University of Virginia Library

BELLES OF NEW YORK.

MRS. VERE.

A child, educated solely for prosperity, was Violet Fanning.
She was literally a belle at twelve years of age, for so accomplished
was the beautiful child as a dancer, and so well-bred and
self-collected in her manners and replies, that, while passing a
gay month with her mother at Saratoga, the beaux approached
her with deference due a lady, danced with her, and addressed to
her conversation as well suited to the age of eighteen. Her mother,
being a woman of remarkable elegance and beauty, her
father having always lived like a gentleman of fortune, and the
family, in all their connections, being understood to be ambitious
and worldly, there was little chance for the fair Violet to escape
what is commonly considered a “good match.” She grew up to
the marriageable age in singular perfection of style, personal development
and mental aplomb. The admiration she excited for
these qualities was the greater, because her spirits were naturally
high, and her inevitable style of manner was the brilliant and
fearless—the most difficult of all manners to sustain proportionately,
and with invariable triumph and grace.

At eighteen, Miss Fanning, though not living in the city, was
one of the best known and most admired belles of the time. To
a connoisseur of symmetry, her movement and peculiar grace,
even as she walked in the street, were a study. Of Arabian
slightness and litheness, her figure still seemed filled out to its
most absolute proportion, and, with the clearness of her hazel eye,
the dazzling whiteness of teeth without a fault, color beautifully
distributed in her face, and features almost minutely regular, she
seemed one of those phenomena of physical perfection, of which
sculptors deny the existence. A fault-finder might have found
the coral thread of the lips too slight, and the nose too thin, in
its high-bred proportion—these being indications of a character
in which sentiment and tenderness are not prevailing qualities—
but, perhaps, here, after all, lay the secret of a propriety and
self-control never ostensibly cared for, and yet never, by any possibility,
put in peril.

Cordial without hesitation, joyous always, confident as a princess,
frank and simple, Miss Fanning charmed all—but apparently
charmed all alike. Of any leaning to a flirtation, no
human heart ever could suppose her capable. The finding of a
mate for herself never seemed to have entered her mind—neither
that care, nor any other, apparently admissable through the door
of a mind guarded by the merest joyousness of a complete existence.
Of the approaches which instinct makes every woman
understand—the approaches of those who, by the silent language
of magnetism, inquire whether they could be loved—she gave no
sign by a manner more thoughtful, and she was too high-minded,
of course, to betray any such secret which she might have
fathomed; but many such approaches she doubtless had. The
world, not at all prepared by any previous indication, was simply

surprised, of course, one fine day, to hear of Miss Fanning's engagement
to Mr. Vere. It was a match of the highest possible
promise—the gentleman a son of one of the best and wealthiest
families, and the affianced an only daughter, and probably a considerable
heiress. The wedding soon followed, and was unusually
brilliant. The prophecies were without a shadow.

Ten years have passed, and death and change have braided
their dark threads in the life-woof of Mrs. Vere, as in those of
women less fair. The fortunes, of both her husband's family and
her own, some five years ago, lessened, without wrecking altogether,
and Mr. Vere, as hopes from without gave way, turned,
with American facility, to resources within; and, from an elegant
pursuer of pleasure, became a hard-working, professional man.
Both reared in luxury only—both with a youth-seen future of exclusively
prosperous anticipation—they are now living a life of
simple competence, and doubtless of careful economy; but, how
Mrs. Vere looks now, and how she bears these reversed anticipations,
and accommodates herself to a sphere many might think
trying and hard to bear, are points that, we presume, will interest
our readers more than any history of a prosperity unbroken.
Men's resistance to adversity is positive—a struggle—a contest—
and therefore easy. Women's is negative—a simple, inactive
endurance—and twenty times as difficult. With this truth in the
mind, the view of a condition of fortune, whose reverses are
shared equally by a husband and wife, makes the latter's history
much the more interesting.

