Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to achieve, to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!--but the life that is permitted to all genius,--that which breathes through the immortal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
Where are the implements for thine art?
Tush!--when did the true workman ever fail to find his tools?
Thou art again in thine own chamber,--the white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil.

They suffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwise vanish with the morrow.
The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was unquestionably noble and august.

It was derived from that Egyptian ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded,--the Judgment of the Dead by the Living (Diod., lib.

i.): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed by the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to the bark which is to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place, it is permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations of the past life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the rites of sepulture.
Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour's description of this custom, which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be found in books, that now suggested the design to the artist, and gave it reality and force.

He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce a whisper had dared to arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone, came the slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon, livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the justice that outlives the grave.
Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mists and darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thy fancies,--strange that the reaction of the night's terror and the day's disappointment should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goes the bold hand over the large outline! How, despite those rude materials, speaks forth no more the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from the glorious elixir, how thou givest to thy creatures the finer life denied to thyself!--some power not thine own writes the grand symbols on the wall.