erbe puissance ennemie de la raison, combien toutes les richesses de
la terre sont insuffisantes sans son consentement. The imagination has
the disposition of all things: Elle fait la beaute, la justice, et le
bonheur, qui est le tout du monde. L'imagination dispose de tout. And
what we have here to note is its extraordinary power in himself.
Strong in him as the reasoning faculty, so to speak, it administered
the reasoning faculty in him a son grbut he was unaware of it, that
power d'autant plus fourbe qu'elle ne l'est pas toujours. Hidden under
the apparent rigidity of his favourite studies, imagination, even in
them, played a large part. Physics, mathematics were with him largely
matters of intuition, anticipation, [89] precocious discovery, short
cuts, superb guessing. It was the inventive element in his work and
his way of putting things that surprised those best able to judge. He
might have discovered the mathematical sciences for himself, it is
alleged, had his father, as he once had a mind to do, withheld him from
instruction in them.

About the time when he was bidding adieu to the world, Pascal had an
accident. As he drove round a corner on the Seine side to cross the
bridge at Neuilly, the horses were precipitated down the bank into the
water. Pascal escaped, but with a nervous shock, a certain
hallucination, from which he never recovered. As he walked or sat he
was apt to perceive a yawning depth beside him; would set stick or
chair there to reassure himself. We are now told, indeed, that that
circumstance has been greatly exaggerated. But how true to Pascal's
temper, as revealed in his work, that alarmed precipitous character in
it! Intellectually the abyss was evermore at his side. Nous avons, he
observes, un autre principe d'erreur, les maladies. Now in him the
imagination itself was like a physical malady, troubling, disturbing,
or in active collusion with it....

NOTES

62. *Published in the Contemporary Review, Feb. 1895, and now reprinted
by the kind permission of the proprietors.

76. +Transliteration: pathos.

80. *The words here cited are, however, from Psalm cxviii., the cxvii.
of the Vulgate, and not from Pascal's favourite Psalm. (C.L.S.)
+C.L.S. stands for Charles Shadwell, editor of the original volume.

ART NOTES IN NORTH ITALY*

[90] TITIAN, as we see him in what some have thought his noblest work,
the large altar-piece, dated 1522, his forty-fifth year, of SS. Naz