ce more made his appearance in his native
village. He was not disposed to be very communicative; but for one
thing, at least, he seemed willing to express his gratitude. His Ohio
wife, having no spell against intermittent fever, had paid the debt of
nature, and had left him free; in view of which, his surviving wife,
after manifesting a due degree of resentment, consented to take him back
to her bed and board; and I could never learn that she had cause to
regret her clemency.

THE BEAUTIFUL

"A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face;
a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form;
it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;
it is the finest of the fine arts."
EMERSON'S Essays, Second Series, iv., p. 162.

A FEW days since I was walking with a friend, who, unfortunately for
himself, seldom meets with anything in the world of realities worthy of
comparison with the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the
Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always near yet never
overtaken. He was half humorously, half seriously, complaining of the
lack of beauty in the faces and forms that passed us on the crowded
sidewalk. Some defect was noticeable in all: one was too heavy, another
too angular; here a nose was at fault, there a mouth put a set of
otherwise fine features out of countenance; the fair complexions had red
hair, and glossy black locks were wasted upon dingy ones. In one way or
another all fell below his impossible standard.

The beauty which my friend seemed in search of was that of proportion
and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves and
obtuse angles, of warm carnation and marble purity. Such a man, for
aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence
who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her
with stony eyes from his niche in the Vatican. One thing is certain,--
he will never find his faultless piece of artistical perfection by
searching for it amidst flesh-and-blood realities. Nature does not,
as far as I can perceive, work with square and compass, or lay on her
colors by the rules of royal artists or the dunces of the academies.
She eschews regular outlines. She does not shape her forms by a common
model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her
who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinit