiest and peculiar condition.  Destitute of this faculty, no metaphysical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent will avail him:  unblest with it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold on the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kindle it.

This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of genius themselves; yet when most under its influence, they can least perceive it, as the eye which sees all things cannot view itself; or, rather, such an attempt would be like searching for the principle of life, which were it found would cease to be life.  From an enchanted man we must not expect a narrative of his enchantment; for if he could speak to us reasonably, and like one of ourselves, in that case he would be a man in a state of disenchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better account than we may trace by our own observations.