found that beauty was not more peculiar to the air of St. James's than of York; and that this perpetual bloom was not native, but imported from abroad. Not content with that red and white which nature gave, your belles are reduced (as they pretend) to the necessity of supplying the flush of health with the rouge of vermilion, and giving us Spanish wool for English beauty. The very reason alleged for this fashionable practice is such as (if they seriously considered it) the ladies would be ashamed to mention. "The late hours they are obliged to keep render them such perfect frights that they would be as loath to appear abroad without paint as without clothes." This, it must be acknowledged, is too true; but would they suffer their fathers or their husbands to wheel them down for one month to the old mansion house, they would soon be sensible of the change, and soon perceive how much the early walk exceeds the late assembly. The vigils of the card table have spoiled many a good face; and I have known a beauty stick to the midnight rubbers, till she has grown as homely as the queen of spades. There is nothing more certain in all Hoyle's cases, than that whist and late hours will ruin the finest set of features; but if the ladies would give up their routs for the healthy amusements of the country, I will venture to say their carmine would be then as useless as their artificial nosegays. A moralist might talk to them of the heinousness of the practice; since all deceit is criminal, and painting is no better than looking a lie. And should they urge that nobody is deceived by it, he might add that the plea for admitting it is then at an end; since few are yet arrived at that height of French politeness, as to dress their cheeks in public, and to profess wearing vermilion as openly as powder. But I shall content myself with using an argument more likely to prevail; and such, I trust, will be the assurance that this practice is highly disagreeable to the men. What must be the mortification, and what the disgust of the lover, who goes to bed to a bride as blooming as an angel, and finds her in the morning as wan and as yellow as a corpse? For marriage soon takes off the mask; and all the resources of art, all the mysteries of the toilet, are then at an end. He that is thus wedded to a cloud instead of a Juno may well be allowed to complain, but without relief; for this is a custom, which, once admitted, so tarnishes the skin that it is next to impossible ever to retrieve it. Let me, therefore, caution these young beginners, who are not yet discolored past redemption, to leave it off in time, and endeavor to procure and preserve by early hours that unaffected bloom, which art cannot give, and which only age or sickness can take away. Our beauties were formerly above making use of so poor an artifice: they trusted to the lively coloring of nature, which was heightened by temperance and exercise; but our modern belles. are obliged to retouch their cheeks every day, to keep them in repair. We were then as superior to the French in the assembly as in the field; but since a trip to France has been thought a requisite in the education of our ladies as well as gentlemen, our polite females have thought fit to dress their faces, as well as their heads, à la mode de Paris. I am told that when an English lady is at Paris, she is so surrounded with false faces. that she is herself obliged (if she would not appear singular) to put on the mask. But who would exchange the brilliancy of the diamond for the faint lustre of French paste? And for my part, I would as soon expect that an English beauty at Morocco would japan her face with lampblack, in complaisance to the sable beauties of that country. Let the French ladies whitewash and plaster their fronts, and lay on their colors with a trowel; but these daubings of art are no more to be compared to the genuine glow of a British cheek than the coarse strokes of the painter's brush can resemble the native veins of the marble. This contrast is placed in a proper light in Mr. Addison's fine epigram on Lady Manchester, which will serve to convince us of the force of undissembled beauty: "When haughty Gallia's dames, that spread O'er their pale cheeks a lifeless red, Confusion in their looks they show'd, I think, Mr. Town, you might easily prevail on your fair readers to leave off this unnatural practice, if you could once thoroughly convince them that it impairs their beauty instead of improving it. A lady's face, like the coats in the "Tale of a Tub," if left to itself, will wear well; but if you offer to load it with foreign ornaments, you destroy the original ground. Among other matter of wonder on my first coming to town, I was much surprised at the general appearance of youth among the ladies. At present there is no distinction in their complexions between a beauty in her teens and a lady in her grand climacteric: yet, at the same time, I could not