Narrowness of waist is not found in the Venus de Medicis, or any other pure and approved models of the female form; there, the line of beauty, instead of being abrupt and sudden, assumes a graceful and glowing curve of outline" fine by degrees, and beautifully less."-How different from the contour of our modern beauties: For when I look, and cast mine eyes below, BP. HALL'S Satires. (10) After having read the eloquent reprobation of this destructive breast-work in Beccario's Lessons of Political Economy, I little expected to find it still in use in sober sensible England. It is but too true, the English ladies are imprisoned in stays, and in stays so stiff, that they are rendered as unbending as a hedgestake by this cuirass. (Our ladies are soft and flexible as a silken cord).COUNT PECCHIO's Observations. (11) Combien d'exemples du mespris de la douleur avons nous en ce genre! Que ne peuvent elles, que craignent elles, pour peu qu'il y ayt d'adgencement à esperer en leur beauté: Vellere queis cura est albos â stirpe capillos J'en ay veu englouter du sable, de la cendre, et ce travailler à poinct nommé de ruyner leur estomach, pour acquerir les pasle couleurs. Pour faire un corps bien espagnolé, quelle gehenne ne souffrent elles, guindees et cenglees, à tout de grosses coches sur les costez, jusques à la chair vifve? ouy, quelquefois à en mourir.-MoN TAIGNE. (12) "The prevailing mode of dress," says a cotemporary, "has carried off more women in this country, during the last ten years, than war has destroyed men in the same space of time. No less than two hundred female patients, sometime ago under the care of one physician, either actually died, or are likely to linger for life, under incurable complaints, all of which were contracted by the exposure of their persons agreeably to the fashions of the day." (13) Venustas, et pulchritudo corporis non possunt secerni a valetudine.-CICERO. (14) It is with women as with books, where a certain plainness of manner and dress is more engaging than that glare of paint, and airs, and apparel, which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections.-HUME. (15) Never let thy clothing be above thy condition, nor always equal to it.-Choose not that which is light and amorous, discovering that through a thin veil, which thou pretendest to hide.-JEREMY TAYLOR. I am not against the ladies adorning their persons ; let them be set off with all the ornaments that art and nature can conspire to produce for their embellishment, but let it be with reason and good sense, not caprice and humour.-DR. ISAAC SCHOMBERG. (16) Is there any thing sinful in particular dress or affected manners? No: but all people know that it shows the state of the mind, and that it is impossible for a ri draces outande to have any thing wise, or reasonable, or good within. All the world agree in owning that the use and manner of clothes is a mark of the state of a person's mind.—Law's Serrana Cal. As the index tells us the contents of stories, and directs to the particular chapter, even so does the outward habit and superfinal order of garments (in Man or Woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality of the soul. — Massinger. CHAPTER VII. FEMALE ESTIMATE OF MEN. A un homme vain, indiscret, qui est grand parleur et mauvais plaisant, qui parle de soi avec confiance, et des autres avec mèpris; impetueux, altier, entrepenant; sans mœurs di probité; de nul jugement et d'une imagination tres libre, il ne lui manque plus, pour être adorer de bien des femmes, que de beaux traits, et la taille belle. LA BRUYERE. § 1.-Among the social blemishes of Woman, is one that peculiarly demands consideration; haivng been an unceasing cause of mischief, and at all times extremely offensive to the sober part of the other sex: we allude to the partiality that women ordinarily feel, and do not attempt to disguise, for the more contemptible order of men. "There is one particular," writes Mackenzie, "in which the sex is daily blamed, and in which their conduct has afforded matter for severe censure; I mean a predilection they are supposed to bear to frivolous men, possessing no one valuable talent, no one quality sufficient to procure either respect or esteem." (1) If any sanguine and charitably-disposed reader imagine that our fair countrywomen have improved in this respect, and since the above was penned, we may refer him to the pages of a very late writer upon manners :-" With us,” says the author of England and the English,' men associate with the idler portion of societythe dandies-the hangers on!" "WO This penchant seems to be a disease that beauty is sure to catch. The most fascinating woman knows so little her true power, that, Nero-like, she only stoops to murder flies and beaux: "Any rank fool goes down," and with the least possible discrimination, "She smiles on every forward fop she sees.” BOILEAU. No man is insensible of the favours of women; no man can deny himself the effort to secure himself some share in their approbation or love; but many are instantly driven back with a writhing consciousness of female caprice. They are martyrs to that feeling, which is, perhaps, Otway. |