Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

I AM going to ask you a strange question, said I, to a very beautiful woman: Do you think yourself beautiful? answer me, if possible, with candour.

I will do so, said she: I will not reply with a jest or an evasion, or a laugh or a frown, but will tell you, in simple truth, I do think myself handsome. If I look into my glass, I behold features which I am sure I should admire in any other person. Nobody ever delivered an opinion of my person, so far as my knowledge extends, which was not favourable. I have often, while passing the street, or standing at a window, caught the eye of a passenger, but if he looked once he was sure to look a second time, and the expression of his countenance clearly informed me that he admired what he saw. I have, times without number, been told that I was beautiful, but never remember to have been told that I was ugly or even plain. My sister who resembled me so much that few people could tell us apart, always appeared beautiful in my eyes, and, so far as I could judge of other people's sentiments, always

VOL. VI. NO. XXXVII.

appeared so to others: and as all this has been uniformly and invariably the case, ever since I reached the age when I was first able to judge of beauty, or to understand others, I conclude, with the utmost confidence, that I am beautiful.-There now; you wanted a candid answer, and I think I have given you one.

And does this persuasion contribute any thing to your happiness?

I can hardly tell you that. The value of any thing, you know, can seldom be judged of by those, who have not likewise experienced the want of it. When age, or casualty, or disease makes me ugly, I shall then be able to tell you whether any part of my present happiness arises from possessing beauty. Till then, it is impossible.

But cannot you judge of its value by the conduct or feelings of those who want it?

I have often heard women say: what would I give to be beautiful! How happy I should be if I could exchange this rough face, or this awkward shape for such a skin or such

1

THE VALUE OF BEAUTY,

a person as yours, miss O.! These wishes once led me to imagine that beauty was a blessing; but this notion was greatly weakened, when I observed as much general cheerfulness and good humour in those plain girls as in any other. They seemed to be as much prized and beloved by their parents and friends, and they acquired the affections of valuable men as soon as they could reasonably wish. On the contrary, when I examined the character and history of those who were commonly reputed beautiful, I have generally found a childish folly, a disgusting haughtiness, a provoking caprice, terminating in guilt or misfortune. I have observed that some of their follies and disasters have arisen from their very beauty, which their narrow understanding has considered as a substitute for every other merit, though, in the actual course of human affairs, it appears to have little or no permanent value.

But do not you derive some pleasure, said I, from that homage and admiration which every where follow you?

I once did, but many circumstances have changed my pleasure either into indifference or pain. Fame becomes indifferent or insipid as soon as it becomes customary and familiar; and this is as true, nay, perhaps, truer, of a reputation for beauty than of any other kind of celebrity. Besides, the homage which my beauty obtains rather mortifies and humbles, than delights or elevates me, I find it almost wholly evinced by impudent staring, and impertinently following. It attracts the gaze of every body, at first sight, but those who have seen me often no longer stare, and the wise and worthy, those whose homage I should value, content themselves with merely staring, while the personal attentions of the less worthy appear to be prompted by nothing further than the outside. The homage and bene fits which beauty obtains, in my opinion, constitute the strongest argument against it, since beauty cannot last for ever, and is generally very

short lived, and hence we are certain of one day losing the one with gained, beauty only can keep A the other. What mere beauty has rational, and who is loved by a man woman that is at once beautiful and of worth, is much less fortunate than the plain woman in like circumstances, since the beauty must believe that her charms have had some influence in attracting her lover, and consequently that when time, sickness or familiarity destroys these charms, the husband may cease to love; whereas the homely girl may solace herself with thinking that she is loved for that which cannot be it is that I have long considered impaired by such accidents. Hence beauty as the bane of virtue and happiness.

The greater, then, must be the their virtue in spite of the baneful merit of those who, like you, retain influence of their beauty, and the as happy as others, though more ligreater their good fortune who are able than others to misery but really it seems to be a manifest perty a defect. There are forms and version of language to call beaufaces that possess what is vulgarly termed beauty, but it is of a kind netract those whose regard is either cessarily transient, and can only atworthless or hurtful: but have you of that sort which harmonizes most never been told that your beauty is eloquently with a beautiful mind; and can never fade as long as the heart and understanding continue the same?

the beauty you speak of, it is not
Believe me, she replied, if I have
that which purchases a single gaze
or compliment. It chances to be
the qualities which constitute what
united with the fair and the smooth,
you call vulgar beauty, and which
company with health and youth.
will inevitably take their flight in

they will. They will leave behind
Let them go, said I, as soon as
them that eternal beauty which, even
when left to itself, must and ought to
which, even when the smooth and
enchant every rational observer, and

[blocks in formation]