but take notice of the wonderful variety in the face of the same lady. I have known an olive beauty on Monday grow very ruddy and blooming on Tuesday; turn pale on Wednesday; come round to the olive hue again on Thursday; and, in a word, change her complexion as often as her gown. I was amazed to find no old aunts in this town, except a few unfashionable people, whom nobody knows; the rest still continuing in the zenith of their youth and health, and falling off, like timely fruit, without any previous decay. All this was a mystery that I could not unriddle, till on being introduced to some ladies I unluckily improved the hue of my lips at the expense of a fair one, who unthinkingly had turned her cheek; and found that my kisses were given (as is observed in the epigram), like those of Pyramus, through the wall. I then discovered that this surprising youth and beauty was all counterfeit; and that (as Hamlet says) "God had given them one face, and they had themselves another." I have mentioned the accident of my carrying off half a lady's face by a salute, that your courtly dames may learn to put on their faces a little tighter; but as for my own daughters, while such fashions prevail they shall still remain in Yorkshire. There I think they are pretty safe; for this unnatural fashion will hardly make its way into the country, as this vamped complexion would not stand against the rays of the sun, and would inevitably melt away in a country dance. The ladies have, indeed, been always the greatest enemies to their own beauty, and seem to have a design against their own faces. At one time the whole countenance was eclipsed in a black velvet mask; at another it was blotted with patches; and at present it is crusted over with plaster of Paris. In those battered belles, who still aim at conquest, this practice is in some sort excusable; but it is surely as ridiculous in a young lady to give up beauty for paint as it would be to draw a good set of teeth merely to fill their places with a row of ivory. Indeed, so common is this fashion among the young as well as the old, that when I am in a group of beauties I consider them as so many pretty pictures,-looking about me with as little emotion as I do at Hudson's; and if anything fills me with admiration, it is the judicious arrangement of the tints and the delicate touches of the painter. Art very often seems almost to vie with nature: but my attention is too frequently diverted by considering the texture and hue of the skin beneath; and the picture fails to charm, while my thoughts are engrossed by the wood and canvas. I am, sir, Your humble servant, RUSTICUS. Number 46 of the Connoisseur complete. JOHN EARLE (c. 1601-1665) LARENDON says that Earle was "of a conversation so pleasant and delightful, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that no man's company was more desired and loved." Those who read "Microcosmography: or, A Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters," written by Earle in imitation of Theophrastus, will know for themselves that all Clarendon says, and more, is justified by the facts. Earle is one of those very rare and always delightful essayists who, when they have told all they really know of one subject, know how to stop and take up another. The title of his essays any one may translate from "Microcosmography" into "A Description of the Microcosm," but it is not every one, perhaps, who will remember that according to Hermes Trismegistus and others of equally venerable authority, the mind and soul of man will give those who really understand them a microscopic view of the mind and soul of "the great universe," "the Macrocosm." This theory of man's relation to the universe Earle has always in view, but it does not make him too serious, nor could any theory make him dull. His essays are the best of their class in English, and they are not surpassed in French, not even by La Bruyère, who, if he is often more witty, lacks the admirable sense of proportion which gives Earle his place with Bacon at the head of the list of essayists who know how to be brief without becoming either disconnected or obscure. Born at York about the year 1601, Earle was educated at Oxford for the Church. After his graduation he became proctor of the university, and in 1642 he was elected to the celebrated Westminster Assembly. Being a strong Royalist, he declined to sit, and after the defeat of the Stuarts at Worcester he went into exile with them. After the Restoration he was chaplain to the king, who made him a bishop in 1662. He died November 17th, 1665, leaving a reputation for good-nature and kindness of heart, which is fully borne out by even the most satirical of his essays. It may fairly be said that his is the best and least Ciceronian English prose of the reign of Charles II., for in spite of his classical learning he uses the genuine English syntax of King Alfred,-short sentences with few and short dependent |