An old, furrowed, eyeless man. But another look and you settle into an awed, entranced gaze. The brow, ampler and higher than before, is crowned with the throned thought that makes each deep line, each vein-track speak of will, of purpose, of intelligence. The lids are closed upon the heralds of the mind, but what need of eyes, when the emphatic eyebrows so solemnly prophecy of the sublime depths they shadow. And how purified, how exalted has the expression of the lip become -it has lost its warmth, but what has it gained in loftier appreciation and the kindly lines that break the thin face, have they not all been traced by sympathy in the sorrows of humanity. In the first picture you see the youth, the student, the prophet. In the last, the poet, the patriot, the martyr. And in the last the face is, to us, a thousand times the more beautiful.

Our theory is world-wide in its application, and mere belief in its truth will give practical results; we shall look less admiringly on those statues of flesh we have made models of, and regard with more love those whom nature, dwarfing the height, twisting her fair flowers, or bereaving her children of some dear sense, has compensated by the grace inseparable from goodness, the Beauty that breathes in a kindly eye and a charitable lip. The more intelligent the world becomes the higher will be its standard of beauty

Till now, the Venus de Medecis, has been the model

"That enchants the world,"

and yet it is but a successful embodying of the lowest attributes of Love. Its coquetry, its mobility and its fire. Where are the elevation, the tenderness, the modesty, the concentration of the Passion? We shall not much longer be content with such a Type of Woman. When we have raised our idea of the Sex, the Sex, ever swaying to our guidance, will raise itself, and as with Raffaelle, the Fornarina of the world will become its Madonna.

That is only sterling which outlives doubt; the pretty faces of the past would have been all forgotten, but for the song of the Poet-and as it is-Helen will scarcely, in any man's eye, rank with Berengeria, or the royal Cleopatra take her place beside the Maid of Orleans.

In Literature, the theory is so accurately defined in every face that almost any would serve our purpose. The face of L. E. L. without one good feature, is it not beautiful? The only instance against us that we recollect, is that of Eliza Cook,

whose portrait if not a libel, is a sacrifice for which the lady deserves more praise than for all her poetry.

We group three faces together all akin in character of those beings ever in the purgatory of a doubtful reputation-Burns— Goldsmith and Byron. How alike each profile. How the luxuriant roundness of line in all three speaks of the large sympathy, the grand egotism, the fierce animalism of the men. But our point here is the one which has hitherto so disturbed physiognomists and philosophers in an estimate of their characters the antagonism rather than the balance of their various qualities. How plainly does each face enunciate our ideahow legibly marked is the emphatic boundary in the features of all the three men between intelligence and license.

We now come to the other part of our subject-the dark side.

And we cannot but mourn over the glorious faces that have been marred by the world, or the possessor. At eighteen, Shelley's face was a prophecy, at five and twenty a warning. And that mad, but fine enthusiast, Robert Owen-how obstinate and square his virtuous single-mindedness has made those features, the presiding expression of which is after all, disappointment. There are few faces we regard with more melancholy than his.

But the instances of such crushed, maddened faces are too numerous for selection.

The great principle of our theory is emphatically set forth in that picture by the German Painter, " Man playing at chess for his soul." There you have the opposing elements of Beauty-its Power in the Satan, its Melancholy in the Mortal, combined in the Angel.

And as in this picture, the creatures of Earth everywhere bear the impress of their doom-their origin is written on their brow. In the most beautiful it is too often the recollection of the lost, not the hope of the recovered Paradise.

Let us begin to educate ourselves, and raise our own species as we do our horses and dogs. Let us be content no more with Statesmen like Walpole, with a face eloquent of all his speciousness and corruption, or with Patriots like Wilkes, Hogarth's portrait of whom is an epigrammatic history of Vice. Let us fling aside the disciples of Ugliness for ever-and with them their models. Voltaire for example in whose face, half goat, half ape ugliness could go no farther. Let us despise all that is mean, corrupt, or monstrous, and we shall soon find beauty

in many a countenance hitherto unregarded, while the cherished faces of our homes and hearts will grow into beauty, day by day and hour by hour.

We would not close with a harsh reflection, but we have hanged a good many ugly men. Men, whose faces had they been taken half the care of, by pity, encouragement and kindly nurture, which has been spent in hunting the famished, ignorant wretches into that despair-elder sister of crime-that so mars all beauty, that with such patient, loving care, they may have furnished models for our Sculptors, not casts for our Museums.

The subject suggests such rich and varied illustration, that we may be tempted farther than is necessary to our purpose. Yet every illustration is an argument. And our last sets a seal upon the truth of our theory.

