Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/42

 their appropriate accessories, till you suddenly found yourself transported to fantastic regions wild and gorgeous as any which have delighted the readers of the Arabian Tales, or you were introduced to associations correct and tasteful as reality in its most graceful aspects could supply. In social life Miss Landon's refined and picturesque taste was manifested in detecting the slightest incongruity, and in admiring to the least minutia any arrangements accordant with the laws of beauty. No illustration need be given of her vivid sketches from imagination; her works abound with beautiful subjects for pictures, displaying exquisite taste in their skilful grouping, their rich colouring, and the introduction of those most striking points on which an artist delights to dwell. The same power by which L. E. L. so individualizes her creations makes her likewise appear an actual spectator of scenes and circumstances which she so graphically describes. An Indian lady, after reading "The Zenana," observed to us, "Miss Landon, I suppose, has passed a considerable time in India; her descriptions are so oriental, that they must have been written either on the spot or from memory." A similar idea might be also applied to her descriptions of Italian and other scenery. This highest development of the imagination, the throwing itself out of itself, whereby an author, through a kind of intellectual transmigration, identifies himself with the beings of his mind, transforming the ideal into realities, is perhaps of all faculties the least understood, abstractedly, although the most striking in its effects. It was by this power that Shakspeare breathed into his creations a living soul, by virtue of which those creations have reflected on himself their merits, and crowned him not only