Graces more confessedly childlike they make shift to
teach themselves.
FAIR AND BROWN
George Eliot, in one of her novels, has a good-natured mother, who
confesses that when she administers justice she is obliged to spare the
offenders who have fair hair, because they look so much more innocent
than the rest. And if this is the state of maternal feelings where all
are more or less fair, what must be the miscarriage of justice in
countries where a _blond_ angel makes his infrequent visit within the
family circle?
In England he is the rule, and supreme as a matter of course. He is
"English," and best, as is the early asparagus and the young potato,
according to the happy conviction of the shops. To say "child" in
England is to say "fair-haired child," even as in Tuscany to say "young
man" is to say "tenor." "I have a little party to-night, eight or ten
tenors, from neighbouring palazzi, to meet my English friends."
But France is a greater enthusiast than our now country. The fairness
and the golden hair are here so much a matter of orthodoxy, that they are
not always mentioned; they are frequently taken for granted. Not so in
France; the French go out of their way to make the exceptional fairness
of their children the rule of their literature. No French child dare
show his face in a book--prose or poetry--without blue eyes and fair
hair.
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