Many men, while listening to the conversation of an ordinary, but sensible young woman, would never see that her hair was harsh, and of a bad color, were it not interwoven with a wreath of roses. They would not perceive the brownness and want of symmetry in her bosom, did not the sparkling necklace attract their eye to the spot. Neither would it strike them that her hands were coarse and red, did not the pearl bracelets and circles of rings tell them that she meant they should vie with Celia’s rose-tipped fingers.
As I recommend a restrained and quiet mode of dress to plain women, so, in gradation as the lovely of my sex advance towards the vale of years, I counsel them to assume a graver habit and a less vivacious air. Cheerfulness is becoming to all times of life, but sportiveness belongs to youth alone; and when the meridian or the decline of our days affects it, is ever heavy and out of place.
Let me show you, my fair friends, by conducting you into the Pantheon of ancient Rome, the images of yourselves at the different stages of your lives. First, behold that lovely Hebe; her robes are like the air, her motion is on the zephyr’s wing: that you may be till you are twenty. Then comes the beautiful Diana. The chaste dignity of the pure intelligence within pervades the whole form, and the very drapery which enfolds it harmonizes with the modest elegance, the buoyant health, which gives elasticity and grace to every limb: here, then, you see yourselves from twenty to thirty. At that majestic age, when the woman of mind looks round upon the world; back on the events which have past, and calmly forward to those which may be to come; all within ought to be settled on the firm basis of religion and sound judgment; and either as a Juno or a Minerva she stands forth in the power of beauty and of wisdom. At this period she lays aside the flowers of youth, and arrays herself in the majesty of sobriety, or in the grandeur of simple magnificence.
Contradictory as the two last terms may at first appear, they are consistent; and a glance on the works of Phidias, and of his best imitators, will sufficiently prove their beautiful union. Long is the reign of this commanding epoch of a woman’s age; for from thirty to fifty she may most respectably maintain her station on this throne of matron excellence. But at that period, when she has numbered half a century, then it becomes her to throw aside “the wimple and the crisping-iron, the ornament of silver, and the ornament of gold,” and gracefully acknowledging her entrance into the vale of years, to wrap herself in her mantle of gray, and move gently down till she passes through its extremest bourn to the mansions of immortality.
Ah! who is there amongst us, who, having once viewed the reality of this picture, would exchange such blessed relinquishment of the world and all its vanities, for the bolstered back, enamelled cheek, and be-wigged head of a modern old woman, just trembling on the verge of the grave, and yet a candidate for the flattery of men?
It has been most wisely said, (and it would be well if the waning queens of beauty would adopt the reflection,) that there is a time for everything! We may add, that there is a time to be young, a time to be old; a time to be loved, a time to be revered; a time to seek life, and a time to be ready to lay it down.
She who best knows how to fashion herself to these inevitable changes is the only truly, only lastingly fair. Her beauty is in the mind, and shown in action; and when men cease to admire the woman, they do better, they revere the saint.
ON THE PECULIARITIES OF DRESS, WITH REFERENCE TO THE STATION OF THE WEARER.
“Dress drains our cellar dry,
And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and wo,
Where peace and hospitality might reign.”
Cowper.
As there is a propriety in adapting your dress to the different seasons of your life, and the peculiar character of your figure, there is likewise a necessity that it should correspond with the station you hold in society.