ontinuous succession, drive one another
out. The eye is always open; and between any given impression and its
recurrence a second time, fifty thousand other impressions have, in
all likelihood, been stamped upon the sense and on the brain. The other
senses are not so active or vigilant. They are but seldom called into
play. The ear, for example, is oftener courted by silence than noise;
and the sounds that break that silence sink deeper and more durably
into the mind. I have a more present and lively recollection of certain
scents, tastes, and sounds, for this reason, than I have of mere visible
images, because they are more original, and less worn by frequent
repetition. Where there is nothing interposed between any two
impressions, whatever the distance of time that parts them, they
naturally seem to touch; and the renewed impression recalls the former
one in full force, without distraction or competitor. The taste of
barberries, which have hung out in the snow during the severity of a
North American winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of
thirty years; for I have met with no other taste in all that time at
all like it. It remains by itself, almost like the impression of a sixth
sense. But the colour is mixed up indiscriminately with the colours of
many other berries, nor should I be able to distinguish it among them.
The smell of a brick-kiln carries the evidence of its own identity with
it: neither is it to me (from peculiar associations) unpleasant.
The colour of brickdust, on the contrary, is more common, and easily
confounded with other colours. Raphael did not keep it quite distinct
from his flesh colour. I will not say that we have a more perfect
recollection of the human voice than of that complex picture the human
face, but I think the sudden hearing of a well-known voice has something
in it more affecting and striking than the sudden meeting with the face:
perhaps, indeed, this may be because we have a more familiar remembrance
of the one than the other, and the voice takes us more by surprise on
that account. I am by no means certain (generally speaking) that we have
the ideas of the other senses so accurate and well made out as those of
visible form: what I chiefly mean is, that the feelings belonging to
the sensations of our other organs, when accidentally recalled, are kept
more separate and pure. Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal of
their interest and romantic effect to the principl