The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-09-12 00:00:00

BEAUTY AND BRAINS.

How sad that there should be unhappy marriages !
But then happiness depends on certain conditions
which mus not be
.disregarded, else it will not be
a "constant guest,' no matter how " welcome."
Caught in the meshes of tea 01,,, men too often "marry
hi haste," to find, alas ! that a beautiful face does not
necessarily eorstitute her whom he has ''wooed and
woo)," a companion and helpmeet this 'ugh life. Con-
s. sis that let-re are oemlities of the 'Mini which have
a much (tree enduring att! actioll than inertly a pretty
tee, a writer in the S•a. rday Re tie iv remarks : --
That lovely woman fultEs only half her inisidon when she
i untersonable instead oof beautiful, all youo,g nun, alai all
!city girls Secure in the conseiolitness k,f their per-
v octions, will agrets Indeed. it is creel to hear the way in
hien heady youth despises ugly girls or lading women,
is ever clever, whose charm lies in their eleverne,s only,
I ab a counteraction in their plainness. To hear them tine
think that hardness of feature, like poverty, was a
t Ans. voluntarily perpetrated, and that contempt was a
,gliteous retribution for the offence. Vet their preference,
tough so cruelly expressed, is to a certain extent the right
Wog. Velien we are young., the beauty of women (rue a
apreme attraction I oeyoud another possessions or ginditieit,
11.1 there are se/f-eviaent reasons why it should la. so. It is
nip as we grow ololer that we know the value o brains, mod,
bile still admiring beauty—an indeed who does not—ad-
mire it as one passing by on the other side as a grace to
ah at, lout not to hold, unless accompanied loy something
litre lasting. This is in the middle souse! a man's We.
dol age, perhaps with the unconscious yearning of regret,
roes back to the love of youth and beauty for their own
o :doe ; eXtreines meeting here as in almost all other circum-
,tauces. The danger is when a young nom, ''lS') nog thc nit-
t grid impulse oof his age and state, marries totoanty only, with
000 thing of more ditraide wear beneath. The mind tees What it
lirings, :did we hove the ideal we create rather than the reality
that exists. A pretty (ace, the unworn nerves of youth, the
Ircshness of hope that has not yet been soured by disap-
pointment or chilled by experience, a neat stroke at croquet,
awl a Merry lawli easily excited, made a girl a goddess to •
holy who is what lie himself calls ni love SIDI his iriends call
ipoony. She may be narrow, sehish, unlit to bear the
1 urdens id life and uindde to Meet her t rials patiently ; she
!nay be utterly unpractical and silly—one of those who
never million.: but only grow old, and rentain great over.
son u children to the end—without judgment, forethought,
common seine or courage • lout he sees molting of all this.

To him she is perfect, girl in the 7viirlir,7' ii he
slangy, or the ' det,rest. ' If be is affectionate ; and he
neither sees nor broils her potential faults. It is only alien
she has stepped down front her pedestal to the level of
the nursery floor that he finds out she is but a woman after
all, and perhaps an exceptionally weak and peevish one.
Then he knows that he would have done better for himself
lad he married that plan brave-hearted girl who would
lave had him to a dead certainty if he bail asked her, but
whom he so unmercifully laughed at and disregarded when
he was making love to his fascinating charmer. As years go
on awl reduce the liebe and Hecate of eighteen to much the
one kind of woman at forty, with perhaps the advantage
n Hecate's side if of the sort that ripens well and
improves by keeping, the man feels that he has been a fool
t•fter the manner of Bunyan's Pission ; that lie has eaten up
l's present in the past, and bad all his cool things at Once.
If he Ina hut looked at the future, and been able to wait !
hut in those days he wanted beauty that lbws not last, and
cared nothing Mr brains that do ; anti so, hitch, made his
election must abide by it, and eat bitter bread' from the
3 east of his own brewing.
Many a man has cursed, his whole life long the youthful
infatuation that made hint starry a pretty fool. Take the
case of a rising politician whose fair-faced wife is either too
stupid to care about his position, or else who imperils it by
her folly. If amiable and affectionate, and in her own silly
Elite way ambitions, she does him incalculable mischief by
saggeration, and by saying and doing exactly the things
hat are most damaging to hint; if stupid, she is just so
touch deadweight that he has to carry with hint while
swimming up the stream. She is very lovely, certainly, and
people crowd her drawing-room to look at lice; but a plain.
ieatured, sensible, shrewd woman with no beauty to speak
of, but with tact and cleverness, world have helped hint in
career far better than would N'enus herself if brainless.
Anil so be hinds Init when it is too late to change M. for N.
is the marriage service. The successful men at small be-
c inning. are greatly liable to this curse of wifely hindrance.
A barrister once bridles. anti now in silk, an artist once
obscure anti 111,w famous, who in the days of impecuniosity
and Bohemia:lista married their landlady's pretty daughters,
anti towards the meridian of life find themselves in the
front ranks of kt haute rob e, uith a mite aldece who drops
her Ws aml multiplies her s's, know the full bitterness of
the in baked from that hasty brewing of theirs. Each
0111011 Way have been beautiful in her yollth, anti each man
may have loved his own very pm-innately; but if she has
nothing to supplement her beauty, if she has to. i,raioa to
fail hack upon, anti by which she can be educated up to Ids
aosent social position as the wife of his successful maturity,
is a mistake. Mr. Dickens was guile right to kill off
pretty childish Dora in Baria Copper/ iehl. If she had lived
ihe would have Wen like Flora io Bleak Bouse, aho indeed
too ;11J,S11 gild, hut not matured, with all the grace and
lieosty of her youth gone, and nothing else to take their
place.
. , . .

-31cn do lad care fir brains in excess in woineli. They like
a sympathetic intellect which can follow thou, and seize
their thoughts as quickly as they are uttered, but they do not
touch care for any clear or special knowledge of facts ; and
even the most philosophic among them would rather not lie
set rigid in a classical quotation, an astronomical calcula-
tion, or the exact learn., of a political questboi by a lovely
!sing in tarlatane whim he was graciously Unbending to
instruct. Neither do they want anything very aft-dig-
minded. To most men, indeed, the feminine strong-
mindedness that can (theme; immoral problems without
blushing, and despise religious observances as useful only to
weak souls, is a quality as unwomanly as a well-developed
biceps ova huge fist would be. It is sympathy, not antago-
nism, it is companionship, not rivalry, still less supremacy,
that they lise in women ; and seine women with brains as
well as learning—for the two are not the same thing—ms
derstand this, and keep their blue stockings well covered by
their petticoats. Others, enthusiasts tor the freedom of
thought and intellectual rights, show theirs defiantly, and
meet with their reward. Ilea shrink from theta. Even
clever men, able to meet them on their own ground, do not
feel drawn to them, while all but high-class sends are
dwarfed and humiliated by their learning and their amral
courage. Arid this is what no man likes to feel in the pre-
euce of a woman, and because of her superiority. But the
I,,ins most e•sfal to women, and most befitting their
sick in the, are those which show themselves in conninin
use, in good judgment. and that kind or patient courage
ien enables them ti bear small crosses and great trials
. . .