Compared with earlier times, with some slight exceptions, our modern costume certainly has the pre-eminence: it has been said that to this cause is to be attributed the seeming absence, in our day, of any transcendant instances of remarkable beauty in the fair sex: all may be made up attractively where even nature has been niggard of her endowments. Dress confers dignity and self-satisfaction, besides possessing the advantage of attractiveness. We are startled to hear a man well attired use vulgar speech, but our amazement is materially lessened if the party be attached to a very menial employment and is enveloped in meaner clothes. Over-fastidiousness at the toilet is, nevertheless, an evil equally to be deprecated: a fop is as much to be despised as a slattern or shrew-both are obnoxious to good breeding and good taste. The attributes of personal beauty may be reduced to four: colour, form, expression, and grace. Colours please by opposition, and it is in the face that they are most diversified and exposed. Thus contrasts are essential, and sallow complexions should be set off by dark cravats and clothing; whilst fairer features may adopt lighter hues. Beauty of form includes the symmetry of the whole body, even to the turn of the eyebrow, or the graceful flow of the hair. Hence the perfect union and harmony of all parts of the body is the source and general cause of beauty; and whilst the peculiar attraction of the female form should be softness and delicacy, that of manly beauty should be apparent strength and agility. Expression may be considered as the effect of the passions on the muscles of the countenance, and the different gestures. The finest combination is a just mixture of modesty and sensibility. Indeed, all the benign affections—such as love, hope, joy, and pity—add to beauty; while the predominance of hatred, fear, or envy, in the mind, deforms or injures the countenance. Grace is the noblest part of beauty. An anonymous writer thus apostrophises beauty: "There is something in beauty, whether it dwells in the human face, in the pencilled leaves of flowers, the sparkling surface of the fountain, that makes us mourn its ruin. I should not envy that man his feelings who could see a leaf wither, or a flower fall, without a slight tribute of regret." "Oh, human beauty is a sight Prompted by their loyalty to woman, we find the poets have ever made her charms the inspiring theme of their muse; not, however, in the realm of song merely has she been celebrated; sober writers in prose have been scarcely less enthusiastic in their laudations. Jeremy Taylor styles woman "the precious porcelain of human clay." Not only is she potent in physical endowment-hers is the more enduring excellence of moral beauty, for her heart is the home of the virtues; and while the fascinations of her personal beauty captivate the sense, our grateful love and veneration do willing homage to her moral excellence and worth. While, therefore, with one who felt the mystic power of her bewildering charms, we exclaim "Denied the smile from partial beauty won, Oh, what were man-a world without a sun!" We yet instinctively yield to the still more potent influence of her enduring love, her patient faith, and the nameless clusters of graces which constitute her moral beauty. It was a pertinent and forcible saying of the Emperor Napoleon that" a handsome woman pleases the eye, but a good woman pleases the heart. The one is a jewel, and the other a treasure." A contemporary poet has epitomised it all in two flowing stanzas: "What's a fair or noble face, If the mind ignoble be? What though beauty in each grace Lips the ruby's light recall; In the Home for Love to dwell One good feeling's worth them all. *Charles Swain. "Give me virtue's rose to trace, Honour's kindling glance and mien ; Beauty is where these are seen! Of the whitest neck may fall; In the Home for Love we know One good feeling's worth them all !" Beauty being the theme with which our chapter commenced, it should also conclude it. We sum up the case then, as legal gentlemen have it, in the words of an American poetess :— "Thou wert a worship in the ages olden, As Phidias gave to immortality! A type exquisite of the pure Ideal, Forth shadowed in perfect loveliness— Embodied and existent in the Real, A perfect shape to kneel before and bless."* * Mrs. Eames. THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE. "If physic be a trade, it is a trade of all others the most exactly cut out for a rogue."-Lacon. "Man is a dupable animal. Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely any one who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling."—Southey. WORTHY Sir Thomas Browne has nobly sought to dignify the medical profession, and it would be undignified in us to attempt to impeach his excellent judgment. There are, however, sundry phases of the Faculty that present points of humour and eccentricity so irresistibly amusing that to indulge a little merriment over them cannot but prove an innocent pastime. There is fun enough in "love, law, and physic," if we seek it out. Any one with an eye for the ludicrous will not need any specifications in point. Much that is farcical in physic is, by the law of electric affinities, transferred to the physician himself. Judging by the latitudinarianism of some practitioners, and the absurd nostrums of empirics and quacks, in all ages, it has been gravely asked, whether doctors are really not the final cause of disease. It is not, of course, to be disputed, that they have been, to no inconsiderable extent, accessory both to the reduction of disease and-of life itself. But for the inherent tendency of mankind to blind credulity and superstition, it may be doubted whether the profession of medicine would ever have been made the vehicle of such gross absurdities and cunning impostures, as its past, and especially its earlier history reveals. We are not about, however, to cast any imputation upon the science of therapeutics; our purpose being to glance at some of the wild and monstrous follies which have so long disputed its claims to the suffrages of society. Medical practice has been defined to be, for the most part, guessing at Nature's intentions and wishes, and then endeavouring to substitute man's. Medication is not the most essential element of cure. Disease is self-limited. Its tendency, in nineteen out of twenty cases, is toward recovery; and that, uninfluenced as to the ultimate result of death or recovery (more or less complete) by any medical interference; unless, indeed, the latter should be murderously severe. Nature," says a French philosophical writer, "is fighting with disease; a blind man armed with a club-that is the physician-comes to settle the difference. He first tries to make peace; when he cannot accomplish this, he, lifts his club and strikes at random. If he strikes the disease, he kills the disease; if he strikes nature, he kills the patient." And to prove, from one who himself turned state's evidence on this point—D'Alembert relates that an individual, after conducting a prominent practice for thirty years, confessed, as his reason for retiring from it, that he was weary of guessing! An industrious nosologist has estimated that there are about twenty-four hundred disorders incident to the human frame! Possibly our great dramatist was not aware to what numerical extent reached "the ills that flesh is heir to," or he would scarcely have so disparagingly suggested that we should "throw physic to the dogs." Or it may be because there is, according to Punch, “an evident affinity between physic and the dogs—a fact that shows the master mind of Shakspeare in suggesting the throwing of the former to the latter; for it is clear that every medicine, like every dog, has its day. Pills have had their popularity, and elixirs have had their run. Lozenges have taken their turn on the wheel of fortune, and even pastes have been stuck to for a time by crowds of adherents." Napoleon once said to one of his physicians (Dr. Antom |
