ions, I
have found that they follow the motions of the eyeball exactly like the
spectral impressions of luminous objects, and that they resemble them
also in their apparent immobility when the eye is displaced by an
external force. If this result (which I state with much diffidence, from
having only my own experience in its favour) shall be found generally
true by others, it will follow that the objects of mental contemplation
may be seen as distinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same
local position in the axis of vision, as if they had been formed by the
agency of light." Hence the impression of an image once conveyed to the
senses, no matter how, whether by actual or illusory vision, is liable
to renewal, "independently of any renewed application of the cause which
had originally excited it," and the image can be seen in that renewal
"as distinctly as external objects," for indeed "the revival of the
fantastic figure really does affect those points of the retina which had
been previously impressed."

CHAPTER XLVI.

Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd stayed in my house three day, I and in their
presence I felt a healthful sense of security and peace. Amy wished to
visit her father's house, and I asked Faber, in taking her there, to
seize the occasion to see Lilian, that he might communicate to me his
impression of a case so peculiar. I prepared Mrs. Ashleigh for this
visit by a previous note. When the old man and the child came back, both
brought me comfort. Amy was charmed with Lilian, who had received her
with the sweetness natural to her real character, and I loved to hear
Lilian's praise from those innocent lips.

Faber's report was still more calculated to console me.

"I have seen, I have conversed with her long and familiarly. You were
quite right,--there is no tendency to consumption in that exquisite, if
delicate, organization; nor do I see cause for the fear to which your
statement had pre-inclined me. That head is too nobly formed for any
constitutional cerebral infirmity. In its organization, ideality,
wonder, veneration, are large, it is true, but they are balanced by
other organs, now perhaps almost dormant, but which will come into
play as life passes from romance into duty. Something at this moment
evidently oppresses her mind. In conversing with her, I observe
abstraction, listlessness; but I am so convinced of her truthfulness,
that if she has once told you she returned your affection,