The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the abysses of his "Inferno," must often have been startled by its horrors, and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on the great criminal.

The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each.

How mysterious to us is the operation of this faculty! A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life itself--embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has even a reality in it for the generality of persons.

In a romance or a drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator, who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and existing scene.
[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often and as long as he wills--with such a personal unity, that an ingenious lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.] Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence?
When FIELDING said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling to his own.

Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the observation by facts which never reached him.