ornament the lilies of the field. If you were obliged to personify civilisation, would you not, like another Pygmalion, make to yourself a feminine wonder, accumulate upon your stature every grace, vivify her wholly with every possible virtue, then throw a Parisian veil of dress over her, and—oh, the profanation of your old days!—fall down and worship her? There is no better mark of civilisation than well-dressed feminine excellence, to which men pay obeisance. Wherever the majority do this, there is humanity best perfected. Homer teacheth that, when he exhibits the aged council of statesmen and warriors on the walls of Troy paying homage to the grace of Helen. The poet wished to show that the personages of his Epic were not barbarians, and chose this scene to dignify them. Ruminate upon the answer, “The latest fashions from Paris.” What a mass of civilising detail is contained in these few words!—the leisure to desire, the elegance to wear, the genius to invent, the benevolent employment of delicate hands, the trades encouraged, the soft influences—the very atmosphere breathes the most delicate perfume of loves. It is not to the purpose to interpose that this Paris of fashion suddenly turned savage, and revelled in brutal revolution, sparing not man nor woman. It was because, in their anti-aristocratic madness, the unhappy people threw off this reverential respect that the uncivilised portion slaughtered the civilised. It was a vile atheistical barbarism that waged war with civilisation. Think no more of that black spot in the History of Humanity—that plague-spot. Rather, Eusebius, turn your thoughts to your work, and fabricate, though it be only in your imagination, your own paradise, and she shall be named Civilisation. In case your imagination should be at this moment dull, rest satisfied with a description of an image now before me, which I think, as a personification, answers the question admirably; for supposing it to be a portrait from nature, what a civilised people must they be among whom such a wonder was born—not only born, but sweetly nurtured, and arrayed in such a glory of dress! If you think this indicates a foolish extravagant passion, know that this fair one must have “died of old age” some centuries before I was born. There she is, in all her pale loveliness, in a black japan figured frame, over the mantelpiece of my bedroom at H——, where I am now writing this letter to you. Mock not, Eusebius; she is, or rather was, Chinese. I look upon her now as giving out her answer from those finely-drawn lips—“I represent civilisation.” If I could pencil like that happy painter—happiest in having such uncommon loveliness to sit to him—I would send you another kind of sketch; it would be a failure. Be content with feeble words. First, then, for dress: She wears a brown kind of hat, or cap, the rim a little turned up, of indescribable shape and texture: the head part is blue; around it are flowers, so white and transparent, just suffused