This may win your good-nature on
behalf of my present essay, which has turned out far more detailed and
circumstantial than I had at first intended.
"It is from yourself that the subject is taken. Our intercourse has been
short, too short both for you and me; but the first time I saw you, the
affinity of our spirits was revealed to me: your culture proved that my
hope was not groundless; and I found in a beautiful body a soul created
for nobleness, gifted with the sense of beauty. My parting from you was
therefore one of the most painful in my life; and that this feeling
continues our common friend is witness, for your separation from me
leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a memorial of
our friendship, which, on my side, is free from every selfish motive, and
ever remains subject and dedicate to yourself alone."
The following passage is characteristic--
"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under
one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of
beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of
men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art.
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