formidable the
power!

But though, as before observed, we may not read this secret with
precision, it is sometimes possible to make a shrewd guess at the
prevailing tendency in certain individuals. Perhaps the most obvious
cases are among the sanguine and imaginative; and the guess would be,
that a beautiful person would presently be enriched with all possible
virtues, while the colder speculatist would only see in it, not what
it possessed, but the mind that it wanted. Now it would be curious to
imagine (and the case is not impossible) how the eyes of each might be
opened, with the probable consequence, how each might feel when his
eyes were opened, and the object was seen as it really is. Some
untoward circumstance comes unawares on the perfect creature: a burst
of temper knits the brow, inflames the eye, inflates the nostril,
gnashes the teeth, and converts the angel into a storming fury. What
then becomes of the visionary virtues? They have passed into air, and
taken with them, also, what was the fair creature's right,--her
very beauty. Yet a different change takes place with the dry man of
intellect. The mindless object has taken shame of her ignorance; she
begins to cultivate her powers, which are gradually developed until
they expand and brighten; they inform her features, so that no one can
look upon them without seeing the evidence of no common intellect: the
dry man, at last, is struck with their superior intelligence, and what
more surprises him is the grace and beauty, which, for the first time,
they reveal to his eyes. The learned dust which had so long buried his
heart is quickly brushed away, and he weds the embodied mind. What
third change may follow, it is not to our purpose to foresee.

Has human beauty, then, no power? When united with virtue and
intellect, we might almost answer,--All power. It is the embodied
harmony of the true poet; his visible Muse; the guardian angel of his
better nature; the inspiring sibyl of his best affections, drawing him
to her with a purifying charm, from the selfishness of the world, from
poverty and neglect, from the low and base, nay, from his own frailty
or vices:--for he cannot approach her with unhallowed thoughts, whom
the unlettered and ignorant look up to with awe, as to one of a
race above them; before whom the wisest and best bow down without
abasement, and would bow in idolatry but for a higher reverence.
No! there is no power like this of mortal birth. But