GIFT OF BOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY THEIR DEVELOPMENT, CAUSAL RELATIONS, HISTORIC AND NATIONAL PECULIARITIES BY HENKY T. FINCK OF THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & co., LTD. 1902 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1887 BY HENRY T. FINCK SIT UP AKD ELECTBOTYPED, 1887 Naw EDITION, FEBBUABT, 1902 Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York ! CONTENTS PAOX EvOLtTTION OF ROMANTIC LOVE 1 ' . . . . 1 COSMIC ATTRACTION AND CHEMICAL AFFINITIES . . 3 FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY ' . . . .7 IMPERSONAL AFFECTION . ". . . . .11 PERSONAL AFFECTIONS . * . . . . .16 I. Love for Animals . . " . . .16 II. Maternal Lovo ' . ' . ' . . . .19 in. Paternal Love '. *. '. . . .20 iv. Filial Love . ' , *, . . . .22 v. Brotherly and Sisterly Love, . . . .23 vi. Friendship. V . . . . v 24 VII. Romantic Love V . . . . .26 OVERTONES OF LOVE ....... 29 I. Individual Preference . . . . .30 II. Monopoly or Exclusiveness . . . .30 in. Jealousy ' . . . . . .30 iv. Coyness ....... 30 v. Gallantry ....... 31 vi. Self-Sacrifice . . . . . .31 vii. Sympathy . . . . . . .31 vin. Pride of Conquest and Possession . . . ,31 IX. Emotional Hyperbole . . . . . 32 x. Mixed Moods . . . . .32 xi. Admiration of Personal Beauty . . . .32 Herbert Spencer on Love . * . , .33 LOVE AMONG ANIMALS . . . . . .33 Courtship . . . . . .37 (a) Jealousy . . . . . .39 (6) Coyness . 40 (c) Individual Preference . . . . .42 (<) Personal Beauty and Sexual Selection . . .43 (1) Protective Colours . . .48 ri CONTEXTS (2) "Warning Colours (3) Typical Colours (4) Sexual Colours . Love Charms and Love Calls . Love Dances and Display , LOVE AMONG SAVAGES Strangers to Love . . Primitive Courtship (1) Capture . (2) Purchase . ;." ' (3) Service . ' .' . ' Individual Preference . . Personal Beaiity and Sexual Selection Jealousy and Polygamy . .._" . Monopoly and Monogamy ' Primitive Coyness Can American Negroes Love ? HISTORY OF LOVE LOVE IN EGYPT ANCIENT HEBREW LOVE . ANCIENT ARYAN LOVE * Hindoo Love Maxims . * GREEK LOVE ... Family Affection No Love Stories . . , Woman's Position . . Chaperonage versus Courtship Plato on Courtship . Parental versus Lovers' Choice , The Hetsera Platonic Love . Sappho and Female Friendship .' Greek Beauty Cupid's Arrows . . . Origin of Love . . . ROMAN LOVE . . Woman's Position . No Wooing and Choice ' . Virgil, Dryden, and Scott . Ovid's Art of Making Love Birth of Gallantry . . MEDIEVAL LOVE . . . Celibacy versus Marriage . Woman's Lowest Degradation . CONTENTS ** Negation of Feminine Choice . . . . : : Christianity and Love ...... Chivalry Militant and Comic ..... Chivalry Poetic . . . . . . .' : (a) French Troubadours ..... (b) German Minnesingers . . . . . Female Culture ....... Personal Beauty ....... Spenser on Love ....... Dante and Shakspere . . . . . . N LOVE . . . . . . . A Biologic Test ....... Venus, Flutus, and Minerva ..... Leading Motives . . . . . . .114 Modern Coyness . . . ' (1) An Echo of Capture . . . . . : (2) Maiden versus Wife ..... (3) Modesty. . ... (4) Cunning to Lo Strange . . . . .US (5) Procrastination ...... Goldsmith on Love . . . . . ,116 Disadvantages of Coyness ..... Coyness lessens "Woman's Love .... Masculine versus Feminine Love . . . .1 '20 Flirtation and Coquetry ..... Flirtation versus Coyness ..... Modern Courtship ...... Modern Jealousy ...... Lover's Jealousy ...... Retrospective and Prospective Jealousy Jealousy and Beauty ..... Monopoly or Exclusiveness ..... True Love is Transient . . . . . Is First Love Best ? . . . Heine on First Love ..... First Love is not Best ..... Pride and Vanity ...... Coquetry ....... Love and Eank ...... Special Sympathy ...... How Love Intensifies Emotions .... Development of Sympathy ..... Pity and Love Love at First Sight viii CONTENTS TPAOB Intellect and Love . . . .154 Gallantry and Self-Sacrifice . . . . .157 Active and Passive Desire to Please . . .159 Feminine Devotion . - x . . . .160 Emotional Hyperbole . . . . . .162 Mixed Moods and Paradoxes . . . . .166 Lunatic, Lover, and Poet . . . . .172 Individual Preference . . . -. " . . 173 Sexual Divergence . . . . ; . . 174 Making Woman Masculine . . . . . 173 Love and Culture . . . . . .176 Personal Beauty . , . . . . .177 Feminine Beauty in Masculine Eyes . . .177 Masculine Beauty in Feminine Eyes . . .178 CONJUGAL AFFECTION AND ROMANTIC LOVE >. . . ISO Romance in Conjugal Love .''. . . . 184 . Marriages of Reason or Love Matches ? . . . .187 Marriage Hints . . -, . . . . 189 OLD MAIDS . . . . . . 190 BACHELORS . ' . . . . . ' . . 194 GENIUS AND MARRIAGK . . -. - . . . 197 GENIUS AND LOVE . . V . . . 201 GENIUS IN LOVE . . " . . '. . . 204 (1) Precocity . . ; . . 7 . . .204 [2) A: n . ' . V . . . 207 ;, - . . . . 210 ity 213 . .' . . 215 INSANII v - ND LOVE . . . . m ' ( '- . . 218 . 218 Erotomania, or Real Love-Sickness . . . . 222 LANGUAGE OF LOVE ...... 223 . . . . 223 if. Facial Expression ...... 224 . 225 KISSINO PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE .... 227 .... 227 .... 228 . . . 229 232 . . . .* 233 234 LoveKi^es T. . . . , 235 CONTENTS ix ' PAGE How TO WIN LOVE . . . . . . .238 Brass Buttons 238 Confidence and Boldness ..... 239 Pleasant Associations . . . . . .240 Perseverance . . . . . . .241 Feigned Indifference . . . . . .241 Compliments ....... 244 Love Letters . . . . . . .246 Love Charms for Women ..... 250 Proposing ....... 253 Diagnosis, or Signs of Love ..... 254 How TO CURE LOVE ....... 255 Absence . . . . . . . 256 Travel .257 Employment . . . . . .257 Married Misery ..... .257 Feminine Inferiority ...... 260 Focussing Her Faults ...... 262 Reason versus Passion ...... 263 Love versus Love . . . . . .264 Prognosis, or Chances of Recovery .... 265 NATIONALITY AND LOVE . . . . . .265 French Love . . . . . . .266 Italian Love ....... 274 Spanish Love ....... 277 German Love ....... 280 English Love ....... 288 American Love '..... . 294 SCHOPENHAUER'S THEOET or LOVE ..... 301 Love is an Illusion ...... 302 Individuals Sacrificed to the Species . . . . 302 Sources of Love ....... 303 (1) Physical Beauty . . . . .303 (2) Psychic Traits . . . . . .304 (3) Complementary Qualities .... 305 FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY ...... 310 i. Health , . . . . . .310 Greek Beauty . . . . . .313 Mediaeval Ugliness . . . . .314 Modern Hygiene . . . , . .316 ir. Crossing ....... 318 in. Romantic Love ...... 322 iv. Mental Refinement ...... 324 EVOLUTION F TASTS 327 xii CONTENTS PACK Lustre . . . . . . . .469 Form ........ 472 Expression . ; . . . . .475 (a) Lustre . . . . . .476 (&) Colour of Iris 478 (c) Movements of the Iris ..... 479 (d) Eyeball . 480 (e) Eyelids . . . .482 (/) Eyebrows . . . .485 Cosmetic Hints . . . i . . .485 THE HAIH . . . . . . .486 Cause of Man's Nudity . '. . . . .486 Beards and Moustaches . . . . . 489 Baldness and Depilatories '*.'"'. . . .492 ^Esthetic Value of Hair . \ V . . . 494 BRUNETTE AND BLONDE . '. *. . . .496 Blonde versus Brunette . , V . . 496 Brunette versus Blonde V 498 Why Cupid Favours Brunettes ..... 499 NATIONALITY AND BEAUTY *. . . . . 505 FRENCH BEAUTY . . Y V . . ,506 ITALIAN BEAUTY . . . . . . .511 SPANISH BEAUTY . . . . . . .515 GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN BEAUTY . . . . . 522 ENGLISH BEAUTY . . . . . . . 528 AMERICAN BEAUTY . 535 ROMANTIC LOVE & PERSONAL BEAUTY EVOLUTION OF ROMANTIC LOVE OP all the rhetorical commonplaces in literature and conversation, none is more frequently repeated than the assertion that Love, as depicted in a thousand novels and poems every year, has existed at all times, and in every country, immutable as the mountains and the stars. Only a few months ago one of the leading German writers of the period, Ernst Eckstein, wrote an essay in which he endeavoured to prove that not only was Love as felt by the ancient Komans the same as modern Love, but that it was identical with the modern sentiment even in its minutest details and manifestations. He based this bold inference on the fact that in Ovid's Ars Amoris directions are given to the men regarding certain tricks of gallantry such as dusting the adored one's seat at the circus, fanning her, applauding her favourites, and drinking from the cup where it was touched by her lips. Curious and interesting these hints are, no doubt. But a closer examination of Roman literature and manners shows that Dr. Eckstein has been guilty of the common blunder of generalising from a single instance. Gallantry is one of the essential traits of modern Love ; and far from having been a common practice in ancient Rome, the interest of Ovid's remarks lies in the fact that they give us the first instance on record of an attempt at gallant behaviour on the part of the men; as will be shown in detail in the chapter on Roman Love. And as with Gallantly, so with the other traits which make up the group of emotions known to us as Love. We look for them in vain among modern savages, in vain among the ancient civilised nations. Romantic Love is a modern sentiment, less than a thousand years old. S> B 2 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Conjugal Love is, indeed, often celebrated by Greek, Hebrew, and other ancient writers, but regarding Romantic or pro-matri- monial Love (which alone forms the theme of our novelists), they are silent. The Bible takes no account of it, and although Greek literature and mythology seem at first sight to abound in allusions to it, critical analysis shows that the reference never is to Love as we understand it. Greek Love, as will be shown hereafter, was a peculiar mixture of friendship and passion, differing widely from the modern sentiment of Love. It is because among the Romans the position of woman was somewhat more elevated and modern than among the Greeks, that we find in Roman literature a vague foreshadowing of some of the elements of modern Love. In the Dark Ages there is a relapse. The germs of Love could not flourish in a period when women were kept in brutal subjection by the men, and their minds refused all nourishment and refine- ment. The Troubadours of Italy and France proved useful champions of woman, as did the German Minnesingers, by teaching the medieval military man to look upon her with sentiments of respect and adoration. Yet their conduct rarely harmonised with their preaching; and the cause of Romantic Love gained little by their poetic effusions, which were almost invariably addressed to married women. Not till Dante's Vita Nuova appeared was the gospel of modern Love the romantic adoration of a maiden by a youth revealed for the first time in definite language. Genius, however, is always in advance of its age, in emotions as well as in thoughts; and the feelings experienced by Dante were obviously not shared by his contemporaries, who found them too subtle and sublimated for their comprehension. And, in fact, they were too ethereal to quite correspond with reality. The strings of Dante's lyre were strung too high, and touched by his magic hand, gave forth harmonic overtones too celestial for mundane ears to hear. It remained for ShaLopere to combine the idealism with the realism of Love in proper proportions. The colours with which he painted the passion and sentiment of modem Love are as fresh and as true to life as on the day when they were first put on his canvas. Like Dante, however, he was emotionally ahead of his time, as an examination of contemporary literature in England and elsewhere shows. But within the last two centuries Love has gradually, if slowly, assumed among all educated people character- istics which formerly it possessed only in the minds of a few isolated men of genius. COSMIC ATTRACTION AND CHEMICAL AFFINITIES 3 Before we proceed to prove all these assertions in detail, it will be well to cast a brief glance at the analogies to human Love presented by cosmic, chemical, and vegetal phenomena; as well as to distinguish Roman tic Love from other forms of human and animal affection. This will enable us to comprehend more clearly what modern Love is, by making apparent what it is not. COSMIC ATTRACTION AND CHEMICAL AFFINITIES It is a favourite device of poets to invest plants and even inanimate objects with human thoughts and feelings. The parched, withering flower, tormented by the pangs of thirst, implores the passing cloud for a few drops of the vital fluid ; and the cloud, moved to pity at sight of the suffering beauty, sheds its welcome, soothing tears. " And 'tis my faith, that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes." WORDSWORTH. " The moon shines bright : in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise." " Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them." SHAKSPERE. One of the first authors who thus endowed non-human objects with human feelings was the Greek philosopher Empedokles, who flourished about twenty-three centuries ago. Just as the last of the great German metaphysicians, Schopenhauer, believed that all the forces of Nature astronomic, chemical, biological, etc. are identical with the human Will, of which they represent different stages of development or " objectivation," so Empedokles insisted that the two ruling passions of the human soul, Love and Hate, are the two principles which pervade and rule the whole universe. In the primitive condition of things, he taught, the four elements, Earth, Water, Air. and Fire are mingled harmoniously, and Love rules supreme. Then Hate intervenes and produces individual, separate forms. Plants are developed, and after them animals, or rather, at first, only single organs detached eyes, arms, hands, etc. Then Love reasserts its force and unites these separate organs into complete animals. Strange monstrosities are the result of some of these unions animals of double sex, human heads on the bodies of oxen, or horned heads on the bodies of men. These, however, perish, while others, which are congruous and adapted to their surroundings, survive and multiply. 4 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Thus Empedokles, " the Greek Darwin," was the originator of a theory of evolution based on the alternate predominance of cosmic Love and Hate; Love being the attractive, Hate the re- pulsive force. In the preface to the first volume of Don Quixote, Cervantes refers those who wish to acquire some information concerning Love to an Italian treatise by Judah Leo. The full title of the book, which appeared in Rome in the sixteenth century, is Dialoghi di amore, Composti da Leone Medico, di nazione Ebreo, e di poi fatto cristiano. There are said to be three French translations of it, but it was only after long searching that I succeeded in finding a copy, at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. It proved to be a strange medley of astrology, metaphysics, theology, classical erudi- tion, mythology, and mediaeval science. Burton, in the chapter on Love, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, quotes freely from this work of Leo, whom he names as one of about twenty-five authors who wrote treatises on Love in ancient and mediaeval times. Like Empedokles, Leo identifies cosmic attraction with Love. But he points out three degrees of Love Natural, Sensible, and Rational. By Natural Love he means those " sympathies " which attract a stone to the earth, make rivers flow to the sea, keep the sun, moon, and stars in their courses, etc. Burton (1652) agrees with Leo, and asks quaintly, "How comes a loadstone to draw iron to it . . . the ground to covet showers, but for love? ... no stock, no stone, that has not some feeling of love. 'Tis more eminent in Plants, Hearbs, and is especially observed in vegetals ; as betwixt the Vine and Elm a great sympathy," etc. " Sensible " Love is that which prevails among animals. In it Leo recognises the higher elements of delight in one another's company, and of attachment to a master. "Rational" Love, the third and highest class, is peculiar to God, angels, and men. But the inclination to confound gravitation and other natural forces with Love is not to be found among ancient and mediaeval authors alone. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the "gross materialist," Dr. Ludwig Biichner, who exclaims rapturously: "For it is love, in the form of attraction, which chains stone to stone, earth to earth, star to star, and which holds together the mighty edifice on which we stand, and on the surface of which, like parasites, we carry on our existence, barely noticeable in the infinite universe; and on which we shall continue to exist till that distant period when its component parts will again be resolved into that COSMIC ATTRACTION AND CHEMICAL AFFINITIES 5 primal chaos from which it laboriously severed itself millions of years ago, and became a separate planet." Biiclmer carries on this anthropopathic process a step farther, by including all the chemical affinities of atoms and molecules as manifestations of love : " Just as man and woman attract one another, so oxygen attracts hydrogen, and, in loving union with it, forms water, that mighty omnipresent element, without which no life nor thought would be possible." And again : " Potassium and phosphorus entertain such a violent passion for oxygen that even under water they burn i.e. unite themselves with the beloved object." Goethe's novel, Elective Affinities, which was inspired by a late and hopeless passion of its author, is based on this chemical notion that no physical obstacle can separate two souls that are united by an amorous affinity. But the practical outcome of his theory that the psychic affinity of two persons suffices to impress the characteristics of both on the offspring of one of them has nothing to support it in medical experience ; while the chemical analogy, with all due deference to Goethe's reputation as a man of science, is against his view. His notion was that the children of two souls loving one another will inherit their characteristics. But what distinguishes a chemical compound (based on " affinity ") from a mere physical mixture, is precisely the contrary fact that the com- pound does not in any respect resemble the parental elements ! Read what a specialist says in Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry : "Definite chemical compounds generally differ altogether in physical properties from their components. Thus, with regard to colour, yellow sulphur and gray mercury produce red cinnabar ; purple iodine and gray potassium yield colourless iodide of potas- sium. . . . The density of a compound is very rarely an exact mean between that of its constituents, being generally higher, and in a few cases lower ; and the taste, smell, refracting power, fusi- bility, volatility, conducting power for heat and electricity, and other physical properties, are not for the most part such as would result from mere mixture of their constituents." Chemical affinities, accordingly, cannot be used as analogies of Love. Not even on account of the violent individual preference shown by two elements for one another, for this apparently indi- vidual preference is really only generic. A piece of phosphorus will as readily unite with one cubic foot of oxygen as with another ; whereas it is the very essence of Love that it demands a union with one particular individual, and no other. Equally unsatisfactory are all similar attempts to identify Love 6 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY with gravitation or other forms of cosmic attraction. Here is what a great expert in Love has to say on this subject : " The attraction of love, I find," writes Bums, " is in inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are to one another, the stronger is the attractive force. In my system, every milestone that marked my progress from Clarinda awakened a keener pang of attachment to her." How beautifully, in other respects, does the law of gravitation simulate the methods of Love ! Does not the meteor which passionately falls on this planet and digs a deep hole into it, show its love in this manner, even as that affectionate bear who smashed his master's forehead in order to kill the fly on it ? Does not the avalanche which thunders down the mountain-side and buries a whole forest and several villages, afford another touching illustra- tion of the love of attraction, or cosmic Love 1 a crushing argu- ment in its favour 1 ? Or the frigid glacier, in its slower course, does it not lacerate the sides of the valley, and strew about its precious boulders, merely by way of illustrating the amorous effect of gravitation ? And millions of years hence, will not this same law of attraction enable the sun to prove his ecstatic love for our earth by swallowing her up and reducing her to her primitive chaotic state *? Imagine a man and a woman whose love consists in this, that they must be kept widely separated by a hostile force to pre- vent them from dashing together, and reducing each other to atoms and molecules ! That is the " love " of the stars and planets. But it is needless to continue this reditctio ad dbsurdum of pantheistic or panerotic vagaries. The method of the writers on Love here quoted Empedokles, Leo, Burton, Biichner has been to identify Love with cosmic force simply because they possess in common the one quality of attraction, by virtue of which the large earth hugs a small stone, and a large man a small maiden. Modern scientific psychology objects to this (i.e. not the hugging, but the method), because it does not in the least aid us in under- standing the nature of Love ; and because it is as irrational to call attraction Love as it would be to call a brick a house, a leaf a tree, or a green daub a rainbow. For Love embraces every colour in the spectrum of human emotion. Having failed to find a satisfactory solution of the mystery of Lo\ e in the inorganic world, let us now see if the vegetable king- dom offers no better analogies in its sexual phenomena. FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY Until a few decades ago, it was the universal belief that flowers had been specially created for man's exclusive delight. This was such an uasy way, you know, to overcome the difficulty of explain- ing the immense variety of forms and colours in the floral world ; and it was, above all, so flattering to man's egregious vanity. But one fine morning in May a German naturalist, Conrad Sprengel, published a remarkable book in which he pointed out that flowers owe their peculiar shape, colour, and fragrance to the visits of insects. Not that the insects visit the flowers in order to shape and paint and perfume them. On the contrary, they visit them for the unjesthetic purpose of eating their pollen and their honey ; while the flowers' scent and colour exist solely for the purpose of indicating to winged insects at a distance where they can find a savoury lunch. But why should flowers take such pains to attract insects by serving them with a breakfast of honey, and by hanging out big petals to serve as coloured and perfumed signal-flags ? Nature is economical in the expenditure of energy ; and as the production of honey and large flowers costs the plant some of its vital energies, we may be sure that this expenditure secures the plant some superior advantage. Sprengel noticed that the insects, while pillaging flowers of their honey, unwittingly brushed off with their wings and feet some of the fertilising dust or pollen, and carried it to the pistil or female part of a flower. But it remained for Darwin to point out what advantage this transference of the pollen secured to the flower. Darwin, says Sir John Lubbock, " was the first clearly to perceive that the essential service which insects perform to flowers consists not only in transferring the pollen from the stamens to the pistil, but in transferring it from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of another. Sprengel had indeed observed in more than one instance that this was the case, but he did not altogether appreciate the importance of the fact. Mr. Darwin, however, has not only made it clear from theoretical considerations, but has also proved it, in a variety of cases, by actual experiment. More recently Fritz Muller has even shown that in some cases pollen, if placed on the stigma of the same flower, has no more effect than so much inorganic dust j while, and this is perhaps even more extraordinary, in others, the pollen placed on the stigma of the same flower acted on it like poison " a curious analogy to the current belief that close intermarriage is injurious to mankind. 8 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY What Darwin and others have proved by their experiments ia that cross-fertilised flowers are more vigorous than those fertilised with their own pollen, and have a more healthy and numerous offspring. With this fact before us we need only apply the usual evolutionary formula to account for the beauty of flowers. It is well known that Nature rarely, if ever, produces two leaves or plants that are exactly alike. There is also a natural tendency in all parts of a plant except the leaves to develop other colours besides green. Now any plant which, owing to chemical causes, favourable position, etc., developed an unusually brilliant colour, would be likely to attract the attention of a winged insect in search of pollen-food. The insect, by alighting on a second flower soon after, would fertilise it with the pollen of the first flower that adhered to its limbs, thus securing to the plant the advantages of cross-fertilisation. Thanks to the laws of heredity, this advantage would be transmitted to the young plants, among which again those most favoured would gain an advantage and a more numerous offspring. And thus the gradual development not only of coloured petals, but of scents and honey, can be accounted for. What makes this argument irresistible is the additional fact, first pointed out by Darwin, that plants which are not visited by insects, but are fertilised by the agency of the wind, are neither adorned with beautifully-coloured flowers, nor provided with honey or fragrance. And another most important fact : Darwin found that flowers which depend on the wind for their fertilisation follow the natural tendency of objects to a symmetrical form ; whereas the irregular flowers are always those fertilised by insects or birds. This points to the conclusion that insects and birds are responsible not only for the colours and fragrance of flowers, but also for the shape of those that are most unique and fantastic. And this a priori inference is borne out by thousands of curious and most fascinating observations described in the works of Darwin, Lubbock, Mtiller, and many others. The briefest and clearest presentation of the subject is in Lubbock's Flowers, Fruits, and Leaves, which no one interested in natural aesthetics should fail to read. There is indeed no more interesting study in biology than the mutual adaptation of flowers, bees, butterflies, humming-birds, etc. ; for just as these animals have modified the forms of flowers, so the flowers have altered the shape of these animals. Many of the changes in the shapes of flowers are made not only with a view to facilitate the visits of winged insects, but also for keeping out creeping intruders, such as ants, which are very fond of honey, but which, as they do not fly, would not aid the cause of FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY 9 cross-fertilisation. Of these contrivances, " the most frequent are the interposition of chevaux de frise, which ants cannot penetrate, glutinous surfaces which they cannot traverse, slippery slopes which they cannot climb, or barriers which close the way." How obtuse are those who, with Ruskin and Emerson, accuse science of destroying the poetry of nature ! What poetry is there in the thought that flowers were made for unaesthetic man, when not one man in a thousand ever takes the trouble to examine one, while for every single flower on which a human eye ever rests, a million are born to blush unseen ? But if we abandon the narrow anthropocentric point of view, and admit that insects too have a right to live, how the scope of Nature's poetry widens ! How easy it then becomes to share not only Wordsworth's belief that "every flower enjoys the air it breathes," but to endow it with a thousand thoughts and emotions like our own delight in a gaily-coloured floral envelope; hope that yonder gaudy butterfly will be attracted by it ; anxiety lest that " horrid " ant may steal some of its honey ; determination to breathe the sweetest perfume on this darling honey bee, so as to induce it to speedily call again. Love dramas, too, tragic and comic, are enacted in this world of flowers and insects. Thus the Arum plant resorts to the fol- lowing stratagem to secure a messenger of love for carrying its pollen to a distant female flower : " The stigmas come to maturity first, and have lost the possi- bility of fertilisation before the pollen is ripe. The pollen must therefore be brought by insects, and this is effected by small flies, which enter the leaf, either for the sake of honey or of shelter, and which, moreover, when they have once entered the tube, are imprisoned by the fringe of hairs. When the anthers ripen, the pollen falls on to the flies, which, in their efforts to escape, get thoroughly dusted with it. Then the fringe of hairs withers, and the flies, thus set free, soon come out, and ere long carry the pollen to another plant " (Lubbock). Then there are male flowers which go a-courting like any amorous swain of a Sunday night. One of these belongs to the Valisneria plant, concerning which the same writer observes that " the female flowers are borne on long stalks, which reach to the surface of the water, on which the flowers float. The male flowers, on the contrary, have short, straight stalks, from which, when mature, the pollen detaches itself, rises to the surface, and, floating freely on it, is wafted about, so that it comes in contact with the female flowers," 10 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY But alas for the poor flowers! Few of them are thus privileged to roam about and seek their own bride. Most flowers have no more free choice in the selection of their spouse than an Oriental or a French girl. There is no previous acquaintance, no courtship before marriage, hence no Romantic Love, even if the undifferen- tiated germs of nervous protoplasm in the plant were capable of feeling such an emotion. Poor flowers ! Their honeymoon is without pleasure, uncon- scious. The wind may woo, the butterfly caress them but the wind has no thought of the flower, and the insect's attachment is mere " cupboard love." The beauty of one flower cannot exist for another which has no eyes to see it ; its honey and its fragrance are not for a floral lover's delight, but for a gastronomic insect's epicurean use. No modest coyness, no harmless flirtation, no gallant devotion and self-sacrifice, enter into the flower's sexual life; not even the bitter-sweet pangs of jealousy, for, as Heine has ascertained, " the butterfly stops not to ask the flower, * Has any one kissed thee before ? ' nor does the flower ask, ' Hast thou already flitted about another?*" Thus " flower-love," with all its poetic analogies, has none of. the elements of Romantic Love. Even attraction fails, for plants axe commonly sessile, and cannot go forth to seek a mate. " I prayed the flowers, Oh, tell me, what is love ? Only a fragrant sigh was wafted Thro' the night." German Song. Two important lessons of this chapter should, however, be carefully borne in mind; for though our search for Love has so far yielded only negative results, some light has been thrown on the general laws of Beauty in Nature. The lessons are : (1) That there is in flowers a natural tendency towards Sym- metry of Form, all normal irregularities being due to the agency of insects and birds. (2) That the superior Beauty of one flower over another is due to its superior vitality or Health, which, again, is promoted by cross- fertilisation or intermarriage the choosing of a mate not in the same but in another flower-bed. Regarding the beauty of flowers a further detail may be added. Some of the coloured lines on flowers are so placed as to guide the visiting bees to the nectar or honey. More complicated colour- patterns probably owe their existence to the advantage of having an easy means of recognition at a distance. It is well known that IMPERSONAL AFFECTION 11 bees on any single expedition visit the flowers of one species only. Now it has been experimentally proved by Lubbock that bees can distinguish different colours; and, if we may judge by analogy with the human eye, they can distinguish colours at a greater distance than forms. Hence the advantage to each flower of having its own colours in its flag. IMPERSONAL AFFECTION From the sexual life of plants we ought to pass on to that of animals; but before doing so, it will be advisable to ascertain clearly what is meant by Romantic Love, and how it differs from other forms of affection, impersonal and personal; from the love for inanimate objects and for plants aud animals; from the family affections maternal, paternal, filial, brotherly, and sisterly love; from friendship; and from conjugal love. Love is the most attractive word in the language, as Heine and Oliver Wendell Holmes have remarked. Out of every half-dozen novels one is likely to have the word Love in its title, as a bait sure to catch readers. But whereas novelists always use this word in the sense of Romantic or pre-matrimonial Love, in common language it is vaguely used as a synonym for any kind of attach- ment, from that of Romeo to the schoolgirl who "just loves caramels." For the verb to love there is perhaps no satisfactory and equally comprehensive substitute; but in place of the noun love it is advisable, at least in a scientific work, to use the word Affection, which comprehends every form of love mentioned above. In the present work Love, with a capital L, always means Romantic Love. Professor Calderwood, in his Handbook of Moral Philosophy, says that " Affection is inclination towards others, disposing us to give from our own resources what may influence them either for good or ill. In practical tendency, the Affections are the reverse of the Desires. Desires absorb, Affections give out. Affections presuppose a recognition of certain qualities in persons, and, in a modified degree, in lower sentient beings, but not in things, for the exercise of Affection presupposes in the object of it the possibility either of harmony or antagonism of feeling." In other words, the eminent Scotch moralist thinks we can entertain affections only towards human beings, and, to some degree, towards animals; but not towards plants or inanimate objects. Careful analysis of our emotions, however, does not sus- tain this distinction, which is as unpoetic as it is anthropocentric 12 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY and unscientific. Dr. Calderwood obviously confounds affection with sympathy. Sympathy means literally to suffer with another, or to share his feelings; and this, indeed, "presupposes in the object of it the possibility either of harmony or antagonism of feeling." But affection, in his own words, "gives out," and hence can be bestowed, and is bestowed, by all emotional and refined persons on a variety of "things," that are neither sentient nor even animate; and a poetic soul will even feel sympathy with such a non-sentient thing as a crushed flower, for his imagination uncon- sciously endows it with the requisite feeling. "Things" are of two kinds those fashioned by man, and those produced by Nature. A poem, a symphony, a violin, a novel come under the first head ; a tree, a precious metal, a mountain under the second. An author who has passed through the whole gamut of emotion in writing his book, follows its fate with a paternal pride and an affectionate anxiety as great as if his bodily child had been sent into the world to seek its fortune. Perhaps the story of the German soldier who was carried off his feet by a cannon-ball, and who grasped first his pipe and then his severed leg, is not a legend. For was not his pipe, like a good . friend, associated with all the pleasant hours of his life? An artist certainly can entertain for his favourite instrument an affection almost, if not quite, human in quality. When Ole Bull suffered shipwreck on the Mississippi, he swam ashore, holding his violin high above water, at the risk of his life. And to an amateur who has often called upon his pianoforte to feed his momentary mood with a nocturne or a scherzo, the instrument soon assumes the functions of " a true friend, to whom," as Bacon would say, " you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession." As for " things " not produced by man, who that has ever spent a summer in Switzerland is not quite willing to believe the legend of the Swiss Heimweh the exiled mountaineer's remini- scent longing and affection for his native haunts, which causes him to die of a broken heart, even if wife and children accompany him in his exile ? His feelings are not identical with the aesthetic admiration of a tourist ; for these imply a certain degree of novelty and artistic perception foreign to his mind. They are true impersonal affection for the snowy summits, sluggish glaciers, azure lakes, chasing clouds coyly playing hide-and-seek with the scenery below ; the balmy breezes, and boisterous storm-winds ; the green slopes studded with cows, whose welcome chimes alone IMPERSONAL AFFECTION 13 interrupt the sublime silence of the Alpine summits. For these sounds and scenes are so interwoven with all his experiences, thoughts, and associations, that he cannot live and be happy without them in a foreign land. The attitude of an aesthetically-refined visitor is thus expressed by Byron : "I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me ; and to me high mountains are a feeling " a poetic anticipation of Schopenhauer's doctrine, that for true aesthetic enjoyment it is necessary that the percipient subject be completely merged in the perceived object, the personal man and the impersonal mountain becoming one and indistinguishable. Like Romantic Love, the affection for the grander aspects of Nature appears to be essentially a modern sentiment. The Greeks, as has often been pointed out, had little regard for the impersonal beauties of Nature ; and to make the forests, brooks, and mountains attractive to the popular mind the poets had to people them with personal beauties ; with nymphs and dryads and The latest phase of the modern passion for impersonal nature includes even its most dismal and awe-inspiring aspects, with an ecstatic predilection that would have seemed incomprehensible to an ancient Greek. This phase has been thus beautifully described by Ruskin : " There is a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth, and morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it with other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be analysed by extreme care is found to the full only in five men that I know of in modern times ; namely, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and myself, differing totally and in the entire group of us from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti, and separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakspere, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for ' Rokkes blok ' and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to Shakspere were only Alpine rheum ; and the Via Malas and Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to climb or cross, all this love of impending mountains, coiled thunderclouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulphs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston." Ruskin flatters himself if he still imagines he is the sole living possessor of this feeling. Though there is much hypocrisy and 14 ROMANTIC LOVE AND" PERSONAL BEAUTY guide-book-star-admiration among tourists, there are yet unques- tionably hundreds who enjoy the Via Malas, the ice-oceans and solitary Swiss valleys they visit ; and though their dismal delight may not be so intense as Ruskin's, it is yet sufficient to indicate the growth of a general affection for impersonal nature in all her moods, whether smiling or frowning. To a mind that can thus rise above human associations and utilities, the sublimest thing in the world is the absolute solitude of an Alpine summit. To the ignorant peasant the harsh cow- bell which interrupts this silence is sweet music, because it suggests the abodes of mankind ; and on this primitive stage of aesthetic culture Jeffrey placed himself when he wrote that, " It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits." Inasmuch as mountain solitudes are accessible to only a very small proportion of mankind, the existence of true impersonal affection on a large scale can be more easily demonstrated by recurring for a moment to the floral world. A city belle is apt to look upon flowers merely from a social or military point of view : the more bouquets, the more evidence of admiration and conquest . of male hearts. And the city belle can hardly be blamed for this callousness of feeling ; for bunched flowers have lost as much of their natural charm and grace as butterflies stuck up on rows of pins in a museum. But watch that fair gardener in a suburban cottage or a country seat ; how she recognises every individual plant, every single flower, as a friend for whose comfort she provides with all the affectionate care which as a child she lavished on her doll. If, after a refreshing shower, the flowers hold up their heads and look bright and happy, her face reflects the same feeling ; if a drouth has parched them and dimmed their lustre, she will neglect her own pleasures to bring them water, and derive from this charitable action the same sympathetic pleasure as if they had been so many suffering human beings. And if an early frost kills all her floral friends, her sorrow and despair will find vent in a flood of tears. What is all this but affection true affection though flowers be but "things," and not " sentient beings." Obviously Professor Calderwood erred in his definition of affec- tion; for, as the above analysis shows, when the regard for an impersonal object rises to the fervour of adoring interest, it does not specifically differ from personal affections any more than, for example, maternal love differs from friendship. Unemotional persons, who have had no opportunities to cultivate their love of IMPERSONAL AFFECTION 15 Nature, may feel inclined to doubt this ; but they should remem- ber that just as there is an intellectual eminence (Shakspere, Kant, Wagner) which the ignoraut are too lazy or too weak to climb, so there is an emotional horizon, beyond which those only can see who have taken the trouble to ascend the summit whence a wider scene is unfolded to the view. From one point of view, impersonal affections are even higher and nobler than personal attachments. The evolution of emotions has been but little studied, but so much is apparent that there has been a gradual development from utilitarian attachments to those that are less utilitarian, or less obviously so. Personal affections are too often exclusively selfish and based on material in- terests, as the loss of "friends," which commonly follows the loss of wealth or position, shows. Whereas impersonal attachments are less apt to be interested, selfish, and fickle, since they presuppose more intellectual power, more imagination, more refinement. Again, although it must be admitted that man is the crown and compendium of Nature, uniting in himself most of the excel- lences of the lower kingdoms with others exclusively his own ; yet it cannot be denied, either, that the vast majority of these "crowns" of Nature are so full of flaws in workmanship, and have lost so many of their jewels, that the sight of them is any- thing but exhilarating. Indeed, it is obvious that the average plant and the average animal are, in their way, far superior to the average man, in beauty, health, vitality; natural selection, -which has been arrested in man, having made them so. No wonder, then, that some of the greatest minds have turned away from mankind, and devoted all their thoughts and energies to the world of " things " and ideas. Goethe and other men of genius have often been accused of being cold and unsympathetic, because they refused to shape their conduct so as to please the people with whom they chanced to come into contact. Had they wasted their affections and sympathies on their commonplace admirers and acquaintances, instead of bestowing them on art and science, on the great ideas that teemed in their brains, we should now be without many of those glorious works which could never have been created had not their authors ignored personal relations for the time being, and bestowed all their warmest impersonal affections on their ideas. As compared with men of genius, women have achieved but little that can lay claim to immortal fame; and the principal reason of this is that their affections are apt to be too exclusively personal. A girl will assiduously practice on the piano as long as 16 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY that will assist her in fascinating her suitors. But how many women, outside the ranks of teachers, continue their practice after marriage, from the impersonal love of music itself? Needless to say they have no time ; for every hour devoted to emotional refreshment strengthens the nerves for two hours of extra labour. As regards the love of Nature, woman is, indeed, artificially hampered. She may botanise to some extent, but she cannot, as a rule, indulge in those solitary walks in a virgin forest which alone can establish a deep communion with Nature. If accom- panied by friend, brother, husband, or lover, her thought will inevitably retain a human tinge. No doubt there is something comic in the ardent affection with which a German professor hugs his pet theory regarding the Greek dative, or the origin of honey in flowers, and in the ferocity with which he will defend it against his best friends, if they happen to oppose it. But such complete devotion to abstract crotchets is absolutely necessary to the dis- covery of original ideas : and as women are rarely able or willing to emerge from the haunts of personal emotion, this explains why they have achieved greatness in hardly anything but novel-writing, which is chiefly concerned with personal emotions. PERSONAL AFFECTIONS I. LOVE FOE ANIMALS Over inanimate objects and plants we have this great emotional advantage that we can love them, whereas they cannot love us, nor even one another, though related by marriage, like flowers. Animals, however, can love both us and one another and be loved ; and this establishes a distinction between them and lower beings, and a relationship with us, that warrants us in placing their attachments under the head of Personal Affections. Calderwood is sufficiently liberal to admit that, to a degree animals may be included in our affections. But Adolf Horwicz who has written the most complete, and, on the whole, most satis- factory analysis of the human feelings in existence, denies this. " Love is and remains a personal feeling," he asserts ; it " can only be referred to persons, not to things. The tenderness of American ladies towards dogs and cats is simply a gross emotional caricature." So it is, very often, especially in the case of ladies who neglect their children and make fashionable pets of animals, changing and exchanging them with the fashion. But it is simply absurd to PERSONAL AFFECTION 17 mention this case as a fair instance of human love towards animak How many of the greatest geniuses the world has produced have become famous for their affectionate devotion to their dogs ! " A dog ! " says an old English writer, " is the only thing on this earth that loves you more than he loves himself." And should we be morally inferior to the dog unable to love him in return 1 especially when we remember that " histories," as Pope remarks, " are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends." Visclier, the well-known German writer on aesthetics, goes so far as to admit that whenever he is in society his only wish is, " Oh, if there was only a dog here ! " There is something much nobler and deeper than sarcasm on humanity in Byron's famous epitaph on his dog : "Near this spot Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the Virtues of man without his Vices." I wonder if Horwicz could read the following exquisite prose poem of Turgenieff without feeling ashamed of himself: " We two are sitting in the room : my dog and I. A violent storm is raging without. " The dog sits close before me he gazes straight into my eyes. " And I too gaze straight into his eyes. "It seems as if he wished to say something to me. He is dumb, has no words, does not understand himself; but I under- stand him. " I understand that he and I are at this moment governed by the same feeling, that there is not the slightest difference between us. We are beings of the same kind. In each of us shines and glows the same flame. " Death approaches, flapping his broad, cold, moist wings. . . . " And all is ended. "Who then will establish the difference between the flames which glowed within us two ? "No! We who exchange those glances are not animal and man. " Created alike are the two pairs of eyes that are fixed on each other. " And each of these eye-pairs, that of the man as well as that .of the animal, expresses clearly and distinctly an anxious craving for mutual caresse*" 18 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY It is a vicicras trait of the human character that it soon grows callous to caresses, and that the unmasked expression of tender emotion is regarded as undignified and in " bad form." It is the absence in the dog's mind of this ugly human trait that makes him such a delightful friend and companion. However much you caress and fondle him, he will always be anxious and grateful for the next gentle pat on the head, the next kind look, and will never despwse you for any excess of fond emotion lavished on him. The greatest few in Christian ethics is, that it takes so little account of this capacity of animals for affection, and our duties towards them. The duty of kindness towards animals is indeed, as Mr. Lecky remarks, " the one form of humanity which appears more prominently in the Old Testament than in the New." "Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn," is a precept which deprecates even a very modified form of cruelty to animals. Had this precept been given in a more generalised and comprehensive form, what an incalculable amount of suffering might have been saved the animals that had the misfortune to be bora in Christian countries, as compared with those in tht Oriental countries. According to Mr. Lecky, Plutarch was the first writer who placed tfee duty of kindness to animals on purely moral grounds ; " and he urges that duty with an emphasis and detail to which no adequate parallel can, I believe, be found in the Christian writings for at least 1700 years." Some of the earlier Greek philosophers had based this duty on the doctrine of the transmigration of human souls into animal bodies ; and it is related that Pythagoras used to buy of fishermen the whole contents of their nets, for the pleasure of letting the fish go again. Leonardo da Vinci, from less superstitious motives, used to buy caged birds for the same pur- pose ; and similar traits are told of other men of genius who were sufficiently refined to recognise the evidences of emotion in animals. In our times, finally, we have a man, Mr. Bergh, who devotes his whole life to the object of establishing the personal rights of animals to kind treatment on legal grounds. But, after all, the most influential friend animals have ever possessed was Darwin, who, by establishing their relationship to man on grounds which no one who understands the evidence can question, for ever vindicated for them the privilege of personal affection. The very grammar of our language has been affected by Darwinism. Formerly, it was customary to write " the dog which jumped into the water to save a child." Now we say, " the dog who jumped into the water." In other words, animals are PERSONAL AFFECTION 19 no longer regarded as "things," or animated machines, but aa persons. II. MATERNAL LOVE Within the range of impersonal emotions and affections, as we have seen, women are vastly inferior to men ; but in personal affections partly owing to their almost exclusive devotion to them women are commonly superior to men. Not always, however ; for, as we shall see later on, the prevalent dogma that woman's Romantic Love is deeper and more ardent than man's is an absurd myth. But in conjugal affection which differs widely from Romantic Love woman is generally more sincere, devoted, and self-sacrificing than man. In friendship, too, women are more sincere and ardent than men ; for friendship is an ancient, rather than a modern sentiment; and as women are more con- servative than men, they have preserved this sentiment (at least in early life), while among men it has become nearly extinct : "All friendship is feigning, all loving mere folly." SHAKSPERE. But the one affection in which woman stands infinitely above man is the maternal, compared with which paternal love is ordin- arily a mere shadow. Romantic Love in man and child-love in woman are the two strongest passions which the human mind entertains. In depth and strength these two passions are perhaps alike. In point of antiquity, the maternal feeling has an advantage over the Love-passion ; for, of all personal affections, the maternal was developed first, and the sentiment of Romantic Love last. Personal affections are of two kinds : (1) Those based on blood- relationship maternal, paternal, filial, brotherly, and sisterly love ; (2) Those not based on blood-relationship friendship and Romantic Love. Conjugal affection belongs psychologically to the first class. That of all relationships the one between mother and child is the most intimate is obvious. The child is part and parcel of the mother : her own flesh and blood and soul ; and in loving it the mother practically loves a detached portion of herself thus uniting the force of selfish with that of altruistic emotion. This is the primitive fountain of maternal affection. A second source of it lies in the resemblance of the child to the father, reviving in the mother's memory the romantic days of pre-matrimonial Love. It must be an unending source of interest in a mother's mind to note which of the child's traits are derived from her, which from the 20 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY father. If she loves herself, and loves her husband, the child that unites the traits of both must be doubly dear to her. The fact that the child is inseparably associated with all the mother's joys and sorrows, from the wedding-day to death, constitutes a third source of her attachment ; and a fourth is the social regard and honour which an energetic and gifted son, or a beautiful and accom- plished daughter, may reflect on her. The mother herself is of course unconscious of the complex nature of her feeling and its origin ; especially in the first days, when the new feeling dawns upon her like a revelation. As in the case of budding Love, the feeling is at first less individual than generic less the affection of this particular mother for this par- ticular child than the bursting out of the general feeling of mother- hood, inherited by her in common with all women. Natural selection helps us to explain how this general feeling of motherhood was developed. As among animals, so among our savage and semi-civilised ancestors, those mothers who fondly cared for their infants naturally succeeded in rearing a larger and more vigorous progeny than those mothers who neglected their children. And through hereditary transmission this instinct gradually acquired, that marvellous intensity and power which we now admire. The sublime and almost terrible height to which this emotion can rise is most realistically depicted in Rubens's famous picture in Munich, representing the murder of the children at Bethlehem ; in which mothers grasp the naked daggers, and frantically expose their breasts to receive the blows intended for their little ones. Throughout the animal kingdom, including mankind, the female is less pugnacious than the male, less provided with means of defence, and hence more gentle and timid ; yet in the moment of peril the mother's affection absolutely annihilates fear, and makes her face danger and death with a courage, supernatural strength, and en- durance, rarely equalled by man, with all his weapons and natural consciousness of superior muscle. It is in this blind, impetuous, passionate willingness of self- sacrifice that maternal affection most closely resembles the passion of Romantic Love. HI. PATERNAL LOVE For paternal affection Natural Selection has done much less than for maternal ; and it is easy to understand why. For, useful as the father's assistance is in securing various advantages to the growing child, yet even if he should cruelly abandon it altogether, the maternal love would still remain interposed to save and rear it. PERSONAL AFFECTION 21 Nor is it in the human race alone that paternal is weaker than maternal love. Among mammals, as Horwicz remarks, we even come across a Herr Papa occasionally who shows a great inclination to dine on his progeny. And how irregularly the paternal sometimes even the maternal instinct is displayed among savages is graphi- cally shown by this group of cases collected by Herbert Spencer : " As among brutes the philoprogenitive instinct is occasionally suppressed by the desire to kill, and even devour, their young ones ; so among primitive men this instinct is now and again over- ridden by impulses temporarily excited. Thus, though attached to their offspring, Australian mothers, when in danger, will some- times desert them; and if we 'may believe Angas, men have been known to bait their hooks with the flesh of boys they have killed. Thus, notwithstanding their marked parental affection, Fuegians sell their children for slaves ; thus, among the Chonos Indians, a father, though doting on his boy, will kill him in a fit of auger for an accidental offence. Everywhere among the lower race? \ve meet with like incongruities. Falkner, while describing the paternal feelings of Patagonians as very strong, says they often pawn and sell their wives and little ones to the Spaniards for brandy. Speaking of the children of the Sound Indians, Bancroft says they 'sell or gamble them away.' According to Simpson, the Pi-Edes * barter their children to the Utes proper for a few trinkets or bits of clothing.' And of the Maeusi, Schomburgk writes, 'the price of a child is the same as an Indian asks for his dog.' This seemingly heartless conduct to children often arises from the diffi- culty experienced in rearing them." Some light is thrown on the genesis and composition of parental affection by the three reasons named by Spencer, why among savages and semi-civilised peoples in general sons were much more appreciated than daughters. While daughters were little more than an encumbrance to the parents, useless before puberty, and lost to them after marriage, the sons could make themselves useful in warding off the enemy, in avenging personal injuries, and in per- forming the funeral rites for the benefit of departed ancestors. In a higher stage of civilisation it is probable that utilitarian considerations of a somewhat different kind still formed a principal ingredient in parental love. A son was valued as an assistant in workshop or field, a daughter as a domestic drudge. Feelings of a tenderer nature were of course sometimes present, but that they were not general is shown by the fact, attested by numerous his- toric examples, that the aim of our paternal ancestors in centuries past was to make their children fear rather than love them. 22 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY A slight element of fear is indeed necessary for the maintenance of filial respect and discipline ; but our forefathers were too prone to sacrifice their tender feelings of sympathy with their offspring to the gratification of parental authority, for the obvious reason that the latter feeling was stronger than the former. The fre- quency with which daughters especially were forced to sacrifice their personal preferences in marriage to the ambitions and whims of their father, affords the most striking instance of the former embryonic state of parental affection. In modern parental love Pride is perhaps the most conspicuous trait. This Pride has two aspects one comic, one serious. Nothing is more amusing than the suddenness with which the " pride of authorship " converts a bachelor's well-known horror of babies into the young father's fantastic worship. Yet though he feels "like a little tin god on wheels/' he recognises the superior rank of the young prince, spoils his best trousers in kneeling before him, allows him to pull his moustache and whiskers, and, indeed, shows a disposition towards self-sacrifice almost worthy of a lover. The serious side of the matter reveals one of the greatest dif- ferences between paternal and maternal love. A mother's love is largely influenced by pity; hence she is very apt to lavish her fondest caresses on that child which happens to be imperfect in some way say a cripple and therefore unhappy. The father on the other hand, will show most favour to his handsomest daughter, his most talented son ; and nothing will so swell a father's heart and cause it to overflow with affection as the news of some great distinction acquired by this son. IV. FILIAL LOVE Mr. Spencer is doubtless right in asserting that of all family affections filial love is the least developed ; and in tracing this weakness especially to the parental harshness and disposition to inspire excessive fear just referred to. In Germany the example of the Prussian king who so unmercifully treated his children was extensively imitated. The condition in France is indicated by the words of Chateaubriand : " My mother, my sister, and myself, transformed into statues by my father's presence, only recover ourselves after he leaves the room ;" and in England, in the fifteenth century, says Wright, " Young ladies, even of great families, were brought up not only strictly, but even tyrannically." Arid ever two centuries Inter " children stood or k?ieH in trending PERSONAL AFFECTION 23 silence in the presence of their fathers and mothers, and might not sit without permission." Among animals filial affection can scarcely be said to exist, except as a very utilitarian craving for protection and sustenance. Among primitive men it is a common practice to abandon aged parents to their fate. The parents do not resent this treatment ; and of the Nascopies Heriot even says that the aged father " usually employed as his executioner the son who is most dear to him." Nor are cases of heartless neglect at all uncommon even among modern civilised communities. But the gradual change of fathers " from masters into friends " has tended to multiply and intensify filial love at the same rate as paternal; and the advance of moral refinement will tend to make the lot of aged parents more and more pleasant, not only because the duty of gratitude for favours received will be more vividly realised and enforced by example, but because the cultivation of the imagina- tion intensifies sympathy, thus making it impossible for a son or daughter to be happy while they know their parents to be un- happy. Our feelings are curiously complicated and subtly interwoven. Parents feel a natural pride in their children. The best way therefore to repay them for all their troubles is to act in such a way as to justify and intensify that pride. On the other hand, the thought that the parental pride is gratified also gratifies filial vanity, and proves an additional incentive to ambitious effort. V. BROTHERLY AND SISTERLY LOVE Young people of both sexes more frequently make confidants and " bosom friends " of their playmates and classmates than of their brothers and sisters. Why is this so ? Novelty perhaps has something to do with it. The domestic experiences and emotions of two brothers or sisters are apt to be so much alike as to become monotonous; whereas a member of another family may initiate them into a fresh and fascinating sphere of emotion and a novel way of looking at things. Moreover, friendship is very capricious in its choice ; and as the number of brothers and sisters is limited, the selection is apt to be made in the wider field outside the domestic circle. Again, it is a peculiarity of human nature to appear in great neglige at home, and to regard the nearest relatives as the best lightning-rods for disagreeable moods ; and this does not tend to deepen the love of brothers and sisters. It may be doubted whether this form of affection exists among 24 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY animals or among primitive men; and even among civilised peoples the bond is but a weak one, except in the most refined families. Though brothers feel bound to protect their sisters, they reserve most of their gallantry for some one else's sister; and though a sister will feel proud if her brother is one of a victorious crew, her heart will beat twice as fast if it is her lover instead of her brother. The English language has not even a collective word for the love of brothers and sisters; and even the partial terms, "sisterly love" and " brotherly love," have more of an ecclesiastic than a domestic flavour. The German language has a collective word and a big one too, Geschivisterliebe; but it would perhaps be misleading to infer from its existence and size that this species of family love is more developed in Germany than in England. The German's advantage appears to be philological merely, and not sociological. He is less of a traveller and colonist than the Englishman, who is very often separated from his brothers and sisters for years. Yet this sometimes is rather a gain than a loss; for it destroys that excessive familiarity which, as just noted, makes friendship rarer among members of the same hearth than between individuals of different families. To the wider circles of blood-relationship up to " forty-second cousins " the Germans pay much more regard than the English ; and the French perhaps go a step beyond the Germans. For in France each family, with its ramifications, forms a sort of clique into which an outsider can rarely enter. ^Needless to say that this forms a great impediment to Love's free choice. VI. FRIENDSHIP If we now turn to the two remaining species of personal affec- tion Friendship and Love the emotional scenery undergoes a great change. In all the cases so far considered, blood-relationship was a source of affection; whereas in friendship it is commonly a disadvantage, and in Romantic Love it is positively abhorred, ex- cept in the more remote degree?. Some savage tribes, it is true, allow, or even prescribe, marriages between brother and sister especially a younger sister; and cases occur of marriages between father and daughter, mother and son. But civilised society guided by religious precepts, and possibly also by a vague instinc- tive recognition of the advantages of cross-fertilisation condemns such unions as hideous crimes; and the mediaeval theologians, in their extreme zeal, forbade all marriages within the seventh degree of relationship. PERSONAL AFFECTION 25 In the case of friendship the objection to blood-relationship is not founded on a social or religious precept; but it exists all the same, as already noted. Perhaps Jean Paul's maxim that friends may have everything in common except their room accounts for its existence. Brothers and sisters are commonly too much alike in their thoughts and tastes to become friends, in the special sense of the word. Hence it is that there is apt to be a deeper attachment between those brothers and sisters who have frequently been separated by school-terms than among those who are always together. For in friendship, as in love, a short absence is advan- tageous. Friendship is partly an outgrowth of the social instinct and partly a result of special associations, habit, community of interests and tastes. As a boy I had an opportunity to make some interest- ing observations on friendship among animals, showing that it differed in degree only, and not in kind or origin, from that of man. Among the animals we kept at our country-house were a dog, a pet sheep, and some pigs. The dog showed his confidence in the sheep's amiable forbearance by abandoning his cold kennel on winter nights and seeking warmer quarters by the side of his woolly neighbour. For the pigs his friendly regards were showfc in a less utilitarian manner, by driving away, unbidden and un- taught, any swinish tramps that appeared, uninvited, to share their meals. But the most peculiar relations existed between the sheep and the pigs. In the absence of any other means of satisfying its gregarious or social instincts, the sheep joined the pigs every morning in their foraging expeditions in the woods, returning with them in the evening. And, what was still more remarkable, when after a time a dozen sheep were added to our stock of animals, the old pet remained faithful to the pigs, and paid no attention what- ever to the newcomers. Here the friendly attachment, based on habitual association and the memory of mutual pleasures of grazing, was strong enough to overcome the inherited fellow-feeling for members of its own species. Between this instance and those ordinary cases of companion- ship among men which are called friendship, there is hardly any difference. In the more intimate cases of special friendship the craving for companionship is strengthened by a community of thoughts and emotions. Bacon gives us in a nut-shell three of the ingredients of friendship which are not to be found in the primitive form just considered. The first is this, that each friend becomes a sort of secular confessor, to whom the other may confide all his hopes and fears, joys and sorrows \ the second is this, that " a 26 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY friend's wits and understanding do clarify and break up in thr wait till he has an assured income. If money-marriages are 200 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY ever justifiable, they are in such cases; and rich girls should make it the one object of life to capture a man of Genius, so as to give him leisure for immortal work. It appears, indeed, as if a sort cf Conjugal Pride of this description were becoming fashionable ; for one hears every month of some author or artist marrying an heiress. This is certainly the easiest way for a woman to become immortal ; and what is a coquette's gratified ephemeral vanity, compared with the proud consciousness of passing down to posterity linked with an immortal name, and of having helped to make that name im- mortal by removing the necessity for bread-winning drudgery ! Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the number of persons able to read a work of genius at sight, as it were, is growing larger every year. Great men do not have to wait for recognition so Ipng as formerly, and this enables them to neglect ephemeral drudgery in favour of creative work. As there has been an unparalleled unfolding and increase in feminine charms, both of body and mind, within the last half- century, it is not too optimistic to hope that the other source of domestic difficulties among men of genius the extreme difficulty of finding a congenial companion will also be removed, in course of time. Men of genius, as Moore remarks, have such rich resources of thinking within themselves, that "the society of those less gifted than themselves becomes often a restraint and burden to which not all the charms of friendship or even love can reconcile them." To be completely happy a Genius should accordingly have a wife as remarkable among women for the womanly qualities of receptivity, grace, and sympathy, as he is among men for the manly quality of creative energy. Yet if it is so difficult for an ordinary man to meet his ordinary Juliet, how much more so will it ever be for an extraordinary man to find an extraordinary Juliet ! Thanks to their passion for Beauty, men of Genius are too prone to follow the impulse of the moment and marry a pretty doll, in the hope of being able to educate her into an attractive companion. Unluckily it rarely happens that the minds of these beauties are " wax to receive and marble to retain." Pretty girls are commonly lazy spoiled by the thought that their beauty atones for everything, and regardless of the future when this apology for indolence will have lost its persuasiveness. Among the objections to the celibacy of Genius, the strongest is supplied by the laws of heredity the desirability of having their superior mental qualities often associated with corresponding physical beauty transmitted to the next generation. Genius, it is true, depends on so many fortuitous circumstances that cases of GENIUS AND LOVE 201 direct transmission from father to son are rare enough ; and Mr. Gallon's researches show that " the ablest child of one gifted pah- is not likely to be as gifted as the ablest of all the children of very many mediocre pairs ;" and that " the more exceptional the gift, the more exceptional will be the good fortune of a parent who has a son who equals, and still more if he has a son who overpasses him." Nevertheless, it remains true that "the children of a gifted pair are much more likely to be gifted than the children of a mediocre pair." Just as a professor's son is born with a brain naturally more plastic and receptive than that of a young savage or peasant, so the children of a Genius who has not shattered his health by overwork or dissipation are likely to be of a mental calibre superior to that of an ordinary professor's son. So that it is the duty of a man of genius to get married even at a sacrifice of personal happiness provided that sacrifice is not so great as to interfere with his intellectual duties. GENIUS AND LOVE If we take the word Genius in the Kantian, imaginative, or aesthetic sense, it may be said that all Geniuses are amorous; and that the degree of their greatness may as a rule be measured by their susceptibility to feminine charms. The most poetic part of the Scriptures is the Song of Solomon with its glowing pictures of feminine charms. Homer, though he lived long before the age of Romantic Love, spent his life in describing the mischief caused by Helen's beauty. Among the Roman poets the most original was also the most amorous. As Professor Sellar remarks of Ovid, " In the most creative periods of English literature he seems to have been more read than any other ancient poet, not even excepting Virgil ; and it was on the most creative minds, such as those of Marlowe, Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, and Dryden, that he acted most powerfully . . . and although the spirit of antiquity is better understood now than it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, yet in the capacity of appreciating works of brilliant fancy we can claim no superiority over the centuries which produced Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton, nor over those which produced the great Italian, French, and Flemish painters," to whom Ovul supplied such abundant material Coming to more recent times, we have seen that Dante, the first modern poet, was also the first modern lover, rarely if ever surpassed in rapturous adoration. How the greatest of the Spanish 202 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY bards was influenced by feminine beauty may be inferred from the glowing descriptions of it and its influence in Don Quixote ; and as for Shakspere, even had he not written Romeo and Juliet, his early poems alone would prove him to have been in his youth every inch a lover ; for no one, not even with Shakspere's imagination, could have painted such unique feelings with his realistic and infallible touch, unless he had felt them more than once and had them indelibly branded on his heart's memory. In the galaxy of German poets Goethe ranks first, owing to his manysidedness. Yet he lacked the very highest of literary gifts wit ; and in this respect as well as through his deeper insight into Modern Love, Heine must be rated higher than Goethe. Heine's personal loves are but thinly covered over by the clear amber of his lyrics, in which they are imbedded. Goethe's loves have become proverbial for their number Katchen, Friederike, Lili, Charlotte, Christiane, etc. Schiller, Wieland, Biirger, Bodenstedt, and the lesser lights might all have appended a D.L., or Doctor of Love, to their names. Shelley, Mr. Hamilton tells us, "had an irresistible natural tendency to fall in love" ; and Byron, speaking of one of his loves, says, " I had and have been attached fifty times since, yet I recol- lect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness," etc. And in the next chapter on " Genius in Love," we shall meet with numerous similar cases of English, German, and French men of genius constantly in Love. To account for this amorous propensity of Genius is easy enough. Genius means creative power allied with a taste for the Beautiful. This taste may be gratified by the contemplation of the beauties of Nature the creative power by reproducing them on canvas or manuscript. But Nature's masterpiece is lovely woman, who not only yields the highest gratification of artistic taste, but inspires Love : and what is Love but a creative impulse a desire to link one's name and personality, in future generations, with this embodi- ment of consummate human beauty ? Shakspere's " Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, - And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind," suggests another reason why men of Genius are eternally involved in Love-affairs. The lover becomes infatuated not with the girl he sees but with the girl he imagines, using her features ?s a mere sketch to be filled up ad libitum GENIUS AND LOVE 20 i " Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy ; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear !" To imagine a feeling is to entertain it; for an imagined im- pression revives the same cerebral processes that were aroused by the original sense impression. In ordinary minds the remembered image of a girl's lovely features, the echo of her sweet voice, are much fainter than the original sight and sound; whereas the imagination of genius paints a face and recalls a voice as vividly as if they were present : so that here to think of Love is to be in Love pro tempore. Besides his refined taste and vivid imagination which retouches every defective negative it is the natural depth of his emotions that urges a Genius to fall in Love with every lovely woman. Passions are like dogs : the big ones need more food than the little ones. A peasant cannot experience the subtle and multitudinous emotions that fill the heart of an artist, a statesman, a scientific discoverer ; much less the complex group of ethereal emotions that make up Romantic Love. The higher we rise in the intellectual scale, the more varied, complex, and deep are the emotional groups which delight and torment the soul. As Genius represents the climax of intellectual power, Love the climax of emotional intensity, is it wonderful that there should be an affinity between the two ^ The higher a mountain peak the more does it attract every passing cloud and clasp it to its breast hoping vainly hoping to warm a heart chilled by its isolation above the rest of the world. As men of genius are more prone to love than common sluggish minds, it is a lucky fact, for the future growth of Romantic Love, that Genius grows more and more abundant pace the laudatores temporis acti who ignorantly compare the number of living geniuses with all those that have ever been as if they had all lived at one epoch. It may even be granted that there have been epochs that had more geniuses than we have at present; but of genius there is more to-day than ever in the world's history. We see almost daily in ephemeral periodicals lines and epigrams worthy of the highest genius, written by men whose names perhaps will never be known. Shaksperep, indeed, will always tower Mont Blanc-like over all other peaks ; but if summits of the second magnitude seem less imposing to-day than formerly, it is because the general level of creativeness has been raised a few thousand feet. The mountains *hat enclose the Engadiue valley, though 10,000 to 12,000 feet in 204 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY height, seem only half as high, because the valley from which you see them lies at an altitude of 6000 feet. GENIUS IN LOVE Were there not a natural affinity between Genius and Love, authors and artists would cultivate Love as the source of their deepest inspiration. For if it makes a temporary poet of every peasant, what must be its effect in exalting the poet's inborn power ! "When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind ;" Love " Which awakes the sleepy vigour of the soul ; " and first " Softened the fierce, and made the coward bold." DEYDEN. " For indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man." TENNYSON. The Love of men of Genius, as distinguished from that of ordinary mortals, is characterised by five traits Precocity, Ex- travagant Ardour, Fickleness, Multiplicity, and Fictitiousness which must be briefly considered in succession. I. PBECOCITY Turgenieff makes the narrator of one of his novelettes speak of his first Love as having been experienced at the age of six. That this is not a poetic license is abundantly proved by historic facts. " Dante, we know, was but nine years old," says Moore, " when, at a May-day festival, he saw and fell in love with Beatrice; and Alfieri, who was himself a precocious lover, considers such early sensibility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts. . . . Canova used to say that he perfectly well remembered having been in love when but five years old." Byron's first Love was at the age of eight. Concerning this he wrote at twenty-five : " How the deuce did all this occur so early ? Where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards ; and yet my misery, my love for that girl [Mary Duff] were so violent that I sometimes wonder if I have ever been GENIUS IN LOVE 205 really attached since.' Of his second Love-affair Byron says : "My first dash into poetry was as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker, one of the mo&t beautiful of evanescent beings. I have long forgotten the verses, but it would be difficult for me to forget her her dark eyes [Byron had a passion for black eyes] her long eyelashes her completely Greek cast of face and figure. I was then about twelve she rather older, perhaps a year. She died about a year or two afterwards." Burns was somewhat older when Love and poetry were born in his soul simultaneously : " You know our country custom," he writes, " of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of the harvest. In my fifteenth summer my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. Mv scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language, but you know the Scottish idiom. She was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys here below." Heine's first boyish love appears to have been a girl who died as a child, and is alluded to in his Pictures of Travel as the " little Veronica." His second love was a most extraordinary case of Love at Sight. It was at a school examination, Kobert Proelsz relates, " and Harry was just declaiming Schiller's Taucher, when the lovely girl entered the room by the side of her father, who was one of the inspectors. The boy stuttered, gazed with- large eyes on the beautiful figure, mechanically repeated the verse he had just recited * And the King his lovely daughter beckoned' and was unable to proceed. In vain the teacher prompted him, the poor fellow's senses failed him, and he fell on the floor in a swoon." Of another early visitation of sudden Love he gives an account in his posthumous memoirs. The girl on this occasion was the red-haired Sefchen, the sheriffs daughter, who, when she was only eight years old, had witnessed the mysterious burial of her grand- father's sword, which had done its duty a hundred times, and which some years later her aunt had dug out and secreted in the garret " One day, when we were alone, I begged Sefchen to show me that curiosity. She willingly complied, went into the room, and soon came out with an enormous sword, which she swung vigorously despite her weak arms, while with a roguish, threatening tone she sang 206 BOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY " 'Will you kiss the naked sword Which the Lord has given us ? * I replied in the same tone, * I will not kiss the naked sword, I will kiss the red-haired Sefchen ; ' and as she could not defend herself, for fear of hurting me with the fatal steel, she had to let me boldly put my arms round her slender waist and kiss her defiant lips." Berlioz had his first passion at twelve, Rousseau at eleven. "When I saw Mile. Goton," writes Rousseau, "I could see nothing else, all my senses were in confusion. ... In her presence I was agitated, and trembled. ... If Mile. Goton had ordered me to throw myself into the fire, I believe I would have obeyed her instantly." As old age is in many respects a second childhood, it seems natural that men of genius should appear "precocious" in this belated sense too. The case of Berlioz is one of the most extra- ordinary on record. The girl who was his first love at twelve he eaw again at sixty-one : " I recognised the divine stateliness of her step ; but, oh heavens ! how changed she was ! her complexion faded, her hair gray. And yet at the sight of her my heart did not feel one moment's indecision ; my whole soul went out to its idol, as though she were still in her dazzling loveliness. . . . Balzac, nay, Shakspere himself, the great painter of the passions, never dreamt of such a thing." And in a letter to her he writes, " I have loved you, I still love you, I shall always love you. And yet I am sixty-one years of age. ... Oh, madame, madame, I have but one aim left in the world that of obtaining your affection." Another composer who had a passion at sixty was " Papa " Haydn poor Haydn, whose wife led him such a terrible life, and used his manuscripts for curl-papers. Concerning her he wrote, " She is always in a bad temper, and does not care whether I am a shoemaker or an artist." Indeed, she had never been his true Love, but was only taken in lieu of her younger sister, whom Haydn adored, but who refused him and became a nun. At sixty, however, in London, he had the fortune, or misfortune, to fall in Love again, with a widow named Schrolter, concerning whom he wrote, "She was a very attractive woman, and still handsome, though over sixty ; and had I been free I should certainly have married her." Goethe, in his old days, fell in Love with Minna Herzlieb, a bookseller's daughter. " In the sonnets addressed to her," says Lewes, " and in the novel of Elective Affinities, may be read the fervour of his passion, and the strength with which he resisted. 