In this respect America sets a noble example to most parts of Europe. Thousands of young Americans marry penniless beauties every year, although they might have rich ugly girls for the asking. This is one of the things Frenchmen and Germans cannot understand, and class as “Americanisms.” And then they wonder why it is that there are so many pretty girls in Canada and the United States. Another “Americanism,” gentlemen. These pretty girls are the issue of Love-matches. Their mothers were selected for their Beauty, not for money or rank.
Not but that there are numerous exceptions to this golden rule of Love. Were there not, ugly women would be scarcer than they are, even in America.
Masculine Beauty in Feminine Eyes.—In woman’s Love the admiration of Personal Beauty has played a much less significant rôle than in man’s Love. If, nevertheless, the average man in most countries is perhaps a better specimen of masculine Beauty than the average woman of feminine Beauty, this is owing to the facts that sons as well as daughters may inherit their mother’s beauty, and that men, leading a more active and athletic life, are more beautiful than women in proportion as they are more healthy.
In the past barbarous times the constant wars and the unsettled state of social affairs made it important for women to select men not for their beauty, but for their energy,[energy,] courage, and manly prowess. Desdemona falls in Love with the Moor despite his colour and ugliness; and why? Othello himself tells us—
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them.”
And it is on beholding Orlando vanquishing the Duke’s wrestler that Rosalind falls in Love with him. As Celia remarks: “Young Orlando, that tripped up the wrestler’s heels and your heart, both in an instant.”
Women are conservative; and in the ludicrous feminine eagerness to make immortal heroes of the ephemeral victors in a boat-race or baseball match, we see an echo, in these peaceful days, of a feminine trait imprinted on them in warlike times.
Intellectual supereminence, in the meantime, was ignored by women. Petrarch’s verses made no impression on Laura, and Dante could not even win Beatrice with such poetic beauties as these lines—
“Whatever her sweet eyes are turned upon,