wanted so small an incitement.
Our old yeomanry farmers--returning to their beds over ferny commons
under bright moonlight from a neighbour's harvest-home, eased their
bubbling breasts with a ready roar not unakin to it. Still the
promptness to laugh is an excellent progenitorial foundation for the wit
to come in a people; and undoubtedly the diarial record of an imputed
piece of wit is witness to the spouting of laughter. This should comfort
us while we skim the sparkling passages of the 'Leaves.' When a nation
has acknowledged that it is as yet but in the fisticuff stage of the
art of condensing our purest sense to golden sentences, a readier
appreciation will be extended to the gift: which is to strike not the
dazzled eyes, the unanticipating nose, the ribs, the sides, and stun
us, twirl us, hoodwink, mystify, tickle and twitch, by dexterities of
lingual sparring and shuffling, but to strike roots in the mind, the
Hesperides of good things. We shall then set a price on the 'unusual
combination.' A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power.
Has she actual beauty, actual wit?--not simply a tidal material beauty
that passes current any pretty flippancy or staggering pretentiousness?
Grant the combination, she will appear a veritable queen of her period,
fit for homage; at least meriting a disposition to believe the best of
her, in the teeth of foul rumour; because the well of true wit is truth
itself, the gathering of the precious drops of right reason, wisdom's
lightning; and no soul possessing and dispensing it can justly be a
target for the world, however well armed the world confronting her. Our
temporary world, that Old Credulity and stone-hurling urchin in one,
supposes it possible for a woman to be mentally active up to the point
of spiritual clarity and also fleshly vile; a guide to life and a biter
at the fruits of death; both open mind and hypocrite. It has not yet
been taught to appreciate a quality certifying to sound citizenship as
authoritatively as acres of land in fee simple, or coffers of bonds,
shares and stocks, and a more imperishable guarantee. The multitudes
of evil reports which it takes for proof, are marshalled against her
without question of the nature of the victim, her temptress beauty being
a sufficiently presumptive delinquent. It does not pretend to know
the whole, or naked body of the facts; it knows enough for its furry
dubiousness; and excepting the sentimental of men, a rocket