d leads us to the very
centre of life. Hence there is in every word set down by the Imagination
an awful undercurrent of meaning--an evidence and shadow upon it of the
deep places out of which it has come.

In this it utterly differs from the Fancy, with which it is often
confounded.

Fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside,
clear, brilliant, and full of detail. The Imagination sees the heart and
inner nature, and makes them felt; but in the clear seeing of things
beneath, is often impatient of detailed interpretation, being sometimes
obscure, mysterious, and abrupt. Fancy, as she stays at the externals,
never feels. She is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual
faculties; or, rather, one of the most purely and simply intellectual.
She cannot be made serious; no edge tools but she will play with; while
the Imagination cannot but be serious--she sees too far, too darkly, too
solemnly, too earnestly, to smile often! There is something in the heart
of everything, if we can reach it, at which we shall not be inclined to
laugh. Those who have the deepest sympathies are those who pierce
deepest, and those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of
things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of
sympathy. The power of an imagination may almost be tested by its
accompanying degree of tenderness; thus there is no tenderness like
Dante's, nor any seriousness like his--such seriousness that he is quite
incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous.

Imagination, being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is
still, calm, and brooding; but Fancy, remaining on the outside of
things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and
round about, to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point,
glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she
settle at all, on a _point_ only, and never embracing the whole. From
these simple points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances,
which are true so far as the point from which she looks is concerned,
but would be false, could she see through to the other side. This,
however, she does not care to do--the point of contact is enough for,
her; and even if there be a great gap between two things, she will
spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and glitter the
most brightly in her leaping. Fancy loves to follow long chains of
circumstanc