The changes which the same cause produces at the surface, are a general development of the cellular tissue, the delicacy of all the outlines, the fineness and the animation of the skin, and the new state of the bosom.
The fire of the eyes, and the altogether new expression of the physiognomy, show that there now also exists the sensation of a new want, which various circumstances may for a time enfeeble or silence, but can never entirely stifle; and with it come those tastes, that direction of the mind, and those habits, which are the effect of an internal power now called into activity.
The gait and bearing of woman are now no longer the same; and the voice changes as well as the physiognomy.
In all that has yet occurred, it will be observed that nutrition and growth take place with great rapidity in woman. Her internal structure, her external form, her faculties, are all developed promptly. It would appear that the parts which compose her body, being less, less compact, and less strong, than those of man, require less time to attain their complete development.
Woman consequently arrives earlier at the age of puberty, and her body is commonly, at twenty years of age, as completely formed as that of a man at thirty. Thus beauty and grace, as has been observed, seem to demand of nature less labor and time than the attributes of force and grandeur.
In many women, however, nutrition languishes even until the sexual organs enter into action, and determine a revolution under the influence of which growth is accomplished.
Still it is certain that, for several years, the locomotive system predominates in young women, even in figures promising the ultimate development of the vital system in the highest degree.
The second age of woman extends from puberty to the cessation of the menses, or, we may say, from the period of full growth, the general time of bearing children, to the time of ceasing to bear—generally perhaps from twenty to forty.
It is at the beginning of this period that woman has acquired all her attributes, her most seducing graces. She is not now distinguished merely by the organs which are the direct instruments of reproduction: many other differences of structure, having a relation to her part in life, present themselves to our view.
At this maturer age, the whole figure is, in the female, smaller and slenderer than in the male. The ancients accordingly gave seven heads and a half to the Venus, and eight heads and some modules to the Apollo.