woman; and, in this age, there are many instances of it; but it is much more likely, that a plain woman will be, in general, better furnished with those two necessary ingredients to domestic happiness, a corrected temper, and a cultivated understanding. Let us suppose a case, for the sake of exemplifying the subject, and let it be something like the following: A young lady, whose person is plain, cannot help observing how much she is neglected at public assemblies, and what universal attention is paid to beauty. She will naturally feel a desire to partake of the respect. She revolves in her mind the most likely methods of accomplishing her purpose. As to her features and shape, it is in vain to think of altering them. She must draw her resource from her mind and her temper. She will study to collect ideas, in order to render her conversation agreeable. She will therefore read, and observe, and reflect, and remember. Her eager desire to gain esteem will stimulate her industry, and give steadiness to her application. With these she cannot fail to succeed. Her mind will be stored with knowledge, which will produce itself in conversation with all the grace of ease and elegance. The improvement of her mind will have a natural effect in the improvement of her temper; for every part of polite learning tends to soften and harmonize the disposition. But she will also pay particular attention to the regulation of her temper; for she will justly argue, that envy and ill-nature will add distortion and ugliness to a set of features originally not worse than plain or indifferent. She will study to compensate for her defects, not only by rendering herself intelligent and good-tempered, but useful. She will therefore study the practical parts of domestic economy; those parts of humble but valuable knowledge, with which a fine lady, with a fine face, would scorn to meddle, lest she should be defiled. Thus sensible, good-tempered, and useful, her company will be sought by men of sense and character; and, if any one of them should be disposed to marry, there is little doubt but that she would be his choice, in prefer ence to a mere beauty, who has scarcely an excellent or useful quality to render her a good wife, mother, and mistress of a family. Suppose our plain lady married. Her gratitude will be powerfully excited, in return for the preference given to her amidst so many others who are talked of, and toasted, and admired. All her attention will be bestowed in making the man happy, who has made her happy in so flattering a manner. Her understanding has been enlightened, and her temper sweetened, by her own exertions. She will, therefore be an entertaining as well as a tender and affectionate companion. She has been accustomed to solid pleasures, for her plain person secluded her from vanity. She therefore seeks and finds comfort at home. She is not always wishing to frequent the places of public amusement, but thinks the day happily closed, if she can look back and find no domestic duty omitted. -Suppose her a mother. As she has furnished herself with ideas, she will be able to impart them to her children. She will teach them to entertain a proper knowledge of the world, and not lead them, by her example, to admire only its vanities. She will be able to educate her daughters completely, and to initiate and improve her sons. In the mean time, the fine lady, who has been taught to idolize her own face, and to dote on vanity, will neither be able nor willing to interest herself in such disagreeable affairs as the care of her noisy children, whom she almost detests; since they make her look old as they grow up, and are an impediment to her extravagance and dissipation. At the age of thirty or forty, which of the two is most amiable? Who now takes notice of the plain lady's face, or handsome lady's beauty? The plain lady, in all probability, is esteemed, and the handsome lady pitied or despised. But this is not all; for the one is happy and useful, the other burdensome and miserable. Juvenal, in his celebrated Satire on the Vanity of Human Wishes, laments that the accomplishment of our wishes should often be the cause of our destruction; and that such are our prayers, that, if heaven were always propitious, it would often be unkind. Who wishes not beauty in his children? Yet beauty has been the bane of myriads, whom deformity might have saved from ruin, and rendered useful, happy, and respectable. In this way does Knox endeavour to console that very worthy part of the sex, who have not to boast the finest texture of a skin, nor the most perfect symmetry of shape and features, and who are often not only neglected, but even ridiculed, by the unfeeling man of pleasure. It is surely a comfortable reflection, that though nature has treated their person rather rudely, her apparent malignity may be turned to a benefit; and that a very plain system of features may really be the cause of rendering them more engaging, and more permanently happy, as well as better able to communicate happiness, than the most celebrated toast, whose mind is unembellished. She indeed may shine a little in the sphere of fashionable life, while the factitious gloss of novelty remains; but her honours