Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/149

Rh many shapes—now, as far as regards prophecy, it takes another form, and calls itself presentiment; and Emily lay awake much longer than was good for her complexion, building that aërial architecture called châteaux en Espagne, on the slight foundation of a single sentence. I do not think imagination an indulgence at all to be permitted in our present state of society: very well for poets and painters—it is their business, the thing of all others not to be neglected; but in the common construction of characters and circumstances it is an illusion quite at variance with the realities on which we are to act, and among which we are to live. In a young man it unfits him for the rough career of life, as much as stepping within the castle's enchanted boundary unfitted Sir Launcelot for his encounter with the giant. The sword of action hangs idly in the unnerved hand. We will suppose he possesses talent and feeling—without them he could not possess imagination;—he starts on his forward path, where, as in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he has to make his own way. Conscious of his abilities, he will overrate, perhaps not themselves, but their influence. He will read the novel, till he becomes to himself the very