Such was the state in which PETRARCH found himself, in that minute narrative of a vision in which Laura appeared to him; and TASSO, in the lofty conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards him on the beams of the sun.

In this state was MALEBRANCHE listening to the voice of God within him; and Lord HERBEBT, when, to know whether he should publish his book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the Deity in the stillness of the sky.[A] And thus PASCAL started at times at a fiery gulf opening by his side.

SPINELLO having painted the fall of the rebellious angels, had so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly the terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon to which his genius had given birth.

The influence of the game ideal presence operated on the religious painter ANGELONI, who could never represent the sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears.

DESCARTES, when young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air which called him to pursue the search of truth; nor did he doubt the vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius charmed him even in his after-studies.