Will any one undertake to say what was the precise colour of the golden hair so vaunted of by the great poets of antiquity? One of our living poets, the author of “The Bride of Rimini,” has brought the light of genius and his fine taste and scholarship to the task, and the matter is yet doubtful. Some have not hesitated to decide that it was red, fiery red, and nothing short of red; and sneered at the ancients for affecting to be connoisseurs in these things. Some have contended that it was auburn, which is a glorious colour, and seems naturally associated with smiles and the rich imagery of poets. In the well-known ode of Anacreon, where he speaks of the beauty of his mistress as a fit subject for the painter’s art, it is difficult to say what colour we must choose. Some prefer to think dark jetty locks were intended, such, possibly, as Byron has given to one of his beauties: “The glossy darkness of that clustering hair, Which shades, yet shows a forehead more than fair.” Ben Jonson--no mean authority--blends with the jetty locks threads of fine gold: “Gold upon a ground of black.” If a mere stripling might handle the bow of Ulysses, we would venture to select the colour which Tennyson has bestowed upon a pretty little portrait: “Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair In gloss and hue the chesnut, when the shell Divides threefold to show the fruit within.” But why be beholden to poets, who, after all, are but the interpreters of nature? Does not Scotland to this day own many a fair complexion, and tresses which Venice cannot match for sunny splendour; and are not the dark, flowing locks of the Lancashire witches working as secret charms as ever enthralled the courteous knights of old? It is certain that, in regard to the hair, the ancients had no monopoly of beauty.