Beauty in the Country 



handsome. The country-side, as it gossips, agrees 

 that the family are marked out as good-looking. 

 Like seeks like, as we know; the handsome inter- 

 marry with the handsome. Still, the beauty has not 

 arrived yet, nor is it possible to tell whether she will 

 appear from the female or male branches. But in 

 the fifth generation appear she does, with the original 

 features so moulded and softened by time, so worked 

 and refined and sweetened, so delicate and yet so rich 

 in blood, that she seems like a new creation that has 

 suddenly started into being. No one has watched 

 and recorded the slow process which has thus finally 

 resulted. No one could do so, because it has spread 

 over a century and a half. If any one will consider, 

 they will agree that the sentiment at the sight of a 

 perfect beauty is as much amazement as admiration. 

 It is so astounding, so outside ordinary experience, 

 that it wears the aspect of magic. 



A stationary home preserves the family intact, so 

 that the influences already described have time to 

 produce their effect. There is nothing uncommon 

 in a yeoman's family continuing a hundred and fifty 

 years in the same homestead. Instances are known 

 of such occupation extending for over two hundred 

 years; cases of three hundred years may be found: 

 now and then one is known to exceed that, and there 

 is said to be one that has not moved for six hundred. 

 Granting the stock in its origin to have been fairly 

 well proportioned, and to have been subject for such 

 a lapse of time to favourable conditions, the rise of 

 beauty becomes intelligible. 



Cities labour under every disadvantage. First, 



families have no stationary home, but constantly 



move, so that it is rare to find one occupying a house 



fifty years, and will probably become much rarer in 



187 