The least beautiful faces in mere outline, color, or gloss, are of course among the unnursed, unembraced, unwept children of the poor. And yet from such elements have our Cathedrals borrowed those lofty and radiant faces whose simple holiness of bearing, whose dignity of expression-through homely feature, and humble dress, proclaim them at once those whom God himself selected as His followers, companions and missionaries on earth—the simple, heroic Apostles of the Saviour.

F. C.

VOL. II.

A LOVER'S LETTER.

You bid me write-what would you have me say?
When all that lends me light is far away:
The birds are singing joyously,—the skies
Are bright and cloudless-Nature's myriad eyes
Are laughing to the sun, whose golden beams

Kiss the fair flowers, gladden the sparkling streams,
On forest glades rest lovingly; till bright
And golden as the beam, they roll in light.
So smiles all nature 'neath the God of day.
But I-I dwell in night-can I be gay?
My soul is sad, my spirit smiles no more;
My heart beats low, its maddening rush is o'er;
Not that I love thee less-Oh deem not so-

Thou know'st thy absence is my source of woe,
And love hath lost his fire-he only weeps

In silent sorrow-yet he firmly keeps

His seat secure upon his sacred throne,

Though light, and joy, and gladness, thence are flown.

My spirit turns to thee, Oh, give it light!
Sun of my soul, dispel this dreary night!
Tell me you'll smile on me from each fair flower:
And oh! in that serene and holy hour

When the day fades, and one bright silver star
Looks forth alone, from its companions far;
And from its path in the clear heaven above
Smiles on the earth in pity and in love:
Then bid thy spirit come, and with me dwell,
Until we meet again.

Farewell! Oh, fare thee well!
CATHERINE BRANDON.

THE POETRY OF FLOWERS.

By H. G. Adams.

THE HONEYSUCKLE, OR WOODBINE-LONICERA,

"Beside the dewy border let me sit,

All in the freshness of the humid air;

There, in that hollowed rock, grotesque and wild,
An ample chair, moss-lined, and overhead
By flowering umbrage shaded; where the bee
Strays diligent, and with th' extracted balm
Of fragrant Woodbine loads his little thigh.

THOMSON.

HONEYSUCKLE! there is sweetness in the very name, derived, as Phillips presumes, "from the trick of children, who draw out the trumpet-shaped corollas from the calyx, to suck the honey from the nectary;" to speak of it only, seems to fill the air around with fragrance, and to invest the scene, however barren and gloomy it may be in reality, with rare and gorgeous beauty, by the power of memory and association, for, as Thomas Miller observes," How often in our wood ramblings have we enhaled the fragrance of the wild Honeysuckle (woodbine)! and, allured by its sweet smell, we have plunged into the thick underwood, and at length discovered it coiled, perhaps, around some young oak, which it has enwreathed with garlands, and almost smothered with flowers and perfumes. What lovely images it has furnished for our poets, entwining and clinging to the stem it decorates, and filling the air far around with odours!" And who, we may add, has not wandered down the green lane, when

the scythe of the mower, and the song of the hay-maker, were heard in the meadows, and the hum and buzz of innumerable insects went up like a murmured prayer from the heart of creation, and beheld

"How the blue bind-weed doth itself enfold

With Honeysuckle, and both them entwine
Themselves with bryony and jessamine,

To cast a kind and odoriferous shade;"

as Ben Jonson hath it in his " Vision of Delight," which would indeed have wanted a charm without the introduction of this beautiful and fragrant flower, whose Latin name, we are told, was given to it in honor of Adam Lonicer, a physician in Frankfort, why the oracle, that is Phillips, saith not, but he continues "We name it Woodbine because it winds itself, as it were in wedlock, to every tree and shrub in its neighbourhood, which it graces by its well attired branches in return for the support it borrows, from hence it is styled the bond of love;" and from hence too, we may well suppose, it was made emblematical of fidelity by Chaucer, in whose beautiful allegory, “the Flower and the Leaf," as modernized by Thomas Powell, we find this stanza

"And those that wear the chaplets on their head
Of Woodbine fresh, are such as never were

To love untrue, in word, or thought, or deed,

But stedfast aye, fidelity their creed;

Though anguish deep their living heart should tear,
They never wavered, but to their trust held fast,
Long as the breath did in their bodies last."

In his "Emblems" Phillips gives us the Foxglove and the Rose (Youth and Beauty) bound together by enwreathing Honeysuckle (united by the bonds of love. Yes love-pure, trusting, confiding, devoted love! What careth it for sorrow or adversity? It knoweth no change, no diminution; but clingeth the more closely to the object of its affections, the more rudely the storm assails that object, and the more darkly the sky lowers over and threatens it with destruction; and when the bolt falls, and the tree, or the ruined wall, lies prostrate, there, too, lies the Honeysuckle, sharing the fate of that which it had beautified and embraced in more prosperous, and happier times: well may Mason say—

"The Woodbine wild

That loves to hang on barren bough remote
Her wreaths of flowery perfume."