er kind: I now well understood who it was
that I saw; and there was no wonder in his being at Allan Bank, Elleray
standing within nine miles; but (as usually happens in such cases) I
felt a shock of surprise on seeing a person so little corresponding to
the one I had half unconsciously prefigured.

And here comes the place naturally, if anywhere, for a description of
Mr. Wilson's person and general appearance in carriage, manner, and
deportment; and a word or two I shall certainly say on these points,
simply because I know that I _must_, else my American friends will
complain that I have left out that precise section in my whole account
which it is most impossible for them to supply for themselves by any
acquaintance with his printed works. Yet suffer me, before I comply
with this demand, to enter one word of private protest against the
childish (nay, worse than childish--the _missy_) spirit in which such
demands originate. From my very earliest years,--that is the earliest
years in which I had any sense of what belongs to true dignity of
mind,--I declare to you that I have considered the interest which men,
grown men, take in the personal appearance of each other as one of the
meanest aspects under which human curiosity commonly presents itself.
Certainly I have the same intellectual perception of differences in
such things that other men have; but I connect none of the feelings,
whether of admiration or contempt, liking or disliking, which are
obviously connected with these perceptions by human beings generally.
Such words as 'commanding appearance,' 'prepossessing countenance,'
applied to the figures or faces of the males of the human species,
have no meaning in my ears: no man commands me, no man prepossesses
me, by anything in, on, or about his carcass. What care I for any
man's legs? I laugh at his ridiculous presumption in conceiting that
I shall trouble myself to admire or to respect anything that he can
produce in his _physics_. What! shall I honour Milo for the very
qualities which he has in common with the beastly ox he carries--his
thews and sinews, his ponderous strength and weight, and the quantity
of thumping that his hide will carry? I disclaim and disdain any
participation in such green-girl feelings. I admit that the baby
feelings I am here condemning are found in connection with the highest
intellects: in particular, Mr. Coleridge for instance once said to me,
as a justifying reason for his dislike of