256 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
the deep folds of the lower torso have but this moment 
been formed as she stooped, and the impulse is to ex- 
tend the hands to welcome this beautiful embodiment 
of lovingkindness. There, in full existence, visible, tan- 
gible, seems to be all that the heart has imagined of the 
deepest and highest emotions. She stoops to please the 
children, that they may climb her back; the whole of 
her body speaks the dearest, the purest love. To extend 
‘the hands towards her is so natural, it is difficult to avoid 
actually doing so. Hers is not the polished beauty of 
the Venus de Medici, whose very fingers have no joints. 
The typical Venus is fined down from the full growth of 
human shape to fit the artist’s conception of what beauty 
should be. Her frame is rounded; her limbs are 
rounded ;.her neck is rounded; tht least possible ap- 
pearance of fulness is removed; any line that is not in 
exact accordance with a strict canon is worked out—in 
short, an ideal is produced, but humanity is obliterated. 
Something of the too rounded is found in it—a figure so 
polished has an air of the bath and of the mirror, of 
luxury ; it is 400 feminine ; it obviously has a price pay- 
able in gold. But here is a woman perfect as a woman, 
with the love of children in her breast, her back bent for 
their delight. An idcal indeed, but real and human, 
Her form has its full growth of wide hips, deep torso, 
broad shoulders. Nothing has been repressed or fined 
down to a canon of art or luxury. A heart beats within 
her bosom; she is love; with her neither gold nor ap- 
plause has anything to do; she thinks of the children, 
In that length of back and width of chest, in that strong 
torso, there is just the least trace of manliness. She is 
not all, not too feminine; with all her tenderness, she 
can think and act as nobly as a man, 
Absorbed in the contemplation of her beauty, I did 
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