Beauty Part 22

Woman presents very little prominence of the frontal sinuses; the cheek-bones display beautiful curves; the edges of the alveoli containing the teeth are much more elliptical than in man; and the chin is softly rounded. Of the chin, it should be observed that it is a distinctive character of the human species, and is not found in any other animal. When well formed, it is full, united, and generally without a dimple; and it pa.s.ses gently and almost insensibly into the neighboring parts. In woman especially, the chin ought to be finely rounded; for when projecting, it expresses, owing to its connexion with muscular action and power, a firmness and a determination which we do not wish to discover in her character. "The apparent convexity of the cheeks," says Winckelmann, "which in many heads appears greater than natural, contributes to this rotundity: it is not, however, ideal, but taken from natural beauty."

The muscles of the face express all the shades of emotion and pa.s.sion, not because such expression is the primary, or the proper object of their motion, but because their various motions adapt the organs to the farther purposes required of them in consequence of preceding impressions; and these motions become expressive to us only because we are thus enabled to infer the feeling and purpose of the person in whom they occur. This is a fundamental principle of physiognomy; and its not being understood has led to many of our errors in that science.

In woman, the countenance is more rounded, as well as more abundantly furnished with that cellular and, fatty tissue which fills all the chasms, effaces, all the angles, and unites all the parts by the gentlest transitions. At the same time, the muscles are feebler, more mobile, resigned for a shorter time to the same contraction, and as inconstant as the emotions and pa.s.sions which their rapid play expresses.

The result of all this is, that the muscles do not profoundly modify the face, which consequently has not so much of permanent character as that of a man, and which permits us more difficultly to discover, through the rounded, short, and s.h.i.+fting parts, the nature of her various feelings.

As, however, the abundance of the cellular tissue diminishes with age, and as the sentiments become at the same time less ephemeral, the physiognomical character and expression of woman become more decided.

As to COLOR of the face, it may be observed that the forehead, the temples, the eyelids, the nose, the upper part of the superior lip, and the lower part of the inferior lip, ought in woman to be of a beautiful and rather opaque white. The approach to the cheeks and the middle of the chin ought to have a slight teint of rose-color, and the middle of the cheeks ought to be altogether rosy, but of a delicate hue.--Cheeks of an animated white are preferable to those of a red color, although less beautiful than those of rosy hue.

With regard to the HAIR, it may be observed, that sometimes, rising from its bulbs, it turns in irregular rings, and, by displaying a forehead rather large, confers a certain sanguine, as well as open air upon the physiognomy. This, however, is most frequently seen in men, and chiefly in men of exuberant vitality, rather than intellectuality: it indeed depends entirely on the former.

In other men, and almost always in women, the hair generally divides in a line extending from the crown to the forehead, and falls over the temples.

The line thus formed, uniting with the median line, of the face in general, and that of the nose in particular, gives to the whole of the features a peculiar symmetry and beauty.

I have said, already, that symmetry is a characteristic of thinking beings, and I have explained the reason of this. The present case admirably ill.u.s.trates it. This symmetrical arrangement of the hair bestows an intellectual air; and it well may, for, when natural, it derives its tendency to fall on each side, from the top of the head, either from the general elevation of the calvarium, or from the particular elevation of the forehead, which is characteristic of beauty in woman.

It accordingly announces in the individual higher observing faculties: hence, the ancient sculptors never omitted this in their highest personages: hence, we find it in the heads of Raffaelle and Guido.

"A fair hue, [Greek: xanthos]," says Winckelmann, "has ever been regarded as the most beautiful; and flaxen-colored hair was a.s.signed to the most beautiful, not only among the G.o.ds, as Apollo [[Greek: chrysokoman Apollona], golden-haired Apollo] and Bacchus, but also among the heroes: Alexander the Great had flaxen hair." The modern Italians call Cupid "Il biondo Dio."

Having concluded what I have here to say of the parts of the face, I may observe, that the _different effects of the same face_, even in a state of repose, have often been observed, never explained. I have, however, in another work, shown that the face is composed of motive, nutritive, and thinking parts or organs. Now, circ.u.mstances bring these variously into action; and the different effects alluded to, in reality depend on the motive, or the nutritive, or the intellectual expression being at the time, respectively, most apparent, or most attended to by us. The study of this subject, which I have not s.p.a.ce here to develop, is of infinite importance to the man of taste, the physiognomist, and the artist. The latter cannot easily excel without understanding it.

