ind itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist,
Enveloping the earth."

The real difficulty of these lifelong hunters after the beautiful exists
in their own spirits. They set up certain models of perfection in their
imaginations, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of
finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very
unreasonably calculating that Nature will suspend her everlasting laws
for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial
gratification.

The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no
object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but
that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or
associations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly
remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be
avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a
cow on the green." The senses and the faculties of the understanding
are so blended with and dependent upon each other that not one of them
can exercise its office alone and without the modification of some
extrinsic interference or suggestion. Grateful or unpleasant
associations cluster around all which sense takes cognizance of; the
beauty which we discern in an external object is often but the
reflection of our own minds.

What is beauty, after all? Ask the lover who kneels in homage to one
who has no attractions for others. The cold onlooker wonders that he
can call that unclassic combination of features and that awkward form
beautiful. Yet so it is. He sees, like Desdemona, her "visage in her
mind," or her affections. A light from within shines through the
external uncomeliness,--softens, irradiates, and glorifies it. That
which to others seems commonplace and unworthy of note is to him, in the
words of Spenser,--

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace;
A full assurance given by looks;
Continual comfort in a face;
The lineaments of Gospel books."

"Handsome is that handsome does,--hold up your heads, girls!" was the
language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The
worthy matron was right. Would that all my female readers who are
sorrowing foolishly because they are not in all respects like Dubufe's
Eve, or that statue of the Venus "which enchant