not, nor do they wish to diffolve it. But if fhe is determined to difpel the charm, it certainly is in her power. She may foon reduce the angel to a very ordinary girl.

There is a native dignity in ingenuous modefty to be expected in your fex, which is your natural protection from the familiarity of men, and which you should feel previous to the reflection, that it is your intereft to keep yourselves facred from all perfonal freedoms. The many nameless charms and endearments of beauty fhould be referved to bless the happy man to whom you give your hearts. The fentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms provided her virtue is fecure, is both grofsly indelicate and dangerous, and has proved fatal to many of your fex.

Let me now recommend to your attention, that elegance, which is not so much a quality of itself, as the high polish of every other. It is what diffuses an ineffable grace over every look, every motion, every fentence you utter. It gives that charm to beauty, without which it generally fails to please. It is partly a perfonal quality, in which refpect it is the gift of nature; but I fpeak of it principally as a quality of the mind. In a word, it is the perfection of taste in life and manners-every virtue, and every excellence, in their most graceful and proper forms.

You may perhaps think I want to throw every spark of nature out of your compofition, and to make enyou tirely artificial. Far from it, I wish you to poffefs the

most

moft perfect fimplicity of heart and manners. I think you may poffefs dignity without pride, affability without meanness, and fimple elegance without affectation. Milton had my idea, when he fays of Eve,

Grace was in all her fteps, heav'n in her eye;
In every gefture dignity and love.

ON ARTIFICIAL BEAUTY.

FROM THE FRIEND.

As the ladies are by no means exempt from peculiar vices, more than men, I hope the liberty here taken will not be looked on as any disrespect to the fex, as the defign is as much to clear them of the many abfurdities and fashions they are guilty of, as the reft of the creation. The beauty of the English ladies has in all ages been remaked by foreigners, as well as natives who have travelled, to be fuperior to any one country befides in the world yet there is a peculiar vice reigning among them, that of painting their faces; a vice which is of the most dangerous confequence to their health, and perhaps to the entire ruin of their conflitution. The quackeries of the times are the causes of this pernicious practice; and they in no less degree curious to try experiments

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periments with their compofitions, which is as much contrary to the purpose as it is poffible, It is plain by the number of these compofitions that they are not for the improving of beauty in the fair fex, but to answer their own private view; nor do they in the least care how many conftitutions they destroy. I have often remarked, when ladies go in a room newly painted, they retire with hafte from it, left the damps and intolerable Imell affect them; yet, though they are so conscious of its being detrimental by the smell only, they even venture to paint themselves with a compofition, for aught they know, more detrimental than that they avoided, with a view, as they imagine, to make themselves look comely. Did they but confider that the leaft difcerning perfon difcovers the deceit, they would not be fo profufe in it; for they only look on them with as much contempt as they imagine themfelves to be handfome. There is nothing more indecent than to fee a lady of a modest disposition addicted to it; for as it is a vice fo common among a certain fet of people, by which they borrow their artificial charms, that even these, by whom they are unknown, are fufpected to be quite different to what they are, and confequently are defpifed. as fuch. It is very common when going to a place of public entertainment, to use this unnatural method, to the ridicule of themselves; the pains and trouble they are at are not worth the dangerous confequences they are liable to, and often turn out to their shame. They are often obferved, when in a great perfpiration, not to `dare put their handkerchiefs to their faces for fear of

lofing their artificial beauty, Others, unthinking of the means they were at to acquire their charms, wipe their faces, to the no small diverfion of the company leaving them in fuch a manner as would be frightful to themselves, did they but then fee them. As art in this

cannot be equal to nature, more than in other affairs, which are continually trying to be improved, it is not only inconfiftent with common fenfe, but contrary to nature: but fo blind are they, if they make but a little alteration, they rail at nature for not making them as they appear to themselves. This artificial afpect is, indeed, as wretched a fubftitute for the expreffion of beauty, as for the blushes of health; it is not only equally tranfient, but equally liable to detection: but as paint leaves the countenance yet more withered and ghaftly, the paffions burft out with more violence after reftraining, and excite more determined averfion. Men of fenfe look on them with difdain, and fuppofe them no more than the portraitures of infignificant people by ordinary painters, which are but pictures of pictures. In a fmall treatise from the French of Monfieur de Gravines, fpeaking of this unnatural vice, he fays, 'I can compare them only to an ignorant fellow, who, < having an exquifite ftatue, caufed it to be gilded: fo these paint their faces, that they look like fo many ancient Bacchanalian nymphs; and vainly imagine, that painting their faces gives to their eyes a more 'piercing radiance. This cuftom which is worthy onIly of the moft favage nations, transforms the most 'beau

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beautiful faces into painted pagods."-Beauty does not confist in an outward form, but the embellishments of the mind; and when beauty and good fense are joined together in a woman, fhe is an angel on earth; but when on the contrary, as much the reverfe. When the fictious beauty has laid by her fmiles; when the luftre of her eyes, and the bloom of her cheeks, have lost their influence with their novelty! what remains, but a tyrant divested of power, who will never be feen without a mixture of indignation and difdain? The only defire which this object could gratify, will be transformed to another, not only with reluctance, but with triumph. As refentment will fucced to difappointment, adefire to mortify will fucceed to a defire to pleafe; and the hufband may be urged to folicit a mistrefs, merely by a rea membrance of the beauty of his wife, which lasted only till fhe was known. To learn to be pretty, you must firft learn to be good as you improve in virtue you will improve in beauty. And may the ladies of this nation leave off those diffembled charms, and wear those only which were given them by nature, which are by far superior to the fuperficial one; and have in remembrance, that the hope of the hypocrite muft perish."

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