1 ' GENIUS IN LOVE 207 Rousseau's last Love forms one of the most romantic episodes in his life, concerning which nothing was known until a few years ago when the French historian, R. Chantslauze, discovered in a bookstall the MS. of a letter by Kousseau to Lady Ceclle Hobart, dated 1770, when Rousseau was almost sixty years of age. He appears to have met this lady in England at the time when he was writing his Confessions. She had first won his affection by her admiration of his works ; and in course of his long and hyper- sentimental letter he remarks, " Why is it that I have never felt any other true love but that for the products of my own fancy 1 Wherein lies the reason, Cecile 1 In these fancied beings them- selves ; they made me dissatisfied with everything else. For forty years I have carried in my mind the image of her I adore. I love her with a constancy, an ecstasy inexpressible. ... I had no hope of ever meeting her, had given up the eager search for her, when you appeared before me. It was folly, infatuation, if you like, that made me surrender myself for a moment to the magic of your sight ; but I could not but say to myself : There she is ! No other woman ever inspired that thought in me. And stranger still is it that I could hear you speak without changing my opinion. What the ideal of iny heart thought, you spoke it to my ears." n. ARDOUB If Bacon did not write the plays of Shakspere, it was the biggest mistake of his life. Second among his mistakes must rank the opinion expressed in the following sentence : " You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or modern), there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love." If the advocates of the Baconian theory had as much sense of humour as they stimulate in other people, they would see that such a sentence and there are others like it in Bacon could not by any possibility have been penned by the author of As You Like It, Venus and Adonis^ or Romeo and Juliet. Dante was by no means the only " great and worthy person " before Bacon's day who had been " transported to the mad degree of love"; and since Bacon's day the word Genius has become almost synonymous with the capacity for lovers' madness. Yet there is a grain of truth in Bacon's sentence as it stands. He evidently had in mind chiefly the ancient "great and worthy persons " ; and of these, as we have seen, but one or two had even a vague presentiment of what was to be some day the moral lever 208 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY of the universe. Bacon probably had a dim perception of the fact that the ancients knew nothing of passionate Love, of the imagina- tive type ; but he did not quite succeed in grasping the idea. As regards Modern Genius, Bacon's assertion is so far from the truth, that it is quite safe to reverse it and say that it is doubtful whether any one but a man of genius is capable of that intense ardour of feeling which marks the climax of Love ; doubtful whether even Romeo at his age could have felt a passion such as Shakspere's glowing imagination painted. Love is based, not on what a man sees with his eyes, but on the mental image retouched by the imagination \ and a man of genius, being a virtuoso of the imagination, can adorn his ideal of love with ornaments unknown to ordinary mortals ; whence it follows that the passion inspired by his more vivid and beautiful image must be more intense than the passion inspired by less perfect visions in common, sluggish brains. And since artistic thought can no more crystallise into verse or epigram without the warm glow of emotion than a flower can grow into a thing of beauty without its daily bath of warm sunshine, it is fortunate that Genius implies a natural suscepti- bility to the aesthetic passion of Love. Fortunate also for the prospects of Romantic Love is the fact that Genius is king in its realms. Had not the sacred mysteries of Love been revealed to the world in the glowing language of poetry, it would probably have remained a thing unknown to ordinary mortals for centuries to come ; even as the beauties of Nature, for which common minds have no eyes, would have remained undetected, had not the poets and artists disclosed the bonds that connect them with human sympathies. As all the quotations from poets given in this chapter (and in that on Hyperbole) practically bear witness to the exceptional ardour of Love in men of genius, only two cases need be cited as specimens those of Burns and Heine. Gilbert Burns, the brother of the poet, writes that the latter " was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver. The symptoms of his passion were often such as nearly to equal those of the celebrated Sappho. I never, indeed, knew that he ' fainted, sunk, and died away ' ; but the agitations of his mind and body exceeded anything of the kind I ever knew in real life." Heine has given evidence in his letters as well as his poems that few even of his equals have ever felt the power of love so profoundly. It is well to emphasise this fact ; for there are not a few who fancy that, like Petrarch, Heine embodied in his songs not the real feelings of his heart but fictitious emotions depicted GENIUS IN LOVE 209 to gratify poetic ambition. He did no such thing. His Love- poetry is the echo of real passion, of his first and only true Love, which cast a shadow over his whole life, and goaded him into bitter reflections more than a decade after its sad ending. He loved his cousin Molly, and writes to a friend, after an absence from home : " Rejoice with me ! rejoice with me ! in four weeks I shall see Molly. With her my muse will also return." The muse did return, but in a different way from that which he had anticipated ; with a smile in her face of cynicism, mockery, melancholy, which never again left her. " She loves me not ! " he writes, in 1816. "Softly, dear Christian, pronounce that last word softly. In the first words lies the eternal living heaven, but in the last lies eternal living hell. If you could only see your friend's countenance, how pale he looks, how bewildered, how insane, your righteous indignation at my long silence would vanish soon ; better still were it if you could have one glance at my soul then would you really learn to love me." " I have seen her again " ' The devil take my soul, My body be the sheriff's, Yet I for me alone Select the loveliest woman.' Hui 1 do you not shudder, Christian 'I Well may you shudder even as I do. Burn the letter, the Lord have mercy on my soul. I did not write these words. There on my chair sits a pale man ; he wrote them. And this because it is midnight. Oh heavens ! Madness cannot sin ! " "There, there, do not breathe so heavily, there I have just built a lovely card-house, and on the top of it I stand and hold her in my arms ! . . . But indeed you can hardly fancy, dear Christian, how delightful, how lovely my ruin appears. Far from her, to carry burning desires in my heart for years, is torture infernal ; but to be near her and yet oft sigh in vain, whole end- less weeks, for my only delight, the sight of her and and ! ! ! Christian ! that is enough to make the purest, most pious soul flare up in wild, delirious ungodliness ! " And the object of this passion, who might have saved a poet's soul and changed him from a negative ferment into a positive agent of culture ? She was the daughter of a millionaire, who, of course, in German fashion, had to marry into another rich family. To marry a poor poet would have been deemed a terrible mesalli- ance. Yet was he not a millionaire too of ideas, as she was in beauty, her father in money 1 But that is reasoning a la Millen- nium. 210 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY "What a comedy it will be to future generations, entirely emancipated from mediaeval puerilities, to read that two such Kings in the realm of Genius as Schubert and Beethoven, could not marry their true loves on account of differences in social position rank and money ! We are accustomed to look down on China and Chinese culture. But China anticipated Europe by several centuries in the discovery of gunpowder ; and there is another thing in which that country is centuries ahead of Europe. " In China there is no aristocracy of birth or money. The aristocracy which here ranks socially above the other classes is solely and only that of the Intellect." III. FICKLENESS Love is a tissue of paradoxes. The very ardour of their passion inclines men of genius to fickleness. " Love me little love me long " is a short way of saying that whereas a blazing, roaring fire consumes itself in an hour, the quiet, glowing coals covered with ashes will outlast the night. Lamartine's " heureuse la beauts' que le poete adore " happy the beauty whom the poet adores may be endorsed by a maiden who is willing to become the secondary wife of a poetic polygamist already wedded to a muse, for the sake of having it said in his biography that she inspired him with some of his prettiest con- ceits "Cynthia, facundi carmen juvenile Properti, Accepit famam nee minus ilia dedit," as Martial says of a Roman beauty. Others will hesitate on reading the following, from London Society : " Lord Byron has said that nothing can inflict greater torture upon a woman than the mere fact of loving a poet ; and though Lamartine calls it a glory to be the object of immortal songs, we half-suspect that the English bard is right, and that it would be impossible to describe the moral sufferings of those frail beings who seem to be the mere toys of an houi'. The world may be indebted to them for some great poem which their love has had the power to inspire, but they themselves were probably no more thought of by the poet than the daisy he might tread on as he passed by." Here is a case in point: " Swift," says Byron, "when neither young nor handsome, nor rich nor even amiable, inspired two of the most extraordinary passions on record Vanessa's and Stella's. ... He requited them bitterly, for he seems to have broken the GENIUS IN LOVE 211 heart of the one and worn out that of the other ; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants." It would be unjust, however, in all cases to trace poetic fickle- ness to heartless or deliberate cruelty. May not the poet and the artist be regarded as martyrs to art and science students of beauty, obliged to take a purely aesthetic, disinterested interest in feminine charms as they do in a picture or a land-cnpe without any desire of exclusive possession ] They flirt, apparently, not to break hearts, but merely to educate their sense of beauty. For is not a woman's face the compendium of all beauty in the world 1 and a woman's eyes, expressing incipient Love, are they not so exquisitely beautiful that an epicure of Love could for ever be contented with that expression alone, feeling that marriage, which might alter it, if ever so little, would be a betise ? Perhaps some similar thought was in Heine's mind when he wrote his famous " Du hist wie eine Blume So hold und schon und rein ; Ich schau' dich an, und Wehmuth Schleicht mir ins Herz Mnein. "Mir ist, als ob ich die Hande Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte So rein und schou und hold." In quite a different kind of a poem Heine bluntly announces to his " Queen Mary IV." his declaration of independence, and informs her that not a few who ruled before her have been unceremoniously deposed " Manche die vor dir regierte Wurde schmahlich abgesetzt." And in his narrative of the sheriff's daughter he says, " I shall not describe my love for Josepha in detail. This, however, I will con- fess, that it was after all only a prelude to the great tragedies of my riper years. Thus does Romeo become infatuated with Rosa- line before he finds his Juliet." Byron's confession, in speaking of an early love, that he had been "attached fifty times since" has been referred to already; and although Byron loved to exaggerate his foibles, his record in this case does not belie his words. Of ^urns, Principal Shairp writes that " There was not a comely girl in Tarbolton on whom he did not compose a song, and then he made one which included them all." Burns himself confesses, " In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so often on fire that it has been vitrified." 212 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY And Washington Irving remarks on Goldsmith's first love as " a passion of that transient kind which grows up in idleness and exhales itself in poetry." Of this kind were two passions of Lamb, concerning which a biographer says, "A youthful passion, which lasted only a few months, and which he afterwards attempted to regard lightly as a folly past, inspired a few sonnets of very delicate feeling and exquisite music." And of his second flame, " His stay at Penton- ville is remarkable for the fugitive passion conceived by Lamb for a young Quakeress named Hester Savory, which he has enshrined and immortalised in the little poem of Hester" Goethe has the reputation of having been of all famous lovers the most fickle. Like Byron, Goethe appears to have endeavoured to make himself appear more frivolous than he was. His amorous Roman Elegies, which have given so much offence, were in reality written in Thuringia, after his return from Italy; and their heroine was no one but the girl who subsequently became his wife. It remained for a Scotchman to write the best apology for Goethe's love-affairs. " To Goethe," says Professor Blackie, " the sight of any beautiful object was like delicate music to the ear of a cunning musician ; he was carried away by it, and floated in its element joyously, as a swallow in the summer air., or a sea-mew on the buoyant wave. Hence the rich story of Goethe's loves, with which scandal, of course, and prudery have made their market, but which, when looked into carefully, were just as much part of his genius as Faust or Iphigenia a part, indeed, without which neither Faust nor Iphigenia could have been written. . . . Let no one, therefore, take offence when I say that Goethe was always falling in love, and that I consider this a great virtue in his character." One more case : " Beethoven constantly had his love-affairs," says Wegeler. His first love was a Cologne beauty, who coquetted with him and another man till both discovered she was engaged to a third! Several times Beethoven made up his mind to marry; he made two definite proposals, both of which were refused. One fatal objection was his habit of falling in love with women above him in " rank." " It is a frightful thing," he once wrote, " to make the acquaintance of such a sweet creature and to lose her immediately; and nothing is more insupportable than thus to have to confess one's own foolishness." One of his flames, an opera einger, gave as a reason why she refused him that he was " so ugly and half-cracked!" GENIUS IN LOVE IV. MULTIPLICITY Perhaps the most unique trait in the love of men of genius is the apparent occasional absence of the element of Monopoly. It was Ovid who first discussed the question whether a man could love two women at once. His friend Gracinus denied the possi- bility of such a thing ; but in one of his Elegies Ovid refutes him by citing his own case of a double simultaneous infatuation. He hesitates which of the two to choose, chides Venus for torturing him with double love for adding leaves to the trees, stars to the heavens, water to the ocean. Of modern authors not a few appear to have followed in Ovid's footsteps. We have seen how madly Heine was in love for a long time with his cousin Amalie. Yet, as one of his bio- graphers, Robert Proelsz, remarks, this ardent though hopeless infatuation saved him neither at Hamburg nor at Bonn, nor at Hanover or Berlin, from a number of love-affairs, some of which are vaguely commemorated in his writings. Another German poet, Wieland, after various romantic adventures, fell in love with Julia Bondeli, a pupil of Rousseau's, and asked for her heart and hand ; but she mistrusted him, and asked the pertinent question, "Tell me, will you never be able to love another besides me?" "Never!" he replied, "that is impossible. . . . Yet it might be possible for a moment, if I should chance to see a more beautiful woman than you who is at the same time very unhappy and very virtuous." " Poor Wieland," Scherr continues, " who subsequently understood the anatomy of the female heart so well, appears not to have known then that no woman pardons in her lover the thought that he might find another more beautiful than her. Julia knew what she had to do, and with deeply-wounded heart allowed the poet to depart." Of Burns his brother Gilbert says, " When he selected any one out of the sovereignty of his good pleasure, to whom he should pay his particular attention, she was instantly invested with a sufficient stock of charms out of the plentiful stores of his own imagination ; and there was often a great disparity between his fair captivator and her attributes. One generally reigned paramount in his affections ; but as Yorick's affections flowed out toward Madame de L at the remise door, while the eternal vows of Eliza were upon him, so Robert was frequently encountering other attractions, which formed so many under-plots in the drama of his love." In Goethe's life these " under-plots " played a like prominent 214 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY part. " He always needed a number of feminine hearts of more or less personal interest, in which to mirror himself," we read ; and he himself told his Charlotte (in 1777) that her love was "the thread by which all his other little passions, pastimes, and flirta- tions hung." So that, after all, it seems possible to love two at a time ; but it takes genius to do it / Yet even with men of genius it is only possible in ordinary love-affairs. A supreme love-affair allows but one goddess under any circumstances. Schumann was one of the most multitudinous lovers on record. Apparently his first love was Nanni, his " guardian angel," who saved him from the perils of the world, and hovered before his vision like a saint. " I feel that I could kneel before her and adore her like a Madonna," he says in a letter. But Nanni had a dangerous rival in Liddy. Not long, however, for he found Liddy silly, cold as marble, and fatal defect ! she could not sympathise with him regarding Jean Paul. " The exalted image of my ideal disappears when I think of the remarks she made about Jean Paul. Let the dead rest in peace." Curiously enough, there are references to both these girls at various dates, showing that, like Ovid, he vacillated between the two. He had a number of other flames, and after his engagement to Clara Wieck gave her warning that he had the " very mischievous habit " of being a great ad- mirer of lovely women. " They make me positively smirk, and I swim in panegyrics on your sex. Consequently, if at some future time we walk along the streets of Vienna and meet a beauty, and 1 exclaim, ' Oh Clara ! see this heavenly vision !' or something of the sort, you must not be alarmed nor scold me." But the most enterprising lover ever known to the world was Alfieri ; for his first Love seems to have embraced a whole female seminary/ In his Memoir es, at any rate, he uses the plural in speaking of the object of his first passion. He was indeed only nine years old, which may excuse this amorous anomaly. He had seen in church a number of young novices, and thus describes his feelings (the italics are mine) : " My innocent attraction towards these novices became so strong that I thought of them and their doings incessantly. At one moment my imagination painted them holding their candles in their hands, serving mass with an air of angelic submission, and again raising the smoke of incense at the foot of the altar; and, entirely absorbed in these images, I neglected my studies; every occupation and all companionship bored me." GENIUS IN LOVE 215 V. FICTITIOUSNESS If Shakspere could identify woman with frailty, one might with equal propriety exclaim, Vanity, thy name is man ! Clever men have a habit of paying pretty girls neat compliments, less to please the girls than to show off their wit. And clever women, though they may not accept these remarks literally, still have cause to be gratified with them, in proportion to the excellence of the wit ; for ugliness or inferior beauty never inspires a happy thought in a clever man. Poets represent the climax of masculine vanity. Though their first Love-poems may be the embodiment of real passion, in subse- quent efforts the purely literary origin is too often apparent. Since poetic composition is in itself a mingled agony and delight, very like Love itself, nothing so facilitates its progress as exciting Love- memories. Hence poets are for ever urged on to compose Love ditties in which they endeavour to out -Romeo Romeo, to out- hyperbolise one another, as women try to out-dress one another. This is one aspect of their vanity; the other lies in their desire for sympathetic admiration. So, whenever a poet meets a damsel who comes within half a mile of his ideal, he forthwith unfolds before her eyes his gaudy dithyrambs and sonnets, and indulges in various Love-antics, very much like an infatuated peacock. Even the great Dante is not free from the reproach of having used his true love for mere literary purposes. Beatrice became to him gradually an abstraction, an allegory, a name for woman in general. But it is in his countryman Petrarch that the tendency to use a sweetheart for purely ornamental purposes, as if she were a feather to be stuck in one's hat, is most vividly illustrated. Petrarch is a conspicuous illustration of the fact that a poetic reputation once established will live on for ever, for the simpk reason that very few people ever take the trouble to read and judge for themselves; so that an undeserved reputation, like a disease, is inherited by generation after generation. No one, of course, can question Petrarch's learning and his influence on the progress of modern culture. I speak of him only as a love-poet ; and as such he occupies a wofully low rank. I have read and reread his sonnets, and have found them one of the dreariest deserts the quest for information has ever driven me into. To say with Mr. Symonds, in the Encyclopedia J3ritannica, that { he was far from approaching the analysis of emotion with the directness of a Heine or De Musset," is putting it very mildly in- deed. Professor Schcrr points out his lack of poetic imagination 210 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY iii these words : " Though he took so much trouble to hand down the beauty of his Laura to posterity, yet (he) never gets beyond a tedious enumeration of her charms. Petrarch never gives us a clear portrait of his lady." " The poems of her lover," says Mr. Symonds, " demonstrate that she was a married woman, with whom he enjoyed a respectful and not very intimate friendship." Moore refers to Petrarch as one " who would not suffer his only daughter to reside beneath his roof, [but] expended thirty -two years of poetry and passion on an idealised love." Schopenhauer naively accepted the reality of Petrarch's passion, which the poor fellow had to drag through life " like a prisoner's chain," because the case suited his argument ; but Mr. Macaulay more justly re- marks that " to readers of our time, the love of Petrarch seems to have been of that kind which breaks no hearts." Finally Professor Scherr's opinion may be cited, which agrees with the view here taken. In 1327 Petrarch "made the acquaintance of Laura, the wife of Hugo de Sade, who has become famous through him, and whom during twenty-one years he continued to love, or at least to cele- brate in song; for one feels somewhat uncertain regarding this love, and is very much tempted to regard it more as a matter of the head than of the heart and the senses more as a welcome theme for his troubadour art and Provencal amorous subtlety than as a genuine, true passion. Petrarch's qualities in general, both as a man and as a poet, are tainted by an appearance of hollowness, a want of substance and character. He lacked genuine originality, the power of spontaneous creation." Petrarch, it is true, was an extreme case of the poet's inclination to give Love a fictitious permanence and depth ; and he lived, more- over, at a time when the novelty of the spiritual aspect of Love naturally inclined the mind to exaggeration in that direction. In the case of modern poets, much less allowance has to be commonly made for motives of purely poetic or literary origin. Such being the leading characteristics of Love in men of genius, and such men being emotionally a few centuries ahead of others, the questions arise, "Is it likely that the Love of ordinary mortals will gradually assume those traits'? and is it desirable that it should ?" There seems no immediate danger that the world will be peopled largely by geniuses, though there is a rapid and steady advance in culture, which in a thousand years may greatly lessen the difference between men of genius and average men of the future as compared with those of to-day. When that millennium arrives the man of genius may have advanced another step, but not so great, perhaps, as that which now raises him above the common GENIUS IN LOVE 217 herd. He will not then be so great an anomaly, and will find society less willing than in the past to make allowance for his irregularities, such as his fickleness and multiplicity of Love-affairs. Yet, after all, these great men are only partly to blame for their fickleness. Beethoven once boasted of having lovea one woman for seven months as something unusual. But had Beethoven been so fortunate as to meet and marry a woman having those qualities which Sir Walter Scott says the wife of a genius should have either " taste enough to relish her husband's performances, or good nature enough to pardon his infirmities," he might have been blessed with a love not of seven months, but of seven times seven years. Of Shelley, Mr. Symonds tells us that, " In his own words, he had loved Antigone before he visited this earth : and no one woman could probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more from love than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life." Mr. Galton, who has made such a careful study of the pheno- mena of genius and marriage (Hereditary Genius), remarks on the "great fact . . . that able men take pleasure in the society of intelligent women, and, if they can find such as would in other respects be suitable, they will marry them in preference to medio- crities." Unfortunately, as before dwelt on, great beauty and great intellect, or amiability, do not always coincide, owing to the fact that pretty girls do riot feel the necessity of cultivating their minds. But in men of genius their own store of intellect is so great, and their admiration for Beauty so intense, that they are constantly liable to marry silly girls ; or before marriage to flirt with one beauty after another without finding satisfaction. In a few gen- erations, however, there will doubtless be many more women than now or in the past who will be intelligent, amiable, and beautiful at the same time ; and such women will be able to fetter even the erratic love of geniuses with adamantine chains, impervious to rust and alteration, and thus cure them of their Fickleness and their constant effort to love more than one at a time. Poetic Fictitiousness, of course, is a trait which does no one any harm, and often enriches literature with charming fancies. And as for the two remaining characters of genius-Love Ardour and Precocity it is evident that there cannot be too much of them in the world. The dawn of Love is always the dawn of so much refinement of the soul, the awakening of so much ambition, that it cannot be too precocious; and the more ardent it is the more thoroughgoing will be its results. Nor need a big fire go out sooner than a small one, provided there is a constant supply of 218 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY fresh fuel a point which Balzac has discussed with much elo- quence in his Physiologic du Mariage. Coleridge says "It is the business of virtue to give a feeling and a passion to our purer intellect, and to intellectualise our feelings and passions." Now this is precisely what is done by Eomantic Love, which first originated in the minds of men of genius. " The might of one fair face sublimes my love, For it hath weaned my heart from low desires." " Sublimes my love." These three words of Michael Angelo con- tain the whole philosophy of our subject. And what is it that sublimes Love chiefly ? " The might of one fair face " the magic effect of Personal Beauty. Perhaps, after all, the greatest differ- ence between the Love of a genius and an ordinary mortal is that in the former the aesthetic element the Admiration of Beauty is so much stronger, making up two-thirds of the whole passion. And as a taste for the beautiful in art and nature becomes more common, the Love of common mortals, in approaching that of genius, will more and more partake of this aesthetic refinement this worship of Personal Beauty for the sake of the higher gratifi- cations it yields to the imagination. INSANITY AND LOVE ANALOGIES The poets, who have in all ages insisted on the analogies be- tween genius and insanity, have also long since discovered a general resemblance between Love and Insanity. Indeed, the notion that Love is a sort of madness is as old as Plato. Love, as understood by him that is, man's " worship of youthful mas- culine beauty " is, he says, mad, irrational, superseding reason and prudence in the individual mind. And the Stoics, who re- garded all affections as maladies, looked upon the severest of the passions as a grave mental disease. Modern poetry is full of allusions to the fatuous folly of Love. Thus Thomson " A lover is the very fool of nature." Shakspere "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact." " Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes, That they behold and see not what they see ? " And the mischievous Rosalind informs us that " Love is merely a INSANITY AND LOVE 219 madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do ; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too." All this is mere poetic banter ; but there is a substratum of truth which the poets must have dimly felt. Modern alienists do not treat their patients to dark rooms and whips, as their predeces- sors did. They regard the maladies of their patients as brain diseases, which have been studied and classified, and are treated on general hygienic and therapeutic principles. A comparison of the classifications adopted in psychiatry with the symptoms of Love shows that Insanity and Love resemble each other especially in three common traits, the presence of Illusions, a sort of Delirium of Persecution, and the Desire for Solitude. There are two ways in which madmen people the outside world with phantoms of their own imaginations by means of illusions and of hallucinations. Hallucinations are pure figments of the imagination, without any object corresponding to them or suggesting them in the outer world. A patient suffering from them will stare into vacancy and see a friend, or perhaps the devil with horns, tail, and hoofs ; and he sees him as vividly as if he were really there to be touched ; the reason being that in that part of the brain where impressions of sight are localised a diseased action is set up which suggests a picture that is forthwith projected into outward space as usual with all sense-impressions. In a word, the patient paints the devil in his mind's eye, and there he is. Illusions, on the other hand, have real external objects for their cause ; but the diseased imagination so falsifies the objects that there is little or no resemblance between the mental vision and the outside reality. A patient suffering from illusions sees a candle and thinks it is the sun, hears a footstep and thinks it thunder. Is not this precisely what Shakspere chides Cupid for that he makes our eyes " behold and see not what they see 1 " or makes them "see Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt 1 ?" Concerning Burns we have just read that " there was often a great disparity between his fair captivator and her attributes " that is, the attri- butes with which she was invested by her lover. The lover, like the lunatic, has had moments when, " beholding his maiden, he half-knows she is not that which he worships " ; but such intervals are rare. Take a madman who believes his body is made of glass, and throw him downstairs : none the less will he believe in his vitreous constitution. Show a lover the 220 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY most beautiful woman in the world, still will he believe his own Dulcinea a hundred times more charming. There is, in the second place, a very common form of insanity, called the Delirium of Persecution. The sufferer imagines that everybody he passes notices him, suspects him of something, or even intends him some harm. Dr. Hammond speaks of a patient of this class " who was sure that all the clergymen had entered into a conspiracy to ' pray him into hell ' ! He went to the churches to hear what they had to say, and discovered adroit allusions to himself, and hidden invocations to God for his eternal damnation, in the most harmless and platitudinous expressions. He wrote letters to various pastors of churches, denouncing them for their uncharitable conduct toward him, and threatening them with bodily damage if they persisted in their efforts to secure the destruction of his soul." " Quand nous aimons," says Pascal, " nous nous imaginons que tout le monde s'en apercoit " when we are in love we imagine that everybody perceives it. The lover feels so awkward and embarrassed that he thinks every one about him must discover his secret ; and this constant apprehension doubles his awkwardness^ and in most cases does lead to his detection. And the jealous lover to whom " trifles light as air " are confirmations of infidelity, who sees dangerous rivalry in the most superficial attentions, and inconstancy in the most harmless smile she bestows on another how does he differ from the man who thought the clergy were trying to pray him into hell, except that in the one case the dis- ordered imagination is more easily restored to its normal functions than in the other ? Thirdly, the lunatic and the lover, in their melancholy stages, have a common fondness for Solitude. For days and weeks a patient will sit motionless, indifferent to everybody and every- thing in the world except the one idea that has fixed on his brain like a leech, and is sucking its life-blood. Nothing, says an observer, is so noticeable on visiting an asylum where the patients are allowed some liberty, as the way in which each one seeks a solitary place regardless of his fellows. Are not, in the same way ** Fountain-heads and pathless groves Places which pale passion loves ? " FLETCHER. But what madman in his wildest flights ever conceived anything quite so sublimely solitary as the flight which Burns projected for himself and Clarinda (in lovers' arithmetic twice one are one) in INSANITY AND LOVE 221 the following epistle : " Imagine . . . that we were set free from the laws of gravitation which bind us to this globe, and could at pleasure fly, without inconvenience, through all the yet unconjec- tured bounds of creation, what a life of bliss would we lead, in our mutual pursuit of virtue and knowledge, and our mutual enjoyment of love and friendship ! "I see you laughing at my fairy fancies, and calling me a voluptuous Mahometan; but I am certain I would be a happy creature beyond anything we call bliss here below ; nay, it would be a paradise congenial to you too. Don't you see us, hand in hand, or rather, my arm about your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, the nearest of the fixed stars ; or, surveying a comet flaming innoxious by us, as we just now would mark the passing pomp of a travelling monarch ; or, in a shady bower of Mercury or Venus, dedicating the hour to love, in mutual converse, relying honour, and revelling endearment, while the most exalted strains of poesy and harmony would be the ready, spontaneous language of our souls." Thus we have in the madman's Illusions an analogy with Love's Hyperbolising tendency ; in the Delirium of Persecution a sugges- tion of Jealousy ; in the Desire for Solitude a reminder of Love's Exclusiveness, and desire to be cast on a desert island. Gallantry, again, has in the past frequently assumed an extra- vagant form bordering on madness. Thus, with reference to a Greek girl to whom Byron made love in Athens, Moore says, " It was, if I recollect right, in making love to one of these girls that he had recourse to an act of courtship often practised in that country namely, giving himself a wound across the breast with his dagger. The young Athenian, by his own account, looked on very coolly during the operation, considering it a fit tribute to her beauty, but in no wise moved to gratitude." In Spain, toward the beginning of the last century, Gallantry appears to have assumed a form of mad extravagance. As Mme. d'Aunoy relates in her Memoires sur VEspagne, no man who accompanied a lady was so rude as to give her his hand or to take her arm under his. He only wrapped his cloak around his arm, and then allowed her to rest her arm on the elbow. Nor was even a lover permitted to kiss his love or caress her otherwise than by tenderly grasping her arm with his hands. Of mediaeval lovers' madness cases have been cited elsewhere, showing to what crazy excess the Knight-errants and Troubadours sometimes carried their gallant devotion. One more amusing illustration may here be added : the oft-cited cases of Peire Vidal, 222 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY a Troubadour of the twelfth century, who, to please his beloved, whose name was Loba (wolf), had himself sewed up in a wolf's hide and went about the mountains howling until his manoeuvres were brought to a sad end by some shepherd dogs, who, having no sense of humour, gave him such a shaking that he was only too glad to resume his normal attitude. There is, in fact, hardly a feature of Love which, in its exalted manifestations, does not occasionally suggest a madhouse. The extravagant Pride shown by a commonplace man in his more com- monplace bride, is quite as ludicrous as a lunatic's delusion that he is a millionaire or emperor of the five continents. The sham capture of a bride still practised among many nations when all parties are willing, illustrates a form of Coyness which would appear as pure lunacy to one unfamiliar with the origin of that custom. EROTOMANIA, OK REAL LOVE-SICKNESS Besides these general analogies there is a form of mental disease which is genuine love-sickness, the outcome of brain disease, and which often seems, for all the world, like a deliberate caricature of Coquetry. " It often happens," says Dr. Hammond, " that the subjects of emotional monomania of the variety under consideration do not restrict their love to any one person. They adore the whole male sex, and will make advances to any man with whom they are brought into even the slightest association. If confined in an asylum they simper and clasp their hands, and roll their eyes to the attendants, especially the physicians, and even the male patients are not below their affections. There is very little constancy in their love. They change from one man to another with the utmost facility and upon the slightest pretext. ' I am very much in love with Dr. ,' said a woman to me in an asylum that I was visiting, * but he was late yesterday in coming to the ward, and now I love you. You will come often to see me, won't you ? ' While she was speaking the superintendent entered the ward. * Oh, here comes my first and only love ! ' she ex- claimed. 'Why have you stayed away so long from your Eliza ?'" Professor von Krafft-Ebing, in his admirable Lekrbuch der Psychiatric, thus characterises Erotomania in general : " The kernel of the whole matter is the delusion of being singled out and loved by a person of the other sex, who regularly belongs to a higher social sphere. And it deserves to be noted that the love THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE 223 felt by the patient towards this person is a romantic, ecstatic, but entirely ' Platonic ' affection. In this respect these patients remind one of the knight-errants and minstrels of bygone times, whom Cervantes has so incisively lashed in his Don Quixote. . . . " From the looks and gestures of the beloved individual they draw the inference that they in return are not regarded with indif- ference. With astonishing rapidity they lose their self-possession. The most harmless incidents are regarded by them as signs of love, and an encouragement to draw near. Even newspaper advertise- ments relating to others are supposed to come from the person in question. Finally, hallucinations make their appearance, by the aid of which the patients begin to be conversant with the object of their love. Illusions also supervene ; in the conversations of others the patient fancies he hears references to his love-affairs. He feels happy, exalted in his estimate of himself. . . . "At last the patient compromises himself by acting in con- sonance with his delusion, thus making himself ridiculous and impossible in society, and necessitating his confinement in an asylum." THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE The insane freaks of erotomaniacs, and the analogous, ludicrous exaggerations in the expression and conduct of lovers, may be regarded as the pathologic and the comic sides of Love's Language. Normally, Romantic Love has no fewer than three languages : Words, Facial Expression, and Caresses, including Kisses. It will at once be seen that this classification involves a crescendo < , from the weakest form of expression to its climax in kissing. Kissing, indeed, though it comes under the head of Caresses, is of so much significance that it may be regarded, if not as a separate language of Love, at least as a special dialect perhaps the long-sought world-language intelligible to all ? i. WORDS Though the greatest poets have striven to become virtuosi in the art of expressing Love in written language, yet words are the weakest and least trustworthy mode of expressing the amorous emotions. Least trustworthy, because the male flatterer, as well as the female coquette, constantly use language to conceal their thoughts and real emotions. Weakest, because words are less eloquent even than silence. For 2-24 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY " They that are rich in words must needs discover They are but poor in that which makes a lover ;** And " Silence in Love bewrays more woe Than words though ne'er so witty." RALEIGH. Cordelia's love was deeper than that of her sisters too deep to be expressed in formal words. And King Lear scorned her and favoured her sisters ; even as shallow maidens constantly look down on silent, awkward adorers of deep affections, and throw themselves away on shallow, fickle, loquacious Lotharios, because they do not understand the real Language of Love, which, according to a stupid old myth, every woman is supposed to know by intuition or instinct. H. FACIAL EXPRESSION, although more trustworthy than written or spoken words, may sometimes prove deceptive too ; for the cunning coquette who daily feigns Love to attract poor moths by her brilliant fascinations, becomes in time so perfect an actress that the coldest of cynics may be deceived by her wiles. In his great work on the Expression of the Emotions, Darwin remarks that although, " when lovers meet, we know that their hearts beat quickly, their breathing is hurried, and their faces flush ;" yet " love can hardly be said to have any proper or peculiar means of expression ; and this is intelligible, as it has not habitually led to any special line of action. No doubt, as affection is a plea- surable sensation, it generally causes a gentle smile and some brightening of the eyes." Inasmuch as a flushed face and transient blushes, a gentle smile and brightening of the eyes, are characteristic of other emotions besides Love, Darwin is right; yet he ignores two peculiarities of expression by which a person in Love may be instantaneously recognised. "A lover," says Chamfort, "is a man who endeavours to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be ; and this is the reason that almost all lovers appear ridiculous." Who has not seen this unmistakable, ludicrous expression of masculine Love head slightly inclined to the left ; face as near her face as possible, echoing every expression of hers ; a saccharine, beseeching smile on the kiss-hungry lips, producing on the spectator an uneasy sense of unstable equilibrium as if in one more moment the force of amorous gravitation would draw down his face to hers 1 Add to this his embarrassed gestures, the over-sweet falsetto of THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE 225 his voice an octave higher than when he speaks to others, and the peculiar lover's pallor, and the picture is complete 'Why so pale and wan, fond lover ? Prithee, why so pale ? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail ?" SUCKLING. To women Cupid is kinder. Instead of making them appear ludicrous, Love has the power of transforming even a homely feminine face into a vision of loveliness by throwing a halo of tender expression around it. This wondrous transformation effected by Love is one of its greatest miracles ; and to one who has seen the girl previously it immediately betrays her infatuation. It is a kind of emotional calligraphy in which the merest tyro can read, "I love him." And this temporary transformation of homely into beautiful faces, this fusing and moulding of the features into forms of volup- tuous expression, is of extreme psychologic interest ; for it shows that, after all, the exalted, extravagant image of Her perfections in the lover's mind is not purely imaginary. It is not so much owing to a difference of " taste " that he loves her more than others do, as because she actually does look more beautiful when her eyes are fastened on him than when looking at any other man. m. CARESSES "Tenderness," says Professor Bain, "is a pleasurable emotion, variously stimulated, whose effort is to draw human beings into mutual embrace." Darwin finds the peculiarity of love in the same desire for contact ; and, as usual, he seeks for the origin of this desire, and endeavours to trace it to analogous peculiarities of the animals most closely related to us. " With the lower animals," he says, " we see the same principle of pleasure derived from contact in association with love. Dogs and cats manifestly take pleasure in rubbing against their masters and mistresses, and in being rubbed or patted by them. Many kinds of monkeys, as I am assured by the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, delight in fondling and being fondled by each other, and by persons to whom they are attached. Mr. Bartlett has described to me the behaviour of two Chimpanzees, rather older animals than those generally imported into this country, when they were first brought together. They sat opposite, touching each other ivith their much-protruded lips, and the one put his hand on the shoulder of Q 226 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY the other. Then they mutually folded each other in their arms. Afterwards they stood up, each with one arm on the shoulder of the other, lifted up their heads, opened their mouths and yelled with delight." Concerning human beings Darwin remarks : " A strong desire to touch the beloved person is commonly felt ; and love is ex- pressed by this means more plainly than by any other. Hence we long to clasp in our arms those we tenderly love. We probably owe this desire to inherited habit, in association with the nursing and tending of our children, and with the mutual caresses of lovers." When love first dawns on the mind, the faintest superficial con- tact flashes along the nerves as a thrill of delicious emotion. To walk along the beach in a stiff breeze, and have her veil acciden- tally flutter in his face, is a romantic incident on which a youthful lover's memory feasts for a month. If allowed to carry her shawl on his arm, he would not feel the cold of a Siberian winter. And later, what a variety of tell-tale caresses are there by which mutual Love may be revealed ! It is not the voice alone that can say " I love you"; nor the speaking eyes. Confessions of Love, proposals and acceptance complete dramas of Love have been enacted by Xthe language of two pairs of feet that have accidentally touched under the table. A slight pressure of the hand in the ballroom has told thousands of lovers, before a word was spoken, that now they may soon put their arms round that lovely waist without the excuse of a waltz or polka. One form of hand-caress, dear alike to mothers and lovers, is thus described by Professor Mantegazza : "In a caress we give and receive at the same time. The hand which distributes love, as by a magnetic effusion, receives it in return from the skin of the beloved person. Hence it is that one of the most common and most thrilling of the expressions of love consists in passing the hand through the hair. The hand finds, in this labyrinth of supple, living threads, the means of multiplying infinitely the points of amorous contact. It appears as if each hair were an electric wire, putting us into direct connection with the senses, with the heart, and even with the thoughts, of those we love. It is not without reason that woman's hair has long been given as a token of love." What a clumsy thing is language, what an awkward thing a formal proposal stuttered out by a lover more embarrassed than if lie were an amateur actor appearing on the stage for the first time, as Romeo before an international audience of actors and critics ! KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 227 How much less natural, less poetic, it is to hear the confession of Love than to feel it " When panting sighs the bosom fill, And hands, by chance united, thrill At once with one delicious pain." CLOUGH. What poet, and were he a genius in condensation, could compress into a line, a page, a volume, such an ocean of emotion as is contained in a momentary caress of the hand ? Not even the moment when the lovers are " imparadised in one another's arms " surpasses this in ecstasy. Yet there is a more delicious rapture still in the drama of Courtship. " Love's sweetest language is," as Herrick says, " a kiss." All other caresses are valueless without a kiss ; for is not a kiss the very autograph of Love ? But labial contact is a subject of such supreme importance in the philosophy and history of Love that it cannot be disposed of briefly as one form of caressing, but demands a chapter by itself. KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE "The lips," says Sir Charles Bell, "are of all the features the most susceptible of action, and the most direct index of the feelings." No wonder that Cupid selected them as his private seal, without which no passion can be stamped as genuine. For the expression of all other emotions, by words or signs, one pair of lips suffices. Love alone requires for its expression two pairs of Hps. Could anything more eloquently demonstrate the superiority of the romantic passion over all others 1 Steele said of kissing that " Nature was its author, and it began with the first courtship." Steele evidently evolved this theory out of his " inner consciousness," for the facts do not agree with it. The art of Kissing has, like Love itself, been gradually developed in connection with the higher stages of culture. Traces of it are found among animals and savages ; the ancients often misunder- stood its purport and object, as did our mediaeval ancestors ; and it is only in recent times that Kissing has tended to become what it should be the special and exclusive language of romantic and conjugal love. AMONG ANIMALS Honour to whom honour is due. The Chimpanzee seems to have been the first who discovered the charm of mutual labial 228 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY contact. In the description by Mr. Bartlett just referred to, the two Chimpanzees " sat opposite, touching each other with their much-protruded lips." And in some notes on the Chimpanzee in Central Park, New York, by Dr. C. Pitfield Mitchell, published in the Journal of Comparative Medicine, and Surgery, January 1885, we find the following : " That tender emotions are experienced may be inferred from the fact that he pressed the kitten to his breast and kissed it, holding it very gently in both hands. In kissing, the lips are pouted and the tongue protruded, and both are pressed upon the object of affection. The act is not accom- panied by any sound, thus differing from ordinary human osculation." Dogs, especially when young, may be seen occasionally exchang- ing a sort of tongue-kiss ; and who has not seen dogs innumerable times make a sudden sly dash at the lips of master or mistress and try to steal a kiss ? The affectionate manner in which a cow and calf eagerly lick one another in succession may be regarded as quite as genuine a kiss as a human kiss on hand, forehead, or cheek ; and it is probable that even in the billing of doves the motive is a vague pleasure of contact. AMONG SAVAGES we meet once more with the anomalous fact that they seem ignorant, on the whole, of a clever invention known even to some animals. Sir John Lubbock, after referring to Steele's opinion that kissing is coeval with courtship, remarks: "It was, on the contrary, entirely unknown to the Tahitians, the New Zealanders, the Papuas, and the aborigines of Australia, nor was it in use among the Somals or the Esquimaux." Jemmy Button, the Fuegian, told Darwin that kissing was unknown in his land ; and another writer gives an amusing account of an attempt he made to kiss a young negro girl. She was greatly terrified, probably imagining him a new species of cannibal who had made up his mind to eat her on the spot, raw, and without salt and pepper. Monteiro, in a passage previously quoted, says that in all the long years he has been in Africa he has " never seen a negro put his arm round a woman's waist, or give or receive any caress whatever that would indicate the slightest loving regard or affection on either side." Considering the general obtuseness of a savage's nerves, it is no wonder that the subtle thrill of a kiss should be unknown to him. In many cases, moreover, Kissing is rendered physically impossible KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 229 by the habit indulged in of mutilating and enlarging the lips. For instance, Schweinfurth, in his Heart of Africa, says that among the Bongo women " the lower lip is extended horizontally till it projects far beyond the upper, which is also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and then by a little ring, and some- times by a bit of straw, about as thick as a lucifer match." Many other similar cases could be cited. Evidently, under these circumstances, kissing would prove a snare and a delusion. THE ORIGIN OF KISSING is a topic on which doctors disagree, the opinions of Darwin and Mr. Spencer in particular differing as widely as their views regarding the origin of music. Mr. Spencer traces the primitive delight in osculation to the gustatory sense, Darwin to contact. "Obviously," says Mr. Spencer, "the billing of doves or pigeons, and the like action of love-birds, indicates an affection which is gratified by the gustatory sensation. No act of this kind on the part of an inferior creature, as of a cow licking a calf, can have any other origin than the direct prompting of a desire which gains by the act satisfaction ; and in such a case the satisfaction is that which vivid perception of offspring gives to the maternal yearning. In some animals like acts arise from other forms of affection. Lick- ing the hand, or, where it is accessible, the face, is a common display of attachment on a dog's part ; and when we remember how keen must be the olfactory sense by which a dog traces his master, we cannot doubt that to his gustatory sense, too, there is yielded some impression an impression associated with those pleasures of affection which his master's presence gives. " The inference that kissing, as a mark of fondness in the human race, has a kindred origin, is sufficiently probable. Though kissing is not universal though the negro races do not understand it, and though, as we have seen, there are cases where sniffing replaces it yet, being common to unlikely and widely-dispersed peoples, we may conclude that it originated in the same manner as the analogous action among lower creatures. . . . From kissing as a natural sign of affection, there is derived the kissing which, as a means of simulating affection, gratifies those who are kissed ; and, by gratifying them, propitiates them. Hence an obvious root for the kissing of feet, hands, garments, as a part of ceremonial." Darwin, on the other hand, holds that kissing " is so far innate or natural that it apparently depends on pleasure from close 230 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY contact with a beloved person ; and it is replaced in various parts of the world, by the rubbing of noses, as with the New Zealandeis and Laplanders, by the rubbing or patting of the arms, breasts, or stomachs, or by one man striking his own face with the hands or feet of another. Perhaps the practice of blowing, as a mark of affection, on various parts of the body may depend on the sams principle." Has Mr. Spencer ever kissed a girl ? Certainly, to one who has, his theory of the gustatory origin of Kissing would seem like a joke were it not stated with so much scientific pomp and circumstance. The billing of doves and love-birds, in the first place, cannot be regarded as a matter of taste, literally, because in birds the sense of taste is commonly very rudimentary or quite absent, as their habit of swallowing seeds and other food whole and dry would make a sense which can only judge of things in a state of solution quite useless. The sense of touch, on the other hand, is exceed- ingly delicate in the bill of birds, which is, as it were, their feeler or hand. That the motive which prompts cows and calves to lick one. another is likewise tactile rather than gustatory, I had occasion to observe only a few days ago in a place worthy of so romantic a subject as the experimental study of kissing. Scene : a green mountain -meadow above Murren, Switzerland. Frame of the picture, a semicircle of snow-giants, including Wetterhorn, Eiger, Monch, Jungfrau, Breithorn, etc. Cows and calves in the meadow, not in the least disturbed by the avalanches thundering down the side of the Jungfrau every twenty minutes. Cow licks calf, and calf retaliates by licking the cow's neck. Cow enjoys it immensely, holding her head up as high as possible, with an expression of intense enjoyment, just like a dog when you rub and pat his neck. Ergo, as cow was not licking but being licked, her enjoyment must have been tactile, not gustatory. To the cow her tongue is what the bill is to a bird her most mobile organ, her feeler, and hand. Possibly Mr. Spencer was misled into his gustatory theory by a too literal interpretation of a habit poets have always had ot calling a kiss sweet. Among the Romans a love-kiss was distin- guished from other kisses by being called a suavium or sweet thing ; and a modern German poet boldly compares the flavour of kisses to wild strawberries (perhaps she had just been eating some). Yet all this belongs to fancy's fairyland. Kisses are called sweet for the same reason that we speak of the sweet concords of music. i.e. because the language of aesthetics is so scantily developed thai KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 231 we are constantly compelled to borrow terms from one sense and apply them to another, when their only resemblance is that they are both agreeable or otherwise. There is a very prevalent impression that the senses of savages are more delicate than ours. In one way they are. A savage can often see an object at a greater distance, and hear a fainter sound, than a white man. But in what may be called aesthetic as distin- guished from physical refinement, savages are vastly our inferiors. A savage can hardly tell the difference between two adjacent notes in the musical scale, while a musician can distinguish the sixtieth part of a semitone. And why would the wondrous harmonies of a Chopin nocturne seem a mere chaos of sound to a savage ? Be- cause his ears have not been trained through his imagination and intellect to discriminate sounds and sound -combinations, or to follow the plot or development of a musical narrative or " theme." Just so with the sense of touch. A sweetheart's veil fluttering in a Hottentot's face would only annoy him. A squeeze of the hand would leave him cold ; and would he refrain from putting his arm round her waist if that gave him any pleasure ? Obviously, then, the reason why the art of kissing is unknown to him is be- cause his senses are too callous, his imagination too sluggish. Kissing, like every other fine art, has its sensuous and its imaginative or intellectual side. Of all parts of the visible body the lips are the most sensitive to contact. Here the layer in which the nerves and blood-vessels are contained is not covered over, as elsewhere on the skin, by a thick leathery epidermis, but only thinly veiled by a transparent epithelium ; so that when lips are applied to lips, the blood-vessels which carry the vital fluid straight from the two loving hearts, and the soul-fibres, called nerves, are brought into almost immediate contact : whence that interchange of soul-magnetism that electric shock which makes the first mutual kiss of Love the sweetest moment of life "What words can ever speak affection So thrilling and sincere as thine ?" BURNS. Yet herein the imagination plays a much more prominent rftle than it appears to do at first sight. The real reason why a savage cannot enjoy a kiss is not so much because his lips are deficient in tactile sensibility, as because he has no imagination to invest labial contact with the romance of individualised passion. If a lover's pleasure lay in the mere labial contact, he would as soon exchange a kiss with any other girl. But should a sweetheart, on being asked for a kiss, refer him, say, to his sister or her sister ; though 232 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY the latter be a hundred times more beautiful, he would chide his love for offering a stone where bread was wanted. His imagina- tion has so long painted to him the superior ecstasy of a kiss from her that, when he finally gets it, the long-deferred gratification ensures the unparalleled rapture anticipated. ANCIENT KISSES As the ancient civilised nations were much more addicted than we are to gesture language, it seems natural that so expressive a sign as kissing should have been used for a variety of purposes for indicating not only family affection, sexual passion and friend- ship, but general respect, reverence, humility, condescension, etc. Among idolatrous nations, as M'Clintock and Strong remark, " it was the custom to throw kisses towards the images of the gods, and towards the sun and moon." Kissing the hand appears to be a modern custom, but many other parts of the body were thus saluted by the ancients : " Kissing the feet of princes was a token of subjection and obedience, which was sometimes carried so far that the print of the foot received the kiss, so as to give the in> pression that the very dust had become sacred by the royal tread, or that the subject was not worthy to salute even the prince's foot, but was content to kiss the earth itself near or on which he trod." A similar observance is the kissing of the Pope's toe, or rather, the cross on his slipper a custom in vogue since the year 710. Among the Arabs the women and children kiss the beards of their husbands or fathers. Among the ancient Hebrews, " kiss- ing the lips by way of affectionate salutation was not only per- mitted, but customary among near relatives of both sexes, both in patriarchal and in later times." The kiss on the cheek " has at. all times been customary in the East, and can hardly be said to be extinct even in Europe." Among the ancient Greeks, Jealousy prompted the husbands to? -"make their wives eat onions whenever they were going from home." And in the Roman Republic, " Among the safeguards of female purity," says Mr. Lecky, "was an enactment forbidding women even to taste wine. . . . Cato said that the ancient Romans were accustomed to kiss their wives for the purpose of discovering whether they had been drinking wine." Breath-sweetening cloves and cachous were evidently unknown in the good old times. The Romans had special names for three kinds of kisses basium, a kiss of politeness ; osculum, between friends ; suavium, KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 283 between lovers. If a man kissed his betrothed, she gained thereby the half of his effects in the event of his dying before the celebra- tion of the marriage ; and if the lady herself died, under the same circumstances, her heirs or nearest of kin took the half due to her, a kiss among the ancients being a sign of plighted faith. So seriously, indeed, was a kiss regarded by the ancient Romans, that a husband would not even kiss his wife in presence of his daughters. It was on account of this strict feeling regarding kisses ex- changed by man and woman that the early Christians subjected themselves to fierce attacks and slander, because of the kisses that were exchanged as a symbol of religious union at the Love-Feasts of the first disciples. "But, in 397, the Council of Carthage thought fit to forbid all religious kissing between the sexes, not- withstanding St Paul's exhortation, 'Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity. 1 " MEDIEVAL KISSES Among many other refinements of the ancients, the mediaeval nations lost the sense of the sacredness of kissing between the sexes. England was apparently the greatest sinner in this respect; for it appears to have been customary on visiting to kiss the host's wife and daughters. Indeed, up to a comparatively recent time, kissing on every occasion was almost as prevalent and permissible as handshaking is at the present day. In the sixteenth century it was customary in England for ladies to reward their partners in the dance with a kiss ; and for a long time the minister who united a couple in the holy bonds of matrimony had the privilege of kissing not only the bride but even the bridesmaids! No wonder the ministry was the most popular profession in those days. " It is quite certain," says a writer in the St. James's Magazine (1871), "that the custom of kissing was brought into England from Friesland, as St. Pierius Wensemius, historiographer to their High Mightinesses, the states of Friesland, in his Chronicle, 1622, tells us that the pleasant practice of kissing was utterly ^in- practised and unknown in England till the fair Princess Romix (Rowena), the daughter of King Hengist of Friesland, pressed the beaker with her lippens, and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a kusjen ' (little kiss)." Having recovered this lost art, however, the English lost no time in making up for neglected opportunities. Erasmus writes in one of his epistles : "If you go to any place (in Britain) you 234 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY are received with a kiss by all ; if you depart on a journey, you are dismissed with a kiss ; you return, kisses are exchanged . . . wherever you move, nothing but kisses. And if you, Faustus, had but once tasted them, how soft they are, how fragrant ! on my honour, you would wish not to reside here for ten years only, but for life ! ! 1" Bunyan, however, frowned on this practice, and inquired most pertinently and impertinently why the men only "salute the most handsome and let the ill-favoured alone 1 " Pepys, in his Diary for 1660, gives this account of some Portuguese ladies in London : " I find nothing in them that is pleasing ; and I see they have learnt to kiss, and look freely up and down already, and I do believe will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country." One of the luckiest of mortals was Bulstrode Whitelock, who at the Court of Christine of Sweden was asked to teach her ladies "the English mode of salutation; which, after some pretty defences, their lips obeyed, and Whitelock most readily ! " The following extraordinary kissing story is told in Chambers^ Journal for 1861 : " When the gallant cardinal, Count of Lorraine, was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the indignation of the irate churchman. 'How, madam e/ exclaimed he, ' am I to be treated in this manner ? I kiss the queen, my mistress, who is the greatest queen in the world, and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little duchess ? I would have you know I have kissed as handsome ladies, and of as great or greater family than you.' Without more ado he made for the lips of the proud Portuguese princess, and, despite her resistance, kissed her thrice on her mouth before he released her with an exultant laugh." The fashion of universal kissing appears to have gone out about the time of the Restoration. MODERN KISSES The history of kissing, thus briefly sketched, shows that among primitive men this art is unknown because they are incapable of appreciating it. To the ancient civilised nations its charms were revealed ; but as usual in the intoxication of a new discovery, they hardly knew what to do with it, and applied it to all sorts of stupid ceremonial purposes. The tendency of civilisation, how- ever, has been to eliminate promiscuous kissing, and restrict it KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 235 more and more to its proper function as an expression of the affections. And even within this sphere the circle becomes gradu- ally smaller. Although in some parts of Europe men still kiss one another as a token of relationship, friendship, or esteem, yet the habit is slowly dying out, the example having been set in England, where it was abandoned toward the close of the seventeenth century. The senseless custom which women to-day indulge in ofj kissing each other on the slightest provocation, often when they I would rather slap one another in the face, is also doomed to I extinction. The witticism that women kiss one another because they cannot find anything better to kiss, differing herein from men, was not perpetrated by a woman. The practice of kissing little children has been often enough condemned on medical grounds, which also hold good in the case of adults. That con- tagious diseases are thus often conveyed from one person to another was already known to the ancient Romans, one of whose emperors issued a special proclamation in consequence against pro- miscuous kissing. From a sentimental point of view, the most objectionable of modern kisses are those which are allowed between cousins. As long as a man may become a suitor for the hand of his cousin he should, both for the sake of his own love-drama and in justice to a possible rival, be debarred from this privilege. Imagine the feelings of a lover who knows that his rival has been permitted to steal the virgin kiss froin the lips of his adored one simply because his father happens to be her uncle ! Family kisses should, there- fore, be allowed only within that degree of relationship which precludes the idea of Love and marriage. Cousins will have to bo satisfied in future with a warmer grasp of the hand and an extra lump of sugar in a maiden's smile. LOVE-KISSES The happiest moment in the life of the happiest man is that when he is allowed for the first time to " steal immortal blessing " from the lips of her who has just promised to be his for ever. No wonder the poets have grown eloquent over this supreme moment of pre-heavenly rapture TENNYSON O love, fire ! