That which baffled the invention, as we are told, of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.
There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on that class of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the mastery of their life.

Their conversations of this nature affect the mind to a distant period of life.

Who, having listened to such, has forgotten what a man of genius has said at such moments?
Who dwells not on the single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the moment, which came from its source?
Then the mind of genius rises as the melody of the AEolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings -- it comes and goes--and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.
The _Miscellanea_ of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had passed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to the pomp of cavalcades.

When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed with PETRARCH about his valley in many a wandering discourse, they sometimes extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought them in vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the evening.
When HELVETIUS enjoyed the social conversation of a literary friend, he described it as "a chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations which HORNE TOOKE alluded to, when he said "I assure you, we find more difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations." The natural and congenial conversations of men of letters and of artists must then be those which are associated with their pursuits, and these are of a different complexion with the talk of men of the world, the objects of which are drawn from the temporary passions of party-men, or the variable _on dits_ of triflers--topics studiously rejected from these more tranquillising conversations.

Diamonds can only be polished by their own dust, and are only shaped by the friction of other diamonds; and so it happens with literary men and artists.
A meeting of this nature has been recorded by CICERO, which himself and ATTICUS had with VARRO in the country.