108 THE OPEN AIR. 



and then beauty appears. The lovely Irish girls, 

 again : their forefathers have dwelt on the mountain- 

 side since the days of Fingal, and all the hardships 

 of their lot cannot destroy the natural tendency to 

 shape and enchanting feature. Without those con- 

 stant factors beauty cannot be, but yet they will not 

 alone produce it. There must be something in the 

 blood which these influences gradually ripen. If it 

 is not there centuries are in vain ; but if it is there 

 then it needs these conditions. Erratic, meteor-like 

 beauty ! for how many thousand years has man 

 been your slave ! Let me repeat, the sentiment at 

 the sight of a perfect beauty is as much amazement 

 as admiration. It so draws the heart out of itself as 

 to seem like magic. 



She walks, and the very earth smiles beneath her 

 feet. Something comes with her that is more than 

 mortal ; witness the yearning welcome that stretches 

 towards her from all. As the sunshine lights up the 

 aspect of things, so her presence sweetens the very 

 flowers like dew. But the yearning welcome is, I 

 think, the most remarkable of the evidence that may 

 be accumulated about it. So deep, so earnest, so 

 forgetful of the rest, the passion of beauty is almost 

 sad in its intense abstraction. It is a passion, this 

 yearning. She walks in the glory of young life ; she 

 is really centuries old. 



A hundred and fifty years at the least — more 

 probably twice that — have passed away, while from 

 all enchanted things of earth and air this precious- 

 ness has been drawn. From the south wind that 

 breathed a century and a half ago over the green wheat. 