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew." MOORE " Grow to my lips thou sacred kiss." 886 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUT* SHAKSPERE " As if he plucked .up kisses by the root That grew upon my lips." RUCKBBT " Meine Liebste, mit den from men treuen Braunen Rehesaugen, sagt, sie habe Blaue einst als Kind gehabt. Ich glaub'e* Neulich da ich, seliges Vergessen Trinkend hing an ihren Lippen, Meine Augen unterm Ian gen Kusse Oeffnend, sehaut* ich in die nahcn ihren, Und sie kamen mir in soldier Niihe Tiefblau wie ein Himmel vor. Was ist das Wer gibt dif der Kindheit Augen wieder ? Deine Liebe, sprach sie, deine Liebe, Die mich hat zum Kind gemaclit, die alle Liebesunschuldstraume meiner Kindheit Hat gereift zu sel'ger Erfullung. Soil der Himmel nicht, der mir im Herzen Steht durch dich, mir blau durch's Auge blicken I* Love-kisses are silent like deep affection- c "Passions are likened best to floods and streams : The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb." RALEIGH. True, Petruchio kissed Katrina " with such a clamorous smack, that at the parting all the church did echo " ; but his object was not to express his Love, but to tease and tame the shrew. Loud kisses, moreover, might betray the lovers to profane ears, and bring on a fatal attack of Coyness on the girl's part 1 I" The greatest sin 'twixt heaven and hell Is first to kiss and then to tell." Love-kisses are passionate and long; for Love is Cupid's lip- cement "Oh, a kiss, long as my exile, Sweet as my revenge." SHAKSPERE. "A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love." " For a kiss's strength I think it must be measured by its length." BYEOW. "A kiss now that will hang upon my lip As sweet as morning dew upon a rose, And full as long." THOMAS MIDDLETON. Perhaps the longest kiss on record is that which Siegfried gives Brunnhilde in the drama of Siegfried. But this is not an ordinary kiss, for the hero bag to wake with it the Valkyrie from the KISSING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 237 twenty years' sleep into which old Wotan had plunged her for dis- obeying his orders. Thanks to Wagner's art, the thrill of this Love-kiss, magically transmuted into tones, is felt by a thousand spectators simultaneously with the lover. Love-kisses are innumerable. Thus sings the Italian poet, Cecco Angiolieri, in the thirteenth century "Because the stars are fewer in heaven's span Than all those kisses wherewith I kept time All in an instant (I who now have none !) Upon her mouth (I and no other man !) So sweetly on the twentieth day of June On the New Year twelve hundred ninety-one." ROSSETTI'S TEANSL. Novelists and poets have exhausted their ingenuity in finding adjectives descriptive of Love-kisses and others. An anonymous essayist has compiled the following list : ^--^ Kisses are forced, unwilling, cold, comfortless, frigid, ana frozen, chaste, timid, rosy, balmy, humid, dewy, trembling, soft, gentle, tender, tempting, fragrant, sacred, hallowed, divine, sooth- ing, joyful, affectionate, delicious, rapturous, deep-drawn, impressive, quick, and nervous, warm, burning, impassioned, inebriating, ardent, flaming, and akin to fire, ravishing, lingering, long. One also hears of parting, tear-dewed, savoury, loathsome, poisonous, treacherous, false, rude, stolen, and great fat, noisy kisses." HOW TO KISS Kissing comes by instinct, and yet it is an art which few under- stand properly. A lover should not hold his bride by the ears in kissing her, as appears to have been customary at Scotch weddings of the last century. A more graceful way, and quite as effective in preventing the bride from "getting away," is to put your right arm round her neck, your fingers under her chin, raise the chin, and then gently but firmly press your lips on hers. After a few repetitions she will find out it doesn't hurt, and become as gentle as a lamb. The word adoration is derived from kissing. It means literally to apply to the mouth. Therefore girls should beware of philolo- gists who may ask them with seemingly harmless intent, " May I adore you 1 " In kissing, as in everything else, honesty is the best policy. Stolen kisses are not the sweetest, as Leigh Hunt would have us believe. A kiss to be a kiss must be mutual, voluntary, siinul- 238 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY taneous. " The kiss snatched hasty from the sidelong maid " is not worth having. A stolen kiss is only half a kiss. " These poor half- kisses kill me quite ; Was ever man thus served ? Amidst an ocean of delight, For pleasure to be starved I " MAKLOWB. HOW TO WIN LOYE BRASS BUTTONS Inasmuch as language is the least eloquent and effective mode of expressing Love, and inasmuch as Love is commonly inspired in woman by the possession of qualities which she lacks, it is obvious that Shakspere did not show his usual insight into human nature when he wrote " That man that hath a tongue is, I say, no man, If with his tongue he cannot win a woman." It seems, indeed, quite probable that Bacon wrote those two lines ; if Shakspere had written them he would have said "That man that hath a uniform is, I say, no man, If with his uniform he cannot win a woman." The extraordinary infatuation for military uniforms shown by women of all times and countries is one of the most obscure problems in mental and social philosophy. Whenever an officer, though ever so humble in rank, is present at a ball or other social gathering, all other men, be they merchants, politicians, lawyers, physicians, artists, students, ministers, are simply " nowhere." What is the cause of this singular infatuation? Is it the colour-harmony formed by the complementary blue cloth and yellow buttons? No, for various officials, as well as messenger boys, wear similar uniforms without making any special impression on the feminine heart. Is it the beauty or the wit of the soldier 1 No, for he may be as stupid as a log, and red-nosed and smallpox- pitted, without losing a jot of his popularity. Nor can it be his valour, for he has perhaps never yet been opposite the " business end " of a rifle, as they say out West. Nor, again, is it likely that women admire soldiers from an inherited sense of gratitude for the services they rendered in former warlike times in protecting their great-great-grandmothers from the enemy's barbarity; for woman's gratitude is not apt to be so very retrospective, while gratitude itself is less apt to inspire Love than aversion. HOW TO WIN LOVE 239 Whatever may be the cause of this mysterious phenomenon, the fact remains that officers are woman's ideals. Hence the first and most important hint to those who would win a woman's Love is : Put brass buttons on your coat, have it dyed blue, and wear epaulettes and a{ waxed moustache. This love-charm has never been known to fail. CONFIDENCE AND BOLDNESS Women secretly detest bashful men. It is their own duty, prescribed by etiquette, to be passive, shy, and diffident; hence if men were shy and diffident too, no advances would be made, and all progress in Love-making would be retarded. Women love courage. He who robs lions of their hearts can easily win a woman's. " Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt," says Shakspere ; and Chesterfield remarks ct propos, that " that silly sanguine notion which is firmly entertained here, that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, encourages and has some- times enabled one Englishman in reality to beat two." Ovid knew the value of boldness. And although his object was not to teach how to win permanent Love, but how to get honey without taking care of the bees, yet his psychology is correct, and agrees with Goethe's aphorism that "if thou ap- proachest women with tenderness thou winnest them with a word ; but he who is bold and saucy comes off better." Perhaps this is one reason why officers are so successful in Love, for several of them have been known to be bold and saucy. Another reason may be that their pursuit is more distinctively and exclusively masculine than any other profession. What, for instance, could be more delightfully masculine, i.e. mediaeval, than the way in which, according to the Chronicon Turonense, William the Conqueror wooed and won Mathilde, the daughter of Count Baldwin, Prince of Flanders. At first he was unsuccessful, "for the young girl," says Professor Seherr, "de- clared proudly she would not marry a bastard. Then William rode to Bruges, waylaid Mathilde, attacked her when she came from church, pulled her long hair, and maltreated her with his fists and with kicks, after which heroic performance he made his escape. Strange to say, this peculiar mode of Love-making imposed so greatly on the beauty that she declared with tears in 240 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY her eyes that she would marry no one but the Norman Duke, whom she actually did marry. A parallel case may be found in the German Nibelungenlied (str. 870 and 901)." Since, according to the old philosophy, human nature, including Love and Love-making, is the same at all times and in all countries, it follows that a modern lover, after donning his brass buttons, should administer his sweetheart a sound thrashing. That will make her mellow and docile. PLEASANT ASSOCIATIONS The Germans, it is well known, are deficient in Gallantry, at least in conjugal life, and often treat their wives more as upper servants than as companions. Perhaps it was the unconscious desire to justify this conjugal attitude that induced one of the leading German psychologists, Horwicz, to pen these lines : " Love can only be excited by strong and vivid emotions, and it is almost immaterial whether these emotions are agreeable or disagreeable. The Cid wooed the proud heart of Donna Ximene, whose father he had slain, by shooting one after another of her' pet pigeons. Such persons as arouse in us only weak emotions, or none at all, are obviously least likely to incline us toward them. . . . Our aversion is most apt to be bestowed on individuals who, as the phrase goes, are ' neither warm nor cold ' } whereas impulsive, choleric people, though they may readily offend us, are just as capable of making us warmly attached to them." How that modern genius, who lived two thousand years ago and called himself Ovid, would have opened his eyes in wonder at this German-mediseval Art of Love ! He, queer fellow, believed that a lover should never be otherwise than pleasantly associated in his sweetheart's mind. If she is spoiled by over-indulgence, do not, he says in efiect, take away her dainties with your own hand. If she is unwell, do not hand her the bitter medicine in person : " Let your rival mix the cup for her." So long as the professional manslayer is the highest ideal of woman's tender heart, lovers will do well to follow mediaeval methods of Courtship and make themselves as disagreeable as possible. When the millennium arrives, and wholesale duels to avenge offended national "honour" will, like private duels to avenge individual "honour," have become obsolete, then the Ovidian psychology of Love will begin to prevail. Then will the lover endeavour to avoid all harshness and to be only agree- ably associated ia the mind of his goddess through bright, HOW TO WItf LOVE 241 cheerful conversation, harmless and sincere compliments, mutual enjoyment of excursions and artistic entertainments, the avoidance of disagreeable topics, of jealous suspicions and reproaches, etc. ; hoping thus to become the nucleus around which her dreams of matrimonial happiness will gradually crystallise. PERSEVERANCE Persistence alone may win a woman where all other means fail. She may dream of an ideal lover and vainly wait for his appear- ance for several years ; and in the meantime the image of her ever-present suitor will become brighter and more inviting in her mind. For is not perseverance, is not unflagging devotion to a single aim, one of the noblest of manly attributes, a guarantee of success in life and the highest test of genuine passion ? Perseverance may neutralise more than one refusal. " Have you not heard it said full oft A woman's nay doth stand for naught I " asks Shakspere ; and Byron teaches that she "Who listens once will listen twice* Her heart, be sure, is not of ice, And one refusal no rebuff." The fact that a proposal is the sincerest compliment a man can pay a woman, contributes not a little to make a second proposal more acceptable. 'A third should rarely be attempted. The first proposal may have been refused more from momentary embarrass- ment than from real indifference. The second, being weighted by reflection, is generally final, though numerous exceptions have occurred ; yet in such cases it is probable that the woman gives her hand without her heart, having at last discovered that her heart is impervious to all Love. There are hundreds of thousands of such women, and some of them are very sweet and pretty. The fault lies in their shallow education. FEIGNED INDIFFERENCE Of every ten disappointed lovers seven might say: Had I been a less submissive slave, I might have been a more successful suitor. " It is a rule of manners," says Emerson, " to avoid exaggera- tion. . . In man or woman the face and the person lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration." R 242 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY In other words, one of the ways of winning Love is through stolidity and indifference, real or feigned. Were women the paragons of subtle insight they are painted, they would favour those who are most visibly affected by their charms, as being best able to appreciate and cherish them. There are such women a few ; but the majority are partial coquettes, to whom Love is known only as a form of Vanity, who neglect a man already won, and reserve their sweetest smiles for those that seem less submissive. The artificial dignity under which so many young society men hide their mental vacuity has an irresistible fascination for the average society girl And the high collar, ! /which helps to keep the head in a dignified position, unswerved/ Noy emotion, is responsible for innumerable conquests. Ergo, to win a society girl's heart, wear a high collar, appear awfully dignified and stolid, and show not the slightest interest in anything. Above all, if you are of superior intelligence, carefully conceal the fact. Brains are not "good form" in society; for what's the use of having flint where there is no steel to strike a spark 1 " Stolidity," says Schopenhauer, " does not injure a man in a woman's eye : rather will mental superiority, and still more genius, as something abnormal, have an unfavourable influence." A passage from Diderot's Paradox of Acting (Pollock's transla- tion) may be cited in illustration of Schopenhauer's remark. "Take two lovers, both of whom have their declarations to make. Who will come out of it best ? Not I, I promise you. I remember that I approached the beloved object with fear and trembling; my heart beat, my ideas grew confused, my voice failed me, I mangled all I said; I cried yes for no; I made a thousand blunders ; I was illimitably inept ; I was absurd from top to toe, and the more I saw it the more absurd I became. Meanwhile, under my very eyes, a gay rival, light-hearted and agreeable, master of himself, pleased with himself, losing no opportunity for the finest flattery, made himself entertaining and agreeable, enjoyed himself; he implored the touch of a hand which was at once given him, he sometimes caught it without asking leave, he kissed it once and again. I the while, alone in a corner, avoided a sight which irritated me, stifling my sighs, cracking uiy fingers with grasping my wrists, plunged in melan- choly, covered with a cold sweat, I could neither show nor conceal my vexation. People say of love that it robs witty men of their wit, and gives it to those who had none before : in other words, makes some people sensitive and stupid, others cold and adven- turous." HOW TO WIN LOVE 243 Another specialist in Love-lore, Lord Byron, discourses on this text in five pithy lines " Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs, Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes, But not too humbly or she will despise ; Disguise even tenderness, if thou art wise." And even the king of German metaphysicians, old Kant, under- stood this feminine foible, which may have been the reason why he never found a wife : " An actor," he says, "who remains un- moved, but possesses a powerful intellect and imagination, may succeed in producing a deeper impression by his feigned emotion' than he could by real emotion. One who is truly in love is, in presence of his beloved, confused, awkward, and anything but fascinating. But a clever man who merely plays the r6le of a lover may do it so naturally as to easily ensnare his poor victim ; simply because, his heart being unmoved, his head remains clear, and he can, therefore, make the most of his wits and his cleverness in presenting the counterfeit of a lover." " The counterfeit of a lover." It is he, then, whom women, according to these French, English, and German witnesses, en- courage, instead of the true lover. So that women are not only less capable of deep Love than men, but they do not even promote the growth and survival of Love by favouring the men most deeply affected by it. And the fault, be it said once more, lies in the superficial education not only of their intellect but of their emo- tions, for the heart can only be reached and refined through the brain. Th.e average, woman, being incapable of feeling Love, is incapable of appreciating it when she finds it in a man. 7 She sees only its ridiculous side and ridicule is fatal, even to Love. Ridi- cule killed Love in France, which to-day is the most loveless country in the civilised world, its women the most frivolous and heartless, and its population gradually diminishing. The ridiculous exaggerations of a lover are indeed harmless if the girl is in love too, for then she does not see them ; but to one who has yet to win Love, as girls are now constituted, they are fatal. Perhaps this is the reason why the list of men of genius who failed in their truest Love is so extraordinarily large : for, their Love being more ardent than that of others, they were unable to restrain its excesses and feign indifference ; while another way in which they "lost power" was through their extravagant ad- miration of Beauty, which put their faces " on the strain " to express it 244 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY However this may be, lovers should keep in mind this para- doxical rule, which follows as a corollary from the foregoing dis- cussion : In order to win a .woman, first cure yourself of your passion, then, having won her through feigned indifference (which is easy), fall in love again and bag her before she has had time to discover your change of feeling. The only difficulty herein lies in the cure. Should this be found impossible, even with the aid of our next chapter, one last resource is open to the lover. Says La Bruyere : " Quand Ton a assez fait aupres d'une femme pour devoir 1'engager, il y a encore une ressource, qui est de ne plus rien faire ; c'est alors qu'elle vous rappelle." In other words, if you have failed to win her love, with all your attentions, change your policy: leave her alone, and she will be sure to recall you. This trait is not simply the outcome of feminine perverseness or coquetry. The explanation lies deeper. Every sensible woman, be she ever so vain and accustomed to flattery, is painfully con- scious of certain defects, physical or mental. " Has he discovered them 1 " she will anxiously ask herself when the sly lover suddenly withdraws ; " I must recover his good opinion." So she sets her- self the task of fascinating and pleasing him ; and this desire to please (Gallantry) being one of the constituent parts of Love, it is apt to be soon joined by the other symptoms which make up the romantic passion. COMPLIMENTS "0 flatter me, for love delights in praises," exclaims one of Shakspere's characters ; and again " Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces ; Tho' ne'er so black, say they have angels' faces." There is one advantage in writing about the romantic passion, Love is such a tissue of paradoxes, and exists in such an endless variety of forms and shades that you may say almost anything about it you please, and it is likely to be correct. So again here. It is true, no doubt, that skill in the art of flattery helps a man to win a woman's goodwill, but how does this rhyme with the doctrine that Feigned Indifference is the lover's sharpest weapon ? Answer : A compliment is not so much an expression of Love as of simple aesthetic admiration ; or else it may spring from the flatterer's desire to show off his wit. A man may compliment a woman for whom he does not feel the slightest Love ; and women HOW TO WIN LOVE 245 know it. Therefore even a coquette does not despise and ignore a man who flatters her, as she invariably does one whose actions brand him as her captive and slave. At the same time, since the desire to be considered beautiful is the strongest passion in a woman's heart, the avenue to that heart may often be found by a man who can convince her honestly that she is considered beautiful by himself and others. For, as every man of ability has moments when he doubts his genius, so every woman has moments when she doubts her beauty and longs to see it in the mirror of a masculine eye. The most common mistake of lovers is to compliment a woman on her most conspicuous points of beauty. This has very much the same effect on her as telling Rubinstein he is a wonderful pianist. He knows that better than you do, and has been told so so many million times that he is sick and tired of hearing it again. But show him that you have discovered some special subtle detail of excellence in his performance or compositions that had escaped general notice, and his heart is yours at once and for ever. A lover can have no difficulty in discovering such subtle charms in his sweetheart, for Cupid, while blinding him to her defects, places her beauties under a microscope. A inan who attends a social gathering comes home pleased, not at having heard a number of bright things, but in proportion to his own success in amusing the company. On the same prin- ciple, if you give a girl especially one who mistrusts her conversa- tional ability a chance to say a single bright thing, she will love you more than if you said a hundred clever things to her. Sincerity in compliments is essential ; else all is lost. It is 'useless to try to convince a woman with an ugly mouth or nose that those features are not ugly. She knows they are ugly, as well as Rubinstein knows when he strikes a wrong note. " Very ugly or very beautiful women," says Chesterfield, "should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty." A clever joke is never out of place. You may intimate to a comparatively plain woman that she is good-looking, and if she retorts with a sceptical answer, you may snub her and score ten points in Love by telling her you pity her poor taste. Indeed, the art of successful flattery, especially with modern self-conscious girls, consists in the ability of giving " a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery," as Coleridge puts it. Conundrums are very useful. For instance, Angelina is patting a dog. " Do you know why all dogs are BO fond of you ?" 246 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY asks Adolphus. Angelina gives it up. "Because dogs are the most intelligent of all animals." Angelina goes to Paris, and Adolphus enjoys his last walk with her. They pass a weeping willow. "Why are we two like this tree ?" She gives it up again. " A weeping willow is graceful and melancholy ; you are grace- ful, I melancholy." "How old am I?" asks Angelina. "I don't know. Judging by your conversation thirty-five, by your looks nineteen." Tell a woman casually, as it were of the effect of her charms on a third party, and it will please her more than a bushel of your neatest compliments. As Lessing remarks, Homer gives us a more vivid sense of Helen's beauty by noting its effect even on the Trojan elders, than he could have done by the most minute enumeration of her charms. Put your flatteries into actions rather than words " mettre la flatterie dans les actions et non en paroles " is Balzac's advice. But " flattery in actions " is simply another name for Gallantry. There is no danger that the subtlest compliment will ever escape notice. In the discovery of praise the commonest mind has the quickness of genius. LOVE-LETTERS The great trouble with compliments is that they have an an- noying habit of occurring to the mind about ten or twenty minutes after the natural opportunity for getting them off has passed away. It is here that Love-letters come to the rescue. They enable a man to excogitate the most excruciatingly subtle and hyperbolic compliments, and then "lead up to them" most naturally. There is an old superstition that Love-letters must be inco- herent trash to be genuine evidences of passion. When Keats's Love-letters to Fanny Brawne were sold at auction, a spicy jour- nalist commented as follows on the occasion : "It is open to question whether, like so many of the letter- writers of the age of which Keats inherited the traditions, tho singer of Endymion had not a shrewd eye to posterity when he wrote the laboured compositions which the world regards as the record of his wooing. The manuscript is painfully correct, the punctuation worthy of a printer's reader, the capitals much nicer than fiery lovers usually form, and the periods rounded with pain- ful care. Like so many cultivators of the art of letter-writing, the sensitive poet, 'who was snuffed out by a review,' seems to HOW TO WIN LOVE 247 have copied the gush, which last week sold for ten times more than Endymion fetched, before he committed it to the fourpenny post. Hence the veriest scrawl, the most illegible postcard of these times is, as an index to the writer's character, infinitely more valuable than the ponderous pieces of rhetoric which last century passed for love-making between Strephon, who quotes the elegant Tully, and Chloe, who makes free use of the * Elegant Extracts.' Duller fustian than such priggish love-letters it is hard to conceive. They remind one of nothing so much as the epistles copied out of The Complete Letter- Writer, and must recall to some middle-aged men certain painful experiences of those salad days when their young affections suffered a sudden blight by missives of so severely correct an order that they suggest the idea of having undergone maternal supervision." Yet why, pray, should Keats not have written his Love-letters so carefully and copied them so neatly ? Is it not a fact that when a man is in love he cares more to make a pleasing impression on one particular person than on all the rest of the world com- bined ? and that even his ambition and fame, for which he labours so hard, seem valuable in his eyes solely as a means of winning Her Love 1 And if Love is a deeper passion, even in a poet, than ambition, why should he not go to the extent even of taking notes and utilising his very best conceits in his Love-letters ? The truth is, in the writing of Love-letters everything depends on the man's habits. If he is accustomed to writing carelessly, his Love-letters will probably _be hasty and slovenly enough to suit orthodox notions on this subject. But if he is a literary artist, he will probably polish his billets-doux more than anything else con amore, considering the probable effect on her mind of every sentence. And although the thought of future publication may enter his mind, it will appear as the veriest trifle compared with the more important object of winning a woman's Love by a display of complimentary wit and passionate protestations of un- dying affection. Sir Richard Steele evidently did not believe that Love-letters, to be genuine, must be slovenly. In one of his letters to Miss Scurlock he apologises for not having time to revise what he had written. In another letter he exclaims : " How art thou, oh my soul, stolen from thyself ! how is all my attention broken ! my books are blank paper, and my friends intruders." Again : "It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As for me, all that speak to find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. A gentleman 248 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY asked me this morning, ' What news from Holland ? ' and I answered, { She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know when I had been last at Windsor ; I replied, ' She designs to go with me.' " And once more : " It is to my lovely charmer I owe that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions : it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirers some similitude of the object admired ; thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion." The first score or so of Keats's Love-letters have the ring of true gold. Here are a few specimens in which the thermometer of endearments rises steadily from My Dearest Lady, through My Sweet Girl, My Dear Girl, My Dearest Girl, My Sweet Fanny, to My Sweet Love, Dearest Love and Sweetest Fanny. In the very first letter he writes : " Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the letter you must write immediately ? and do all you can to console me in it make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me write the softest words and kiss them, that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself,' if I do not know how to express my devotion to so fair a form, I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies, and lived but three summer days three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain." " All I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your beauty." " I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks your loveli- ness and the hour of my death. that I could have possession of them both in the same minute." " I hate the world : it batters too much the wings of my self- will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it. From no others would I take it." " At Winchester I shall get your letters more readily ; and it being a cathedral city, I shall have a pleasure, always a great one to me when near a cathedral, of reading them during the service up and down the aisle." All this is in the true Shaksperian key of Eomantic Love, as are the Love-letters of Burns, Byron, Moore, Heine, Burger, Lenau, and most other poets. Room must be made here for a few extracts from Lenau's letters to his love, which, in some respects, resemble those of Keats equally polished, poetic, deep, and sincere : HOW TO \VLN LOVE 249 " It makes me melancholy to see how incapable I am of sym- pathising with the pleasures of my friends. My Love goes out afar towards you ; it hearkens and listens and stares in the distance for you, and takes no note of all the love by which it is surrounded here. I am truly ill. I constantly think of you alone and death. It often seems to me as if my time had expired. I cannot write poetry, I cannot rejoice in anything, cannot hope, can only think of you and death. The other day I wrote to you to take good care of your health though I myself feel so little desire to live." " The whole evening I was unable to think of anything but of you and the possibility of losing you. The large crowd of people seemed to have assembled on purpose to show me most painfully what a mere nothing the world would be to me if I had to part from you. I constantly saw but your face, your lovely, divine eye." " Alexander wishes me to go to the baths at Leuk with him. He is quite ill But I cannot go. If I have to see Switzerland without you, I prefer not to see it at all." "My poetic composition is in a bad way. Though a thought sprouts in me here and there, it withers before it has reached maturity. When I go to see you I shall bring along a dry wreath of prematurely-faded poetic blossoms, and make them revive in your presence, as there are warm fountains dipped into which faded flowers blossom again." " I have lost all pleasure in other people when you are absent. If you had only been at Weinsberg ! Even the ^Eolian harps did not produce the usual impression on me." It is noticeable how the overtone of Monopoly is accented in all these plaints. "I have found in your companionship more evidence of an eternal life than in all my investigations and studies of nature. Whenever, in a happy hour, I believed I had reached the climax of Love and the proper moment for death, since a more delicious moment could never follow : it was on each occasion an illusion, for another hour followed in which I loved you still more deeply. These ever new, ever deeper abysses of life convince me of its immortality. To-day I saw in your eyes the full measure of the divine. Most distinctly did I perceive to-day that the swelling and sinking of the eye is the breathing of the soul. In an eye of such beauty as yours we can see, as in a prophetic hieroglyphic, the essence of which some day our immortal body will consist. If I die, I shall depart rich, for I have seeu what is most beautiful iu the world." " The rose you gave ine at parting has a most delicious fra- 250 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY grance, as if it were a Good-Night from you ! Sleep well, dearest heart ! Preserve the second rose as a memento. I love you immeasurably." No doubt the average Love-letters read in courts of justice in breach of promise cases, to the intense amusement of the audience, are very different in character from these poetic effusions. But to say that, because the average Love-letters are ludicrous, therefore all Love-letters, to be genuine, must be ludicrous and incoherent, is the very Bedlam of absurdity. What makes common Love- letters so laughable is the fact that the writer, previously a para- gon of prosiness, suddenly gets some poetic fancies and tries to put them into language. But as the writing of poetry in verse or prose is a more difficult art than piano-playing, first attempts cannot be otherwise than harrowing or amusing. On the other hand, just as a pianist can never improvise so soulfully as when he is in love, so a poet will write his best prose in the letters addressed to his love ; the only ludicrous feature being that extravagant and exclusive admiration of one person which is the very essence of Love. ^ Surely "Hawthorne was neither "insincere" nor "thinking of posterity " w^en he finished one of his Love-letters with this poetic conceit, expressed in his best prose style : " When we shall be endowed with spiritual bodies I think they will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any distance, in no time at all, and transfuse them warm and fresh into the consciousness of those we love. Oh, what happiness it would be, at this moment, if 'I could be conscious of some purer feeling, some more delicate sentiment, some lovelier fantasy than could possibly have had its birth in my own nature, and therefore be aware that you were thinking through my mind and feeling through my heart ! Perhaps you possess this power already." This is true epistolary Love-making the sublimated essence of complimentary Gallantry. LOVE-CHARMS FOR WOMEN As women are not allowed to make Love actively, they resort to various cunning arts with which they indirectly reach the hard hearts of men. Magic is the most potent of these arts, and always has been so considered by women ; for, curiously enough, one finda on looking over the folklore of various nations, ancient and modern, that in nineteen cases out of twenty where a Love-charm is spoken of, it is one used by women to win the affection of men. HOW TO WIN LOVE 251 Probably the real reason why the vast majority of women are so curiously indifferent to the hygienic arts of increasing and pre- serving Personal Beauty as shown in their devotion to tight- lacing, their aversion to fresh air, sunshine, and brisk exercise is because they know they can infallibly win a man's Love by the use of some simple powder or potion. It is well known that the Roman poet Lucretius took his life in an amorous fit caused by a love-potion ; and Lucullus lost his reason in the same way. The grandest musical work in existence would never have been written had not Brangane given to Tristan and Isolde a love-potion which w r as so powerful that it made not only both the victims die of the fever of Love, but united them even after death : " For from the grave of Tristan sprang a plant which descended into the grave of Yseult. Cut down thrice by order of the Cornish king, the irre- pressible vegetable bloomed verdant as ever next morning, and even now casts its shadow over the tombs of the lovers ** ' An ay it grew, an ay it threw, As they would fain be one.' " In mediaeval times Personal Beauty was such a rara thing, and created such havoc among men, that the unhappy possessors of it were frequently accused of using forbidden Love-charms, and burnt at the stake as witches. To-day, thanks to our superior sanitary and educational arrange- ments, Beauty is such a common affair that it has lost all its effect on the masculine heart ; hence girls should carefully note a few of the ways by which a man may be irresistibly fascinated. Italian girls practise the following method : A lizard is caught, drowned in wine, dried in the sun and reduced to powder, some of which is thrown on the obdurate man, who thenceforth is theirs for evermore. A favourite Slavonic device is to cut the finger, let a few drops of her blood run into a glass of beer, and make the adored man drink it unknowingly. The same method is current in Hesse and Oldenburg, according to Dr. Ploss. In Bohemia, the girl who is afraid to wound her finger may substitute a few drops of bat's blood. Cases are known where invocations to the moon were followed by the bestowal of true Love. And if a girl will address the new moon as follows " All hail to thee, moon ! All hail to thee 1 Prit^pe. good moon, reveal to me. This night who my husband shall be," she will dream of him that very night. -252 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY A four-leaved clover secretly placed in a man's shoes will make him the devoted lover of the woman who puts it in. " Inside a frog is a certain crooked bone, which, when cleaned and dried over the fire on St. John's Eve, and then ground fine and given in food to the lover, will at once win his love for the administerer." j If a girl sees a man washing his hands say at a picnic and llends him her apron or handkerchief to dry them, he will forthwith; Declare himself her amorous slave to eternity. There are men, however, who, owing to some constitutional defect or inherited anomaly, remain unaffected by these and similar arts. Should any woman be so foolish as to crave such a man's Love, she will do well to bear in mind that Vanity is the back- door by which every marts heart may be entered. Thus Byron says of a Venetian flame of his : "But her great merit is finding out mine there is nothing so amiable as discernment." " Let? her be," says Thackeray, " if not a clever woman, an appreciator of clever- ness in others, which, perhaps, clever folks like better." ' Ne'er," says Scott, " ' Was flattery lost on poet's ears : A simple race ! they waste their toil For the vain tribute of a smile.' " Rousseau's last love was inspired by a woman's admiration of his writings. Balzac, celibate for many years, was at last captured by a woman who returned to a hotel room for a volume of his works she had left there, informing him, without suspecting who he was, that she never travelled without it and could not live without it. " The story of the marriage of Lamartine," says the author of Salad for the Solitary, " is also one of romantic interest. The lady, whose maiden name was Birch, was possessed of considerable property, and when past the bloom of youth she became passion- ately enamoured of the poet from the perusal of his Meditations. For some time she nursed this sentiment in secret, and, being apprised of the embarrassed state of his affairs, she wrote him, tendering him the bulk of her fortune. Touched with this re- markable proof of her generosity, and supposing it could only be caused by a preference for himself, he at once made an offer of his hand and heart. Ha imln-nri T-in-^fiy, an d t^e p ne t wa s ; omptly :', beauty, wit, elegant mann&s, amiability these are . ever sure of their j^ra. f Siie k ed me for tho dangers I -had passed," says Utheiio, "and I loved her that she did pity them." Or, as Professor Dowden comments on this HOW TO WIN LOVE 253 passage, "the beautiful Italian girl is fascinated by the regal strength and grandeur, and tender protectiveness of the Moor. He is charmed by the sweetness, the sympathy, the gentle disposi- tion, the gracious womanliness of Desdemona." " The gracious womanliness of Desdemona." There lies the secret the charm of charms. It is fortunate that the political viragoes of to-day, who would remove woman from her domestic sphere, have opposed to them the greatest force in the universe the power of man's Love ! When they have overcome that, they will find it easy to dam the current of the Niagara River, and curb the force of the ocean's countless breakers. PROPOSING Countless as the stars, and only too apposite, are the jokes about lovers who evolve masterpieces of eloquence wherewith to lay their hearts at their idol's feet ; but who, when the crucial moment of the trial arrives, like Beckmesser iu Wagner's comic opera, stutter out the veriest parody of their song of Love. And no wonder, considering what is at stake ; for the Yes or No decides whether the lover is to be literally the happiest or the un- happiest of all men for weeks or months to come. Ovid cautions a man not to select a sweetheart in the twilight or lamplight, since " spots are invisible at night and every fault is overlooked; at that time almost every woman is held to be beautiful." But proposing is a different matter from selecting. When once the choice is made, and her choice alone remains to be decided, twilight is the only proper time to " pop the question." For a maiden's independence and Coyness are inversely related to the degree of light. Injth^minmngrin broad daylight, she can boldly face even the terrible thought of being left an old maid ; but in the" twilight she feels the need of a man's protection, and it is at that time that the imagination is least deaf to the whispered and self -suggested fancies of Romantic Love and wedded bliss. A man who proposes in the morning deserves, therefore, to be dis- appointed. Nature herself has provided a safeguard against morning nrrv posals. No woman ia "> ^"-^iftd in the daytime as in the even- ing; anc magic ,eff autifying the complexion anri and thus 'iiging the lover's courage to the point of amormia ron. Cession. 254 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY There is still another reason why a tender and considerate lover should propose in the chiaroscuro of subdued light to spare her blushes " But 'ncath yon crimson tree, Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame." BUY ANT. Not many years ago a plan was described in the newspapers by which a number of Southern youths who had not the courage to propose were happily mated and wedded. An elderly person was selected, vowed to eternal secrecy, and to him each youth and maiden who was in love confided in writing the name of the be- loved. Those couples that had chosen one another were informed of the fact, and went away rejoicing, arm in arm. A fairy story, on the face of it. A woman would sooner cut off her hand than write with it the secret of her Love before she knew it was returned ; and that man that hath a tongue is, I say, no man, if he is afraid to ask for a woman's hand or to take it unasked, and let it respond to the touching question. " Love sought is good, but given unsought is better," says Shakspere.. The only true proposals are those where spoken words are dis- pensed with ; where the magnetic thrill of the hands, the eloquence of the tell-tale eyes, draw the lovers into mutual embrace, and lips become glued on lips in unpremeditated ecstasy. DIAGNOSIS OR SIGNS OF LOVE Though women may often feel in doubt concerning the in- tentions of men who pay them attentions, they cannot help recog- nising deep Love in a man instantly; for the symptoms, as described in a previous chapter, are absolutely unmistakable. A woman, too, who loves deeply, can hardly help betraying herself, by the sly opportunities she finds for meeting her lover (purely accidental, of course), and by the special pains she takes to make it clear to her friends that she does not care for that man certainly; often also by the fact, pointed out by Jean Paul, that " Love increases man's delicacy and lessens woman's"; tempting her occasionally to throw away all prudence and regard for public opinion, in the wild intoxication of her passion and her confidence in her lover. But in cases of doubt how is a lover to decide whether it is safe and wcr* 1 ; 1 wMle to proceed? A woman's Coyness, of course, means nothing, and may have been brought on by an assumption of excessive confidence and boldness on the man's part. Girls are HOW TO CUKE LOVE 255 like wild colts. They may be safely approached to a certain dis- tance, whence one step more will cause them to stampede; but stand still at that point, and before long they will cast away fear and meet you half-way. Trifles are the only safe tests of Love. For they are not so apt as weighty words and actions to be the outcome of a deliberate coquettish desire to deceive. To ascertain if you are loved and this holds true for both sexes allude (with a careless assumption of indifference) to some trifling details of previous conversation or common experience. If she (or he) remembers them all, especially if of remote occurrence, the chances are you are loved. Shakspere evidently had this in mind when he wrote " If thou rememberest not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run into, Thou hast not loved." HOW TO CURE LOVE All hope abandon ye who enter here. It is a terrible haunt of pessimism, for disappointed lovers only. All others will please pass it by, for the object of this book is to advocate the cause of Love, not to weaken it. Only when all hope of reciprocation is abandoned, should the tender plant ever be crushed underfoot. An exception must be made in favour of those hopeful lovers who merely wish to cure themselves in order to improve their chances of winning, as explained in the last chapter, under the head of Feigned Indifference. It is useless to quote to a rejected lover Rosalind's philosophy : " Our poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love cause. . . . Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Useless to tell him, as Emerson does, that it is not a disgrace to love unrequitedly : " It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet." To all such efforts at consolation the poor wretch may retort with Shakspere : " Every one may master a grief but he who has it." Yet he may, at any rate, endeavour to "patch his grief" with the following reflections, based on the experience of centuries. KOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY ABSENCE Two thousand years ago Ovid advised the readers of his Eemedia Amoris who wished to cure themselves of an unwelcome attachment to flee the capital, to travel, hunt, or till the soil till all danger of a relapse should be averted. " Out of sight, out of mind," wrote Thomas a Kempis ; and this theme has been varied by a hundred writers in prose and verse. "Love is a local anguish," exclaims Coleridge ; " I am fifty miles away and am not half so miserable." Carew puts it thus " Then fly betimes, for only they Conquer love, that run away." Even the unspeakable Turk has a proverb advising a lover to fly to the mountains. The Himalayas are probably meant, for no other chain would be high enough to allay the anguish of a poly- gamist rejected by a whole harem. On the other hand, " I find that absence still increases love," wrote Charles Hopkins in the seventeenth century; and Bayly- gave this paradox the familiar form of "absence makes the heart grow fonder" to which a modern realistic wag has added the coda " of the other man." " La Rochefoucauld has well remarked," says Hume, "that absence destroys weak passions, but increases strong ones ; as the wind extinguishes a candle but blows up a fire." This simile is not very appropriate, nor is the statement un- questionable. It is more correct to say that short absence increases Love, while long absence cures it. There are two ways in which a short absence favours Love : Like the thirst of a man who would wean himself of strong liquor, the lover's ardour is at first increased when he is placed where he can no longer drink in the intoxicating sight of her beauty. Time is needed to annihilate the maddening memory of that pleasure. Secondly, short absence favours the idealising process in the lover's mind. Removed from the corrective influence of her actual presence, his imagination may abandon itself to the delightful task of painting a gloriously unreal counterfeit of her charms which is oil in the flames. This idealising process is facilitated by the strange difficulty which most people and lovers in particular experience in recalling the features of those specially dear to them. HOW TO CUBE LOVE 257 Given sufficient time to fix the idealised image of the beloved in the memory, and a cure may be effected through the shock sub- sequently felt on comparing this image with the greatly inferior reality. TRAVEL It is safer, however, not to risk a return, but to avoid sight of her altogether for several years. The advantages of travel are twofold, not to mention the security from the danger of an accidental meeting. At home the surrounding world is too familiar to afford distraction, whereas in a strange place every object claims the attention and diverts the mind from its amorous reveries. More important still is the fact that in a foreign country the strangeness of national physiognomy invests all women with a heightened charm, so that it is easier to find an antidote by falling in love anew. EMPLOYMENT " Great spirits and great business do keep out the weak passion of love," said Bacon ; but long before him Ovid knew that Leisure is Cupid's chief ally. " If you desire to end your love, employ yourself and you will conquer ; for Amor flees business." He advises military service, agriculture, and hunting as excellent diversions. Poetry and music, however, as the same poet tells us, and all other occupations tending to stir up the tender feelings, are to be carefully avoided. Novel -reading is particularly bad, for to imagine another's Love is to revive your own. " Lotte Hartmann played some melodies of Bellini on the piano this evening," writes Leuau ; " I ought to avoid music when I am away from you, for it arouses in me a longing and an anguish of consuming violence. I feel how my heart sadly shrinks within itself, and unwillingly continues to beat." MARRIED MISERY Surely the thought that his romantic adoration will cease with marriage ought to cure a rejected wooer. Unquestionably, marriage is the best cure of Love. For though cynics are wrong in claim- ing that wedlock changes Love to indifference, it does change it to conjugal affection, which is an entirely different group of emotions. To the rejected lover, unfortunately, matrimony is not available as a cure of his Love. But he may give his overheated imagination an ice-bath by reflecting on the dark side of conjugal life, the 258 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY promised bliss of which has been described as a mirage by so many great minds. Professor Jowett thus discourses on how a modern Sokrates in a cynical mood might discourse on the seamy side of married life : " How the inferior of the two drags the other down to his or her level ; how the cares of a family * breed meanness in their souls.' . . . They cannot undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women famous, from domestic con- siderations. Too late their eyes are opened ; they were taken unawares, and desire to part company. Better, he would say, a 1 little love at the beginning,' for heaven might have increased it ; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike. . . . How much nobler, in conclusion he will say, is friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes, and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the courts." Dr. Johnson, in a letter to Baretti, points out the difference between Love and Marriage : "In love, as in every other passion of which hope is the essence, we ought always to remember the uncertainty of events. There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman ; and if all would happen that a lover fancies, I know not what other terrestrial happiness would deserve pursuit. But love and marriage are different states. Those who are to suffer the evils together, and to suffer often for the sake of one another, soon lose tliai tenderness of look and that benevolence of mind which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and successive amusement." " Lose that tenderness of look !" Have you reflected that it is that exquisite tenderness of look which chiefly fascinated you, and have you not noticed that, as Johnson implies, married people rarely regard one another with that look which constantly intoxi- cated them during Courtship ? For " beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense," says Addison ; or, as Hazlitt puts it, " though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration." " With most marriages," says Goethe, " it is not long till things assume a very piteous look." Raleigh : " If thou marry beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which, perchance, will HOW TO CURE LOVE 259 neither last nor please thee one year." Seneca : " Beauty is such a fleeting blossom, how can wisdom rely upon its momentary delight?" Howells : "Marian Butler was at that period full of those airs of self-abnegation with which women adorn themselves in the last days of betrothal and the first of marriage, and never afterwards." Alexander Walker : " It looks as if woman were in possession of most enjoyments, and as if man had only an illusion held out to him to make him labour for her." Montaigne : " As soon as women are ours we are no longer theirs." " The land of marriage has this peculiarity that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished thence." Boucicault : " I wish that Adam had died with all his ribs in his body." De Finod : " Marriage is the sunset of love." Goldsmith : " Many of the English marry in order to have one happy month in their lives." Hood : " You can't wive and thrive both in the same year." Southey : " There are three things a wise man will not trust, the wind, the sun- shine of an April day, and a woman's plighted faith." Byron : " I remarked in my illness the complete inertion, inaction, and destruction of my chief mental faculties. I tried to rouse them, and yet could not and this is the Sovlf// I should believe that it was married to the body if they did not sympathise so much with each other." Colley Gibber : " Oh, how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring ! " Alphonse Karr : "Women for the most part do not love us. They do not choose a man because they love him, but because it pleases them to be loved by him." Lady Montagu : " It goes far toward reconciling me to being a woman, when I reflect that I am thus in no immediate danger of ever marrying one." Schopenhauer : " It is well known that happy marriages are rare." " The lover, contrary to expectation, finds himself no happier than before." Byron " Think you if Laura had been Petrarch's wife He would have written sonnets all his life ? " Burton : " Paul commended marriage, yet he preferred a single life." Buxton : " Juliet was a fool to kill herself, for in three months she'd have married again, and been glad to be quit of Romeo." Heine: "The music at a marriage procession always reminds me of the music which leads soldiers to battle." Lessing " Ein einzig boses Weib gibt's hochstens in der Welt, Nur schade dass ein jeder es fur das seine halt." " Of shrewish women in the world there's surely only one, A pity, though, that every man says she's the wife he won." 260 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Selden : " Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in JEsop were extremely wise ; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." When the Pope heard of Father Hyacinthe's marriage, says Oheales, he exclaimed : " The saints be praised ! the renegade has taken his punishment into his own hands. Truly the ways of Providence are inscrutable ! " FEMININE INFERIORITY Why are women so mysterious, so inscrutable? Cynics say because you cannot calculate what they will do, as they have no fixed compass by which they steer, i.e. no character. But Heine takes up their defence. Far from having no character, he says, they have a new one every day. The world's opinion of women is best revealed in the crystallised wisdom, based on experience, called proverbs. It will soothe the wounded lover's heart to note the unanimity with which woman's foibles are dwelt on in the proverbs of all nations from ancient Greece to modern China and France. To give only three instances of a thousand that may be found in any collection of proverbs : " Women," says a French proverb, " have quicksilver in the brain, wax in the heart." The old Greek poet Xenarchus sang, " Happy the cicadas live, since they all have voiceless wives." " There is no such poison in the green snake's mouth or in the hornet's sting as in a woman's heart," says a Chinese maxim. But it is not necessary to rely on such anonymous collections of wisdom as proverbs to convince a man of the folly of linking himself for life with such a miserable inferior being as a woman. From Plato to Darwin there is a consensus of opinion as to woman's vast inferiority to man. According to Plato, says Mr. Grote, "men are superior to women in everything ; in one occupation as well as in another." Cookery and weaving having been named as two apparent excep- tions, Plato denies woman's superiority even in these. "The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes," says Darwin, " is shown by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music (inclusive both of composition and performance), history, science, HOW TO CURE LOVE 261 and philosophy, with half a dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison." " I found, as a rule," says Mr. Galton, " that men have more delicate powers of discrimination than women, and the business of life seems to confirm this view. The tuners of pianofortes are men, and so, I understand, are the tasters of tea and wine, the sorters of wool, and the like. These latter occupations are well salaried, because it is of the first moment to the merchant that he should be rightly advised on the real value of what he is about to purchase or to sell. If the sensitivity of women were superior to that of men, the self-interest of merchants would lead to their being always employed ; but as the reverse is the case, the opposite sup- position is likely to be the true one. "Ladies rarely distinguish the merits of wine at the dinner- table, and though custom allows them to preside at the breakfast- table, men think them, on the whole, to be far from successful makers of tea and coffee." This disposes of the old myth that women are more sensitive than men. And De Quincy, in his essay on False Distinctions, refutes the equally absurd notion that " women have more imagina- tion than men." He comes to the conclusion that, " as to poetry in its highest form, I never yet knew a woman, nor yet will believe that any has existed, who could rise to an entire sympathy with what is most excellent in that art." One proof of this statement lies in the fact that as a rule men of genius have been refused by the women they loved most deeply. Regarding the emotional sphere, we have seen that it is only in parental and conjugal feeling that woman surpasses man. In Romantic Love, in all the impersonal feelings for art and nature, she is vastly his inferior. Her superficial education gives her no intellectual interests, and that is the reason why so many married men prefer the club and friendship to home and conjugal devotion even as did the ancient Greeks. It is in the seventh book of the Laws, p. 806, that Plato remarks : " The legislator ought not to let the female sex live softly and waste money and have no order of life, while he takes the utmost care of the male sex, and leaves half of life only blest with happiness, when he might have made the whole state happy." Is it not humiliating to man, who loves to call himself a " reasoning animal," to find that, after so many centuries, one of our greatest and most liberal thinkers, Professor Huxley, is obliged to write in this same Platonic tone that " the present system of female education stands self-condemned, as inherently absurd," 262 EOMAKTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY because it fosters and exaggerates instead of removing woman's natural disadvantages? "With few insignificant exceptions," Professor Huxley continues, "girls have been educated either to be drudges or toys beneath man, or a sort of angels above him ; the highest ideal aimed at oscillating between Clarchen and Beatrice. The possibility that the ideal of womanhood lies neither in the fair saint nor in the fair sinner ; that women are meant neither to be men's guides nor their playthings, but their comrades, their fellows, and their equals, so far as Nature puts no bar to their equality, does not seem to have entered into the minds of those who have had the conduct of the education of girls" (Lay Sennons, p. 25). Woman, in short, is a failure ; and let any disappointed lover ask himself, Is it businesslike to begin life with a failure 1 FOCUSSING HEK FAULTS Love being a magic emotional microscope which ignites passion by magnifying the most beautiful features of the beloved, leaving everything else indistinct and blurred, it follows that the simplest way of arresting this flame is to change the focus of this microscope^ to fix the attention deliberately on her faults, while throwing her merits and charms into an unfavourable light. This method is too self-evident and effective not to have occurred to the ingenious Ovid. He advises the lover who wishes to be cured to study the girl's charms in a hypercritical spirit. Call her stout if she is plump, black if she is dark, lean if slender. Ask her to sing if she has no talent for music, to talk if unskilled in conversation, to dance if awkward, and if her teeth are bad, tell her funny stories to make her laugh. Her mental faults require no microscope to reveal them. Cer- tainly her taste is execrable, for does she not prefer that vulgar fellow Jones to you, one of the cleverest fellows that ever conde- scended to be born on this miserable planet ? What folly, indeed, to love such a girl ! What fascinates you is simply the mysterious brilliancy of her coal-black eyes of which you may find ten thousand duplicates in Italy or Spain. Don't you see that no flashes of wit are ever mirrored in those eyes 1 that, though beautiful, they are soulless, like a black pansy ? that they look at one person as at another, incapable oif expressing shades and modulations of tender emotion, because the soul of which they are the windows has never been, and never will be, moved by Love ? She never thinks of anything but her own pleasure; does HOW TO CURE LOVE 263 nothing but visit the dressmaker and the theatre and read novels ; never thinks it her duty to provide for her future husband's com- fort and happiness by educating herself in domestic economy and aesthetic accomplishments of real depth as you have toiled and studied in anticipation of providing for her comfort and happiness. She takes no sympathetic interest in your affairs how can you expect to be happy with her ? If she loves you not, you would be more than a fool to try to get her consent to marriage, for is it not the ecstasy of Love to be loved and worshipped alone and beyond any other mortal 1 The beauty of her eyes will not last, it is nothing, anyway, but sunlight mechanically reflected from a darkly-painted iris and when its youthful brilliancy vanishes there will be no soul-sparks to take its place. And for this brief honeymoon mirage you are willing to give up your bachelor comforts and pleasures, your freedom to do what you please, go where you please, and travel whenever you please ; to exchange your refreshing sleep o' nights for domestic cares and the pleasure of trotting up and down the room with a bawling baby at two o'clock in the morning 1 Bah ! Are you in your senses ? True, if you are rich some of these disadvantages may be avoided. But if you are rich you will not be refused, for "Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair," as Byron remarks ; and again : " For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon Fortune" But of all her shortcomings the most galling and fatal is that she loves you not. This thought alone, says Stendhal, may suc- ceed in curing a man of his passion. You will notice, he says, that she whom you love favours others with little attentions which she withholds from you. They may be mere trifles, such as not giving you a chance to help her into her carriage, her box at the opera. The thought of this, by " associating a sense of humiliation with every thought of her, poisons the source of love and may destroy it." Thus wounded Pride is the easiest way out of Love, as gratified Pride is the straightest way in. REASON VERSUS PASSION According to Shakspere, though Love does not admit Eeason as his counsellor, he does use him as his physician. The most effective way of using Reason to cure Love is by way of comparison. By dwelling on the miseries of married life as just detailed, the disap- 264 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY pointed lover may mitigate his pains somewhat, as did that Italian mentioned by Schopenhauer, who resisted the agony of torture by constantly keeping in his mind's eye the picture of the gallows that would, have been the reward of confession. Again, he may compare his present Love with a former infatua- tion that seemed at the time equally deep and eternal, though now he wonders how he could have ever loved that girl. History repeats itself. Compare, moreover, your present idol with her stout and faded mother. In a few years she will perhaps resemble her mother more than her present self. Compare her charms, feature by feature, with some recognised paragon of beauty. Look at her in the glaring light of the sun, which reveals every spot on the complexion. LOVE VERSUS LOVE Longfellow says it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion ; and Mr. Hamerton believes that " a wrinkled old maid may still preserve in the depths of her own heart, quite unsuspected by the young and lively people about her, the un extinguished embers of a passion that first made her wretched fifty years before." Occasionally this may be true, in the sense in which psychology teaches that no impression made on the mind is ever completely effaced, but may, though forgotten for years, be revived in moments of great excitement, or in the delirium of fever ; as, for example, in the case mentioned by Duval, of a Pole in Germany, who had not used his native language for thirty years, but who, under the influence of anaesthetics, " spoke, prayed, and sang, using only the Polish language." The persistence of an old passion is the more probable from the fact that in mental disease and age, as Ribot points out, the emotional faculties are effaced much more slowly than the intellectual. Feelings form the self; amnesia of feeling is the destruction of self. Ordinarily, however, and for the time being, it may be possible to practically obliterate a passion. " All love may be expelled by love, as poisons are by other poisons," says Dryden. And if the allopathic remedies described in the preceding paragraphs should fail to effect a cure, the lover may find the homoeopathic principle of similia similibus more successful. Heine, in his posthumous Memoirs, thus refers to this principle of curing like with like : NATIONALITY AND LOVE 25 "In love, as in the Roman Catholic religion, there is a provisional purgatory in which mortals are allowed to get used gradually to being roasted before they get into the real eternal hell. ... In all honesty, what a terrible thing is love for a woman. Inoculation is herein of no use. . . . Very wise and experienced physicians counsel a change of locality in the opinion that removal from the presence of the enchantress will also break the charm. Perhaps the homoaopathic principle, by which woman cures us of woman, is the best of all. ... It was ordained that I should be visited more severely than other mortals by this malady, the heart-pox. . . . The most effective antidote to women are women ; true, this implies an attempt to expel Satan with Beelze- bub ; and in such a case the medicine is often more noxious still than the malady. But it is at any rate a change, and in a disconsolate love-affair a change of the inamorata is unquestionably the best policy." PROGNOSIS OR CHANCES OF RECOVERY After carefully following all the foregoing rules regarding absence, travel, employment, dwelling on the miseries of marriage, the weaknesses of women in general and one woman in particular, the disappointed lover may boldly return and face her again. The chances are ten to one he will find himself more in love than ever ! Women are magicians, No wonder they were burned as witches in the Middle Ages. NATIONALITY AND LOVE Romantic love commonly considered immutable not only displays countless individual variations in regard to duration and degrees of intensity, but has a sort of "local colour" in each country; or, to keep up our old metaphor, a varying clangtint, depending on the greater or less prominence of certain "over- tones." To describe all these varieties of Love would require a separate volume. Ajid since all the most interesting forms of the romantic passion are to be met with in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, and America, it will suffice to briefly characterise Love in those countries. 266 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY TRENCH LOVE As literary luck would have it, the subject of French Love follows naturally upon the subject of the last chapter, the Remedia Amor is. The French are too clever a nation to leave to individual effort the difficult task of curing the mind of such an obstinate thing as Love. All the papas and mammas in the land have put their heads together and devised two methods of killing Love wholesale, compared with which all the remedies named in the last chapter are mere fly-bites. These two methods are Chaperonage and Parental Choice, as opposed to Courtship and Individual Sexual Selection. Paradoxical as it may seem, there is in the midst of modern Europe a nation which, in the treatment of women, Love, and marriage, stands on the same low level of evolution as the ancient, mediaeval, and Oriental nations. This is not a theory, but a fact patent to all, and attested by. the best English, German, and French authors. One of the deepest of French thinkers, whose eyes were opened by travel and comparison, De Stendhal, in 1842, says in his book De I' Amour : " Pour comprendre cette passion, que depuis trente ans la peur du ridicule cache avec tant de soin parmi nous, il faut en parler comme d'une maladie " " To understand this passion, which during the last thirty years has been concealed among us with so much solicitude, from fear of ridicule, it is necessary to speak of it as a malady." But Stendhal greatly understates the case. It was not only within thirty years from the time when he wrote, and by means of ridicule, that the French had tried hard to kill Love. They have never really emancipated themselves from mediaeval barbarism. Pure Romantic Love between two young unmarried persons has never yet flourished in France because it has never been allowed to grow. To-day, as in the days of the Troubadours, the only form of Love celebrated in French plays and romances is the form which implies conjugal infidelity. "Marriage, as treated in the old French epics," says Ploss, "is rarely based on love ;" the woman marries for protection, the man for her wealth or social affiliations. In the eighteenth century girls were compelled from their earliest years to live only for appearance sake : " The most harmless natural enjoyment, every childish ebullition, is interdicted as improper. Her mother denies FRENCH LOVE 267 her the expression of tender emotion as too bourgeois, too common. The little one grows up in a dreary, heartless vacuum ; her deeper feelings remain undeveloped. . . Real love would be too ordinary a motive of marriage, and therefore extremely ridiculous. It is not offered her, accordingly, nor does she feel any." Heine wrote from Paris in 1837 that "girls never fall in love in this country." " With us in Germany, as also in England and other nations of Germanic origin, young girls are allowed the utmost possible liberty, whereas married women become subjected to the strict and anxious supervision of their husbands. " Here in France, as already stated, the reverse is the case : young girls remain in the seclusion of a convent until they either marry or are introduced to the world under the strict eye of a relative. In the world, i.e. in the French salon, they always remain silent and little noticed, for it is neither good form here nor wise to make love to an unmarried girl. "There lies the difference. We Germans, as well as our Germanic neighbours, bestow our love always on unmarried girls, and these only are celebrated by our poets ; among the French, on the other hand, married women only are the object of love, in lifo as well as in literature." The difficulty of becoming acquainted with a young lady, Mr. Hamerton tells us, is greatest " in what may be called the ' respectable ' classes in country-towns and their vicinities. In Parisian society young ladies go out into le monde, and may be seen and even spoken to at evening-parties." " And even spoken to " is good, is very good. What a privilege for the young men ! The iron bars which formerly separated them from the young ladies have actually been removed, and they are allowed to speak to them in presence of a heart-chilling, conversation-killing dragon. No wonder Parisian society is so corrupt ! Mr. Hamerton has given in Round My House the most realistic and fascinating account of French courtship and marringe-customs ever written. He is a great admirer of the French, always ready to excuse their foibles, and his testimony is, therefore, doubly valuable as that of an absolutely impartial witness. He had an opportunity for many years of studying French provincial life with an artist's trained faculties ; and here are a few sentences culled from his descriptions : " It is not merely difficult, in our neighbourhood, for a young man in the respectable classes to get acquainted with a young lady, but every conceivable arrangement is devised to make it absolutely 268 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY impossible. Balls and evening-parties are hardly ever given, and when they are given great care is taken to keep young men out of them, and young marriageable girls either dance with each other or with mere children." Whereas in England "a young girl may go where she likes, without much risk to her good name," a French girl " may not cross a street alone, nor open a book which has not been examined, nor have an opinion about anything." " The French ideal of a well-brought-up young lady is that she should not know anything whatever about love and marriage, that she should be both innocent and ignorant, and both in the supreme degree both to a degree which no English person can imagine." " The young men are not to blame; they would be ready enough, perhaps, to fall in love if they had the chance, like any Englishman or German, but the respectable parents of the young lady take care that they shall not have the chance of falling in love." The only opportunity a young man has of seeing a girl is at a distance, at church or in a religious procession. Here he may see her face; her character he can only ascertain through gossip, a lady friend, or the parish priest. It is much more respectable, however, to show no such curiosity, for its absence implies the absence of such a ridiculous thing as Love. " There is nothing which good society in France disapproves of so much as the passion of Love, or anything resembling it." "When Ctelebs asks for the hand of a girl he has seen for a minute, he may just possibly be in love with her, which is a degrading supposition ; but if he has never seen her, you cannot even suspect him of a sentiment so unbecoming." There is but one way for the young man to gain admission to a house where there is a marriageable young lady : "He must first, through a third party, ask to marry the young lady, and, if her parents consent, he will then be admitted to see her and speak to her, but not otherwise. The respectable order of affairs is that the offer and acceptance should precede and not follow court- ship." Would it be possible to conceive a more diabolically ingenious social machinery for massacring Romantic Love en gros ? " Marriages in France are generally arranged by the exercise of reason and prudence, rather than by either passion or affection." Mr. Hamerton gives an amusing account of how he was asked to be matrimonial ambassador by a young man who had never seen the girl he wanted to marry. Mr. Hamerton obliged the young man, but was told by the mother that if the young man would FRENCH LOVE 269 wait two years he might have a fair chance, provided a richer or nobler suitor did not turn up in the meantime. Money aid Rank versus Love. French mammas have at least one virtue. They are not hypocrites. The Countess von Bothmer, who lived in France a quarter of a century, says in her French Home Life : " Where we so ordinarily listen to what we understand by love to the temptations of the young heart in all their forms (however transitory), to our individual impressions and our own opinions the French consult fitness of relative situation, reciprocities of fortune and position, and har- monies of family intercourse." To annihilate the last resource of Love elopement the Code Napoleon forbids all marriages without either the consent of the father and mother, or proof that they are both dead. " It is very troublesome to get married in France ; the operation is surrounded by difficulties and formalities which would make an Englishman stamp with rage." Social life, of course, suffers as much from this idiotic system as Romantic Love. French hospitality " does not extend beyond the family circle," we are informed by M. Max O'Rell, who also gives this amusing instance of the imbecility or mental slavery (he does not use these words) produced by the French system of education and chaperonage : "I remember I was one day sitting in the Champs Elyse'es with two English ladies. Beside us was a young French girl with her father and mother. The person on the right of papa rose and went away, and we heard the young innocent say to her mother : 1 Mamma, may I go and sit by papa 1 ' It was a baby of about eighteen or twenty. Those English ladies laugh over the affair to this day." Boys suffer as well as girls. As the author of an article on " Parisian Psychology " remarks : " There are no mothers in France ; it is a nation of ' mammas,' who, in the most unlimited sense of the word, spoil their boys, weaken them in body and soul, dwarf their thought, dry their hearts, and lower them to below even their own level, hoping thereby to rule over them through life, as they too often do. Frenchwomen having been at best but half-wives, regard their children as a sort of com- pensation for what they have themselves not had ; and after the mischievous fashion of weak * mammas/ prolong babyhood till far into mature life." The French, in fact, are a nation of babies. Their puerile conceit, which prevents them from learning to read any language 270 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY but their own, and thus finding out what other nations think of them, is responsible in part for the mediaeval barbarism of their matrimonial arrangements. The Parisian is the most provincial animal in the world. In any other metropolis be it London, New York, Vienna, or Berlin people understand and relish whatever is good in literature, art, and life, be it English, American, French, German, or Italian. But the Parisian under- stands only what is narrowly and exclusively French. And this is the dictionary definition of Provincialism. The consequences of this medievalism and provincialism in modern France are thus eloquently summed up by a writer in the Westminster Review (1877) : " Such education as girls receive is not only not a preparation for the wedded state, it is a positive disqualification for it. They are not taught to read, they are not taught to reason ; they are launched into life without a single intellectual interest The whole effort of their early training goes to fill their mind with puerilities and superstitions. As regards God, they are instructed to believe in relics and old bones; as regards man, they are instructed to believe in dress, in mannerisms, and coquetry. Their love of appreciation, after being enormously developed, is bottled up and tied down until a husband is found to draw the cork. What else, then, can we look for but an explosion of frivolity ? Can we expect that such a provision of coquettishness will be reserved for the husband's exclusive use ? He will be tired of it in three months unless it is tired of him before ; and then the pent-up waters will forsake their narrow bed and overflow the country far and wide." No wonder Napoleon remarked that "Love does more harm than good." And right he was, most emphatically, for the only kind of Love possible in France does infinite harm. It poisons life and literature alike. We can now understand the fierceness of Dumas's attacks on mariages de convenance : "The manifest deterioration of the race touches him ; it does not touch us. Nor do we at all realise the next to impossibility of a man ever marrying for love in France. There are those who have tried to do it, but they can never get on in life ; they are reputed of ' bad example ' " (St. James's Gazette). And now we come upon a paradox which has puzzled a great many thinkers. The Countess von Bothmer, while deploring the absence of Love in French courtship, endeavours to show that domestic happiness and conjugal affection are, nevertheless, not FRENCH LOVE 271 rare in France. French busoaiids "are ordinarily with their wives, accompany them wherever they can, and share their friend- ships and distractions." Mr. Hamerton likewise bears witness that French girls " become excellent wives, faithful, orderly, dutiful, contented, and economical. They all either love their husbands, or conduct themselves as if they did so." He says the notion fostered by novels "that Frenchmen are always occupied in making love to their neighbours' wives" is nonsense; thai: there is no more adultery than elsewhere. "There exists in foreign countries, and especially in England, a belief that French- women are very generally adulteresses. The origin of the belief is this, the manner in which marriages are generally managed in France leaves no room for interesting love-stories. Novelists and dramatists must find love-stories somewhere, and so they have to seek for them in illicit intrigues." This is all very ingenious, but the argument is not conclusive. Even granted for a moment that Mr. Hamerton is right in his defence of French conjugal life, is it not a more than sufficient condemnation of the French system of " courtship " that one-half of the nation are prevented from reading its literature because it is so foul and filthy because Love has been made synonymous with adultery 1 But Mr. Hamerton's assertion loses its probability when viewed in the light of the following considerations. He himself admits that the French are anxious to read about Love, that the novelists and dramatists must find stories of Love somewhere mind you, not of conjugal but of Romantic Love and the Paris Figaro not long ago denounced the French novelists of the period for devoting their stories to Love almost exclusively, whereas Balzac, Dumas, Thackeray, and Scott, at least introduced various other matters of interest. Now French novels have the largest editions of any books published ; and if so vast an interest is displayed by the French in reading about Love, is it likely that their interest is purely literary ? Certainly not. They will seek it in real life. And in real life it can only be found in one sphere, which else- where is protected against such invasions, by the young being allowed to meet one another. " It is to be feared that they who marry where they do not love, will love where they do not marry.' In this respect human nature is the same the world over. The testimony of scores of unprejudiced authors on this head cannot be ignored. This, however, is only one of the evils following from the French suppression of pre-matrimonial Love. The parents may or 272 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY may not suffer through conjugal jealousy and infidelity, one thing is certain, that the children suffer from it, in body and mind. It is leading to the depopulation of France. It was M. Jules Rochard who called attention to the fact that " France, which two centuries ago included one-third of the total population of Europe, now contains but one-tenth"; although the death-rate is smaller in France than in most European countries, and although there has been a gradual increase of wealth throughout the country. That the suppression of Romantic Love and of all opportunities for courtship is the principal cause of the decline of France, is apparent from the fact that the countries in which population increases most rapidly as America and Great Britain are those in which Romantic Love is the chief motive to marriage. Romantic Love goes by complementary qualities, the defects of the parents neutralising one another in the offspring ; so that the children who are the issue of a love-match are commonly more beautiful