The age-herald., 1899-09-01
CHARACTERISTIC
 NATIONAL BEAUTY
From the Pal Man Gazette.

l
 men and women. to see how they differed
 by race in one generation. would do well to
 look again with like intention as another
 generation comes to it's full growth Other
 wise they may be taking old phrases for
 the sentences of judgment upon present
 things.
 Thus when the Punch cartoons were
 much occupied with the American figure. l 1t was doubtless true that the American
 was, as represented in those simple ale 1 gories. Fan exceedingly narrow mafas4narroy 1 from shoulder to shoulder. and especially
 narrow in face But the American face to- | day has peculiar breadth. It shows those straight horizontal lines of level features l that the first Napoleon wears In the legen- l dary portraits: broad brows, eyebrows that 1 have room to lay their plume straight from end to end without the regular arch or the capricious curve which a smaller forehead
 must wear perforce. Accordingly, the eyes
 of young Americans are set wide apart with that width betwen that was once the distinction of the Italian. but the young 1 Americans eyes are framed in a larger orbit, and in them lodge the shadows of the intellectulad hollows that are in no wise Italian.
 J century seem to be. by some chance of as- sociation on this single point, the Arab and the English; but the English is, need less to say. a merely prevalent and hardly
 a general narrowness. contradicted by every third head or SO in the concourse of the streets, according to the law of that variety which gathers nearly every form,
 nearly every color, and nearly every mind l fnf -l-a And who. asked at random, what is the most general sign of a French woman's face. will reply to the present purpose? However it may have Ioeen in the past. there is one form that. in spite of the null tItude of exceptions, marks Frenchwo- mans face; that Is, no other European face has 1t so frequently. The eyes are set heur de tete with very full surrounding | eyelfds, and the eye itself is smoothly prominent; not made to seem prominent, as an English eye often is, in profile, Joy the cavern of the oiioit, but frankly and evenly prominent, eye and eyelid and all
 the parts there adjacent, prosperous and we'll nourished. If these eyes are large, they are large without mystery, and if they are dark, they are dark without gloom. and if bright, bright without the ambush of light.
 These may be the eyes of a charming head, full. fair and well featured, with the pleasant corners to the mouth that give childish finish to a face thus ample and furnished; nevertheless they are perhaps the least interesting of human eyes. With the broad brows that are admira- ble you must generally have the broad flg- ure that the world has no longer the habit of admring-broad, that Is, in proportion to the height Nor is it possible, except by the good luck of some rare exception to escape those connections i've may all be
 wrong in thinking i'll of them, since they are nature's) such as that of the noble slender body, and the less noble narrow head that which Charles Dickens re- marked when he describes a woman who had an aquiline form: the beautiful fingers. with their convex points matched by large aquline profile. It would be better to correct our sense of beauty by the fun damental harmonies of physical structure, and to be heartily pleased with the Roman 5 nose that so often gives us such hand. Ait
 When the structure of one form, such as the curve in these fine nails, happen to be contradicted by the difference of another, as by a straight nose, We all hasten to ac- knowledge beauty; but 1t is by no means certain that we are right so to acclaim this mere accident. Obviously, It Is the chance of an individual body of one person here and there, whose slight discordS happen to chime with our variously derived and col lected ideas of what is lovely. Doubtless there Is something singularly pleasing in such hazard of beauty. It might as easily have been a hazard of beauty. It might as easily have been hazard without that D, luck, to take the same example for wo- man. largely aquiline profile might have been accidentally matched with the un- womanly-looking hand that has broad fingers. It is rare and charming to have the discords beautiful against many odds: and this fortuitous concourse of beauties gives us even philosophic sense of chance. with the cheerfulnes that as in the case of Dr. Johnson's friend. would keep breaking in." We see a wild order. necessarily unique. in a conspicu- ousy beautiful person.
 E But for the same reasons the faces. and those men and women who represent their race, are built with far less of this hazard. With the broad brows goes the square fig- ure, and so forth in the same order among the other forms of bodily construction. They hold nationally together. And when the races change they seem to change by a very curious general consent showing the new national features by as large a majority as showed the old It would be much easier to mark those alterations with something like precision. if only one could trust the report of those who described peoples in the recent past.
 Recently I saw description by Taine os the manners, and especially the dress, or women as they walk the London parks wherein they were reproached with some way of folding their shawls Cor some such minor fashion) which perhaps no woman
 
 enough for the day of Taine, but to quote 1t now is an untimely, tedious homage to a merely fugitive opinion. -7
 English women were once short: 1t is not only the mannerism of John Leech that made them seem so. In this single respect |. the change has been so sudden and quick that all eyes are convinced. This one alter ation does not seem to have taken place in the other countries. But the tPansforma- tion of American women has been almost as quickly achieved. if we may trust the novelists and tourists who used to celebrate 2 their fragility By brilliant .najoritys they have grown into a kind of health that shows ample forms under fresh. soft. and vigorous coloring, gloss and bloom. Abund-t.s ant life makes their beauty smooth, clear and candid: unpreoccupied, their intelli- gence keeps a lamp turned full upon all they see, making their mind also perpetual- :. ly visible. Theirs Is never vigilance under cover. Such are American women today: ; was it not then time that the only descrip- cbn ha -s