BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY. 197 



hunting, shooting, takes the place of manual labour. 

 All the refinements that money can purchase, travel, 

 education, are here at work. That the culture of the 

 mind can alter the expression of the individual is 

 certain; if continued for many generations, possibly 

 it may leave its mark upon the actual bodily frame. 

 Selection exerts a most powerful influence in these 

 cases. The rich and titled have so wide a range to 

 choose from. Consider these things working through 

 centuries, perhaps in a more or less direct manner, 

 since the Norman Conquest. The fame of some such 

 families for handsome features and well-proportioned 

 frames is widely spread, so much so that a descend- 

 ant not handsome is hardly regarded by the out- 

 side world as legitimate. But even with all these 

 advantages beauty in the fullest sense does not 

 appear regularly. Few indeed are those families 

 that can boast of more than one. It is the best of 

 all boasts; it is almost as if the Immortals had 

 especially favoured their house. Beauty has no 

 period ; it comes at intervals, unexpected ; it cannot 

 be fixed. No wonder the earth is at its feet. 



The fisherman's daughter ere now has reached 

 very high in the scale of beauty. Hardihood is the 

 fisherman's talent by which he wins his living from 

 the sea. Tribal in his ways, his settlements are 

 almost exclusive, and his descent pure. The wind 

 washed by the sea enriches his blood, and of labour 

 he has enough. Here are the same constant factors ; 

 the stationary home keeping the family intact, the 

 out-door life, the air, the sea, the sun. Refinement 

 is absent, but these alone are so powerful that now 