You will not meet, in your daily walk in New York, a more
tastefully dressed, lady-like and elegant woman than Mrs. Vere
Her gait, and general carriage of person are those of one whose

spirit is wholly unsubdued, whose arehed foot has a bridge as
elastic as in her 'teens; whose lively self-confidence is without a
shadow of abatement. In even the beauty of her face there is
no absolute diminution, for the girlish hue of complexion, and
the scarce perceptible fullest degree of outline, are more than replaced
by heightened expression, and by a shade of inward expectation
less exacting. Of the world without, Mrs. Vere expects
as much as ever. Her unaltered raluation of her own position,
is her beautiful glory—a glory of which she is probably
quite unconscious, though it causes her to be looked upon with
boundless respect and admiration by any observer who knows the
world, and who appreciates the rarity of a pride worn so loftily
easy. By it Mrs Vere holds her husband's fortunes, in every
important particular, where they were. She compels the world,
by it, to believe her untouched by any misfortune worth considering—to
see her in the same posture and place of society as before,
and yield, to her, every inch as much of admiring consideration.
Though she dresses with extreme care and with becoming
economy, it is the dress of a woman who is not at all aware of having
lost ground by a loss of fortune, and who dresses still for the
same position; and, obediently, society takes her at her word,
rates her at her own estimate, and, at this present moment, gives
her as much regard and deference as she could have had with
millions of which to make a display. She walks on her errands,
or rides in an omnibus,—does any proper thing she likes—without
fear of committing her dignity. Her open and frank eye is
is without suspicion of any possible slight. She is, in short, a
woman born with a spirit too high for fortune to affect, and, freed
thus from the wear which, most of all, makes inroad upon beauty,
she is likely, for twenty years more, to be beautiful and at
tractive.

Such is Mrs. Vere, and slight observers will not recognise the
portrait. Here and there, one, who knows her, will.

MISS AYMAR, OF NEW YORK.

By the vote of Underdone-dom, (the stripling constituency of
belle-ship in New York,) Miss Aymar would, perhaps, scarce be
elected a belle; yet a stranger, accustomed to the society of
women of high rank, abroad, would recognize in her, at a first
glance, a quality of beauty and manners which would have been
the pride and admiration of a court. Dignified without being repulsive—cold
without being reserved—full and perfect in figure and
health, yet of marble paleness—frank, yet smiling seldom—a head
set very proudly upon the shoulders, yet pliant and natural in all
its movements—she is the type of what is meant, abroad, when
they say of a woman that she “looks like a duchess.” Add to
this an oval cast of features, a well-completed outline to the
cheek, a round yet tapering chin, and a throat curved gracefully
from the head, and there seems nothing wanting, to Miss Aymar,
of those peculiarities which, in England, are thought most desirable
to grace a title.

In proportion to the nobleness and fine balance of qualities in a
woman, (and this we have admired and wondered at, more than

any other peculiarity of the sex), is the unsuspecting readiness of
her assent to destiny. With all the superiority of Miss Aymar,
and the manifest want of a proper response to the call of her mind
and heart, she plays her part with unaffected earnestness and contentment,
receives what attention falls to her lot with as much
pleasure as if any higher intercourse and homage would be beyond
her capacity to appreciate, and, (if we may be pardoned the
similitude,) simply does her best, like a blood courser at the
plough, without intimating, by discontent or resistance, that her
fine nature is out of place and unappreciated. The merest
dancing partner, who bespeaks an invitation to her mother's
house by asking her hand for a quadrille, believes any favor there
may be in the matter, to be entirely of his own granting—setting
down the unvoiced superiority, by which he is mysteriously kept
at a distance, as a “something or other about her manner which
is not very agreeable.”

