'Bravo! bravo! O wonderful conversion! Lancelot has at last
discovered that, besides the "glorious Past," there is a Present
worthy of his sublime notice! We may now hope, in time, that he
will discover the existence of a Future!'

'But, Mr. Mellot,' said Honoria, 'why have you been so unfaithful to
your original? why have you, like all artists, been trying to soften
and refine on your model?'

'Because, my dear lady, we are bound to see everything in its ideal-
-not as it is, but as it ought to be, and will be, when the vices of
this pitiful civilised world are exploded, and sanitary reform, and
a variety of occupation, and harmonious education, let each man
fulfil in body and soul the ideal which God embodied in him.'

'Fourierist!' cried Lancelot, laughing. 'But surely you never saw a
face which had lost by wear less of the divine image? How
thoroughly it exemplifies your great law of Protestant art, that
"the Ideal is best manifested in the Peculiar." How classic, how
independent of clime or race, is its bland, majestic self-
possession! how thoroughly Norse its massive squareness!'

'And yet, as a Cornishman, he should be no Norseman.'

'I beg your pardon! Like all noble races, the Cornish owe their
nobleness to the impurity of their blood--to its perpetual loans
from foreign veins. See how the serpentine curve of his nose, his
long nostril, and protruding, sharp-cut lips, mark his share of
Phoenician or Jewish blood! how Norse, again, that dome-shaped
forehead! how Celtic those dark curls, that restless gray eye, with