to fill a woman's mind with all beautiful thoughts, and which I never met with a woman that did not like, notwithstanding its faults, and in spite of the critics. "Her tears came dropping down like rain in sunshine; and she not taking heed to wipe the tears, they hung upon her cheeks and lips, as upon cherries, which the dropping tree bedeweth."-Book the Third. Nothing can be more fresh and elegant than this picture. A mouth should be of good natural dimensions, as well as plump in the lips. When the ancients, among their beauties, make mention of small mouths and lips, they mean small only, as opposed to an excess the other way; a fault very common in the south. The sayings in favour of small mouths, which have been the ruin of so many pretty looks, are very absurd. If there must be an excess either way, it had better be the liberal one. A petty, pursed-up mouth, is fit for nothing but to be left to its self-complacency. Large mouths are oftener found in union with generous dispositions, than very small ones. Beauty should have neither; but a reasonable look of openness and delicacy. It is an elegance in lips, when, instead of making sharp angles at the corner of the mouth, they retain a certain breadth to the very verge, and show the red. The corner then looks painted with a free and liberal pencil. Beautiful teeth are of a moderate size, even, and white; not a dead white like fish bones, which has something ghastly in it, but ivory or pearly white with an enamel. Bad teeth in a handsome mouth present a contradiction, which is sometimes extremely to be pitied; for a weak or feverish state of body may occasion them. Teeth, not kept as clean as possible, are unpardonable. Ariosto has a celebrated stanza upon a mouth. "Next, as between two little vales, appears Thence issue the soft words and courteous prayers, And there the smile taketh its rosy rise, That opens upon earth a paradise."* To the mouth belong not only its own dimples, but those of the face: "The delicate wells Which a sweet smile forms in a lovely cheek."t * "Sotto quel sta, quasi fra due vallette, t La bocca, sparsa di natio cinabro: Quivi due filze son di perle elette, Che chiude ed apre un bello e dolce labro ; Quindi escon le cortesi parolette Da render molle ogni cor rozzo e scabro; Quivi si forma quel soave riso, Ch'apre a sua posta in terra il paradiso.”—Orlan. Fur. Canto 7. The chin, to be perfect, should be round and delicate, neither advancing nor retreating too much. If it exceed either way, the latter defect is on the side of gentleness. The former anticipates old age. A rounded and gentle prominence is both spirited and beautiful; and is eminently Grecian. It is an elegant countenance, (affectation of course apart) where the forehead and eyes have an inclined and overlooking aspect, while the mouth is delicately full and dimpled, and the chin supports it like a cushion, leaning a little upward. A dimple in the chin is almost invariably demanded by the poets, and has a character of grace and tenderness. NECK and SHOULDERS. The shoulders in a female ought to be delicately plump, even, and falling without suddenness. Broad shoulders are admired by many. It is difficult not to like them, when handsomely turned. It seems as if "the more of a good thing, the better." At all events, an excess that way may divide opinion, while of the deformity of pinched and mean looking shoulders there can be no doubt. A good-tempered woman, of the order yclept buxom, not only warrants a pair of expansive shoulders, but bespeaks our approbation of them. Nevertheless, they are undoubtedly a beauty rather on the masculine than feminine side. They belong to manly strength. Achilles had them. Milton gives them to Adam. His "Hyacinthine locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustering; but not beneath his shoulders broad." Fielding takes care to give all his heroes huge calves and Herculean shoulders,-graces, by the way, in which he was himself eminent. Female shoulders ought rather to convey a sentiment of the gentle and acquiescent. They should lean under those of the other sex, as under a protecting shade. Looking at the male and female figure with the eye of a sculptor, our first impression with regard to the one, should be, that it is the figure of a noble creature, prompt for action, and with shoulders full of power;-with regard to the other, that it is that of a gentle creature, made to be beloved, and neither active nor powerful, but fruitful:-the mould of humanity. Her greatest breadth ought not to appear to be at the shoulders. The figure should resemble the pear on the tree, "Winding gently to the waist." Of these matters, and of the bosom it is difficult to speak: but Honi soit qui mal y pense. This article is written neither for the prudish nor the meretricious; but for those who have a genuine love of the beautiful, and can afford to hear of it. It is not the poets and other indulgers in a lively sense of the beautiful, that are deficient in a respect for it; but they who suppose that every lively expression must of necessity contain a feeling of the gross and impertinent. I do not regard these graces, as they pass in succession before me, with the coarse and cunning eye of a rake at a tavern-door. I will venture to say that I am too affectionate and even voluptuous for such a taste; and that the real homage I pay the sex, deserves the very best construction of the most amiable women, and will have it. "Fathers and husbands, I do claim a right BEN JONSON. A bosom is most beautiful when it