Of course there is a “world of one's own,” without which unappreciated
poets would come down to what is thought of them,
and superior women, by mere lack of recognition, grow like the
common-place people among whom they are numbered. Miss
Aymar's door shuts in a tranquil universe of thought, of choice
books, and of culture which is a luxury without effort; and here
the mind, which is bent to the world, daily recovers its stature,
and the sympathies, whose noble harmony is diminished to accord
with lesser natures, resume their capability and tone. It is by
natural and unconscious echo to the chance-sounded key-note of
a kindred mind, that the true melody of this inner life is alone
betrayed, for it is never ostentatiously sounded to those whom it
might disparage or rebuke. Miss Aymar has her appreciators;
but, unfortunately, from the very advance of her progress, they

are necessarily only those whom she has overtaken—who are not
of her own age—who have learned, by disappointment, comparison,
and life's varied experiences of bitter and sweet, the true
value of what she scarce recognises in herself. In foreign society,
where the men, up to a marriageable age, are kept away from
narrowing cares and devoted wholly to such general cultivation as
fits them to adorn fortune when they receive it, and fitly to mate
the delicacy and dignity of a superior woman when they wed her,
she would only have the embarrassment of choice, among competitors
for her hand, all suitable in age and accomplishments.
Here, such youths are rare; and, as Miss Aymar is not a woman
to marry except with the fullest consent of her own taste and
feeling, she is (we admiringly fear!) in some danger of never
being the wife she could be—the perfect wife made up of contradictions
and contrasts—such a one as Shakspeare's Helena promises
to be to Bertram:—

FANNY TRELLINGER.

Fanny Trellinger is a belle by mistake. She does not understand
it herself. And, if continually “trying on” hearts,
like shoes, and dropping them with as little ceremony as mis-fits
of morocco, prove a young lady to be a coquette, Fanny Trellinger
is a coquette. Yet she does not deserve to be called one.

Miss Trellinger is a blonde of whom even Buchanan Read, that
skilful idealizer of the pencil, could scarce make a beauty. Her
eyes, hair, waist and shoulders might belong to the most neglected
of wall-flowers. She dresses well, from obedience to unconscious
good taste, but forgets her dress and her looks, from the
moment she leaves her mirror till she comes back to it again. If
she has any mere personal charm it is one which is seldom recognized
except by painters—(though it indicates a delightful quality
in a woman, but it can belong to none but the habitually self-forgetful)—her
mouth has those blunt corners which the tension
of a forced smile alters to a sharp angle. Probably no man ever
admired Miss Fanny from seeing her, merely. She reaches
hearts without paying the toll of beauty for passing in at the

eyes. To feel her fascination, one must converse with her; and
the invariable attraction, which affects those who approach her
thus near, is as mysterious to most lookers-on, as, to a child is
the sudden jumping of needles when brought into the neighborhood
of a magnet. It does not seem to require particular qualities to be
subject to her influence. All kinds of men, from a Wall-street
tetrarch to an unbuttered asparagus in his first tail-coat, find her
delightful. She might seem, indeed, indiscriminate in her liking;
for, though her magnetism depends on what is entirely within her
own control, she exercises it on every new comer who approaches
her—withholding it from none except those she has rejected or
known enough of. Few people in this world being capable (as
the doctors say) of “clearly telling what ails them,” the secret
of this omni-fascination does not get out, even through the confessions
of its victims; and Miss Trellinger shops at Stewart's—
of all the belles who go there, the one whose silks and muslins
minister to conquests the most unaccountable.

It would be vain to look for the secret of this invisible charm,
in the education, or reading, or conversational talent of Miss
Fanny. Within the ordinary outline of school-routine, she was
left to educate herself; her reading is pursued with no system,
and is rather less, than more, than that of other young ladies;
and, in conversation she says singularly little. It is doubtful
whether her most desperate admirer ever quoted any remark of
hers as peculiar or clever, and she never, herself, entertained the
remotest idea of expressing a thought so as to make an impression.
We seem, thus far, to have almost proved that her fascination
is neither of person nor mind—yet it is not so, altogether.

