INTRODUCTION.

It is in vain to dispute about the matter;-moralists may moralize, preachers may sermonize, about it as much as they please,—still beauty is a most delightful thing,—and a really lovely woman a most enchanting object to gaze on. I am aware of all that can be said about roses fading, and cheeks withering, and lips growing thin and pale. No one, indeed, need be ignorant of every change which can be rung upon this peal of bells, for every one must have heard them in every possible and impossible-variety of combination. Give time, and complexion will decay, and lips and cheeks will shrink and grow wrinkled, sure enough. But it is needless to anticipate the work of years, and to give credit to old Time for his conquests before he has won them. The edge of his scythe does more execution than

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that of the conqueror's sword; we need not add the work of fancy to his,-it is more than sufficiently sure and rapid already.

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When things are good, I am willing to take them as they are; when faces are beautiful, I content to gaze on them, without too accurately calling to mind what they will probably be when five or six additional lustres shall have passed over them. I cannot, indeed, claim any great originality or singularity of taste on this head. Most persons agree with me, more or less consciously, and with greater or lesser degrees of analysis. What I mean is this:There are few men who do not intuitively love to look upon a pretty face and well-moulded form; but certainly there are yet fewer who duly judge of the various gradations of beauty upwards, from that lowest one which I have just named-prettiness,—still less of the latter item, symmetry and perfection of form. The man of more coarse perceptions, indeed, is less likely to have his taste offended; but neither does he enjoy the gratification which arises from the refined and delicate distinctions

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of the real judge of beauty. There is a last criterion of its full appreciation, to which the ordinary observer has still seldomer pretensions —I mean the admiration of loveliness for its own sake, wholly uncoupled with any feelings of a sexual kind. I am far from saying that, if a man be fortunate enough to combine the woman of his love with the incarnate figure of his ideal perfection of beauty,—I am far from saying that, in this case, each circumstance does not infinitely heighten and assist the other. But it is equally certain, that the intense and extreme admiration of abstract loveliness, of which I have been speaking, may, and often does, exist as a feeling totally apart and separate from any of those more usually recognised and mentioned.

I am the more certain of this, from the fact that, perhaps, the strongest admiration of beauty I ever felt was towards-a picture. I have stood before it for hours-all consciousness of surrounding objects, of the world, of myself, lost in the absorbing influence of that pervading loveliness. But as this picture is, in fact, the origin of the following tale, I will give a some

what detailed account of the circumstances under which I saw it, as well as of itself.

I was on a visit in one of the midland counties, at an old manor-house, built towards the end of Henry the Eighth's time. I have a passion for old houses, and this was qualified to gratify it in every way. It was, in style, what is called a Cardinal Wolsey's house,-like the old part of Hampton Court Palace, and some private places in that neighbourhood-of red brick, namely, with tall twisted chimneys, numerous gable ends, and an infinite irregularity of outline. But how different is such a building from that which is commonly associated with the term "red brick !" Instead of a gaping, square, hospital-looking edifice, dropped in the middle of a field, this stood in the elbow, as it were, of a secluded valley-with a line of gigantic firs, in which the owls built, at each side of the entrance, and a fine mill-stream of a brook running through the bottom. The small bricks, peculiar to that date and style of building, were darkened by ageand overgrown, in places by ivy, in places by magnificent pear-trees, which were trained along the

face of the house. Grass, shaven as smoothly as the scythe could crop it, stretched down to the bank of the stream, which, after taking a bold sweep through the valley, disappeared in a wood of dark foliage at its extremity..

The moment I saw the place, I exclaimed"This must have been a monastery!" The monks always nestled in sheltered laps of land like this, with a hill to protect them from the north and east, and a smiling exposure to the south, and, above all, with a brook to turn their mill. Such spots abound in England; and form, at once, one of the most pleasing and peculiar of the characteristics of its scenery.—I was right, and I was not right. The land had been abbey-land; but the house had been built by one of those barons who had joined in the destruction of the religious establishments, to participate in their spoil—and who had done so amply. His castle, considerably the worse for wear, had stood a little higher up the stream than the site of the present house; the monastery something lower. The very water which joined these temporal and spiritual potentates had been a cause of discord