ingle
bottle of our worthy host's choice old Madeira--and then haste in the
barouche (ha! here it is) to Bowness. It is right now to laugh--and
sing--and recite poetry--and talk all manner of nonsense. Didn't ye hear
something crack? Can it be a spring--or merely the axle-tree? Our
clerical friend from Chester assures us 'twas but a string of his
guitar--so no more shrieking--and after coffee we shall have

"Rise up, rise up, Xarifa, lay your golden cushion down!"

And then we two, my dear sir, must have a contest at chess--at which, if
you beat us, we shall leave our bed at midnight, and murder you in your
sleep. "But where," murmurs Matilda, "are we going?" To Oresthead,
love--and Elleray--for you must see a sight these sweet eyes of thine
never saw before--a SUNSET.

We have often wondered if there be in the world one woman indisputably
and undeniably the most beautiful of all women--or if, indeed, our first
mother were "the loveliest of her daughters, Eve." What human female
beauty is all men feel--but few men know--and none can tell--further
than that it is perfect spiritual health, breathingly embodied in
perfect corporeal flesh and blood, according to certain heaven-framed
adaptations of form and hue, that by a familiar yet inscrutable mystery,
to our senses and our souls express sanctity and purity of the immortal
essence enshrined within, by aid of all associated perceptions and
emotions that the heart and the imagination can agglomerate round them,
as instantly and as unhesitatingly as the faculties of thought and
feeling can agglomerate round a lily or a rose, for example, the
perceptions and emotions that make them--by divine right of inalienable
beauty--the Royal Families of Flowers. This definition--or description
rather--of human female beauty, may appear to some, as indeed it appears
to us, something vague; but all profound truths--out of the exact
sciences--are something vague; and it is manifestly the design of a
benign and gracious Providence that they should be so till the end of
time--till mortality puts on immortality--and earth is heaven.
Vagueness, therefore, is no fault in philosophy--any more than in the
dawn of morning, or the gloaming of eve. Enough, if each clause of the
sentence that seeks to elucidate a confessed mystery, has a meaning
harmonious with all the meanings in all the other clauses--and that the
effect of the whole taken together is musical--and a tune. Then it is
Truth.