The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant / Being a collection of select pieces from our best modern writers, calculated to eradicate vulgar prejudices and rusticity of manners, improve the understanding, rectify the will, purify the passions, direct the minds of youth to the pursuit of proper objects, and to facilitate their reading, writing, and speaking the English language with elegance and propriety

by John Hamilton Moore

16. If the misconduct which I have described, had been only to be found, Mr. Town, at my friend's table, I should not have troubled you with this letter: but the same kind of ill breeding prevails too often, and in too many places. The giglers and the whisperers are innumerable; they beset us wherever we go; and it is observable, that after a short murmur of whispers, out comes the burst of laughter: like a gunpowder serpent, which, after hissing about for some time, goes off in a bounce.

17. Some excuse may perhaps be framed for this ill-timed merriment, in the fair sex. Venus, the goddess of beauty, is frequently called laughter-loving dame; and by laughing, our modern ladies may possibly imagine, that they render themselves like Venus. I have indeed remarked, that the ladies commonly adjust their laugh to their persons, and are merry in proportion as it sets off their particular charms.

18. One lady is never further moved than to a smile or a simper, because nothing else shews her dimples to so much advantage; another who has a fine set of teeth, runs into a broad grin; while a third, who is admired for a well turned neck and graceful chest, calls up all her beauties to view by breaking into violent and repeated peals of laughter.

19. I would not be understood to impose gravity or too great a reserve on the fair sex. Let them laugh at a feather; but let them declare openly, that it is a feather which occasions their mirth. I must confess, that laughter becomes the young, the gay, and the handsome: but a whisper is unbecoming at all ages, and in both sexes: nor ought it ever to be practised, except in the round gallery of St. Paul's, or in the famous whispering place in Gloucester cathedral, where two whisperers hear each other at the distance of five-and-twenty yards.

I am, Sir,
Your humble Servant.

Beauty.

1. Though the danger of disappointment is always in proportion to the height of expectation, yet I this day claim the attention of the ladies, and profess to teach an art by which all may obtain what has hitherto been deemed the prerogative of a few: an art by which their predominant passion may be gratified, and their conquest not only extended, but secured; "The art of being PRETTY."

2. But though my subject may interest the ladies, it may, perhaps, offend those profound moralists who have long since determined, that beauty ought rather to be despised than desired; that, like strength, it is a mere natural excellence, the effect that causes wholly out of our power, and not intended either as the pledge of happiness or the distinction of merit.

3. To these gentlemen I shall remark, that beauty is among those qualities which no effort of human wit could ever bring into contempt: it is therefore to be wished at least, that beauty was in some degree dependent upon sentiment and manners, that so high a privilege might not be possessed by the unworthy, and that human reason might no longer suffer the mortification of those who are compelled to adore an idol, which differs from a stone or log only by the skill of the artificer: and if they cannot themselves behold beauty with indifference, they must, surely, approve an attempt to shew that it merits their regard.