Whether from some bent of the mind early taken, or from an

accident of combined mental qualities, it is difficult to say—but
Miss Trellinger's most powerful instinct is curiosity as to undisclosed
qualities of character. This is united, of course, with
sanguine belief in the superiority of concealed qualities to those
upon the surface; and the taste, like that for love and pleasure
seems not to diminish by disappointment. Every man who approaches
her as a new acquaintance, is a new enigma of intense
interest; and she sets aside his first politenesses, or quietly waits
for their exhaustion, and brings him as soon as possible to the
state of communicativeness when he will talk freely of himself
and tell his hates and loves, hopes and ambitions. A botanist
does not more attentively and patiently take to pieces a complex
flower. Her natural tact and ingenuity at inspiring confidence
and provoking the betrayal of secret springs of thought and propensity,
are, perhaps, enough, alone, to stamp her as a superior
girl, and, differently trained, they might have been the basis of
very uncommon character for a woman.

All unconscious that she is doing more than to gratify a simple
thirst for the discovery of heroic qualities, dormant and unappreciated,
Miss Fanny, meantime, plays a game that no art or
fascination could outdo. Forgetful of herself, and perfectly honest
in her desire to know deeply the character within, her manifest
sincerity puts incredulity at once to sleep; and the self-love
of the heart she strives to read, throws down its defences, and
believes it has found, at last, the fond intensity with which
sighed to be appreciated! The manner of Miss Trellinger
without being carressing, is that of earnest, exclusive and grave
attention. Her eyes are fastened on the lips of the speaker; the
tones in which she gives her assent, or puts her simple and ingenuous
yet most pertinent questions, are subdued to an appealing

contralto by the interest she really feels; and the expression of
her countenance while she listens, says, more earnestly than Coriolanus:—

The love that is incidentally and inevitably made to Miss
Fanny, all this time, she receives with the sanguine appreciation,
with which she believes in each character while studying it. It
is the love of a hero, a poet, a philosopher, a chivalrie and high-hearted
gentleman—or so she estimates and answers it. Her notion
of love is as elevated as her expectation of quality in the
man she seeks, and by the dignity and earnestness of her brief
responses of tenderness, she really inspires that kind of impassioned
respect which is the ground-work of affections the most lasting.

It will be seen that while the temporary intimacies of Miss
Trellinger look, to careless observers, like any other of the flirtations
going on in society, the unseen weapons with which she
achieves her conquests are more formidable than is suspected.
As was remarked before, her victims could not, or would not precisely
tell what had attracted and won them; and their perseverance
in attention, after being dropped and slighted by her, is
even more a subject of bewildered wonder, to her female acquaintances,
than the conquest itself. She passes, very naturally, for
heartless, capricious and hypocritical—for one who does her utmost
to captivate, for the sake of the triumph only. Her acute
perceptions are always waiting for her glowing imagination to exhaust
itself, however; and a sudden arrival at the termination of
a shallow character, or an unconscious disclosure of a quality inconsistent
with her ideal, inspires her with a disappointment or

disgust proportionate to her expectations, and, it is only by intercourse
abruptly ended that she can avoid even a rude expression
of her feeling. There is, in the world, unquestionably, such
character as Miss Fanny Trellinger seeks with this thirst insatiable.
Should she find it, she would “love with a continuance,”
there is little doubt; but she may find, that, with such men, the
expectations from the love of woman are large; and she may regret
that some of the intensity of her nature had not been expended
on that self-culture which alone can satisfy, in the un-impassioned
intervals of possessed affection.

MRS. LETTRELL.

There is a great deal silently recognized and known in this
world, which, still, seems first discovered when first spoken of.
And there is a great deal understood which seems misunderstood;
for society, very often, confidently expresses one opinion of a person,
and yet, whenever brought into contact with that same
person, acts upon an unexpressed and totally different estimate.
The truth is that most of us are far wiser than our words would
prove us to be—the art of first clothing an idea, being so different
and evasive that few try it at all, and most people so invariably
borrowing the word-clothes for their opinions, that the true
things they think are not recognizable in the erroneous things
they say.

