beauty cometh by nature, yours by art; they increase their favors with fair water, you maintain yours with painters' colors; the hair they lay out groweth upon their own heads, your seemliness hangeth upon others; theirs is always in their own keeping, yours often in the dyer's; their beauty is not lost with a sharp blast, yours fadeth with a soft breath; not unlike unto paper flowers which break as soon as they are touched, resembling the birds in Egypt called ibes, who, being handled, loose their feathers, or the serpent serapie, which, being but touched with a brake, bursteth. They use their beauty be cause it is commendable, you because you would be common; they, if they have little, do not seek to make it more, you that have none endeavor to bespeak most; if theirs wither by age they nothing esteem it, if yours waste by years you go about to keep it; they know that beauty must fail if life continue, you swear that it shall not fade if colors last.

But to what end, ladies, do you alter the gifts of nature by the shifts of art? Is there no color good but white, no planet bright but Venus, no linen fair but lawn? Why go ye about to make the face fair by those means that are most foul? a thing loathsome to man and therefore not lovely; horrible before God and therefore not lawful.

Have you not heard that the beauty of the cradle is most bright, that paintings are for pictures without sense, not for persons with true reason? Follow at the last, ladies, the gentlewomen of England, who, being beautiful, do those things as shall become so amiable faces, if of an indifferent hue, those things as they shall make them lovely, not adding an ounce to beauty that may detract a dram from virtue. Besides this, their chastity and temperance is as rare as their beauty, not going in your footsteps, that drink wine before you rise to increase your color and swill it when you are up to provoke your lust. They use their needle to banish idleness, not the pen to nourish it, not spending their time in answering the letters of those that woo them, but forswearing the company of those that write them, giving no occasion either by wanton looks, unseemly gestures, unadvised speech, or any uncomely behavior of lightness or liking. Contrary to the custom of many countries, where filthy words are accounted to favor of a fine wit, broad speech of a bold courage, wanton glances of a sharp eyesight, wicked deeds of a comely gesture, all vain delights of a right courteous courtesy.

And yet are they not in England precise but wary, not disdainful to confer but fearful to offend, not without remorse where they perceive truth but without replying where they suspect treachery, whenas among other nations there is no tale so loathsome to chaste ears but it is heard with great sport and answered with great speed.

Is it not then a shame, ladies, that that little island should be a mirror to you, to Europe, to the whole world?

Where is the temperance you profess, when wine is more common than water? where the chastity, when lust is thought lawful? where the modesty, when your mirth turneth to uncleanness, uncleanness to shamelessness, shamelessness to all sinfulness? Learn, ladies, though late, yet at length, that the chiefest title of honor in earth is to give all honor to him that is in heaven; that the greatest bravery in this world is to be burning lamps in the world to come; that the clearest beauty in this life is to be amiable to him that shall give life eternal.

Look in the glass of England-too bright, I fear me, for your eyes: what is there in your sex that they have not, and what that you should not have? They are in prayer devout, in bravery humble, in beauty chaste, in feasting temperate, in affection wise, in mirth modest, in all their actions, though courtly because women, yet angels because virtuous.

Ah, good ladies, good, I say, for that I love you,— I would you could a little abate that pride of your stomachs, that looseness of mind, that licentious behavior, which I have seen in you with no small sorrow, and cannot remedy with continual sighs.

They in England pray when you play, sow when you sleep, fast when you feast, and weep for their sins when you laugh at your sensualities. They frequent the church to serve God, you to see gallants; they deck themselves for cleanliness, you for pride; they maintain their beauty for their own liking, you for others' lust; they refrain wine because they fear to take too much, you because you can take no more. Come, ladies, with tears I call you, look in this glass, repent your sins past, refrain your present vices, abhor vanities to come, say thus with one voice, "We can see our faults only in the English glass; a glass of grace to them, of grief to you; to them in the stead of righteousness, to you in place of repentance.

The lords and gentlemen in that court are also an example for all others to follow.

This is a glass for our youth in Greece, for your young ones in Italy, the English glass: behold it, lords and ladies, and all that either mean to have piety, use bravery, increase beauty, or that desire temperance, chastity, wit, wisdom, valor, or anything that may delight yourselves or deserve praise of others.

But another sight there is in my glass, which maketh me sigh for grief I cannot show it, and yet had I rather offend in derogating from my glass than my good will.

Blessed is that land that hath all commodities to increase the common wealth; happy is that island that hath wise councilors to maintain it, virtuous courtiers to beautify it, noble gentlemen to advance it, but to have such a prince to govern it as is their sovereign queen, I know not whether I should think the people to be more fortunate, or the prince famous; whether their felicity be more to be had in admiration that have such a ruler, or his virtues to be honored that hath such royalty; for such is their estate there that I am enforced to think that every day is as lucky to the Englishmen as the sixth day of February hath been to the Grecians.

