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 model of humanity. Her greatest breadth ought not to appear to be at the shoulder. 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
In all that is call'd lovely. Take my sight
Sooner than my affection from the fair,
No face, no hand, proportion, line or air
Of beauty, but the muse hath interest in.

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 country women; 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.

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 admirers 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-bosom'd Hours."

Virgil says of Venus,

"She said,

And turn'd, refulgent with a rosy neck.t"

"O'er her warm neck and rising bosom move

The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of love;"

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, “vernalbosom'd."‡ The most delicate painting of a vernal bosom is in Spenser :

"And in her hand a sharp boar-spear she held,

And at her back a bow and quiver gay

Stuft with steel-headed darts, wherewith she quell'd

The salvage beasts in her victorious play,

Knit with a golden bauldrick, which forelay

Athwart her snowy breast, and did divide

Her dainty paps; which, like young fruit in May,

Now little gan to swell; and being tied,

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,
The deep recesses of the grove he gain'd;

* See an epigram in the Greek Anthology, beginning Εκμαίνει χειλη μη ροδοκρυα, ποικιλομυθα.

"Dixit; et avertens, rosea cervice refulsit."

* Ειαρομασθος.

Where, in a plain defended by the wood,
Crept through the matted grass a crystal flood,
By which an alabaster fountain stood :
And on the margin of the fount was laid
Attended by her slaves, a sleeping maid;

Like Dian and her nymphs, when, tired with sport,
To rest by cool Eurotas they resort

The dame herself the goddess well express'd,
Not more distinguish'd by her purple vest,
Than by the charming features of her face,
And e'en in slumber a superior grace.

Her comely limbs composed with decent care,
Her body shaded with a slight cymar,
Her bosom to the view was only bare;
Where two beginning paps were scarcely spied,
For yet their places were but signified.
The fanning wind upon her bosom blows;
To meet the fanning wind the bosom rose ;

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.”

SPENSER'S Britain's Ida.

Even the turn of the last triplet is imitated from Spenser.-See the divine passage of the concert in the Bower of Bliss, Faery Queen, book ii. canto 12. stanza 71. "The sage and serious Spenser," as Milton called him, is a great master of the beautiful in all its branches. He also knew, as well as any poet, how to help himself to beauty out of others. The former passage imitated by Dryden, was, perhaps, suggested by one in Boccaccio.* The simile of "young fruit in May" is undoubtedly from Ariosto.

"Her bosom is like milk, her neck like snow;
A rounded neck; a bosom, where you see
Two crisp young ivory apples come and go,
Like waves that on the shore beat tenderly,
When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro."t

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 Nature.

I quit this tender ground, prepared to think very ill of any person

* L'Ameto, as above, pp. 31. 33.

"Bianca neve è il bel collo, e 'l petto latte;

Il collo tondo, il petto colmo e largo:
Due pome acerbe, e pur d'avorio fatte,
Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo,
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.

Orlan. Fur. Canto 7.

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 turned, with taper fingers, and a certain buoyancy and turn upwards in their very curvature and repose. I fear this is not well expressed. I mean, that when the hand is at rest, and displayed, the wrist a little bent, and the other part of it, with the fingers, stretching and dipping forwards with the various undulations of the joints, it ought, however plump and in good condition, to retain a look of promptitude and lightness. The spirit of the guitar ought to be in it; of the harp and the piano-forte, of the performance of all elegant works, even to the dairy of Eve, who "tempered dulcet creams."-See a picture in Spenser, not to be surpassed, as usual, by any Italian pencil:

"In her left hand a cup of gold she held,

And with her right the riper fruit did reach,
Whose sappy liquor, that with fulness swell'd,
Into her cup she scruz'd with dainty breach
Of her fine fingers, without foul empeach.

That so fair wine-press made the wine more sweet.

Book ii. canto 12.