The above truisms would probably occur to any one after reading
the sketch I am about to draw; but it would seem, at first
glance, to be something of a riddle, and those who are as little
fond of deferred revelations as I, will approve, perhaps, that I
have first given the solution.

Leaning, one enchanting summer's morning, two or three years

ago, from the upper balcony of a hotel on the road to a watering
place, I chanced to see, spread out upon the railing of the balcony
below, a lady's hand. A white cuff, with an inch or two of
the sleeve of a mourning dress, was all I could see, besides, of the
tranquil owner—tranquil I say, for she sat, during the fifteen
minutes that she was left alone by her companions, with that outspread
hand absolutely motionless—evidently drinking the summer
into its pores of pearl with the enjoyment and forgetful
luxuriousness of a water-lily newly ungloved. The party, of
which the lady was one, had arrived but a few minutes before,
and I had not yet seen her face or figure; but I insensibly
formed an estimate of her character from a study of her hand
only, and had even sketched to myself, though, of course, with a
mere chance of correctness, her expression of countenance, features
and form.

The hand is not always a reliable index to the character. It
is, more than any other portion of the body, likely to give a deformed
betrayal of any peculiar manual labor in those from whom
it has descended. A moderate experience in pahnistry will
enable one to distinguish a shoemaker's daughter from a tailor's, for
instance—the enlargement of one particular muscle or finger by
constant effort being handed down like a family feature. Where
it is unmodified by any special influence, however, the hand is expressive
of the presence, or want, of two or three leading qualities
in female character, and gives often a dumb but lively promise of
sweetness else undisclosed.

In the beautiful and motionless one spread out, so unconscious
of observation, on the railing below my eye, I read exquisite sensibility
to pleasure, joyous love of the beautiful, generous freedom
from suspicion, delicacy still un-alarmed, frankness, and, if I may

so express it, sensuous poetry of nature. It was not a small hand.
The dimples were round and scarce perceptible. The upper
joints of the long and taper fingers were so full as to give an exquisite
expression of dreamy and idle tenderness, while at the
same time there was a look of the finest dexterity and nicest elegance
in the slender and rosy nails. The whole posture and
form of the hand showed a habit of unreluctant and obedient
expansion to impulse, and it looked as unwithdrawing and trustful
as the opening petals of a rose.

I had thus far studied the viewlessly written page of character,
accidentally opened in its dewy fairness to my perusal, when I
was accosted by an acquaintance, who chanced to be one of the
lady's party. He told me who it was, sitting in the balcony below,
and, to a question or two of my own, gave me her character
—as that of a lady who disliked society, was very strict in the
education of her children, highly religious, devoted to the poor,
and passionately fond of riding on horseback. I tacitly made use
of my own better reading to separate what was probably true,
from what I knew to be erroncous, in this hearsay estimate of
character, but stored away a resolution to know more of the
owner of that hand, whom I had met and was likely to meet again,
but who had hitherto passed, gloved and unobserved, in the dazzle
of more pretentious society.

So easily do we let a superficial impression guide us, in our
selection of persons to observe and admire, that, (but for the
chance revealing by that expressive hand,) I might very possibly,
have continued, even till now, to meet, without recognition of its
veiled brightness, this one of the cluster of better spirits, moving,
like electric sparks, through the dull metal of every human
society Mrs. Lettrell is beautiful, certainly, but it is beauty of

that kind which dissolves film after film from off your eye as you
grow interested in gazing on it; and, much admiration as she
attracts from trifling observers, a man of sense would be very
likely to take this common attraction to express her whole value,
and not give her the after study which would disclose to him the
finer quality of the nature, admired thus partially yet instinctively.