than their parents. In France there is no selection whatever, except with reference to money and rank. Not even Health is considered, the sine qua non of Love as well as Beauty. Hence the absence of Love in France has led to the almost absolute absence of beauty. And it would be nothing short of a miracle if the offspring of a young maiden, still in her teens, and an old broken-down sinner, chosen by her parents for his wealth or social position, were any different from the puny, hairy men and coarse-featured, vulgar women that make up the bulk of the French nation. In Paris one does occasionally see a fine figure and a rather pretty face, but they almost always belong to the lower classes. As the lower classes allow the young considerable freedom, it would seem as if beauty in this class ought to be as common an article as in England or the United States. But the incapacity of the young women for feeling and reciprocating Love neutralises these opportunities. For of what use is it for a man to feel Love if the woman invariably bases her choice on money 1 This matter is most clearly brought out by Mr. Hamerton : " Amongst the lower classes, the peasantry and workmen . . . girls have as much freedom as they have in England. The great institution of the parlement gives them ample opportunities for becoming acquainted with their lovers ; indeed the acquaintance, in many cases, goes further than is altogether desirable. A peasant girl requires no parental help in looking after her own interests. She admits a lover to the happy state of parlement, which means that he has a right to talk with her when they FRENCH LOVE 273 meet, and to call upon her, dance with her, etc. The lover is always eager to fix the wedding-day, the girl is not so eager. She keeps him on indefinitely until a richer one appears, on which No. 1 has the mortification of seeing himself excluded from parle- ment, whilst another takes his place. In this way a clever girl will go on for several years, amusing herself by torturing amorous swains, until at length a sufficiently big fish nibbles at the bait, when she hooks him at once, and takes good care that he shall not escape. Nothing can be more pathetically ludicrous than the condition of a young peasant who is really in love, especially if he is able to write, for then he pours forth his feelings in innumer- able letters full of tenderness and complaint. On her part the girl does not answer the letters, and has not the slightest pity for the unhappy victim of her charms. After seeing a good deal of such love-affairs I have come to the conclusion that in humble life young men do really very often feel " 'The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of love.' And they 'wear the chain* too. Young women, on the other hand, seem only to amuse themselves with all this simple-hearted devotion '"And mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair. 1 " Schopenhauer pointed out that the French lack the Gefiikl fur das Innige the tenderness and emotional depth which characterise the Germans and Italians. It is this that accounts for the inability of the French to appreciate Love, and for the fact that even vice is coarser in France than elsewhere, as remarked by Mr. Lecky, who, in his History of European Morals, contrasts " the coarse, cynical, ostentatious sensuality, which forms the most repulsive feature of the French character," with "the dreamy, languid, and sesthetical sensuality of the Spaniard or Italian." And it remained for the French to attempt to deify vice as in that over-rated and repulsive story of Manon Lescaut. Mme. de Stael, who suffered so much from the provincialism (alias patriotism) of her countrymen, saw clearly the immorality of the French system of marrying girls without consulting their choice. Brandes relates the following anecdote of her: "One day, speaking of the unnaturalness of marriages arranged by the parents, as distinguished from those in which the young girls choose for themselves, she exclaimed, * I would compel my daughter to marry the man of her choice 1 ' " 274 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY An attempt is being made at present in Paris to introduce tl.e Anglo-American feminine spirit into society. The word flirtcr has been adopted, and the thing itself experimented with. But the French girl does not know how to draw the line between coquetry and flirtation. She needs a better education before she can flirt properly. This education the Government is trying to give her at present ; but it meets with stubborn resistance from the priests, and from the old notion that intellectual culture is fatal to feminine charms and the capacity for affection. If this book should accom- plish nothing else than prove that without intellect there can be no deep Love, it will not have been written in vain. ITALIAN LOVE In Italy, in the sixteenth century, women were kept in as strict seclusion as to-day in France ; and with the same results, conjugal infidelity and a great lack of Personal Beauty, as noted by Montaigne, who remarks at the same time that it was regarded as something quite extraordinary if a young lady was seen in public. Byron wrote in 1817 that "Jealousy is not the order of the day in Venice " ; and that the Italians " marry for their parents, and love for themselves." In Crowe and Cavalcaselle's Life and Times of Titian we read that " Though chroniclers have left us to guess what the state of society may have been in Venice at the close of the fifteenth century, they give us reason to believe that it was deeply influ- enced by Oriental habit. The separation of men from women in churches, the long seclusion of unmarried females in convents or in the privacy of palaces, were but the precursors to marriages in which husbands were first allowed to see their wives as they came in state to dance round the wedding supper- table." But even at this early period when women were still treated as babies unable to take care of themselves, we find at least one trace of the Gallantry which is so essential an element in modern love. It was customary for the men, on festive occasions, to stand behind their wives' chairs at table and serve them. Extremely ungallant, on the other hand, are some of the Italian proverbs about women of this and other periods. " A woman is like a horse-chestnut beautiful outside, worthless inside." " Two women and a goose make a market." " Married man bird in cage." " In buying a horse and taking a wife shut your eyes and commend your soul to heaven." ITALIAN LOVE 275 Her exuberant health makes an Italian woman naturally prone to Love ; but though she falls in love most readily, the passion is apt to be fugitive and superficial. She rarely loves with the passionate ardour of a Spanish woman. "What we notice especi- ally in Italian women," says Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, " is the absence of that alternation between those extremes of tempera- ment which are so conspicuous in other Southern women. Energy is almost as unknown to her as the moral power of resignation and sacrifice. Hence it can hardly surprise us that Italian history records so few heroic women or pious female martyrs. Italy has produced neither a Jeanne d'Arc nor an Elizabeth of Thuringia ; the crowns were too oppressive to be borne by these beauties, and life too enchanting for them to invite to tragic self-sacrifice." Probably the most realistic, and certainly the most fascinating, account of Italian love-making ever given is to be found in Mr. Howells's Venetian Life. As it is too long to quote, I will attempt to condense it, though at some sacrifice of that literary ** bouquet," as an epicure would say, which constitutes the unique charm of Mr. Howells's style : " The Venetians have had a practical and strictly businesslike way of arranging marriages from the earliest times. The shrewdest provision has always been made for the dower and for the good of the state ; private and public interest being consulted, the small matters of affection have been left to the chances of association. "Herodotus relates that the Assyrian Veneti sold their daughters at auction to the highest bidder; and the fair being thus comfortably placed in life, the hard-favoured were given to whomsoever would take them, with such dower as might be con- sidered a reasonable compensation. The auction was discontinued in Christian times, but marriage contracts still partook of the form of a public and half-mercantile transaction. "These passionate, headlong Italians look well to the main chance before they leap into matrimony, and you may be sure Todaro knows, in black and white, what the Biondina has to her fortune before he weds her." " With the nobility and with the richest commoners marriage is still greatly a matter of contract, and is arranged without much reference to the principals, though it is now scarcely probable in any case that they have not seen each other. But with all other classes, except the poorest, who cannot or will not seclude the youth of either sex from each other, and with whom, consequently, romantic contrivance and subterfuge would be superfluous, love is made to-day in Venice as in the Capa y cspada comedies of the 276 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Spaniards, and the business is carried on with all the cumbrous machinery of confidants, billets-doux, and stolen interviews." The " operatic method of courtship " thence resulting commonly assumes this form : "They follow that beautiful blonde, who, marching demurely in front of the gray-in oustached papa and the fat mamma, after the fashion in Venice, is electrically conscious of pursuit. They follow during the whole evening, and, at a distance, softly follow her home, where the burning Todaro photographs the number of the house upon the sensitised tablets of his soul. This is the first step in love : he has seen his adored one, and she knows that he loves her with an inextinguishable ardour." The next step consists in his frequenting the caffe, where she goes with her parents, and feasting his eyes on her beauty. After some time he may possibly get a chance to speak a few words to her under her balcony ; or, what is more likely, he will bribe her servant-maid to bring her a love-letter. Or else he goes to church to admire her at a convenient distance. " It must be confessed that if the Biondina is not pleased with his looks, his devotion must assume the character of an intolerable, bore to her; and that to see him everywhere at her heels to behold him leaning against the pillar near which she kneels at church, the head of his stick in his mouth, and his attitude care- fully taken with a view to captivation to be always in deadly fear lest she shall meet him in promenade, or turning round at the caffe encounter his pleading gaze that all this must drive the Biondina to a state bordering upon blasphemy and finger-nails. Ma, come si fa ? Ci vuol pazienza ? This is the sole course open to ingenuous youth in Venice, where confessed and unashamed acquaintance between young people is extremely difficult ; and so this blind pursuit must go on till the Biondiua's inclinations are at last laboriously ascertained." Then follow the inquiries as to her dowry, after which nothing remains but " to demand her in marriage of her father, and after that to make her acquaintance" Topsy-turvy as this last arrangement may seem to Anglo- American notions, here at least Love has some chance to bring about real Sexual Selection, for a Southerner's passions are momen- tarily inflamed, and the Italian Cupid needs but a moment to fix his choice. And what distinguishes Italy still more favourably from France is that, whereas the French consider Love ridiculous, and have made the most ingenious contrivances for annihilating it, the Italians worship it, revel in it, and are inclined rather to make too many concessions to it than to ignore it. SPANISH LOVE 277 The result is patent to all eyes. For every attractive French- woman there are to-day a hundred beautiful Italians. And were Anglo-American methods of courtship introduced in Italy, beauty would again be doubled in amount. It must not be forgotten, however, that Love, as a beautifier of mankind, has in Italy very strong allies in the balmy air and sunshine, tempting to constant outdoor life, which mellows the complexion, brightens the eyes, and fills out the figure to those full yet elegant proportions which instantaneously arouse the romantic passion. SPANISH LOVE Spanish veins contain more Oriental blood than those of any other European nation ; and to the present day Eastern methods of treating women cast their shadow on Spanish life. But the shadow is so light, and so much mitigated by the rosy hue of romance, that the "local colour" of Love in Spain presents an unusually fascinating spectacle, which countless literary artists have attempted to depict. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Oriental shadow was much darker, and kept the women iu extreme subjec- tion and ignorance. " Their life," says Professor Scherr, speaking even of the queens, " passed away in a luxurious tedium which dulled the sentiments to the point of idiocy. They were only crowned slaves. As an instance of their absolute deprivation of liberty may be cited the case of Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., who, when in 1565 she went to Bayonne to meet her mother, had to wait three days before the gates of Burgos before it was possible to ascertain the king's decision whether the queen should pass through the city or around it." " Women of rank," he continues, " lived iu a seclusion border- ing on that of a convent, if not surpassing it. For nuns were at least allowed to speak to male visitors behind bars, whereas married women were strictly forbidden to receive the visit of a man, except with the special permission of the husband. And only during the first year of their wedded life were they allowed to frequent public drives in open carriages by the side of theii husband ; subsequently they were only allowed to go out in closed carriages. Of cosy family life not a trace. . . . Even the table did not unite the husband and wife ; the master took his meai alone, while his wife and children sat respectfully on the floor on carpets, with their legs crossed in Oriental fashion. " The poor women, excluded from every refined social diversion, 278 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY were confined to manual work, gossip with their duennas, mechani cal praying, playing with their rosaries, and intriguing. For the greater the subjection of women, the more does their cunning grow, the more passionate becomes their desire to avenge them- selves on their tyrants. The Spaniards found this out to their cost. The most inexorable spirit of revenge, all the parade of 'Spanish honour,' bordering in its excess on clownishness, could not prevent the Spanish dames from loving and being loved." In course of time this Oriental despotism, with its fatal con- sequences to conjugal fidelity as in France has been greatly mitigated in Spain. In Pepys's Diary , 1667, we read of an informant who told the writer "of their wooing [in Spain] by serenades at the window, and that their friends do always make the match ; but yet they have opportunities to meet at masse at church, and there they make love." In an interesting book on Spain, written almost two and a quarter centuries after Pepys's Diary Mr. Lathrop's Spanish Vistas we still read concerning this ecclesiastic Love-making, in the Seville Cathedral : " Every door was guarded by a squad of the decrepit army, so that entrance there became a horror. These sanctuary beggars serve a double purpose, however. The black- garbed Sevillan ladies, who are perpetually stealing in and out noiselessly under cover of their archly-draped lace veils losing themselves in the dark, incense-laden interior, or emerging from confession into the daylight glare again are careful to drop some slight conscience-money into the palms that wait. Occasionally, by pre-arrangement, one of these beggars will convey into the hand that passes him a silver piece, a tightly-folded note from some clandestine lover. It is a convenient underground mail, and I am afraid the venerable church innocently shelters a good many little transactions of this kind." How greatly the facilities for falling in love and for making love have been increased in modern Spain is vividly brought out in the following citation from Schweiger-Lerchenfeld regarding the scenes to be witnessed every evening on the crowded promenade or Rambla at Barcelona : " Are these elegantly-attired ramblers one and all suitors, since they put no limit nor restraint on their whispered flatteries ? No, that is simply the custom in Barcelona. The women and girls are beautiful, and though they are well aware of it, they neverthe- less allow their charms to be whispered in their ears hundreds of times every evening a freedom of intercourse which is only possible on Spanish soil. . . . And thus one of these adored SPANISH LOVE 279 beauties walks up and down in the glare of the lamps, and sweet music is wafted to her ears : * Your beauty dazzles me/ whispers one voice ; and another, ' Happiness and anguish your eyes are burning into my soul.' One compliments the chosen one on her hair, another on her figure, a third on her graceful gait. Young adorers feel a thrill running down their whole body if her mantilla only touches them; while mature lovers are contented with nothing less than a pressure of the hand. It is a picture that is possible, conceivable only in Spain." The same writer quotes some specimens of Spanish Love-songs, one of which may be transferred to this page "Echarae, nifia bonita, Lagrimas en tu panuelo. Y los llevare a Madrid Que los engarce un platero.* " Show me, my little charmer, the tear in your handkerchief; to Madrid will I take it and have it set by a jeweller." What a contrast between this modern complimentary and poetic form of Gallantry and the form prevalent in the good old times when lovers endeavoured to win a maiden's favour by flagel- lating themselves under her window until the blood ran down their backs ; and when, as Scherr adds, " it was regarded as the surest sign of supreme gallantry if some of the blood bespattered the clothes of the beauty to whom this crazy act of devotion was addressed ! " Nevertheless, the Spanish still have much to learn from Eng- land and America regarding the proper methods of Courtship ; for, according to a writer in Macmillan's Magazine (1874), the un- married maiden of the higher classes, "like her humbler sister, can never have the privilege of seeing her lover in private, and very rarely, indeed, if ever, is he admitted into the sala where she is sitting. He may contrive to get a few minutes' chat with her through the barred windows of her sala ; but when a Spaniard leads his wife from the altar, he knows no more of her character, attainments, and disposition than does the parish priest who married them, and perhaps not so much." In one respect Spanish lovers have a great advantage over their unfortunate colleagues in France. There marriage is impossible without parental consent, whereas in Spain a law exists concerning which the writer just quoted says : "Should a Spanish lad and lassie become attached to one another, and the parents absolutely forbid the match, and refuse their daughter liberty and permission to marry, the lover has his 280 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY remedy at law. He has but to make a statement of the facts on paper, and deposit it, signed and attested, with the alcalde or mayor of the township in which the lady's parents dwell. The alcalde then makes an order, giving the young man the right of free entry into the house in question, within a certain number of days, for the purpose of wooing and carrying off his idol. The parents dare not interfere with the office of the alcalde, and the lady is taken to her lover's arms. From that moment he, and he alone, is bound to provide for her : by his own act and deed she has become his property." Should he prove false " the law comes upon him with all its force, and he is bound to maintain her, in every way, as a wife, under pain of punishment." Thus a Spanish girl is protected against perfidious lovers as well as is an English and American girl through the possibility of suing for breach of promise. If the short stories told in Don Quixote may be taken as examples, faithless lovers were very common in Spain at that time ; which, doubtless, accounts for the origin of this law. The girls on their part erred by yielding too easily to the promises of the men; though they are partially excused by the great strength of their passions. In his work on Suicide, Professor Morselli has statistics show- ing that more women take their life in Spain than in any other country; and he attributes this to the force of their passions, which is greater than in Italy, where the number of female sui- cides is considerably lower. Thus Love has a more favourable ground in Spain than either in Italy or in France, notwithstanding certain restrictions. And the result shows itself in this, that all tourists unite in singing the praises of Spanish Beauty. Spain, indeed, unites in itself all the conditions favourable to Beauty : a climate tempting to outdoor life ; a considerable amount of intellectual culture and sesthetic refinement; a mixture of nationalities, fusing ethnic peculiarities into a harmonious whole ; and Love, which fuses individual com- plementary qualities into a harmonious ensemble of beautiful features, graceful figure, amiable disposition, and refined manners. GERMAN LOVE When Tacitus penned his famous certificate of good moral character for the Germans of his time, he little suspected how many thousand times it would be quoted by the grateful and proud descendants of those early Teutons, and pinned to the lapels of their coats as a sort of prize medal in the competition for GERMAN LOVE 281 ancestral virtue. The more candid historians, however, admit that the Roman historian somewhat overdrew his picture in order to teach his own profligate countrymen a sort of Sunday school lesson, by the vivid contrast presented by these inhabitants of the northern virgin forests. x There is no question that women were held in considerable honour among these early Germans. Many of them served as priestesses, and adultery was punished with death. Polygamy existed only among the chiefs, and even among them it was not common. Yet the men did not treat the women as their equals. " They had more duties than privileges," says Schweiger-Lerchen- feld. Their husbands were addicted to excessive drinking or gambling when not engaged in war or the chase, leaving the hard domestic and field labour to the women : and all this cannot have tended to refine the women. " Marriage in the old Germanic times," says Ploss, " was mostly an affair of expediency. ... In the choice of a wife beauty was of less moment than property and good social antecedents. Love before the betrothal rarely occurs." Gustav Freytag, in his Pictures of German Life, during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, remarks : " Marriage was considered by our ancestors less as a union of two lovers than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not only of married people towards one another, but also towards their relatives, as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. . . . Therefore in the olden time the choice of husband and wife was always an affair of im- portance to the relatives on both sides, so that a German wooing from the oldest times, even until the last century, had the appear- ance of a business transaction, which was carried out with great regard to suitability." And a business transaction it is, unfortunately, to the present day, in the vast majority of cases. A certain amount of dower or property on the bride's part is the first and most essential requisite. Second in importance is the desirability of not descending even a step in the social ladder, though an extra lump of gold commonly suffices to pull down social Pride to a lower level. Health, temper, Personal Beauty, and mutual suitability these are the trifles which, other things being equal, come in as a third consideration. And thus is the order of Sexual Selection, as ordained by Love, commonly reversed. What would an English or American youth of twenty-two say to his father if the latter should undertake to write to all his relatives, asking them to look about for an eligible partner for his 282 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY son, and capping the climax by starting himself on a trip in search of a bride for his son 1 Would he accept without a murmur the girl thus found, and would an English or American girl thus allow herself to be given away like a cat in a bag, not knowing whether she was going ? I have seen several such cases with my own eyes. One of them was most pathetic. For when the blooming bride, a sweet and refined girl, was introduced to the bridegroom selected for her by her parents a repulsive-looking brute, twice her age she conceived a perfect loathing for him, and almost wept out her eyes before the wedding-day. But the man was rich, and that settled the matter. What aggravated this outrage was the fact that the bride's father also was rich. And herein, in fact, lies the canker of the German system. Money is such a comfortable thing to have that it is useless to preach against it. There are money- marriages enough in England and America. But in these countries it is generally considered sufficient if one party has the money. Not so in Germany. It is not so much the comfort ensured by a certain amount of money that is aimed at as the superior social influence ensured by a large amount of wealth. Hence the rich marry the rich, regardless of other consequences, and poor Cupid is left shivering in the cold. So that, after all, the silly pride of social position is a greater enemy of Eomantic Love than money. And the consequences of such a matrimonial system 1 They have been most eloquently set forth by the blind old philosopher, Dr. Duhring : " The amalgamation of fortunes, and the resulting enervating luxury of living, are the ruling matrimonial motives ; and the want of mutual adaptation of the individuals becomes the cause of the degenerate appearance of the offspring. The loathsome products of such marriages then walk about as ugly embodiments and witnesses of such a degraded system of legalised prostitution (Kuppelwirthschafi). They bear the stamp of incongruity on body and mind ; for their appearance shows them to be the offspring of disharmonious parents, blindly associated, or even, in many cases, of parents who themselves are already products of this new matri- monial method. This degeneracy necessarily continues from one generation to another, and in this manner maltreated Nature avenges herself by leading to personal decrepitude and the forma- tion of a new sort of idiocy." "It is true," he adds, "that love is not an infallible sign of mutual suitability ; but when it is absent, or even replaced by GERMAN LOVE 283 aversion, it is certain that it is useless to expect a specially harmonious composition of the offspring." Is this one of the reasons why Personal Beauty is so rare, comparatively, in Germany? But Individual Preference is not the only element of Love which thus suffers in Germany through false Pride and parental tyranny. Gallantry is another factor which needs mending. German women are sweet and amiable. In fact, they are too sweet and good-natured. They have spoiled the men, who in con- sequence are excessively selfish in their relations to women the most selfish men in the world, outside of Turkey or China. True, the German officer in a ballroom seems to be the very essence of officious Gallantry. But his motives are too transparently Ovidian : it is not true Anglo- American politeness of the heart that inspires his conduct. He is either after forbidden sweets or parading his uniform and his vanity. Take the same man and watch him at home. His wife has to get him his chair, move it up to the fire, bring him his slippers, put the coffee in his hand, and do errands for him. When he goes out she puts on his over- coat and buttons it up carefully for him as if he were a helpless big baby. This would be all very well for why should not women be gallant too ? if he would only retaliate. But he never dreams of it. Even if it comes to a task which calls for masculine muscular power the carrying of bundles, etc. he makes the wife do it. He is, in fact, matrimonially considered, not only a big baby but also a big brute, the very incarnation of masculine selfishness. In former centuries it was customary in Germany, as it is now with us, for women to bow first to men. The modern German has reversed this. Woman has no right to bow until her lord and superior has invited her to do so by doffing his hat. The German girl, says the Countess von Bothmer in German Home Life, " is taught that to be womanly she must be helpless, to be feminine she must be feeble, to endear herself she must be dependent, to charm she must cling." " To keep carefully to the sheep-walk, to applaud in concert and condemn in chorus, is the only behaviour that can be tolerated." " They have one bugbear and one object of idolatry, these monotonous ladies, a fetish which they worship under the name of Mode ; a monster between public opinion and Mrs. Grundy. To say a thing is not * Mode ' here, is to condemn it as if by all the laws of Media and Persia. It is not her centre [sic], but the system of her social education, that renders the German woman so hopelessly provincial." 284 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Of course it is the men who are responsible for this social edu- cation and this feminine ideal of absolute dependence. It suits their selfish pleasure to be worshipped and obeyed by the women without any efforts at gallant retaliation on their part. A native writer tells us that "a true German philosophises occasionally while he embraces his sweetheart ; while kissing even, theories will sprout in his mind." No wonder, therefore, that one of the German metaphysicians, Fichte, should have made a sophistic attempt to reduce masculine selfishness to a system. He proves to his own satisfaction that it is woman's duty to sacrifice herself in man's behalf; while man, on his part, has no such obligations. His reasoning is too elaborate to quote in full ; but is too amusingly naive to be omitted, so I will translate the summary of it given by Kuno Fischer in his History of Philosophy : " What woman's natural instincts demand is self-abandonment to a man ; she desires this abandonment not for her own sake, but for the man's sake ; she gives herself to him, for him. Now abandoning oneself for another is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice from an instinctive impulse is LOVE. Therefore love is a kind of. instinctive impulse which the sexual instinct in woman necessarily and involuntarily assumes. She feels the necessity of loving. . . . This impulse is peculiar to woman alone ; woman alone loves [! ! !] ; only through woman does love appear among mankind. . . . The woman's life should disappear in the man's without a remnant, and it is this relation that is so beautifully and correctly indicated in the fact that the wife no longer uses her own name, but that of her husband [!]." The latest (and it is to be hoped the last) of the German meta- physicians, the pessimist Hartmann, goes even a step beyond Fichte in arrogating for man special privileges in Love. If Fichte makes Love synonymous with Self-Sacrifice feminine, mind you, not masculine Hartmann tries to prove that man may love as often as he pleases, but woman only once. And what aggravates the offence, he does it in such a poetic manner. " Though it may be doubtful," he says, "whether a man can truly love two women at the same time, it is beyond all doubt that he can love several in succession with all the depth of his heart ; and the assertion that there is only one true love is an unwarranted generalisation to all mankind of a maxim which is true of woman alone. . . . Woman can learn but once by experience what love is, and it is painful for the lover not to be the one who teaches her first. True it is that a tree nipped by a spring frost brings forth a second crown of GERMAN LOVE 285 leaves, but so rich and luxuriant as the first it will not be ; thus does a maiden-heart produce a second bloom, if the first had to wither before maturity, but its full and complete floral glory is unfolded only where love, aroused for the first time, passes in full vigour through all its phases." Yet it is not ungallant selfishness alone that prompts German men to bring up their women so that they shall be mere playthings at first and drudges after marriage, never real soul-mates. They have the same old stupid continental fear that culture of the intellect weakens the feelings. This fear is based on slovenly reasoning on the inference that because a few blue-stockings have at all ages made themselves ridiculous by assuming masculine attributes and parading their lack of tenderness and feminine delicacy, therefore intellectual training must be fatal to feminine charms. As if there were not plenty of masculine blue-stockings, or pedants, without disproving the fact that the men of the greatest intellectual power men of genius are also the most emotional and refined of all men ; or the fact proved by this whole mono- graph, that Love and general emotional refinement grow with the general intellectual culture of women. A typical illustration of German feeling on the subject of female education is to be found in Sc'nweiger-Lerchenfeld's Frauenleben ckr Urde, p. 530. Eeferring to the attempts now being made in France to give young girls a rational education, he quotes tfto opinion of a French legislator that a girl thus brought up would not love less deeply than heretofore, while she would love more intelligently; and then comments as follows: "How far this anticipation may be realised cannot be decided now or in the near future. At any rate we must leave to the French themselves the task of getting along with this classical female generation of the future. Certain it is that their experiment will hardly be imitated, and that the old Eomans and Greeks may eventually become more dangerous to masculine supremacy (Autoritat) than the pilgrimage stories of Lourdes." It is time for German woman to rise in revolt against this mediaeval masculine selfishness. Not in active revolt, for a warlike woman is an abomination. But in passive revolt. Let them usase to spoil the men, and these bears will become more gallant. Germany is later in almost every phase of literary and social culture than England. It was not an accident that Shakspere came before Heine, the English before the German poet of Love ; for Love is much less advanced in Germany than in England. It has not even passed the stage where a harsh sort of Coyness is still 286 ROM ANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY in place. German women want to learn the cunning to be strange. They are too deferential to the men, too easily won. They want to learn to indulge in harmless flirtation, and they want the educa- tion which will give them wit enough to flirt cleverly and make the men mollow. It must be admitted, however, notwithstanding all these strictures, that there is much genuine Romantic Love in Germany, often differing in no wise from Anglo-American Love. At first sight it seems, indeed, as if chaperonage were as strict as in France ; and no doubt many German girls are brought up on the spring-chicken-coyness system which regards every man as a hawk, and a signal fcr hiding away in a corner. But in general Ger- man girls have much more freedom than French girls. They may walk alone in the street in the daytime, go alone to the conservatory to attend a music-lesson. They meet the young men freely at evening parties, dances, musical entertainments, etc. ; and the chaperons are not nearly so obtrusive and offen- sive as in France. The mothers appear to have taken to heart Jean Paul's saying that "in the mother's presence it is impos- sible to carry on an edifying conversation with the daughter." So that there is plenty of opportunity for falling in love ; and were it not for parental dictation, Love-matches would perhaps be as common as in England. But the girls lack independence of spirit to defy parental tyranny, which it is their moral duty to defy where money or rank are pitted against Love. For the health and happiness of the next generation are at stake. German girls also enjoy an advantage over the French in having a literature which is pure and wholesome ; and by reading about Romantic Love they train and deepen their feelings. It is often said that Heine's influence has been chiefly negative. The truth is, Heine is the greatest emotional educator Germany has ever liad. More young men and girls have wept over his pathetic lyrics than over any other poetry. His Buck der Lieder has done more to foster the growth of Romantic Love in Germany than all other collections of verse combined; not only by their own unadorned beauty, but through the soulful music wedded to these poems by Schubert, Schumann, and other magicians of the heart. The fact that the copyright on Heine's works was soon to expire, and the country to be flooded with cheap editions, has long csjbed Master Cupid to rub his hands in gleeful anticipation of brisk busi- ness; and he has just given orders in his arsenal for one hundred thousand new golden arrows. Heine indeed fathomed the secrets of Love much more deeply GERMAN LOVE 287 than Goethe. Whereas Heine sang of Love in every major and minor key, Goethe appears to have emphasised chiefly its transi- toriness. " Love, as Goethe knows it," says Professor Seeley, " is very tender, and has a lyric note as fresh as that of a song-bird. In his Autobiography one love-passage succeeds another, but each comes speedily to an end. How far in each case he was to blame is a matter of controversy. But he seems to betray a way of thinking about women such as might be natural to an Oriental sultan. ' I was iu that agreeable phase,' he writes, * when a new passion had begun to spring up in me before the old one had quite disappeared.' About Frederika he blames himself without reserve, and uses strong expressions of contrition ; but he forgets the matter strangely soon. In his distress of mind he says he found riding, and especially skating, bring much relief. This reminds us of the famous letter to the Frau von Stein about coffee. He is always ready in a moment to shake off the deepest impressions and receive new ones ; and he never looks back. . . . Goethe was a man of the old regime. . . . Had he entered into the reforming movement of his age, he might have striven to elevate women. . . . He certainly felt at times that all was not right in the status of women ('woman's fate is pitiable'), and how narrowly confined was their happiness (wie enggebunden ist des Weibes Gluck) . . . but he was not a reformer of institutions." A reformer of institutions, however, has apparently just arisen in Berlin. For we read that at a private female seminary the girls received the following subject for an essay : " There is from the Ideas of Plato, the atoms of Democritus, the Substance of Spinoza, the monads of Leibnitz, and from the subjective mental forms of Kant, the proof to bring, that the philosophy it never neglected has the to-be-calculated results of their hypotheses with their into- perception-falling effects to compare." Such subjects, so elegantly expressed, are no doubt eminently calculated to bring out the latent possibilities of feminine feeling and culture. To close this chapter with a sweet, soothing concord major triad, horns and 'cellos, smorzando it must be admitted that the Germans have one ingredient of Romantic Love which all other nations must envy them. They have one more thrill in the drama of Love, in the ascending scale of familiarities, than we have, namely, the word Du, which is something very different from the stilted Thou, because still a part of everyday language. The second person singular is used in Germany towards pet animals and children, between students, intimate friends, relatives, and lovers, 288 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY French " lovers " do not say tu to each other till after marriage, and even then they do not use it in public. But the German lover has the privilege, as soon as he is engaged, of exchanging the formal Sie for the affectionate Du ; and the first Du that comes from her lips can hardly be less sweet than the first kiss. There is a game of cards, popular among young folks in Germany, during which you have to address every one with Du whom you otherwise would have to call Sie, and vice versd ; cards have to be called spoons, white black, etc. If there is a young man in the company secretly in love with a young lady, you can always " spot " him by the eagerness he shows to speak to her, and the fact that he always gets the Du right and everything else wrong ; while she, strange to say, appears to have never heard of such a thing at all as a personal pronoun. ENGLISH LOVE Concerning Eomantic Love in England and America, there is less to be said under the head of National Peculiarities than in case of the continental nations of Europe, for the simple reason that almost everything said in the pages on Modern Love refers especially to these two countries. Anglo-American Love is Romantic Love, pure and simple, as first depicted by Shakspere, and after him, with more or less accuracy, by a hundred other poets and novelists. There is no lack of colour in this Love colour warm and glowing but it is no longer a mere local colour, a national or provincial peculiarity, but Love in its essence, its cosmopolitan aspect ; Love such as will in course of time prevail throughout the world, when the Anglisation of this planet which is only a question of time shall have been completed. England has many a bright jewel in the crown of her achieve- ments in behalf of civilisation, but the brighest of all is this, that she was the first country in the world ancient, mediaeval, or modern that removed the bars from woman's prison-windows, opened every door to Cupid, and made him thoroughly welcome and comfortable. And grateful Cupid has retaliated by setting ap English manners and customs as a model which all other nations are slowly but surely copying. Eighteen million souls in the United States, or almost two persons in every five, are not of English origin ; yet of these there are not one million who have not given up their old country methods of courtship as antiquated, and adopted the Anglo-American style. The Germans in America make love not after the German but after the English fashion. So ENGLISH LOVE 289 ilo the French, though somewhat more reluctantly and tardily. In San Francisco and Chicago it is said that but one name in ten is of English origin ; yet who ever heard of a San Franciscan or Chicagoan making love in foreign style? During the last hundred years the majority of the immigrants to America have come from non-English countries; yet, though the parents enter the country as adults with all their national traditions stamped on their memories, they invariably allow their sous and daughters to court and be courted in American style. And now that England is gradually extending her influence to every one of the five continents, Romantic Love to whose sway, quite as much as to their outdoor active life, the English owe the fact that they are to-day the handsomest and most energetic race in the world is also rapidly extending its sphere, and will finally oust the last vestiges of Oriental despotism, feminine suppression, and mediaeval masculine barbarism. For some centuries woman has been more favoured by law, an<* especially by national custom, in England than in any other European state. It is true that the Englishman who beats his wife is the most brutal savage on the face of the globe, but he is to be found only among the lowest classes. Nor has wife-selling ever been quite such a universal custom in England as foreigners imagine ; although cases are on record as far back as 1302 and as late as 1884. In an article in All the Year Round (Dec. 20, 1884) more than twenty cases are enumerated with full details, the price of a wife varying from twenty-five guineas to a pint or half a pint of beer, or a penny and a dinner ; and the Times of July 22, 1797, remarks sarcastically : " By some mistake or omission, in the report of the Smithiield market, we have not learned the average price of wives for the week. The increasing value of the fair sex is es- teemed by several eminent writers the certain criterion of increasing civilisation. Smithfield has, on this ground, strong pretensions to refined improvement, as the price of wives has risen in that market from half a guinea to three guinea,? and a half." That these cases occurred only among the lowest classes is self- evident; yet even the lowest classes often resented the brutal transaction by pelting the offenders with stones and mud ; whereas, as far as the women were concerned, the offence was mitigated by the fact that in all cases on record they appear to have been only too glad to be sold, so as to get rid of their tyrants. It cannot be said that English women are all exempt from the hardest manual labour even to-day ; but the tendency to relieve them of tasks unsuited to feminine muscular development has u 290 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY existed longer in England than elsewhere. The difference can be best observed with regard to agricultural labour. Any one who travels through Italy, Switzerland, France, or Germany in the autumn, gets the impression that most of the harvesting is done by the women ; whereas in England, as shown by statistics, there are twenty-two men to every woman engaged as field-labourers. Yet even at that rate there are still 64,840 women in England engaged in agricultural labour un suited to their sex. On the other hand, English women, like American women, ?.re manifesting a great disposition at present to try their hand or brain at almost every employment heretofore considered exclusively masculine. The census enumerates 349 different classes of work, and of these all but about 70 have been invaded by women ; in- cluding 5 horse-dealers, 14 bicycle makers and dealers, 16 sculptors, 18 fence makers, 1 9 fossil diggers, etc. ; whereas there are as yet no female pilots, dentists, police officers, shepherds, law students, architects, cab-drivers, commercial travellers, barristers, etc. [Full list in Pall Mall Gazette, Oct. 3, 1884.] Inasmuch as there are almost a million more women than men in England, it is not surprising that women should thus seek to extend their sphere of usefulness. We live in an experimental epoch, when it is to be ascertained what is and what is not becom- ing to woman regarded as a labourer. It is therefore of the utmost importance that there should be some standard by which each em- ployment is to be judged. And this standard, fortunately, is supplied by Romantic Love. We have seen that the tendency of civilisation has been to differentiate the sexes more and more in appearance, character, and emotional susceptibilities, and that on this differentiation depends the existence and power of Love, because it individualises mau and woman, and Love is the more intense the more it is individualised. Hence every employment which tends to make woman masculine in appearance or habits is to be tabooed by her because antagonistic to Love. If she, nevertheless, persists in it, Love will have its revenge by eliminating her through Sexual Selection. No man will marry a masculine woman, or fall in love with her, so that her unnatural temperament will not be transmitted to the next generation and multiplied. But what is to be accepted as the standard of femininity 1 The answer is given us by Nature. Throughout the animal world, with a few insignificant exceptions, the sexes are differentiated dis- tinctly ; and the female is the more tender and gentle of the two, the more devoted to domestic affection and the care and education ENGLISH LOVE 231 of the young, the more amiable, and, above all, less aggressive, bold, and pugnacious than the male. "Any education which women undergo," says the Spectator, "should be an education not for the militant life of war against evil but for the spiritual life inspiring a persuasive or patient charity. . . . Even in a field properly suited to them the field of charitable institutions, of poor-law work, of educational representation women no sooner take up the cudgels than they lose their appropriate influence, and are either unsexed or paralysed." According to Mr. Ruskin, "woman's work is (1) To please people. (2) To feed them in dainty ways. (3) To clothe them. (4) To keep them orderly. (5) To teach them." Statistics concerning the employments instinctively sought by the majority of women bear out Mr. Ruskin's table quite well. Woman's first duty is to please people by being beautiful, amiable, and fascinating in conversation and manners. No man would marry a woman unless she pleased him in one way or another ; hence matrimony is the most successful female profession, which in England includes 4,437,962 women. But there are other ways in which women seek to please and prosper ; hence there are in England 2368 actresses as against 2197 actors, and 11,376 women whose profession is music, as against 14,170 men. Domestic service, which includes the " feeding in dainty ways " (though too often the " dainty " must be omitted), employs 1,230,406 women in England about 30,000 fewer than industrial employments, which are somewhat more popular owing to the greater individual liberty they allow the employed. Yet domestic service is a much better preparation for married life than labour in a manufactory \ so that, other things being equal, a labouring man looking for a wife would be apt to select one who has learned how to take care of his home. This thought ought to help to render domestic service more popular. "To clothe them." Dressmaking, staymaking (alas!), and millinery, employ 357,995 women in England. " To keep them orderly." Bathing and washing service employ 176,670 women ; medicine and nursing, almost 50,000; missions, 1660. "To teach them." This, one of woman's special vocations, eminently suited to her capacity, employs 123,995 females. If I have failed in correctly interpreting Mr. Ruskin's oracle, I stand subject to correction from that earnest labourer in the task of finding for woman her proper sphere a work for which he has not yet received the recognition and thanks he deserves. 292 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY That marriage, and not miscellaneous employment, is woman's true destiny, is shown by the way in which Cupid influences sta- tistics. Thus there are in England about 29 ; 000 school-mistresses aged 15-20, and 28,500 aged 25-45 ; but the time from 20-25, the period of courtship and marriage, has only 21,000. In the case of dressmakers this fact is brought out still more strikingly : 15.20 84,000; 20-2576,000; 25-45 129,000, in round numbers. Although, therefore, as Emerson remarks, "the circumstances may be easily imagined in which woman may speak, vote, argue cases, legislate, and drive coaches, if only it comes by degrees," facts show that there is more philosophy of the future in Mrs. Hawthorne's remark that " Home, I think, is the great arena for women, and there, I am sure, she can wield a power which no king or emperor can cope with." A consideration of all the foregoing facts shows that Love may be safely accepted as a guiding-star in making a proper division of the world's labour between men and women. And the reason why England and America have made so much more progress than other nations in ascertaining woman's true capacity and sphere, is because she has been educated to a point where she can assert her independence, and where she can inspire as well as feel Love thus making man humble, gallant, gentle, ready to make con- cessions and remove restrictions. It is in England and America alone that Love plays a more important role in marriage than money and social position ; that the young are generally permitted to consult their own heart instead of parental command ; and that the opportunities for courtship are so liberal and numerous that the young are enabled to fall in love with one another not only for dazzling qualities of Personal Beauty, viewed for a moment, but for traits of character, emotional refinement, and a cultured intellect. These two nations alone have fully taken to heart and heeded Addison's maxim that " Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship. The passion should strike root and gather strength before marriage be grafted on it. A long course of hopes and expectations fixes the idea in our minds, and habituates us to a fondness of the per- son beloved." There is, however, a difference between English and American Love which shows that we have learned Addison's lesson even better than his own countrymen. As Mr. Robert Laird Collier remarks in English Home Life : " The American custom, among the mass of the people, of leaving young men and young women ENGLISH LOVE 298 free to associate together and to keep company with each other for an indefinite length of time, without declaring their intentions, is almost unknown in any country of Europe. It is not long after a young man begins to show the daughter attentions before the father gives intimation that he wishes to know what it means, and either the youth declares his intentions or is notified to * cut sticks.' " " Courtships in England are short, and engagements are long." The London Standard doubtless exaggerates the difference between English and American girls and their attitude toward men in the course of an article, part of which may, nevertheless, be cited : " American girls offer a bright example to their English eisters of a happy, unclouded youth, and instances seem to be few of their abusing the liberty which is accorded to them. Perhaps their immunity from sentimental troubles arises from the fact that from earliest childhood they have been comrades of the other sex, and are therefore not disposed to turn a man into a derni-god be- cause they only see one at rare intervals under the eagle eye of a mother or aunt. A great revolution in public opinion would be required ere English girls could be emancipated to the extent which prevails on the other side of the Atlantic, and even then it is doubtful whether the system would work well. The daughters of Albion, with but few exceptions, are single-hearted, earnest, and prone to look upon everything seriously. They often make the mistake of imagining that a man is in love because he is decently civil." Yet in German Home Life, written from an English point of view, we read that " There is no such thing as country life, as we understand it, in Germany ; no cosy sociability, smiling snug- ness, pleasant bounties and hospitalities ; and, above all, for the young folk, no freedom, flirtation, boatings, sketchings, high teas, ecamperings, and merriments generally." And again : " The sort of frank ' flirtation,' beginning openly in fun and ending in amuse- ment, which is common amongst healthy, high-spirited boys and girls in England, and has no latent elemeat of intrigue or vanity in it, but is born of exuberant animal spirits, youthful frolics, and healthy pastimes shared together, is forbidden to her " (the Ger- man girl). The Standard itself apparently contradicts itself in another article on " Flirtation," concerning which it says : " It is usually so innocent that it has become part of the education most of our young women pass through in their training for society!. The British matron smiles contentedly when she sees that her daughter, 294 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY just entered on her teens, exhibits a partiality for long walks and soft-toned confabulations with her cousin Fred or 'her brother's favourite schoolmate. Three or four such juvenile attachments will do the girl no harm, if they are gently watched over by the parental eye. They serve to evolve the sexually social instincts in a gradual way. Through them the bashful maiden learns the nature of man in the same fashion as she takes lessons on the piano. In a word, she is ' getting her hand in ' for the real game cf matrimony that is to be played in a few years. Her youthful swains, of course, derive their own instructions from these inno- cent amours. . . . Chivalrous feeling is developed which it takes a deal of worldly wisdom to smother in after years. . . . When we observe this sentimentality in a boy, we derive great amuse- ment from it, but it should raise the lad in our estimation. He has something in him to which ideals appeal, and his early- developed susceptibility will to use a beautiful but forgotten word engentle his nature." Perhaps the difference between English and American court- ship and flirtation is not so great as often painted, and is becoming less every year, owing to the Americanisation of Europe. AMERICAN LOVE It is in the United States of America that Plato's ideal so completely ignored by his countrymen that young men and women should have ample opportunity to meet and get acquainted with one another before marriage, is most perfectly realised ; as well as Addison's supplementary advice that marriage should be preceded by a long courtship. As boys and girls in America are commonly educated in the same schools, they are initiated at an early age into the sweets and sorrows of Calf-love Courtship, which has such a refining influence on the boys, and renders the girls more easy and natural in society when they get older ; destroying among other puerili- ties that spring-chicken Coyness which makes many of their European sisters appear so silly. In the Western country-schools each girl has her "beau" a boy of fourteen to seventeen who brings her flowers, apples, or other presents, accompanies her home, and performs various other gallant services ; nor has any harm ever been known to result from this juvenile Courtship except an occasional elopement, in case of a prematurely frivolous couple, whom it was just as well to get rid of in that way as any other. AMERICAN LOVE 295 When they get a little older, the young folks go to picnics without a chaperon, or they enjoy a drive or sleigh-ride, or go a- skating together ; and after a party, dance, church fair, or other social gathering, where the elders commonly keep out of the way considerately, each young man accompanies a young lady home. Were you to insinuate to him the advisability of having a chaperon for the young lady, he would inform you pointedly that the young lady needed no protection inasmuch as he was a gentleman and not a tramp. It is this high sense of gentlemanly honour that pro- tects women in America a hundred times better than all the barred windows of the Orient and the dragons of Europe. Thanks to this feeling of modern chivalry, a young lady may travel all^i^-u alone from New York to Chicago, or even to San Francisco, and, ^ * if her manners are modest and refined, she will not once be in- ' V suited by word or look, not even in passing through the roughest -Vfftii ^Vyv mining regions.. ' "I 1 * is the consciousness of this chivalrous code of honour among the men that gives an American girl the frank and natural gaze which is one of her greatest charms, and that allows her to talk to a man just introduced as if they were old acquaintances. It is a knowledge of this gentlemanly code that makes parents feel- perfectly at ease in leaving their daughter alone in the parlour all the evening with a visitor. In a word, American customs prove that if you treat a man as a gentleman he will behave like a gentleman. Unquestionably there are girls who abuse the liberty allowed them, and encourage the men to encourage them in their freedom. Mr. Henry James has done a most valuable service in holding up the mirror to one of these girls, to serve as a warning to all Daisy Millers and semi-Daisy Millers. There are not a few of the latter kind, and I have myself met three full-fledged specimens of the real " Daisy " in Europe girls who would not have hesitated to go out rowing on a lake at eleven o'clock in the evening with a man known to them only a few hours, or to go next day with him to visit an old tower, or to say that mamma " always makes a fuss if I introduce a gentleman. But I do introduce them almost always. If I didn't introduce my gentlemen friends to mother, I shouldn't think I was natural." .., It is this class of American tourists that have, unfortunately, -given foreigners a caricatured notion of the American girl's deportment Etiquette differs somewhat* in /various American cities and among the different classes. For instance, a young lady of the " upper circle?, " who in Chicago is permitted to drive to the 296 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY theatre in a carriage with a young man, is not allowed the same privilege in New York. The New York Sun, an excellent authority in social matters, gives the whole philosophy of American Courtship and Love iu answering a young man's question as to whether, in asking a young lady of the highest circles to accompany him to a place of amuse- ment, it is necessary to invite a chaperon at the same time. He is told that he must, in those circles : " But these people are only a few among the many. What is called society more exclusively in New York comprises, all told, no more than a hundred or two hundred families. Outside of them, of course, there are larger circles, to which they give the law to a greater or less extent, but the whole number of men and women in this great town of a million and a half of inhabitants who pay obedience to that law is not over a few thousand. " Nine girls out of ten in New York, with the full consent of their parents and as a matter of course, accompany young men to amusements without taking a chaperon along. They feel, and they are, entirely able to look out for themselves, and they would regard the whole fun as spoiled if a third person was on hand to watch over them. A large part of the audience at every theatre is always made up of young men and young women who have come out in pairs, and who have no thought of violating any rule of propriety. Very many of these girls would never be invited to the theatre by their male acquaintances if they were under the dominion of such a usage, for the men want them to themselves, else they would not ask their company, and besides do not feel able to pay for an extra ticket for an obnoxious third person ; or, if they have a little more money to spare, they prefer to expend it at an ice- cream saloon after the play. " Nor can it be said that the morals of these less formal young people are any worse than those of the more exacting society. Probably they are better on the average, and if the laws of Murray Hill prevailed throughout this city, the marriage-rate of New York would be likely to decline, for nothing discourages the passion of the average young man so much as his inability to meet the charmer except in the presence of a third person, who acts as a buffer between him and her. He feels that he has no show, and cannot appear to good advantage under the eyes of a cool critic, whereas if he could walk with the girl alone in the shades of the balmy evening, the courage to declare his affection would come to him. " Therefore it is that engagements, even in the most fashionable AMERICAN LOVE 297 society, are commonly made in the country during the summer, where the young people come together more freely and more constantly than in the town." The attempt made in certain comers of New York " Society " to introduce the foreign system of chaperonage is one of the most absurd and incongruous efforts at aping foreign fashions (which are on the decline even in Europe) ever witnessed in our midst In Europe Chaperonage is in so far excusable, as it is a modified survival from barbarous times when men were mostly brutes, being drunk half the time and on military expeditions the other half. To treat American men, who are brought up as gentlemen, and commonly behave as such, as mediseval ruffians, is a gratuitous insult, which they ought to resent by avoiding those houses where Oriental experiments are being tried with the daughters. That would bring the " mammas " to reason very soon. Yet it would seem as if New York " Society " had already had enough of the Oriental experiment ; for the same high authority just quoted asserted last autumn that "A regular stampede in favour of the liberty of the young unmarried female is to be under- taken this winter by a number of ' three-years-in-society ' veterans, supported and encouraged by nearly all this season's debutantes. The first step is to be the establishment of a right on the part of young girls to form parties for theatre matinees and afternoon concerts, untrammelled by the presence of even a matron of their own age, and to which all * reliable and well-behaved young men are to be eligible.' . . . Rule No. 2 establishes beyond all dispute the often-mooted question whether the presence of a brother and sister in a party of young people going to any place of evening amusement throws a shield of respectability over the others of the party. Society long ago frowned upon this moijgrel kind of chaperonage; but upon the principle that no young man would permit indiscretions or improprieties in a party of which his sister made one, the ' veterans ' have voted in favour of it. The young man with a sister is therefore to enact the part of dragon on these occasions, and will be largely in demand. Failing a convenient sister, he may get a cousin, perhaps, to 'take her place." When it comes to the cousin, the reversion to Americanism, pure and simple, will be complete. The gentlemanliness and Gallantry of Americans have at all times been acknowledged by observers of all nationalities ; and it is indeed hardly too much to say that the average American is disposed to treat the whole female sex with a studied Gallantry, which in most European countries is reserved by men for the 298 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY one girl with whom they happen to be in love. Even the irate aad vituperative Anthony Trollope in his book on North America was obliged to admit that " It must be borne in mind that in that country material wellbeing and education are more extended than with us, and that therefore men there have learned to be chivalrous who with us have hardly progressed so far. The conduct of the men to the women throughout the states is always gracious. . . . But it seems to me that the women have not advanced as far as the men have done. ... In America the spirit of chivalry has sunk deeper among men than it has among women." Anthony Trollope is by no means the only writer who has put his finger on the greatest foible of American women. No doubt they have, as a class, been spoiled by excessive masculine Gallantry. They do not, like the women of the Troubadour period, who were similarly spoilt, go quite so far as to send their knights on crusades and among lepers, but they often shroud themselves in an atmo- sphere of selfishness which is very unfeminine to choose a compli- mentary adjective. In the East, where there is already a large excess of women over men, this evil is less marked than in the West, where women are still in a minority. Thus the Denver Tribune, in an article on " The Impoliteness of Women," remarks : " If there is any charac- teristic of Americans of which they are more proud than any other, it is the courtesy which the men who are natives of this country exhibit towards women, and the respect which the gentler sex receives in public. This is a trait of the American character of which Americans are justly proud, and in which they doubtless excel the people of any other country. But while this is true of the men, it is a matter to be deeply regretted that as much cannot be eaid of the women of this country." After praising American women for their beauty, vivacity, high moral character, and other charms, the Tribune adds that they " seem very generally to be prompted in their conduct in public by a spirit of selfishness which very often finds expression in acts of positive rudeness." They are ungrateful, it continues, to the men who give up their seats in street-cars ; they compel men to step into a muddy street, instead of walking one behind the other at a crossing ; and at such places as the stamp-window of the post-office they do not wait for their turn, but force the men to stand aside. Another Western paper, the Chicago Tribune, complains that in that city there are 10,000 homes in which the daughters are ignorant of the simplest kind of household duties. It adds " That they do not desire to learn ; that, having been brought up to do AMERICAN LOVE 299 nothing except appear gracefully in society, their object in life is to marry husbands who can support them in idle luxury ; that this state of things has substituted for marriages founded on love and respect a market in which the men have quoted money-values, and where a young man, however great his talents, has no chance of winning a wife from the charmed circle." So that the pendulum has apparently swung to the other extreme. In mediaeval times the women were married for their money by the lazy, selfish men ; now the women are lazy and selfish, while the men toil and are married for their money. Yet there is much exaggeration in this view, which applies to only a small portion of the American people. We are far from the times when Miss Martineau complained of the feeble health of American women, and attributed it to the vacuity of their minds. Their health is still, on the average, inferior to that of English and German damsels, from whom they could also learn useful lessons in domestic matters ; but intellectually the American woman has no equal in the world; while her sweetness, grace, and proverbial beauty combine into an ensemble which makes Cupid chuckle whenever he looks at a susceptible young man. Goldsmith says somewhere that " the English love with vio- lence, and expect violent love in return." Certainly this holds true no less of the Americans. There are indeed several favour- able circumstances which combine to make Romantic Love more ardent and more prevalent in the United States than in any other part of the world. (1) The first is the intellectual culture of women just referred to, which they owe partly to the leisure they enjoy, partly to the fact that America has the best elementary schools in the world, so that their minds are aroused early from their dormant state. As Bishop Spalding remarks : " Woman here in the United States is more religious, more moral, and more intelligent than man ; more intelligent in the sense of greater openness to ideas, greater flexi- bility of mind, and a wider acquaintance with literature." Now the whole argument of this book tends to show that the capacity for feeling Romantic Love is dependent on intellectual culture, and increases with it ; hence we might infer that there is more Love among the women of America than among those of any other country, even if this were not so patent from the greater number of Love- matches and various subtle signs known to international observers. And as the sweetest pleasure and goad of Love lies in the con- viction that it is really returned, man's Love is thus doubled in ardour through woman's responsive sympathy. 