if a pretty woman, all the better.

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all
the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently
of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts
of subjects, interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have
become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of
that part of the brain alone on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot
conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted
than mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered: and if I had to
live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and
listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of
my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The
loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be
injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by
enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

PRIVATE MEMORANDUM CONCERNING HIS LITTLE DAUGHTER

From 'Life and Letters'

Our poor child Annie was born in Gower Street on March 2d, 1841, and
expired at Malvern at midday on the 23d of April, 1851.

I write these few pages, as I think in after years, if we live, the
impressions now put down will recall more vividly her chief
characteristics. From whatever point I look back at her, the main
feature in her disposition which at once rises before me is her buoyant
joyousness, tempered by two other characteristics; namely, her
sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger,
and her strong affection. Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated
from her whole countenance, and rendered every movement elastic and full
of life and vigor. It was delightful and cheerful to behold her. Her
dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running
down-stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me, her whole form radiant
with the pleasure of giving pleasure. Even when playing with her
cousins, when her joyousness almost passed into boisterousness, a single
glance of my eye, not of displeasure (for I thank God I hardly ever cast
one on her), but of want of sympathy, would for some minutes alter her
whole countenance.

The other point in her character, which made her joyousness and spirits
so delightful, was her strong affection, which was o