PRAYER UPON SIGHT OF BEAUTIFUL PERSONS.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—As the reading of your book, The Adventure of Living, has given me great enjoyment, I thought I would try and
find the passage you referred to in Sir Thomas Browne. I had the luck to find it in about two minutes. I hope it fits ; I think it does.
On page 484 of your book, The Adventure of Living, I read :— " I recall the passage which I know is somewhere in Sir Thomas Browne, though I am quite unable to find it, in which the physician philosopher declares that when he sees specially beautiful persons he desires to say a grace or thanksgiving to Heaven for the joy that has been vouchsafed him."
On page 284 of Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, edited by W. A. Greenhill, M.D., Oxon., published by Macmillan and Co., 1901, the last paragraph reads :— " Upon sight of beautiful persons, to blesS God in His creatures, to pray for the beauty of their souls, and to enrich them with inward graces to be answerable unto the outward ; upon sight of deformed persons to send them inward graces, and enrich their souls, and give them the beauty of the Resurrection."
Hill.Garden, Torquay.
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