To anticipate once more. Nature seems to have completed
the character of Mrs. Lettrell, and forgetfully, afterwards, to
have relifted its cup of perfect mixture and added to it an unneeded
drop of conscientiousness. To this double portion of the
corrective ingredient, the joyous and life-teeming impulses of a
heart, whose self-abandonment would be as safe as a fount's to
its overflow, are perpetually in check. No thrill of pleasure goes
through her heart unchallenged; no intention, save one of duty,
escapes being called to order; no glow of impassioned worship of
the beautiful kindles in her bosom unrebuked. Like an ingredient
added too late for solution, however, this last superfluous
drop has not tinctured, though it mingles with, the other qualities;
and often, in repose, separates quite, and leaves her else perfect
and impulsive nature all transparent. To this release she yields
with the feeling of escape from school—when on horseback, or
when the enchantments of summer or moonlight, poetry or music,
take her by surprise—though, for every such indulgence she calls
herself to account, and balances it by a self-imposed penance of
distasteful duty.

Forced into gay society by relatives and unavoidable influences,
Mrs. Lettrell constantly and sincerely expresses her unwillingness
to be there, dresses pertinaciously in a way to disguise whatever
beauty she has that might seem to invite admiration, and perpetually

checks her own joyousness and the careless conversation
of others, to suggest graver topics or make interest for a benevolent
object. The talk of society takes her at her own valuation,
and no one will express an opinion of her except as an over-exemplary
woman, who would not have been handsome if she could
have helped it—but around her, notwithstanding, cluster the life-loving,
the youthful and the impulsive, and, though none would
allow that she was not “too good for this world,” the most avowed
mirth-hunter feels uncondemned by her presence.

To those grasping monopolists, (of whom there is here and there
one!) who would possess that entire world, a woman's heart, as
unshared as Eden when Adam first looked around him alone, this
composition of character—like a summer's day with a lock and
key to it—is the treasure that rewards any cost of search, even
without beauty; but, coupled with beauty, of priceless rarity and
value.

I break off abruptly and unwillingly, leaving a singular and
beautiful character drawn only in outline; but to say more would
be an invasion of propriety, and perhaps, too, they who are capable
of best appreciating it, will be able to supply what is left unpencilled.
In great danger of giving offence, even as it is, I have
abstained from sketching form or features, describing only the
fair hand which so truly first revealed the character to my own
knowledge, and which few, whose recognition would be troublesome,
will ever chance to see ungloved.

HOPE CHASMAR.

In every block of marble there is a concealed statue. And
this assertion, so susceptible of qualification, probably corresponds
in truth and definiteness, to the optimistic axiom, that “there is
a beautiful ideal in the character of every human being”—wanting
only development. I have known some men—(and I presume,
therefore, that there may be here and there a woman)—whom
chiselling or developing, by human art or circumstances, could
possibly make interesting or admirable.

Incredulity, however, would as wrongfully lead to the other
extreme. In more of the people about us than we should think
possible, there are capabilities of the higher displays of character,
wanting only favorable culture and opportunity. Among women,
more particularly, whose bud and flower of youth are left to grow
more spontaneously than those of men—less crowded by care and
less rudely handled by vice and antagonism—the inherent qualities
of mind, ready to bloom and bear fruit luxuriantly, with but a
little pruning and transplanting, are often beautifully visible. To
a philosophic observer, the discovery and appreciation of these

uncommon capabilities, in those who pass for but ordinary persons,
gives to society the additional interest which a botanist feels in
walking over a common field—seeing curious plants, and flowers
of divine purpose and structure, on ground which another man
walks over without thought or interest.

The writers of romance have found it so much easier to make
heroines out of “dark eyes” and “raven locks,” than out of blue
eyes and fair hair, that a light complexion has, by dint of the
mere repetition of this trick of authorship, grown to be considered
a natural sign of “nothing remarkable.” Almost any one, sent
into a ball-room to select, from a hundred young ladies, the one
most capable of a heroic action, would first reject all who had
had blue eyes and fair hair—taking it as a matter of course that
the pick must be from the dark-eyed only. And this would be
very likely to be a mistake; for the sanguineous temperaments of
light-complexioned people are both more hopeful and more
enthusiastic, and these are two essential ingredients of the heroic,
which, as mere matters of temperament, may be possessed without
affecting the comparison in other qualities.

