By the last word, I do not mean the embrace of vice, but merely that indiscriminate facility which some young women have in permitting what they call a good-natured kiss. These good-natured kisses have often very bad effects, and can never be permitted without injuring the fine gloss of that exquisite modesty, which is the fairest garb of virgin beauty.
I remember the Count M——, one of the most accomplished and handsomest young men in Vienna. When I was there, he was passionately in love with a girl of almost peerless beauty. She was the daughter of a man of great rank and influence at court; and on these considerations, as well as in regard to her charms, she was followed by a multitude of suitors. She was lively and amiable, and treated them all with an affability which still kept them in her train, although it was generally known that she had avowed a predilection for Count M. and that preparations were making for their nuptials. The Count was of a refined mind and delicate sensibility. He loved her for herself alone—for the virtues which he believed dwelt in a beautiful form; and, like a lover of such perfections, he never approached her without timidity, and when he touched her, a fire shot through his veins that warned him never to invade the vermilion sanctuary of her lips. Such were the feelings, when one night at his intended father-in-law’s, a party of young people were met to celebrate a certain festival. Several of the young lady’s rejected suitors were present. Forfeits were one of the pastimes, and all went on with the greatest merriment, till the Count was commanded by some witty mademoiselle to redeem his glove by saluting the cheek of his intended bride. The Count blushed, trembled, advanced to his mistress, retreated, advanced again—and at last, with a tremor that shook every fibre in his frame, with a modest grace he put the soft ringlet which played upon her cheek to his lips, and retired to demand his redeemed pledge in evident confusion. His mistress gaily smiled, and the game went on. One of her rejected suitors, but who was of a merry unthinking disposition, was adjudged, by the same indiscreet crier of the forfeits,—“as his last treat before he hanged himself,” she said,—to snatch a kiss from the lips of the object of his recent vows—
“Lips whose broken sighs such fragrance fling,
As Love had fanned them freshly with his wing!”
A lively contest between the lady and the gentleman lasted for a minute; but the lady yielded, though in the midst of a convulsive laugh. And the Count had the mortification, the agony, to see the lips, which his passionate and delicate love would not allow him to touch, kissed with roughness and repetition by another man, and one whom he despised. Without a word, he rose from his chair, left the room—and the house; and, by that good-natured kiss, the fair boast of Vienna lost her husband and her lover. The Count never saw her more.
ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PERSON IN DANCING, AND IN THE EXERCISE OF OTHER FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined.
Childe Harold.
It is vain to expend large sums of money and large portions of time in the acquirement of accomplishments, unless some attention be also paid to the attainment of a certain grace in their exercise, which though a circumstance distinct from themselves, is the secret of their charms and pleasure-exciting quality.
As dancing is the accomplishment most calculated to display a fine form, elegant taste, and graceful carriage, to advantage; so towards it, our regards must be particularly turned; and we shall find that when Beauty, in all her power, is to be set forth, she cannot choose a more effective exhibition.
By the exhibition, it must not be understood that I mean to insinuate anything like that scenic exhibition which we may expect from professors of the art, who often, regardless of modesty, not only display the symmetry of their persons, but indelicately expose them, by most improper dresses and attitudes, on the public stage. What I propose by calling dancing an elegant mode of showing a fine form to advantage, has nothing more in it, than to teach the lovely young woman to move unembarrassed and with peculiar grace through the mazes of a dance, performed either in a private circle, or public ball.
It must always be remembered, and it cannot be too often repeated, “That whatever it is worth while to do, it is worth while to do well.” Therefore, as all times and nations have deemed dancing a salubrious, decorous, and beautiful exercise, or rather happy pastime and celebration of festivity, I cannot but regard it with particular complacency. Dancing carries with it a banquet, alike for taste and feeling. The spectator of a well-ordered English ball sees, at one view, in a number of elegant young women, every species of female loveliness. He beholds the perfection of personal proportion. They are attired with all the gay habiliments of fashion and of fancy; and their harmonious and agile movements unfold to him, at every turn, the ever-varying, ever-charming grace of motion.