to be merry and wise,
It is good to be honest and true,
It is good to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new."

There was never better truth spoken than this, and if all men and
women could follow the advice here given, there would be very little
sorrow in the world. But men and women do not follow it. They are no
more able to do so than they are to use a spear, the staff of which
is like a weaver's beam, or to fight with the sword Excalibur. The
more they exercise their arms, the nearer will they get to using the
giant's weapon,--or even the weapon that is divine. But as things
are at present, their limbs are limp and their muscles soft, and
over-feeding impedes their breath. They attempt to be merry without
being wise, and have theories about truth and honesty with which they
desire to shackle others, thinking that freedom from such trammels
may be good for themselves. And in that matter of love,--though love
is very potent,--treachery will sometimes seem to be prudence, and a
hankering after new delights will often interfere with real devotion.

It is very easy to depict a hero,--a man absolutely stainless,
perfect as an Arthur,--a man honest in all his dealings, equal to all
trials, true in all his speech, indifferent to his own prosperity,
struggling for the general good, and, above all, faithful in love.
At any rate, it is as easy to do that as to tell of the man who is
one hour good and the next bad, who aspires greatly but fails in
practice, who sees the higher but too often follows the lower course.
There arose at one time a school of art, which delighted to paint
the human face as perfect in beauty; and from that time to this we
are discontented unless every woman is drawn for us as a Venus, or,
at least, a Madonna. I do not know that we have gained much by this
untrue portraiture, either in beauty or in art. There may be made
for us a pretty thing to look at, no doubt;--but we know that that
pretty thing is not really visaged as the mistress whom we serve, and
whose lineaments we desire to perpetuate on the canvas. The winds of
heaven, or the flesh-pots of Egypt, or the midnight gas,--passions,
pains, and, perhaps, rouge and powder, have made her something
different. But there still is the fire of her eye, and the eager
eloquence of her mouth, and something, too, perhaps, left of the
departing innocence of youth, which the painter might give us without
the Venus or the