Still there is a wonderful resemblance between a lean woman and a lean horse, in more points than one; the lady does not, indeed, go upon all fours, but I can never see a very genteel female, laced into the shape of an hour-glass, without wishing, from the bottom of my heart, that she had an extra pair of le—ahem!—ancles, to support her feeble and tottering frame.
As I am growing old, and am, moreover, somewhat peculiarly circumstanced, I suppose that I must put up with such a wife as it pleases God to send me; but were I ten or fifteen years younger, and "well to do," I would accept of no descendant of mother Eve, as a helpmate and partner for life, who did not cut at least two inches on the ribs. The Turks, who are practical men of taste in these things; the Chinese, who pretend to the highest antiquity in civilization; the naked Africans and South Sea Islanders, beyond dispute the most unsophisticated of all father Adam's children, and who, like Job, "retain their integrity" pretty stiffly, considering the missionaries, the "march of intellect," and other untoward circumstances, are all of them most decidedly in favor of something substantial in wedlock; no man of taste, in either of these nations, ever dreams of comfort and happiness in matrimony, unless he clasps to his bosom an armful of wife. They choose their wives as we do lobsters—the heaviest are the best.
I am a firm believer in the maxim that mind and matter exert a mutual influence upon each other, and one of the most obvious deductions from that datum that occurs to my mind is, that the acidities of the disposition are not only neutralized but absolutely shut up by the embonpoint of the body. People blessed with healthy plumpness are indolent as well as good-natured, and it is a laborious piece of business for such folks to get in a passion.
The wealth and fondness of Julia's father, and her own natural good sense, had made her mistress of all those elegant and fashionable accomplishments that constitute the education of a lady of fortune; and she had a grace and sweetness in every thing she did that reminded the beholder of that exquisitely beautiful line in Ariosto:
"She walked—she spoke—she sang—and heaven was there."
This description may not be according to certain received axioms concerning female beauty; but I never could bear to contemplate a fair face and graceful form as painters do, who measure woman's loveliness by certain fixed and arbitrary rules, as surveyors of lumber do boards. Nothing makes me more fidgetty than to hear a man compare every beautiful face he sees with a certain standard, even if that standard is the Venus de Medicis herself; this face is not good, for it is not exactly oval; that nose is altogether wrong, for it is not Grecian; a chin is not this, or a mouth is not that, &c. Portrait painters are much addicted to this kind of criticism; and whenever I find myself in company with one of these two-foot-rule critics, I make my escape from him as I would from a plague hospital.
At the time of our narrative, Julia's father had been absent somewhat more than two years. He had sent for her to join him at Valparaiso, a summons that she prepared to obey with no small trepidation. "The course of true love," which is somewhat notorious for "never running smooth," seemed at this moment about to encounter a "head sea." Her absence from England she knew must be a long one, perhaps an eternal one; the separation from Allerton weighed much heavier upon her spirits than she was willing to admit, and altogether her prospects of happiness seemed darkened for ever.
The same conveyance that brought Julia's letters also brought instructions to the other partners of the house to fit out two vessels for the Pacific, one of which was to be entrusted to the command of Captain Allerton; but Mr. Effingham omitted to designate which of the two was to be honored by being for some months the floating home of his fair daughter; either intending it should be left to her option, or taking it for granted that his partner, well aware of the intimacy of Allerton's standing in her father's family, would of course place Julia on board the ship commanded by George. But that partner was a crafty old fox, who had long since seen the growing affection of the two young people, and, with all that eagerness to destroy happiness, that they are past enjoying, that characterizes the majority of old people, decided that Miss Julia should, for a time, entrust her person and fortunes to the fatherly care of Captain Burton, a sedate old Cornish man of sixty years of age, who had no more idea of love than he had of the Chaldee language.
CHAPTER V.
Should a man full of talk be justified? O that ye would altogether hold your peace; and it should be your wisdom.
Job, Ch. xi. 2; xiii. 5.