Middle age in this country never loses its sovereignty, nor does old age lose its respect; and this respect, with the enjoyments which accompany it, keeps the world young. It turns the clouds into drapery, and gilds them with its sunshine; which presents as fine a prospect as the clear and starry heavens. Even time seems to fall in with the general observance. I know French women who retain to forty-five and often beyond that age the most agreeable attractions of their sex.—Is it not villanous in your Quakerships of Philadelphia to lay us, before we have lived half our time out, upon the shelf? Some of our native tribes, more merciful, eat the old folks out of the way.—Don’t be mad; you will one day be as old as your mothers.
An important item here in a lady’s studies (and it should be a leading branch of education every where) is her beauty. Sentiment and health being the two chief ingredients and efficient causes of this quality, have each its proper degree of cultivation. Every body knows that the expression of the eye, the voice, and the whole physiognomy, is modified by the thoughts or passions habitually entertained in the mind. Every one sees their effects upon the face of the philosopher and the idiot; upon that of the generous man and the niggard; but how few have considered that not only is this outward and visible expression nothing but the reflection of the mind; but that the very features are in a material degree modelled by its sensations.
Give, for example, any woman a habit of self-complacency, and she will have a little pursed up mouth; or give her a prying and busy disposition, and you will give her a straight onward nose. What gives the miser a mouth mean and contracted, or the open-hearted man his large mouth, but the habitual series of thoughts with which we are conversant? Determination stiffens the upper lip, and this is the lip of a resolute man. Peevish women and churls have thin lips; and good humour, or a generous feeling, or a habit of persuasion, rounds them into beauty. I have read that it was common amongst the rakes about Charles the Second to have “sleepy, half-shut, sly and meretricious eyes,” and that this kind of eye became fashionable at court. So every feature has its class of sensations by which it is modified; and this is not forgotten in the education of the Parisian young ladies. They take care that, while young and tender, they may cherish honest and amiable feelings, if for no other reason than that they may have an amiable expression of countenance—that they may have Greek noses, pouting lips, and the other constituents of beauty.
Our climate is noted for three eminent qualities, extreme heat and cold, and extreme suddenness of change. If a lady has bad teeth, or a bad complexion, she blames it conveniently upon the climate; if her beauty, like a tender flower, fades before noon, it is the climate; if she has a bad temper or even a snub nose, still it is the climate. But our climate is active and intellectual, especially in winter, and in all seasons more pure and transparent than these inky skies of Europe. It sustains the infancy of beauty, and why not its maturity? it spares the bud, and why not the opened blossom or the ripened fruit? Our negroes are perfect in teeth, and why not the whites?—The chief preservative of beauty in any country is health, and there is no place in which this great interest is so little attended to as in America.
To be sensible of this, you must visit Europe. You must see the deep-bosomed maids of England upon the Place Vendôme, and the Rue Castiglione. There you will see no pinched and mean-looking shoulders overlooking the plumpness and round sufficiency of a luxuriant tournure. As for the French women, a constant attention to the quantity and quality of their food is an article of their faith; and bathing and exercise are as regular as their meals. When children, they play abroad in their gardens; they have their gymnastic exercises in their schools, and their dancing and other social amusements keep up a healthful temperament throughout life. Besides, a young lady here does not put her waist in the inquisition. Fashion, usually insane, and an enemy to health, has grown sensible in this; she regards a very small waist as a defect, and points to the Venus de Medicis, who stands out boldly in the Tuileries, in vindication and testimony of the human shapes; and now among ladies of good breeding a waist which cannot dispense with tight lacing is thought not worth the mantua-maker’s bill—not worth the squeezing.
When I left America, the more a woman looked like an hour-glass, like two funnels or two extinguishers converging, the more pretty she was considered; and the waist in esteem by the cockney curiosity of the town, was one you would pinch between thumb and finger; giving her a withered complexion, bloated legs, consumptive lungs and ricketty children.—If this is not reformed, alas the republic!—A Frenchwoman’s beauty, such as it is, lasts her her lifetime, by the care she takes of it. Her limbs are vigorous, her bosom well developed, her colour healthy, and she has a greater moral courage, and is a hundred times better fitted to dashing enterprises, than the women of our cities.
The motherly virtues of our women, so eulogised by foreigners, are not entitled to unqualified praise. There is indeed no country in which maternal care is so assiduous; but also there is none in which examples of injudicious tenderness are so frequent. If a mother has eight or nine children (the American number) and wears out her life with the cares of nursing them, dies, and leaves them to a step-mother, she is not entitled to any praise but at the expense of her judgment and common sense; and this is one of our daily occurrences in America.—If a mother should squander away upon the infancy of her child, all that health and care which are so necessary to its youth and adolescence, or if by anticipating its wants she destroys its sense of gratitude, and her own authority, and impairs its constitution and temper by indiscreet indulgences—instead of being the most tender, she is the most cruel of all mothers—this happens commonly in all countries, and in none so much as in America.—If a mother should toil thirty years, and kill herself with cares, to procure for her son the glorious privilege of doing nothing, perhaps the means of being a rake and prodigal; she is a stupid mother, and such mothers——
But —— I forget I have a reputation all the way from Mohontongo-street to Adam-street, and I must take care how I lose it. Do you be a good little mother, and economise your health and good looks; and remember that a little judicious hard fare and exposure will not injure your children’s happiness, and that not the quantity, so much as the quality of your maternal cares is useful and commendable. I do not preach rebellion, but if I were any body’s wife, and he should insist on killing me off for the benefit of his children, or to get a new wife—I should insist particularly on not being killed.
The system of ladies’ schools here, is more reasonable than that of their worse halves. There is a better adaptation of studies to the capacity and future destination of the scholars, and to the uses of society; and being open to a fair competition, and to public patronage only, there is a better management of the details.
The gentlemen’s colleges engross all the higher branches, and give them a specific direction, embracing only three or four of the employments of society, and these are, consequently, so overstocked, as to make success in them no better than a lottery. The community is, therefore, filled with a multitude of idlers, who falling often into desperate circumstances, either plot some treason against the state, or prowl, for a thievish subsistence about the gambling houses.—His Most Christian Majesty must have as many lives as a cat to escape them.