, 1863-04-04
English Women.


with which English ladies retain their per
sonal beauty to late period of life bu
mot to suggest too that an American ey,
needs use and cultivation before it car
quite appreciate the charm of English
beauty at any age), it strikes me that al
English lady of fifty is apt to become {
creature less refined and delicate so far as
her phlsique goes, than anything that we
western people class under the name of wo-
man. She has an awful ponderosity of
frame, not pulpy, like the looser develop
ment OF our few fat women, but massive
with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that
though struggling manfully against the
loea) you inevitably think of her as made
up OF steaks and surloins. When she
walks, her advance is elephantine. When
she sits down, it is on great round space
~ An~ Mnber'e fnntetnn! where che looLs
imposes awe and respect by the muchness
of her personality, to such a degree that
you probably credit her with far greater
moral and intellectual force than she can
fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim
and stern, not always positively forbidding,
yet calmly terrible, mot merely by is breadth
to express so much well-founded self-reli-
ance, such acquaintance with the world, its
tolls, troubles and dangers, and such sturdy
capacity for trampling down foe With
out anything positively salient, or actively
offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable
to her neighbors, she has the effect of
seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace
while you assure yourself that there is no
real danger, you cannot help thinking how
tremendous would be her onset if pugna-
ciously inclined, and how futile the effort
to infict any counter-injury She certainly
looks ten-told-nay hundred fold-better
to take care of herself than our slender
framed and haggard womankind; but |
have not found reason to suppose that the
English dowager of fifty has actually great
er courage, fortitude, and strength of char
acter tran our women of similar age, or
even tougher physical endurance than
they. Morally, she is strong l suspect,
only in society, and in the common routine
of social affairs, and would be found pow
erless and timid in any exceptional strait
that might call for energy outside of the
conventionalities amid which she has grown
up.
You can meet this figure in the street
and live, and even smile at the recollection.
But conceive of her in a ballroom, with
the bare brawny arms that she invariably
displays there, and all the other correspond
ing development, such as is beautiful ia
the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to
howl at in such an over-blown cabbage
ose as this.
Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk
there must be hidden the modest slender,
violet-nature of GIRL whom an alien mass
of earthliness has, unkindly overgrown for
an English maiden In her teens, though
very seldom so pretty as our own damsels,
possesses to say the truth, certain charm
of half blossom and delicateiy folded leaves
and tender womanhood shielded by maid
emily reserves, with which, somehow or
other, our American girls often fail to adorn
themselves during an appreciable moment
1t is pity that the English violet should
grow into such an outrageously developed
piony as have attempted to describe. l
wonder whether a middle aged husband
ought to be considered as married to all
the accretions that have overgrown the
sIenderness of his bride since he led her to
the altar, and which make her so much
more than he ever bargained for Is it not
a sounder view of the case, that the matri-
monial bond cannot be held to include three
fourths of the wife which had no existence
when the ceremony was performed And
as a matter of conscience and good morals,
onght not an English married pair to insist
upon the celebration of Silver Wedding
at the end of twenty-five years, in order to
legalize and mutually appropriate that cor
poreal growth of which both parties have
individually come into possession since they
were pronounced one flesh.