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272 see that gentleman seated by the fire-place?—he is one who has excited your most enthusiastic admiration." Emily turned, and saw a face that riveted her whole attention: melancholy and intellectual, it was of the noblest order, and the expression seemed to impart something of its own thoughtfulness to the beholder. The shape of the head, the outline of the face, had more the power and decision of the Roman, than the flowing softness of the Greek; in a bust it would have been almost stern, but for the benevolence of the mouth. It was as if two natures contended together,—the one, proud, spiritual, severe, the expression of the head,—the other, sad, tender, and sensitive, the expression of the heart. There was melancholy, as if the imagination dwelt upon the feelings, deepening their tenderness, and refining their sorrow, and yet intellectual withal, as if the thought and the feeling sprang up together: perhaps the most striking effect was their change from their natural look of abstraction to that of observation,—the one was the glance of the poet, the other of the falcon. He is one of our most distinguished authors, in whose novels it is difficult to say whether philosophy, wit, or poetry, most