Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman

by Alexander Walker

The situation of this considerable organ is in the back and lower part of the head, and may be pretty accurately indicated by saying, that a line passing through it would complete, posteriorly, a longer line passing backward from the nose through the lower part of the ear.

When this organ, which is that of the will, is high, and more especially when it is large, a determination and force seem to be given by it to the character, which render it the reverse of feminine.

Having spoken here of the ready exercise of the will in woman, and its adaptation to her wish to please, it seems to be here that some circumstances dependant on these should be noticed.

With this ready exercise of the will and desire to please, are evidently connected the light carelessness, the graceful ease, and the gentle softness, which add so much to the power of beauty. Hence, artists give to woman the bending form which associates so well with all her characteristics; for all feel with Hogarth that undulating lines are more or less formed in all movements executed with the intention of expressing sentiments of courtesy, respect, benevolence, or love.

But it is grace that we must especially consider here—grace which directly emanates from this ready exercise of the will and desire to please, especially when combined with observing faculties so perfect and so perpetually active as those of woman.

“Gracefulness,” says Burke, “is an idea not very different from beauty; it consists in much the same thing.... Gracefulness is an idea belonging to posture and motion. In both these, to be graceful, it is requisite that there be no appearance of difficulty; there is required a small inflexion of the body; and a composure of the parts in such a manner, as not to encumber each other, nor to appear divided by sharp and sudden angles. In this ease, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude and motion, it is that all the magic of grace consists, and what is called ‘je ne scais quoi.’”

It is not in these mere physical qualities, that all the magic of grace consists, which, in the state of Burke’s knowledge, he might indeed well call “je ne scais quoi!” Let the reader hear what is said on this subject by a man who could look a little deeper than Burke, and who owed no fame to the little art of substituting a flash of words for depth of thought, and serving by it a venal purpose as little as the art itself.

“What grace,” says Smith, “what noble propriety do we not feel in the conduct of those who exert that recollection and self-command which constitute the dignity of every passion, and which bring it down to what others can enter into! We are disgusted with that clamorous grief, which, without any delicacy, calls upon our compassion with sighs and tears, and importunate lamentation. But we reverence that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant, but affecting address of the whole behavior. It imposes the like silence upon us; we regard it with respectful attention, and watch over our whole behavior, lest, by any impropriety, we should disturb that concerted tranquillity which it requires so great an effort to support.” This is eloquence, indeed.

Alison duly appreciates this earliest definition of grace. “It is,” he says, “this ‘recollection and self-command,’ which in such scenes constitute what even in common language is called the graceful in behavior or deportment; and it is the expression of the same qualities in the attitude and gesture, which constitutes, in my apprehension, the grace of such gestures or attitudes.... Wherever, in the movements of the form, self-command or self-possession is expressed, some degree of grace, at least, is always produced.... Whenever in such motions grace is actually perceived, I think it will always be found to be in slow, and, if I may use the expression, in restrained or measured motions.

“The motions of the horse, when wild in the pasture, are beautiful; when urged to his speed, and straining for victory, they may be felt as sublime; but it is chiefly in movements of a different kind that we feel them as graceful, when, in the impatience of the field, or in the curvetting of the manege, he seems to be conscious of all the powers with which he is animated, and yet to restrain them, from some principle of beneficence or of dignity. Every movement of the stag almost is beautiful, from the fineness of his form and the ease of his gestures; yet it is not in these or in the heat of the chase that he is graceful: it is when he pauses upon some eminence in the pursuit, when he erects his crested head, and when, looking with disdain upon the enemy who follows, he bounds to the freedom of his hills. It is not, in the same manner, in the rapid speed of the eagle when he darts upon his prey, that we perceive the grace of which his motions are capable. It is when he soars slowly upward to the sun, or when he wheels with easy and continuous motion in airy circles in the sky.