apprehend no reason for directing any vigilance against it. But I
contend that reasonably no feelings of deep interest are justifiable
as applied to any point of external form or feature in human beings,
unless under two reservations: first, that they shall have reference
to women; because women, being lawfully the objects of passions and
tender affections, which can have no existence as applied to men, are
objects also, rationally and consistently, of all other secondary
feelings (such as those derived from their personal appearance) which
have any tendency to promote and support the first. Whereas between
men the highest mode of intercourse is merely intellectual, which is
not of a nature to receive support or strength from any feelings of
pleasure or disgust connected with the accidents of external
appearance: but exactly in the degree in which these have any
influence at all they must warp and disturb by improper biases; and
the single case of exception, where such feelings can be honourable
and laudable amongst the males of the human species, is where they
regard such deformities as are the known products and expressions of
criminal or degrading propensities. All beyond this, I care not by
whom countenanced, is infirmity of mind, and would be baseness if it
were not excused by imbecility.

Excuse this digression, for which I have a double reason: chiefly I
was anxious to put on record my own opinions, and my contempt for men
generally in this particular; and here I seemed to have a conspicuous
situation for that purpose. Secondly, apart from this purpose of
offence, I was at any rate anxious, merely on a defensive principle,
to screen myself from the obvious misinterpretation incident to the
case: saying anything minute or in detail upon a man's person, I
should necessarily be supposed to do so under the ordinary blind
feelings of interest in that subject which govern most people;
feelings which I disdain. Now, having said all this, and made my
formal protest, _liberavi animam meam_; and I revert to my subject,
and shall say that word or two which I was obliged to promise you on
Professor Wilson's personal appearance.

Figure to yourself, then, a tall man, about six feet high, within half
an inch or so, built with tolerable appearance of strength; but at the
date of my description (that is, in the very spring-tide and blossom
of youth) wearing, for the predominant character of his person,
lightness and agility, o