Hope Chasmar is not beautiful enough, nor is her family
wealthy enough, to account for all the attention she receives.
Her light hair is magnificently abundant, it is true, and her head
is moulded in those admirable proportions which attract a
sculptor's eye; but neither of these are beauties definitively
recognized by the class of beaux who find her attractive. She
has the two peculiarities which belong to all people capable of
great enthusiasm, an expansive chest and thin nostrils, and she
has one other personal mark inseparable from lofty character—
motion without engles or pettiness—so that, whether she lifts a
hand or turns her head, it expresses amplitude of feeling, and

freedom from suspicious reserves. Her features, as a whole,
inspire confidence and liking, while, in detail, they are neither
very regular nor very decided.

A bird singing his song on a bough, however, and the same
bird, with his wings spread for flight, and glittering in the sun-flecks
as he sweeps through a wood, is not more different than
the countenance of Hope Chasmar habitually, and the same face
at transient and fitful moments of startled imagination. Without
the conscious but undefined orbit of nobler action for which her
soul is instinctively aiming its impulses, she would not, perhaps,
have that generous self-forgetfulness and unrebuking nobleness of
demeanor, which make her attractive to ordinary men; so that
she owes, indirectly, to her heroic character, the common and unappreciative
homage which makes her a belle; but her true
beauty has probably never been seen by one in twenty of her
admirers, or, if seen, has passed for an accidental expression of
face, which might as easily have been awakened by the same
chance light upon any other. In her ordinary mood she seems
simply good-looking, lady-like, hearty, joyous and unsuspecting.
In her rarer and finer moments, her whole countenance awakens,
her nostrils and eyelids slightly expand, her neck lifts from its
forward curve, and bears her fine head with the fearless pose of
Minerva's, and the muscles of her face, which seem to have been
as much out of place, for effect, as busts, taken down from their
pedestals, assume a totally different proportion, and make a
totally different impression, on the observer's eye. The most
effective change, however, is that of the lips—the genial expansion,
which widens the mouth to a disadvantageous straightness of
line with its look of good humor, yielding to a relaxation of repose,
by which the corners fall, and the “Cupid's bow” of the upper

lip becomes perfect, the lower lip, by the same movement, arching
into fulness and firmness. In a year or two's observation of this
young lady, I have noticed this change of expression, perhaps four
or five times; but, at the late Opera ball, I chanced to see her
look suddenly over her shoulder at an exciting change in the
music, and I should suppose that the look I then saw awakened,
would have revealed to any observer that there stood a heroine
capable of life's greatest emergencies.

JENNY EVELAND.

“A man who loses his sight,” says Dugald Stewart, “improves
the sensibility of his touch: but who would consent, for such a
recompense, to part with the pleasures which he receives from
the eye?” The expense at which most kinds of distinction are
acquired, seems expressed in this. The right arm of the sculptor
has twice the muscular development of the left—exercised as it
alone is, with the constant lift of the leaden hammer which drives
his chisel. But, inseparable as is this enlargement of the
thought-conveying portion of the body (and of a corresponding
portion of the brain) from the specific labor and construction
which can alone bring fame to the worker in marble, it is, no less,
an unequal development of the system, and, just so far, a lessening
of its perfection. The Apollo Belvidere is a perfect type of a
man's figure and limbs, in healthful development; but he never
could have excelled, as a human sculptor, without a special exercise

of brain and muscle, which would have enlarged them at the
expense of equal distribution of forces, and so destroyed him as a
model, either of perfect health or perfect beauty. While the
possession of genius, therefore, may be consistent with entire
harmony of proportion, the development of it, or the labor of concentrating
it upon any special pursuit to create a fame, enlarges
the exclusively-exerted portions of the system, and destroys its
healthful balance.

