human.

To this we may add a similar example, from our own art, in the Puck,
or Robin Goodfellow, of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Who can look at this
exquisite little creature, seated on its toadstool cushion, and not
acknowledge its prerogative of life,--that mysterious influence which
in spite of the stubborn understanding masters the mind,--sending
it back to days long past, when care was but a dream, and its most
serious business a childish frolic? But we no longer think of
childhood as the past, still less as an abstraction; we see it
embodied before us, in all its mirth and fun and glee; and the grave
man becomes again a child, to feel as a child, and to follow the
little enchanter through all his wiles and never-ending labyrinth of
pranks. What can be real, if that is not which so takes us out of
our present selves, that the weight of years falls from us as a
garment,--that the freshness of life seems to begin anew, and the
heart and the fancy, resuming their first joyous consciousness, to
launch again into this moving world, as on a sunny sea, whose pliant
waves yield to the touch, yet, sparkling and buoyant, carry them
onward in their merry gambols? Where all the purposes of reality are
answered, if there be no philosophy in admitting, we see no wisdom in
disputing it.

Of the immutable nature of this peculiar Truth, we have a like
instance in the Farnese Hercules; the work of the Grecian sculptor
Glycon,--we had almost said his immortal offspring. Since the time of
its birth, cities and empires, even whole nations, have disappeared,
giving place to others, more or less barbarous or civilized; yet these
are as nothing to the countless revolutions which have marked
the interval in the manners, habits, and opinions of men. Is it