A PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE AND BEAUTY.*

" A ',man," according to Chamfort, quoted by Mr. Finck, " is a man who endeavours to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be ; and this is the reason why almost all lovers appear ridiculous." But it would be altogether unjust to charge love with the absurdities of its male votaries,—male, it must be remembered, for the sex which almost always inspires the feeling, usually preserves its dignity. The description, which, of course, depicts the modern lover, is not merely amusing; it is characteristic. Love in the nineteenth century, and in those countries where it has freest opportunity—England and America —involves a service on the part of the cavalier which seeks to become a servitude to the lady. Mr. Finck asserts that this kind of love, " romantic love," as he terms it, was unknown to the ancient world, only dimly perceived by chivalry, first proclaimed by Dante, and elaborated by Shakespeare. But he forgets the story of Jacob and Rachel, and the myth of Hercules and Omphale. The truth is, that romantic love has always existed, in every clime and age, since man left simian society ; and the records of travellers show that it is to be found among even the lowest savages. It has not so much developed in kind, as expanded in degree, with the widening of the freedom of intercourse between the sexes. In English and American novels, the lover is often enough ridiculous ; in Continental novels, rarely so, for society on the Continent seldom gives him the chance of which he is so ready to avail himself in Anglo-Saxon lands. How it comes to pass that his freedom lands him so often in a ridiculous eitua- tion, Mr. nick does not explain. Probably this result, which to the lover is not uupleasing, is brought about by a kind of absent-mindedness due to the intensity of his absorption in the adoration of the object of his passion, an intensity only attain- able where the opportunities of adoration are frequent.

Of the genesis, evolution, varieties, and incidents of love, Mr. Finck gives a fairly good account, though much too diffuse a one, which may be read with no great profit, perhaps, but at least with amusement. We agree with it on the whole, but with some modifications which will appear from what follows. Throughout Nature it ie usually the male, where there is a male, who pursues ; and in the animal world, the female is little more than the passive prize of his endeavours. Notwithstanding Darwin's assertions to the contrary, it is more than doubtful whether she ever exercises any choice. The instances in which the female seems to possess a power of selection fall to the ground when the facts are closely examined ; and what Darwin termed sexual selection is almost certainly merely a case of natural selection. Whether, indeed, animals have any sense of beauty, apart from a mere pleasurable excitement caused by colour, and perhaps by colour-harmonies, may be doubted. Passing to mankind, despite the subordination of the woman—more marked in the middle stages of human evolution than in the earlier or later—she both has and exercises a power of choice, though limited usually to a choice among pretendents. The sir, on the other hand, does not seem to choose, but to obey an instinct :- " Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ?"

sings Marlowe. Hence the moods of woman's love are infinitely more various and interesting than those of man's, which are merely phases of pursuit. He sighs or exults, is melancholy or frantic, always at one or other extreme of the gamut of passion ; while his mistress displays a thousand changing aspects, and enjoys as many different delights, taking a pleasure in the brief despotism Nature allows her, which it were surely ungenerous to resent. Nay, her very mobility adds to her attractiveness :—

Souvent femme varie, Fol eat qui s'y fie,"

is a man's epigram, as shallow as ungallant. What were woman • Bantantie Lore and Perry:ad Beauty. By Henry T. Pinok. 2 yob. London and New York : Nvomi➢an and 0o. MI.

without her variability, which, after all, is but her instinctive perception of the great truth enouneed in a judgment of a cour d'amour of the twelfth century, delivered by the Countess of Champagne, that " les obstacles donnent du prix is ramour " P The French are not, perhaps, the beet lovers, but they are the beet commentators on what Victor Hugo, in his grandiloquent way, yet not untruly, describes as the perfect union,—" Un homme et une femme qui se fondent en tin ange ; o'est le eiel." The original genesis of love may lie in mere desire; but that is only its beginning, just as language originates in mere emotional cries. The lowest savages have some perception of female beauty, and their standards, different as they appear from our own, are nevertheless always found on close examination to present points of identity. Even of the third element of modern love, the moral element, personal affection, they possess a share, and the history of the evolution of human love is nothing more than that of the growth of the selective and directive influences born of :esthetic and moral culture, and amplified by freedom of intercourse, working within a group of phenomena common to the world of men and that of animals.

