MRS. WALKER ON FEMALE BEAUTY.
Wma that has seen a bonnie Scotch lassie, with her plump round arms and bare legs, trampling linen by a burn-side—her hair, half disengaged from the snood that confined it, floating on the breeze, her eyes sparkling with good-humour and animation, her cheek glowing with health and exercise, and her lips " ruddier than the cherry,"—and contrasted the pallid face, the air of lassitude, the fragile or flaccid form of a woman of fashion, set off with all the aids of dress and the fascinations of manner,—but has sighed to think that man's choice must be limited by such extreme condi- tions. To combine the mental benefits of high civilization with the physical advantages of a natural, active, out-door ex- istence, has been the objectof a great variety of medical and other treatises, and is that of the volume before us. The impossibility is not so perfect as at first sight it would seem to be; nor indeed, considering the desirableness of the conjunction and the rationality that is beginning to prevail in modes of life and fashions of dress in the present day, ought it to be regarded as an impossibility at all, though the probabilities are strong against it; and since it has been over and over again demonstrated that health is the grand essential to vigour of mind and beauty of person, the customs of society may become insensibly modified, so as to preserve health as the one thing needful to the enjoyment of life.
In initiating us of the niasculine gender to the arcane of the female toilet, Mrs. WALKER has done her sex no service. After our admission to the ladies' dressing-room, we can hardly help re- garding, for a time at least, the charms that we admire in the lovely creatures themselves, as the result of art ; and the oft-quoted line of THOMSON,
"Beauty, when unadorned, adorned the most,"
seems a poetical figment. We are instructed in the nature and uses of all the munitions of war which constitute the artillery of beauty : and as such it is a dangerous book to fall into the hands of bachelors. We fancy how we should have been shocked, had we, in our days of youth and innocence, encountered such a trea- tise : as it is, one almost feels as if concealed under the dressing- table listening surreptitiously to the mysterious details. It is but fair to Mrs. WALKER, however, to state at the outset, that the only cosmetics she recommends are air and exercise, temperance, serenity of temper, and occupation of mind. Were there more of novelty than is the case, the subject would forbid our entering into its minutia: : we, indeed, frankly avow ourselves to be incompetent to the delicate task. Things which to us seem most strange, may be familiar to those for whose use the book is designed. The methodical arrangement of the work, its comprehensiveness and philosophical tone, are its novel fea- tures: in these respects indeed, and in the minute subdivisions of the subject, it reminds us of the Analysis Qfnealay in Woman, by ALEXANDER WALKER; to Which the present volume is, as it were, the outward covering. We are inclined to suspect that the male WALKER has had some share in the arrangement, at any rate. The preface speaks of cosmetics used in ancient and modern times, only to condemn them ; though the information is there for those who disregard the penalties. The first section treats of the effects of diet and exercise on the person showing how to get plump or become thinner, and in what various ways air, particular pursuits and modes of life, affect the health and the appearance. The second is devoted to cleanliness in all its de- partments, from simple ablution to the removal of bodily super- fluities. The third treats of the art of dress, exhibiting the effect of colours and styles of costume upon different complexions and figures, by means of plates as well as descriptions. These plates are in pairs, the head and bust of one being seen through an opening in the other ; in this way the change produced by the alteration of costume is very strikingly shown. It what LAW- RENCE the painter said of women in high life, that he had rarely occasion to alter the style or colour of the dress of his sitters, were true of the sex generally, there would be little need for these hints on dress ; as it is, they will be useful to many.
The character of the book is, however, lowered by its being un- fortunately made the vehicle of putting particular tradespeople.
Previous page
