Viewing page 62 of 130

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

tudes of children. This is the end of a large portion of the arts of polished life. How many drugs are sold, and how many applications are made for the improvement of beauty? How many artists of different kinds live upon this idea of beauty? If children learn to dance it is chiefly in order to improve and to display their beauty. If they acquire skill in the use of the sword, it is more for the purpose of improving personal beauty than for defence. If this general effort for appearance sometimes leads the decrepid and deformed into absurdity, and produces fantastic characters among the young, it has, however, a great and national effect in forming the countenance, not less than the attitudes and movements of the person.

Of its effect in creating distinctions among nations in which different ideas of personal beauty prevail, and different means are employed to reach them, we may frame some conception from the differences that take place in the same nation, in which similar ideas exist, and similar means are used to form the person, only in various degrees. What a difference between the soft and elegant tints of complexion generally seen in women who move in the higher circles of society, and the coarse ruddiness of the vulgar!---between the uncouth features, and unpliant limbs of an unpolished rustic, and the complacency of countenance, the graceful figure, and easy air and movement of persons in cultivated life!---between the shaped and meaning face of a well bred lady, and the soft and plump simplicity of a country girl!---We now easily account for these varieties which have become familiar to the eye, because we see the operation of their causes. But if we should find an entire nation distinguished by a composition of features resembling the one, and another by the contrary, they would have as fair a title to be ranked under different species by certain philosophers as the German, and the Tartar. The general countenance of Europe was, probably, more various several centuries ago than at present. The differences, which arise out of the state of society as their principal cause are, insensibly wearing away in proportion as, in the progress of refinement, the manners and ideas of the European nations are gradually approximating one standard. But the effect of a common standard of beauty, and the means employed by our own countrymen to form their persons after this ideal model are, through the influence of custom, and general example, often little observed. The means

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-06 08:45:11