served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even a
horror to some. A pious and a learned lady, who had felt intolerable
uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius
that very evening without an impression that she had never heard so divine
a man in her life. The conversation happening to turn on that principle of
benevolence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the
Founder, it gave BARRY an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus
with that copiousness of heart and mind which, once heard, could never be
forgotten. That artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of
Christ, which he was always talking of executing: "It is here!" he would
cry, striking his head. That which baffled the invention, as we are told,
of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his
creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the
mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when
conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.

There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on
that class of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the
mastery of their life. Their conversations of this nature affect the mind
to a distant period of life. Who, having listened to such, has forgotten
what a man of genius has said at such moments? Who dwells not on the
single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the
moment, which came from its source? Then the mind of genius rises as the
melody of the AEolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings
--it comes and goes--and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.

The _Miscellanea_ of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in
the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had
passed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to
the pomp of cavalcades. When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed with
PETRARCH about his valley in many a wandering discourse, they sometimes
extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought them in
vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the evening.
When HELVETIUS enjoyed the social conversation of a literary friend, he
described it as "a chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations
which HORNE TOOKE alluded to, when he said "I assure you, we find more
difficulty to finish than to begin our conv