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The Soul of things – Professor William Denton

The case of Niebuhr, the celebrated Danish traveller can be related here ‘When old, blind and so infirm that he was able only to be carried from his bed to his chair, he used to describe to his friends the scenes which he had visited in his early days with wonderful minuteness and vivacity.  When they expressed their astonishment, he told themthat ashe lay in his bed, all  visible objects shut out, the pictures of what he had seen in the East continually floated before his mind’s eye, so that it was no wonder he could speak of them as if he had seen them yesterday.  With like vividness, the deep intense sky of Asia, with its brilliant and twinkling host of stars, which he had so often gazed at by night, or its lofty vault of blue by day, was reflected in the hours of stillness and darkness on his innocent soul’