Italian improvvisatori, some of whom, I have heard from one present at a similar exhibition, have not degenerated in poetic inspiration, nor in its corporeal excitement.  “His eyes fixed downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, the moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his forehead swell, and wonderfully his learned ear, as it were, abstracted and intent, moderates each impulse of his flowing numbers."[A]

[Footnote A:  The passage is curious:—­“Canenti defixi exardent oculi, sudores manant, frontis venae contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditae aures, tanquam alienae et intentae, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum exactissima ratione moderantur.”]

This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature into absorbing reveries when the senses of other men are overcome at the appearance of destruction; he continues to view only Nature herself.  The mind of PLINY, to add one more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature amidst the volcano in which he perished.  VERNET was on board a ship in a raging tempest where all hope was given up.  The astonished captain beheld the artist of genius, his pencil in his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketching the terrible world of waters—­studying the wave that was rising to devour him.[A]

[Footnote A:  Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still decorate the Louvre.  He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of the celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of her best painter of battle-scenes.—­ED.]

There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies of antiquity.  Then the ideal presence or the imaginative existence prevails, by its perpetual associations, or as the late Dr. Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly termed them, suggestions. “In contemplating antiquity, the mind itself becomes antique,” was finely observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of the mind existed as a system.  This rapture, or sensation of deep study, has been described by one whose imagination had strayed into the occult learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Orpheus it seemed to him that he had lifted the veil from Nature.  His feelings were associated with her loneliness.  I translate his words:—­“When I took these dark mystical hymns into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending into an abyss of the mysteries of venerable antiquity; at that moment, the world in silence and the stars and moon only, watching me.”  This enthusiasm is confirmed by Mr. Mathias, who applies this description to his own emotions on his first opening the manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the philosophy of Plato; “and many a learned man,” he adds, “will acknowledge as his own the feelings of this animated scholar.”