AS BAD AS BEAUTIFUL. 143 this didactic homilist and his platitudinary paraphrases. But let that pass. He at least recognises Absalom's surpassing beauty, and that must have been some compensation or consolation at the last. From other parts of the play have been cited various lines in which Absalom himself or others assert this pre-eminence. Here is another hyperbolical passage, Absalom the speaker: “Whose beauty will suffice to chase all mists, And clothe the sun's sphere with a triple fire, But let the king's favourite son be once for all entangled by his hair, and in that helpless position be stabbed by ruthless Joab, and the king's soldiers will come and deride the dying man, calling one upon another to see where the rebel in his glory hangs, and uttering such mocking queries as “Where is the virtue of thy beauty, Absalon? And cords prepared to stop thy father's breath?" The fatal gift of beauty,—to man as well as to woman has that expression sometimes applied. And that personal beauty may be associated with baseness of character, with scoundrelism, with utter heartlessness, with flagitious criminality, there are examples on record enough and to spare, in the literature of all times as well as in that for all time. Homer's Paris is "as smooth of face as fraudulent of mind,” -a goodly apple rotten at the core. Boethius signalizes Alcibiades as the goodliest person of his day, quo ad superficiem, but with a corpus turpissimum interne-a soul superlatively the reverse of his outward seeming. The wish of the gnomic poet is honest: Δύσμορφος εἴην μᾶλλον ἢ καλός κακός. Deformis sim potius quam pulcher malus.-One of Fielding's handsome scoundrels is thus described: “Nature had certainly wrapt up her odious work in a most beautiful covering." Historians of Scotland stigmatize the Master of Gray, the favourite of young James VI., as carrying a heart as black and treacherous as any in that profligate age, under an exterior which was pre-eminently beautiful, though too feminine to please some tastes.* A perfect traitor should, according to the painter in Romola, have a face which vice can write no marks on-lips that will lie with a dimpled smile-eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them-cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard. Without taking upon him to say, at first sight, that the young stranger, Tito, is a traitor, the painter does say that Tito has a face which would make him a more perfect traitor if he had the heart of one, which is saying neither more nor less than that he has a beautiful face, informed with rich young blood, that will be nourished enough by food, and keep its colour without much help from virtue. "Say what thou wilt, Piero," replies Nello, as the bright-faced young stranger takes leave of them, "I shall never look at such an outside as that without taking it as a sign of a loveable nature. Why, thou wilt say next that Lionardo, whom thou art always raving about, ought to have made his Judas as beautiful as St. John!" The barber would have been all for rehabilitating Cæsar Borgia: and, simply as barber, how could he have withstood Absalom and his head of hair? Mr. Herbert Spencer avows himself unable ever to have accepted the commonly expressed opinion, that beauty of character and beauty of aspect are unrelated; and he objects. to those who hold this theory the incompleteness of their conviction, inasmuch as whenever they find a mean deed committed by one of noble countenance, they manifest surprise-a fact he takes clearly to imply that underneath their professed induction lies a still living conviction at variance with it. But * Tytler says of him, at the last: "None lamented his disgrace; for although still young in years [1587] Gray was old in falsehood and crime. Brilliant, fascinating, highly educated, and universally reputed the handsomest man of his time, he had used all these advantages for the most profligate ends.”—History of Scotland, vol. iv., ch. vi. HANDSOME SCOUNDRELS. 145 Zeluco may be taken as a type of only too numerous a class. "His person," says his author, "was finely proportioned; and although some people who pretended to skill in physiognomy asserted that they could detect the indications of ill-nature and of a vicious disposition in his countenance; yet, in the general opinion . . . he was a very handsome man.” Particularly of that opinion was the Signora Rosolia,-described as one of those young ladies who, when they greatly approve of a man's face and figure, are inclined to believe that every other good quality is added thereunto. Like Zeluco's mother, she saw his mind in his visage; “and as this was fair and regular, she fondly believed it to be a faithful index of the other.” Whereas Zeluco stands forth the most unmitigated rascal, perhaps, in universal fiction. The rebuke of Odysseus to Antinoüs begins with this very proper personality: souls, like that in thee, Ill suit such forms of grace and dignity." Than Milton's Belial, "a fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed for dignity composed and high exploit; but all was false and hollow," and his thoughts were mean, and himself to vice industrious, but to nobler deeds timorous and slothful. In Dante's image of Fraud, "His face the semblance of a just man's wore, So kind and gracious was its outward cheer; Mr. Wingrove Cooke tells us of a notorious American criminal whose trial he witnessed at Hongkong for piracy and murder, that while his name, Eli Boggs, would do for a villain of the Blackbeard class, he was in form and feature like the hero of a sentimental novel. The face of the handsome lad whose name had been for three years connected with the boldest and bloodiest acts of piracy, was one “of feminine beauty. Not a down upon the upper lip; large lustrous eyes; a mouth, the smile of which might woo coy maiden; affluent black hair, not carelessly parted; hands so small and so L delicately white that they would create a sensation in Belgravia : such was the Hongkong pirate, Eli Boggs." Virtue is beauty, says one of Shakspeare's Antonios-the sea-captain of Illyria, not the merchant of Venice: but the beauteous-evil Are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the devil." It is in the same play (Twelfth Night) that Viola thus addresses another sea-captain, whom, after inspection, or by intuition, she has made up her mind to trust: "And though that nature with a beauteous wa Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee I will believe thou hast a mind that suits With this thy fair and outward character." The first two lines have a flavour of the Rara est adeo concordia forma Atque pudicitia of Juvenal. Or compare the lines of Prudentius: "Os dignum æterno nitidum quod fulgeat auro, Si mallet laudare Deum; cui sordida monstra To Shakspeare again. "O Hero! what a Hero thou hadst been," exclaims the abused if also abusive Claudio, "if half thy outward graces had been placed above thy thoughts, and counsels of thy heart! But fare thee well, most foul, most fair!" The Antonio of Venice moralizes on a villain with a smiling cheek, like goodly apple rotten at the core: "O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!" Juliet has a flood of abhorrent apostrophes for the slayer of her cousin : "O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face! LONGING FOR REST. Was ever book, containing such vile matter, So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace !" 147 Very flat after such an outburst will sound the lines of Clarice in Corneille : "Le dedans paraît mal en ces miroirs flatteurs; Les visages sont souvent de doux imposteurs. Que de défauts d'esprit se couvrent de leurs grâces ! Et que de beaux semblants cachent des âmes basses !" But we are getting far away from Absalom, and of him it is time to take leave. Be this done in a couplet from Dryden, of which the phrase in Shakspeare about "paradise of sweet flesh" reminds us: it is from the Absalom and Achitophel, and descriptive of the beautiful rebel-call him David's son or the tuart's, which you will: "His motions all accompanied with grace, And Paradise was opened in his face." WITH LONGING FOR REST. PSALM lv. 6, 7. a heart sore pained within him, with open war against him in front, and treacherous friends behind his back, the Psalmist's weariful aspiration is, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness." So would he hasten his escape from the windy storm and tempest. Versed in those statutes which were his songs in the house of his pilgrimage, he must have appreciated to the full every recurring promise to the footsore wanderers in the desert, that the Lord their God would give them rest; that a sabbatical rest remaineth for the people of God; that His presence should go with them, and Himself give them rest; that the day should come when they might offer sacrifices of rest to |