San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1891-12-08
BEAUTY is INCREASING.
More Pretty Women In the World To-
day Than Ever in It's History.

| les, Sne Is ueClueuly pretty; DuG uOt
half so pretty as her mother was at her
age!' How often do we hear this remark
when we venture to praise some beauty
of the present day in the hearing of any
one of an older generation. 1t suggests
an important question: Whether the
standard of beauty is changing; and, if
beautiful than they used to be.
No woman has been more celebrated
for her beauty than Mary Queen of
Scots; but if she were to walk unan-
nounced into London drawing room
today, it is doubtful if she would cause
much remark. No doubt she would still
retain the power of captivating people
with her charms, but she would no
longer bewitch them by her face. 1t is
true we can hardly realize what Mary
was like; we are not even sure of the
color of her hair or her eyes. The vari-
Gus authentic portraits of her are strange
ly dissimilar. They only agree in this,
that they all show us face which disap-
points us.
As We are not satisfied with a degree
of beauty which was enough for Mary's
contemporaries, the inference is that the
standard of beauty has risen, and the
rise has probably been gradual and con-
slant. each generation making a certain
advance on its predecessor. One can
hardly resist conclusion of this kind
after looking over collection of por-
traits of n single family for three or
four centuries, such as one may see in
any large old country house.
1t may be said that this is the fault of
the old painters who did not know how
to make good Ekenesses.. But no one
has ever looked at Holbein's portraits of
Henry VIII, full of life and character as
they are, without feeling that the real
Henry E}ands before him. And if Hol-
bein can give ne such lifelike rep
resentation of Henry, can he be incom-
petent to give us any idea CT Anne
BOleyn? Yet the beauty of Anne Boleyn,
rs HOlbein represents it, is certainly
not such as we should rave about now.
There is a considerable advance in
s0OiSlf'I DVb'ACD "IlVll VIC pass vi W Tic
portraits of the next century. The ladies
of fine reign of Charles |, as painted by
VandyCk, are about the first who are
really pretty according to our ideas,
though the delicate flatCery of the artist
in trying to give them all resemblance
to Henrietta Maria makes them look
little mOnOtOnOuS.
A jump of another century lands us in
the midst of those great masters who
have left us such a full and splendid
record of all that was noble and beauti-
full in the days when George III was
king. Ones first impression on visiting
a collection Of Reynoldses and Gains
borOughs is that all the women of that
time must have been lovely and the
painters lucky to get such subjects.
Ones second impression, however, is apt
to be that the Sitters were lucky to have
such painters, for the real attraction is
more often in the pictures than in the
faces. Not that there are not plenty of
beautiful faces among them, but that
beauty is by no means universal, and,
further, that there is no beauty on the
canyases OF the last century which could
not be easily matched today.
We have only to look at the picture of
the famous Misses Cummings to be assured
Of this. They were declared by their
contemporaries to be 1.-The handSomest
women alive" The beauty of the Misses
Cummings can certainly have lost nothing
under Reynolds brush; yet his portraits
Of them do not reveal any loveliness
which we should consider wonderful. 1t
is not, then. that we admire beauty less
than our forebears did, but that we have
more of it, and therefore it excites us
less
As TO beauty in the present day it is
quite unnecessary to speak. No one
who keeps his eyes open can fail to be
struck by it, It is not merely that there
are more beauties of the first order than
there seem ever to have been before, but
chat beauty has become so very general.
Any one who wishes to test this has only
to take his stand in Piccadilly and watch
the stream of life rolling past him in
carriages and on foot: and if he does not
see in one afternoon more pretty faces
than in all the Reynoldses and Gains
boroughs he knows, he will be very I'M
fortunate. Indeed, it is hardly possible
TO deny that in tins matter of beauty at
least our age has gone good deal ahead
Of all its predecessors. Letter.
Miss Porter Secures Work