In the difference between a mean indolence and the lofty resistance
of Nature to this partial development, which is demanded
of genius—in the perpetual struggle between an instinct to exert
all the faculties equally, and an ambition for the distinction which
is only attainable by exclusive exercise of one—lies the “motive
power” of the character of Jenny Eveland. It was only by prefacing
a sketch of her with the foregoing somewhat abstract
explanation, that her apparent uncertainty and variableness of
aim and effort could be justly drawn.

Miss Eveland has superiority distributed throughout her
nature. Her face has been too long subject to strong emotions
to be invariably attractive. At times it would be called plain.
It is capable, however, of most illuminated beauty, and it is
always expressive, always frank and noble, with the irregular
features which are necessary to the highest expression, her form,
in all else, is the perfection of feminine symmetry. Never giving
her movements a thought, she walks with a lithe grace and freedom
that betrays her at once, to the observing, as a woman of perfect
make. Her head is admirably set on. An Indian girl, bred in
the forest like a fawn, would not be more creet, nor of more unconscious
elasticity of carriage and mien. An unusually arched
instep to an exquisite foot gives her the mark of high breeding,

which is most looked to in the East, and her slender, and yet
roundly beautiful hand, with its tapering fingers, has a look of
discriminating elegance that the most careless of her friends
recognize and admire. A bright hazel eye, earnest and fearless;
profuse brown hair, whose natural waves are controlled with difficulty
by her comb, bright teeth, and one of those voices of
“clouded contralto” which betray the tearfulness of a throat used
to keeping down sadness, are other peculiarities, which go to form
her portrait, and which share in the delightful impression she
makes on all who have the happiness to know her.

But, though the mind of Jenny Eveland is gifted as symmetrically
as her person—(perhaps because it is)—she has no
believers in her genius, except those who can recognise it without
the evidence of its works—as some book it has written, some
statue it has chiselled, or some picture it has drawn. Feeling
constantly the capacity to write as famous authors write, and to
image beauty, with clay or pencil, as sculptors and painters do, she
talks the language of genius to those who can understand her,
and has all the inspired impulses of genius,—its longings for
creative expression, its profound trances of inaction and melancholy,
its visions, and its recognitions. Unusually trying circumstances
in her life have shown that she has energy, industry, and
an almost absolute power of self-control—but, of course, with a
nature in such complete proportion, she must needs “listen to
its loudest voice,” and, if her quick blood and impatient limbs
call her off to dance, she must throw aside pen or pencil—if her
heart says it is time to be gay, she must abandon sadness, though
poem or picture demand that she should dwell on it for completion.
If this be fickleness and idleness, the angels in heaven,
(whose thoughts of beauty come, as they come to genius, but are

not arrested to be put into books or pictures, nor patiently carved
in marble) are fickle and idle.

Yet, from the curse of industry—from the “sweat of the
brow”—no humanity is exempt, and ambition, which is the shape
under which it compels proud minds to action, makes the large
endowments, of Jenny Eveland, gifts of uneasy possession. It is
not enough for her that she has glorious imaginings—that she
can exchange the passwords of inspiration with poets and painters,
that she can go abroad from common thoughts as the dove from
the ark, and return with tidings of what could be found with such
wings only. The fever to prove this superiority to the world
burns constantly within her. She would fain apply her seal to
the impressible events and opinions of the time. Love, that
would only call upon her affections, and that would leave unemployed
her finest powers, could not content her. Fame, on the
other hand, if it gave her no scope for the boundless tenderness of
her heart, would suffice as poorly. She is too gifted for common
love—she is too fond and sympathetic to breathe only the thin
atmosphere of the gifted. And, in this embarrassment of a
nature too proportionate for a world which “the curse” has made
one of unequal development, the youth of Jenny Eveland is passing
unsatisfied away.