800 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY (2) That Courtship proper is longer than in England, and engagement shorter, is a circumstance in favour of America. For nothing adds so much to the ardour of Love as the uncertainty which prevails during Courtship ; whereas, after engagement, all these alternate hopes and doubts, confidences and jealousies, are quieted, and the ship approaches the still waters of the harbour of matrimony, which may be quite as deep but are less sublime and romantic than mid-ocean, with its possibilities of storm and ship- wreck. Moreover, the longer the time of tentative Courtship, the fewer are the chances of a mistake being made in selecting a sympathetic spouse. In Germany an engagement is so conclusive an affair that it is announced in the papers, and cards are sent out as at a wedding. In America we meet with the other extreme, for it is not very unusual for a couple to be engaged some time before even the parents know it. Though there is such a thing as breach of promise suits against fickle young men, such engagements, if unsatisfactory to either side, are commonly broken off amicably. And, as one of Mr. Howells's characters remarks in Indian Summer : " A broken engagement may be a bad thing in some cases, but I am inclined to think it is the very best thing that could happen in most cases where it happens. The evil is done long before j the broken engagement is merely sanative, and so far beneficent." Were engagements less readily dissolved, divorces would be more frequent even than they are now. (3) Parental dictation is almost unknown in America ; nowhere else have young men and women such absolute freedom to choose their own soul-mate. Hence Individual Preference, on which the ardour of Love depends in the highest degree, has full sway. The comparative absence of barriers of rank and social grade also makes it easier for a man to find and claim his real Juliet. (4) This dependence of Love on Individualisation gives it another advantage in America. For nowhere is there so great a mixture of nationalities as here ; and, away from home, a national peculiarity of feature or manners has a sort of individualising effect. Till we get used to such national peculiarities through their con- stant recurrence we are apt to judge almost every woman in a new city attractive. From this point of view Love may be defined as an instinctive longing to absorb national traits, and blend them all in the one cosmopolitan type of perfect Personal Beauty. (5) There are beautiful women in all countries of the world, but no country has so many pretty girls as America, Money and AMERICAN LOVE 301 rank find it hard to compete with such loveliness, hence Love has its own way. Here alone is it possible to find heiresses who have failed to get married through lack of Beauty. Personal Beauty is the great matchmaker in America ; and thus it comes that Beauty is ever inherited and multiplied. For Love is the cause of Beauty as Beauty is the cause of Love. One more characteristic of American Love remains to be noted the most unique of all. American women are of all women in the world the most self-conscious, and have the keenest sense of humour. To these quick-witted damsels the sentimental sublimities of amor- OU3 Hyperbole, which may touch the heart of a naive German or Italian girl, are apt to appear dangerously near the ludicrous; hence an American lover, if he is clever enough, deliberately covers the step which separates the sublime from the ridiculous. He gilds the gold of his compliments by using the form of playful exaggeration, which is the more easy to him because exaggeration is a national form of American humour. Mr. Howells's heroes often make love in this fashion. The lover in The Lady of the Aroostook spices his flatteries with open burlesque, and succeeds admirably with this new Ars Amoris ; and Colville in Indian Summer says to Imogene : " Come, I'll go, of course, Imogene. A fancy-ball to please you is a very different thing from a fancy-ball in the abstract." " Oh, what nice things you say ! Do you know, I always admired your compliments ? I think they're the most charming compliments in the world." "I don't think they're half so pretty as yours; but they're more sincere." " No, honestly. They flatter, and at the same time they make fun of the flattery a little ; they make a person feel that you like them even while you laugh at them." Perfect success in this form of flattery requires a talent for epigram. Not many, unfortunately, even in America, are poets and wits at the same time, like Mr. Howells; but there is an abundance of clever compliments nevertheless, and they are apt to assume the form of playful exaggeration. SCHOPENHAUER'S THEORY OF LOVE A first hasty perusal of Schopenhauer's brilliant essay on the " Metaphysics of Sexual Love " (in the second volume of his Welt als Wille ^md Vorgtelhmg) will dispose moat readers to 802 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY agree with Duhring that the great pessimist " makes war on love." But a more careful consideration of his profound thoughts shows that this is not the case, notwithstanding his habitual cynical tone. In the first place, his theory can do no possible harm, because, as he himself admits, no lover will ever believe in it. Secondly, the gist of Schopenhauer's theory is to show that a lover is the most noble and unselfish martyr in the world, because his usual attitude and fate is self-sacrifice. LOVE IS AN ILLUSION The fundamental truth which Schopenhauer claims to have discovered is that love is an illusion an instinctive belief on the lover's part that his life's happiness absolutely depends on his union with his beloved ; whereas, in truth, a love-match commonly leads to lifelong conjugal misery. The lover, on reaching the goal so eagerly striven for, finds himself disappointed, and realises, to his consternation, that he has been the dupe of a blind instinct. Quien se casa por amores, ha de vivir con dolores, says a Spanish proverb ("to marry for love is to live in misery"): and this doctrine Schopenhauer re-echoes in a dozen different forms : " It is not only disappointed love-passion that occasionally has a tragic end ; successful love likewise leads more commonly to misery than to happiness." "Marriages based on love commonly end un- happily," etc. INDIVIDUALS SACRIFICED TO THE SPECIES The reason of this curious fact is given in this sentence: " Love-marriages are formed in the interest of the species, not of the individuals. True, the parties concerned imagine that they are providing for their own happiness ; but their real [unconscious] aim is something foreign to their own selves namely, the pro- creation of an individual whose existence becomes possible only through their marriage." What urges a man on to this sacrifice of individual happiness to the welfare of his offspring is, as already intimated, a blind instinct known as Love. The universal Will (Schopenhauer's fetish, or name for an impersonal deity underlying all phenomena) has implanted this blind instinct in man, for the same reason that it implants so many other instincts in various animals to induce the parents to undergo any amount of labour, and even danger to SCHOPENHAUER'S THEORY OF LOVE 303 life, for the sake of benefiting the offspring, and thus preserving the species. All these animals, like the lovers, are urged on blindly to sacrifice themselves in the belief that they are doing it for their own pleasure and benefit ; whereas it is all in the interest of their offspring. Why was the Will compelled to implant this blind instinct in man *? Because man is so selfish wherever guided by reason, that it would have been unwise to entrust so important a matter as the welfare of coming generations to his intellect and prudence. Prudence would tell young people to choose not the most attrac- tive and healthy partners, who would be able to transmit their excellence to the next generation, but the ones who are most liberally supplied with money and useful friends. That is, they would invariably look out first for " Number One," indifferent to the deluge that might come after them. It was to neutralise this selfishness that the Will created the instinct of Love, which impels a man to marry not the woman who will make him the most happy and comfortable, but whose qualities, combined with his own, will be likely to produce a harmonious, well-made group of children. Schopenhauer's Will, it must be understood, is an aesthetic sort of a chap. He has his hobbies, and one of these hobbies is the desire to preserve the species in its typical purity and beauty. There are a thousand accidents of climate, vice, disease, etc., that tend to vitiate the type of each species ; but Love strives for ever to restore a harmonious balance, by producing a mutual infatua- tion in two beings whose combined (and opposite) defects will neutralise one another in the offspring. SOURCES OF LOVE More definitely speaking, there are three ways in which the Will preserves the purity of its types three ways in which it inspires the Love whose duty it is to achieve this result. Physical Beauty is the first thing desired by the lover, because that is the expression of typical perfection. Secondly, he may be influenced by such Psychic Traits as will blend well with his own ; and thirdly, he will be attracted by perfections (or imperfections) which are the opposite of his own. These three sources must be considered briefly in detail. (1) Physical Beauty. The most important attribute of Beauty, in the lover's eye, is Youth. Men prefer the age from eighteen to twenty-eight in a woman; while women give the 304 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAbTY preference to a man aged from thirty to thirty-five, which represents the acme of his virility. Youth without Beauty may still inspire Love ; not so Beauty without Youth. Health ranks next in importance. Acute disease is only a temporary disadvantage, whereas chronic disease repels the amorous affections, for the reason that it is likely to be trans- mitted to the next generation. A fine framework or skeleton is the third desideratum. Be- sides age and disease, nothing proves so fatal to the chances of inspiring Love as deformity : " The most charming face does not atone for it ; on the contrary, even the ugliest face is preferred if allied with a straight growth of the body." A certain plumpness or fulness of flesh is the next thing considered in sexual selection ; for this is an indication of Health, and promises a sound progeny. Excessive leanness is repulsive, and so is excessive stoutness, which is often an indication of sterility. " A well-developed bust has a magic effect on a man." What attracts women to men is especially muscular development, because that is a quality in which they are commonly deficient, and for which the children will accordingly have to rely on the father. Women may marry an ugly man, but never one who is unmanly. Facial beauty ranks last in importance, according to Schopen- hauer. Here too the skeleton is first considered in sexual selection. The mouth must be small, the chin projecting, " a slight curve of the nose, upwards or downwards, has decided the fate of innumerable girls ; and justly, for the type of the species is at stake." The eyes and the forehead, finally, are closely associated with intellectual qualities. (2) Psychic Traits. What charms women in men is pre- eminently courage and energy, besides frankness and amiability. " Stupidity is no disadvantage with women : indeed, it is more likely that superior intellectual power, and especially genius, as being an abnormal trait, may make an unfavourable impression on them. Hence we so often see an ugly, stupid, and coarse man preferred by women to a refined, clever, and amiable man." When women claim to have fallen in love with a man's intellect, it is either affectation or vanity. Wedlock is a union of hearts, not of heads ; and its object is not entertaining conversation, but providing for the next generation. This part of Schopenhauer's theory is evidently an outcome of his doctrine that children inherit their intellectual qualities from the mother, and their character from the father. Hence the feeling that they are capable of SCHOPENHAUER'S THEORY OF LOVE 805 supplying their children with sufficient intellect is part of the feminine Love-instinct, and makes women indifferent to the presence or absence of those qualities in men. It does not follow from all this that a sensible man may not reflect on his chosen one's character, or she on his intellectual abilities, before marriage. Such reflection leads to marriages of reason, but not to Love -marriages, which alone are here under consideration. (3) Complementary Qualities. The physical and mental attri- butes considered under (1) and (2) are those which commonly inspire Love. But there are cases where perfect Beauty is less potent to inflame the passions than deviations from the normal type. " Ordinarily it is not the regular perfect beauties that inspire the great passions," says Schopenhauer; and this seems to be borne out by the experience of Byron, who says : " I believe there are few men who, in the course of their observations on life, have not perceived that it is not the greatest female beauty who forms [inspires] the longest and the strongest passions." How is this to be accounted for 1 By the anxiety of Nature (or the Will) to neutralise imperfections in one individual by wed- ding them to another's excesses in the opposite direction ; as an acid is neutralised by combining it with an alkali. The greater the shortcoming the more ardent will be the infatuation if a person is found exactly adapted for its neutralisation. The weaker a woman is, for example, in her muscular system, the more apt will she be to fall violently in love with an athlete. Short men have a decided partiality for tall women, and vice versd. Blondes almost always desire brunettes ; and if the reverse does not hold true, this is owing to the fact, he says, that the original colour of the human complexion was not light but dark. A light com- plexion has indeed become second nature to us, but less so the other features ; and " in love nature strives to return to dark hair and brown eyes, as the primitive type." Again, persons afflicted with a pug-nose take a special delight in falcon-noses and parrot-faces ; and those who are excessively long and slim admire those who are abnormally short and even stumpy. So with temperaments ; each one preferring the opposite to his or her own. True, if a person is quite perfect in any one respect, he does not exactly prefer the corresponding imperfection in another, but he is more readily reconciled to it. Throughout his essay, Schopenhauer tacitly assumes that the parental peculiarities are fused or blended equally in the offspring, 806 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY and that this blending is what the Will aims at. But on this point Mr. Herbert Spencer has some remarks, in his essay on "Personal Beauty," which directly contradict Schopenhauer, of whose theory, however, he does not seem to have been cognisant : "The fact," he says, "that the forms and qualities of any offspring are not a mean between the forms and qualities of its parents, but a mixture of them, is illustrated in every family. The features and peculiarities of a child are separately referred by observers to father and mother respectively nose and mouth to this side ; colour of the hair and eyes to that ; this moral peculi- arity to the first ; this intellectual one to the second and so with contour and idiosyncrasies of body. Manifestly, if each organ or faculty in a child was an average of the two developments of such organ or faculty in the parents, it would follow that all brothers and sisters should be alike ; or should, at any rate, differ no more than their parents differed from year to year. So far, however, from finding that this is the case, we find not only that great irregularities are produced by intermixture of traits, but that there is no constancy in the mode of intermixture, or the extent of varia- tions produced by it. " This imperfect union of parental constitutions in the constitu- tion of offspring is yet more clearly illustrated by the reappearance of peculiarities traceable to bygone generations. Forms, disposi- tions, and diseases, possessed by distant progenitors, habitually come out from time to time in descendants. Some single feature, or some solitary tendency, will again and again show itself after being apparently lost. It is notoriously thus with gout, scrofula, and insanity." Again, unite a pure race "with another equally pure, but adapted to different conditions and having a correspondingly dif- ferent physique, face, and morale, and there will occur in the descendants not a homogeneous mean between the two constitu- tions, but a seemingly irregular combination of characteristics of the one with characteristics of the other one feature traceable to this race, a second to that, and a third uniting the attributes of both ; while in disposition and intellect there will be found a like medley of the two originals." The fact that the more remote ancestry must be taken into account besides the parents, in considering the traits of the off- spring, is one which Mr. Galton has done much to emphasise, and which Schopenhauer completely ignores. It tells against the metaphysical part of his theory ; for all the efforts of the Will to merge opposite characters into homogeneous traits must prove SCHOPENHAUER'S THEORY OF LOVE 307 futile if a blue-eyed man, for instance, who marries a black-eyed girl, finds that their children have neither the father's blue nor the mother's black, but the grand mother's gray eyes. Yet in the long run diverse traits of figure and physiognomy ds baud to a harmonious fusion. Though a man with a prominent n;se, irhich he inherited from his father, is likely to transmit it to his son, though his wife may have a snub-nose, yet there will be a slight modification even in the son's organ ; and if the son keeps up the tradition of marrying a snub-nosed girl, and his children follow his example, the chances are that in a few genera- tions the nose of that family will be a feature of moderate size and classic proportions. The very fact emphasised by Mr. Galton that all the ancestral influences count, will here aid the ultimate fusion. Conspicuous instances of the long-continued prevalence of a par- ticular nose or other feature may be accounted for by the fact that other kinds of that organ were rare in the vicinity, or that marriage was decided by so many other considerations that the dimensions of one organ could not come into consideration, much as the bride or groom might have preferred an improvement in that respect. So far as Schopenhauer's theory concerns only the fact that Love is apt to be based on complementary qualities, he is doubt- less correct ; but it needs no erratic metaphysical fetish, as a deus ex machina, to account for that fact. A simple application of psychologic principles explains the whole mystery. In ths first place, nothing could be more remote from the truth than the cynical notion that every woman considers herself a Venus. She may, on the whole, consider herself equal to the average of Beauty ; but if she has any special fault a mouth too large or too small, an upper lip too high, a nose too flat or too prominent, too much or too little flesh, excessive height or short- ness she is not only conscious of the defect, but morbidly con- scious of it, and uses every possible device to conceal it. Thus constantly brooding over her misfortune her mind, by a natural reaction, will conceive a special admiration for an organ that exceeds the line of Beauty in the opposite direction. Every day one hears a petite girl admiring a specially tall woman ; and this admiration will prompt her, other things being equal, to fall in love with a tall man. Secondly, familiarity breeds indifference to one's own charms, and a disposition to admire what we lack ourselves. Novelty comes into play. A Northern blonde among a nation of brunettes cannot fail to slay hearts by the hundred, while the 808 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY mystic flashes of a Spanish woman's black eyes are fatal to every Northern visitor. Nations, like individuals, admire and desire what they lack. The Germans and the English are deficient in grace hence that quality is what chiefly charms them in the French, who have much more of it than of Beauty, and in the Spanish. Byron was BO n.tich smitten with the sun-mellowed complexions and the graceful proportions and gait of the Spanish maidens, that he became quite unjust to his own lovely countrywomen *' Who round the North for paler dames would seek ? How poor their forms appear ! How languid, wan, and weak ! " Were savages susceptible to Love, it might be suggested that their practice of exogamy, or marrying a woman from another tribe, had something to do with their admiration of novelty and complementary qualities ; but we know that they do not admire such qualities, but only such typical traits as prevail among their own women, and these, moreover, in an exaggerated form. This is one reason why savages are so ugly. They have no Eoniantic Love to improve their Personal Beauty by fusing heterogeneous defects into homogeneous perfections. Thus we may freely endorse Schopenhauer's doctrine regarding the benefits derived by the offspring (ultimately, in several genera- tions) from marriages based on complementary Love, without bowing down before his fetish a fetish which appears doubly objectionable because it is old-fashioned ; i.e. it strives to " main- tain the type of the species in its primitive purity," whereas modern science teaches that this "primitive type" of human beauty had a very simian aspect. Nor need we at all accept the pessimistic aspect of his theory the notion that Love is an illusion, and that Love-marriages commonly end unhappily, the lover sacrificing himself for his progeny. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Sociology, elaborates an idea which so curiously leads up to this phase of Schopenhauer's doctrine that it must be briefly referred to for its evolutionary suggestiveness. Among the lowest animals the microscopic protozoa the individual, as he remarks, is sacrificed after a few hours of life, by breaking up into two new individuals, or into a number of germs which produce a new generation. The parents are here entirely sacrificed to the interests of the young and the species. As we ascend in the scale of life this sacrifice of parents to the young and the species becomes less and less prevalent. Among SCHOPENHAUER'S THEORY OF LOVE 309 birds, for instance, "The lives of the parents are but partially subordinated at times when the young are being reared. And then there are long intervals between breeding-seasons, during which the lives of parents are carried on for their own sakes. . . . In proportion as organisms become higher in their structures and powers, they are individually less sacrificed to the maintenance of the species; and the implication is that in the highest type of man this sacrifice is reduced to a minimum." Here is the point where Schopenhauer, had he been an evolu- tionist, might have dovetailed his theory with Spencer's, by saying that in man it is no longer the life of the individual, or most of his time, that is sacrificed, but merely his conjugal happiness, which the Love-instinct induces him unconsciously to barter for the superior physical and mental beauty of his offspring. Unfortunately, Schopenhauer did not take any pains to verify his theory by testing it by vulgar facts. There are plenty of unhappy marriages, but no one who will search his memory can fail to come to the conclusion that the vast majority of them are cases where money or rank and not Love supplied the motive of an unsympathetic union. Though Conjugal Affection consists of a different group of emotions from Romantic Love, yet there is an affinity between them ; and it is not likely that Conjugal Love will ever supervene where before marriage there was an entire absence of sympathy and adoration. Even an imprudent Love- match which leads to poverty is it not preferable to a nariage de convenance, which leads to lifelong indifference and ennui? Is it not better to have one month of ecstatic bliss in life than to live and die without ever knowing life's highest rapture ? Again, the French marry for money and social convenience, and their children are ugly ; the Americans marry for Love, and have the most beautiful children in the world. Is it not more conducive to conjugal happiness to know that one has lovely children and that the race is increasing, than to have ugly children and to know that the race is dying out 1 Love-matches would never end unhappily if the lovers would take proper care of their own happiness by transfusing the habits of Courtship into conjugal life, as elsewhere explained in this book. Schopenhauer's whole argument is vitiated by the fact that it is chiefly the physical complementary qualities that inspire Love, not the mental the latter, in fact, being barely noticed by him. Mental divergence might indeed occasionally lead to an unhappy marriage, but physical divergence the fact that he is large and 810 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY blond, she small and a brunette cannot possibly lead to matri- monial discord. This knocks the whole bottom out of Schopen- hauer's erotic pessimism. The only sense in which Love is an illusion is in its Hyperbolic phase the notion that the beloved is superior to all other mortals ; and that is a very harmless illusion. Schopenhauer's pessimism, it should be added, is greatly miti- gated by the poetic halo of martyrdom with which he invests the lover's head. Society and public opinion, he points out, applaud him for instinctively preferring the welfare of the next generation to his own comfort. " For is not the exact determination of the individualities of the next generation a much higher and nobler object than those ecstatic feelings of the lovers, and their super- sensual soap-bubbles 1 " It is this that invests Love with its poetic character. There is one thing only that justifies tears in a man, and that is the loss of his Love, for in that he bewails not his own loss but the loss of the species. Apart from the suggestive details of his essay, Schopenhauer's merit and originality lies, first, in his having pointed out that Love becomes more intense the more it is individualised ; secondly, . in emphasising the fact that iu match-making it is not the happiness of the to-be-married couple that should be chiefly consulted, but the consequences of their union to the offspring; thirdly, in dwelling on the important truth that Love is a cause of Beauty, because its aim always is either to perpetuate existing Beauty through hereditary transmission, or to create new Beauty by fusing two imperfect individuals into a being in whom their short- comings mutually neutralise one another. Love, however, is only one source of Personal Beauty. Per- sonal Beauty has four sources ; and these must now be considered in succession, in the order which roughly indicates their succes- sive evolution Health, Crossing, Love, and Mental Eefinement. The remainder of this work will be devoted exclusively to the subject of Personal Beauty, as it influences and is influenced by Romantic Love. And here, as in the preceding pages, I shall always cite the ipsissima verba of the greatest specialists who have written on any particular branch of this subject. FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY I* HEALTH Plants, Animals, Savages. In two of the most exquisite passages, not only in his own works, but in all English literature, FOUB SOURCES OF BEAUTY 811 Mr. Ruskin has emphasised the dependence of physical beauty in plants on their healthy appearance, and the independence of this beauty on any idea of direct utility to man. " It is a matter of easy demonstration," he says, " that, setting the characters of typical beauty aside, the pleasure afforded by every organic form is in proportion to its appearance of healthy vital energy ; as in a rose-bush, setting aside all considerations of gradated flushing of colour and fair folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or the snow-wreath, we find in and through all this certain signs pleasant and acceptable as signs of life and enjoyment in the particular individual plant itself. Every leaf and stalk is seen to have a function, to be constantly exercising that function, and, as it seems, solely for the good and enjoyment of the plant. It is true that reflection will show us that the plant is not living for itself alone, that its life is one of benefaction, that it gives as well as receives, but no sense of this whatever mingles with our perception of physical beauty in its forms. Those forms which appear to be necessary to its health, the symmetry of its leaflets, the smoothness of its stalks, the vivid green of its shoots, are looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own happiness and per- fection they are useless to us, except as they give us pleasure in our sympathising with that of the plant, and if we see a leaf withered or shrunk or worm-eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it to be most painful, not because it hurts ?, but because it seems to hurt the plant, and conveys to us an idea of pain and disease and failure of life in it" " The bending tree, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it is happy, though it is perfectly useless to us. The same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It serves as a bridge, it has become useful ; it lives not for itself, and its beauty is gone, or what it retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colours, not its functions. Saw it into planks, and though now adapted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost for ever, or to be regained only in part when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand of JSTaturc the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life." In the animal world we find the same dependence of Beauty upon Health. As Mr. Wallace has shown, " colour and ornament are strictly correlated with health, vigour, and general fitness tc survive." It is the superior vitality, vigour, and vivacity of 312 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY certain male animals that leads the choicest females to prefer them to others less favoured ; and thus it happens that, thanks to the dependence of Beauty on Health, animals have become more and more beautiful. Moreover, it is Love in its primitive form that urges animals to prefer those that are most healthy. And thus we have the three great agents acting and reacting upon one another. Health produces Beauty, and together they inspire Love; while Love selects Health, and thus preserves and multiplies Beauty. But this whole subject has been so fully discussed in the chapter on Love among Animals that it is needless to recapitulate the facts here. Concerning savages, there is a prevalent notion that, owing to their free and easy life in the forests, they are healthier on the average than civilised mankind. As a matter of fact, however, they are as inferior to us in Health as in Beauty. Their constant exposure and irregular feeding habits, their neglect and ignorance of every hygienic law, in conjunction with their vicious lives, their arbitrary mutilations of various parts, and their selection of inferior forms, prevent their bodies from assuming the regular and delicate proportions which we regard as essential to Beauty. They arrive at maturity at an earlier age, and lose their vitality sooner than we do. " Decrepitude," says Dr. Topinard, " shows itself sooner in some races than in others. The Australians and Bosjesmans are old men at a period when the European is in the full enjoyment of his faculties, both physical and intellectual. The Japanese the same, according to Dr. Krishaber, physician to the Japanese Women everywhere pay less attention to the laws of Health than men. They have less exercise, less fresh air and sunshine than men. Hence, although the most beautiful women are more beautiful than the handsomest men, yet in probably every country of the world the average man is a more perfect specimen of masculine than the average woman of feminine Beauty. Concerning savages, Mr. Spencer says : " Very generally among the lower races the females are even more unattractive in aspect than the males. It is remarked of the Puttooahs, whose men are diminutive and whose women are still more so, that 'the men are far from being handsome, but the palm of ugliness must be awarded to the women.' The latter are Jiard-worked and apparently ill-fed" Again, of the inhabitants of the Corea GutzlarT says : " The females are very ugly, whilst the male sex is one of the best formed oi Asia. . . . Women are treated like beasts of burdeti." Many similar cases are cited by Dr. Ploss in Das Weil. FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY 313 Concerning modern civilised nations a well-known art-critic has given his testimony to the effect that " Possibly owing to the fact that men are freer to follow their normal lives, I have found that in a majority of the countries I have visited there are more hand- some men than beautiful women. This is peculiarly the case with the modern Greek, and was, if antique sculpture could be accepted as witness, with the ancient." Greek Beauty. In the preceding chapters of this work an attempt has been made to show that there is a general connection between the growth of Love and the growth of Beauty throughout the world. To some readers, no doubt, the thought has suggested itself, " How, if this be true, did the loveless Greeks succeed in reaching such uncommon physical beauty beauty which artists of all times have admired?" It must be borne in mind, however, that we are very liable to exaggerate in our notions of Greek Beauty, because we are apt to generalise from the fine statues that have come down to us, and to imagine that they represent the common type of Greek Beauty. But it is well known that the Greeks idealised their statues according to certain physiognomic rules ; and, moreover, as Winckelmann remarks, "Beauty was not a general quality even among the Greeks, and Cotta in Cicero says that, among the great numbers of young persons at Athens, there were only a few possess- ing true beauty." Besides, it has not been claimed that Love is the only cause of Beauty. Taking into consideration the other sources of Beauty, it is easy enough to account for such physical attractiveness as the Greeks did possess. The intellectual culture which the men enjoyed gave them a great advantage over the women ; and equally important, if not more so, was the attention which the men (and in some cases the women too) paid to Health. Their habitual life in the open air, while the women were locked up at home, combined with their daily gymnastic exercises in making their complexion healthy, their eyes sparkling, their limbs supple, vigorous, and graceful. Other causes that tended to keep up an average of healthy bodily development were the refusal to bring up sickly and deformed infants, and the existence of numerous slaves, who did all the drudgery for the Greeks. It is most characteristic that the author of a very old Greek ode formulates his wishes in this order: First, health; then, beauty; thirdly, wealth honestly got; fourth, the privilege of being gay and merry with his friends. 314 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY First, Health ; then, Beauty. There lies the secret, for the} always go together; and in aiming at one the Greeks got the other too. There was every reason why Greek parents should have striven eagerly to follow those laws of Health which ensure beautiful children. In ancient Greece Beauty was a possession which led to national fame. Some persons, Winckelmann informs us, were even characterised by a particular name, borrowed from some specially fine feature. Thus Demetrius Poliorketes was named, from the beauty of his eyelids, xapirophtyapos, i.e. on whose lids the graces dwell. "It appears, indeed," the same writer continues, "to have been a belief that the procreation of beautiful children might be promoted by the distribution of prizes for beauty, as there is reason to infer from the contests of beauty which were instituted in the remotest ages by Cypselus, King of Arcadia, in the time of the Heraclidse, on the banks of the river Alpheus, in Elis ; and also from the fact that at the festival of the Philesian Apollo, a prize for the most exquisite kiss was conferred on the youthful. Its assignment was subject to the decision of a judge, as was probably also the case at Megara, at the tomb of Diocles. " At Sparta, and at Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the citizens of Parrhasia, the women contended for the prize of beauty. The regard for this quality was so strong that, as Oppian declares, the Spartan women placed in their sleeping-rooms an Apollo, or Bacchus, or Nereus, or Narcissus, or Hyacinthus, or Castor and Pollux, in order that they might bear beautiful children." Some hint as to what the Greeks regarded as beautiful is given by the epithets Homer bestows on Helen " the well-rounded " " the white-armed," "fair-haired," " of the beautiful cheeks." Mediaeval Ugliness. This is a topic which might as well be introduced under any of the other Sources of Beauty, for it is difficult to say which of these sources was most completely and deliberately choked up during the Dark Ages. It is a curious irony of language that makes asceticism almost identical with sestheticism, of which it is the deadly enemy. As diseases are transmitted from generation to generation, so it seems that the fear of Beauty born of mediaeval asceticism has not yet died out completely; for it is related that some years ago a pious dame in Boston seriously meditated the duty of having some of her daughter's sound teeth pulled out, so as to mitigate her sinful Beauty. FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY 315 If this worthy lady had followed St. Jerome's injunction " I entirely forbid a young lady to bathe " ; if she had taught her that it is unladylike to have a healthy appetite ; if she had locked her up in a house rendered pestilential by defective drainage ; allowed her mind to rot in fallow idleness ; taught her that to be really saintly and virtuous she must be pale and hysterical ; or imitated the lady who was praised by a bishop in the fourth century for " having brought upon herself a swarm of diseases which defied all medical skill to cure," if the worthy Boston lady had but followed this mediaeval system, she would have succeeded in a short time in overcoming her daughter's sinful Beauty, and making her " ugly as a mud-fence," as they say out West. That Personal Beauty cannot flourish where Health is regarded as a vice and Disease as a virtue is self-evident. And one needs only to look at mediaeval pictures to note how coarse and void of refined expression are the men, how hard and masculine the women. The faces of the numerous mediaeval women in Planchd's Cyclopaedia of Costume have almost all an expression approaching imbecility, and features as if they had been chiselled by a small boy trying his hand at sculpture for the first time. Thackeray does not hesitate to speak even of " those simpering Madonnas of Rafael." Mr. G. A. Simcox remarks that in manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (like the Harleian Gospels and Maccabees) we meet with "short, thickset figures, mostly with the long, square, horsey face, moving stiffly in small groups, in heavy dresses; and even the daughter of Herodias dances upon her head [sic] in a gown that might have stood alone. On the other hand, the faces are more set, more articulate, less flabby, though they are all mean, or almost all, and look askance out of the corners of their eyes" (Art Journal, 1874, p. 58). There may be Oriental countries where woman is kept more closely under lock and key than she was in Europe during the Dark Ages ; but nowhere else has man so well succeeded in reduc- ing the pursuit of unhappiness to a science, in snubbing, scorning, abusing, maltreating woman. How all this must have tended to increase Personal Beauty is well brought out in the following advice given by Mr. Ruskin : " Do not think you can make a girl lovely if you do not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on a good girl's nature there is not one check you give to her instincts of affection or of effort which will not be inde- libly written on her features, with a hardness which is all the more painful because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue." 316 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Modern Hygiene. Disease is Beauty's deadliest enemy. Yet for the sake of gratifying a silly vanity for the sake of being distinguished from ordinary mortals a certain pallor and blase languor have long been considered in certain influential circles as more distingue than ruddy cheeks and robust health. Yet even if pale cheeks were more beautiful than rosy cheeks, would it be worth while to purchase them at the cost of premature decay of the certainty that a few years of pale cheeks will be followed by many years of sallow cheeks and lack-lustre eyes, deeply sunk into their orbits ? Though beauty is still of lamentably rare occurrence in every country, there is infinitely more of it than during the Middle Ages ; and certainly not the least cause of this is the increased attention paid to Hygiene public and personal. The difference in this respect between us and our ancestors is well brought out by the statistics regarding the average length of life. In ancient Koine, it is stated, " the average longevity among the most favoured classes was but thirty years, whereas to-day the average longevity among the corresponding class of people is fifty years. In the sixteenth century the average longevity in Geneva was 21*21 years. Between 1814 and 1833 it was 40-68, and as large proportion now live to seventy as lived to forty-three three hundred years ago." Dr. Corfield, comparing the statistics of 1842 with those of 1884, states that the mean duration of life in London has increased from twenty-nine to thirty-eight years. " In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the death-rate of the metropolis as it then was amounted to 40 per thousand. In the reign of Queen Victoria, almost entirely by the reduction of mortality by means of improved drainage, ventilation, and water, it has often touched 15 and 14, and even fallen as low as 13 in the thousand," while "in many of the suburban districts, and in the fashionable region about Hyde Park it ranges from 11 to 12." In France, according to M. Topinard, the mean duration of life, which was twenty-nine at the close of the eighteenth century, and thirty-nine from 1817 to 1831, increased to forty from 1840 io 1859, thanks to the progress of sanitary science and civilisation. As Hygiene is receiving more and more attention every year, it is possible that in course of time Dr. W. B. Richardson's ideal will be realised a town ideally perfect in sanitary matters, having a death-rate of 9 per 1000, and 105 years the duration of a man's life. As decrepitude and premature old age means a premature losa of Beauty, personal attractiveness would be correspondingly pro- longed and increased with life itself. FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY 317 Even at the present time not one house in a thousand is so constructed that every room has good ventilation. Architects are, however, less to blame than the people who will persist in their absurd old superstition that draughts and night air are inju- rious. Professor Reclam, the distinguished hygienist, not long ago opened a crusade against the horror of night air and draughts which is especially prevalent among his countrymen. " Sleeping with open windows," he says, "is most unjustly decried among the people, as well as night air in general. But night air is injurious only in swampy regions, whereas on dry soil, in the mountains, and everywhere in the upper stories of a house it is more salubrious than day air. . . . Draughts are not injurious unless we are in a glow. To healthy persons they cannot possibly do so much harm as the stagnant air in a close room. The fear of draughts is en- tirely groundless, though it affects most people in a manner which is simply ludicrous." Electricity, no doubt, will in less than a decade abolish horses from our cities, and with them the dust, foul odours, and sleep- murdering noise. The gain to Health, and through it to Beauty, from this alone, will be enormous. Doubtless one of the reasons why there is so much Beauty, so many fresh and sparkling eyes, in Venice, is because there are no horses in that city, and the inhabi- tants are not roused and half-roused from sleep every fifteen minutes during the night by a waggon rattling down the street. It is not sufficiently known that street-noise may injure the Health even of those whom it does not entirely wake up. The restorative value of sleep lies in its depth and the absence of dreams. A noisy waggon interferes with the depth of sleep and starts a current of dreams, thus depriving it of half its potency. u Beauty sleep" is an expression which rests on a real physiological truth. Sleep before midnight really is more health-giving and beautifying than after midnight, for the reason that in all towns and cities there is less noise in the early hours of the night than after four in the morning, wherefore sleep is deeper between ten and twelve than between six and eight o'clock. The reason why so many more proposals (by city folks) are made in the country than in the city is not only because there are more frequent opportu- nities of meeting at a summer hotel, but because the young folks retire early, and appear in the morning with an exuberance of Health, born of fresh air and sound sleep, which cannot fail to inspire Love. Other matters of Hygiene will be discussed in connection with the organs which they specially concern. 318 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY n. CROSSING Darwin has proved experimentally that in the vegetable kingdom "cross -fertilisation is generally beneficial, and self- fertilisation injurious. This is shown by the difference in height, weight, con- stitutional vigour, and fertility of the offspring from crossed and self-fertilised flowers, and in the number of seeds produced by the parent plants." He also showed that "the benefit from cross- fertilisation depends on the plants which are crossed having been subjected during previous generations to somewhat different con- ditions." Similarly, concerning animals, we read in Topinard, that "breeders who select their subjects with a definite object to breed in and in, that is to say, between near relations, rapidly obtain excellent results. They know, however, that fertility then dimin- ishes, and that it will cease altogether if they do not have recourse from time to time to crossing, in order to strengtJien the race" But both in the vegetable and the animal kingdom, as we have seen, superior Health also implies superior Beauty. The inference is natural that the human race also must be benefited by marriages of individuals of different races, or of the same race, but brought up under different conditions of life. And the facts are entirely in favour of this supposition, as are the best authorities in Anthropology. Dr. Topinard gives the following instances among many others : u Immigration into the United States, which has taken so considerable a flight during the last thirty years, has already been enormous. Every variety of cross has been going on between English, Irish, Germans, Italians, French, etc., with the greatest possible success. We may also mention numberless Spaniards from the Peninsula, among whom are found the features of the Saracen invaders of the ninth cen- tury; then that population on the Barbary coast, called Moors, and which is a medley of races of eveiy description, the Arab and Berber blood predominating. On tracing back the yellow races, we also discover a perfect eugenesis. . . . De Mas speaks in the highest terms of mixed breeds of Chinese and Mongolians, and MM. Mondieres and Morice of those of Chinese and Annamites under the name of Minuongs. Dr. Bowring describes a race in the Philippine Islands, intermediate between the Malays and Chinese, as the principal agent of civilisation in these latitudes." On the other hand, " it is undeniable that in Africa the Negro races do not cross to any great extent." Nor has any one ever FOUK SOURCES OF BEAUTY 819 accused the Negroes of an excessive amount of Beauty. Whereas in Lima, which has the finest women in South America, " there are twenty -three different names to designate the varieties of mixed breeds of Spaniards, Peruvians, and Negroes." " The num- ber of mongrels on the face of the globe has been estimated at twelve millions, of whom no fewer than eleven millions are in South America." South American women are already famous for their Beauty, and there is reason to believe that when the fusion of all these elements is complete the race will be one of the finest in the world. What Beauty it has now seems to be owing chiefly to the magic of Crossing ; for attention to Health there is little but what comes from life in the open air ; while Romantic Love is perhaps as rare as Mental Refinement, inasmuch as Courtship is not so free and easy a matter as in North America, All the more honour to the potency of Crossing. Take a few more cases. The African Negroes, as just stated, do not mix much, and are an ugly type. Among the Polynesians, on the other hand, there are many very fine types of human beauty ; and it is therefore not surprising to read that to-day in Polynesia, " mixed breeds are so numerous that it would be difficult to find among them any individuals of pure race." Again, concerning the Magyars or Hungarians, Schweiger- Lerchenfeld remarks that " they are a splendid race, physically and intellectually. . . . The girls and young women are of most piquant charm, models of health in mind and body." But these Magyars, when they first came to Europe, were, as Waitz states, " of a repulsive ugliness in the eyes of all their neighbours." That they have mixed with the In do-Germanic type is shown by their appearance, as well as by peculiarities of their language. " Where they have probably remained less mixed," Waitz continues, " and at the same time less cultivated, in some remote regions, especially in the mountains, the ugly primitive type may be found to the present day ; in the plains may be found every transitional form from this to the nobler type ; at Szegedin both are found face to face." The Magyars, in turn, have, like the Slavo-Italians, Czechs, etc., assisted the Austrians in evolving a superior type of Beauty by fusing with them. That there is very much more Beauty in Vienna than in any purely German city is an almost proverbial commonplace ; and the reason why may be found in the statistics : in Germany 31 '80 per cent are blond, 14-05 brunet, 54*15 mixed; in Austria 19-59 per cent are blond, 23-17 brunet, and 68'04 mixed. ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY The European Turks have much nobler forms of the head and features than their Asiatic relatives ; and the inference seems in- evitable that they owe these improvements to intermarriage with Circassian women. A negative instance, showing the disadvantages of abstaining from Crossing, is given by the Jews. There are handsome Jews and, up to a certain age, very beautiful Jewesses. But the typical Jew is certainly not a thing of beauty. The disadvantages of Jewish separatism are shown not only in the long, thick, crooked nose, the bloated lips, almost suggesting a negro, and the heavy lower eyelid, but in the fact that the Jews " have proportionately more insane, deaf mutes, blind, and colour-blind" than other Europeans. From an intellectual and industrial point of view, the Jews are one of the finest races in the world, and their absorption by the natives of the countries in which they have settled could not but benefit both parties concerned. From this point of view there may be something said even in favour of the money-marriages, which are now so frequent between extravagant German officers and Jewish heiresses. Unfortunately, the Jews have kept apart so long from the rest of the world that they do not readily mix' with non-Jews. Contrary to the general rule, mixed marriages of Jews and Christians are less fertile than pure Jewish unions. The precise manner in which a mixture of races improves phy- sical appearance is a question still open to debate. Professor Kollmann (Plastische Anatomic) thinks " the result of the crossing of two forms is comparable, not to a chemical, but to a mechanical mixLu'-e " ; and this agrees with the view of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who endeavours to trace to this fact the frequent want of corres- pondence between intellectual and physical beauty. He believes, however, the time will come " when the present causes of incon- gruity will have worked themselves out," and intellectual beauty emerge in harmony with physical, in all details, as it no doubt exists in general. There is no lack of facts supporting the view that sexual fusion is a mere mechanical mixture. The " Bourbon nose " seems to defy mitigating circumstances for generations ; and " M. de Quatre- fages knew a great-grandson of the bailiff of Suffren who was a striking likeness of his ancestor after four generations, and who, nevertheless, bore no resemblance either to his father or his mother." A child may resemble its father, mother, aunt, uncle, grand- parents, or several of them at once ; and the resemblance may vary at different ages. More extraordinary are the following cases cited by Topinard : FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY 821 "Sometimes the child possesses altogether the character of one or other parent : for example, the child of a European father and a Chinese mother, Dr. Scherzer says, is altogether a European or altogether a Chinese. A Berber with blue eyes and with the lobule of the ear absent, married to a dark Arab woman with a well- formed ear, had two children, one like himself, the other like his wife. An English officer, fair, with blue eyes and florid com- plexion, had several children by an Indian negress. Some were the image of the father, others exactly like the mother. ... A decided negro, having had a white among his ancestors, has unex- pectedly a child with a white skin by a negress." Yet all these are exceptional cases, which, like the winning number in a lottery, get a disproportionate amount of attention. Moreover, this " mechanical " form of assimilation seems to occur chiefly where very unrelated races are fused, and then especially in the first generation. In subsequent generations the union doubt- less tends to become more and more chemical no longer a negro character floating on a white one, like oil on water, but a mixture, as of wine and water. Take the American quadroons, for instance, famous for their beauty of form and features. They are mongrels of the third generation, having one-eighth black, seven-eighths white blood in their veins. Surely these characters are not "mechanically" mixed in such a woman, but " chemically." That is, you do not find her with the eyes and nose of a negro, the lips and ears of a white, one part of her skin dark the other light : but in everything there is a fusion of the ancestral elements. Her nose is not flat like that of her ancestress, nor her lips swollen, but both are intermediate between those of her white and black ancestors. Her lip is still thicker than that of the whites, and that gives her a sensuous aspect, kiss-inviting. Her eyes, again, have lost the fierce glare and opaque blackness of the negro-grandmother, and assumed a more crystalline, tender lustre ; while their form and surroundings have become more refined and expressive. All this is homogeneous fusion, not " heterogeneous mixture." Finally, it is hardly correct to state dogmatically that a certain person resembles this or that ancestor. In nothing else do opinions vary so constantly and so ludicrously. No one who has ever been " trotted around " among his relatives in the " old country," can have failed to be amused at the countless resemblances to this and that uncle, aunt, or grand-parent discovered in him, until he came to the conclusion that he must be a veritable epitome of the whole genealogy. A man who at home is supposed to be absolutely un- 823 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUT* like his brother, is elsewhere mistaken for him and addressed as such ; while another man finds a friend who knew his father in his youth, and declares he is exactly like him ; though a second friend who knew only the mother, claims a similar hereditary influence for her. All of which tends to show that there is more of both parents in each person than is commonly supposed ; and that the reason why opinions differ so, is because the fusion is chemical rather than mechanical, which makes it difficult to put the finger on distinct points of resemblance. It is in the more closely allied races, like the English and Ger- man, or Italian and Spanish, that "chemical" fusion is most readily attained, and Beauty most rapidly evolved. Such are the unions which take place on such a large scale in the United States and Canada ; and this may account for the fact that there is more Beauty in North America than in South America, where the races that intermingle are less related. There is a golden mean here as in everything eke. HL EOMANTIO LOVE What Crossing does on a national scale, Love continues with individuals, by fusing dissonant, but complementary, parental qualities into a harmonious progeny. How this is done is sufficiently ihown in the chapter on Schopenhauer. This, however, is only one of the ways in which Love increases the amount of Beauty in the world. There are several others. The second is that apart from complementary considerations Romantic Love always urges the choice of a mate who approaches nearest to the ideal type of Beauty. As Beauty is hereditary, and as a beautiful father and mother may have six or more beautiful children, this predilection for Beauty shown by Love necessarily preserves and multiplies it " From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby Beauty's rose might never die," says Shakspere, anticipating the modern theory of heredity. On this particular topic nothing more need be said here, because all the remainder of this book will be taken up with a considera- tion of those features of Personal Beauty for which the aesthetic taste which forms part of Romantic Love shows a decided prefer- ence. The third way in which Love promotes the cause of Beauty ia by the great attention it pays to Health in its choice. For though FOUB SOUBUES OF BEAUTY 823 Health is not always synonymous with Beauty, it is the soil on which alone Beauty can germinate and flourish. The fourth way is through the elimination of ugliness. Love, says Plato, is devotion to Beauty : ' with the ugly Eros has no concern." From the aesthetic point of view, ugliness is disease. Now there is a cast-iron Lykurgean law prevailing throughout Nature which eliminates the diseased and the ugly. It is a cruel agency, called Natural Selection, and has not the slightest regard for indi- viduals, but provides only for the weal of the species, as Schopen- hauer erroneously says is the case with Love. In a bed of plants, if there are more than can find sustenance, the stronger crowd out the weaker. Among animals, wherever there is competition, the ')est-developed, handsomest lion survives in combat, and the most fleet-footed, and consequently most graceful, deer escapes, while the clumsy, the ugly, and diseased perish miserably, inexorably. Savages leave the old and feeble to die, and weak or deformed children are either deliberately put out of the way or perish from want of proper care. Nor among the ancient civilised nations were such methods unknown. Plato and Aristotle, says Mr. Grote, agree in this point : " Both of them command, that no child born crippled or deformed shall be brought up 9 practice actually adopted at Sparta under the Lykurgean inr fruitions, and even carried further, since no child was allowed tr> be brought up until it had been inspected and approved by th/s public nurses." The Romans, too, were legally permitted to expose deformed children. Christianity, the religion of pity aad charity, abhors such practices. Christianity is antagonistic to Natural Selection. One of its chief functions is the building of hospitals in which the cripples, the insane, the incurably diseased, are gratuitously and tenderly cared for, instead of being allowed to perish, as they would under the sway of Natural Selection. This artificial preservation of disease and deformity, in and out of hospitals, due to Christian chanty, might in the long run prove injurious to the welfare of the human race, were it not for the stepping in of Modern Love as a preserver of Health and Beauty. What formerly was left to the agency of Natural Selection is now done by Love, through Sexual Selection, on a vast scale. From a moral point of view, the substitution of Sexual for Natural Selection is a great gain, in harmony with the spirit of Christianity. For Cupid does not kill those who do not come up to his standard of Health and Beauty, but simply ignores and Condemns them to a life of single-blessedness. 124 BOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY IV. MENTAL REFINEMENT "After all," says Washington Irving, speaking of Spanish women, " it is the divinity within which makes the divinity with- out ; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty." It is one of the commonest commonplaces of conversation that in moments of intellectual or emotional excitement the features of plain people assume an aspect of exquisite beauty. Love trans- fuses a homely girl's countenance with a glow of angelic loveliness ; and biographies are full of statements concerning the countenances of men of genius, which, ordinarily unattractive, assumed an ex- pression of unearthly beauty while their minds were active and electrified the facial muscles. " There is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momen- tarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features," says Mr. Ruskin ; and again, he speaks of " the operation of the intellectual powers upon the features, in the fine cutting and chiselling of them, and removal from them of signs of sensuality and sloth, by which they are blunted and deadened, and substitution of energy and intensity for vacancy and insipidity (by which wants alone the faces of many fair women are utterly spoiled and rendered value- less) ; and by the keenness given to the eye and fine moulding and development to the brow, of which effects Sir Charles Bell has well noted the desirableness and opposition to brutal types." An English clergyman, the Rev. F. P. Lawson, diocesan inspector for Northamptonshire, issued a report not long ago concerning the results of his observations in 325 urban and rural schools during several years, regarding the effects of good education in improving the appearance of the children. "A school, thoroughly well taught, seldom failed to exhibit a considerable number of interest- ing little faces, and a striking absence of such faces might invari- ably be associated with poverty of tone and superficial instruction. Nothing struck him more forcibly in a school that has been suddenly lifted out of the mire by a firstrate teacher than the bright and thoughtful look which the children soon acquire." Negative evidence to the same effect might also be cited by the volume, but one case may suffice. *' It is unhappily a fact," says Mr. Galton, " that fairly distinct types of criminals breeding true to their "kind have become established, and are one of the saddest disfigurements of modern civilisation," FOUR SOURCES OF BEAUTY 825 The connection between culture and a superior type of Beauty is strikingly revealed in the following remarks on the far-fained Georgian women of the Caucasus, made by a great connoisseur of feminine beauty, the poet Boclenstedt : " In Europe the notion prevails that a Georgian woman is a tall, graceful being, of luscious form, clothed in wide, rich garments, with dense black hair, long enough to enchain all masculine hearts, an open, noble forehead, and a pair of eyes which contain within their dark, mysterious, magic circle all the secrets of human delight that come through the soul or the senses. Her gait is rapture. Joy precedes, and admiration follows her. . . . With such notions in their heads, strangers generally arrive in Georgia, and find themselves wofully disappointed. The tourists who come with such great expectations to visit this country, invested with the atmosphere of a fairyland by history and legend, either adhere stubbornly to their precon- ceived notions, or else they instantly go over to the opposite extreme, and find everything dirty, ugly, disgusting, dreadful. " The truth lies between these extremes. The Georgians are, all in all, one of the handsomest nations on the earth. But although I am a great admirer of women, I am compelled in this case to award the prize to the men instead of the women. This opinion is endorsed by all educated inhabitants of Georgia who have eyes, taste, and an impartial judgment. "I must add that of that higher beauty where heart and intellect and soul are mirrored in the eye, I found few traces in the whole Caucasus, either among men or women. I have seen the greater number of the beauties which Georgia boasts, but not one face have I seen that satisfied me completely, though the picturesque native costume does much to heighten the charms of the women. The face entirely lacks that refined mental expression which makes a beautiful European woman such a unique enchant- ress. Such a woman may still inspire love and win hearts long after the time of her bloom; whereas in a Georgian everything fades with youth. The eyes, which, notwithstanding their apparent fire, never expressed anything but calm and voluptuous indolence, lose their lustre; the nose, which even in its normal relations exceeds the limits of beauty, assumes, in consequence of the premature hollowness of the cheeks, such abnormal dimensions that many people imagine that it actually continues to grow ; and the bosom, which the national costume makes no effort to conceal, prematurely loses its natural firmness all of which phenomena are observed in European women much less frequently, and in a less exaggerated form. If you add to this the habit, so prevalent 326 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY among Georgians, young and old, of using white and red cosmetics, you will understand that such rude and inarti-tic arts of the toilet can only add to the observer's sense of dissatisfaction." America affords many illustrations of the manner in which refinement of mind and manners increases Beauty in a single generation. There are in every city thousands of parents who began life as ordinary labourers, but soon got rich through industry or good luck. They bring up their children in houses where every attention is paid to sanitary rules ; they send them to school and college ; and when they come back you would hardly believe that those coarse-featured, clumsy-limbed, ungraceful persons could be their father and mother. The discrepancy is sometimes so great that when the young folks invite people of " their set " to their house, the old birds keep out of the way discreetly, either of their own accord or by filial dictation, which in .America appears to be displacing parental authority. But if there is such an intimate connection between culture and Beauty, how is it that we so often find plain features joined with a noble mind and fine features with a mean mind ? Mr. Spencer has endeavoured to explain this apparent discrepancy by assuming that in such cases plain features are inherited severally and separ- ately from ancestors of diverse physiognomies, which being merely mechanically mixed, not fused, fail to harmonise. There may be something in this, but a simpler explanation is at hand. Noble minds are often the result of individual effort, and persistence in it. Many men of genius have had humble parents not specially gifted. From these parents and their ancestors they inherited their plain faces. Now individual effort, in the short period of a lifetime, is insufficient to alter the proportions of a face, which depend on its bony parts ; but it does suffice to alter the expression, which depends on the movements of the soft, muscular parts. Hence every person, however plain-featured, may acquire a beautiful expression by cultivating his mind and refining his manners and temper. Whenever, therefore, we meet a man or woman whose features are less attractive at rest than when moved to expression of emotion, we may feel sure that they owe their mental refinement more to individual effort than to inherited capacity. The children of such persons will be more beautiful than they are themselves, because they will inherit the parents' habit of expressive muscular action of the features. And owing to the fact that all the bony parts of the body are modified in accordance with the action of the muscles attached to them, the bony parts, EVOLUTION OF TASTE 327 the proportions, of the face will also be gradually modified and moulded into nobler shapes, through the continuance of refined emotional expression. It is in this manner that intellectual growth and emotional refinement have gradually differentiated our features from those of our savage ancestors. Our lips have become more delicate, our mouths smaller, our jaws less gigantic, ponderous, and projecting, because civilisation has taught us to use the hands in preparing food, and to cut it instead of tearing it off the bone with the teeth, as savages and other wild animals do. Use increases, disuse diminishes the size of an organ. Hence for the same reason that our jaws have become less projecting and heavy, our forehead has lost its backward slope and become straight and noble, owing to the growth of the brain. And similarly with other peculiarities of the face, indicating the con- nection between mental refinement and physical beauty. " Thus is it," says Mr. Spencer, " with depression of the biidge of the nose, which is a characteristic both of barbarians and of our babes, possessed by them in common with our higher quadrumana. Thus, also, is it with that forward opening of the nostrils, which renders them conspicuous in a front view of the face, a trait alike of infants, savages, and apes. And the same may be said of widespread alse to the nose, of great width between the eyes, of long mouth, of large mouth indeed of all those leading peculiari- ties of feature which are by general consent called ugly." EVOLUTION OF TASTE SAVAGE NOTIONS OF BEAUTY In all the preceding remarks concerning the connection between mental and physical beauty, the assumption has been made tacitly that what we consider beautiful is so in reality; and that our taste is a safe guide to follow. Yet this assumption may be challenged, and has, indeed, been often challenged. Every nation, every savage tribe, has its own standard of Beauty ; what right, therefore, have we to claim dogmatically that we are infallible judges 1 Ask the devil, says Voltaire, what is the meaning of TO icaAov the Beautiful and he will tell you "Le beau est une paire de comes, quatre griffes, et une queue " a couple of horns, four claws, and a tail Ask a North American Indian, save 328 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Hearne, what is Beauty, he will answer : " A broad, flat face, small eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a large, broad chin, a clumsy hook-nose, a tawny hide, and breasts hanging down to the belt." In the Chinese empire " those women are preferred who have . . . a broad face, high cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears." " One of the titles of the Zulu king," says Darwin (who gives many other instances Apropos in chapter xix. of the Descent of Man), " is * You who are black.' Mr. Galton, in speaking to me about the natives of South Africa, remarked that their ideas of beauty seem very different from ours ; for in one tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls were not admired by the natives." Darwin himself appears to have been staggered and puzzled by this diversity of taste, and to have partly inclined to the theory that Beauty is relative to the human mind (though elsewhere he repudiates it) a theory which Jeffrey has so boldly formulated in the assertion that " All tastes are equally just and true, in as far as concerns the individual whose taste is in question ; and what a man feels distinctly to be beautiful is beautiful to him, whatever other people may think of it." Fiddlesticks ! The Alison-Jeffrey school of Scotch sestheticians, having been among the first in the field, have done more to confuse the English mind on the subject of Beauty than several generations of other clever writers will be able to clear up again. There are about half a dozen sound, square, solid, scientific reasons why we have a better right to our opinion concerning the nature of Beauty than a Hottentot or a North American Indian. NON-ESTHETIC ORNAMENTATION One of the things most commonly forgotten by those who wonder at the strange " taste " of savages is that many of their customs have nothing whatever to do with the sense of beauty. The habit of putting on " war-paint " originated not in a desire for ornamentation, but in the wish to make themselves frightful in appearance to the enemy. For the same reason heads are mutilated. As Waltz notes in speaking of Tahiti : " A very ugly mutilation is that to which most of the boys had to subject them- selves. Immediately after birth their mothers compressed their forehead and the back of the head, so that the former became narrow and high, the latter fiat ; this was done to make their aspect more terrible, and thus turn them into more formidable warriors." Tattooing, likewise, was originally intended to be an EVOLUTION OF TASTE 329 easy sign of recognition, or of social or religious distinction, rather than an ornament of the body. And when we consider how prone the mind of our own fashionable ladies is to violate every canon of good taste in their wild effort to surpass one another in some novel extravagance just from Paris ; when we note that if a Fifth Avenue lady wears a gull on her hat, her coloured cook will invest in a turkey or ostrich for hers, we understand at once that many of the mutilations approved by savages are the outcome of vanity and emulation, not of aesthetic taste. PERSONAL BEAUTY AS A FINE AUT Yet there are undoubtedly a number of physiognomic and other peculiarities which savages admire while we consider them ugly ; and some, again, which we admire and they dislike. Have we a right to consider them inferior to us in taste because they fail to admire what we adore ? Certainly ; beyond the shadow of a doubt. It takes genius to fully appreciate genius ; it takes a refined taste to appreciate refined beauty. This is what the savage lacks. Look at any one of the fine arts. Why does the savage prefer his monotonous drumming and ear-piercing war-songs to a soft, beautiful, dreamy Chopin nocturne? Because he cannot under' stand the nocturne. Why does he prefer his painted, clumsy, coarse-featured squaw to a civilised woman with delicate contours, refined features, graceful gait ? Because he does not understand the beauty of the latter. It is too subtle for his coarse nerves, his feeble imagina- tion. The smiles and manifold expressions that chase one another across her lovely features, like the subtly-interwoven melodies in a symphonic poem, are the visible signs of thoughts and emotions which he has never experienced, and therefore caimot understand. It is like giving him a page of Sanskrit to read. It is for this reason that a negro never falls in love with a white woman, and that a peasant prefers his plump, crude country-girl to the fair, delicate city visitor. He requires more vigorous arms, broader features, than the city girl possesses, to make an impression on his callous nerves of touch and sight. And it is fortunate for the peasant girl that her lover does lack taste, else she would soon find him a fickle deserter. The savage, in a word, prefers his style of "beauty" to ours for the same reason that he prefers a piece of raw liver and a glass of oil to the subtle flavours of French cookery and French wines. 880 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY His senses are too coarse, his mind too vulgar, to perceive the poetry of refined features. Everything must be loud and exaggerated to make an impression on him loud music, loud and glaring red and yellow colours, loud and coarse features. This doctrine that differences of taste are merely due to dif- ferences in the degree of aesthetic culture, and that there is such a thing as an absolute standard of human beauty, derives further support from the facts (1) that the ideal of beauty set up by the aesthetic Greeks two thousand years ago corresponds so remarkably with that of modern artistic minds; (2) that e.g. a Japanese student in the United States soon learns to prefer American female beauty to the Japanese variety ; (3) that an English, Italian, or American audience who at first admire Norrna and find Lohengrin tiresome, can in a few seasons be so educated as to prefer Lohengrin and actually scorn Norma ; but not vice versa, in either case (2) or (3). Mr. Ruskin takes a similar view regarding differences of taste when he says that " respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking with disgust on the white face, no importance what- ever is to be attached to the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty whatsoever (these ideas being only received by minds under some certain degree of cultivation), and whose disgust arises naturally from what they suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill-health." That this consideration of health does affect the negro's judg- ment regarding the beauty of the white complexion, is also shown by what Mr. Winwood Reade told Mr. Darwin, namely, that the negro's " horror of whiteness may be attributed . . . partly to the belief held by most negroes that demons and spirits are white, and partly to their thinking it a sign of ill-health." But of all the theoretical truths emphasised in the Modern Painters none is so important as this : " That not only changes of opinion take place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from variation of opinion to unity of opinion, that whatever may be the difference of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there will be unity of taste among the experienced ; and that, therefore, the result of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of preference in some sort com- mon to all, and which are part of our nature." Let us now see what are those principles of Beauty that may be considered independent of a more or less crude and undeveloped taste. Some are negative, some positive. NEGATIVE TESTS OJ? BEAUTY B81 NEGATIVE TESTS OP BEAUTY (a) Animals. " It has been argued," says Darwin (by Schaff- hausen), " that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, and no doubt this is partly true with the more civilised nations, in which intellect is highly appreciated; but this explanation will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness." Curiously enough, savages themselves use animals as a negative test of beauty. Thus we read that "the Indians of Paraguay eradicate their eyebrows and eyelashes, saying that they do not wish to be like horses." " On the Eastern coast, the negro boys, when they saw Burton, cried out, 'Look at the white man; does he not look like a white ape V" "A man of Cochin China * spoke with contempt of the wife of the English ambassador that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like that of potato- flowers.' " A few centuries ago it was a favourite pastime of physiognomists to draw elaborate parallels between men and animals. . Thus, in 1593, there appeared a work, De Humana Physiognomia, with numerous illustrations, in which always a human face was matched with some animal's head. Professor Wundt thus sums up the essence of this book : " A broad forehead, we are told, indicates fearfulness, because the ox with his broad head lacks courage. A long forehead, on the other hand, indicates erudition, as is shown by means of an intelligent dog who has the honour of serving as a pendant to Plato's profile. Persons with shaggy hair are good- natured, as they resemble the lion. He whose eyebrows are turned inwards, towards the nose, is uncleanly like the pig, which this resembles. The narrow chin of the ape signifies malice and envy. Long ears and thick lips, such as the donkey possesses, are signs of stupidity. A person who has a nose crooked from the forehead inclines, like the raven, to theft, etc. These animal- physiognomists appear to have favoured a thoroughly pessimistic view of man's capacities, inasmuch as for every creditable resem- blance they find at least ten discreditable ones." Apart from these puerilities, it is in most cases simply absurd to compare man with animals. Except in the case of apes there are no proper terms of comparison, because the types are so distinct ; and, moreover, from the point of view of its own type, the average animal of any species is more beautiful tnan the average man or woman from the human point of view. This assertion is indirectly corroborated by Mr. Gallon's testimony, that " our human civilised 382 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic." Schopenhauer considered animals beautiful in every way, and suggested that whenever we do find an animal ugly it is due to some irrelevant, inevitable association of ideas, as when a monkey suggests a man, or a toad mud. And Mr. Ruskin pertinently suggests that " That mind only is fully disciplined in its theoretic power which, when it chooses, throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the ideas of destructiveness or of inno- cence accustom us to regard the animal tribes, as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, I think, from the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own, can pursue the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the alligator, the coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle." When Sir Charles Bell intimated that in Greek sculpture the guiding principle was remoteness from the animal type, he stated only one side of the truth, of which the other is thus noted by Winckelmann : among the Greeks, he says, " The study of artists in producing ideal beauties was directed to the nature of the nobler beasts, so that they not only instituted comparisons between the forms of the human countenance and the shape of the head of certain animals, but they even undertook to adopt from animals the means of imparting greater majesty and elevation to their statues . . . especially in the heads of Hercules." Jupiter's head " has the complete aspect of the lion, the king of beasts, not only in the large, round eyes, in the fulness of the prominent, and, as it were, swollen forehead, and in the nose, but also in the hair, which hangs from his head like the mane of the lion, first rising upward from the forehead, and then, parting on each side into a bow, again falling downward." So that we may safely reject the theory that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, whatever savages and Chinamen may think on this subject. Coarse minds little suspect what exquisite beauty is to be found in the head of a cow or a donkey, a puppy or a lamb beauty which, like a lovely melody, may bring tears to the eyes of one who is sensitive to aesthetic impressions. Objectively considered, even- the destructive emotions do not appear ugly in an animal. The ferocity of a lion does not make him appear vicious, because ferocity is his nature. He knows no better; can only live by fighting. But a man is disfigured by ferocity because he does know better ; he can live without fighting ; and it is the consciousness of Ms selfish meanneu that puts the stamp of ugliness on his distorted features. NEGATIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 333 In apes alone does fierceness seem ugly and brutal instead of sublime. For apes bear so much resemblance to us, and have a brain so superior in structure to that of other animals, that we feel justified in applying the human standard. Hence apes alone afford us a negative test of beauty. Their heads and faces are cast in our mould, and therefore afford the means of direct comparison. In looking at their massive, brutal jaws, their receding foreheads, their uudifferentiated hands and feet, their coarse, hairy skin, their clumsy, inexpressive, gigantic mouths, their flat noses and nostrils open to the view, we are justified in calling them ugly, compared with ourselves, and in feeling proud that civilisation has gradually raised us so far above our country cousins, in beauty as in every- thing else, except the art of climbing trees. (b) Savages are valuable as negative tests of beauty for the same reason : they enable us to see what progress we have made in refining our features into harmonious proportions, and making them susceptible of diverse emotional expression. It should be noted that Nature constantly endeavours to make primitive man- kind beautiful, as it does with all other animals. Tourists con- stantly note the occurrence of remarkable instances of Personal Beauty among the young in most tribes. But this natural Beauty is not appreciated by the vulgar taste of savages, as we saw a few pages back in a case mentioned by Mr. Galton. Beauty must be distorted and exaggerated before it pleases the savage's taste. Paint must be laid on an inch thick, the nose perforated and " adorned " with a ring, and ditto the abnormally lengthened lips. This corrects the notion that savage hideousness is a product of Nature. Nature may blunder, but never so sadly as in the appear- ance of a savage belle or warrior ; and in scorning these we do not therefore scorn Nature, but merely the artificial products of the vulgar taste of primitive man. (c) Degraded Classes. Poverty, suffering, want of leisure for mental culture, want of money for sanitary modes of living, have, unfortunately, produced in all countries a large class in whom Personal Beauty occurs only as an accident. That such unhappy mortals afford a negative test of Beauty is seen by the fact that, just as savages are intermediate between monkeys and them, so they stand between savages and refined men in features and ex- pression. Poverty alone does not produce this vulgar type of personal appearance ; it is intellectual indolence, moral vice, and hygienic indifference that are responsible for it. Hence this third negative test of Beauty is not at all difficult to find in any sphere of 834 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY society, from the hod-carrier to the aristocrat with a pedigree of a hundred generations. In every scale of the social ladder may be found " features seamed by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, con- vulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse ; bodies consumed with sloth, broken down by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured in foul uses ; intellects without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly and devilish " (Ruskin). (d) Age and Decrepitude. It is not true, as a famous Frenchwoman has remarked, that age and beauty are incompatible terms. Even age and Love are not incompatible, as we saw in the chapter on Genius in Love; and Byron has remarked that Love, like the measles, is most dangerous when it comes late in life. There is a special variety of Beauty for every period of life, and the Beauty of old age certainly is not the least attractive of these varieties. What could be more majestic, more admirable, than the head of a Longfellow in his last days ? Provided health of mind and body has been maintained, even the folds in the cheeks, the wrinkles on the forehead of old age, are not unbeauti- ful. But when senility means decrepitude, brought on by a neglectful or otherwise vicious life, then it is positively ugly. The loveliest thing in the world is a fair and amiable maiden ; the ugliest a vicious old hag savages and apes not excepted. (e) Disease. Temperance preachers and other hygienic re- formers commonly dwell too exclusively on the dangers to health, domestic peace, moral progress, and refinement which the indul- gence in various vices entails. If they would insist with equal, or even greater, emphasis on the havoc which diseases brought on by intemperance and neglect of the laws of Health make on Personal Beauty, they would double their influence on their audi- ences or readers. For in woman's heart the desire to be beautiful is and always will be the strongest motive to action or non- action ; nor are men, as a rule, much less interested in the matter of preserving a handsome appearance. It may make some im- pression on a man to tell him that if he takes ice-water before breakfast, or "cock-tails" at various odd hours on an empty stomach, he will ruin his digestion ; but the impression will be six times as deep if you can convince him that he will ere long look like that confirmed dyspeptic Jones, with lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, and a general expression of premature senility, which accounts for the fact that he has been twice already refused by the girl he adores. NEGATIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 3S5 Or take that girl over there who never; takes a walk, always sleeps with her windows hermetically closed, and never allows a ray of sunshine to touch any part of her body. Tell her she is ruining her health and she may be momentarily alarmed by this vague warning, and walk half a mile for a week or so, until she has forgotten it. But make it clear to her what is the exact con- sequence of such neglect of the primal laws of health namely, the premature loss of every trace of Personal Beauty and youthful charm, with old-maidenhood inevitably staring her in the face, owing to her apathetic appearance and gait, her sickly complexion, her features distorted by frequent headaches, brought on by lack of fresh, cool air each of which leaves its permanent trace in the form of an addition to a wrinkle or subtraction from the plumpness of her cheeks, tell her all this, and that her eyes will soon sink into their sockets and have blue rings like those of an invalid, and a ghastly stare and she will, perhaps, be sufficiently roused to save her Health for the sake of her Beauty. We are now confronted with the question, Why is it that dis- ease is a mark of ugliness, health a mark of Beauty 1 The old Scotch school of sestheticians think it is all a matter of associa- tion. We consider certain forms characteristic of health as beautiful simply because we associate with them various emotions of affection, the pleasures of love, etc., and conversely with disease and vice. According to Stendhal, " La beaut^ n'est que la promesse du bonheur," or, in American, Beauty is simply the promise of a "good time." But it is Lord Jeffrey who, to use another appropriate American expression, " goes the whole hog" in this matter, by practically denying the existence of such a thing as a pure, disinterested, aesthetic sense. Suppose, he says, " that the smooth forehead, the firm cheek, and the full lip, which are now so distinctly expressive to us of the gay and vigorous periods of youth and the clear and blooming complexion, which indicates health and activity had been, in fact, the forms and colours by which old age and sickness were characterised ; and. that, instead of being found united to those sources and seasons of enjoyment, they had been the badges by which Nature pointed out that state of suffering and decay which is now signified to us by the livid and emaciated face of sickness, or the wrinkled front, the quivering lip, and hollow cheek of age; if this were the familiar law of our nature, can it be doubted that we should look upon these appearances, not with rapture, but with aversion, and consider it as absolutely ludicrous or disgusting to speak of the 336 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY beauty of what was interpreted by every one as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude ? "Mr. Knight himself, though a firm believer in the intrinsic beauty of colours, is so much of this opinion that he thinks it entirely owing to those associations that we prefer the tame smoothness and comparatively poor colours of a youthful face to the richly fretted and variegated countenance of a pimpled drunkard." Bosh ! and a hundred times bosh ! One feels that these men lived at a time when port was drunk by the bottle, like claret, and when variegated noses were to a certain extent fashionable. Though every reader feels the sophistry and absurdity of the above argumentation, it is not easy to refute it. Professor Blackie declaims against it, Ruskin sneers at it, but nowhere have I been able to find a definite direct refutation of the thesis. The fol- lowing suggestions may, therefore, be of some value. In the first place, Jeffrey's supposition is equivalent to saying that if black were white, white would be black. For if all the phenomena of human nature were reversed, our taste, being also a " phenomenon," would be reversed too. If health meant ema- ciation, then a lover would not be happy unless he could kiss a pair of leathery lips and embrace a skeleton. Hence his sense of touch, like his sight, would have to be the reverse of what they are now ; and that being the case, aesthetic taste, which is based on the senses, would of course be reversed too. But that is simply saying that if you stand a man on his head his feet will be in the air. Secondly, Lord Jeffrey's argument involves the old fallacy that the useful and the beautiful are identical that we only consider those things beautiful which afford us some utilitarian gratification. If this theory were correct, a coal-boat would be more beautiful than a yacht ; a savage's big jaw-bone more beautiful than our delicate ones; a clumsy, dirty, coarse - featured labourer more beautiful than a society belle. No ; we have, thank heaven, an aesthetic sense which enables us to see and admire beauty quite independently of any " associa- tions " which it may have with our utilitarian cravings. It is possible, however, and even probable, that the aesthetic sense was originally developed from utilitarian associations. On this subject Mr. Grant Allen has some exceedingly valuable remarks in his interesting work on the Colour-Sense. He there eloquently sets forth the view that it was the bright tints of luscious fruits that first taught primitive man to derive pleasure from the sight of NEGATIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 837 coloured objects. This gradually led to a " predilection for bril- liant dyes and glistening pebbles ; till at last the whole series culminates in that intense and unselfish enjoyment of rich and pure tints which make civilised man linger so lovingly over the hues of sunset and the myriad shades of autumn. . . . Tiie disin- terested affection can only be reached by many previous steps of utilitarian progress." But and here lies the kernel of the argu- ment " fruit-eaters and flower-feeders derive pleasure from bril- liant colours . . . not because those colours have mental associa- tions with their food, but because the structures which perceive them have been continually exercised and strengthened by hered- itary use," until at last they formed a special nervous or cerebral apparatus which presides over impressions of beauty, and takes a special pleasure in its own activity, apart from all utilitarian considerations. Lord Jeffrey apparently lacked this special aesthetic sense, as shown by his whole argument, and by his inability, which he shared with Alison, of finding beauty in Nature, unless it was in some way associated with man's presence and man's mean utilities. How different this from the feelings of the man who of all writers on Beauty has the most highly developed aesthetic sense Mr. Ruskin, who has just told us in his Autobiography that his love of Nature, ardent as it is, depends entirely on the wildness of the scenery, its remoteness from human influences and asso- ciations. It is this specially-developed aesthetic taste that would prevent man from calling flabby cheeks, sallow complexions, pimpled noses, and sunken eyes beautiful, if by some miracle they should be changed into signs of health. For this sense of beauty was first educated not by the sight of human beauty, but of beauty in Nature fruits, pebbles, shells, lustrous metals, etc. ; and the notions of beauty thus obtained have been gradually transferred to human beings as standards of attractiveness. It can be shown that what the best judges pronounce the highest human beauty, is so because it partakes of certain characteristics which we find beautiful throughout Nature. And conversely, what we consider ugly in the human form and features would also be called ugly in external objects ; in both cases, be it distinctly understood, with- out any direct reference to utilitarian considerations, and some- times even in opposition to them, as in our admiration of a beautiful poisonous plant or snake, or a tiger. It is these universal characteristics of Beauty, found in man as in animals, that we now have to consider. They are the positive z 338 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY criteria of Beauty, and may be regarded as a new set of " over- tones" or leading motives for the remainder of this volume, although the old ones will occasionally reappear and combine with them. POSITIVE TESTS OP BEAUTY Of these there are at least eight Symmetry, Curvature, Gradation, Smoothness, Delicacy, Colour, Lustre, Expression, including Variety and Individuality. (a) Symmetry. " In all perfectly beautiful objects," says Mr. Buskin, ''there is found the opposition of one part to another, and a reciprocal balance obtained : in animals the balance being commonly between opposite sides (note the disagreeableness occa- sioned by the exception in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head) ; but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is, from their nature, impos- sible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be beheld with pleasure. . . . Symmetiy is the opposition of equal quantities to each other. Proportion the connection of unequal quantities with each other. The pro- perty of a tree in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion." Mr. Darwin thus gives his testimony as to the prevalence of symmetry in Nature : " If beautiful objects had been created solely for man's gratification, it ought to be shown that before man appeared there was less beauty on the face of the earth than since he came on the stage. Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully sculptured ammon- ites of the Secondary period, created that man might ages after- wards admire them in his cabinet ? Few objects are more beautiful than the minute silicious cases of the diatomacese: were they created that they might be examined and admired under the higher powers of the microscope 1 The beauty in this latter case, and in many others, is apparently wholly due to symmetry of growth" (Origin of Species, chap, vi.) In the floral world, again, the natural tendency is always towards symmetry. Wind-fertilised flowers are symmetrical in POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 839 form; and "as Mr. Darwin has observed, there does not appeal to be a single instance of an irregular flower which is not fertilised by insects or birds " (Lubbock), and therefore modified in form in the effort to adapt itself to useful insects and to exclude pirates. Throughout the animal kingdom, including man, this law of symmetry is true. Hence it is not likely that we should ever admire a lame leg, a crooked nose, bent on one side, eyes that are not mates, or a face several inches longer on one side than the other, owing to paralysis as beautiful, even if, as Jeffrey would have it, Madame Nature should suddenly take it into her head to associate such abnormalities with health instead of with disease. (b) Gradation. On this law of Nature Mr. Ruskiu again has spoken at once more scientifically and poetically than any other writer on aesthetics : " What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shades and colours. . . . For instances of the complete absence of gradation we must look to man's work, or to his disease and decrepitude. Compare the gradated colours of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual concentration of the youth- ful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply-drawn veining of old age. " Gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade and colour that the eye refuses in art to understand anything as either which appears without it ; while, on the other hand, nearly all the gradations of nature are so subtile, and between degrees of tint so slightly separated, that no human hand can in any wise equal, or do anything more than suggest the idea of them." The following remarks which the same writer makes in another place concerning Gradation show at the same time how asinine it is for a savage or any other person of uncultivated taste to set himself up as a judge of Personal Beauty, as good as any one else, on the plea that it is all " a matter of taste " and de gustibus non est disputandum : " When the eye is quite uncultivated, it sees that a man is a man, and a face is a face, but has no idea what shadows or lights fall upon the form or features. Cultivate it to some degree of artistic power, and it will then see shadows distinctly, but only the more vigorous of them. Cultivate it still further, and it will see light within light, and shadow within shadow, and will con- tinually refuse to rest in what it has already discovered, that it may pursue what is more removed and more subtle, until at last it comes to give its chief attention and display its chief power on gradations which to an untrained faculty are partly matters of indifference and partly imperceptible." 840 KOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY The words italicised enable us to appreciate what Sokrates must have had in his mind when he distinguished between that which is beautiful and that which only appears beautiful JEsthetic training enables us to see things as they are, instead of as they appear through inattention, through ignorance, or through clouds of national prejudice, or individual utilitarianism. The way in which aesthetic training enables us to see gradations of beauty previously imperceptible can be most strikingly illus- trated in the case of music. There are thousands of intelligent folks who cannot tell the difference between a superb Steinway Grand, just tuned for a concert, and a harsh, claugy, mountain- hotel piano that has not been tuned for two years. But give these persons a thorough musical education, and they will soon be able to smile at Jeffrey's notion that the tone of the hotel-piano was quite as beautiful as that of the Steinway, because it seemed so to them. It is not only the imagination but the senses them- selves that require training. A Hottentot or any unmusical person cannot tell the difference between two consecutive tones on the piano, whereas a skilled musician can detect all the gradations from one tone to another, down to the sixty-fourth part of a semitone ! " It is all a matter of taste ! * Precisely. Of good taste and bad taste. Examples of gradation in the human form are the gradual tapering of the limbs and the fingers, the exquisite line from the female neck to the shoulders and the bosom, the blushes on the cheeks, so long as they do not assume the form of a hectic flush, and the delicate tints of the complexion in general, varying with emotional states, according as the veins and arteries are more or less filled with the vital fluid. Is it then " entirely owing to their associations " with health or disease that we prefer the complexion of a youthful face to the hideous daubs of red which Knight refers to as the " richly fretted and variegated countenance of a pimpled drunkard " 1 Is it owing to such associations that we prefer the delicately gradated blushes of coloured marble to the richly bedaubed countenance of a pimpled brickbat ? But it would be a waste of time to refer again to the crude anti-aesthetic notions of Messrs. Knight, Alison, and Jeffrey. One more exquisite illustration of subtle gradation in the human form divine may be cited from Winckelmann : "The soul, though a simple existence, brings forth at once, and in an instant, many different ideas ; so it is with the beautiful youthful outline, which appears simple, and yet at the same time haa POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 341 infinitely different variations, and that soft tapering which is difficult of attainment in a column, is still more so in the diverse forms of the youthful body. Among the innumerable kinds of columns in Rome some appear pre-eminently elegant on account of this very tapering ; of these I have particularly noted two of granite, which I am always studying anew: just so rare is a perfect form, even in the most beautiful youth, which has a stationary point in our sex still less than in the female." (c) Curvature. " That all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves will," Mr. Ruskin believes, " be at once allowed ; but that which there will be need more especially to prove, is the subtility and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast (as in the slope of debris), in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are no lines or surfaces of nature without curvature, though, as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon, and in vast and extended plains, right lines are often suggested which are not actual. Without these we should not be sensible of the value of contrasting curves ; and while, therefore, for the most part, the eye is fed in natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument can follow, other means are provided to give beauty to those surfaces which are admitted for contrast, as in water by its reflection of the gradations which it possesses not itself." In a footnote to the last edition of the Modern Painters he adds regarding the apparent exceptions named : " Crystals are indeed subject to rectilinear limitations, but their real surfaces are continually curved ; the level of calm water is only right lined when it is shoreless." On the other hand, "Generally in all ruin and disease, and interference of one order of being with another (as in the cattle line of park trees), the curves vanish, and violently opposed or broken and unmeaning lines take their place." I feel tempted to cite another most admirable passage on curvature throughout Nature even where it is least looked for, and the untrained eye cannot see it in the shattered walls and crests of mountains which " seem to rise in a gloomy contrast with the soft waves of bank and wood beneath." But it is too long to quote, and I can only advise the reader most earnestly to look it up in chapter xiv. vol. iv. " Straight lines," Professor Bain observes, " are rendered artistic 342 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY only by associations of power, regularity, fitness, etc." " In some situations straight lines are aesthetic. ... In the human figure there underlies the curved outline a certain element of rigidity and straightness, indicating strength in the supporting limbs and spine. Whenever firmness is required, there must be a solid structure, and straightness of form is a frequent accompaniment of solidity. The straight nose and the flat brow are subsidiary to the movement and the stability of the face." Yet even our straight limbs follow in their motions the law of curvature. And to this fact that they move more easily and naturally in a curved than in a straight line, which requires laborious adjustment, Bain traces part of our superior pleasure in rounded lines. What infinite subtlety and variety Curvature is capable of is vividly brought before the eyes by Winckelmann : " The forms of a beautiful body are determined by lines the centre of which is constantly changing, and which, if continued, would never describe circles. They are, consequently, more simple, but also more com- plex, than a circle, which, however large or small it may be, always has the same centre, and either includes others or is in- cluded in others. This diversity was sought after by the Greeks in works of all kinds; and their discernment of its beauty led them to introduce the same system even into the form of their utensils and vases, whose easy and elegant outline is drawn after the same rule, that is, by a line which must be found by means of several circles, for all these works have an elliptical figure, and herein consists their beauty. The greater unity there is in the junction of the forms, and in the flowing of one out of another, so much the greater is the beauty of the whole." Masculine and Feminine Beauty. The universality of curva- ture as a form of beautiful objects throughout nature and art is of importance in helping us to determine the question which is the more beautiful form, a perfect man or a perfect woman an Apollo or a Venus 1 A Venus, no doubt. In those qualities which are subsumed under the terms of the sublime or the characteristic in strength, manly dignity, intellectual power, majesty the mas- culine type, no doubt, is superior to the feminine. But in Beauty proper in the roundness and delicacy of contours, in the smooth- ness of complexion and its subtle gradations of colour, in the symmetrical roundness and lustrous expressiveness of the eyes the feminine type is pre-eminent. "Woman," says Professor Kollmann, "is smaller, more delicate, but also softer and more graceful (schwungvolier) in form, in her POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 34S breasts, hips, thighs, and calves. No line on her body is short and sharply angular; they all swell, or vault themselves in a gentle curve. . . The neck and the rounded shoulders are con- nected by gracefully curved lines, whereas a man's neck is placed more at a right angle to the more straight and angular shoulders. . . . The hair is softer, the skin more tender and transparent. All the forms are more covered over with adipose tissue, and connected by those gradual transitions which produce the gently rounded outlines ; whereas in a man everything muscles, sinews, blood-vessels, bones is more conspicuous." Schopenhauer, accordingly, was clearly in the wrong when he endeavoured to make out that man is vastly superior to woman in physical beauty, a notion which Professor Huxley, too, does not appear to disapprove of very violently. At the same time it is, no doubt, true that there are more good specimens of masculine beauty in most countries than of feminine beauty; true also that man's beauty lasts much longer than woman's. A boy is more beautiful than a girl under sixteen, for the very reason that his form is more like that of an adult woman than a girl's is. From eighteen to twenty-five woman is more beautiful than man ; while after thirty, owing to the almost universal neglect of the laws of health women are apt to become either too rotund, which ruins their grace and delicacy, or too angular more angular than a man under fifty. (d) Delicacy and Grace. The difference between masculine and feminine beauty and the superiority of the latter is also in- directly brought out in Burke's remarks on Delicacy, which, though open to criticism in one or two points, are on the whole admirable and exhaustive : " An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest which we consider as beautiful ; they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of reverence. It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine, which we look on as vegetable beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and elegance. Among animals the greyhound is more beautiful than the mastiff, and the delicacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse is much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of war or carriage. 844 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY "I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe the point will be easily allowed me. The beauty of women is con- siderably owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it. I would not here be understood to say that weakness betraying very bad health has any share in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the bright colour, the lumen purpureum juventce is gone, and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines." Delicacy is a quality closely related to grace, or beauty in motion and attitude. " Grace," says Dr. J. A. Symonds, " is a striking illustration of the union of the two principles of similarity and variety. For the secret of graceful action is that the sym- metry is preserved through all the varieties of position." This is well put; but the first condition and essence of grace is that there must be an exact correspondence between the work done and the limb which does it. The attitude of an oak-trunk, with nothing on the top but a geranium bush, however symmetrical, would always be ungraceful, owing to the ludicrous disproportion between the support and the thing supported. Conversely, a weak fern- stalk, trying to support a branch of heavy cactus leaves, would be equally ungraceful ; for there must be neither a waste of energy nor a sense of effort. Part of this feeling may perhaps be traced to sympathy thus showing how various emotions enter into our aesthetic judgments, sometimes weakening, sometimes strengthening them. As Professor Bain remarks, & propos : " We love to have removed from our sight every aspect of suffering, and none more so than the suffering of toil." Grace is almost as powerful to inspire Love as Beauty itself. Women know this instinctively, and in order to acquire the Delicacy which leads to grace, they deprive their bodies of air and sunshine and strengthening sleep, hoping thereby to acquire arti- ficially, through ill-health, what Nature has denied them. Fortu- nately such violations of the laws of health always frustrate then* object Delicacy conjoined with Health inspires Love, but delicacy born of disease inspires only pity a feeling which may inspire in a woman what she imagines is Love, but in a man never. (e) Smoothness is another attribute of Beauty on which Burke was the first to place proper emphasis : It is, he says, " a quality so essential to beauty that I do not recollect anything beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers, smooth leaves POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 345 are beautiful ; smooth slopes of earth in gardens ; smooth streams in the landscape ; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal beauties ; in fine women, smooth skins : and in several sorts of ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. . . . Any ruggedness, any sudden projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to the idea of beauty." Though there are exceptions to this rule of smoothness includ- ing such a marvel of beauty as the moss-rose, as well as various leaves covered with down, etc. yet, on the whole, Burke is right. Certainly the smooth white hand of a delicate lady is more beauti- ful than the rough, horny " paws" of a bricklayer ; and the inferior beauty of a man's arm is owing as much to its rough scattered hairs as to the prominence of the muscles, in contrast to the smooth and rounded arm of woman. In animals, however, hairs on the limbs are not unbeautiful, because they are dense enough to over- lap, and thus form a hairy surface admirable alike for its soft smoothness, its gloss, and its colour. (/) Lustre and Colour. Lustrous, sparkling eyes, glossy hair, pearly teeth, where would human beauty be without them without the delicate tints and blushes of the skin, the brown or blue iris, the golden or chestnut locks, the ebony eyebrows and lashes 1 Yet the greatest art-critics incline to the opinion that, on the whole, colour is a less essential ingredient of beauty than form. " Colour assists beauty," says Winckelmann, but " the essence of beauty consists not in colour but in shape." " A negro might be called handsome when the conformation of his face is handsome." " The colour of bronze and of the black and greenish basalt does not detract from the beauty of the antique heads," hence " we possess a knowledge of the beautiful, although in an unreal dress and of a disagreeable colour." Similarly Mr. Ruskin, who remarks of colour that it " is richly bestowed on the highest works of creation, and the eminent sign and seal of perfection in them ; being associated with life in the human form, with light in the sky, with purity and hardness in the earth, death, night, and pollution of all kinds being colour- less. And although if form and colour be brought into complete opposition, so that it should be put to us as a stern choice whether we should have a work of art all of form, without colour (as an Albert Diirer's engraving), or all of colour, without form (as au imitation of mother-of-pearl), form is beyond all comparison the more precious of the two . . . yet if colour be introduced at all, it is necessary that, whatever else may be wrong, that should l>e right," etc. 840 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Again : " An oak is an oak, whether green with spring or red with winter ; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be yellow or crimson ; and if some monster-hunting botanist should ever frighten the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia; but let one curve of the petals one groove of the stamens be wanting, and the flower ceases to be the same. Let the roughness of the bark and the angles of the boughs be smoothed or diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak ; but let it retain its inward structure and outward form, and though its leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tri- colour, it would be a white oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but an oak still." " If we look at Nature carefully, we shall find that her colours are in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above ; the bashes receive grays and yellows from the ground ; every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the sky, or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local colour; this local colour, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue o'f the light or quenched in the gray of the shadow ; and the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great that were we left to find out what objects were by their colours only, we would scarcely in place distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond them or the ground beneath them. I know that people unpractised in art will not believe this at first ; but if they have accurate powers of observation, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find that, while they can scarcely ever determine the exact hue of anything, except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or the blue sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided and evident, and the source of the chief character of every object." Professor Bain remarks on this topic that " Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colour. . . . For this reason we find the poets borrowing more of their epithets from colours than from any other topic." This view seems to be confirmed by the fact that lovers in expatiating on the beauty of their Dulcineas seem to have much more to say about their brown or golden locks, their light or dark complexion, their blue or black eyes, than about the shape of their features. This, however, partly finds its explanation in the fact that colour, being a sensuous quality, is more easily and more directly appreciated than form, the perception of which is a much POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 84 r more complicated matter, being a translation into intellectual terms of remembered impressions of touch, associated with certain colours, lights, and shades which recall them ; and partly in the greater ease with which peculiarities of colour are referred to than peculi- arities of form. In the days of ancient Greece the nomenclature of colours was equally undeveloped, and is so vague in Homer that Gladstone and Geiger actually set up the theory tltat HomerV colour-sense was imperfect, and that that sense has been gradually developed within historic times, a theory which I have confuted on anatomical grounds in Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 187.9. That as regards human beauty colour is of less importance than form is shown, moreover, in this, that a girl with regular features and a freckled complexion will much sooner find a lover than one- with the most delicately-coloured complexion, conjoined with a big mouth, irregular nose, or sunken cheeks. And a beautifully-shaped eye is sure to be admired by all, no matter whether blue, gray, or brown ; whereas an eye that is too small or otherwise defective in form can never be redeemed by the most beautiful colour or brilliancy. On the other hand, there are several things to be said in favour of colour that will mitigate our judgment on this point. In the first place, colour is more perfect in its way than form, so that it is impossible ever to improve on it by idealising, as it is often with form. As Mr. Buskin remarks, " Form may be attained in per- fection by painters, who, in their course of study, are continually altering or idealising it ; but only the sternest fidelity will reach colouring. Idealise or alter in that, and you are lost. Whether you alter by debasing or exaggerating, by glare or by decline, one fate is for you ruin. . . . Colour is sacred in that you must keep to facts. Hence the apparent anomaly that the only schools of colour are the schools of realism." Again, looking at Nature with an artist's eye, Ruskin discovered and frequently alludes to the " apparent connection of brilliancy of colour with vigour of life," and Mr. Wallace, looking at Nature with a naturalist's eye, established this " apparent connection " as a scientific fact. The passage in which he sums up his views has been once already quoted ; but it is of such extreme importance in enforcing the lesson that beauty is impossible without health, that it may be quoted again : " The colours of an animal usually fade during disease or weak- ness, while robust health and vigour adds to its intensity. ... In all quadrupeds a ' dull coat ' is indicative of ill-health or low con- dition ; while a glossy coat and sparkling eye are the invariable 348 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY accompaniments of health and energy. The same rule applies to the feathers of birds, whose colours are only seen in their purity during perfect health ; and a similar phenomenon occurs even among insects, for the bright hues of caterpillars begin to fade as soon as they become inactive, preparatory to their undergoing transformation. Even in the Vegetable Kingdom we see the same thing; for the tints of foliage are deepest, and the colours of flowers and fruits richest, on those plants which are in the most healthy and vigorous condition." (g) Expression, Variety, Individuality. Besides the circum- stances that colour is more uniformly perfect in Nature than form, and that it is always associated with Health, without which Beauty is impossible, another peculiarity may be mentioned in its favour. The complexion is a kaleidoscope whose delicate blushes and constant changes of tint, from the ashen pallor of despair to the rosy flush of delight, are the fascinating signs of emotional expres- sion. And herein lies the superior beauty of the human complexion over all other tinted objects : it reflects not only the hues of surrounding external bodies, but all the moods of the soul within. Form without colour is form without expression. But form without expression soon ceases to fascinate, for we constantly crave novelty and variety; and form is one, while expression is infinitely varied and ever new. Herein lies the extreme importance of ex- pression as a test of Beauty. Colour, of course, is only one phase of expression. The soul not only changes the tints of the com- plexion, but liquifies the facial muscles so that they can be readily moulded into forms characteristic of joy, sadness, hope, fear, adora- tion, hatred, anger, affection, etc. Why is the portrait-painter so infinitely superior to the photo- grapher? Because the photographer paradoxical as this may seem gives you a less realistic picture of yourself than the artist. He only gives you the fixed form, or at most a transient expression which, being fixed permanently, loses its essence, which is motion and thus becomes a caricature an exaggeration in duration. But the artist studies you by the hour, makes you talk, notes the habitual forms of expression most characteristic of your individu- ality ; and, blending these into a sort of " typical portrait " of your various individual traits, makes a picture which reveals all the advantages of art over mere solar mechanism or photography. This explains why some of the most charming persons we know never appear well in a photograph, while others much less charm- ing do. The beauty of the latter lies in form, of the former in expression. But expression is much more potent to inspire admi- POSITIVE TESTS OF BEAUTY 349 ration and Love than mere beauty of features ; and not without reason, for beautiful features, being a lucky inheritance, may be conjoined with unamiable individual traits, whereas beautiful ex- pression is the infallible index of a beautiful mind and character ; and promises, moreover, beautiful sons and daughters, because " expression is feature in the making." It is by such subtle signs and promises that Love is unconsciously and instinctively guided in its choice. Formal Beauty alone is external and cold. It is those slight variations in Beauty and expression which we call individuality and character that excite emotion : so much so that Love, as we have seen, is dependent on individuality, and a man who warmly admires all beautiful women is in love with none. Speaking of the Greeks, Sir Charles Bell says : " In high art it appears to have been the rule of the sculptor to divest the form, of expression. ... In the Venus, the form is exquisite and the face perfect, but there is no expression there ; it has no human softness, nothing to love" " All individuality was studiously avoided by the ancient sculptors in the representation of divinity ; they maintained the beauty of form and proportion, but without ex- pression, which, in their system, belonged exclusively to hu inanity." But inasmuch as the Greeks attributed to their deities all the various emotions which agitate man, why did they refuse them th< signs of expression ? One cannot but suspect that the Greeks did not sufficiently appreciate the beauty of expression. Had they valued it more they would not have allowed their women to vege- tate in ignorance like flowers, one like the other, but would have educated them and given them the individuality and expression which alone can inspire Love. Again, if the Greeks had been susceptible to the superior charms of emotional expression, is it likely that they would have been so completely absorbed in the two least expressive and emotional of the arts architecture and sculpture 1 We cannot avoid the conclusion that the Greeks were as indif- ferent to the charms of individual expression as to Romantic Love, which is dependent on it. In their statues, as Dr. Max Sehasler remarks, a mouth or eye has no more significance as a mark of beauty than a well -shaped leg. Whereas in modern, and even sometimes in mediaeval art, what a world of expression in a mouth, a pair of eyes ! Leaving individual exceptions (like Homer) aside, it may be said that the arts have been successively developed to a climax in the order of their capacity for emotional expression, viz. Archi- 350 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY tecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Music. Poetry precedes music, because though its emotional scope is wider, it is less intense. To-day music is the most popular and universal of all the arts because it stirs most deeply our feelings. And just as the discovery of harmony, by individualising the melodies, has increased the power and variety of music a thousandfold ; so the individuali- sation of Beauty and character through modern culture has made Romantic Love a blessing accessible to all the most prevalent form of modern affection. Individuality is of such extreme importance in Love that a slight blemish is not only pardoned but actually adored if it in- creases the individuality. Bacon evidently had this in his mind when he said that " there is no excellent beauty which has not some strangeness in its proportion." Seneca, as well as Ovid, noted the attractiveness of slight short-comings ; and the following anecdote shows that though the Persians, as a nation, have ever been strangers to Romantic Love, their greatest poet, Hafiz, understood the psychology of the subject in its subtlest details : " One day Timur (fourteenth century) sent for Hafiz and asked angrily : * Art thou he who was so bold as to offer my two great cities Samarkand and Bokhara for the black mole on thy mistress's cheek ? ' alluding to a well-known verse in one of his odes. ' Yes, sire,' replied Hafiz, ' and it is by such acts of generosity that I have brought myself to such a state of destitution that I have now to solicit your bounty.' Timur was so pleased with the ready wit displayed in this answer that he dismissed the poet with a hand- some present." To sum up : the reason why " The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower " is not, as Bryant implies, the transitoriness of the rose, but the fact that the marble flower, like the wax-flower, is dead and unchange- able, while the short-lived rose beams with the expression of happy vitality after a shower, or sadly droops and hangs its head in a drouth. It has life and expression, subtle gradations of colour, and light and shade, which are the signs of its vitality and moods, varying every day, every hour. And so with all the higher forms of life, those always being most beautiful and highly prized which are most capable of expressing subtle variations of health, happi- ness, and mental refinement. There is no part of the human body which does not serve as a mark of expression THE FEET 861 " In many's looks the false heart's history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange." " There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks." SHAKSPERE. It will not do, therefore, to neglect any part of the body. As it is the last straw which breaks the camel's back, so Cupid's capri- cious choice is often determined by some minor point of perfection, when the balance is otherwise equal. Suppose there are two sisters whose faces, figures, and mental attractions are about equal ; then it is possible that one of them will die an old maid simply because the other had a smaller foot, a more graceful gait, or longer eye- lashes. But though every organ has its own beauty, there is an aesthetic scale of lower and higher which corresponds pretty accurately with the physical scale from down upwards from the foot to the eye and forehead. It is in this order, accordingly, that we shall now pro- ceed to consider the various parts of the human form, and those peculiarities in them which are considered most beautiful and most liable to inspire Romantic Love. THE FEET SIZE There is hardly anything concerning which vain people are so sensitive as their feet. To have large feet is considered one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a woman. Mathematically stated, the length of a woman's skirts is directly proportional to the size of her feet ; and women with large feet are always shocked at the frivolity of those who have neat ankles and coquettishly allow them to be seen on occasion ; nor do they see any beauty in Sir John Suckling's lines " Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light." Nor are men, as a rule, sufficiently free from pedal vanity to pose as satirists. Byron found a mark of aristocracy in small feet, and he was rendered almost as miserable by the morbid consciousness of his own defects as Mme. de Stael (who had very ugly feet, yet once ventured to assume the rdle, in private theatricals, of a statue) was offended by Talleyrand's witticism, that he recognised her by the pied de Stael. 852 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY There is a ben trovato, if not true, story of a clever wife who objected to her husband's habit of spending his evenings away from home, and who reformed him by utilising his vanity. By insisting that his boots were too large, she repeatedly induced him to buy smaller ones, which finally tortured him so much that he was only too glad to stay at home and wear his slippers. FASHIONABLE UGLINESS How universal is the desire to have, or appear to have, small feet is shown by the fact that everybody blackens his shoes or boots; for, owing to a peculiar optical delusion, black objects always appear smaller than white ones ; which is also the reason why too slim and delicate ladies never appear to such advantage in winter as they do in summer, when they exchange their dark for light dresses. To a certain point the admiration of small feet is in accordance with the canons of good Taste, as will be presently shown. But Taste has a disease which is called Fashion. It is a sort of microbe which has the effect of distorting and exaggerating every- thing it takes hold of. Fashion is not satisfied with small feet ; it wants them very small, unnaturally small, at the cost of beauty, health, grace, comfort, and happiness. Hence for many genera- tions shoemakers have been compelled to manufacture instruments of torture so ruinous to the constitution of man and woman, that an Austrian military surgeon has seriously counselled the enact- ment of legal fines to be imposed on the makers of noxiously- shaped shoes, similar to those imposed on food-adulterators. Most ugly and vulgar fashions come from France ; but as re- gards crippled feet the first prize has to be yielded to the Chinese, even by the Parisians. The normal size of the human foot varies, for men, from 9J to 13 ; for women, from 5^ to 9 inches, man's feet being longer proportionately to the greater length of his lower limbs. In China the men value the normal healthy condition of their own feet enough to have introduced certain features of elas- ticity in their shoes which we might copy with advantage ; but the women are treated very differently. " The fashionable length for a Chinese foot," says Dr. Jamieson, " is between 3 J and 4 inches, but comparatively few parents succeed in arresting growth so com- pletely." "When girls are five years old their feet are tightly wrapped up in bandages, which on successive occasions are tightened more and more, till the surface ulcerates, and some of the flesh, skin, and sometimes even a toe or two come off. " During the first THE FEET 553 year," says Professor Flower, "the pain is so intense that the sufferer can do nothing but lie and cry and moan. For about two years the foot aches continually, aud is subject to a constant pain, like the pricking of sharp needles." Finally the foot becomes reduced to a shapeless mass, void of sensibility, which " has now the appearance of the hoof of some animal rather than a human foot, and affords a very insufficient organ of support, as the peculiar tottering gait of those possessing it clearly shows." The difference between the Chinese belle and the Parisian is one of degree merely. The former has her torturing done once for all while a child, whereas the latter allows her tight, high- heeled shoes to torture her throughout life. The English are the only nation that have recognised the injuriousness and vulgarity of the French shoe, and subsntuted one made on hygienic principles ; and as England has in almost everything else displaced France as the leader in modern fashion, it is reasonable to hope that ere long other nations will follow her in this reform. American girls are, as a rule, much less sensible in this matter than their English sisters ; one need only ask a clerk in a shoe store to find out how most of them endeavour to squeeze their small feet into shoes too small by a number. Fashions are always followed blindly, without deliberation. But would it not be worth while for French, American, and Ger- man women and many men too to ask themselves what they gain and what they lose by trying to make their feet appear smaller than they are 1 The disadvantages outweigh the advan- tages to an almost ludicrous extent. On the one side there in absolutely nothing but the gratifica- tion of vanity derived from the fact that a few acquaintances admire one's " pretty feet " ; and even this advantage is problem- atical, because a person who wears too tight shoes can hardly conceal them from an observer, and is therefore apt to get pity for her vain weakness in place of admiration. On the other hand are the following disadvantages : (1) The constant torture of pressure (not to mention the result- ing corns and bunions), which alone must surely outweigh a hundred times the pleasure of gratified vanity at having a Chinese foot. (2) The unconscious distortion of the features and furrowing of the forehead in the effort to endure and repress the pain, and wrinkles, be it remembered, when once formed are ineradicable. (3) Tho discouragement of walking and other exercise, involv- ing a general lowering of vitality, sickly pallor and premature loss of "the bloom of youth. 354 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY (4) The wasting of the calf of the leg to dimensions character- istic of savagedom, disease, and old age, not to speak of the numerous maladies resulting to women from the use of hard high heels of fashionable shoes, every contact of which with the ground sends a shock through the spinal column to the brain and produce* obscure disorders in various parts of the organism. (5) The mutilation of one of the most beautiful and char- acteristically human parts of the body. As the author of Harper's Ugly Girl Papers remarks : " One's foot is as proper an object of pride and complacency as a shapely hand. But where in a thousand would a sculptor find one that was a pleasure to contem- plate like that of the Princess Pauline Bonaparte, whose lovely foot was modelled in marble for the delight of all the world who have seen it ? " (6) Finally, and most important of all, the loss of a graceful gait, of the poetry of motion, which is a thousand times more calculated to inspire admiration aesthetic or erotic than a small foot. Man is said to be a reasoning animal; and man embraces woman. But surely in matters of fashion woman i ; not a reason- ing being. Very large feet being properly regarded as ugly, she draws the inference that the smaller they can be made the more will they be beautiful ; forgetting that Beauty is a matter of pro- portion, not of absolute size. A foot may, like a waist, as easily appear ugly from being too small as from being too large. A large woman with very small feet cannot but make a disagreeable im- pression, like a bust on an insecure pedestal or a leaning tower. TESTS OF BEAUTY According to Schopenhauer, the great value which all attach to small feet " depends on the fact that small feet are an essentially human characteristic, since in no animal are the tarsus and meta- tarsus together so small as in man, which peculiarity is connected with his erect attitude : he is a plantigrade." But it is difficult to see any force in this reasoning, since not one person in a hundred thousand knows what the bones called tarsus and metatarsus are, nor cares whether they are larger in man or in animals ; while, as regards the upright position, large feet would appear more suitable for maintaining it than small ones. If smallness were the test of beauty in man, why should we not feel ashamed to have larger heads than animals, or envy the elephant, who, for his size, has the smallest foot of all animals 1 THE FEET 855 Those who believe that human beauty consists in the degree of remoteness from animal types, will derive satisfaction from the fact that apes have feet that are larger than ours. Topinard gives these figures showing the relative sizes: man, 16 '9 6; gorilla, 20'69; chimpanzee, 21-00; orang, 25. But why should man feel a special pride in the fact that his feet are somewhat smaller than those of his nearest relatives, whom, until recently, he did not even acknowledge as such ? It is, moreover, unscientific to compare man's foot with the ape's too closely, because they have different functions being used by man for walking, by the ape for climbing and therefore require different characteristics. It is only in those organs that have a like function as the jaws, teeth, nose, eyes, and forehead that a direct comparison is permissible, and a progress noted in our favour. Again, as M. Topinard tells us, " The hand and the foot of man, although shorter than those of the anthropoid ape, do not. vary among races according to their order of superiority, as we should have supposed. A long hand or foot is not a diaracteristic of inferiority" The same is true among individuals of the same race. Mme. de Stael was one of the most intelligent women the world has ever seen, yet her feet were very large ; and conversely, some of our silliest girls have the smallest feet. Since, then, there is no obvious connection between small feet and superior culture, it follows that the beauty of a foot is not to be determined by so simple a matter as its length. There are other peculiarities, of greater importance, in which the laws of Beauty manifest themselves. First, in the arched instep, which is not only attractive because it introduces the beauty-curve in place of the straight, flat line of the sole, but which is of the utmost im- portance in increasing the foot's capacity for carrying its burden, just as architects build arches under bridges, etc., for the sake of the greater strength and more equable distribution of pressure thus obtained. Secondly, in the symmetrical correspondence of the toes and contours of one foot with those of its partner ; in the gradation ->f the regularly shortened toes, from the first to the fifth ; in the delicate tints of the skin which, moreover, is smooth and not (as in apes) covered with straggling hairs and deep furrows, which would have concealed the delicate veins that variegate the surface, and give it the colour of life. Professor Carl Vogt, in his Lectures on Man, vividly illustrates the principles on which our judgment regarding beauty in feet is 856 BOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY based, by comparing a negro's foot with that of civilised man : " The foot of the negro, says Burineister, produces a disagreeable impression. Everything in it is ugly ; the flatness, the projecting heel, the thick, fatty cushion in the inner cavity, the spreading toes. . . . The character of the human foot lies mainly in its arched structure, in the predominance of the metatarsus, the shortening and equal direction of the toes, among which the great toe is remarkably long, but not, like the thumb, opposable. . . . The toes in standing leave no mark, but do so in progression. The whole middle part of the foot does not touch the ground. Persons with flat feet, in whom the middle of the sole touches ground, are bad pedestrians, and are rejected as recruits. . . . The negro is a decided flat foot . . . the fat cushion on the sole not only fills up the whole cavity, but projects beyond the sur- face." Inasmuch as it is the custom among all civilised peoples to cover the foot entirely, many of its aspects of beauty are rendered invisible permanently, so that it is perhaps not to be wondered at that in their absence Fashion should have so eagerly fixed on the two visible features size and arched instep and endeavoured to exaggerate them by Procrustean dimensions and stilt -like high heels. Yet in this matter even modern Parisians represent a progress over the mediaeval Venetian ladies, who, according to Marinello, at one time wore soles and heels over a foot in height, so that on going out they had to be accompanied by several servants to prevent them from falling. Mais que voulez vous? Fashion is fashion, and women are women. By the ancient Greeks the feet were frequently exposed to view; hence, says Winckelmann, "in descriptions of beautiful persons, as Polyxena and Aspasia, even their beautiful feet are mentioned." Possibly in some future age, when Health and Beauty will be more worshipped than vulgar Fashion fetishes, a clever Yankee will invent an elastic, tough, and leathery, but transparent substance that will protect the foot while fitting it like a glove u^a showing its outlines. This would put an end to the mutilations resorted to from vanity, guided by bad taste, and would add one more feature to Personal Beauty. And the foot, as Burmeister insists, has one advantage over every other part of the body. Beauty in all these other features depends on health and a certain muscular roundness. But the foot's beauty is independent of such variations, as it lies mainly in its permanent bony contours and in its fat cushion, which alone of all adipose layers resists the ravages of disease and old age. Hence a THE FEET 857 beautiful foot is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, long after all other youthful charms have faded and fled. A GRACEFUL GAIT So long as the foot remains entirely covered, its beauty is, on the whole, of less importance than the grace of its movements. Grace, under all circumstances, is as potent a love-charm as Beauty itself of which, in fact, it is only a phase ; and if young men and women could be made to realise how much they could add to their fascinations by cultivating a graceful gait and attitudes, hygienic shoemakers, dancing-masters, and gymnasiums would enjoy as great and sudden a popularity as skating-rinks, and a much more permanent popularity too. It is the laws of Grace that chiefly determine the most admir- able characteristics of the foot. The arched instep is beautiful because of its curved outlines ; but its greatest value lies in the superior elasticity and grace it imparts to the gait. The habitual carrying of heavy loads tends to make the feet flat and to ruin Grace ; hence the clumsy gait of most working people, and, on the other hand, the graceful walk of the " aristocratic " classes. The proper size of the foot, again, is most easily determined with reference to the principles of Grace. Motion is graceful when it does not involve any waste of energy, and when it is in accordance with the lines of Beauty. There must be no dispro- portion between the machinery and the work done no locomotive to pull a baby-carriage. Too large feet are ugly because they appear to have been made for carrying a giant ; too small ones are ugly because seemingly belonging to a dwarf. What are the exact proportions lying between "too large" and "too small " can only be determined by those who have educated their taste by the study of the laws of Beauty and Grace throughout Nature. From this point of view Grace is synonymous with functional fitness. A monkey's foot is less beautiful than a man's, but in climbing it is more graceful ; whereas in walking man's is infinitely more graceful. Apes rarely assume an erect position, and when they do so they never walk on the flat sole. " When the orang-outang takes to the ground," says Mr. E. B. Tylor, " he shambles clumsily along, generally putting down the outer edge of the foot and the bent knuckles of the hand." I have italicised the word "clumsily" because it touches the vital point of the question. Man owes his intellectual superiority largely to the fact that he does not need his hands for walking or 358 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY climbing, but uses them as organs of delicate touch and as took. To acquire this independence of the hands he needed feet, which enabled him to stand erect and walk along, not " clumsily," but firmly, naturally, and therefore gracefully. Hence in course of time, through the effects of constant use, there was developed the callous cushion of the heel and toes ; while, through discontinu- ance of the habit of climbing, the toes became reduced in size. In the ape's foot, it is well known, the toes are almost as long as the fingers of the hand : a fact which led Blumenbach and Cuvier to classify apes as quadrumana or four-handed animals. But Professor Huxley showed that this classification was based on erroneous reasoning. The resemblance between the hands and feet of apes is merely physiological or functional because hands and feet are used alike for climbing. But anatomically, in its bones and muscles, etc., the monkey's apparent hind " hand " is a true foot no less than man's. If the physiological function, i.e. the opposability of the thumb to the other fingers, were taken as a ground of classification, then birds, who have such toes, would have no feet at all but only wings and hands. There is a limit, however, beyond which the size of man's toe's cannot be reduced without injuring the foot's usefulness and the grace of gait. The front part of the foot is distinguished for its yielding or elastic character. Hence, says Professor Humphrey, "in descending from a height, as from a chair or in walking downstairs, we alight upon the balls of the toes. If we alight upon the heels for instance, if we walk downstairs on the heels we find it an uncomfortable and rather jarring procedure. In walking and jumping, it is true, the heels come first in contact with the ground, but the weight then falls obliquely upon them, and is not fully borne by the foot till the toes also are upon the ground." One of the reasons why Grace is more rare even than Beauty on this planet is that the toes are cramped or even turned out of their natural position by tight, pointed, fashionable shoes, and are thus prevented from giving elasticity to the step. Instances are not rare (and by no means only in China) where the great toe is almost at right angles to the length of the foot. In walking, says Professor Flower, " the heel is first lifted from the ground, and the weight of the body gradually transferred through the middle to the anterior end of the foot, and the final push or impulse given with the great toe. It is necessary then that all these parts should be in a straight line with one another." It is a mooted question whether the toes should be slightly THE FEET 859 turned outward, as dancing-masters insist, or placed in straight parallel lines, as some physiologists hold. For the reason indicated in the last paragraph, physiologists are clearly right. With parallel or almost parallel great toes, a graceful walk is more easily attained than by turning out the toes. Even in standing, Dr. T. S. Ellis argues, the parallel position is preferable : " When a body stands on four points I know of no reason why it should stand more firmly if those points be unequally disposed. The tendency to fall forwards would seem to be even increased by widening the distance between the points in front, and it is in this direction that falls most commonly occur." EVOLUTION OP THE GREAT TOE Perhaps the most striking difference between the feet of men and apes lies in the relative size of the first and second toes. In the ape's foot the second toe is longer than the first, whereas in modern civilised man's foot the first or great toe is almost always the longer. Not so, however, with savages, who are intermediate in this as in other respects between man and ape ; and there are various other facts which seem to indicate that the evolution of the great toe, like that of the other extreme of the body the head and brain is still in progress. There is a notion very prevalent among artists that the second toe should be longer than the first. This idea, Professor Flower thinks, is derived from the Greek canon, which in its turn was copied from the Egyptian, and probably originally derived from the negro. It certainly does not represent what is most usual in our race and time. "Among hundreds of bare, and therefore undeformed, feet of children I lately examined in Perthshire, I was not able to find one in which the second toe was the longest. Since in all apes in fact, in all other animals the first toe is considerably shorter than the second, a long first toe is a specially human attribute; and instead of being despised by artists, it should be looked upon as a mark of elevation in the scale of organised beings." Mr. J. P. Harrison, after a careful examination of the unrestored feet of Greek and Roman statues in various museums and art galleries, wrote an article in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain (vol. xiii. 1884), in which he states that he was " led to the conviction that it was from Italy and not Greece that the long second toe affected by many English artists had been imported." Among the Italians a longer second toe IB 360 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY common, as also among Alsatians ; in England so rarely that its occurrence probably indicates foreign blood. Professor Flower, as we have seen, found no cases at all ; Paget examined twenty-seven EngMsh males, in twenty-four of whom the great toe was the longer. " In the case of the female feet, in ten out of twenty-three subjects the first or great toe was longest, and in ten females it was shorter than the second toe. In the remaining three instances the first and second toes were of equal length." Bear these last sentences in mind a moment, till we have seen what is the case with savages. Says Dr. Bruner : "A slight shortening of the great toe undoubtedly exists, not merely amongst the Negro tribes, but also in ancient and modern Egyptians, and even in some of the most beautiful races of Caucasian females" And Mr. Harrison found this to be, with a few exceptions, a general trait of savages. The great toe was shorter than the second in skeletons of Peruvians, Tahitians, New Hebrideans, Savage islanders, Amos, New Caledonians. Must we therefore agree with Carl Vogt when he says, "We may be sure that, whenever we perceive an approach to the animal type, the female is nearer to it than the male"? Perhaps, however, we can find a solution of the problem some- what less insulting to women than this statement of the ungallant German professor. It is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that has thus ap- parently caused almost half the women to approximate the simian type of the foot ; Fashion, which, by inducing women for centuries to thrust their tender feet into Spanish boots of torture, has taken from their toes the freedom of action requisite for that free develop- ment and growth which is to be noticed in almost all the men. Considering the great difference between the left and the right foot, it appears almost incredible, but is a sober fact, that until about half a century ago " rights and lefts " were not made even for the men, who now always wear them. But even to-day " they are not, it is believed, made use of by women, except in a shape that is little efficacious," says Mr. Harrison ; and concerning the Austrians Dr. Schaffer remarks, similarly, that " the like shoe for the left and right foot is still in use in the vast majority of cases." No wonder women are so averse to taking exercise, and therefore lose their beauty at a time when it ought to be still in full bloom. For to walk in such shoes must be a torture forbidding all unneces- sary movement. Once more be it said it is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that is responsible for the inferior beauty of the average female THE FEET 361 foot, by preventing the free development and play of the toes which are absolutely necessary for a graceful walk. To what an extent the woful rarity of a graceful gait is due to the shape of " fashionable " shoes is vividly brought out in a passage concerning the natives of Martinique, which appeared in a letter in the New York Evening Post: "Many of the quadroons are hand- some, even beautiful, in their youth, and all the women of pure black and mixed blood walk with a lightness of step and a graceful freedom of motion that is very noticeable and pleasant to see. I say all the women ; but I must confine this description to those who go shoeless, for when a negress crams her feet into even the best-fitting pair of shoes her gait becomes as awkward as the waddle of an Indian squaw, or of a black swan on dry land, and she minces and totters in such danger of falling forward that one feels constrained to go to her and say, ' Mam'selle Ebene or Noirette, do, I beseech you, put your shoes where you carry everything else, namely, on the top of your well-balanced head, and do let me see you walk barefoot again, for I do assure you that neither your Chinese cousins nor your European mistresses can ever hope to imitate your goddess-like gait until they practise the art of walk- ing with their high-heeled, tiny boots nicely balanced on their heads, as you so often are pleased to do.'" There is another lesson to be learned from this discussion, namely, that in trying to establish the principles of Beauty, it is better to follow one's own taste than adhere blindly to Greek canons, and what are supposed to be Greek canons. The longer second toe, as we have seen, is not a characteristic of Greek art, but due apparently to restorations made in Italy where this peculiarity prevails. The Greeks, indeed, never hesitated to idealise and improve Nature if caught napping; and there can be little doubt that if in their own feet the first toe had been shorter than the second, they would have made it longer all the same in their statues, following the laws of gradation and curvature which a longer second toe would interrupt. For it is undeniable that, as Mr. Harrison remarks, " a model foot, accord- ing to Flaxmau, is one in which the toes follow each other imper- ceptibly in a graceful curve from the first or great toe to the fifth." NATIONAL DIFFERENCES The statement made above regarding the prevalence among Italians of a longer second toe enables us also to qualify the remark made in the Westminster fieview (1884), that "Even at the present day it is a fact well known to all sculptors that 362 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Italy possesses the finest models as regards the female hands and feet in any part of Europe ; and that to the eye of an Italian the wrists and ankles of most English women would not serve as a study even for those revivalisms of the antique which are to be purchased in our streets for a few shillings." Whatever may be true of wrists and ankles, the toes must be excepted, at least if a larger percentage of Italian than of English women have the second toe longer. Although in matters where so many individual differences exist it is hazardous to generalise, the following remarks on national peculiarities in feet, made by a reviewer of Zachariae's Diseases of the Human Foot, may be cited for what they are worth : " The French foot is meagre, narrow, and bony; the Spanish foot is small and elegantly curved, thanks to its Moorish blood, . . . The Arab foot is proverbial for its high arch ; ' a stream can run under his foot,' is a description of its form. The foot of the Scotch is large and thick that of the Irish flat and square the English short and fleshy. The American foot is apt to be disproportionately small" BEAUTIFYING HYGIENE Walking, running, and dancing are the most potent cosmetics for producing a foot beautiful in form and graceful in movement. It is possible that much walking does slightly increase the size of the foot, but not enough to become perceptible in the life of an individual ; and it has been sufficiently shown that the standard of Beauty in a foot is not smallness but curved outlines, litheness, and grace of gait, these qualities being a thousand times more powerful "love-charms" than the smallest Chinese foot. Moreover, it is probable that graceful walking has no tendency to enlarge the foot as a whole, but only the great toe ; and a well-developed great toe is a distinctive sign of higher evolution. It is useless for any one to try to walk or dance gracefully in shoes which do not allow the toes to spread and act like two sets of elastic springs. One of the most curious aberrations of modern taste is the notion that the shape of the natural foot is not beau- tiful that it will look better if made narrowest in front instead of widest. Even were this so, it would not pay to sacrifice all grace to a slight gain in Beauty. But it is not so. It is only habit, which blunts perception, that makes us indifferent to the ugliness of the pointed shoes in our shop-windows, or even in many cases prefer them to naturally-shaped shoes. Were we once accus- tomed to properly-shaped hygienic boots, iu which no part of the THE FEET 363 foot is cramped, our present shoes, with their unnatural curves where there should be none, and the absence of curves where they should be ("rights and lefts"), would seem as "awful" and "horrid" as the old crinoline does to the eyes of the prer-ent generation. As Professor Flower remarks : " The fact that the excessively pointed, elongated toes of the time of Richard II., for instance, were superseded by the broad, round-toed, almost ele- phantine, but most comfortable shoes seen in the portraits of Henry VIII. and his contemporaries, shows that there is nothing in the former essential to the gratification of the aesthetic instincts of mankind. Each form was, doubtless, equally admired hi the time of its prevalence." The Germans claim that it was one of their countrymen, Petrus Camper, who first called attention, about a hundred years ago, to another objectionable peculiarity of the modern shoe its high heels ruinous alike to comfort, grace, and health (a number of female diseases being caused by them) ; yet they admit that Cam- per's advice was hardly heeded by the Germans, and that it there- fore serves them right that quite recently the modern hygienic shoe, with low, broad heels, has been introduced in Germany as the "English form," the English having proved themselves less obtuse and conservative in this matter. The heel is, however, capable of still further improvement. It is not elastic like the cushion of the heel, after which it should be modelled ; and Dr. Schaffer's suggestion that an elastic mechanism should be introduced in the heel is certainly worthy of trial. Everybody knows how much more lightly, gracefully, as well a^ noiselessly, he can walk in rubbers than in leather shoes ; and this gain is owing to the superior elasticity of the heel and the middle part of the shoe, covering the arch, which should be especially elastic. It is pleasanter to walk in a meadow than on a stone pavement ; but if we wear soles that are both soft and elastic we need never walk on a hard surface ; for then, as Dr. Schaffer remarks, "we have the meadow in our boots." As the left foot always differs considerably from the right, it is not sufficient to have one measure taken. The fact that shoemakers do take but one measure shows what clumsy bunglers most of them are. As a rule, it is easier to get a fit from a large stock of ready-made boots than at a shoemaker's. The stockings, as well as the shoes, often cramp and deform the foot ; and Professor Flower suggests that they should never be made with pointed toes, or similar forms for both sides. Digitated stockings, however, are a nuisance, for they hamper the 364 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY free and elastic action of the toes. Woollen stockings are the best both for summer and winter use. No one who has ever experi- enced the comfort of wearing woollen socks (and underclothes in general), will ever dream of reverting to silk, cotton, or any other material. Soaking the feet in water in which a handful of salt has been dissolved, several times a week, is an excellent way of keeping the skin in sound condition. For perfect cleanliness it does not suffice to change the socks frequently. As the author of the Ugly Girl Papers remarks, "The time will come when we wilt find it as shocking to our ideas to wear out a pair of boots without putting in new lining as we think the habits of George the First's time, when maids of honour went without washing their faces for a week, and people wore out their linen without the aid of a laundress. " DANCING AND GRACE Among the ancients dancing included graceful gestures and poses of all parts of the body, as well as facial expression. In Oriental dancing of the present day, likewise, graceful movements of the arms and upper part of the body play a more important role than the lower limbs. Modern dancing, on the contrary, is chiefly an affair of the lower extremities. It is pre-eminently an exercise of the toes ; and herein lies its hygienic and beautifying value, for, as we have seen, grace of gait depends chiefly on the firm litheness and springiness of the toes, especially the great toe. By their grace of gait one can almost always distinguish persons who have enjoyed the privilege of dancing-lessons, which have strengthened their toes and, by implication, many other muscles, not forgetting those of the arm, which has to hold the partner. There are thousands of young women who have no opportunities for prolonged and exhilarating exercise except in ballrooms. In the majority of cases, unfortunately, Fashion, the handmaid of Ugliness and Disease, frustrates the advantages which would result from dancing by prescribing for ballrooms not only the smallest shoes, but the tightest corsets and the lowest dresses, which render it impossible or imprudent to breathe fresh air, without which exercise is of no hygienic value, and may even be injurious. But what are such trifling sacrifices as Health, Beauty, and Grace compared to the glorious consciousness of being fashionable ! THIS JJ-EET 865 DANCING AND COURTSHIP The ballroom is Cupid's camping ground, not only because it facilitates the acquisition of that grace by which he is so eapily enamoured, but because it affords such excellent opportunities for Courtship and Sexual Selection. And this applies not only to the era of modern Romantic Love, but, from its most primitive mani- festations in the animal world, dancing, like song, has been connected with love and courtship. Darwin devotes several pages to a description of the love-antics and dances of birds. Some of them, as the black African weaver, perform their love-antics on the wing, " gliding through the air with quivering wings, which make a rapid whirring sound like a child's rattle ;" others remain on the ground, like the English white-throat, which " flutters with a fitful and fantastic motion ;" or the English bustard, who "throws himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting the female ;" and a third class, the famous Bower-birds, perform their love-antics in bowers specially constructed and adorned with leaves, shells, and feathers. These are the earliest ballrooms known in natural history ; and it is quite proper to call them so, for, as Darwin remarks, they " are built on the ground for the sole purpose of courtship, for their nests are formed in trees." Passing on to primitive man, we again find him inferior to animals in not knowing that the sole proper function of dancing is in the service of Love, courtship, and grace. Savages have three classes of dance, two being performed by the men alone, the third by men and women. First come the war-dances, in which the grotesquely-painted warriors brandish their spears and utter un- earthly howls, to excite themselves for an approaching contest. Second, the Hunter's Dances, in which the game is impersonated by some of the men and chased about, which leads to many comic scenes ; though there is a serious undercurrent of superstition, for they believe that such dances a sort of saltatorial prayer bring on good luck in the subsequent real chase. Third, the dance of Love, practised e.g. by the Brazilian Indians, with whom " men and women dance a rude courting dance, advancing in lines with a kind of primitive polka step " (Tylor.) That there is as little refinement and idealism in the savage's dances as in his love-affairs in general is self-evident. The civilised nations of antiquity, as we have seen, had no prolonged Courtship, and therefore no Romantic Love. Since 366 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY young men and women were not allowed to meet freely, dancing was of course not esteemed as a high social accomplishment. It was therefore commonly relegated to a special class of women (or slaves), such as the Bayaderes of India and the Greek flute girls. Notwithstanding that even the Greek gods are sometimes repre- sented as dancing, yet this art came to be considered a sign of effeminacy in men who indulged in it ; and as for the Romans, their view is indicated in Cicero's anathema : " No man who is sober dances, unless he is out of his mind, either when alone or in decent society, for dancing is the companion of wantow conviviality, dissoluteness, and luxury." In ancient Egypt, too, the upper classes were not allowed to learn dancing. And herein, as in so many things in which women are concerned, the modern Oriental is the direct descendant of the ancients. " In the eyes of the Chinese," says M. Letourneau, " dancing is a ridiculous amusement by which a man compromises his dignity." Plato appears to have been the first who recognised the import- ance of dancing as affording opportunities for Courtship and pre-matrirnonial acquaintance. But his advice remained unheeded by his countrymen. A view regarding dancing similar to Plato's was announced by an uncommonly liberal theologian of the sixteenth century in the words, as quoted by Scherr, that " Dancing had been originally arranged and permitted with the respectable purpose of teaching manners to the young in the presence of many people, and enabling young men and maidens to form honest attachments. For in the dance it was easy to observe and note the habits and peculiarities of the young." Thus we see that, with the exception of the savage's war-dances and hunting pantomimes, the art of dancing has at all times and everywhere been born of love ; even the ancient religious dances having commonly been but a veil concealing other purposes, as among the Greeks. But all ceremonial dancing, like ceremonial kissing, has been from the beginning doomed to be absorbed and annihilated by the all-engrossing modern passion of Romantic Love, True, as a miser mistakes the means for the end and loves gold for its own sake, so we sometimes see girls dance alone possibly with a vaguely coy intention of giving the men to understand that they can get along without them. But their heart is not in it, and they never do it when there are men enough to go round. As for the men, they are too open and frank ever to veil their sentiments. They never dance except with a woman. To-day our fashion and society papers are eternally complaining THE FEET 867 of the fact that the young men especially the desirable young men seem to have lost all interest in dancing. But who is to blame for this? Certainly not the men. It is Fashion again, and the mothers who sacrifice the matrimonial prospects of their daughters as well as their Health, Beauty, and Individuality to this hideous fetish. It is the late hours of the dance, prescribed by Fashion, that are responsible for the apparent loss of masculine interest in this art. Formerly, when aristocracy meant laziness and stupidity, the habit of turning night into day was harmless or even useful, because it helped to rid the world prematurely of a lot of fools. But to-day the leading men of the community are also the busiest. Aristocracy implies activity, intellectual and otherwise. Hence there are few men in the higher ranks who have not their regular work to do during the day. To ask them after a day's hard labour to go to a dance beginning at midnight and ending at four or five is to ask them to commit suicide. Sensible men do not believe in slow suicide, hence they avoid dancing-parties as if such parties were held in small-pox hospitals. Let society women throw their stupid conservatism to the winds. Let them arrange balls to begin at eight or nine and end at midnight or one, and " desirable " men will be only too eager to flock to assemblies which they now shun. The result will be a sudden and startling diminution in the number of old maids and bachelors. It is the moral duty of mothers who have marriageable daugh- ters to encourage this reform. Maternal love does not merely imply solicitude for the first twenty years of a daughter's life, but careful provision for the remainder of her life, covering twice that period, by enabling her to meet and choose a husband after her own heart. EVOLUTION OF DANCE MUSIC Did space permit, it would be interesting to study in detail the dances of various epochs and countries, coloured, like the Love which originated them, by national peculiarities the Polish mazourka and polonaise, the Spanish fandango, the Viennese waltz, the Parisian cancan, etc. Suffice it to note the great difference between the dances of a few generations ago and those of to-day, as shown most vividly in the evolution of dance-music. The earliest dance-tunes are vocal, and were sung by the (pro- fessional) dancers themselves, in