ity. Such should not be throned in
woman's heart! He is not worthy woman's tender, self-denying love,
whom a sneer will change--a laugh will part--he will be found
wanting--he will stand aloof when the faint heart turns to him for
consolation. Wo to you! wo to you, especially if you trust such. You
cannot always tread on flowers; choose one who can and will smooth
down a rugged path. The gilded vessel, the child's plaything, rides
gayly on a glassy sea--but life is not a glassy sea; the storm must
come. If you would reach the peaceful port, embark not in a summer
yacht; select a ship that can abide the storm--a mind that can
maintain its course--that struggles--and will conquer. Look there," he
continued, for she made no reply, taking up a highly finished drawing
from the table, the performance showing more pains than genius, and
contrasting it with a bold, free sketch which lay beside it, "there
they are exactly, the one all harmony, or insipidity as I should call
it; a model of weakness--highly finished--not a stroke
wanting--complete as a whole--but how poor a whole! Without the
possibility of amendment, too: deficient in energy--not a bold line:
and were such put in it would be out of place--it would spoil the
keeping. Now look on this! A bold and vigorous outline--the work of
mind, seizing the attention: soul, not manner; thought, not mechanism;
it may be filled up ill, but it may also be filled up well: there is
the capability of greatness: there may be faults in the petty details,
but the whole will compel admiration, and not weary in the survey.
This other makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the
generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the
powers whose force he knows not; but the capabilities of amendment are
within him. What say you to my exordium?"

* * * * *

It is great injustice to assert that delicacy of feeling is confined
to the higher ranks, and is the offspring of refinement and education;
these may nourish and increase, but they cannot give it. It is innate;
the child of the untutored heart; the very essence of the beautiful:
chained to no climate, bounded to no rank.

We have seen the wealthy, those who thought themselves the great ones
of the earth, take leave of those of fallen fortunes with undimmed eye
and steady voice, as though they knew not that there was cause for
sorrow, guessed not that the heart was well nigh broken, and only
stay