ually obvious in either case.

Let us return now to the former consideration. It was stated that the
poet is affected by every day incidents, which would have little or
no effect on the mind of a general observer: and if you ask the poet,
who from his conduct may be the supposed advocate of the past as the
fittest medium for poetic eduction, why he embodied the suggestions
of to-day in the matter and dress of antiquity; he is likely to
answer as follows.--"You have stated that men pass by that which
furnishes me with my subject: If I merely reproduce what they
slighted, the reproduction will be slighted equally. It appears then
that I must devise some means of attracting their sympathies--and the
medium of antiquity is the fittest for three several reasons.
1st.--Nothing comes down to us from antiquity unless fraught with
sufficient interest of some sort, to warrant it being worthy of
record. Thus, all incidents which we possess of the old time being
more or less interesting, there arises an illative impression that
all things of old really were so: and all things in idea associated
with that time, whether real or fictitious, are afforded a favorable
entertainment. Now these associations are neither trivial nor
fanciful:{11} for I remember to have discovered, after visiting the
British Museum for the first time, that the odour of camphor, for
which I had hitherto no predilection, afforded me a peculiar
satisfaction, seemingly suggestive of things scientific or artistic;
it was in fact a _literary smell!_ All this was vague and
unaccountable until some time after when this happened again, and I
was at once reminded of an enormous walrus at the British Museum, and
then remembered how the whole collection, from end to end, was
permeated with the odour of camphor! Still, despite the
_consciousness_ of this, the camphor retains its influence. Now let a
poem, a painting, or sculpture, smell ever so little of antiquity,
and every intelligent reader will be full of delightful imaginations.
2nd.--All things ancient are mysterious in obscurity:--veneration,
wonder, and curiosity are the result. 3rd.--All things ancient are
dead and gone:--we sympathize with them accordingly. All these
effects of antiquity, as a means of enforcing poetry, declare it too
powerful an ally to be readily abandoned by the poet." To all this
the painter will add that the costume of almost any ancient time is
more beautiful than that of the present--add