season, we will dig up all the roots.

No heroine can probably engage our interest or sympathy who possesses
the infirmity of ugliness: it is not in human nature to admire her, and
human nature is a thing very much to be consulted. Moreover, no one ever
yet saw an amiable personage, who was not so far pleasing, or, in other
parlance, so far pretty. I cannot help the common course of things; and
however hackneyed be the thought, however common-place the phrase, it is
true, nevertheless, that beauty, singular beauty, would be the first
idea of any rational creature, who caught but a glimpse of Emily Warren;
and I should account it little wonder if, upon a calmer gaze, that
beauty were found to have its deepest, clearest fountain in those large
dark eyes of heir's.

Aware as I may be, that "large dark eyes" are no novelty in tales like
this; and famous for rare originality as my pen (not to say genius)
would become, if an attempt were herein made to interest the world in a
pink-eyed heroine, still I prefer plodding on in the well-worn path of
pleasant beauty; and so long as Nature's bounty continues to supply so
well the world we live in with large dark eyes, and other feminine
perfections, our Emily, at any rate, remains in fashion; and if she has
many pretty peers, let us at least not peevishly complain of them. A
graceful shape is, luckily, almost the common prerogative of female
youthfulness; a dimpled smile, a cheerful, winning manner, regular
features, and a mass of luxuriant brown hair--these all heroines
have--and so has our's.

But no heroine ever had yet Emily Warren's eyes; not identically only,
which few can well deny; but similarly also, which the many must be good
enough to grant: and very few heroes, indeed, ever saw their equal;