One might as well try to bind the winds as to define love. Sainte-Beuve said its mysteries were unfathomable. So they are ; but hints may be gathered from innumerable sources throwing light upon the different aspects and phases of the most powerful of human sentiments, for the theme is as inexhaustible as it is attractive. Schopenhaner saw in it the merging of the feeling of the individual in that of the race, a merely utilitarian view, from which, however, he drew the laudable conclusion that arranged marriages were to be condemned. Bossy Rabutin rises above his usual level in describing love as a "ddsir d'dtre aired de co qu'on aims." Madame Necker calls it " nu dtat de guerre continuelle," which it doubtless is ; but then, ie it not much more P One of love's peculiar characteristics is given in a paradox of Pierre Corneille :—

" L'amenr, dans as prudence, est tonjoars indiseret, A force de se take il trahit son secret."

Raleigh sings :—

"Silence in love bewrays more woe

Than words, tho' ne'er so witty."

Shakespeare gives the whole theory and art of love, but after trial, we abandon the attempt to choose a quotation. Napoleon thought it an idle man's occupation, and some modern French- man tells us that it gives wit to those who have none, and takes it from those who have.' Balzac prettily calls it the poetry of the senses, dwelling wholly on its iesthetic features. Madame de Steel, taking a larger and profounder view, says that love is " rhistoire de la vie des femmes ; une episode, dana cello des hommes."

Mr. Finck, who sees clearly how greatly feminine surpasses virile love in interest, discusses amusingly the nature of coquetry and coyness, and condemns both, much too un- reservedly to our mind. Flirtation, on the other hand, which —by some Frenchman again—is defined as consisting on the gentleman's part of "attentions without intentions"—the quotation is Mr. Finok's—he altogether approves. On the lady's side, it is a sort of reconnaissance, a view of the ground on which the lines of siege are to be drawn, a preliminary peep at the enemy's forces, and a series of feints inducing their revelation. It is in some measure her answer to and defence against gallantry, which Montesquieu describes as "le d6licat, leger, et perpetuel meneonge de ramonr," the heritage of chivalry, itself the product of Christianity and the Northern respect for woman. Galauterie is, etymologically, simply "gaiety," and its poetical expression was the business of the joyeuse science. Of Northern birth, it was essentially of French growth, and spread throughout Europe with French manners. In the Middle Ages it was first a phase in the educa- tion of the Knight, and afterwards a mode of display of ;esthetic sentiment. With the advent of the Renaissance it degenerated ; in the eighteenth century it was little more than an elegant frivolity, covering less vice, however, than is commonly sup- posed; and in the nineteenth, gallantry has become a sort of love-making in public, real or feigned, pushed just so far as the dissimulation of modern society allows.

Mr. Finck's elaborate account of general and comparative female beauty we must leave to the reader's criticism. The great fault of his book is its diffuseness and want of proportion. One volume would well have contained all he has to say that the world will care to hear. But he has read widely, if not deeply, and writes with ease, though not always in good taste. His onslaught on fashion as the great enemy of beauty is as well delivered as it is well merited ; but we fear the onslaught will be in vain. On the various features of woman's beauty, Mr. Flack might have consulted Ludovio Lalanne, who, in his Curiosites Littgraires, has collected a number of poetic addresses to them, varieties of the sonnet to a mistress's eyebrow. One of the prettiest we know of, not, however, to be found in Lamina, is Gabrielle Chiabrera's cation—" Belle rose per. porine "—to his lady-love's lips, with the concluding stanza of which this discursive paper may perhaps fitly close :-

" Be giammai tra fior vermigli, Se tra gigli

Yeste l'Alba an stereo velo; E ea rote di zaffiro Move in giro, Noi dioiam ohe ride it cielo.

Ben a ver, qaando e giocondo, Bide it monde, Ride it oiel quando b giojoso, Ben a ver ; ma non san poi Come voi

Fare un rise grazioso."