soon droop, and, like the gaudy tulip, are remembered no more. Beauty consists in four things; colour, form, expression, and grace. Beauty of colour, or complexion, though the lowest of all the constituent parts of beauty, is yet commonly the most striking, and the most observed; for this obvious reason, that every body can see, and few can judge; the beauties of colour requiring much less judgment than either of the other three. Beauty of form consists of a due proportion, or a union and harmony, in all parts of the body. These parts of beauty are distinct from mind, intelligence, virtue, and disposition; but the other characteristics of beauty, expression and grace, may be possessed by persons who are deficient in colour and form: a plain person may happily possess considerable degrees of expression and grace. By beauty of expression, is meant the expression of the passions; the turns and changes of the mind, so far as they are made visible to the eye by our looks and gestures. It is common to all persons and faces. Though the mind appears principally in the face and attitudes of the head; yet every part almost of the human body, on some occasion or other, may become expressive. Of the passions in general we may observe, that all the tender and kind passions add to beauty, and all the cruel and unkind ones to deformity; and it is on this account, that good-nature may very justly be said to be "the best feature, even in the finest face." For, as Dr. Young observes:— What's female beauty, but an air divine, Through which the mind's all gentle graces shine? The body charms, because the soul is seen. Mr. Pope has included the principal passion of each sort in two very pretty lines: Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train ; The former qualifications naturally give an additional lustre and life to beauty; as the latter are too apt to throw a gloom and cloud over it. Yet in these, and all the other passions, moderation ought perhaps to be considered in a great measure the rule of beauty, as moderation in actions is the rule of virtue. The finest union of passions that can perhaps be observed in any face, consists of a just mixture of modesty, sensibility, and sweetness, each of which, when taken singly, is very pleasing; but, when blended together in such a manner as either to enliven or correct each other, they give almost as much attraction as it is possible for the passions to add to a very pretty face. It is owing to the great power of imparting pleasure attendant on all the kindred passions, that lovers not only seem, but are in reality, more beautiful to each other than they are to the rest of the world; because, when they are together, those pleasing passions are alternately depicted in their features, which are seldom in action before the rest of the world. There is then " a soul upon their countenances," which does not appear when they are absent from each other, nor even when together, if conversing with other persons who are indifferent to them. The superiority which the beauty of expression has over that of colour and of form, will be evident; but if it should appear problematical to any one, let him consider the follow ing particulars, of which every one has met with instances: That there is a great deal of difference in the same face, as the individual is in a better or worse humour, or in a greater or less degree of liveliness: that the best complexion, the finest features, and the exactest shape, without any thing of the mind expressed on the countenance, are as insipid and unmoving as the waxen figure of the fine Duchess of Richmond in Westminster Abbey: that the finest eyes in the world, with an expression of malice or rage in them, will grow as shocking as they are in that fine face of Medusa, on the famous seal belonging to the Strozzi family at Rome: that a face without any good features in it, and with a very indifferent complexion, will have a very taking air; from the sensibility of the eyes, the general good-humoured turn of the look, and perhaps a little agreeable smile about the mouth. Thus the passions can give beauty without the assistance of either colour or form; and take it away, where these have united most strongly to give it. Hence the superiority of this part of beauty to the other two. We may therefore rest assured, that the chief rule of the beauty of the passions, is moderation; and that they appear most strongly in the eyes. There love holds all its tenderest language. There virtue commands, modesty charms, joy enlivens, sorrow engages, and inclination fires the heart of the beholder. There even fear, anger, and confusion, can charm. But all these, to be charming, must be kept within due bounds; for too demure an assumption of virtue, a violent swell of passion, a rustic and overwhelming modesty, a deep sadness, or too wild or impetuous a joy, become all either oppressive or disagreeable. The finishing and noblest part of beauty, is grace; a characteristic, of which every one is accustomed to speak, but of which no one seems hitherto to have given a proper definition. It has, however, been divided into two sorts: the majestic, and the familiar. No poet seems to have understood this part of beauty |