play of fancy

To the imaginative, it starts a train of thought—a play of fancy.

But the self-same Spirit works in both these contrasted ways,—in the sanguine and the melancholic disposition, in the demonstrative and in the reserved, in the quick play of fancy and the brightness and impulsiveness of youth no less than in the sober gait and solid sense of riper age.

The play of fancy wreathed the sombre building with a hundred memories grave and gay.

And who shall forget the strange play of fancy as the candle light, during an afternoon service, mingles with the strong 185 sunshine upon the white figures of saints and the whiter figure of the Lady Poverty, who appear to move towards us from amidst a blaze of golden clouds, until gradually as the evening closes in and the candles go out one by one, they are set once more in the shadow of their backgrounds like so many images of snow.

And besides the artistic unity of the work, that satisfies one's standards so fully, there is an exquisite something hard to define; a play of fancy, a veil of poetic beauty lingering over the story, that makes us feel when we have closed the book as if we were gazing at a clear winter sunset.