Ixvi A LETTER PROM MISS BBEMEE. 



joyfully, without any effort, to breathe forth the life and 

 light given him. It was his nature. In a flower-pot arr 

 ranged hy his hand, there Was"a; silent lecture on true ta,ste, 

 applicable to all objects and arrangements in life. His 

 shght and delicately formed hand, " la main Sme," as Vi- 

 Comte d'Agincourt would have named it, could not touch 

 things to arrange them without giving, them a soul of 

 beauty. 



Thptigh commoidy silent and retired, there was in his 

 very presence something that made you feel a secret influ- 

 ence, a secret speaking, in appreciation or in criticism — 

 that made you feel that the Judge was there ; yea, though 

 kind and benevolent, still. iAg Judge, severe to the thing, 

 the expression, though indulgent to the indi:vidtial. Often 

 when travelling with him on his beloved Hudson, and' in 

 deep silence sitting, by his side, a glance of his eye, a smile, 

 half melancholy, half archj^ would direct my looks to. some 

 curious things passing, or some words would break the si- 

 lence, slightly spoken, without accent, yet with meaning 

 and power enough never to be forgotten. His appre- 

 ciation of things always touched the characteristic points. 

 He could not help it. It was his nature. 



And so, while I became impressed with that nature, as 

 a peculiar finished work of God, and the true spirit a;nd 

 aim of the refinements and graces of civilized life became 

 through him mere clear to me, I felt a very great joy to 

 see that the New World — ^the world of my hopes — 'had ip 

 him a leading mind, through which its realm of beauty 

 might rise out of the old heathenish chaos and glittering 

 falsities, to the pure region where beauty is connected vdth 

 what is chaste, and noble, and dignified in every form and 

 application. 



A new conception of beauty and refinement, in aU 



