those compositions which work most powerfully on
their sensibility. They like neither argument nor the ripe fruits of
knowledge. Now have you ever considered the results which follow these
poetical readings?

Romances, and indeed all works of imagination, paint sentiments and
events with colors of a very different brilliancy from those presented
by nature. The fascination of such works springs less from the desire
which each author feels to show his skill in putting forth choice and
delicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the human intellect.
It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everything that he lays
up in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces, what monuments of
the dead are not made more beautiful than actual nature in the artistic
representation? The soul of the reader assists in this conspiracy
against the truth, either by means of the profound silence which it
enjoys in reading or by the fire of mental conception with which it
is agitated or by the clearness with which imagery is reflected in
the mirror of the understanding. Who has not seen on reading the
_Confessions_ of Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens is described as
much prettier than she ever was in actual life? It might almost be said
that our souls dwell with delight upon the figures which they had met in
a former existence, under fairer skies; that they accept the creations
of another soul only as wings on which they may soar into space;
features the most delicate they bring to perfection by making them their
own; and the most poetic expression which appears in the imagery of an
author brings forth still more ethereal imagery in the mind of a reader.
To read is to join with the writer in a creative act. The mystery of
the transubstantiation of ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive
consciousness that we have of a vocation loftier than our present
destiny. Or, is it based on the lost tradition of a former life? What
must that life have been, if this slight residuum of memory offers us
such volumes of delight?

Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much more
susceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most violent
transport. She creates for herself an ideal existence beside which all
reality grows pale; she at once attempts to realize this voluptuous
life, to take to herself the magic which she sees in it. And, without
knowing it, she passes from spirit to letter and from soul to sen