Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

And, methinks, it would be an acceptable service to take them out of the hands of quacks and pretenders, and to prevent their imposing on themselves, by discovering to them the true art and secret of preserving beauty.

"In order to do this, before I touch upon it directly, it will be necessary to lay down a few preliminary maxims, viz. :

"That no woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech.

"That pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

"That no woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.

"And, that what would be odious in a friend is deformity in a mistress.

5

10

15

"From these few principles, thus laid down, it will be easy to prove that the true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper 20 ornaments of virtue and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is that those who are the favorite works of Nature, or, as Mr. Dryden expresses it, the porcelain clay of human kind,* become animated, and are in a capacity of exerting their charms, and those who 25 seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable in a great measure of finishing what she has left imperfect.

"It is, methinks, a low and degrading idea of that sex which was created to refine the joys, and soften the 30 cares of humanity, to consider them merely as objects of sight. This is abridging them of the natural extent of their power, to put them on a level with the pictures at Kneller's. How much nobler is the contemplation

of beauty, heightened by virtue, and commanding our esteem and love, while it draws our observation! How faint and spiritless are the charms of a coquette, when compared with the real loveliness of Sophronia's innocence, piety, good-humor, and truth; virtues which add a new softness to her sex, and even beautify her beauty! That agreeableness which must otherwise have appeared no longer in the modest virgin is now preserved in the tender mother, the prudent friend, and the faithful wife. Colors artfully spread upon canvas may entertain the 10 eye, but not affect the heart; and she who takes no care to add to the natural graces of her person any excelling qualities, may be allowed to amuse as a picture, but not to triumph as a beauty.

"When Adam is introduced by Milton describing Eve 15 in Paradise, and relating to the angel the impressions he felt upon seeing her at her first creation, he does not represent her like a Grecian Venus by her shape or features, but by the lustre of her mind which shone in them and gave them their power of charming.

Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye,
In all her gestures dignity and love.'"

20

"Without this irradiating power the proudest fair one ought to know, whatever her glass may tell her to the contrary, that her most perfect features are uninformed 25 and dead."

I cannot better close this moral than by a short epitaph written by Ben Jonson, with a spirit which nothing could inspire but such an object as I have been describing :"

"Underneath this stone doth lie

As much virtue as could die,
Which when alive did vigor give
To as much beauty as could live."

30

XLI.

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.

BY DR. JOHN BROWN.'

FOUR-AND-THIRTY years ago Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how or why.

[ocr errors]

When we got to the top of the street and turned 5 north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. "A dogfight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up! And is not this boy nature? and human nature too? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out 10 before we see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac' says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man-courage, endurance, and skill-in intense action. 15 This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy, be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and me fast enough: it is 20 a natural, and not a wicked interest that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.

Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not, see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid induc

25

tion. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a crowd annular, com- 5 pact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downward and inward to one common focus.

Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small, thorough-bred, white bull-terrier is busy throttling 10 a large shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had 15 their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat, and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any 20 man, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from 25 the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-30 enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend, who went down like a shot.

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" observed a calm, highly dressed young buck,' with an eye-glass in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck, but with more 5 urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms, comforting him.

10

But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied. The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him; down Niddry Street he goes, bent on mis-15 chief; up the Cowgate like an arrow-Bob and I and our small men panting behind.

There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets; he is old, gray, 20 brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps' shaking as he goes.

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our astonishment the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and roar-yes, 25 roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob and I are up to them. He is muzzled! The bailies' had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus constructed 30 out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage-a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a

« НазадПродовжити »