Another curious fact, not hitherto observed, is, that though beauty of face is, owing to the power of the vital system, almost universal at a certain age, there is always a _faulty feature_, which the physiognomist may observe, and which ever continues to exaggerate, until it terminate in relative ugliness. Thus we scarcely observe the long upper lip during youth, in some women; and yet it afterward gives to them the sober grimace of baboons. We admire in youth the spirit of the piercing eye, and aquiline nose in others, to whom these afterward give the look of so many old hawks. In others, still, we are charmed with the round, rosy, and innocent cheeks, which, when they become paler and more pendent, confer on them the aspect either of seals or of mastiffs, according to other circ.u.mstances of temper and disposition. I could easily trace these, and many more, from youth to middle age, and ill.u.s.trate them convincingly, by drawings: but I have no room for it here.

Each, indeed, of the subjects of the two immediately preceding paragraphs, is worthy of a volume; for the first is as essential to all judgment of existing beauty at the instant of its being before us, as the second is to all prescience of what beauty will very soon be--to all who have no love for a leap in the dark.

I add to this chapter but a few words on the very _different organization of the head and face_, and the very different mind, of the Greeks and Romans.

Whoever, for the purpose of comparing the heads of these two nations, may walk into the British Museum, will be struck with the difference between them.

The forehead is almost always rather narrow, and rather high, in the most ill.u.s.trious Greeks; and this could not so uniformly have been so represented, in sculpture, unless it had been so also in fact. This is verified, in the third room of the Townley collection, by the heads of Homer, Hippocrates, Epicurus, Pericles, &c.--by the almost universal conformation of Greek heads, to which there are but few exceptions: Sophocles, in this room, and Demosthenes, in the eleventh, are rather broader.

On the contrary, the forehead, the face, the jaws, are excessively broad, and the cranium is depressed and low, in the Romans--in Severus, Nero, Caracalla, &c., in the sixth room, and in Tiberius and Augustus, in the eleventh; nor is this owing to the circ.u.mstance that these generally were men degraded in feeling or intellect, for nearly the same configuration is found in Trajan, Hadrian, &c., in the fourth, sixth, and other rooms. The faces of the Romans are not less ugly than their heads; and those of their women are absolutely detestable, as may be seen in Faustina, Plautilla, Sabina, Domitia, &c., in the sixth of these rooms.

If farther ill.u.s.tration of this be wanting, it may be found in the circ.u.mstance that, while the Greeks preferred the rather high forehead, and invented the ideal one, the Romans, on the contrary, preferred a little forehead and united eyebrows. Ovid a.s.sures us that the women of his time painted their eyebrows in such a manner, that they might appear to form only one.

In the work so often referred to, I have shown that the intensity of functions is as the length of their organs, and the permanence of functions as the breadth of their organs. No truth can be better ill.u.s.trated than this is, in the organization and the faculties of the Greeks and Romans. With the higher and larger head of the Greeks was united an intensity of genius, which no other people has yet rivalled; and with the broader head of the Romans, a perseverance, equally obstinate and unfeeling, which has been similarly unrivalled.

A good ill.u.s.tration of the vaunted Roman virtue is recorded in Porcia, the daughter of Cato, the wife of Brutus, who plunged a toilet-knife into her thigh, and kept it eight days in the wound, without complaining, to prove to her husband that her courage and her discretion rendered her worthy of entering into the conspiracy, which he meditated; and who also destroyed herself by swallowing burning coals, when she heard of his defeat.

Obstinacy and insensibility were great sources of the crimes either perpetrated, or, by their lying historians, pretended to be perpetrated, under the name of Roman virtue.

It would be out of place, here, to enter farther into the character and expression of the face. Those whom these remarks dispose to do so, may refer to the physiognomical work, which I have been so often compelled to allude to.[43] To those who are satisfied, neither with the vague, though tasteful inspirations of Lavater, nor with the empyrical or unreasoned manifestations of Gall and Spurzheim, but who desire _the a.s.signment of a reason for every description of physiognomical character or expression_, that work may afford some satisfaction.

That the Greeks, either intuitively or reasonedly, distinguished the three species of beauty as to the figure, has been already seen. The heads of Diana, Venus, and Minerva, respectively present beauty of the locomotive, vital, and mental systems.

CHAPTER XVI.

COMBINATIONS AND TRANSITIONS OF THE THREE SPECIES OF FEMALE BEAUTY.

As to the COMBINATIONS of beauty, it must now be observed, that some one of these species of beauty always characterize the same individual during every stage of life; and, to the experienced observer, it never is difficult to say which of them predominates. Attention to the preceding principles will render this easy.

It is right to mention here the cause of this general predominance of one species of beauty over the rest. It depends on this, that the slightest original or accidental preponderance of strength in one system above that of the rest, though un.o.bserved at first, leads to a more frequent employment of its functions, and therefore to a more perfect development of its organs, until at last the disproportion between these and those of the other systems, becomes characteristic of the individual.

In a truly beautiful woman, none of the systems described can exist in a great degree of degradation; but of the three, the nutritive or vital system is to woman the most essential. In England, from thirty to forty is generally the age of its highest perfection.

