Christian Saints" to that golden diadem or circlet of supernatural light
(that _glory_, as it is commonly called in English) which, amongst the
great masters of painting in Italy, surrounded the heads of Christ and of
distinguished saints.

[5] "_The astonishment of science_."--Her medical attendants were Dr.
Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondent
of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White, the most
distinguished surgeon at that time in the north of England. It was he
who pronounced her head to be the finest in its development of any that
he had ever seen--an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in
after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the
subject may be presumed from this, that, at so early a stage of such
inquiries, he had published a work on human craniology, supported by
measurement of heads selected from all varieties of the human species.
Meantime, as it would grieve me that any trait of what might seem vanity
should creep into this record, I will admit that my sister died of
hydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the premature
expansion of the intellect in cases of that class is altogether morbid--
forced on, in fact, by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would,
however, suggest, as a possibility, the very opposite order of relation
between the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease
may always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but,
inversely, this growth of the intellect coming on spontaneously, and
outrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the
disease.

[6]
"I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony which cannot be remembered."