Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

and their power is a mystery like every thing else that acts upon the imagination. Imagination in its relations with nature, in its effects, in its illusive influences, will never be defined satisfactorily by minds even the most subtle and the most sublime. Clearly to define imagination would be to mount up to the fountain head of the passions. Source of love, channel of pity, moving element of genius, most tremendous of all the endowments of man—for it makes of him a new Prometheus, — imagination is the strength of the Creator lent for one moment to the creature. Man receives it, but he cannot scan it: it is in him, but it is not of him. When the voice ceases to warble, when the rainbow melts away, whither are the sounds and the colours fled ? Can any one say whence they came ? Similar in their nature, although yet more incomprehensible, more varied, more fugitive, and above all, more disquieting, are the illusions of imagination ! I have felt the power of this faculty all my life with an unavailing awe; I have far too much of it for the use I make of it; I sought to render myself its master; I remain its victim and its toy. Abyss of desires and contradictions, it is it which still urges me to traverse the world, and which attaches me to places at the very moment when it is summoning me elsewhere. О illusions ! how perfidious are you when you seduce us, and how cruel when you abandon us !

It was past ten o'clock when I returned from the promenade of the Islands. At that hour the aspect of the city has a singular and not easily described effect; for the beauty of the picture does not consist in the lines, since the site is entirely flat, it lies in