University of Virginia Library

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.