MANY men, many minds, says the proverb. This is true in every sense, in relation to all subjects, moral, political, and religious, and even in our judgments of sensible objects. No two men feel or see the same external, visible, or tangible objects in the same light. So different, indeed, are the impressions made on the senses of different men by the same objects, that we are sometimes irresistibly impelled to say that some men possess a sense intrinsically different from those of other men. There is indeed a discriminating power, created as it were by practice and experience, in relation to sensible objects, that is truly surprising. The sportsman sees a woodcock or squirrel, where his contemplative companion, naturally sharp-sighted as he, can see nothing but a piece of bark or a cluster of leaves. The blind man passes his forefinger over a perforated piece of copper or tin, and exclaims that the holes are not at equal distances, that their diameters are not the same, and that some are square, some hexagonal, some oval, but that none are perfectly round, while his clear-sighted neigh bour can only discover a number of holes drilled in a metallic plate by the finest needle, all which, to his nicest scrutiny, appear exactly alike*. I have often been amused with the different opinions formed of the apparent size of the moon. Nobody without experience would imagine there was any difference between men in this particular; but when he comes to investigate the matter, he

This circumstance actually occurred in this city, to the once famous Dr. Moyes.

finds that to one it appears as large as a dollar; to another as big as his hand; to a third it has the size of his hat; and so on to an infinite variety.

Men who are short-sighted in a small degree, either originally or by habit, do not commonly make the discovery very early. They are not aware, till some accident suggest a comparison between their own accuracy of vision and that of others, that they see less, or more imperfectly than their neighbours. In inany cases, but, strange as it may seem, not in all, myopism may be read in the shape of the eye, and therefore men may obtain the information of their own ocular defects from others, as soon as they are capable of comprehending it. In cases where this defect is not visible in the exterior shape of the eye, any suspicion we may form concerning ourselves is sometimes repressed by the assurances of others, who pretend to judge on such occasions by the shape of the organ.

My own case is an illustration and a proof of this last remark. I was eighteen years of age before I discovered that I could not sce as far and as keenly as my friends. Then, the mere accident of putting on a pair of spectacles, which enabled me to discover that a lady, on the opposite side of the street, had red hair instead of brown, as I had previously imagined, disclosed the secret to me of my own myopism. On inquiry I found, to my great surprise, that my neighbours had long enjoyed a privilege of which I was wholly destitute, without being conscious of my ́ forlorn condition. I had often heard of the man in the moon, but I never suspected that this noted personage had precluded all doubts of his existence, by actually staring in the face of every one who turned his eyes upon that luminary. I never dreamed that the chief lineaments of this gigantic face, the eyes, nose, mouth, were plainly to be seen by every long-sighted beholder, in the round disk of a full moon. I thought the belief of his translation was

founded only on the report of those ancient and grave annalists, whose industry and veracity have rescued from oblivion the memorable exploits of Jack the Gianticide, and the swallow-tamer Tom Thumb. As soon as I put on spectacles, my mind was completely illuminated on this important subject; and, to speak gravely, those mountains and gulphs in the lunar disk, which, in their lo, cal relation, bear a fantastic resemblance to the human lineaments, were suddenly unveiled to my view, though, till then, I had never seen any thing in that orb, but a dull, uniform brightness.

charity and forbearance towards the holders of adverse opinions and repugnant systems; and, secondly, an inflexible resolution to pursue truth for its own sake, to keep the mind ever open to conviction, ever accessi ble to argument; meanwhile, steadily maintaining and practising the opinion which, for whatever reason, appears, at present, to have most of truth, to be nearest certainty.

For the Literary Magazine.

THE ADVERSARIA,

A.

Or Winter Evening Amusements.

NO. XVIII.

Come, EVENING, once again, season of peace;

Return, sweet Evening, and continue long!

Come then, and thou shalt find thy vot'ry calm,

But though it be possible, by the the aid of optical instruments, to enable you to see external objects as clearly, perhaps, though not exactly in the same light as the majority of your neighbours, widely different is it with regard to intellectual objects, and to the eye of the mind. There are no spectacles for mental myopism. There are no such accidents as that above described, which suggest the existence of former dark- Or make him so. Composure is thy ness by its contrast to present light. Without doubt, there is a progress in the history of many minds in this respect. They see more sides of a subject, more of the scope of an argument or a system, to-day than they did yesterday. Former errors are detected and deplored; but surely, surely, to see the whole truth of things; to enter fully into all the arguments relative to many interesting topics, is Impossibility himself, or one of his neighbours.

Absolute scepticism, if it were possible, is equally foolish and unnecessary. An impartial mind, when it contemplates the variety of systems and opinions current in the world, may sometimes be induced desperately to unloose, its hold of every system, and suffer itself to fall, like the shapeless and rudderless log, down every changeful and capricious tide; but this is absurd and pernicious. The true lesson to be learned from the many minds of many men is not sloth, despair, and incredulity, but, first, an invincible

gift;

And whether I devote thy gentle hours
To books, to music, or the poet's toil;

Or twining silken threads round iv'ry
reels,

When they command whom man was born to please;

I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still.

COWPER.

NOTWITHSTANDING all the learning and information that may be found in the works of sir THOMAS BROWNE, I believe his ponderous volumes are now scarcely opened but by some curious reader who would examine the style which Johnson did not disdain to imitate. I confess it was this single object which induced me to delve into what I consider a rich mine of English phraseology. Although it was the ambition of sir Thomas to introduce as many exotic terms into our language as possible, and that in the prosecution of this design his taste

« PreviousContinue »