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 unobserved 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 attitude assumed 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, constitute 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 passions 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 circumstances 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 passions violent, the movements abrupt and impetuous, and the character inflexible. This is evidently a very compound temperament, and should never have been classed, 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.