presents none of the extremes which different tastes have demanded for it. Its only excess should be that of health. This is not too likely to occur in a polite state of society. Modern customs and manners too often leave to the imagination the task of furnishing out the proper quantity of beauty, where it might have existed in perfection. And a tender imagination will do so. The only final ruin of a bosom in an affectionate eye, is the want of a good heart. Nor shall the poor beauty which a mother has retained by dint of being no mother, be lovely as the ruin. O Sentiment! Beauty is but the outward and visible sign of thee; and not always there, where thou art most. Thou canst supply her place when she is gone. Thou canst remain, and still make an eye sweet to look into; a bosom beautiful to rest the heart on. A favourite epithet with the Greek poets, lyrical, epic, and dramatic, is deep-bosomed. Mr. Moore, in one of his notes on Anacreon, says, that it literally means full-bosomed. But surely it literally means what it literally says. Full-bosomed might imply a luxuriance every way. Deep-bosomed is spoken in one of those poetical feelings of contrast, which imply rather a dislike of the reverse quality, than an extravagant demand of the one which is praised. If it is to be understood more literally, still the taste is to be vindicated. A Greek meant to say, that he admired a chest truly feminine. It is to be concluded, that he also demanded one left to its natural state, as it appeared among the healthiest and loveliest of his countrywomen; neither compressed, as it was by the fine ladies; nor divided and divorced in that excessive manner, which some have accounted beautiful.* It was certainly nothing contradictory to grace and activity, which he demanded. Crown me then, I'll play the lyre, With a dark, deep-bosom'd maid.-ANACREON. Ode v. The ladies ought to understand the spirit of epithets like these: for the tight lacing and other extravagances, of which they are too justly accused, originated in a desire, not to make the waist so preposterously small as they do make it, but to convey to their ad See an epigram in the Greek Anthology, beginning « Έκμαινει χειλη μη ροδόκρυα, ποικιλομύθα." mirers a general sense of the beauty of smallness in that particular, and their own consciousness of the grace of it. Rosy-bosom'd is another epithet in the Greek taste. Milton speaks in Comus of "The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours." Virgil says of Venus, "She said, And turn'd, refulgent with a rosy neck."* "O'er her warm neck and rising bosom move GRAY. which is a couplet made up of this passage in Virgil and another. Virgil follows the Greeks, and the Greeks followed Nature. All this bloom and rosy refulgence, which are phrases of the poets, mean nothing more than that healthy colour which ought to appear in the finest skin. See the next section of this paper, upon Hands and Arms. A writer in the Anthology makes use of the pretty epithet, "vernal-bosom'd." The most delicate painting of a vernal bosom is in Spenser: "And in her hand a sharp boar-spear she held, Stuft with steel-headed darts, wherewith she quell'd Knit with a golden bauldrick, which forelay Athwart her snowy breast, and did divide Her dainty paps; which, like young fruit in May, Through their thin weeds their places only signified." Dryden copies after Spenser, but not with such refinement. His passage, however, is so beautiful, and has a gentleness and movement so much to the purpose, that I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting it. He is describing Boccaccio's heroine in the story of Cymon and Iphigenia: "By chance conducted, or by thirst constrain'd, And on the margin of the fount was laid Like Dian and her nymphs, when, tired with sport, The dame herself the goddess well express'd, "Dixit; et avertens, rosea cervice refulsit." † Ειαρόμασθος. VOL. VII. No. 41.-Museum. 3 G Her comely limbs composed with decent care, Her bosom to the view was only bare; The fanning wind upon her bosom blows; The fanning wind, and purling streams, continue her repose." This beautiful conclusion, with its repetitions, its play to and fro, and the long continuous line with which it terminates, is delightfully soft and characteristic. The beauty of the sleeper and of the landscape mingle with one another. The wind and the bosom are gentle challengers. "Each softer seems than each, and each than each seems smoother." Even the turn of the last triplet is imitated from Spenser.-See "Her bosom is like milk, her neck like snow; The si But Ariosto has been also to Boccaccio, and he to Theocritus; in whom, I believe, this fruitful metaphor is first to be met with. It is very suitable to his shepherds, living among the bowers of Sicily. See Idyl xxvii. v. 49. Sir Philip Sidney has repeated it in the Arcadia. But poets in all ages have drawn similar metaphors from the gardens. Solomon's Song abounds in them. There is a hidden analogy, more than poetical, among all the beauties of Na ture. I quit this tender ground, prepared to think very ill of any person who thinks I have said too much of it. Its beauty would not allow me to say less; but not the less do I " with reverence deem❞ of those resting-places for the head of love and sorrow "Those dainties made to still an infant's cries." HAND AND ARM.-A beautiful arm is of a round and flowing outline, and gently tapering; the hand long, delicate, and well * L'Ameto, as above, p. 31. 33. "Bianca neve è il bel collo, e 'l petto latte; Orlan. Fur, Canto 7. C |