and then beauty appears. The lovely Irish girls, again their forefathers have dwelt on the mountainside since the days of Fingal, and all the hardships of their lot cannot destroy the natural tendency to shape and enchanting feature. Without those constant factors beauty cannot be, but yet they will not alone produce it. There must be something in the blood which these influences gradually ripen. If it is not there centuries are in vain; but if it is there then it needs these conditions. Erratic, meteor-like beauty! for how many thousand years has man been your slave! Let me repeat, the sentiment at the sight of a perfect beauty is as much amazement as admiration. It so draws the heart out of itself as to seem like magic.

She walks, and the very earth smiles beneath her feet. Something comes with her that is more than mortal; witness the yearning welcome that stretches towards her from all. As the sunshine lights up the aspect of things, so her presence sweetens the very flowers like dew. But the yearning welcome is, I think, the most remarkable of the evidence that may be accumulated about it. So deep, so earnest, so forgetful of the rest, the passion of beauty is almost sad in its intense abstraction. It is a passion, this yearning. She walks in the glory of young life; she is really centuries old.

A hundred and fifty years at the least-more probably twice that have passed away, while from all enchanted things of earth and air this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half ago over the green wheat.

From the perfume of the growing grasses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the greenfinches, baffling the bee. From rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and cornflower azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklet's sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad hill's thyme and freedom: thrice a hundred years repeated. A hundred years of cowslips, blue-bells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn; sunshine, shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power of writing: who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a century ago? The swallows to the housetop three hundred times-think a moment of that. Thence she sprang, and the world yearns towards her beauty as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is centuries old. Is this why passion is almost sad?

II. THE FORCE OF FORM.

Her shoulders were broad, but not too broad-just enough to accentuate the waist, and to give a pleasant sense of ease and power. She was strong, upright, self-reliant, finished in herself. Her bust was full, but not too prominent-more after nature than the dressmaker. There was something, though, of the corset-maker in her waist, it appeared naturally fine, and had been assisted to be finer. But it was in the hips that the woman was perfect :-fulness without

coarseness; large but not big: in a word, nobly proportioned. Now imagine a black dress adhering to this form. From the shoulders to the ankles it fitted "like a glove." There was not a wrinkle, a fold, a crease, smooth as if cast in a mould, and yet so managed that she moved without effort. Every undulation of her figure as she stepped lightly forward flowed to the surface. The slight sway of the hip as the foot was lifted, the upward and inward movement of the limb as the knee was raised, the straightening as the instep felt her weight, each change as the limb described the curves of walking was repeated in her dress. At every change of position she was as gracefully draped as before. All was revealed, yet all concealed. As she passed there was the sense of a presence the presence of perfect form. She was

lifted as she moved above the ground by the curves of beauty as rapid revolution in a curve suspends the down-dragging of gravity. A force went by-the force of animated perfect form.

Merely as an animal, how grand and beautiful is a perfect woman! Simply as a living, breathing creature, can anything imaginable come near her?

There is such strength in shape-such force in form. Without muscular development shape conveys the impression of the greatest of all strength-that is, of completeness in itself. The ancient philosophy regarded a globe as the most perfect of all bodies, because it was the same—that is, it was perfect and complete in itself-from whatever point it was contemplated. Such is woman's form when nature's intent is fulfilled in beauty, and that beauty gives the idea of self-contained power.

A full-grown woman is, too, physically stronger than a man. Her physique excels man's. Look at her torso, at the size, the fulness, the rounded firmness, the depth of the chest. There is a nobleness about it. Shoulders, arms, limbs, all reach a breadth of make seldom seen in man. There is more than merely sufficient-there is a luxuriance indicating a surpassing vigour. And this occurs without effort. She needs no long manual labour, no exhaustive gymnastic exercise, nor any special care in food or training. It is difficult not to envy the superb physique and beautiful carriage of some women. They are so strong without effort.

A large white arm, bare, in the sunshine, to the shoulder, carelessly leant against a low red wall, lingers in my memory. There was a house roofed with old gray stone slates in the background, and peaches trained up by the window. The low garden wall of red brick-ancient red brick, not the pale, dusty blocks of these days-was streaked with dry mosses hiding the mortar. Clear and brilliant, the gaudy sun of morning shone down upon her as she stood in the gateway, resting her arm on the red wall, and pressing on the mosses which the heat had dried. Her face I do not remember, only the arm. She had come out from dairy work, which needs bare arms, and stood facing the bold sun. It was very largesome might have called it immense-and yet natural and justly proportioned to the woman, her work, and

her physique. So immense an arm was like a revelation of the vast physical proportions which our race is capable of attaining under favourable conditions. Perfectly white-white as the milk in which it was often plunged-smooth and pleasant in the texture of the skin, it was entirely removed from coarseness. The might of its size was chiefly by the shoulder; the wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal, white, sunlit, bare-among the trees and the meads. around—it was a living embodiment of the limbs we attribute to the first dwellers on earth.

IV.-LIPS.

The mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. To the lips the glance is attracted the moment she approaches, and their shape remains in the memory longest. Curve, colour, and substance are the three essentials of the lips, but these are nothing without mobility, the soul of the mouth. If neither sculpture, nor the palette with its varied resources, can convey the spell of perfect lips, how can it be done in black letters of ink only? Nothing is so difficult, nothing so beautiful. There are lips which have an elongated curve (of the upper one), ending with a slight curl, like a ringlet at the end of a tress, like those tiny wavelets on a level sand which float in before the tide, or like a frond of fern unrolling. In this curl there lurks a smile, so that she can scarcely open her mouth without a laugh, or the look of one. These upper lips are drawn with parallel lines, the verge is defined by two lines near together, enclosing the