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culiar habit as well as that of meaningless blushing may be fallen into by very good people who mee often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness, calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the look of a gentleman as well as anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young man holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any of you have seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean.

-Do I think these people know the peculiar look they have?-I cannot say; I hope not; I am afraid they would never forgive me, if they did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; when one meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same manifestation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular slip, a dependence of the platysma myoides, which is called the risorius Santorini.

Say that once more,-exclaimed the young fellow mentioned above.

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking people I told you of the other day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that they are born with these looks, as other people are with more generally recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I

had rather meet three of the scowlers than one of the smilers.

-There is another unfortunate way of looking, which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not like to find fault with. There are some very pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't under stand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces. Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing. Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second,―not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a picturegallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them.

When we observe how. the same features and style of person and character descend from generation to generation, we can believe that some in

herited weakness may account for these peculiarities Little snapping-turtles snap-so the great naturalist tells us before they are out of the egg-shell. I am satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at the age of 2 or -3 months.

-My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity, - which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the great book where he found the fact about the little snappingturtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have suggested several odd analogies enough.

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and these are what must form the future. A man's general notions are not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds of others. One must be in the habit of talking with such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their develop ment is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new patterns, which must be long and closely

studied. But these are the men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book.

-A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow,-said one of the company.

I proceeded. in spite of the interruption.-All uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its materials have been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its office in one mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. It may be milk or venom to other minds; but, in either case, it is something which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his intellect.

Where are the brains that are fullest of these ovarian eggs of thought ?—I decline mentioning individuals. The producers of thought, who are few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed up in the popular apprehension, that it would be hopeless to try to separate them before opinion has had time to settle. Follow the course of opinion on the great subjects of human interest for a few generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of its movement, see where it tends, and

then see who is in advance of it or even with it; the world calls him hard names, probably; but if you would find the ova of the future, you must look into the folds of his cerebral convolutions.

[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it night cut off a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyrburning and witch-hanging-but time will show, -time will show, as the old gentleman opposite says.]

—Oh,—here is that copy of verses I told you

about.

SPRING HAS COME.

Intra Muros.

The sunbeams, lost for half a year,

Slant through my pane their morning rays

For dry Northwesters cold and clear,

The East blows in its thin blue haze.

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close against the sheltering wall

The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfolding ball.

The golden-chaliced crocus burns;
The long narcissus-blades appear;
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns,
And lights her blue-flamed chandelier.

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