I declare, Madame, that I have written myself into love with you; alas! that imagination should play Pygmalion so cruelly. And yet, even as I write, I see you in yonder photograph of the Venus of Milos-yes, that was your form, O eternal soul of Beauty! and of all the Joyousness of all Life-two thousand years ago in Greece! Then you rose from the sea, and appeared in glory to a newly-baked world, piping warm from the oven of Chaos; now you rise from the small circular Pontine pool of my inkstand; but, O dear soul! how I love you, and worship in you, with all heart and deepest reverence, the ideal of woman. Ay, there is Pride-the pride which never dies-the glorious Pride which has comprehended Beauty, and nobility of soul, and trueheartedness, and joyousness; the pride which would make this world anew to a merry Venusberg, and every gentleman to a brave Tannhäuser, and fill all the land with piping and song, with books of Gay Science, and every heart with honor-that honor which lives for others as much as for self. Yea, beloved, all these things do I behold in the pride of that fair lady—the Gloriana whom to have seen is to live forever in a newer, truer, fresher life of Poetry and Beauty. She it is who will ride in future ages at the head of the gay train, whose watchword will be HILARITER, and which we now dimly prophesy with premonitory cow-horn blast, far down amid the dark forests and gloomy swamps of a doleful, wailing age. We indeed rout on low notes and

a humble horn, but the age is forming others, who will send forth clear, ringing, trumpet blasts of frank, bold Joyousness, and there will arise in those days from these our ashes a Swan whom they cannot roast.

"Inspiratus sum"-no matter, my ideal dame-I have paid homage to you, and, in you, to all womankind as they will be when men are more advanced; and I do not regret the prophecy or the rhapsody. In sober truth, I wish that people would look more closely into this matter of Pride. Everybody hates the selfish, grasping pride which cries "Give! give!" and yet every one grants that there is a certain "right sort of pride,” a great self-reliance, which is the very soul of beauty, purity, and nobility. And in this last pride are inclosed, as in a golden casket, all the virtues requisite to enable us to live happily.

One word more. I have spoken of the Venus of Milos as my type of womanly perfection. Minerva is indeed the incarnation of mere intellect without passion, of that knowledge of the letter whose power can be applied, like oratory, either to good or evil. But even Minerva, as I understand her, is not the real Minerva ; the Ma Nerf-the Great Strength-of old Etruria; the one supreme incarnation of knowledge and power and love, corresponding to the Phoenician Astarte, the Starry Queen of Heaven. It was Venus in her primeval loveliness and strength, who was both wise and loving-the deity of the Serpent and the Dove. In later days, as

mankind divided and fell away from those grand and simple types of early faith, there arose many Venuses, from the Cottyta of Filth up to those pure forms of infinite, noble loveliness of which I verily believe the Neapolitan Psyche to have been one. The ideal of woman, noble, loving, and proud-stooping to nothing vile, mingling with nothing base-the LADY par excellence, yet warm and loving amid kindred phases of physical and moral beauty, must be sought in the higher Venuses of Greek Art. It has been so usual to forget the Greek or Etruscan in the Roman, and the pure antique among modern corruptions, that now we only know Cupid as a silly, blind boy-the foolish fiction of almost modern times-and have degraded the sweet name and conception of Venus down to all that is vile. And we have chosen as our ideal the Venus di Medicis, the most "graceful," indeed, and softest, the most "symmetrical," polished, and dilettantish of statues— but not the one-no, anything but that—in which superb loveliness and heartfelt nobility call forth the best love and most earnest adoration of a true nature. Man or woman, whoever you are, I pity you if before the antique Venus Triumphant, or before Her of Milos, you have not felt that in the soul of the sculptor there dwelt a simpler, nobler, and more exquisitely true ideal than in his who modelled her of Florence.

In the olden time, Venus was Diana, the crescent queen of heaven-woman perfect both in intellectual and

physical attributes, and not less the Juno of Pride. And it is such a Venus Astarte whom I worship in the Fair Form of the isle of Milos; such a Venus in the won. drously lovely Psyche; such a Venus in you, superbly proud Madame, invoked so often in these pages. Eyes of light, may ye shine forever!

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

"FOR my part, I say it in all solemnity, I have become sincerely suspicious of the piety of those who do not love pleasure in any form. I cannot trust the man that never laughs; that is always sedate; that has no apparent outlets for springs of sportiveness and gayety that are perennial in the human soul. I know that Nature takes her revenge on such violence. I expect to find secret vices, malignant sins, or horrid crimes springing up in this hot-bed of confined air and imprisoned space, and therefore it gives me a sincere moral gratification, anywhere and in any community, to see innocent pleasures and popular amusements resisting the religious bigotry that frowns so unwisely upon them. Anything is better than dark, dead, unhappy social life; a prey to ennui and morbid excitement, which results from unmitigated Puritanism, whose second is usually unbridled license and infamous folly."-REV. DR. BELLOWS ON "MIRTH."

FROM the rural communes of the Atlantic States much good has gone forth, mingled with inseparable qualifications which to us, who hope for newer and more genial developments, and are opposed to such antiquated forms as cause more suffering than benefit, decidedly appear as evil. The good was, a stern independence, an appreciation of the value of education, the faculty of self-government-as shown in well-managed town meetings and a persevering, incredibly varied industry, which has had the effect in all parts of America, where Puritan descent or influence has shown itself, of socially