THE GALWAY FAIR. 303 



the noble duchess, who presents a long train of daughters, rus 

 tling in silk, and glittering with diamonds, at the queen s draw 

 ing-room, or the ladies of rank and fashion, who appear at public 

 places with all the beauty and splendor of dress and ornament 

 which wealth, and taste, and art, and skill, can supply, meaning 

 nothing else but &quot; Admire me ! &quot; arid these honest Gal way nymphs 

 with their fair complexions and their bright eyes, with their 

 white frilled caps, and their red cloaks and petticoats, for this is 

 the picturesque costume of that part of the country, all willing 

 to endow some good man with the richest of all the gifts of 

 Heaven, a good and faithful wife, I can see no essential dif 

 ference. 



&quot; Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 

 Their homely joys, and destiny obscure.&quot; 



I hope I shall be excused, if I say something more of these 

 Galway women. I never saw a more handsome race of people. 

 I have always been a great admirer of beauty natural beauty, 

 personal beauty, mental beauty, moral beauty. For what did 

 the Creator make things so beautiful as they are made, but to 

 be admired ? For what has he endowed man with an exquisite 

 sense of beauty, but that he may cultivate it, and find in it a 

 source of pleasure and delight? As I have grown older, this 

 sense of beauty and I deem it a great blessing from Heaven 

 has become more acute ; and every day of my life, the world and 

 nature, nature and art, the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral 

 creation, the heavens and the earth, the fields and flowers, men, 

 women, and children, wit, genius, learning, moral purity and 

 moral loveliness, deeds of humanity, fortitude, patience, heroism, 

 disinterestedness, have seemed to me continually more and more 

 beautiful, as, at the setting of the sun, man looks out upon a 

 world made richer and more glorious by his lingering radiance, 

 and skies lit up with an unwonted gorgeousness and splendor. 

 But the human countenance seems in many cases to concentrate 

 all of physical, of intellectual, and of moral beauty, which can 

 be combined in one bright point. Why should it not, therefore, 

 be admired ? In the commingled beams of kindness and good- 

 humor brightening up the whole face, like heat-lightning in 

 summer on the western sky ; or in the flashes of genius sparkling 

 in the eyes with a splendor which the fires of no diamond can 

 rival ; or in the whole soul of intelligence, and noble thoughts, 



