against the
antagonist moral, the human beauty of itself has no power, no
self-sustaining life. While it panders to evil desires, then, indeed,
there are few things may parallel its fearful might. But the unholy
alliance must at last have an end. Look at it then, when the beautiful
serpent has cast her slough.

Let us turn to it for a moment, and behold it in league with elegant
accomplishments and a subtile intellect: how complete its triumph! If
ever the soul may be said to be intoxicated, it is then, when it feels
the full power of a beautiful, bad woman. The fabled enchantments
of the East are less strange and wonder-working than the marvellous
changes which her spell has wrought. For a time every thought seems
bound to her will; the eternal eye of the conscience closes before
her; the everlasting truths of right and wrong sleep at her bidding;
nay, things most gross and abhorred become suddenly invested with
a seeming purity: till the whole mind is hers, and the bewildered
victim, drunk with her charms, calls evil good. Then, what may follow?
Read the annals of crime; it will tell us what follows the broken
spell,--broken by the first degrading theft, the first stroke of the
dagger, or the first drop of poison. The felon's eye turns upon the
beautiful sorceress with loathing and abhorrence: an asp, a toad, is
not more hateful! The story of Milwood has many counterparts.

But, although Beauty cannot sustain itself permanently against what is
morally bad, and has no direct power of producing good, it yet may,
and often does, when unobstructed, through its unimpassioned purity,
predispose to the good, except, perhaps, in natures grossly depraved;
inasmuch as all affinities to the pure are so many reproaches to the
vitiated mind, unless convertible to some selfish end. Witness the
beautiful wife, wedded for what is misnamed love, yet becoming the
scorn of a brutal husband,--the more bitter, perhaps, if she be also
good. But, aside from those counteracting causes so often mentioned,
it is as we have said: we are predisposed to feel kindly, and to think
purely, of every beautiful object, until we have reason to think
otherwise; and according to our own hearts will be our thoughts.

We are aware of but one other objection which has not been noticed,
and which might be made to the intuitive nature of the Idea. How is
it, we may be asked, that artists, who are supposed, from their early
discipline, to have overcome all c