New Monthly Magazine.
In the poems of Elizabeth Trefusis there is a “Valentine” with an expression of feeling which may well conclude the extracts already produced.
When to Love’s influence woman yields,
She loves for life! and daily feels
Progressive tenderness!—each hour
Confirms, extends, the tyrant’s power!
Her lover is her god! her fate!—
Vain pleasures, riches, worldly state,
Are trifles all!—each sacrifice
Becomes a dear and valued prize,
If made for him, e’en tho’ he proves
Forgetful of their former loves.
[50] Dr. Drake’s Shakspeare and his Times. See also the Every-Day Book for large particulars of the day.
[51] “Si mea cum Vestris valuissent vota!”—Ovid, Met.
AIR AND EXERCISE
For Ladies.
There is a notion, that air spoils the complexion. It is possible, that an exposure to all weathers might do so; though if a gipsy beauty is to be said to have a bad complexion, it is one we are very much inclined to be in love with. A russeton apple has its beauty as well as a peach. At all events, a spoilt complexion of this sort is accompanied with none of the melancholy attending the bad complexions that arise from late hours, and spleen, and plodding, and indolence, and indigestion. Fresh air puts a wine in the blood that lasts from morning to night, and not merely for an hour or two after dinner. If ladies would not carry buttered toast in their cheeks, instead of roses, they must shake the blood in their veins, till it spins clear. Cheerfulness itself helps to make good blood; and air and exercise make cheerfulness. When it is said, that air spoils the complexion, it is not meant that breathing it does so, but exposure to it. We are convinced it is altogether a fallacy, and that nothing but a constant exposure to the extremes of heat and cold has any such effect. The not breathing the fresh air is confessedly injurious; and this might be done much oftener than is supposed. People might oftener throw up their windows, or admit the air partially, and with an effect sensible only to the general feelings. We find, by repeated experiments, that we can write better and longer with the admission of air into our study. We have learnt also, by the same experience, to prefer a large study to a small one; and here the rich, it must be confessed, have another advantage over us. They pass their days in large airy rooms—in apartments that are field and champain, compared to the closets that we dignify with the name of parlours and drawing-rooms. A gipsy and they are in this respect, and in many others, more on a footing; and the gipsy beauty and the park beauty enjoy themselves accordingly. Can we look at that extraordinary race of persons—we mean the gipsies—and not recognise the wonderful physical perfection to which they are brought, solely by their exemption from some of our most inveterate notions, and by dint of living constantly in the fresh air? Read any of the accounts that are given of them, even by writers the most opposed to their way of life, and you will find these very writers refuting themselves and their proposed ameliorations by confessing that no human beings can be better formed, or healthier, or happier than the gipsies, so long as they are kept out of the way of towns and their sophistications. A suicide is not known among them. They are as merry as the larks with which they rise; have the use of their limbs to a degree unknown among us, except by our new friends the gymnasts; and are as sharp in their faculties as the perfection of their frames can render them. A glass of brandy puts them into a state of unbearable transport. It is a superfluous bliss; wine added to wine: and the old learn to do themselves mischief with it, and level their condition with stockbrokers and politicians. Yet these are the people whom some wiseacres are for turning into bigots and manufacturers. They had much better take them for what they are, and for what Providence seems to have intended them—a memorandum to keep alive among us the belief in nature, and a proof to what a physical state of perfection the human being can be brought, solely by inhaling her glorious breath, and being exempt from our laborious mistakes. If the intelligent and the gipsy life could ever be brought more together, by any rational compromise, (and we do not despair of it, when we see that calculators begin to philosophize,) men might attain the greatest perfection of which they are capable. Meanwhile the gipsies have the advantage of it, if faces are any index of health and comfort. A gipsy with an eye fit for a genius, it is not difficult to meet with; but where shall we find a genius, or even a fundholder, with the cheek and health of a gipsy?