Page:Language of the Eye.djvu/143

Rh the sensual and conceited, the selfish and artificial can recognize beauty; for such recognition requires habitual dignity and delicacy of mind. How vain would be the endeavour to create a sympathy for the beautiful in the mind of the covetous and sensual, the idle or dissipated! before such this apparition of divinity will not appear. But we will proceed.—Beauty is one of the ministering fairies, ever tending the path of the intellectual and imaginative. By the old beechen tree, in the rays of the sun, in the hues of the dark portentous clouds, midst the dazzling figures of the mazy dance, in the long and sombre corridor, or gloomy aisle, on battlements, or mountain's brow, rolling on the bosom of the lonely sea, in the wild wind's voice, in the presence of the perfume of gentle violets, or the ruby rose, there sits beauty—to win, to excite, to delight her devotees, to charm, to soothe, to dignify and absorb, to lead to honour, love, and charity. This heavenly guest will wait on earth, till all the sons of man are gone; and then will be wafted in her golden car to join in eternal praises in the unseen world. Beauty, like all divine gifts, is everywhere to be seen by the eye of the faithful admirer of nature; and, like all spirits, she is scarcely to be described by words. Her countenance and mien, her path, her hue and carriage, often surpass expression, and soothe the enthusiast into reverie and silence. Sometimes she is personified by the graceful lily, sometimes by the dashing cataract, at times in eventide's rays, or on the trembling leaf of autumn; sometimes in the painter's reveries, or the sculptor's exalted conceptions; in the halo of childhood she frolics with innocent playfulness; but one of her earthly thrones is in woman's eye and fashion: there are the unchangeable lines and contour of beauty. There is beauty midst a host of courteous associates, who execute her commands; thence