Daily globe., 1882-05-14
The Cause OF Beauty in Women.


The CormhsU Magazine, discussing
the reason why physical beauty is prev
alent In the arlstOcratic ranks of Great
Britain, argues that IL Is due to the
"constant selection Of the most beauti-
full women of all classes, peeresses, act
resses or wealthy bourgeoise, through
an immense number OF generations,
and deduces from this fact that aver
age personal beauty everywhere CORE
spends to the average general love of
beauty in the abstract" This is un.
doubtedly true, with the addition that
aesthetic taste is the result chiefly of ed
ucation. Hence it is that the prevailing
beauty OF American women is remarked
by every traveller who comes from be-
yond the Atlantic. Hereditary forms
and features certainly, in the main, are
transmitted from generation TO genera
ton, but they must be refined by social
and mental education, or else the coarse
and the sensual will become the rule,
even among the titled classes of En-
gland. In that kingdom beauty is the
exception, not the rule, as the repulsive
ugliness of the lower human strata
proves, and this is the fact because those
strata remain III dense ignorance. The
common-school system is at the bottom
Of American beauty. An American girl
has the advantage Of good school edu-
cation and Of average musical training,
and, although less robust than her Brit
ish sister, is more spirituelle and re-
fined in skin, color and carriage. There
can be no doubt that the love of the
beautiful, q resultant of education,
beams through the face and adds grace
to the person, for it is the province of
love TO 40 this in women, just
as the love OF wisaum in
men makes them rugged. The
late Adelaide Nelson was unquestiona-
bly, kept beautiful by playing the lowell
est of all the characters of Shakespeare.
The stimulation begat similarity. Or
the other hand, the face of Thomas
Carlyle, just deceased, was rugged and
severe. In Nelson's case, beauty
streamed from her face because her
thoughts, derived from and in sympathy
with the Shakspearean model, flowed
from within to without. In Carlyle's
case, his face was rugged because his
thoughts flowed from without to within.
It is utterly impossible for a very great
thinker to be facially handsome, and, if
Sir Robert Peel is cited as an example
to the contrary, the answer is that he
was rare exception Our Webster,
Clay and Calhoun were not Apollos, al
though striking in feature and form.
Women cultivate the affections, and
hence their loveliness, provided they are
educated in a taste for beauty men
cultivate the mind, and, however great
their requirements, the inward flow of
thought will sooner or later overwhelm
every particle of facial beauty which
they might have inherited from lovely
mother. The truth is, and few people
ever think of it, there is a certain ten
dency in men to leave the likeness Of
their mothers and gravitate toward the
likeness of their fathers, and that is the
surest proof of legitimacy. To sum up,
physical beauty, while heredity of in
termarriage, as the Corn1saU argues, is
refined, heightened and in every way en-
hanced by cultivation of the finest af-
fectons and intellectual graces, such as
the female heart and mind can bear.
Such woman will be attractive when
her locks are silvered, for an inward art
ist molds her features and makes them
glass through which the emotions are
as visible as brilliant colors through a
TRANSPARENT vase.