the days when the young were not yet allowed to meet, converse, and flirt and dance. Subse- quently, the transference of dance-music to instruments played by 368 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY others gave the dancers opportunity to perform more complicated figures, and made it possible to converse. But even as late as the eighteenth century dancing and dance-music were characterised by a stately reserve, slowness, and pompous dignity which showed at once that they had nothing to do with Romantic Love. It was not the fiery, passionate youths who danced these solemnly stupid minuets, gavottes, sarabandes, and allemandes, but the older folks, whose perruques, and collars, and frills, and bloated clothes would not have enabled them to execute rapid movements even if the warm blood of youth had coursed in their veins. How all this artificiality and snail-like pomp has been brushed away by triumphant Romantic Love, which has secured for modern lovers the privilege of dancing together before they are married and cease to care for it ! True, we still have the monotonous soporific quadrille, as if to remind us of bygone times ; but the true modern dance is the round dance, which differs from the stately mediaeval dance as a jolly rural picnic does from a formal morning call. The difference between the mediaeval and the modern dance ig thus indicated by F. Bremer : " Peculiar to modem dance-music is the round dance, especially the waltz ; and it is in consequence warmer than the older dance- music, more passionate in expression, in rhythm and modulation more sharply accented. As its creator we must regard Carl Maria von Weber, who, in his Invitation to Dance, struck the keynote through which subsequently, in the music of Chopin, Lanner, Strauss, Musard, etc., utterance was given to the whole gamut of dreamy, languishing, sentimental, ardent passion. The con- sequence was the displacement of the stately, measured dances by impetuous, chivalrous forms ; and in place of the former naive sentimentality and childish mirth, it is the rapture of Love that constitutes the spirit of modern dance-music." Not to speak of more primitive dance-tunes, what a difference there is between the slow and dreary monotony of eighteenth cen- tury dances and a Viennese waltz of to-day! The vast superiority of a Strauss waltz lies in this that it is no longer a mere rhythmic noise calculated to guide the steps, and skips, and bows, and evolu- tions of the dancers, but the symphonic accompaniment to the first act in the drama of Romantic Love. It recognises the fact that Courtship is the prime object of the dance. Hence, though still bound by the inevitable dance rhythm, Strauss is ever trying to break loose from it, to secure that freedom and variety of rhythm which is needed to give full utterance to passion. Note the slow, THE FEET 869 pathetic introductions ; the signs in the score indicating an accel- erated or retarded tempo when the waltz is played at a concert, where the uniformity of ballroom movement is not called for ; note what subtle use he makes of all the other means of expressing amorous feeling the wide melodic intervals, the piquant, stirring harmonies, the exquisitely melancholy flashes of instrumental colouring, alternating with cheerful moments, showing a subtle psychologic art of translating the Mixed Moods of Love into the language of tones. In the waltzes, mazourkas, and polonaises of Chopin we see still more strikingly that the true function of dance-music is amorous. Even as Dante's Love for Beatrice was too super-sensual, too ethereal for this world, so Chopin's dance-pieces are too subtle, too full of delicate nuances of tempo and Love episodes, to be adapted to a ballroom with ordinary mortals. Graceful fairies alone could dance a Chopin waltz; mortals are too heavy, too clumsy. They can follow an amorous Chopin waltz with the imagination alone, which is the abode of Romantic Love. To a Strauss waltz a hundred couples may make love at once, hence he writes for the orchestra ; but Chopin wrote for the parlour piano, because the feelings he utters are too deep to be realised by more than two at a time one who plays and one who listens, till their souls dance together in an ecstatic embrace of Mutual Sympathy. THE DANCE OP LOVE It is at Vienna, which has more feminine grace and beauty to the square mile than any other city in the world, that the art of dancing is to be seen in its greatest perfection. No wonder that it is the home of the Waltz-King, Johann Strauss ; and that a Viennese feuilletonist has shown the deepest insight into the psychology of the dance in an article from which the following excerpts are taken : "The waltz has a creative, a rejuvenating power, which no other dance possesses. The skipping polka is characterised by a certain stiffness and angularity, a rhythm rather sober and old- fashioned. The galop is a wild hurricane, which moves along rudely and threatens to blow over everything that comes in its way; it is the most brutal of all dances, an enemy of all tender and refined feelings, a bacchanalian rushing up and down. . . . " The waltz, therefore, remains as the only true and real dance. "Waltzing is not walking, skipping, jumping, rushing, raving ; it is a gentle floating and flying ; from the heaviest men it seems to 2s 370 KOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY take away some of their materiality, to raise the most massive women from the ground into the air. True, the Viennese alone know how to dance it, as they alone know how to play it. ... " The waltz insists on a personal monopoly, on being loved for its own sake, and permits no vapid side-remarks regarding the fine weather, the hot room, the toilets of the ladies ; the couple glide along hardly speaking a word ; except that she may beg for a pause, or he, indefatigable, insatiable, intoxicated by the music and motion, the fragrance of flowers and ladies, invites her to a new flight around the hall. And yet is this mute dance the most eloquent, the most expressive and emotional, the most sensuous that could be imagined ; and if the dancer has anything to say to his partner, let him mutely confide it to her in the sweet whirl of a waltz, for then the music is his advocate, then every bar pleads for him, every note is a billet-doux, every breath a declara- tion of love. Jealous husbands do not allow their wives to waltz with another man. They are right, for the waltz is the Dance of Love." BALLET-DANCING There is one more form of dancing which may be briefly alluded to, because it illustrates the hypocrisy of the average mortal as well as the rarity of true aesthetic taste. Solo ballet-dancing is admired not only by the bald-headed old men in the parquet, but there are critics who seriously discuss such dancing as if it were a fine art ; generally lamenting the good old times of the great and graceful ballet-dancers. The truth is that ballet -dancing never can be graceful, as now practised. To secure graceful movement it is absolutely necessary to make use of the elasticity of the toes to touch the ground at the place where the toes articulate with the middle foot, and to give the last push with the yielding great toe. Ballet-dancers, however, walk on the tips of their stiffened toes, the result of which is, as the anatomist, Professor Kollmann, remarks, that " their gait is deprived of all elasticity and becomes stiff, as in going on stilts." It speaks well for the growing sensibility of mankind that this form of dancing is gradually losing favour. Like the vocal tight- rope dancing of the operatic prime donne with whom ballet- dancers are associated, their art is a mere circus-trick, gaped at as a difficult tour de force, but appealing in no sense to aesthetic sentiments. These strictures, of course, apply merely to solo -dancing on tiptoe. The spectacular ballet, which delights the eye with kalei- THE LOWER LIMBS 871 doscopic colours and groupings, is quite another thing, and may be made highly artistic. THE LOWER LIMBS MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT The assumption by man of an erect attitude has modified and improved the appearance of his leg and thigh quite as marvellously as his feet. " In walking," says Professor Kollmann, " the weight of the body is alternately transferred from one foot to the other. Each one is obliged in locomotion to take its turn in supporting the whole body, which explains the great size of the muscles which make up man's calf. The ape's calf is smaller for the reason that these animals commonly go on all fours." Professor Carl Vogt gives these details : " No ape has such a cylindrical, gradually diminishing thigh ; and we are justified in saying that man alone possesses thighs. The muscles of the leg are in man so accumu- lated as to form a calf, while in the ape they are more equally dis- tributed ; still, transitions are not wanting, since one of the greatest characteristics of the negro consists in his calfless leg." And again : " Man possesses, as contrasted with the ape, a distinctive character in the strength, rotundity, and length of the lower limb ; especially in the thighs, which in most animals are shortened in proportion to the leg." The words here italicised call attention to two of the qualities of Beauty gradation and the curve of rotundity which the lower limbs in their evolution are thus seen to be gradually approximat- ing. Other improvements are seen in the greater smoothness, the more graceful and expressive gait resulting from the rounded but straight knee, etc. The implication that savages are in the muscular development of their limbs intermediate between apes and civilised men calls for further testimony and explanation. Waitz states that "in regard to muscular power Indians are commonly inferior to Europeans"; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has collected much evi- dence of a similar nature. The Ostyaks have " thin and slender legs " ; the Kamtchadales " short and slender legs " ; those of the Chinooks are " small and crooked " ; and the African Akka have " short and bandy legs." The legs of Australians are " inferior in mass of muscle " ; the gigantic Patagonians have limbs " neither so muscular nor so large-boned as their height and apparent bulk would induce one to suppose." Spencer likewise calls attention to the fact that relatively-inferior legs are " a trait which, remotely 872 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY simian, is also repeated by the child of the civilised man " -which thus individually passes through the several stages of development that have successively characterised its ancestors. Numerous exceptions are of course to be found to the rule that the muscular rotundity and plumpness of the limbs increases with civilisation. The lank shins which may be seen by the hundred among the bathers at our sea-coast resorts contrast disadvantage- ously with many photographs of savages ; and tourists in Africa and among South American Indians and elsewhere have often enough noted the occurrence of individuals and tribes who would have furnished admirable models for sculptors. But this only proves, on the one hand, that " civilised" persons who are uncivil- ised in their neglect of the laws of Health, inevitably lose certain traits of Beauty which exercise alone can give ; while, on the other hand, those " savages " who lead an active and healthy life are in so far civilised, and therefore enjoy the superior attractions bestowed by civilisation. Moreover, as Mr. Spencer suggests, " In combat, the power exercised by arm and trunk is limited by the power of the legs to withstand the strain thrown on them. Hence, apart from advantages in locomotion, the stronger-legged nations have tended to become, other things equal, dominant races." " Kengger," says Darwin, " attributes the thin legs and thick arms of the Payaguas Indians to successive generations having passed nearly their whole lives in CMIOCS, with their lower extremi- ties motionless. Other writers have come to a similar conclusion in analogous cases." Although savages have to hunt for a living and occasionally go to war, they are essentially a lazy crew, taking no more exercise than necessary ; which accounts for the fact that, with the excep- tions noted, their muscular development is inferior to that of higher races. BEAUTIFYING EXEKCISE One of the most discouraging aspects of modem life is the growing tendency toward concentration of the population in large cities. Not only is the air less salubrious in cities than in the country, but the numerous cheap facilities for riding discourage the habit of walking. London is one of the healthiest cities, and the English the most vigorous race, in the world ; yet it is said that it is difficult to trace a London family down through five generations. Few Paris families can, it is said, be traced even through three generations. Without constant rural accessions cities would tend to become depopulated. THE LOWER LIMBS 873 The enormous importance of exercise for Health and Beauty, which are impossible without it, is vividly brought out in this statement of Kollmann's : " Muscles which are thoroughly exer- cised do not only retain their strength, but increase in circumference and power, in man as in animals. The flesh is then firm, and coloured intensely red. In a paralysed arm the muscles are degenerated, and have lost a portion of one of their most important constituents albumen. Repeated contractions strengthen a muscle, because motion accelerates the circulation of the blood and the nutrition of the tissues. What a great influence this has on the whole body may be inferred from the fact that the organs of locomotion the skeleton and muscles make up more than 82 per cent of the substance of the body. With this enormous pro- portion of bone and muscle, it is obvious that exercise is essential to bodily health." Exercise in a gymnasium is useful but monotonous ; and too often the benefits are neutralised by the insufficient provision for fresh air, without which exercise is worse than useless. Hence the superiority of open-air games base -ball, tennis, rowing, riding, swimming, etc., to the addiction to which the English owe so much of their superior physique. Tourists in Canada invariably notice the wonderful figures of the women, which they owe largely to their fondness for skating. " Beyond question," says the Lancet, " skating is one of the finest sports, especially for ladies. It is graceful, healthy, stimulating to the muscles, and it develops in a very high degree the important faculty of balancing the body and preserving perfect control over the whole of the muscular system, while bringing certain muscles into action at will. Moreover, there is this about it which is of especial value : it trains by exercise the power of intentionally inducing and maintaining a continuous con- traction of the muscles of the lower extremity. The joints, hip, knee, and ankle are firmly fixed or rather kept steadily under control, while the limbs are so set by their muscular apparatus that they form, as it were, part of the skate that glides over the smooth surface. To skate well and gracefully is a very high accomplishment indeed, and perhaps one of the very best exercises in which young women and girls can engage with a view to health- ful development." For the acquisition of a graceful gait women need such exercise more even than men ; and while engaged in it they should pay especial attention to exercising the left side of the body. On this point Sir Charles Bell has made the following suggestive remarks : " We see that opera-dancers execute their more difficult feats 374 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUT V on the right foot, but their preparatory exercises better evince the natural weakness of the left limb ; in order to avoid awkwardness in the public exhibitions, they are obliged to give double practice to the left leg ; and if they neglect to do so an ungraceful prefer- ence to the right side will be remarked. In walking behind a person we seldom see an equalised motion of the body ; the tread is not so firm upon the left foot, the toe is not so much turned out, and a greater push is made with the right. From the peculiar form of woman, and from the elasticity of her step, resulting from the motion of the ankle rather than of the haunches, the defect of the left foot, when it exists, is more apparent in her gait." Those who wish to acquire a graceful gait will find several useful hints in this extract from Professor Kollmann's Plastische Anatomic, p. 506 : " Human gait, it is well known, is subject to individual varia- tions. Differences are to be noted not only in rapidity of motion, but as regards the position of the trunk and the movements of the limbs, within certain limits. For instance, the gait of very fat persons is somewhat vacillating ; other persons acquire a certain dignity of gait by bending and stretching their limbs as little as possible while taking long steps ; and others still bend their knees very much, which gives a slovenly character to their gait. And as regards the attitude of the trunk, a different effect is given according as it is inclined backwards or forwards, or executes superfluous movements in the same direction or to the sides. All these peculiarities make an impression on our eyes, while our ears are impressed at the same time by the differences in rapidity of movement, so that we learn to recognise our friends by the sound of their walk as we do by the quality of their voice." Bell states that "upwards of fifty muscles of the arm and hand may be demonstrated, which must all consent to the simplest action." Walking is a no less complicated affair, to which the attention of men of science has been only quite recently directed. The new process of instantaneous photography has been found very useful, but much remains to be done before the mystery of a graceful gait can be considered solved. If some skilled photographer would go to Spain and take a number of instantaneous pictures of Aiidalusian girls, the most graceful beings in the world, in every variety of attitude and motion, he might render most valuable service to the cause of personal aesthetics. The time will come, no doubt, when dancing masters and mistresses will consider the teaching of the waltz and the lancers THE LOWER LIMBS 375 only the crudest and easiest part of their work, and when they will have advanced classes who will be instructed in the refine- ments of movement as carefully and as intelligently as professors of music teach their pupils the proper use of the parts and muscles of the hand, to attain a delicate and varied touch. The majority of women might make much more progress in the art of graceful- ness than they ever will in music; and is not the poetry of motion as noble and desirable an object of study as any other fine art ? FASHIONABLE UGLINESS It is the essence of fashion to exaggerate everything to the point of ugliness. Instead of trying to remedy the disadvantages to their gait resulting from anatomical peculiarities (just referred to in a quotation from Bell), women frequently take pains to deliberately exaggerate them. As Alexander Walker remarks : " The largeness of the pelvis and the approximation of the knees influence the gait of woman, and render it vacillating and unsteady. Conscious of this, women, in countries where the nutritive system in general and the pelvis in particular are large, affect a greater degree of this vacillating unsteadiness. An example of this is seen in the lateral and rotatory motion which is given to the pelvis in walking by certain classes of the women in London." The Egyptians and Arabians consider this ludicrous rotatory motion a great fascination, and have a special name for it Ghung. But Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, is not content with aping the bad taste of Arabians and Egyptians. It goes several steps lower than that, down to the Hottentots. The latest hideous craze of Fashion, against which not one woman in a hundred had taste or courage enough to revolt the bustle or "dress- improver"(!) was simply the milliner's substitute for an ana- tomical peculiarity natural to some African savages. "It is well known," says Darwin, " that with many Hottentot women the posterior part of the body projects in a wonderful manner t they are steatopygous ; and Sir Andrew Smith is certain that thio peculiarity is greatly admired by the men. He once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind, that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity ; and, according to Burton, the Somal men * are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a linr) is an isolated and somewhat accidental adjunct to the chin, it was not," says Winckelmaun, " regarded by the Greek artists as an attribute of abstract and pure beauty, though it is so considered by modern writers." With a few unimportant exceptions, it is not found in " any beautiful ideal figure which has come down to us." And although Varro prettily calls a dimple in a statue of Bathyllus an impress from the finger of Cupid, Winckelmann thinks that when dimples do occur in Greek art works they must be attributed to a conscious deviation from the highest principles of art for the sake of personal portraiture. "In images whose beauties were of a lofty cast, the Greek artists never allowed a dimple to break the uniformity of the chin's surface. Its beauty, indeed, consists in tha rounded fulness of its arched form, to which the lower lip, when full, imparts additional size." KEFINED LIPS Whereas the beauty of the chin is purely physical, its neigh- boui, the mouth, has the emotional charm of expression besides the 414 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY formal beauty of outline. When we come to speak of the ears we shall find that some animals have five times as many muscles as man, wherewith they can execute expressive movements with those organs. But in the number and delicacy of the muscles of the mouth no animal approaches man, in whom they are more numer- ous even than those which serve for the varied expression of the eyes. Great as is the difference between an animal's forefoot and man's hand, it is not so great as the difference between an animal's and a man's mouth. Chewing and sucking are almost the only functions of the animal's mouth, while man moulds his lips into a thousand shapes in singing, whistling, pouting, blowing, speaking, smiling, kissing, etc. From being a mere mechanism for masticat- ing food, it has become the most delicate instrument for intellectual and emotional expression. Sir Charles Bell's testimony that "the lips are, of all the features, the most susceptible of action, and the most direct index of the feelings," has already been quoted in the chapter on Kissing. Could Rubinstein himself express a wider range of emotions, by subtle variations of pianistic touch, than our lips can express degrees and varieties of affection in the family, friendly, conjugal, and love kisses ? And can we find, even in. the music of Chopin and Wagner, harmonic changes more infinitely varied than the countless subtle modulations of the human lips, as revealed in the fact that deaf mutes can be taught to understand what we say to them merely by watching the movements of our lips 1 "The mouth, which is the end of love" (Dante), is also the seat of Love's smiles ; " and in her smile Love's image you may see." We often read of smiling eyes, and the eyes do partake in the expression of smiling, by increased brightness and the wrinkling of the surrounding muscles. But that the mouth is a more important factor in this expression can be shown by painting the face of a man with a sad expression, and then pasting on a smiling mouth, which will give the man at once a happy expression, not- withstanding the unchanged eyes. In life the muscles of the mouth and eyes execute certain movements in harmony. " In all exhilarating emotions," says Bell, " the eyebrows, the eyelids, the nostril, and the angle of the mouth are raised. In the depressing emotions it is the reverse." For the execution of these diverse movements, which make it the most expressive organ of the body, the mouth employs more than a dozen important groups of muscles, some of which originate in the chin, some in the cheeks, some in the lips themselves, enabling them to execute independent movements. JAW, CHIN, AND MOUTH 415 While surpassing the eyes in expressiveness, the mouth rivals them in beauty of form and colour. " The lips answer the pur- pose of displaying a more brilliant red than is to be seen elsewhere," says Winckelmann. " The under lips should be fuller than the upper." In Greek divinities the lips are not always closed : " and this is especially the case with Venus, in order that her countenance may express the languishing softness of desire and love." At the same time, "very few of the figures which have been represented laughing, as some Satyrs or Fauns are, show the teeth." This is natural enough, for the long-continued exposure of the teeth would only result in a grimace. It is only in the transient smile that the teeth may peep forth; and then what a charming contrast their ivory curve and lustrous colour presents to the full-blooded, soft, pink lips ! " Lilies married to the rose, Have made Tier cheek the nuptial bed ; Her lips betray their virgin red, As they only blushed for this, That they one another kiss." Health, Beauty, and Love everywhere we see them insepar- ably associated. Who could ever fall in love with a pair of thin, pallid lips that have lost their pink and plump loveliness through ansemic indolence, or disease, or tight lacing? The very teeth, though the hardest substance of the body, lose their natural colour and beauty in ill-health. Not only do they decay and become blackish, but " in bilious people they become yellow, and in con- sumptive patients they show occasionally an unnaturally pearly and translucent whiteness " (Brinton and Napheys). Negroes have, normally, teeth of a dazzling whiteness, which is often regarded as a racial peculiarity, but is due, according to Waitz, to the use of chalk or vegetal fibres. But various savages are dissatisfied with the natural form and colour of their teeth, and disfigure them in various ways. " In different countries the teeth are stained black, red, blue, etc., and in the Malay Archi- pelago it is thought shameful to have teeth like those of a dog " (Darwin). " In Macassar the women spend a part of the day in painting their teeth red and yellow, in such a way that a red tooth follows a yellow one, and alternately." In Japan, Fashion compels married women to blacken their teeth, not, however, as an orna- ment, but to make them ugly and save them from temptation. Some African tribes knock out two or more of their front teeth, on the ground that they do not wish to look like brutes. 41G ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY The Batokas " think the presence of incisors most unsightly, and on beholding some Europeans, cried out, ' Look at the great teeth ! ' . . . In various parts of Africa, and in the Malay Archipelago, the natives file the incisors into points like those of a saw, or pierce them with holes, into which they insert studs." In case of the lips, primitive Fashion prescribes still more atrocious mutilations. One would think that a negro's swollen lips were ugty euough to suit even a devotee of African Fashion ; but no ! Her lips being naturally large, the fashionable negro belle considers it incumbent on her to exaggerate them into additional hideousness, just as European and American fashionable women exaggerate the slight and beautiful natural curve of their waist into the atrocious hour-glass shape. "Among the Babines, who live north of the Columbia River," says Sir John Lubbock, " the size of the under lip is the standard of female beauty. A hole is made in the under lip of the infant, in which a small bone is inserted ; from time to time the bone is replaced by a larger one, until at last a piece of wood, three inches long and an inch and a half wide, is inserted in the orifice, which makes the lip protrude to a frightful extent. The process appears to be very painful." " In Central Africa," says Darwin, " the women perforate the lower lip and wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the tongue, has *a wriggling motion, indescribably ludicrous during conversation.' The wife of the chief of Latooka told Sir S. Baker that Lady Baker ' would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the long pointed polished crystal in her under lip.' Further south, with the Makalolo, the upper lip is perforated, and a large metal and bamboo ring, called a pelele, is worn in the hole. This caused the lip to project in one point two inches beyond the tip of the nose ; and when the lady smiled, the contraction of the muscles elevated it over the eyes. * Why do the women wear these things 1, ' the venerable chief Chinsurdi was asked. Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, ' For beauty ! They are the only beautiful things women have ; men have beards, women have none. What kind of a person would she be without a pelele ? She would not be a woman at all, with a mouth like a man but no beard.' " In New Zealand, according to Tylor, "it was considered shameful for a woman not to have her mouth tattooed, for people would say with disgust, * She has red lips.' " Compare these two pictures for a moment : on the one side, JAW, CHIN, AND MOUTH 417 the protuberant mouth-borders of the negro woman, swollen as by disease or an insect's sting, enlarged, in smiling, to the very ears, and showing not only the teeth but the gums, the tongue and the unsesthetic oesophagus ; on the other side, the full but delicate cherry lips of civilised woman, capable of an infinite variety of subtle, graceful movements, a keyboard on which the whole gamut of human feelings finds expression, and revealing, in a smile, only the tips of the pearly, undeformed teeth. Shall we say, with Alison and Jeffrey, that it is all a matter of taste, and that the negro has as much right to his taste as we have to ours ? Or have we not plentiful reasons for claiming that Personal Beauty is a fine art, and that the reason why the negro prefers his coarse mouth to our refined lips is because he does not understand our highly-developed and specialised Beauty ? There are cogent scientific reasons for believing that, just as the skull has been modified and developed from the upper part of the spinal column, and the brain from its contents, so ihe facial muscles are all developed from the broad muscle of the neck. In the orang, according to Professor Owen, we find already all the important facial muscles which man uses to express emotions. But, as Darwin remarks, " distinct uses, independently of expres- sion, can ... be assigned with much probability for almost all the facial muscles." On the other hand, the facial muscles " are, as is admitted by every one who has written on the subject, very variable in structure ; and Moreau remarks that they are hardly alike in half a dozen subjects. They are also variable in function. Thus the power of uncovering the canine tooth on one side differs much in different persons. The power of raising the wings of the nostrils is also, according to Dr. Piderit, variable in a remarkable degree ; and other such cases could be given." The facts that the facial muscles blend so much together that their number has been variously estimated at from nineteen to fifty-five, and that they vary so much in details of structure and function in individuals, are of extreme significance. For, in the first place, this variableness allows Love or Sexual Selection to favour the survival of those modifications of the features which are most in harmony with the laws of Beauty ; and, secondly, it affords the means of further specialisation and increased accuracy in the modes of emotional expression. When we see a friend reading a letter, we fancy his face a perfect mirror, reflecting every mood touched upon in its contents. Yet many of our expressions are vague, and there is much room 418 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY for improvement in definiteness. Darwin, in the introduction to his work on the Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, has remarked how difficult it often is to name the exact emotion intended to be expressed in a picture of a man, unless we regard the accessories by which the painter illustrates the situation ; and how apt people are to disagree in naming the emotions expressed by a series of physiognomic portraits. With monkeys, he says, " the expression of slight pain, or of any painful emotion, such as grief, vexation, jealousy, etc., is not easily distinguished from that of moderate anger." Savages, as we saw in a previous chapter, are strangers to many of the tender emotions which enter into our daily life ; hence it would be absurd to look for muscles specially trained to express them. And even with Europeans the refined emotions are of such recent development that, as just stated, they are capable of much further specialisation. To take only one case : it is probable that, whereas in the present stage of human evolution, it is almost impossible, without accessories, to distinguish the facial expression of feminine Romantic Love from that of maternal love, future generations will have specially modified muscles for those modes of expression. Duchenne has pointed out on the side of the nose a series of transient folds expressive of amorous desire. As Romantic Love displaces coarse passion, may not these or another set of muscles be pressed into the special service of refined Love as a sign of encouragement to lovers about to propose 1 Coquettes, of course, would immediately cultivate this expression, as a new wile or " wrinkle." / Between the facial muscles that are thus utilised for the expression of emotions and other muscles of the body, there is one difference which is of the utmost importance from the point of view of Personal Beauty. The function of ordinary muscles is to move bones, whereas the muscles of expression in the face are only concerned with the movements of the skin. Hence they do not enlarge the bones of the face, which would destroy its delicacy. Their exercise gives elasticity and plump roundness to the outlines of the face ; and as they are subtly subdivided in function, they cannot easily become too plump from exercise. Individual peculiarities of expression are of course due to the frequent exercise of certain sets of muscles, leading gradually to a fixed physiognomic aspect ; for form is merely crystallised expres- sion. Hence no one can be beautiful without being good. Vice soon destroys Personal Beauty. If the muscles of anger, envy, jealousy, spite, cruelty, etc., are too frequently called into exercise, JAW, CHIN, AND MOCTH 419 the result is a face on which the word vicious is written as legibly and in as many corners as the numerals X and 10 are printed on a United States banknote. One of the reasons why Fashion encourages the blase, nil ad- mirari attitude, and the stolid suppression of emotional expression, is to hide these signs of moral and hygienic sins. Oliver Wendell Holmes, anatomist and poet, says of Emerson that he had "that look of refinement centring about the lips which is rarely found in the male New Englander, unless the family features have been for two or three cultivated generations the battlefield and the playground of varied thoughts and complex emotions, as well as the sensuous and nutritive port of entry." Dr. Holmes need not have limited his generalisation to " male New Englanders." Refined mouths are rare in every country, among women as well as among men. As a writer in the Victoria Magazine exclaims : " It is wonderful how far more common good foreheads and eyes are amongst us than good mouths and chins." Yet there is a special reason for singling out the average male New Englander as a " warning example." He inherits the thin, famished, pale, stern, forbidding lips of his Puritan ancestors, whose sins are thus visited on later generations. Sins? Yes, sins against health. Without cheerfulness there can be no sound health, and the Puritans made the systematic pursuit of unhappi- ness the chief object of their life. They made cruel war on all those innocent pursuits and amusements which bring the bloom of health and beauty to the youthful cheek, and exercise the lips in the expression of refined aesthetic emotion. Even music, the most innocent of the arts, was included in their fanatic ostracism, to which historians also trace the rarity of musical taste of the highest order in England. There is reason to believe that it is especially aesthetic culture which betrays itself in the refined contours and expression of the lips. Men of genius, though their cast of features is not always handsome, commonly have finely -cut mouths. Among German women addicted to music and love of nature, though beauty is comparatively rare owing to causes which will be considered in a later chapter good mouths are more common than in some other countries which boast a higher general average of Personal Beauty. Among Americans in general, all the features are ap f - to be finely cut, hence the lips also partake of this advantage. But it is among Spanish maidens that perhaps the most invit- ing, full-blooded yet delicate, soft, and refined lips are to be sought. True, the Spanish maiden seems to lack refined feelings when slie 420 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY goes, as commonly supposed, to be thrilled by a bull fight. Yet it is well known that the upper classes of women in Spain do not commonly attend these spectacles ; and if they did, would they be more cruel than our fashionable women 1 Which is the more glaring evidence of callous emotions, to voluntarily witness the slaughter of an infuriated, dangerous beast, or to wear on one's hat the painted corpses of innocent song-birds ? The following passage in one of Washington Irving's works shows that the Spanish have genuine aesthetic feeling and taste : " * How near the Sierra looks this evening ! ' said Mateo ; * it seems as if you could touch it with your hand, and yet it is many leagues off.' While he was speaking a star appeared over the snowy summit of the mountain, the only one yet visible in the heavens, and so pure, so large, so bright and beautiful as to call forth ejaculations of delight from honest Mateo. " ' Que lucero hermoso ! que clara y limpio es ! no pueda ser lucero mas brillante.' (What a beautiful star ! how clear and lucid ! no star could be more brilliant !) " I have often remarked this sensibility of the common people of Spain to the charms of natural objects. The lustre of a star the beauty or fragrance of a flower the crystal purity of a foun- tain, will inspire them with a kind of poetical delight and then what euphonious words their magnificent language affords with which to give utterance to their transports ! " Possibly the constant pronouncing of these " euphonious words" is one of the causes of the beauty of Spanish lips. But one need not go into such subtle details for an explanation of the pheno- menon. Sexual Selection accounts for it sufficiently. The admira- tion of Beauty is the strongest factor in Romantic Love. The Spaniard's sense of Beauty is refined through his love of Beauty in natural objects. Hence in Sexual Selection he is guided by a taste which abhors equally the coarse, protuberant lips suggestive of mere animality, and the leathery, lifeless lips indicating neglect of the laws of health and a lack of lusty vitality. For true labial refinement consists not in ascetic elimination of sensuous fulness, but in aesthetic harmony between sense and intellect. The lips, like all other parts of the body, are naturally plump and full- blooded in Southern nations, saturated with sunshine and fresh air ; and when this plumpness is checked by mental refinement and the exigencies of varied expression, then it is that lips become ideally beautiful. It is with the lips as with Love, of which they are the perch. Neither Zola nor Dante are the true painters of the romantic JAW, CHIN, AND MOUTH 421 passion, but Shakspere, who pays respect to flesli and blood as well as to emotion aud intellect. COSMETIC HINTS Although the size and shape of the lips afford an index of coarse or refined ancestry, the mouth is commonly the most self- made feature in the countenance, because it is such an important seat of individual expression. Herein lies a soothing balm to those who, owing to the stupidly irregular and incalculable laws of heredity, have inherited an ugly mouth from a grandfather or a more remote ancestor. A pleasing impression, oft repeated, leaves its traces on the facial muscles. Kant gives this advice to parents : " Children, especially girls, must be accustomed early to smile in a frank, unconstrained manner ; for the cheerfulness and animation of the features gradually leave an impression en the mind itself, and thus create a disposition towards gaiety, amiableness, and sociability, which lay an early foundation for the virtue of benevolence." So Kant evidently believed that we can beautify the soul by beautifying the body. And the reverse is equally true. As Mr. Ruskin remarks : " There is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features. ... On the gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows a grace of action which by no discipline may be taught or obtained." If educators and parents would thoroughly impress on the minds of the young the great truth that good moral behaviour and the industry which leads to intellectual pre-eminence are magic sources of youthful and permanent Personal Beauty, they would find it the most potent of all civilising agencies, especially with women. Drs. Brinton and Napheys, in their work on Personal Beauty (1870), which is especially valuable from the point of view of medical and surgical cosmetics, but which is unfortunately out of print, offer the following suggestions as to how the shape and expression of the mouth may be improved : "For cosmetic reasons, immoderate laughter is objectionable. It keeps the muscles on the stretch, destroys the contour of the features, and produces wrinkles. It is better to cultivate a ' classic repose/ "Still more decidedly should the habit of 'making mouths' be condemned, whether it occur in conversing in private or to express emotions. It never adds to the emphasis of the discourse, never improves the looks, and leads to actual malformations. 422 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY " Children sometimes learn to suck and bite their lips. This distorts these organs, and unless they are persuaded to give it up betimes, a permanent deformity will arise. " When the lips have once assumed a given form, it is difficult to change them. Those that are too thin can occasionally be increased by adopting the plan of sucking them. This forces a large quantity of blood to the part, and consequently a greater amount of nutriment. When too large, compresses can sometimes, but not always, be used to effect. We have employed silver plates connected by a wire spring, or a mould of stiff leather. Either may be worn at night, or in the house during the day." Jt is astonishing to note how many persons are utterly uncon- cerned regarding the appearance of their mouths in talking, smiling, and laughing, sometimes revealing the whole of the teeth and even the gums, like savages, or as if they were walking tooth-powder advertisements. Self-observation before a mirror is the best anti- dote against such grimaces. Chapped lips sometimes call for constitutional treatment, but ordinarily they can be easily cured by obtaining a lip-salve of some reputable chemist. Glycerine is almost always adulterated and injurious, and should only be used on any part of the skin when chemically pure. Pale lips are commonly an indication of ill-health, and there- fore call for exercise, tonics, or other medical treatment. And the colour of the lips is an index of emotion as well as of health 41 Whispering, with white lips, ' The foe ! They come ! They come 1 ' " BYKON. That sound teeth, though they should never be seen except in glimpses, are an extremely important element in facial beauty, may be seen by the fact that the loss of a few front teeth makes a person look ten years older at once. The art of dentistry has reached such marvellous perfection that there is no excuse for having unsightly teeth. They may be easily preserved to a good age, if properly exercised on solid food bread crusts, etc. Very hot and very cold food and drink is injurious, especially if cold and hot things are taken in immediate succession. The teeth should be cleaned twice a day, on rising and before retiring. The brush should not be too hard, and a harmless powder, wash, or soap should be obtained of a trustworthy chemist for the threefold purpose of whitening the teeth by removing tartar, of killing the numerous microbes in the mouth, and purifying the breath. An offensive breath is shockingly common, probably owing to the fact THE CHEEKS 423 that many brush only the outside surface of their teeth. They should be brushed inside as well, and on the top, and the tooth wash or soap should be brought into contact with every corner and crevasse of the mouth and teeth. An offensive breath ought to be good cause for divorce, and certainly it is a deadly enemy of Koinantic Love. THE CHEEKS HIGH CHEEK-BONES When we look at a Mongolian, the flat nose and oblique eyes at once attract our attention, but hardly to such a degree as his high and prominent cheek-bones. The North American Indians, who are probably the descendants of Mongolians, resemble them in their prominent cheek-bones ; and the Esquimaux likewise possess these in a most exaggerated form. " The Siamese," says Darwin, " have small noses with divergent nostrils, a wide mouth, rather thick lips, a remarkably large face, with very high and broad cheek-bones. It is therefore not wonderful that ' beauty, according to our notion, is a stranger to them. Yet they con- sider their own females to be much more beautiful than those of Europe.' " Here is another " matter of taste," which is decided in our favour by the general laws of Beauty, positive and negative. High, prominent cheek-bones are ugly, in the first place, be- cause they interfere with the regularly gradated oval of the face. Secondly, because, like projecting bones and angles in any other part of the body, they interrupt the regular curve of Beauty. Thirdly, because they are coarse and inelegant, offending the sense of delicacy and grace, like big, clumsy ankles and wrists. Fourthly, because they suggest the decrepitude of old age and disease. In the healthy cheek of youth and beauty there is a large amount of adipose tissue, both under the skin and between the subjacent muscles. When age or disease makes fatal inroads on the body, this fat disappears and leaves the impression of starvation. "Famine is in thy cheeks," exclaims Shakspere; and again " Meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones." When the malar bones are too high, the fleshy cheeks, instead of including them in a plump curve, are made by contrast to appear hollow, thus simulating and suggesting the appearance of disease 424 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY to those whose imagination is sufficiently awake to notice such suggestions. And besides emaciation, hollow cheeks suggest an- other sign of age and decrepitude the loss of the teeth, which on the sides of the jaws help to give youthful cheeks their plump outlines. Finally, prominent cheek-bones are objectionable because they are concomitants of the large, clumsy, brutal jaws which characterise savages and apes. To the cheek - bones the upper jaw-bone is directly attached ; hence the larger the teeth are, and the more vigorously they are exercised in fighting and picking bones, the more massive must be the cheek-bones, to prevent the upper jaw from being pushed out of position. Moreover, there is attached to the cheek-bones a powerful muscle which connects it with the lower jaw, and by its contraction brings the two jaws together ; and this is a second way in which violent exercise of the jaws tends to enlarge the cheek-bones, for all bones become enlarged if the muscles attached to them are much exercised. At a recent meeting of the British Association, Sir George Campbell advanced the theory that the Aryan race, to which we belong, originally had prominent cheek-bones, like those of lower races. On general evolutionary grounds this is indeed a foregone conclusion ; as is the corollary that our cheek-bones have become smaller, for the same reason that our jaws have become more delicate; viz. because we no longer use them to fight and tear our food like wild beasts, but to masticate soft cooked food, to talk, etc. Thus does the progress of civilisation enhance our Personal Beauty. An excessive diminution in the size of the cheek-bones, as of the jaws, will be prevented by Romantic Love (Sexual Selection), which ever aims at establishing and preserving those proportions and outlines of the features which are most in harmony with the general laws of beauty. Among the lower animals cruel Natural Selection eliminates those individuals who are ugly, i.e. unnatural, unhealthy, clumsy. With mankind charity and pity have checked the operation of this cruel though beneficial law, and progress in the direction of refinement and Beauty would therefore be fatally impeded were it not that Sexual Selection, or Love guided by the sense of Beauty, steps in to eliminate the ill-favoured, who bear in their counten- ance too conspicuously the marks of their savage and animal ancestry. Perhaps Mr. Wallace had some such thought in his mind when he anticipated the time when man's selection shall have supplanted natural selection THE CHEEKS 425 Yet there are thousands of good people who still profess to believe that " beauty is only skin deep," and that Romantic Love and aesthetic culture are of no practical importance, but mere gaudy soap-bubbles to delight our vision for a transient moment ! In future ages, when aesthetic refinement will be more common, and Romantic Love, its offspring, less impeded by those considera- tions of rank and money and imaginary "prudence " which lead parents to sacrifice the physique and wellbeing of their grand- children to the illusive comfort of their sons and daughters (in " marriages of reason ") what an impetus will then be given to the development of Personal Beauty ! Refined mouths and noses, rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, plump and graceful healthy figures, now BO lamentably rare, will then become as plentiful as black- berries in the autumn. COLOUR AND BLUSHES Although the heart's warm blood is not carried to the cheeks in so dense a network of arteries, nor so near the surface as in the lips, yet the cheeks come next to the lips in delicate sensibility a fact which Love has discovered instinctively ; for a kiss on the cheeks is still a kiss of love, whereas a kiss on the forehead or eye- lids indicates less ecstatic forms of affection or esteem. What makes the cheeks so sensitive is the great delicacy of their transparent skin, which readily allows the colour of the blood to be seen as through a veil, not only in blushing, but in the natural rosy aspect of youth and health. Though the cheeks may not vie with the lips and teeth, the hair and the eyes, in lustrous depth of colour, they have an ad- vantage in their chamseleonic variety and changes of tint, and their delicious gradations. Even the delicate blushes on an apple or a peach, caused by the warm and loving glances of the sun, what are they compared to the luscious, mellow tints on a maiden's ripe cheeks ? Nor is it possible to find in the leaves of an autumnal American forest more endless individual nuances and shades of red and rose and pink than in the cheeks of lovely girls unless in- dolence or other sins against health have painted them with ghastly repulsive pallor, or the hideous Hottentot habit of bedaubing them with brutal paint has ruined their translucent delicacy. Says the author of the Ugly Girl Papers : " Some cheeks have a wiuelike, purplish glow, others a transparent saffron tinge, like yellowish-pink porcelain; others still have clear, pale carmine; and the rarest of all, that suffused tint like apple-blossoms." 426 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY At summer resorts where girls drink in daily draughts of the elixir of youth and beauty, commonly known as fresh air, one of their greatest love-charms is these colour-symphonies on their cheeks, changing their melody with every pulse-beat. These charms they might possess all the year round did not their parents commonly convert their dwelling-houses into hothouses, reeking with stagnant, enervating air. If, therefore, we read that Africans prefer the opaque, inky, immutable ebony of their complexion to the translucent, ever- changing tints, eloquent of health and varied emotions, in a white maiden's face, we well, we simply smile, on recalling the fact that even among ourselves a cheap, gaudy chromo is preferred by the great multitude to the work of a great master which they do not understand. The slow growth of aesthetic refinement is illustrated by the fact that it is only a few years since Fashion has set its face against the use of vulgar paints and powders, which ensure a most questionable temporary advantage at the ex- pense of future permanent defacement. The colours of the cheeks, so far under consideration, are to a certain extent subject to our will and skill ; for no one who culti- vates the complexion and has plenty of pure air need be without these blooming buccal roses. But the " thousand blushing appa- ritions " that start into our faces are, as Shakspere's well-chosen words imply, as independent of our will and control as any other apparitions. Are blushes ornamental or useful ? That is, were they devel- oped through Sexual or through Natural Selection ? Such Shaks- perian expressions as " Bid the cheek be ready with a blush, modest as morning ; " " Thy cheeks blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses ; " and " To blush and beautify the cheek again," suggest the notion that the great poet regarded blushes as beautiful ; while the following permit a different interpretation : "Her blush is guilti- ness, not modesty ; " " Blushing cheeks by faults are bred, and fears by pale white shown;" "You virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing?" " His treasons will sit blushing in his face." Let us see if any light is thrown on the problem by going back to the beginning, and tracing the development of the habit of blushing. That blushing is a comparatively recent human acquisi- tion is made apparent from the facts that it is not seen in animals, nor in very young children, nor in idiots, as a rule ; while among savages the faculty of blushing seems to be dependent on the pre- sence of a sense of shame, which is almost, if not entirely, unknown to the lowest tribea. THE CHEEKS 427 That animals never blush, Darwin thinks, is almost certain. " Blushing," he says, " is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush." Concerning children he says : " The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy, which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls blushing at the ages of between two and three years ; and of another sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault." " In the dark-brown Peruvian," says Mr. Tylor, " or the yet blacker African, though a hand or a thermometer put to the cheek will detect the blush by its heat, the somewhat increased depth of colour is hardly perceptible to the eye." Dr. Burgess repeatedly had occasion to observe that a scar in the face of a negress " in- variably became red whenever she was abruptly spoken to, or charged with any trivial offence." And Darwin was assured by several trustworthy observers " that they have seen on the faces of negroes an appearance resembling a blush, under circumstances which woidd have excited one in us, though their skins were of an ebony-black tint. Some describe it as a blushing brown, but most say that the blackness becomes more intense." Now evidence has already been quoted in a previous chapter showing that negroes admire a black skin more than a white one (vide Descent of Man, 1885, p. 579). Is it likely, therefore, that the blush was admired by negroes, and became a ground of selection, because it intensified the blackness of the skin '] It hardly seems probable that the coarse negro can be influenced in his amorous choice by any such subtle, almost imperceptible difference; and even the great originator of the theory of Sexual Selection does not believe that it accounts for the origin of blushes : " No doubt a slight blush adds to the beauty of a maiden's face ; and the Cir- cassian women who are capable of blushing invariably fetch a higher price in the seraglio of the Sultan than less susceptible women. But the firmest believer in the efficacy of sexual selection will hardly suppose that blushing was acquired as a sexual orna- ment. This view would also be opposed to what has just been said about the dark-coloured races blushing in an invisible manner." On the other hand, it seems equally difficult to account for the origin of blushing on utilitarian grounds. No one likes to be caught blushing ; on the contrary, every one tries to conceal such a state by lowering or averting the face. How could such an un- 428 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY welcome, embarrassing habit prove of advantage to us? Sir Charles Bell's remarks on the subject may serve as a clue to the answer. That blushing " is a provision for expression may be inferred," he says, " from the colour extending only to the surface of the face, neck, and breast the parts most exposed. . . . The colour caused by blushing gives brilliancy and interest to the expression of the face. In this we perceive an advantage possessed by the fair family of mankind, and which must be lost to the dark ; for I can hardly believe that a blush may be seen in the negro. . . . Blush- ing assorts well with youthful and with effeminate features, while nothing is more hateful than a dog- face that exhibits no token of sensibility in the variations of colour." The poet Young tells us that " the man that blushes is not quite a brute ; " and Darwin quotes from Humboldt a sneer of the Spaniard, "How can those be trusted who know not how to blush 1 " Darwin's remark that some idiots, " if not utterly degraded, are capable of blushing," also accords with Bell's notion that blushing is a provision for expression. Bell's assertion that it is " indicative of excitement " is, however, not sufficiently definite. What is it that a blush expresses ? Evidently nervous sensibility, a moral sense, modesty, innocence. The Circassian who can blush is more highly valued than another, because the blush is eloquent of maiden modesty and heart untainted. The fact that there is also a blush of violated modesty, a blush of shame, and of guilt, does not argue against this view, any more than the fact that we blush if, though innocent, we are accused of guilt. It is the association of ideas and of emotions that evokes the blush in such cases. We may therefore conclude that a blush is useful on account of its moral beauty, i.e. its expressiveness of presumptive innocence, or at least of a desire to be considered innocent ; whereas the un- blushing front and cheek indicate a brutal, callous indifference to virtue. We admire a blush as "the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions." And we admire it also, to some extent, on purely aesthetic grounds, if not exaggerated. A slight blush lias a rosy charm of its own, and it is only when it becomes a too diffused and deep facial Aurora borealis that it loses its charm, because suggestive of the hectic or fever flush, or the redness caused by anger, heat, violent exertion, etc., which has a physio- logical origin distinct from that of blushing. According to Bell, " the colour which attends exertion or the violent passions, as of rage, arises from general vascular excitement, and differs from blushing. Blushing is too sudden and too partia! THE EARS 429 to be traced to the heart's action." Darwin endeavours to find the explanation of blushing in the intimate sympathy which exista between the capillary circulation of the surface of the head and face, and that of the brain, which would account for the mental confusion of shyness, modesty, etc., being so immediately photo- graphed on the face. He sums up his theory in these words : " I conclude that blushing whether due to shyness to shame for a real crime to shame from a breach of the laws of etiquette 1o modesty from humility to modesty from an indelicacy depends in all cases on the same principle ; this principle being a sensitive regard for the opinion, more particularly for the deprecia- tion of others, primarily in relation to our personal appearance, especially of our faces; and secondarily, through the force of association and habit, in relation to the opinion of others on our conduct." He gives various illustrations showing how by directing our attention to certain parts of the body we can increase their sensi- tivity and activity in a manner analogous to that postulated by the theory of blushing. But for these the reader must be referred to his essay on this subject in the Expression of Emotions a masterpiece of physiological and psychological analysis. One more passage, however, may be cited, as it helps to justify this long dis- cussion of blushing by showing its special relations to Romantic Love and Personal Beauty : " It is plain to every one that young men and women are highly sensitive to the opinion of each other with reference to their per- sonal appearance ; and they blush incomparably more in presence of the opposite sex than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy pair of young lovers, valuing each other's admiration and love more than anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr. Bridges, blush ' chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their own personal appearance.'" THE EARS A USELESS ORNAMENT The shell of the ear appears to be the only part of man's visible body which has ceased to be useful and become purely ornamental 430 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY " Persons whose ears have been cut off hear just as well as before/ says Professor Haeckel. Dr. J. Toynbee, F.R.S., " after collecting all the evidence on this head, concludes that the external shell is of no distinct use ; " and Darwin was informed by Professor Preyer that after experimenting on the functions of the shell of the ear he had come to nearly the same conclusion. To infer from this that our external ears have been developed, through Sexual Selection, for purely ornamental purposes, would not be in accord with scientific analogies. For, often as existing organs (horns, feathers, etc.) are modified for ornamental purposes, there are no known instances of any that have oeeu specially developed for that purpose ; even the facial muscles of expression being, as we have seen, in this predicament. Hence we are led to conclude that man has inherited the shell of his ear from a remote apelike ancestor, to whom it was of use in catching faint sounds, and who consequently had the power, common to other animals, not only of directing the ears as a whole to different points of the compass, but of temporarily altering its shape. Indeed, one of the strongest proofs of our descent from lower animals lies in the fact that man still possesses, in a rudimentary form, the muscles needed to move the ears. Some savage tribes have con- siderable control over these muscles. The famous physiologist, Johannes Muller, after long and patient efforts, succeeded in recovering the power of moving his ears ; and Darwin writes : "I have seen one man who could draw the whole ear forwards ; other men can draw it upwards ; another who could draw it backwards ; and from what one of these persons told me, it is probable that most of us, by often touching our ears, and thus directing our attention towards them, could recover some power of movement by repeated trials." Ordinary monkeys still possess the power to move their ears ; but the manlike or anthropoid apes resemble us in the rudimentary condition of their ear-muscles ; and Darwin was assured by the keepers in the London Zoological Gardens that these animals never move or erect their ears. He suggests two theories to account for the loss of this power : first, that, owing to their arboreal habits and great strength, these apes were not exposed to much danger, and thus gradually, through disuse, lost control over these organs, just as birds on oceanic islands where they are not subject to attacks have lost the use of their wings ; secondly, that the freedom with which they can move the head in a horizontal plane enabled them to dispense with mobile ears. The remarkable variability of the ears greater, by the way, hi THE EARS 431 men tkaii in women is another reason for regarding them as rudimentary organs, inherited from remote semi-human ancestors, to whom they were useful ; for great variability is a characteristic of all rudimentary organs. Haeckel facetiously suggests that " at large assemblies, where our interest is not sufficiently enchained, nothing is more instructive and entertaining than a comparative study of the countless variations in the form of the ears." The ancient Greek artists were aware of this variability, for Winckle- mann speaks of " the infinite variety of forms of the ear on heads modelled from life. " " It was customary with the ancient artists to elaborate no portion of the head more diligently than the ears." " In portrait figures, when the countenance is so much injured as not to be recognised, we can occasionally make a correct conjecture as to the person intended, if it is one of whom we have any knowledge, merely by the form of the ear ; thus we infer a head of Marcus Aurelius from an ear with an unusually large inner opening." If we compare a man's ears with those of a dog or horse, differences of shape appear no less conspicuous than differences in mobility. Two points are especially characteristic of man the folded upper margin and the lobule. Our cousins, the anthropoid apes, are the only other animals which have the margin of the ear thus folded inwards, the lower monkeys having them simple and pointed, like other animals. The sculptor, Mr. Woolner, called Darwin's attention to " a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly- folded margin or helix." Darwin, on investigating the matter, came to the conclusion that these points " are vestiges of the tips of former erect and pointed ears "; being led to think so "from the frequency of their occurrence, and from the general correspondence in position with that of the tip of a pointed ear." The lobule is still more peculiar to man than the folded margin, since he does not even share it with the anthropoid apes, although, according to Professor Mivart, " a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla." An intermediate stage between man and ape is occupied by some savage tribes in whom the lobule is scantily developed or even absent. COSMETICS AND FASHION The lobule of the human ear has been presumably developed through the agency of Sexual Selection, as it is an ornament the absence of which is at once felt. And there are other ways in which this organ has been gradually brought into harmony with the laws of beauty. Thus the loss of the hair (of which rudiments 432 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY are still occasionally present) made visible the soft skin and the delicate tint of the ear, which, like that of the cheeks, may be momentarily heightened by a blush, and thus become an index of emotional expression. A permanently heightened colour of the ear, however, caused by exposure to extreme cold or by rough treatment, is almost as great a blemish as a red nose or pallid lips. If boxers are anxious to deform their ears, no one has a right to object ; but children have a right to ask of their parents and teachers not to redden their ears permanently by pulling or boxing them. That a delicate and important sense-organ like the ear should be so frequently chosen as a place to inflict punishment, shows the necessity of a general diffusion of hygienic knowledge. It may not be superfluous to add a caution to lovers, that the ears should never be taken as an osculatory substitute for the lips or cheeks, as cases are known in medical practice where the tympanum, and consequently the hearing, has been destroyed by a vigorous kiss implanted by a foolish lover on his sweetheart's ears. An ear to be beautiful should be about twice as long as broad. It should be attached to the head almost straight, or slightly inclined backwards, and should almost touch the head with the back of its upper point. Many poor girls are deformed for life through the ignorance of their mothers, who allow them to wear their hair or bonnets in such a way as to make the ears stand out obliquely. As the ears contain no bones, but consist entirely of cartilages and skin, they can be, more readily even than the nose, moulded into a fine shape at an early age. As Drs. Brinton and Napheys remark, "Even when the ear is in part or altogether absent, the case is not desperate. An * artificial ear' can be made of vulcanised rubber, or other material, tinted the colour of the flesh, and attached to the side of the head with such deftness that its character will escape every ordinary eye." There is therefore no excuse for having badly-shaped or wrongly-inclined ears in these days of cosmetic surgery. In the most beautiful ears the lobe is free, and not attached to the head in its lower part. Heavy earrings, which have a tendency to unduly enlarge the lobules, are now tabooed by Fashion ; but very small jewels in the ear may be looked on, like small finger- rings, necklaces, and bracelets, as unobjectionable from an aesthetic point of view, though real beauty unadorned is adorned the most. Formerly Fashion maltreated the poor ears quite as badly as it still does the waist and the feet. Lubbock remarks that the East Islanders enlarge their ears till they come down to the shoulders; and Darwin, after referring to liberties taken with THE EARS 483 the nose, says that " the ears are everywhere pierced and similarly ornamented, and with the Botocudos and Lenguas of South America the hole is gradually so much enlarged that the lower edge touches the shoulder." Among the Greeks, as Becker remarks, " it was considered a dishonour, or a token of foreign manners, for men to have their ears bored. . . . Women and girls, however, not only used earrings, evcima, cAAo/ifia, eAiKT^/ocs, which are seen perpetually in vases, but also wore numerous articles of jewellery about the neck, the arms, and on the leg above the ankle." The ancients, too, had heard of the malformed ears of primitive peoples. " It is possible," says Tylor, " that there may be some truth in the favourite wonder-tale of the old geographers, about the tribes whose great ears reached down to their shoulders, though the story had to be stretched a good deal when it was declared they lay down on one ear and covered themselves with the other for a blanket." Such blanket-ears would be the aesthetic equivalent of modern bustles, crinolettes, and wasp-waists. PHYSIOGNOMIC VAGARIES Ever since the days of ancient Greek philosophy ingenious attempts have been made to find a special meaning for this or that particular form of the ear. According to Aristotle, a long eai indicates a good memory, whereas modern physiognomists incline to the opinion that a long ear shows a man's mental relationship to a certain unjustly-maligned animal. Small ears, Lavater thinks, are a sign of an active mind, while a deep shell indicates a thirst for knowledge. As a matter of fact, the ears have no connection whatever with intellectual or emotional expression, except that a well-shaped ear indicates in a general way that its possessor comes off a stock in which the laws of cosmetic hygiene have been observed during many generations. To many of the lower animals the ears are a means of emotional expression. What, for instance, could be more expressive and droll than the way a dog expresses mild surprise or expectation by pricking up his ears? Or what a more certain sign of viciousness in a horse than the drawing back of the ears ? a movement of which Darwin has found the reason in the fact that all animals that fight with their teeth retract their ears to protect them ; whence, through habit and association, it comes that they draw them back whenever a fighting mood comes over 434 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY them. Man, on the other hand, never uses his ears for emotional expression, because they are the least mobile part of the body. Now form is merely crystallised expression : and the absence of special movements for emotional expression necessarily prevents individual alterations indicative of character. Hence the absurdity of trying to use the ears as a basis for physiognomic distinctions. NOISE AND CIVILISATION What is the cause of the folding of the margin of the human ear, which distinguishes it from that of all other animals ? Darwin remarks that it " appears to be in some manner connected with the whole external ear being permanently pressed backwards ; " but this does not explain the mysterious phenomenon. After many hours of profound meditation on this subject I have come to the conclusion that this slight folding of the ear's margin is the begin- ning of a new phase of human evolution. In course of time this cannot be disproved the fold of the margin will become larger and larger, until finally the shells of the ear will have been trans- formed into mobile lids for shutting out at will disagreeable noises, even as the eyelids have been developed to shut out glaring light. This would account for the providential preservation of the rudi- mentary ear- muscles referred to above. When this process of evolution is completed men coming home late will no longer have to listen to curtain-lectures. The innovation will tend to make them polite, for instead of telling the lecturer to " shut up," they will shut up themselves. Seriously speaking, such movable ear-lids are very much needed in this transition stage of civilisation. The present age of steam will by future historians be classified as the age of noise. It is almost impossible to find a place within ten miles of a city where one can rest without having one's sleep constantly disturbed, or at least deprived of its refreshing depth, by the blowing of railway and factory whistles. Both are unnecessary, inasmuch as railway signals would be quite as effective if not so murderously loud and prolonged, while factory whistles are either blown at the moment when the operatives go to work, when a simple bell would do as well, or they are blown an hour earlier to wake up the workmen, a most outrageous proceeding, as everybody else sleeping within a radius of a mile or more is thus waked up at six o'clock. The fact that these nuisances have so long been tolerated shows how primitive is as yet the aesthetic development of the average human ear. Some people even smile at you for being so " nervous," THE EARS 485 and boast of their indifference to such hideous, brain-racking noises. The Esquimaux and Chinese would doubtless assume a similar attitude regarding their indifference to noisome stenches. In mediaeval times, Europeans in general were quite as indifferent to the emanations from their gutters as they still are to the hideous noises in the streets. It has often been noted with sin-prise that the death-rate in London and the general aspect of health should be so much more favourable than that of continental cities, which are free from the depressing London fogs. The reason, doubtless, lies chiefly in the facts that there are no vile sewer odours in London to poison the atmosphere, and that the pavement of the streets is of such a nature that one can sleep soundly at night, provided there are no steam whistles near. London, too, does not tolerate the brutal whip-cracking which transforms French, German, and Swiss towns and cities into Bedlams of noise. In this respect New York resembles London ; but here the comparison ends. New York pavements are the noisiest, roughest, and dirtiest in the world. I have known of invalids who were advised to drive in the Central Park, but could not do so because they could not bear on their way to drive even up Fifth Avenue, a street lined with the houses of millionaires. And to walk on Broadway for twenty minutes, talking to a friend, makes one as hoarse as delivering a two-hour lecture. There can be no doubt that a horror of useless noise grows with the general refinement of the senses and the mind. Goethe's aversion to noise, especially at night, is well known. It led him to poison dogs that disturbed him. The delicate hearing of Franz, the great song composer, was ruined by the whistle of a locomotive. And Schopenhauer has put the whole matter into a nutshell in these admirable words : " Intellectual persons, and all in general who have much esprit, cannot endure noise. Astounding, on the other hand, is the insensibility of ordinary people to noise. The quantity of noise which any one can endure without annoyance is really related inversely to his mental endowments, and may be regarded as a pretty accurate measure of them," A MUSICAL VOICE It is self-evident that indifference to ear-splitting noises implies a lack of appreciation for the exquisite clang-tints of music ; for whenever the acoustic nerve is sufficiently refined to appreciate such subtle tints, it is affected as painfully by harsh sounds as the artistic eye is by glaring colours and flickering light. And an ear 436 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY which is indifferent to the sweetness of musical sounds is of COUIKS indifferent also to the musical charm of the speaking voice. But a sweetly modulated voice is one of the most conspicuous attributes of Personal Beauty for Beauty refers to sounds as well as to sights " Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman." SHAKSPEBK. There is as much variety in voices as in faces ; and in estimat- ing a person's general refinement, the voice is perhaps a safer guide than the face ; because the quality of the voice is largely a matter of individual training, whereas in reading faces the judgment is warped by the presence of inherited features speaking of traits which have not been modified by individual effort and culture. Many young men and women live in absolute indifference to the quality of their speaking voice, till one day Cupid arouses them from their unsesthetic slumber with his golden arrows, and makes them eager not only to brush up their hats and improve their personal appearance, but also to modulate their voices into sweet, expressive accents. But the vocal cords, like a violin, can only be made to yield mellow sounds after long practice j hence the usual result of a sudden effort to speak in love's sweet accents is a ridiculous lover's falsetto. THE NOSE SHAPE AND SIZE " The fate of innumerable girls has been decided by a slight upward or downward curvature of the nose," says Schopenhauer ; and Pascal points out that if Cleopatra's nose had been but a trifle larger, the whole political geography of this planet might have been different. Owing to the fact that the nose occupies the most prominent part of the face, Professor Kollmann remarks that " the partial or complete loss of the nose causes a greater disfigurement than a much greater fault of conformation in any other part of the face." And Winckelmann thus bears witness to the inrportance of the nose as an element of Personal Beauty: "The pi:iof, easy to be understood, of the superiority of shape of the Groek* and the present inhabitants of the Levant lies in the fact that we find among them no flattened noses, which are the greatest disfigure- ment of the face." Yet here again we find that " tastes differ." Thus we read in Darwin "that the ancient Huns during the age of Attila were THE NOSE 487 accustomed to flatten the noses of their infants with bandages, ' for the sake of exaggerating a natural conformation ' " [note the stamp of Fashion] ; that, " with the Tahitians, to be called long-nose is considered as an insult, and they compress the noses and fore- heads of their children for the sake of beauty ; " and that " the same holds true with the Malays of Sumatra, the Hottentots, certain Negroes, and the natives of Brazil." But the ne-plus-ultra of nasal ugliness is found among the Tartars and Esquimaux. " European travellers in Tartary in the Middle Ages," says Tylor, " described its flat-nosed inhabitants as having no noses at all, but breathing through holes in the face." And among the Esquimaux, as Mantegazza remarks, a rule can be placed on both the cheeks at once without touching the nose. Flat noses, says Topinard, " are either depressed as a whole, as among Chinese, or only in the lower half, as among Malays. Negroes have both forms." The yellow and black races, who naturally have flat noses, consider it fashionable to have them very flat. The same is true with our modem Fashion regarding wasp-waists and feet. But in regard to the face the white races including even the women have emancipated themselves from the tyranny of fashionable exaggeration. Hence, though we admire prominent noses, we do not admire them more and more in proportion to their size. On the contrary, every one looks upon the very large Jewish nose as ugly. The reason is that in judging of the face Fashion has been displaced by aesthetic Taste, whose motto is Moderation, and which is based on a knowledge of the cosmic laws of beauty. Savages have Fashion but no