nessed them; and, in the minor necessities of life, to
enable us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of
enjoyment, by investing it with happy associations, and, in any
present evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other
hours; and also to give to all mental truths some visible type, in
allegory, simile, or personification, which shall most deeply enforce
them; and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it
with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the
suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living
companionship, instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies
in the grass, and naiads in the wave.

[6] I should be glad if the reader who is interested in the question
here raised, would read, as illustrative of the subsequent statement,
the account of Tintoret's 'Paradise,' in the close of my Oxford lecture
on Michael Angelo and Tintoret, which I have printed separately to make
it generally accessible.

10. Yet, because we thus reverence the power and art of imagination,
let none of us despise the power and art of memory.

Let the reader consider seriously what he would give at any moment to
have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often
rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the
leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the
fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting
upon the lake; and then to bear away with him no darkness or feeble
sun-stain, (though even that is beautiful,) but a counterfeit which
should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect image of life indeed.
Or rather, (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus
sufficiently expressed,) let him consider that it would be in effect
nothing less than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment
into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied
spirit; and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the
present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very
bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them
in act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than ever was
granted to the companions of those transient acts of life, to see them
fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and
stayed on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning
purpose.--Conceive, so far as i