. Madame ROLAND has
thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of
Telemachus and Tassot:--"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire
colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was
Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. However, during this
perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything,
for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing
around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it
was a dream, without being awakened."

The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and
philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one
of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words.
Alluding to the famous "Transfiguration," our own RAFFAELLE says--"When I
have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness,
the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal
action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and
for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could
really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes."

The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men produced on the
mighty mind of ALFIERI, during a whole winter, while he lived as it were
among the heroes of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and
raved with grief and indignation that he was born under a government which
favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often as he was struck with the
great deeds of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from his
seat as one possessed. The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for
more than twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle: but as the
natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, he was a
poet without writing a single verse; and as a great poet, the ideal
presence at times became ungovernable, verging to madness. In traversing
the wilds of Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth to
poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state
of the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence; for he proceeded
along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. He
considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing but in laughter
and tears. He was not aware that he was then yielding to a demonstration,
could he have judged of