The whiteness and the animation of the skin, however, do not alone constitute its beauty: there is still another quality which is absolutely necessary to it. This is the softness and the polish which, as the reader has seen, is one of the first conditions of physical beauty. In woman, this is probably derived from a slight degree of oleaginous secretion. Hence, she has few asperities of the skin, especially on the surface of the bosom, and other parts, where the skin is excessively smooth.
Brown women, who probably have more of this oleaginous secretion, are said to possess in a greater degree the polish of skin which gives impressions so agreeable to the organ of touch; and hence, Winckelmann has said that persons who prefer brown women to fair ones allow themselves to be captivated by the touch rather than the sight. There is reason, however, to doubt the accuracy of this. Brown women appear to have greater softness, but less smoothness of skin.
The body of woman is nearly deprived of hairs upon all parts, except the head, axillæ, &c.; and the hair of her head is generally long, fine, and flexible.
The quantity and the color of the hair are always in relation to the constitution of the individual to which it belongs, and generally to the temperature of the place. The people of northern countries have the hair of a silken fineness and of surprising length.
The hair which is most admired is not only very fine and flexible, but light colored. Fair golden hair was, of all its teints, that which the ancient artists preferred.
In woman, the hair of the head whitens and falls later than in man.
It is curious that, in regard to the hair, the distinctive characters of the sexes should not always have been preserved. Though nature gives long hair to woman, it has sometimes been the fashion to wear it short; and though man has naturally shorter hair, it has sometimes been the fashion to cherish its growth, and to shave the beard from his face. The latter has especially been the case in degenerate and effeminate times; and this has sometimes been accompanied by remarkable consequences.
One of the greatest misfortunes, says a French writer, which France ever had to lament, the divorce of Louis le Jeune from Elinor of Guyenne, resulted from the fashion, which this prince wished to introduce, of shaving his chin and cropping his head. The queen, his wife, who appears to have possessed, with a masculine beauty, considerable acuteness of intellect, observed with some displeasure, that she imagined herself to have espoused a monarch, not a monk. The obstinacy of Louis in shaving himself, and the horror conceived by Elinor at the sight of a beardless chin, occasioned France the loss of those fine provinces which constituted the dowry of this princess; and which, devolving to England by a second marriage, became the source of wars which desolated France during four hundred years.
The habit of wearing the beard is a manly and noble one. Nature made it distinctive of the male and female; and its abandonment has commonly been accompanied not only by periods of general effeminacy, but even by the decline and fall of states. They were bearded Romans who conquered the then beardless Greeks; they were bearded Goths who vanquished the then beardless Romans; and they are bearded Tartars who now promise once more to inundate the regions occupied by the shaven and effeminate people of western Europe.
In farther illustration of the manliness of this habit we may observe, that throughout Europe, wars have generally led to its temporary and partial introduction, as at the present day. Those assuredly blunder, who ridicule the wearing of the beard. Silly affectation, on the contrary, is imputable only to those who, by removing the beard, take the trouble so far to emasculate themselves! and who think themselves beautified by an unnatural imitation of the smoother face of woman!