It is sometimes thought that hands and arms cannot be too white. A genuine white is very beautiful, and is requisite to give them perfection; but shape and spirit are the first things in all beauty. Complexion follows. A hand and arm may be beautiful, without being excessively fair: they may also be very fair, and not at all beautiful. Above all, a sickly white is not to be admired, whatever may be thought of it by the sallow Italian, who praises a white hand for being morbida. I believe, however, he means nothing more than a contradiction to his own yellow. He would have his mistress's complexion unspoilt by oil and macaroni at any rate. These excessive terms, as I have before noticed, are not to be taken to the letter. A sick hand has its own merits, if it be an honest one; and may excite a feeling beyond beauty. But sickliness is not beauty. In the whitest skin there ought to be a look of health. The nails of the fingers ought to be tinged with a healthy red. When the Greeks spoke of the rosy-finger'd Morn, it was not a mere metaphor, alluding to the ruddiness of the time of day. They referred also to the human image: the metaphor was founded in Nature, whether the goddess's office, or person, was to be considered. My friend George Bustle used to lament, that, in consequence of the advancement of knowledge and politeness, there was no longer any distinguishing mark of gentility but a white hand. Poor George! He had better have thought otherwise. He attempted one day to shew off among us, by letting the blood be drawn out of his fingers' ends: which, acting upon an ill constitution, was the death of him. People who have nothing but a white hand to shew for their beeding, are in a bad

* "Candidis tamen manibus rosei ruboris aliquid suffundatur."
Junius, Cap. ix. sect. 26.

way. I would as soon trust the long nails of a Chinese dandy, who thinks it vulgar to be without talons. He supposes that nobody can be polite, whose hands retain a look of utility. Unreflecting Hi-Fong! not to know, that beauty, grace, and utility are fellow workers. A sculptor might as well shut up his tools.

"The instrument of instruments, the hand,"

is not a thing to be stuck in a scutcheon, like a baronet's device. The most delicate need not be afraid of turning it to account, even on the score of delicacy. If it is worth any thing at all, it is worth preserving; and a reasonable exercise of the various joints, muscles, and other useful pieces of machinery which Nature, whatever some may think, has really bestowed on that graceful member, serves to keep it in health and perfectness. Look at the delicate withered claw of some foolish old lady, West Indian for instance, who has never been suffered to lift a comb to her head, or carry a bundle of music across a threshold; and compare it with many accomplished hands, that have been used to fifty good offices, and that remain soft and young-looking to the last. Wherever a genuine and lasting beauty is desired, the blood must be circulated.

FIGURE, CARRIAGE, &c.-The beauty of the female figure consists in being gently serpentine. Modesty and luxuriance, fulness and buoyancy, a rising, as if to meet; a falling, as if to retire; spirit, softness, apprehensiveness, self-possession, a claim on protection, a superiority to insult, a sparkling something enshrined in gentle proportions and harmonious movement, should all be found in that charming mixture of the spiritual and material. Mind and body are not to be separated, where real beauty exists. Should there be no great intellect, there will be a sort of intellectual instinct, a grace, an address, a naturally wise amjableness. Should intellect unite with these, there is nothing upon earth so powerful, except the spirit whom it shall call master.

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the wilful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes, the vulgar. It is the vulgarity that can afford to shift and vary itself, opposed to the vulgarity that longs to do so, but cannot. The high point of taste and elegance is to be sought for, not in the most fashionable circles, but in the best-bred, and such as can dispense with the eternal necessity of never being the same thing. Beauty there, both moral and personal, will do all it can to resist the envy of those who would deface, in order to supersede it. The highest dressers, the highest painters, are not the loveliest women, but such as have lost their loveliness, or never had any. The others know the value of their natural appearance too well. It is these that inspire the mantua-maker or milliner with some good thought. The fantastics of fashion take it up, and spoil it. Sixty or seventy years ago, it was the fashion for ladies to have long waists like a funnel. Who would suppose that this originated in a natural and even rustic taste? And yet the stomachers of that time were only caricatures of the bodice of a country beauty. Some handsome women brought the ori ginal to town; fashion proceeded to render it ugly and extravagant;