l lingered light;
now from corruption the light itself was gone. In that herculean
constitution excess of all kinds had at length forced its ravage, and
the ravage was visible in the ruined face. The once sparkling eye was
dull and bloodshot. The colours of the cheek, once clear and vivid, to
which fiery drink had only sent the blood in a warmer glow, were now
of a leaden dulness, relieved but by broken streaks of angry red, like
gleams of flame struggling through gathered smoke. The profile, once
sharp and delicate like Apollo's, was now confused in its swollen
outline; a few years more, and it would be gross as that of
Silenus,--the nostrils, distended with incipient carbuncles, which
betray the gnawing fang that alcohol fastens into the liver. Evil
passions had destroyed the outlines of the once beautiful lips, arched
as a Cupid's bow. The sidelong, lowering, villanous expression which had
formerly been but occasional was now habitual and heightened. It was the
look of the bison before it gores. It is true, however, that even yet on
the countenance there lingered the trace of that lavish favour bestowed
on it by nature. An artist would still have said, "How handsome that
ragamuffin must have been!" And true is it, also, that there was yet
that about the bearing of the man which contrasted his squalor, and
seemed to say that he had not been born to wear rags and loiter at
midnight amongst the haunts of thieves. Nay, I am not sure that you
would have been as incredulous now, if told that the wild outlaw before
you had some claim by birth or by nurture to the rank of gentleman, as
you would had you seen the gay spendthrift in his gaudy day. For then he
seemed below, and now he seemed above, the grade in which he took place.
And all this made his aspect yet more sinister, and the impression that
he was dangerous yet more profound. Muscular strength often remains to
a powerful frame long after the constitution is undermined, and Jasper
Losely's frame was still that of a formidable athlete; nay, its strength
was yet more apparent now that the shoulders and limbs had increased
in bulk than when it was half-disguised in the lissome symmetry of
exquisite proportion,--less active, less supple, less capable of
endurance, but with more crushing weight in its rush or its blow. It was
the figure in which brute force seems so to predominate that in a savage
state it would have worn a crown,--the figure which secures command and
auth