. And I say "woman" rather than "girl," because
among "Girls of the Period" Cecilia Travers cannot be classed. You might
call her damsel, virgin, maiden, but you could no more call her girl
than you could call a well-born French demoiselle _fille_. She is
handsome enough to please the eye of any man, however fastidious, but
not that kind of beauty which dazzles all men too much to fascinate one
man; for--speaking, thank Heaven, from mere theory--I apprehend that the
love for woman has in it a strong sense of property; that one requires
to individualize one's possession as being wholly one's own, and not
a possession which all the public are invited to admire. I can readily
understand how a rich man, who has what is called a show place, in which
the splendid rooms and the stately gardens are open to all inspectors,
so that he has no privacy in his own demesnes, runs away to a pretty
cottage which he has all to himself, and of which he can say, "_This_ is
home; _this_ is all mine."

But there are some kinds of beauty which are eminently show
places,--which the public think they have as much a right to admire as
the owner has; and the show place itself would be dull and perhaps fall
out of repair, if the public could be excluded from the sight of it.

The beauty of Cecilia Travers is not that of a show place. There is a
feeling of safety in her. If Desdemona had been like her, Othello would
not have been jealous. But then Cecilia would not have deceived her
father; nor I think have told a blackamoor that she wished "Heaven
had made her such a man." Her mind harmonizes with her person: it is
a companionable mind. Her talents are not showy, but, take them
altogether, they form a pleasant whole: she has good sense enough in
the practical affairs of life, and enough of that ineffable womanly gift
called tact to counteract the effects of whimsical natures like mine,
and yet enough sense of the humouristic views of life not to take too
literally all that a whimsical man like myself may say. As to temper,
one never knows what a woman's temper is--till one puts her out of it.
But I imagine hers, in its normal state, to be serene, and disposed to
be cheerful. Now, my dear father, if you were not one of the cleverest
of men you would infer from this eulogistic mention of Cecilia Travers
that I was in love with her. But you no doubt will detect the truth that
a man in love with a woman does not weigh her merits with so steady a
hand