But I see you gaze until I show this glass, which, you having once seen, will make you giddy. O ladies! I know not when to begin nor where to end; for the more I go about to express the brightness, the more I find mine eyes bleared, the nearer I desire to come to it, the farther I seem from it; not unlike unto Simonides, who, being curious to set down what God was, the more leisure he took, the more loath he was to meddle, saying that in things above reach it was easy to catch a strain but impossible to touch a star; and therefore, scarce tolerable to point at that which one can never pull at. When Alexander had commanded that none should paint him but Apelles, none carve him but Lysippus, none engrave him but Pergotales, Parrhasius framed a table squared every way two hundred feet, which in the borders he trimmed with fresh colors and limned with fine gold, leaving all the other room without knot or line, which table he presented to Alexander, who, no less marveling at the bigness than at the bareness, demanded to what end he gave him a frame without face, being so naked, and without fashion, being so great. Parrhasius answered him, "Let it be lawful for Parrhasius, O Alexander, to show a table wherein he would paint Alexander, if it were not unlawful, and for others to square timber though Lysippus carve it, and for all to cast brass though Pergotales engrave it." Alexander,

perceiving the good mind of Parrhasius, pardoned his boldness and preferred his art, yet inquiring why he framed the table so big. He answered that he thought that frame to be but little enough for his picture, when the whole world was too little for his person, saying that Alexander must as well be praised as painted, and that all his victories and virtues were not to be drawn in the compass of a signet but in a field.

This answer Alexander both liked and rewarded, insomuch that it was lawful ever after for Parrhasius both to praise that noble king and to paint him.

In like manner I hope, and though it be not requisite that any should paint their prince in England that cannot sufficiently perfect her, yet it shall not be thought rashness or rudeness for Euphues to frame a table for Elizabeth, though he presume not to paint her. Let Apelles show his fine art, Euphues will manifest his faithful heart; the one can but prove his conceit to blaze his cunning, the other his good will to grind his colors.

He that wetteth the tools is not to be disliked though he cannot carve the image; the worm that spinneth the silk is to be esteemed though she cannot work the sampler; they that fell timber for ships are not to be blamed because they cannot build ships. He that carrieth mortar furthereth the building, though he be no expert mason; he that diggeth the garden is to be considered, though he cannot tread the knots; the goldsmith's boy must have his wages for blowing the fire, though he cannot fashion the jewel.

Then, ladies, I hope poor Euphues shall not be reviled though he deserve not to be rewarded. I will set down this Elizabeth as near as I can, and it may be that as the Venus of Apelles, not finished; the Tindarides of Nicomachus, not ended; the Medea of Timomachus, not perfected; the table of Parrhasius, not colored, brought greater desire to consummate them and to others to see them; so the Elizabeth of Euphues, being but shadowed for others to varnish, but begun for others to end, but drawn with a black coal for others to blaze with a bright color, may work either a desire in Euphues hereafter, if he live, to end it, or a mind in those that are better able to amend it, or in all (if none can work it) a will to wish it. In the mean season I say, as Zeuxis did when he had drawn the picture of Atlanta, more will envy me than imitate me, and not commend it though they cannot amend it.

MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS.

[MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE, French essayist, was born of a distinguished family at the Château Montaigne in Périgord, February 28, 1533. In accordance with his father's eccentric ideas on education, he was taught and allowed to speak no language but Latin till the age of six, and was then sent to the Collège de Guienne at Bordeaux, among his instructors being George Buchanan, the Scottish poet and historian. He was afterwards a judge in the Parliament of Bordeaux, twice mayor of that city, and when at Blois, in 1588, was chosen to negotiate a treaty between the Duke of Guise and Henry of Navarre. The greater part of his life, however, was spent in peaceful study and meditation at his ancestral château, where he died September 13, 1592. Montaigne's "Essays" (published 1580 and 1588) had an immense influence on French authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and have been widely read outside of France. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson possessed English translations.]

VIRTUES OF THE LOWER ANIMALS.

WHAT is there in us that we do not see in the operations of animals? The swallows that we see at the return of the spring, searching all the corners of our houses for the most commodious places wherein to build their nest; do they seek without judgment, and amongst a thousand choose out the most proper for their purpose, without discretion? And in that elegant and admirable contexture of their buildings, can birds rather make choice of a square figure than a round, of an obtuse than of a right angle, without knowing their properties and effects? Do they bring water, and then clay, without knowing that the hardness of the latter grows softer by being wet? Do they mat their palace with moss or down without foreseeing that their tender young will lie more safe and easy? Do they secure themselves from the wet and rainy winds, and place their lodgings against the east, without knowing the different qualities of the winds, and considering that one is more wholesome than another? Why does the spider make her web tighter in one place, and slacker in another; why now make one sort of knot and then another, if she has not deliberation, thought, and conclusion? We sufficiently discover in most of their works how much animals excel us, and how unable our art is to imitate them. We see, nevertheless, in our rougher performances, that we employ all our faculties, and apply the utmost power of our souls; why do we not conclude the same