CHAPTER I. Pleasure of Beauty. HE culture of beauty is, everywhere a legitimate art. But the beauty and adornment of the human form; the culture of personal beauty, and, in our age, especially of female beauty, is of the first interest and importance. It is impossible to separate people from their looks. A woman's natural quality is to attract, and having attracted, to enchain; and how influential she may be for good or for evil, the history of every age makes clear. We may add, therefore, that the culture of beauty is the natural right of every woman. It is not wicked' to take pains with oneself. In the present day our altered system of education, and an improved conception of woman's capacities, may have a little blinded us. We have begun to think of the mind almost to the exclusion of the body. It is perhaps, time to notice that the new views, whilst pointing to one truth, are in danger of eclipsing another: not, as some thoughtless people believe, that mental culture can ever harm a woman, or do aught but confer an added to aught but confer an added grace, but that the exclusive culture of one good thing involves a deplorable loss, whilst two good things do but enhance each other's lustre. However important the mind may be in fitting woman for her place in the world, either individually or as the companion of man, the body is hardly less important; and, after all, the oldfashioned notion that a woman's first duty is to be beautiful, is one that is justified by the utter impossibility of stamping it out. I should be the last to imply that physical beauty is the only thing that can make a woman attractive. Many are attractive and magnetic without beauty as it is commonly understood, and some are too useful to provoke criticism; but physical beauty remains one of the sweetest and strongest qualities, and one which can scarcely be too highly valued or too falsely despised. The immortal worth of beauty lies in the universal pleasure it gives. We all love it instinctively. We all feel, more or less, that beauty (or what we think beauty) is a sort of necessity to us, like the elements. One of the best proofs of this is the fact that we generally invest with ideal beauty any face or thing we are fond of. The beauty of the skies and seas soothes and uplifts our hearts; the beauty of faces passes into our souls, and shapes our moods and acts. What we love is probably always worth cultivating; and when we love what after all has an enormous refining influence, its cultivation may even become a duty. The power and sanctity of physical, as well as moral beauty, has been recognised in all ages. The early myth of Beauty worshipped and respected by beasts of prey is a suggestive and touching instance of this. The Greeks considered beauty so essentially a divine boon, that the mother prayed to Zeus that her child might be before all things beautiful. Beauty seemed to the Greek the visible sign of an inward grace, and an expression of divine good-will. Thus it naturally came to be cultivated at Athens with an enthusiasm and devotion such as it is difficult for us to realise. It was a part of their religion, and the common phrase, καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθόν, the Good and the Beautiful, embodied the fact. It may seem strange that the Greeks, whose civilisation had made them so sensitive to beauty of a certain order, should have remained to a great extent untouched by other orders of beauty which we value so deeply; but it is even more singular that we who know all that they knew, and have cultivated a susceptibility to sound, as in music, and colour, as in painting, far more keen and complex than theirs, should have become. |