It often, however, occurs, that two, or even the whole of these species of beauty, are blended in considerable perfection. In those females in which it is found, the locomotive system is well developed in the length and elegance of the limbs; the vital or nutritive system everywhere presents soft forms, and rounds both body and limbs; and the mental or thinking system displays a capability of grace in action, notwithstanding the constrained att.i.tude a.s.sumed to conceal the face.

Although there can indeed be no great degree of beauty in which this combination is not more or less the case, yet a union of all the three species of beauty, in the greatest compatible degree, is to be found only in some of those immortal images of ideal beauty, which were created by the genius and the chisel of the Greeks.

Having briefly spoken of these combinations, I may notice also those _combinations which similarly occur among the temperaments_, which, as already said, const.i.tute partial views of the varieties I have been describing.

In relation to a combination of the _phlegmatic_ and _nervous_ temperament, I may refer to Richerand, who says, that, "among the moderns, the easy Michael Montaigne, all of whose pa.s.sions were so moderate, who reasoned on everything, even on feeling, was truly pituitous. But in him the predominance of the lymphatic system was not carried so far, but that he joined to it a good deal of nervous susceptibility."

Of women, more especially, it is observed, that they rarely present examples of the lymphatic temperament, unmodified by nervous mobility; whence come extreme vivacity in the sensations with great feebleness, determinations equally precipitate and unsteady, excited imagination and ephemeral tastes, absolute will, &c.

The _sanguine_ temperament is similarly combined with the _nervous_ one.

Hence, the physiologist above quoted says, that "to the extreme love of pleasure, sanguine men join, when circ.u.mstances require it [he should have said, in some cases], great elevation of thought and character, and can bring into action the highest talents in every department: the history of Henry IV., of Mirabeau, and others, proves that."

The ancients gave the name of _bilious_, to a temperament in which the sanguineous system is energetic, the pulse strong, hard, and frequent, the subcutaneous veins prominent, the development of the liver excessive, the superabundance of bile remarkable, the sensibility easily excited, yet capable of dwelling upon one object, the pa.s.sions violent, the movements abrupt and impetuous, and the character inflexible. This is evidently a very compound temperament, and should never have been cla.s.sed, any more than the two preceding, with the simple temperaments, the athletic or muscular, the phlegmatic or lymphatic, the sanguine, and the nervous, which I have noticed under the heads to which they belong.

In persons of this temperament, the skin is of a yellowish brown, the hair black, the muscles marked, the form harshly expressed. "Bold in the conception of a project," says Richerand, "constant and indefatigable in its execution, it is among men of this temperament, that we find those who, in different ages, have governed the destinies of the world: full of courage, boldness, and activity, they have signalized themselves by great virtues or great crimes, and have been the terror or admiration of the universe. Such were Alexander, Julius Cesar, Brutus, Mahomet, Charles XII., the Czar Peter, Cromwell, Sixtus V., Cardinal Richelieu [and, he should have added, Bonaparte].... To attain to results of such importance, the profoundest dissimulation and the most obstinate constancy are equally necessary; and these are the most eminent qualities of the bilious."

A still more compound temperament is the _melancholic_, in which disease is added to the bilious temperament, a derangement of the functions of the nervous system, and the diseased obstruction of some one of the organs of the abdomen, so that the nutritive functions are feebly or irregularly performed, the bowels sluggish, the pulse hard and contracted, the excretions difficult, the imagination gloomy, the disposition suspicious.

In persons of this temperament, the skin is of a still deeper hue, and the look uneasy and gloomy. Rousseau and Tiberius are excellent examples of this temperament, as a.s.sociated with genius and virtue in one, and with truly royal vice in the other. In women, this temperament is rarely so intense as in men.

Of the TRANSITIONS of beauty, I have now to observe, that, though one species of beauty always characterizes the same individual during every stage of life, yet it is remarkable, that the young woman (whatever species of beauty predominates) has always a tendency to beauty of the locomotive system;--that the middle-aged woman has always a tendency to beauty of the nutritive system;--and that the woman of advanced age has always a tendency to beauty of the thinking system.

Some women would seem, in the progress of life, to pa.s.s through all these systems (and the more perfect the whole organization, the more will this seem to be the case); but the accurate observer will always see the predominance of the same system.

CHAPTER XVII.

PROPORTION, CHARACTER, EXPRESSION, ETC.

Winckelmann says: "I cannot imagine beauty without the PROPORTION which is always its foundation.--The drawing of the naked figure is founded upon the idea and the knowledge of beauty; and this idea consists partly in measures and relations, and partly in forms, the beauty of which was, as Cicero observes, the object of the first Grecian artists: the latter determine the figure; the former fix the proportions."

The great variety of proportions presented by the human body causes much difficulty in determining with precision what are the best. The difficulty becomes quite insurmountable if we attempt to a.s.sign precise dimensions to the details of configuration or to minute parts.