Taste. We have both ; but Taste is gradually demolishing Fashion, like other relics of barbarism. Sometimes our estimate of the nose, as of other features, may be influenced by non-aesthetic considerations by prejudices of race, aristocracy, etc. "In Italy," says Mantegazza, "we call a long nose aristocratic (especially if it is aquiline) perhaps because conquerors with long noses, Greeks and Romans, have subjected the indigenous small-nosed inhabitants." But the Italians are not the only people who, if asked to choose between a nose too large or one too small, would ask for the former. And the cause of this preference is suggested very forcibly in these remarks of Grose : " Convex faces, prominent features, and large aquiline noses, though differing much from beauty, still give an air of dignity to their owners; whereas concave faces, flat, snub, or broken noses, always stamp a meanness and vulgarity. Tfie one seems to have passed through the limits of beauty, the other never to have arrived at them" 488 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY EVOLUTION OF THE NOSE The flat, irregular nose of savages and semi-civilised peoples, with its visible nostrils and imperfectly developed bridge, being intermediate between the ape's nose and our own, we are naturally led to infer that the nose has been gradually developed into the shape now regarded as most perfect by good judges of Beauty. To what are we indebted for this favourable change to Natural or to Sexual Selection ? In other words, is the present perfected shape of the nose of any use to us, or is it purely ornamental 1 It appears that both these laws have acted in subtle combina- tion to improve our nasal organ. The nose is a sort of funnel for warming the air on its way to the sensitive lungs. In cold lati- tudes a long nose would therefore be an advantage favoured by Natural Selection ; and it is noteworthy that in general the flat- nosed peoples live in warm climes. There are exceptions, however, notably the Esquimaux, showing that this hypothesis does not entirely cover the facts. Let us examine, therefore, the second function of the nasal organ. The external nose is a sort of filter for keeping organic impurities out of the lungs. At the entrance of the nostrils there are a number of fine hairs which serve to keep out the dust. If any particles manage to get beyond this first fortress, they are liable to be arrested by the rows of more minute, microscopic hairs, or cilia, which line the mucous membrane and keep up a constant downward movement, by means of which dusty intruders are expelled and the air filtered. Esquimaux living in snowfields, and savages in the forests and grass-carpeted meadows, do not need these filters so much as we do in our dusty cities and along dusty country roads ; hence their noses have remained more like those of the arboreal apes, while ours have grown larger, so as to yield a larger surface of sifting hairs and cilia. When we think of the dusty American prairies and the African and Asian deserts, can we wonder, accordingly, that the American Indians, as well as the nomadic Arabs and Jews, have such immense noses? The t heory seems fanciful, if not grotesque \ but perhaps there is more in it than appears at first sight. Even if both these hypotheses should prove untenable, there is a third consideration which alone suffices to account for the de- velopment of the European nose. The nose has a most important musico-philological function. The language of savages often con- sists of only a few hundred words, while ours is so complicated THE NOSE 439 that it requires the co-operation of the vocal cords, and the cavities of the mouth and the nose to produce the countless modifications of speech and song which make us listen with so much pleasure to an eloquent speaker or a great singer. The subject is far too complicated with anatomical details to be fully explained here, and the reader must be referred to a full discussion (not from the evolutionary point of view, however) to Professor Georg Hermann von Meyer's elaborate treatise on The Organs of Speech, chap. iii. A few points, however, must be noted here. The nasal air- passage, " with its two narrow openings and intermediate greater width, possesses the general form -of a resonator, and there can be no doubt but that it has a corresponding influence, and that the tones with which the air passing through it vibrates are strength- ened by its resonance. The larger the nasal cavity the more powerful the resonance, and, consequently, the reinforcement ex- perienced by the tone. ... In consequence of the peculiarity of the walls of the nasal cavity, it appears that sounds uttered with the nasal resonance, particularly the nasal vowels, are fuller and more ample than the same sounds when strengthened by the resonance of the cavity of the mouth. The general impression of fulness and richness conveyed by the French language arises from its wealth in nasal vowels ; and it is for this reason that second- rate tragic actors like to give a nasal resonance to all the vowels in the pathetic speeches of their heroic parts." Further, it is of great importance to bear in mind " that the resonance of the nasal cavity also plays a part in the formation of non-nasal articulate sounds," appearing here as a mere reinforce- ment of the resonance of the cavity of the mouth, and free from the nasal twang. Indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, an infallible way to make our speech sound " nasal " is to keep the air out of the nose by clasping it tightly ; whereas if the nasal passage remains open the nasal twang is replaced by an agreeable reson- ance. What could more forcibly illustrate the importance of a well-developed nose ? Now there are several groups of muscles attached to the lower cartilages of the nose, parts which are imperfectly developed in apes and negroes. The constant exercise of these, during many generations, in the service of speech, in expressing several emotions, and in heavy breathing, suffice to account, on accepted physio- logical principles, for the gradual enlargement of the resonant tube which we call the nose. So much for Natural or Utilitarian Selection. But Sexual Selection or Romantic Love plays also a most important role in 440 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY the development of the nose. Thef quotations from Pascal and Schopenhauer made at the beginning of this chapter show that the efficacy of Sexual Selection was recognised long before Darwin had coined the term. As soon as a refined aesthetic taste appears, it rejects ugly forms of the nose. It rejects, for instance, open, visible nostrils, because they are a scavenging apparatus, unaesthetic to behold, though the savage, having no taste, is not thus offended. It gives the preference, in the second place, to the long nose, on musical grounds, because its owner has a more sonorous speech. It scorns the snub-nose because of its simian suggest! veness, and dislikes the excessively large and aquiline nose because it is an exaggerated form, which has passed beyond the delicate dimensions and subtle curves of beauty. GREEK AND HEBREW NOSES This checking of excessive development in the direction at first prescribed by the cosmic laws of beauty is indeed one of the main functions of Sexual Selection, without which our mouths would gradually become too small, our eyes and noses too large, our foreheads too high, our hair too scant, etc. Why, for instance, have the Jews such large noses compared with the Greeks 1 Evidently because Taste which, though com- monly associated with Romantic Love, may, in a highly aesthetic nation, act independently of it did not restrain the excessive development of the Jewish nose. The ancient Hebrews were not an aesthetic nation, like the Greeks. The finest works of sculp- ture ever created were made by the Greeks, while the Hebrews practically had no sculpture at all not even such works as were produced by Assyrians and Egyptians. And if any further proof were needed of the statement that the ancient Hebrews had little taste for beauty it might be found in the fact that Solomon, esteemed a great judge of feminine charms, compares his love's nose to "the tower of Lebanon, which looketh toward Damascus." The admission which I have just made that there may be a sort of aesthetic selection independent of real Romantic Love, does not militate against the general thesis of this book : that Love is the cause of Beauty, as Beauty is the cause of Love. For though the Greek artists knew what the shape and size of a beautiful nose should be, there are cogent reasons for believing that " Greek noses " were rare even among the ancient Greeks, thanks to their habit of sacrificing Romantic Love to the dragon chaperon. Hear what Ruskin has to say, in his Aratra Pentelici, about the Greek THE NOSE 441 features in general : " Will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of Greek art ; which I have just set before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful 1 Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren and Arethusa have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neither reaches even the average standard of pretty English girls. The Venus Urania suggests at first the idea of a very charming person, but you will find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And remember, these are chosen examples ; the best I can find of art current in Greece at the great time ; and even if I were to take the cele- brated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one of them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have already asserted in The Queen of the Air, has nothing notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentic type of great beauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in their symbolism of her will be con- vincingly proved to you by the coin represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of the best time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and finally and this you may accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty there is little evidence, even in their literature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy or early childhood." Nevertheless, it was to the contours of childhood that the Greek artists apparently went for their ideal of the divine nose. Greek beauty was youthful masculine beauty; and the "Greek nose " is one which not only is straight in itself, but forms a straight line with the forehead. In other words, there is no hollow at the root of the nose, where it meets the forehead. Now the absence of this cavity is characteristic of youth, and is owing to the imperfect development of the brain cavities. Later in life these cavities bulge forwards and produce the hollow, which, therefore, is an indication of superior cranial development and higher intellectual powers. Hence, as Professor Kollmann suggests, the object of the Greek artists in making the nose of their deities form a straight line with the forehead, was probably to give them the stamp of eternal youth ; which would thus appear to have been considered a more important attribute even than the expression of superior masculine intellectual power, which we associate with the hollow at the junction of nose %nd 442 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY forehead, and for which reason we do not admire it in women i' too pronounced. Nevertheless, even in women the cosmic laws of Beauty call for a gentle curve instead of a perfectly straight line ; but the more subtle the curve the greater is its beauty ; whereas the nose itself may be perfectly straight on its upper edge, because it forms a dividing line of the face into two symmetric halves, and by its contrasting straightness heightens the beauty of the sur- rounding facial curves. To sum up : the Greek's admiration of such features as arc naturally associated with youthful masculine beauty no doubt led him, in choosing a wife, to give the preference to similar features, including the " Greek " nose. Yet in the absence of opportunities for courtship, Sexual Selection could not operate very extensively ; hence it is probable that ungainly noses, though not so extravagant as among the Semitic races, were common enough in Greece as in Rome. In the Dark Ages hideous noses must have prevailed everywhere, as might be inferred from the facts that Romantic Love was unknown, and physical beauty looked on as a sinful possession, even if the painted and sculptured portraits did not prove it to our eyes in most instances. Regarding modern noses it may be said that the nose is such a prominent feature that more has been done for its improvement, through the agency of Love or Sexual Selection, than for the mouth or any other feature, excepting the eye. The average Englishman's nose of to-day, for example, is a tolerably shapely organ, and yet his ancestors were not exactly distinguished for nasal beauty, according to a close observer and student of por- traiture, Mr. G. A. Simcox, who remarks that " sometimes both Danes and Saxons had their fair proportions of snub-noses and pug-noses, but when they escaped that catastrophe the Danish nose tended to be a beak (rather a hawk's beak than an eagle's), while the Saxon nose tends to be a proboscis." Yet even at this date perfect noses are rare, and it is easy to see why. In the first place, it takes many generations to wipe out entirely the ugliness inherited from our unsesthetic ancestors ; secondly, Romantic Love, based on aesthetic admiration, is still very commonly ignored in the marriage market in favour of considerations of rank and wealth ; and thirdly, a lover, infatuated by his sweetheart's fascinating eyes, is apt to overlook her large nose or mouth till after the honeymoon. THE NOSE 443 FASHION AND COSMETIC SI7EGERT Inasmuch as the civilised races of Europe have so long been indifferent to their ugly noses, we can hardly wonder that bar- barians should not only disregard their nasal caricatures, but even exaggerate their grotesqueness deliberately. We have already seen how certain tribes habitually flatten their already flat noses. Moreover, " in all quarters of the world the septum, and more rarely the wings, of the nose are pierced , rings, sticks, feathers, and other ornaments being inserted into the holes." " In Persia one still finds the nose-ring through one side of a woman's nostril ; " and Professor Flower states that such rings are often worn by female servants who accompany English families returning from India. Captain Cook, in the account of his first voyage, says of the east-coast Australians : " Their principal ornament is the bone which they thrust through the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other. ... As this bone is as thick as a man's finger, and between five and six inches long, it reaches quite across the face, and so effectually stops up both the nostrils that they are forced to keep their mouths wide open for breath, and snuffle so when they attempt to speak that they are scarcely intelligible even to each other." This last sentence bears out our assertion regarding the philo- logical or conversational importance of the nose. And there is another lesson to be learned from these barbarian mutilations of the nose. If Huns, Tahitians, and Hottentots are able to make their noses as delightfully ugly as they please, why should not we utilise the plastic character of the nasal cartilages for beautifying ourselves ? Says a specialist : " Much can be done by an ingenious surgeon in restoration and improvement. A nose that is too flat can be raised, one with unequal apertures can be modified, one too thin can be expanded. Cosmetic surgery is rich in devices here, all of which are very available in children and young persons, less so when years have hardened and stiffened the cartilages and bones." Thus may Cupid employ a medical artist as an assistant in his efforts at improving the physical beauty of mankind. Needless to add that only a first-class surgeon should ever be allowed to meddle with the features. Cosmetic surgery has already reached such perfection that it can even make "a good, living, fleshly nose. It will transplant you one from the arm or the forehead, Eomau or Grecian, & 444 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY volonte ; it will graft it adroitly into the middle of the face, with two regular nostrils and a handsome bridge ; and it will almost challenge Nature herself to improve on the model " (Brinton and Napheys). Medical men are daily complaining in a more clamorous chorua that their profession is overcrowded. Why don't some of them in every city and town make a specialty of cosmetic surgery and hygienic advice? Why leave this remunerative field entirely in the hands of dangerous quacks who alone have enterprise and sense enough to advertise ? As illustrations of what may be done in this direction, two points may be noted. A French surgeon, Dr. Cid, noticed that persons who wear eyeglasses are apt to have long and thin noses. The thought occurred to him that this might be due to the com- pression of the arteries which carry blood to the nose, by the springs of the glasses ; so he constructed a special apparatus for compressing these arteries, and by attaching it to a young girl's large and fleshy nose, succeeded in reducing its size. Why should people worry themselves and frighten others with ugly noses when they can be so easily improved ? The second point is still more simple. It is important that the nose should occupy exactly the middle of the face, so as to secure bilateral symmetry. Yet Welcker, who made a number of accurate observations on skulls, plaster casts of the dead, as well as on the living countenance, noted that perfect symmetry is very rarely found. The obliqueness is sometimes at the root, some- times at the tip of the nose, and the cause of the deviation from a straight line is attributed to the habit most persons have of sleeping exclusively on one side, a practice which is also objec- tionable on other grounds. Mantegazza, however, suggests that, as he has found the deviation almost always toward the right side, it may be due to our habit of always taking our handkerchief in the right hand ; and the same view is held by Drs. Brinton and Napheys. So that we have here an additional argument in favour of ambidexterity. The New York Medical and Surgical Reporter for November 1, 1884, prints a lecture by Dr. J. B. Roberts on "The Cure of Crooked Noses by a New Method," which, as it is not conspicuous and hardly leaves a scar, may be commended to the attention of those afflicted with nasal deformities. The pin method, he says, Is applicable " even to those slight deformities whose chief annoy- ance is an aesthetic and cosmetic one. I leave the pins in position for about two weeks." THE NOSE 445 Red noses, if due to exposure, can be readily whitened by one of the methods to be discussed in the chapter on the complexion. If due to disease, they call for medical treatment ; if to intemper- ance or tight lacing, moral and aesthetic reform is the only possible cure. NOSE-BREATHING AND HEALTH Owing to its tendency toward unsightly redness and malforma- tion, the nose is very apt to be looked at from a comic point of view. Wits and caricaturists fix on it habitually for their nefarious purposes, as if it were a sort of facial clown. Indeed, ninety-nine persons in a hundred, if questioned regarding the functions of the nose, would know no answer but this : that it is sometimes ornamental, and is remotely connected with the " almost useless " sense of smell. We have seen, however, that besides being ornamental per se t the nose plays a most important aesthetic as well as utilitarian toU in giving sonority and variety to human speech; and that it is, further, of great use as an apparatus for warming, moistening, and filtering the air before it enters the lungs. Hence the im- portance of nose -breathing. Professor Reclam states that city people at the age of thirty usually have a whole gramme of cal- careous dust in their lungs, which they can never again get rid of, and which may at any time engender dangerous disease. This is one of the bad results of mouth-breathing, but by no means the only one. " The continued irritation from dry, cold, and unfiltered air upon the mucous membrane of the upper air tract soon results," says Dr. T. R. French, " in the establishment of catarrhal inflam- mation, the parts most affected being the tongue, pharynx, and larynx. . . . The habit of breathing through the mouth interferes with general nutrition. The subjects of this habit are usually anaemic, spare, and dyspeptic." That mouth-breathing at night leaves a disagreeable taste in the mouth and leads to snoring, thus interfering with refreshing sleep, has already been stated. It also injures the teeth and gums by exposing them all night to the dry air. And in the daytime it compels one to keep the mouth wide open, which imparts a rustic if not semi-iiiotic expression to the face. Moreover, think of the filthy dust you shallow in walking along the street with your mouth open. However, it is useless to advise people on such matters. An attempt is made for a day or two to reform, and then the whole matter is forgotten. These points are therefore noted here not with any missionary intentions, but merely for their scientific interest. 446 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY COSMETIC VALUE OF ODOURS We come now to the fourth important function of the nose the sense of smell. What has this to do with Personal Beauty? A great deal. In the first place, is not the flower-like fragrance of a lovely maiden a personal charm that has been sung of by a thousand poets, of all times ? " The fragrant bosom of Andromache and of Aphrodite finds a place in Homer's poetry," as Professor Bain remarks; and an eccentric German professor, Dr. Jager of Stuttgart, even wrote a book a few years ago on the Discovery of the Soul, in which he endeavoured to prove that the whole mystery of Love lies in the intoxicating personal perfumes. It is not with such fancies, however, that we are concerned here. It can be shown on purely scientific grounds that the cause of Personal Beauty would gain an immense advantage if people would train and refine their olfactory nerves systematically, as they do their eyes and ears. Unfortunately, Kant's absurd notion, expressed a century ago, that it is not worth while to cultivate the sense of smell, has been countenanced to the present day by the erroneous views held by the leading men of science, including Darwin, who wrote that " the sense of smell is of extremely slight service " to man. In an article on the " Gastronomic Value of Odours," which appeared in the Contemporary Review for November 1886, I pointed out that this under-valuation of the sense of smell i* explained by the fact that the sense of taste has hitherto been credited with all the countless flavours inherent in food, whereas, in fact, taste includes only four sensations of gastronomic value sweet, sour, bitter, and saline, all other " flavours " being in reality odours; as is proved by the fact that by clasping the nose we cannot distinguish between a lime and a lemon, different kinds if confectionery, of cheese, of nuts, of meat, etc. Now it is well known that most people show a most amazing tolerance to insipid, badly-cooked food, gulping it down as rapidly as possible ; and why? Simply because they do not know that in order to enjoy our meals we must eat slowly, and, while masti- cating, continually exhale the aroma-laden air through the nose, (mind, not inhale but exliale). This is what epicures do uncon- sciously; and look at the results ! No dyspepsia, no anaemia and sickly pallor, no walking skeletons ; and surely a slight embon- point is preferable to leanness from the point of view of Peraonal Beauty. THE NOSE 447 If this gastronomic secret were generally known, people would insist on having better cooked food ; dyspepsia, and leanness, and a thousand infirmities hostile to Beauty would disappear, and in course of time everybody would be as sleek and handsome and rosy-cheeked as a professional epicure. Nor is this the only way in which refinement of the sense of smell would benefit Personal Beauty. In consequence of the criminally superstitious dread of night air, the atmosphere in most bedrooms is as foul, compared to fresh air, as a street puddk 1 after a shower compared to a mountain brook. I have seen well- dressed persons in America and Italy take into their mouths the shamefully filthy and disease-soaked banknotes current in those countries ; and I have seen others shudder at this sight who, if their smell were as refined as their sight, would have shuddered equally at the foul air in their bedrooms, which diminishes their vital energy and working power by one-half. Architects, of course, will make no provision for proper ventilation as long as they are not compelled to do so. Why should they? They don't even care, in building a theatre, how many hundreds of people will some day be burnt in it, in consequence of their neglect of the simplest precautions for exit. One more important consideration. When you leave the city for a few weeks everybody will exclaim on your return, " Why, how well you look ! where have you been ? " But wherein lies this cosmetic magic of country air ? Not in its oxygen, for it has been proved, by accurate chemical tests, that in regard to the quantity of oxygen there is not the slightest difference between city and country air. What, then, is the secret ? I am convinced, from numerous experiments, that the value ot country air lies partly in its tonic fragrance, partly in the absence of depressing, foid odours. The great cosmetic and hygienic value of deep-breathing has been proved in the chapter on the Chest. Now the tonic value of fragrant meadow or forest air lies in this that it causes us involuntarily to breathe deeply, in order to drink in as many mouthfuls of. this luscious aerial Tokay as possible : whereas in the city the air is well, say unfragrant and uninviting ; and the constant fear of gulping down a pint of deadly sewer gas discourages deep breathing. The general pallor and nervousness of New York people have often been noted. The cause is obvious. New York has the dirtiest streets of any city in the world, except Constantinople and Canton ; and, moreover, it is surrounded by oil-refineries, which sometimes for days poison the whole city with the stifling fumes of petroleum, so that one 448 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAU1T hardly dares to breathe at all. No wonder that, by universal consent, there is more Fashion than Beauty in New York. And ao wonder that it is becoming more and more customary, for all who can afford it, to spend six to eight months of the year in the country. THE FOREHEAD BEAUTY AND BEAIN It has been stated already that, anatomically considered, the forehead is not a part of the face but of the cranium. From an artistic and popular point of view, however, the forehead is a part of the face, and a most important one. Modern taste fully endorses the ancient law of facial proportion, which makes the height of the forehead equal to the length of the nose, and to the distance from the tip of the nose to the tip of the chin. " Fore- heads villainous low" are objectionable, because associated with a vulgar unintellectual type of man, and too vividly suggestive of our simian ancestors. Foreheads abnormally high, though pre- ferable to the other extreme, displease, because they violate the law of facial proportion. We excuse them in men, because they are commonly expressive of intellectual power. But in women a high forehead is always objectionable, because it gives them a masculine appearance. Hence Romantic Love, which cannot exist without sexual contrasts, and which aims at making woman a perfect embodiment of the laws of Beauty, eliminates girls with too high foreheads. Yet at the command of Fashion thousands of maidens deliberately prevent men from falling in love with them by combing back their hair and giving their foreheads a masculine appearance, instead of coyly hiding it under a fringe or " bang." The fact that the feminine forehead, though more perpendicular than the masculine at the lower part, slants backward in its upper part in a more pronounced angle, is another reason why women should cover up this part of their forehead, which Sexual Selection has not yet succeeded in moulding into perfect shape. For the receding forehead is universally recognised as a sign of inferior culture. Everybody knows what is meant by Camper's facial angle, which is formed by a horizontal line drawn from the opening of the ear to the nasal spine, and a perpendicular line touching the most prominent parts of the forehead and front teeth. In adult Europeans Camper's angle rarely exceeds 85 degrees. The average in the Caucasian race is 80 ; in the yellow races 75 ; in the negro 60 to 70 ; in the gorilla 31. In antique Greek heads the THE FOREHEAD 449 angle is sometimes over 90 e . Says Camper : " If I cause the facial line to fall in front, I have an antique head ; if I incline it backwards, I have the head of a negro ; if I cause it to incline still further, I have the head of a monkey ; inclined still more, I have that of a dog, and, lastly, that of a goose." It appears, however, that this angle has more value as a test of beauty than as an absolute gauge of intellect. Generally speaking, there is no doubt a correlation between a bulging forehead and a superior intellect ; but individual exceptions to this rule are not infrequent. Nor is it at all difficult to account for them. For intellectual power does not depend so much on the size and shape of the skull as on the convoluted structure of the brain. Our brain consists of two kinds of matter the white, which is inside, and the gray, which covers it. The white substance is a complicated telegraphic network for conveying messages which are sent from the external gray cells. It has been proved, by compar- ing the brains of man and various animals, that the amount of intelligence depends not so much on the absolute size of the brain, as on the abundance of this gray matter. And, what is of extreme importance from a cosmetic point of view, the gray cells are increased in number, not by an addition to the absolute size or circumference of the brain, but by a system of furrows and convolu- tions which increase the surface lining of the brain without enlarg- ing its visible mass. For the benefit of those who have never seen a human brain, it may be very roughly compared to the convoluted kernel of an English walnut. Wherein lies the aesthetic significance of this mode of cerebral evolution 1 It prevents our head from becoming too large. Have you ever considered why infants appear so ugly to every one but their mothers ? One of the principal reasons is that their heads are twice as large in proportion to the rest of the body as those of adults. A child's stature is equal to four times the height of its head, an adult's to eight heads. If our heads continued to grow larger as our minds expanded, from generation to generation, all the proportions of human stature would ultimately be violated. But thanks to the peculiar mode of cerebral evolution just described, Romantic Love may continue to " select " in accordance with our present standards of beauty, without thereby favouring the survival of lower intellectual types. This view of the question also solves a difficulty which has staggered even such a leading evolutionist as Mr. Wallace, viz., the fact that the oldest prehistoric skulls that have been found "surpass the average of modern European skulls in capacity." 450 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY But if it is the easiest thing in the world to find an ordinary stupid man in our streets with a larger skull than that of many a clever brain-worker, why should we attach so much importance to those prehistoric skulls ? Had their brains been examined, they would doubtless have been found as scantily furrowed as those of a big- headed modern anarchist. FASHIONABLE DEFORMITY That the intellectual powers are to a large extent independent of the particular conformation of the skull is shown further by the circumstance that so many savage tribes have for centuries followed the fashion of artificially shaping their heads, without any apparent effect on their minds. Man's brain incites him, as Topinard remarks, "to the noblest deeds, as well as to the most ridiculous practices, such as cutting off the little finger, scorching the soles of the feet, extracting the front teeth, or deforming the head because others have done so before him" But of all silly Fashions hostile to Beauty, that of deforming the head has found the largest number of followers always excepting, of course, the modern Wasp- Waist Mania. Deformed skulls have been found in the Caucasus, the Crimea, Hungary, Silesia, France, Belgium, Switzerland, in Polynesia, in different parts of Asia, etc. " But the classic country in which these deformations are found is America," says Topinard. "M. Gosse has described sixteen species of artificial deformation, ten of which were in American skulls." "Sometimes the infant was fastened on a plank or a sort of cradle with leather straps ; or they applied pieces of clay, pressing them down with small boards on the forehead, the vertex, and the occiput. . . . Sometimes the head was kneaded with the hands or knees, or, the infant being laid on the back, the elbow was pressed on the forehead. Circular bands were sometimes employed to support the sides of the head." " Many American Indians," says Darwin, " are known to admire a head so extremely flattened as to appear to us idiotic. The natives of the north-western coast compress the head into a pointed cone;" while the inhabitants of Arakhan "admire a broad, smooth forehead, and in order to produce it, they fasten a plate of lead on the head of the new-born children." " The genuine Turkish skull is of the broad Tartar form," says Mr. Tylor, "while the nations of Greece and Asia Minor have oval skulls, which gives the reason why at Constantinople it THE FOREHEAD 451 became the fashion to mould the babies' skulls round, so that they grew up with the broad head of the conquering race. Relics of such barbarism linger on in the midst of civilisation, and not long ago a French physician surprised the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap, while in Brittany they pre- ferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to this day." " Failure properly to mould the cranium of her offspring," says Bancroft, " gives to the Chinook matron the reputation of a lazy and undutiful mother, and subjects the neglected children to the ridicule of their young companions, 50 despotic is fashion" Food for thought will also be found in these remarks by Darwin. Ethnologists believe, he says, " that the skull is modified by the kind of cradle in which infants sleep;" and Schaffhausen is con- vinced that " in certain trades, such as that of a shoemaker, where the head is habitually held forward, the forehead becomes more round and prominent." If this is true, then we have one reason, at least, why authors have such large foreheads. WBINKLES Wrinkles in the face are signs of advanced age, or disease, or habits of profound meditation, or frequent indulgence in frowning and grief. The wrinkles on a thinker's forehead do not arouse our disapproval, because they are often eloquent of genius, which excuses a slight sacrifice of the smoothness of skin that belongs to perfect Beauty. In women, however, we apply a pure and strict aesthetic standard, wherefore all wrinkles are regarded as regrettable inroads on Personal Beauty. Old women, of course, form an exception, because in them we no longer look for youthful Beauty, and are therefore gratified at the sight of wrinkles and folds as stereotyped forms of expression bespeaking a life rich in experiences, and associated with the veneration due to old age. Such wrinkles are characteristic but not beautiful ; and it may be stated, by the way, that Alison's whole book on Taste is vitiated by the ever- recurring argument in which he forgets that we may take a per- sonal and even an artistic interest in a thing which is characteristic without being beautiful. In youth, while the skin is firm and elastic, the wrinkles on the forehead or around the eyes, caused by a frown or smile, pass away, leaving no more trace than the ripples on the surface of a lake. With advancing age the skin becomes looser and less elastic, sc 452 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY that frequent repetition of those movements which produce a fold in the skin finally leaves an indelible mark on the furrowed coun- tenance. Woman's skin, being commonly better " padded " with fat than man's, is not so liable to wrinkles, provided attention is paid to the laws of health. Mantegazza suggests that the simplest antidote for wrinkles would be to distend the folded skin again by fattening up. The daily use of good soap and slight friction helps to ward off wrinkles by keeping the facial muscles toned up and the skin elastic. The (voluntary) mobility of the skin of the forehead, to which we owe our wrinkles, affords an interesting illustration of the way in which facial muscles, once "useful," have been modified for mere purposes of expression. " Many monkeys have, and frequently use, the power of largely moving their scalps up and down." This may be of use in shaking off leaves, flies, rain, etc. But man, with his covered head, needs no such protection ; hence most of us have lost the power of moving our scalps. A correspondent wrote to Darwin, however, of a youth who could pitch several heavy books from his head by the movement of the scalp alone; and many other similar cases are on record, attesting our simian relationship. But lower down on the forehead, our skin has universally retained the power of movement, as shown in frowning and the expression of various emotions. At first sight it is somewhat difficult to understand why medi- tation should wrinkle the skin ; but Darwin explains it by con- cluding that frowning (which, oft repeated, results in wrinkles) " is not the expression of simple reflection, however profound, or of attention, however close, but of something difficult or displeasing encountered in a train of thought or in action. Deep reflection can, however, seldom be long carried on without some difficulty, so that it will generally be accompanied by a frown." Fashionable women sometimes endeavour (unsuccessfully) to distend the skin and remove wrinkles by pasting court-plaster on certain spots in the face. But the repulsive fashion of wearing patches of court-plaster all over the face as an ornament (" beauty- spots ! "), doubtless had its origin in the desire of some aristocratic dame to conceal pimples or other skin blemishes. At one time women even submitted to the fashion of pasting on the face and bosom paper flies, fleas, and other loathsome creatures. The African monkeys who held an indignation meeting when they first heard of Darwin's theory of the descent of man, had pro- bably just been reading a history of human Fashions, THE COMPLEXION 451 THE COMPLEXION WHITE VERSUS BLACK w The charm of colour, especially in the intricate infinities of human flesh, is so mysterious and fascinating, that some almost measure a painter's merit by his success in dealing with it," says Hegel ; and again : " Man is the only animal that has flesh in its display of the infinities of colour." " No loveliness of colour, even of the humming birds or the birds of Paradise, is living, is glowing with its own life, but shines with the lustre of light reflected, and its charm is from without and not from within" (^Esthetics, Kedney's edition). For a metaphysician, trained to scornfully ignore facts, the difference between man and animals is in these sentences pointed out with commendable insight. Regard for scientific accuracy, it is true, compels us to qualify Hegel's generalisation, for not only have monkeys bare coloured patches in their faces, and elsewhere, which are subject to changes, but the plumage of birds, too, is dulled by ill-health and brightened by health, reaching its greatest brilliancy in the season of Courtship, thus showing a connection between internal states and external appearances. Nevertheless, these correspondences in animals are transient and crude ; and man is the only being whose nude skin is sufficiently delicate and trans- parent to indicate the minute changes in the blood's circulation brought about by various phases of pleasure and pain. To understand the exact nature of these tints of the complexion, which are so greatly admired though different nations, as usual, have different standards of "taste" it is necessary to bear in mind a few simple facts of microscopic anatomy. To put the matter graphically, it may be said that our body wears two tight-fitting physiological coats, called the epidermis or overskin, and the cutis or underskin. The overskin is not simple, but consists of an outside layer of horny cells, such as are removed by the razor on shaving, and an inside mucous layer, as seen on the lips, which have no horny covering. The underskin contains nerves, fat cells, hairbulbs, and numer- ous blood-vessels, some as fine as a hair, all embedded in a soft, elastic network of connective tissue. The overskin has none of these blood-vessels ; but as it is very delicate and transparent, it allows the colour of the blood to be 454 ROMANTIC LOYE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY seen as through a veil. In the extremely blond races of the North nothing but the blood can be seen through this veil ; but in the coloured races the lower or mucous layer of the overskin contains a number of black, brown, or yellowish pigment cells. The colours of these cells blend with that of the blood, thus producing, accord- ing to their number and depth of coloration, the brunette, black, yellow, or red complexion. The palm of the negro's hand is whiter than the rest of his body, because there the horny epidermis is so thick that the black pigmentary matter cannot be seen through it. And the reason why every negro is born to blush un- seen is because the pigmentary matter in his skin is so deep and abundant that it neutralises the colour of the blood. Now, why do the races of various countries differ so greatly in the colour of their skin 1 This is the most vexed and difficult question in anthropology, on which there are almost as many opinions as writers. The oldest and most obvious theory is that the sun is respon- sible for dark complexions. Are not those parts of our body which are constantly exposed to sunlight the hands, face, and neck darker than the rest of the body 1 and does not this colour become darker still if we spend a few weeks in the country or make a trip across the Atlantic 1 Do we not find in Europe, as we pass from the sunny South to the cloudy North, that com- plexion, hair, and eyes grow gradually lighter ? And not only are the Spaniards and Italians darker than the Germans, but the South Germans are darker than the North Germans, and the Swedes and Norwegians lighter still than the Prussians. The same holds true not only of South America as compared to North America, but of the southern United States compared to the northern. It also holds true of the East, where, as Waitz tells us, " The Chinese from Peking to Canton show every shade from a light to a dark-copper colour, while in the Arabians, from the desert down to Yemen, we find every gradation from olive colour to black." Moreover, aristocratic ladies in Japan and China are almost or quite white, whereas the labouring classes, as with us, are of a darker tint. These and numerous similar facts, taken in connection with the circumstance that the blackest of all races lives in the hottest con- tinent, and that Jews may be found of all colours according to the country they inhabit, lead almost irresistibly to the conclusion that it is the sun who paints the complexion dark. Nevertheless there are numerous and striking exceptions to the rule that the wanner the climate the darker the complexion. To THE COMPLEXION 451 obviate this difficulty, Heusinger in 1829, Jarrold in 1838, and others after them, have endeavoured to show that the moisture and altitude, as well as the direct action of the sun, had to be taken into consideration. But since "D'Orbigny in South America, and Livingstone in Africa, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions with respect to dampness and dryness," Darwin excogitated the theory (which, he subsequently found, had already been advanced in 1813 by Dr. Wells), that inasmuch as "the colour of the skin and hair is sometimes correlated in a surprising manner with a complete immunity from the action of certain vegetable poisons, and from the attacks of parasites . . . negroes and other dark races might have acquired their dark tints by the darker individuals escaping from the deadly influence of the miasma of their native countries, during a long series of generations." The testimony on this point being, however, conflicting and un- satisfactory, Darwin gave up this notion too, and fell back on the theory that differences in complexion are due to differences in taste, and were created through the agency of Sexual Selection. " We know," he says, "from the many facts already given that the colour of the skin is regarded by the men of all races as a highly important element in their beauty ; so that it is a character which would be likely to have been modified through selection, as has occurred in innumerable instances with the lower animals. It seems at first sight a monstrous supposition that the jet-blackness of the negro should have been gained through sexual selection; but this view is supported by various analogies, and we know that negroes admire their own colour." Doubtless there is some truth in Darwin's view, but it does not cover the whole ground. Natural as well as Sexual Selection has been instrumental in producing the diverse colours of various races. Hitherto the trouble has been that no one could understand how a black skin could be useful to an African negro. It ought to make him feel uncomfortably hot for is it not well known that black absorbs heat more than any other colour? and do we not feel warmer in summer if we wear black than if we wear white clothes ? No doubt whatever. But it so happens that the skin is not made of dead wool or felt. It contains, among various other ingenious arrangements, a vast number of minute holes or pores, through which, when we are very warm, the perspiration leaks, and, in changing into vapour, absorbs the body's heat and leaves it cool, or even cold. Now, in a negro's skin these pores are both larger and more numerous than in ours, which partly accounts for 456 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY his indifference to heat, and the fact that his temperature is lower than ours. Yet it does not solve the problem in hand ; for there is no visible reason why Natural Selection should not succeed in enlarging the number and size of the pores in a white skin as easily as in a black one. A year or two ago Surgeon-Major Alcock sent a communication to Nature in which, as I believe, he for the first time suggested the true reason why tropical man is black, and why his blackness is useful to him. He pointed out that since the pigment-cells in the negro's skin are placed in front of the nerve terminations, they serve to lessen the intensity of the nerve vibrations that would be caused in a naked human body by exposure to a tropical sun ; so that the pigment plays the same part as a piece of smoked glass held between the sun and the eyes. This ingenious theory at once explains some curious and appa- rently anomalous observations communicated to Nature by Mr. Ralph Abercrombie from Darjeeling. They are that " In Morocco, and all along the north of Africa, the inhabitants blacken them- selves round the eyes to avert ophthalmia from the glare off hot sand ;" that " In Fiji the natives, who are in the habit of painting their faces with red and white stripes as an ornament, invariably blacken them when they go out fishing on the reef in the full glare of the sun ; " and that " In the Sikkim hills the natives blacken themselves round the eyes with charcoal to palliate the glare of a tropical sun on newly-fallen snow." How, on the other hand, are we to account for the white com- plexion of northern races'? It is well known that there is a tendency among arctic animals to become white. This, in many cases, can be accounted for by the advantage white beasts of prey, as well as their victims, thus gain in escaping detection. But it is probable that another agency comes into play, first suggested by Craven in 1846, and thus summarised by a writer in Nature, 2d April 1885 : " It is well known that white, as the worst absorber, is also the worst radiator of all forms of radiant energy, so that warm-blooded creatures thus clad would be better enabled to with- stand the severity of an arctic climate the loss of heat by radiation might, in fact, be expected to be less rapid than if the hairs or feathers were of a darker colour." This argument, which may be applied to man as well as to animals, is greatly strengthened by a circumstance which at first appears to oppose it the fact, namely, that insects in northern regions, instead of being light-coloured, show a tendency toward blackness. But this apparent anomaly is easily explained. Insects, THE COMPLEXION 457 being cold-blooded, cannot lose any bodily heat through radiation ; whereas a black surface, by absorbing as much solar heat as possible while it lasts, adds to their comfort and vitality. The question now arises, Which was the original colour of the human race, white or black ] This question, too, we are enabled to answer with the aid of a principle of evolution which, so far, has stood every test, the principle that the child's development is an epitome of the evolution of his race. Before birth there is no colouring matter at all in the skin of a negro child. " In a new- born child the colour is light gray, and in the northern parts of the negro countries the completely dark colour is not attained till towards the third year," says Waitz and again, in speaking of Tahiti : " The children are here (as everywhere in Polynesia) white at birth, and only gradually assume their darker colour under the influence of sunlight; covered portions of their bodies remain lighter, and since women wear more clothes than men, and dwell more in the shade, they too are often of so light a colour that they have red cheeks and blush visibly." So we are entitled to infer that primitive man was originally white, or whitish. As he moved south, Natural Selection made him darker and darker by continually favouring the survival of those individuals whose colour owing to the spontaneous variation found throughout Nature was of a dark shade, and therefore better able to dull the ardour of the sun's rays. In the north, on the contrary, a light complexion was favoured for its quality of retaining the body's heat. The yellow and red varieties need not be specially considered, for it has been shown that the different tints of the iris are merely due to the greater or less quantity of the same pigmentary matter ; and as the colouring matter of the complexion and the hair is similar to that of the eye, it is probable that the same holds true of different hues of the skin ; so that yellowish, brown, and reddish tints may be looked upon as mere intermediate stages between white and black. A trace of pigment, indeed, is found even in our skins ; and I believe that the reason why we become brown on exposure to the sun is that the skin, when thus exposed and irritated, secretes a larger amount of this colouring matter, to serve, like a dimly-smoked glass, as a protection against scorching rays. From all these considerations we may safely infer that the par- ticular hue of man's skin in each climate is useful to him, and not merely an ornamental product of " taste," as Darwin believed. Yet to some extent Sexual Selection, doubtless, does come into play in moat cases. At a low stage of culture each race likes its special 458 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY characteristics in an exaggerated form, a trait which would lead the more vigorous men to persistently select the darkest girls as wives, and thus cause their gradual predominance over the others : while the men, too, would, of course, inherit a darker tint from their mothers. But a still more important consideration is this, that, as Dr. Topinard points out, " Dark colour in the negro is a sign of health" naturally, since the darker the dermal pigment, the better are the nerves of temperature protected against the ener- vating solar rays. Concerning the Polynesians, too, Ellis (cited by Waitz) " notes expressly that a dark colour was more admired and desired because it was looked upon as a sign of vigour." These facts yield us a most profound insight into the methods of amorous selection. The erotic instinct, whose duty is the pre- servation of the species, is above all things attracted by Health, because without Health the species must languish and die out. In a climate where under the circumstances in which negroes live a light complexion is incompatible with Health, it is bound to be eliminated. Fortunately, the negro's taste is not sufficiently refined to make him feel the aesthetic inferiority of the ebony complexion imposed on him by his climate. Wherein this aesthetic inferiority consists is graphically pointed out in these words of Figuier : "The colour of the skin takes away all charm from the negro's countenance. What renders the European's face pleasing is that each of its features exhibits a particular shade. The cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin of the white have each a different tinge. On an African visage, on the contrary, all is black, even the eyebrows, as inky as the rest, are merged in the general colour ; scarcely another shade is perceptible, except at the line where the lips join each other." Nor is this all. Not only do we look in vain, in the monoto- nous blackness of the negro's face, for those varied tints which adorn a white maiden's face, borrowing one another's charms by insensible gradations, but also for those subtle emotional changes which, even if they existed in the negro's mind, could not paint themselves so delicately on his opaque countenance, betraying every acceleration or retardation in the heart's beats, indicating every nuance of hope and despair, of pleasure or anguish. In our own latitude, luckily, Natural Selection favours, in the manner indicated, the survival of the translucent white complexion. And what Natural Selection leaves undone, Sexual Selection com- pletes. Romantic Love is the great awakener of the sense of Beauty, and in proportion as Love is developed and unimpeded in its action, does the complexion become more beautiful and more THE COMPLEXION 459 appreciated. Savages, blind to the delicate tints of a transparent skin, daub themselves all over with mixtures of grease and paint. The women of ancient Greece had taste enough to feel the ugliness of the pallor caused by being constantly chaperoned and locked up, but not enough to know that no artificial paint can ever replace the natural colour of health. Hence, as Becker tells us, "painting was almost universal among Grecian women." Perhaps they did not use any rouge at home, but it " was resumed when they were going out, or wished to be specially attractive." The men, appa- rently, had better taste, for we read that " Ischomachos counselled his young wife to take exercise, that she might do without rouge, which she was accustomed constantly to use." Coming to more recent times, we find men still protesting in vain against the feminine fashion of bedaubing the face with vulgar paint. More than two centuries ago La Bruyere informed his countrywomen pointedly that " If it is the men they desire to please, if it is for them that they paint and stain themselves, I have col- lected their opinions, and I assure them, in the name of all or most men, that the white and red paint renders them frightful and disgusting; that the red alone makes them appear old and artifi- cial ; that men hate as much to see them with cherry in their faces, as with false teeth in their mouth and lumps of wax in the jaws." It is needless to say that women who paint their faces put themselves on a level with savages ; for they show thereby that they prefer hideous opaque daubs to the charm of translucent facial tints. Masculine protestation, combined with masculine amorous preference for pure complexions, has at last succeeded in banishing paint from the boudoir of the most refined ladies ; and this, com- bined with compulsory vaccination against smallpox, accounts for the increasing number of good complexions in the world. But, the important question now confronts us, Is there no limit to the evolution of whiteness of complexion ? Will Sexual Selec- tion continue to favour the lighter shades until the hyperbolic "milk and blood" complexion will have been universally realised? An emphatic No " is the answer. An exaggerated white is as objectionable as black, more so> in fact, because, whereas the deepest black indicates good health, Extreme whiteness suggests the pallor of ill-health, and will therefore always displease Cupid, the supreme judge of Personal Beauty. Moreover, iu a very white face the red cheek suggests the confusing blush or the hectic flush rather than the subtle tints of health and normal emotion. And again, the Scandinavian rose-and-lily complexion is inferior to the delicate and sKghtly*v?iipd tint of the Spnni-h brunette, 40 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY the latter suggests the mellowing action of the sun's rays, which promises more permanence of beauty. Hence it is that in the marriage market a decided preference is shown for the brunette type, as we shall see in the chapter on Blondes and Brunettes. COSMETIC HINTS We are now in a position to understand the extreme importance of the complexion from an amorous point of view, and to see why the care of the complexion has almost monopolised the attention of those desiring to improve their personal appearance, as shown by the fact that the word " cosmetic," in common parlance, refers to the care of the skin alone. Books containing recipes for skin lotions, ointments, and powders are so numerous, that it is not worth while to devote much space to the matter here. As a rule, the best advice to those about to use cosmetics is Don't. Every man whose admira- tion is worth having will infinitely prefer a freckled, or even a pallid or smallpox-marked, face to one showing traces of powder or greasy ointments, or lifeless, cadaverous enamel, opaque as ebony blackness. If a woman's skin is so morbidly sensitive as to be injured by ordinary water and good soap, it is a sign of ill-health which calls for residence in the country and the mellowing rays of the sun. Where this is unattainable, the water may be medicated by the addition of a slice of lemon, cucumber, or horse-radish, to all of which magic effects are often attributed. The black spots on the sides of the nose may be removed in a few weeks by the daily application (with friction) of lemon juice. For pimples and barber's itch a camphor and sulphur ointment, which may be obtained of any chemist, is the simplest remedy. For a shiny, polished com- plexion, and excessive redness of the nose, cheeks, and knuckles, the following mixture is recommended by a good authority : Powdered borax, one half ounce; pure glycerine, one ounce; camphor-water, one quart. Borax, indeed, is as indispensable a toilet article as soap or a nail-brush. After washing the face, ex- posure to the raw air should always be avoided for ten or fifteen minutes. " A certain amount of friction applied to the face daily will do much," says Dr. Bulkley, "to keep the pores of the sebaceous glands open ; and, by stimulating the face, to prevent the forma- tion of the black specks and red spots so common in young people, I generally direct that the face be rubbed to a degree short of THE COMPLEXION 461 discomfort, and that the towel be not too rough." Slight friction also helps to ward off wrinkles. Two or three weekly baths hot in winter, cold in summer are absolutely necessary for those who wish to keep their skin in a healthy condition ; and no elixir of youth and beauty could pro- duce such a sparkling eye and glow of rosy health as a daily morning sponge bath, followed by friction care being taken, in a cold room, to expose only one part of the body at a time. The importance of keeping open the pores of the skin by bathing is seen by the fact that if a man were painted with varnish he would suffocate in a few hours ; for the skin is a sort of external lung, aiding its internal colleague in removing effete products, dissolved in the perspiration, from the system. The debris and oily matter brought to the surface of the skin and deposited there by the perspiration cannot be completely removed without soap. Unfortunately, this article has done more to ruin complexions than almost any other cause, except smallpox and the superstitious dread of sunshine. Many people have a peculiar mania for economising in soap. If they can buy a piece of soap for a farthing, they consider themselves wonderfully clever, regardless of the fact that it may not only ruin their complexion, but produce a repulsive skin disease which it will cost much gold to cure. Do they ever realise that these soaps, which they thus smear over the most delicate parts of their body every day, are made of putrid carcasses of animals, rancid fat, and corrosive alkalies 1 Has no one ever told them that if a soap is both cheap and highly perfumed it is certain to be of vile composition, and injurious to the skin ? After washing yourself wait a moment till the soap's artificial odour has disappeared, and then smell your hands. That vile rancid odour which remains if you knew its source, you would immediately run for a Turkish bath to wash off the very epidermis to which that odour has adhered. What has mined so many complexions is not soap itself, but bad soap. A famous specialist, Dr. Bulkley, says that " there is oo intrinsic reason why soap should not be applied to the face, although there is a very common impression among the profession, as well as the laity, that it should not be used there. . . . The fuct is, that many cases of eruptions upon the face are largely due u> the fact that soap has not been used on that part ; and it is tlso true that, if properly employed, and if the soap is good, it is iot only harmless, but beneficial to the skin of the face, as to every >ther part of the body." *' A word may be added in reference to the so-called * medicated 462 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY soaps/ whose number and variety are legion, each claiming virtues far excelling all others previously produced. . . Now all or most of this attempt to 'medicate' soap is a perfect farce, a delusion, and a snare to entrap the unwary and uneducated. . . . Carboli: soap is useless and may be dangerous, because the carbolic acid may possibly become the blind beneath which a cheap, poor soap is used ; for in all these advertised and patented nostrums the temptation is great to employ inferior articles that the pecuniary gain may be greater. The small amount of carbolic acid incorpor- ated in the soap cannot act as an efficient disinfectant." FRECKLES AND SUNSHINB Soap is not the only cosmetic that has been tabooed in the face because of illogical reasoning. There is a much more potent beautifying influence viz., the mellowing rays of the sun of which the face has long been deprived, chiefly on account of an unscientific prejudice that the sun is responsible for freckles. In his famous work on skin diseases Professor Hebra of Vienna, the greatest modern authority in his specialty, has completely dis- proved this almost universally accepted theory. The matter is of such extreme importance to Health and Beauty that his remarks must be quoted at length : "It is a fact that lentigo (freckles) neither appears in the newly-born nor in children under the age of 6-8 years, whether they run about the whole day in the open air and exposed to the bronzing influence of the sun, or whether they remain confined to the darkest room ; it is therefore certain that neither light nor air nor warmth produces such spots in children. . . . " If we examine the skin of an individual who is said to be affected with the so-called freckles only in the summer, at other seasons of the year with sufficient closeness in a good light, and with the skin put on the stretch by the finger, we shall detect the same spots, of the same size but of somewhat lighter colour than in summer. In further illustration of what has just been said, I will mention that I have repeatedly had the opportunity of seeing lentigines on parts of the body that, as a rule, are never exposed to the influence of the light and sun. . . . "A priori, it is difficult to understand how ephelides can originate from the influence of sun and light in the singular form of disseminated spots, since these influences act not only on single points, but uniformly over the whole surface of the skin of the face, hands, etc. The pigmentary changes must appear, therefore, in THE COMPLEXION 463 the form of patches, not of points. Moreover, it is known to every one that, if the skin of the face be directly exposed, even for only a short time, to a rough wind or to intense heat, a tolerably dark bronzing appears, which invades the affected parts uniformly, and not in the form 01 disseminated, so-called summer-spots (freckles). It was, therefore, only faulty observation on the part of our fore- fathers which induced them to attribute the ephelides to the influence of light and sun." But the amount of mischief done by this " faulty observation of our forefathers" is incalculable. To it we owe the universal femi- nine horror of sunshine, without which it is as impossible for their complexion to have a healthy, love-inspiring aspect, as it is for a plant grown in a cellar to have a healthy green colour. How many women are there who preserve their youthful beauty after twenty-five the age when they ought to be in full bloom 1 They owe this early decay partly to their indolence, mental and physical, partly to their habit of shutting out every ray of sunlight from their faces as if it were a rank poison instead of the source of all Health and Beauty. If young ladies would daily exercise their muscles in fresh air and sunshine, they would not need veils to make themselves look younger. Veils may be useful against very rough wind, but otherwise they should be avoided, because they injure the eyesight. Parasols are a necessity on very hot summer afternoons, but " the rest of the year the complexion needs all the sun it can get." Were any further argument needed to convince us that the sun has been falsely accused of creating freckles, it would be found in the fact that southern brunette races, though constantly exposed to the sun, are much less liable to them than the yellow and especially the red-haired individuals of the North. Professor Hebra regards freckles as "a freak of Nature rather than as a veritable disease," and thinks they are " analogous to the piebald appearances met with in the lower animals." As has just been noted, they exist in winter as well as in summer. All that the summer heat does is to make them visible by making the skin more transparent. As the heat itself causes them to appear any way, it is useless to taboo the direct sunlight as their source. Inasmuch as freckles appear chiefly among northern races, whose skin has been excessively bleached and weakened in its action by constant indoor life, it seems probable, notwithstanding Dr. Hebra's opinion, that they are the result of an unhealthy, abnormal action of the pigment-secreting apparatus which exists even in the white skin. If this be so, then proper care of the 46,' ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY skin continued for several generations would obliterate them. The reason why country folks are more liable to freckles than their city cousins would then be referable, not to the greater amount of sunlight in the country, but to the rarity of bath-tubs, good soap, and friction-towels. My own observation leads me to believe that freckles are rarer in England than on the continent, and the English are proverbially enamoured of the bath-tub and open-air exercise. For those who, without any fault of their own, have inherited freckles from their parents, there is this consoling reflection that these blemishes reside in a very superficial layer of the skin, and can therefore be removed. Several methods are known ; but as no one should ever use them without medical assistance, they need not be described here (see Hebra's Treatise, vol. iii.) Any one who wishes to temporarily conceal skin-blemishes may find this citation from Hebra of use : " Perfumers and apothecaries have prepared from time immemorial cosmetics whose chief constituent is talcum venetum, or pulvis aluminis plumosi (Federweiss), which, when rubbed in, in the form of a paste, with water and alcohol, or a salve with lard, or quite dry, as a powder, gives to the skin an agreeable white colour, and does not injure it in the least, even if the use of the cosmetic be continued throughout life." It is probable that electricity will play a grand rdle in future as an agent for removing superfluous hairs, freckles, moles, port- wine marks, etc. Much has already been done in this direction, and the only danger is in falling into the hands of an unscrupulous quack. In vol. iii. No. 4 of the Journal of Cutaneous and Venereal Diseases^ Dr. Hardaway has an interesting article on this subject. THE EYES In one of the Platonic dialogues Sokrates points out the rela- tivity of standards of Beauty. " Is not," he asks in effect, " the most beautiful ape ugly compared to a maiden 1 and is not the maiden, in turn, inferior in beauty to a goddess 1 " Eegarding most of the human features it may be conceded that Sokrates is right in his second question. To find a human fore- head, nose, or mouth that could not be improved in some respect, is perhaps impossible. But one feature must be excepted. There are human eyes which no artist with a goddess for a model could make more divine. And of these glorious orbs there are so many, in every country, that one cannot help concluding that Sehopeu- THE EYES 465 hauer made a great mistake in placing the face, with the eyes, so low down in his list of love-inspiring human qualities. On the contrary, I am convinced that no feminine charm so frequently and so fatally fascinates men as lovely eyes, and that it is for this reason that Sexual Selection has done more to perfect the eyes than any other part of the body. When Petruchio says of Katharina that " she looks as clear &s . morning roses newly washed with dew," he compliments her com- plexion ; but when the Persian poet compares " a violet sparkling with dew " to " the blue eyes of a beautiful girl in tears," the compliment is to the violet. A woman's eye is the most beautiful object in the universe ; and what made it so is man's Romantic Love. Putting poetry aside, we must now consider a few scientific facts and correct a few misconceptions regarding the eye, its colour, lustre, form, and expression. COLOUR To say of any one that he has gray, blue, brown, or black eyes, is vague and incorrect from a strictly scientific point of view, inasmuch as there are no really gray or black eyes, and, as a matter of fact, every eye, if closely examined, shows at least five or six different colours. There is, first, the tough sclerotic coat or white of the eye, which covers the greater part of the eyeball, and is not trans- parent, except in front where the coloured iris (or rainbow mem- brane) is seen through it. This central transparent portion of the sclerotic coat is called the cornea, and is slightly raised above the general surface of the eyeball, like the middle portion of some watch-glasses. The white of the eye is sometimes slightly tinged with blue or yellow, and sometimes netted with inflamed blood-vessels. All these deviations are aesthetically inferior to the pure white of the healthy European, because suggestive of disease, and conflicting with the general cosmic standards of beauty. The bluish tint is a sign of consumption or scrofulous disorders, being caused by a diminution of the pigmentary matter in the choroid coat which lines the inside of the sclerotic. The yellowish tint, in the European, is indicative of jaundice, dyspepsia, or premature de- generacy of the white of the eye. It is normal, on the other hand, in the healthy negro; but if a negro should claim that, inasmuch as a yellowish sclerotic is to him not suggestive of 466 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY disease, he has as much right to consider it beautiful as we om white sclerotic, the simple retort would be, that we are guided in our aesthetic judgment by positive as well as negative tests. Disease is the negative test; the positive lies in the fact that in inanimate objects, where disease is altogether out of the question as in ivory ornaments (which no one associates with an elephant's tusk) we also invariably prefer a pure snowy white to a muddy un- certain yellow. It is these two tests in combination which have guided Sexual Selection in its efforts to eliminate all but the pure white sclerotic, a tint which, moreover, throws into brighter relief the enchanting hues of the " sunbeamed " iris. More objectionable still than a yellowish or bluish sclerotic is a bloodshot eye, not only because the inflamed blood-vessels which swell and flood the white surface of the eye deface the marble purity of the sclerotic (in a manner not in the least analogous to marble " veins "), but because the red, watery blear eye generally indicates the ravages of intemperance or unrestrained passions. However, a bloodshot eye may be the result of mere overwork, or reading in a flickering light, or lack of sleep; hence it is not always safe to allow the disagreeable aesthetic impression given by inflamed eyes to prognosticate moral obliquity. But, after all, the intimate connection between aesthetic and moral judgments is in this case based on a correct, subtle instinct ; for is not a man who ruins the health and beauty of his eyes by intemperance in drink or night-work sinning against himself? If attempts at suicide are punished by law, why should not minor offences against one's Health at least be looked upon with moral disapproval ? If this sentiment could be made universal, there would be fifty per cent more Beauty in the world after a single generation. In the centre of the white sclerotic is the membrane which gives the eyes their characteristic variations of colour, the iris or rainbow curtain. If we look at an eye from a distance of a few paces, it seems to have some one definite colour, as brown or blue. But on closer examination we see that there are always several hues in each iris. The colour of the iris is due to the presence of small pigment granules in its interior layer. These granules are always brown, in blue and gray as well as in brown eyes ; and the greater their number and thickness, the darker is the colour of the iris. Blue eyes are caused by the presence, in front of the pigment-layer, of a thin, almost colourless membrane, which absorbs all the rays of light except the blue, which it reflects, and thus causes the translucent iris to appear of that colour. The Instructions de la Socie'td d'Anthropologie, says Dr THE EYES 487 Topinard, "recognise four shades of colour, brown, green, blue, and gray; each having five tones the very dark, the dark, the intermediate, the light, and the very light The expression "brown" does not mean pure brown; it is rather a reddish, a yellowish, or a greenish brown, corresponding with the chestnut or auburn colour, the hazel and the sandy, made use of by the English. The gray, too, is not pure ; it is, strictly speaking, a violet more or less mixed with black and white." " The negro, in spite of his name, is not black but deep brown," as Mr. Tylor remarks ; and what is true of his complexion is also true of his eyes ; " what are popularly called black eyes are far from having the iris really black like the pupil ; eyes described as black are commonly of the deepest shades of brown or violet." The pupil, however, is always jetblack, not only in negroes, but in all races. For the pupil is simply a round opening in the centre of the iris which allows us to see clear through the lens and watery substance of the eyeball to the black pigment which lines its inside surface. The iris, in truth, is nothing but a muscular curtain for regulating the size of the pupil, and thus determining how much light shall be admitted into the interior of the eye. When the light is bright and glaring, a little of it suffices for vision, hence the iris relaxes its fibres and the pupil becomes smaller; whereas, in twilight and moonlight, the eye needs all the light it can catch, so the muscles of the iris-curtain contract and enlarge the pupil-window. This mechanism of the iris in diminishing or enlarging the pupil can be neatly observed by looking into a mirror placed on one side of a window. If the hand is put up in such a way as to screen the eye from the light, the pupil will be seen to enlarge ; and if the hand is then suddenly taken away, it will immediately return to its smaller size. For the muscles of the iris have the power, denied to other unstriped or involuntary muscles, of acting quite rapidly. Thus we find in the eyeball three distinct zones of colour the white of the eye, sometimes slightly tinted blue, yellow, or red ; the iris, which has various shades of brown, green, blue, and gray, commonly two or three in each eye ; and the central black pupil. Add to this the flesh-colour of the eyelid and surrounding parts, and the light or dark lashes and eyebrows, and we see that the eye in itself is a perfect colour-symphony. Can we account for the existence of all these colours ? The easiest thing in the world, with the aid of the principles of Natural and Sexual Selection. There are reasons for believing that the sense of sight is merely a higher development from the sense of 468 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY temperature, adapted to vibrations so rapid that the nerves of temperature can no longer distinguish them. In its simplest form, among the lowest animals, the sense of sight is represented by a mere pigment spot. And in the highest form of sight, after the development of the various parts of our complicated eye, we still find this pigment as one of the most essential conditions of vision. Its function, however, is not the same as that of the pig- ment in the human skin. There it is interposed between the sun and the underskin, in order to protect the nerves of temperature. The optic nerve needs no such protection ; for the heat-rays of the sun cannot but be cooled on passing through the membranes, the lens, and the watery substance in the eye, before reaching the optic .nerve, spread out on the retina. Consequently the eye- pigment, instead of being placed in front of the nerves, is put behind them ; and their function is to absorb any excess of light that enters the eye. Were the membrane which contains this pigment whitish, all the light would be reflected back, and create such a glare and confusion that no object could be seen distinctly. This view regarding the function of the pigment is strikingly supported by the anomalous case of Albinos. "The pink of their eyes (as of white rabbits) is caused by the absence of the black pigment," says Mr. Tylor, " so that light passing out through the iris and pupil is tinged red from the blood-vessels at the back ; thus their eyes may be seen to blush with the rest of the face." Bearing these facts in mind, it is obvious why it is an advan- tage in a sunny country to have as much pigmentary matter as possible in the eye, and why, therefore, Natural Selection makes the eyes blacker the nearer we approach the tropics. And, as with the complexion, so here, it is fortunate for the negro that he has not sufficient taste to feel the aesthetic inferiority of the monotonous black thus imposed on him by Natural Selection. " The ins is so dark," says Figuier, " as almost to be confounded with the black of the pupil. In the European, the colour of the iris is so strongly marked as to render at once perceptible whether the person has black, blue, or gray eyes. There is nothing similar in the case of the negro, where all parts of the eye are blended in the same hue. Add to this that the white of the eye is always suffused with yellow in the Negro, and you will understand how this organ, which contributes so powerfully to give life to the countenance of the White, is invariably dull and expressionless in the Black Race." To the Esquimaux, living in the constant glare of ice and gnowfields, a protective pigment is quite as necessary as to an THE EYES 469 African savage ; hence their eyes are equally black. But among other northern races, who are less constantly exposed to the blinding rays of the sun, it suffices to have coal-black pigment in the back part of the eye, as seen through the pupil, while the iris need not be so absolutely opaque. This leaves room for the action of Sexual Selection in giving the preference to eyes less monotonously black. Our aesthetic sense craves variety and con- trasts in colour ; and as the sense of Beauty originally stood in the service of Love almost exclusively, it is to Cupid's selective action that we doubtless owe the diverse hues of the modern iris. To what kind of an iris does modern Love or aesthetic selection give the preference? Doubtless to that which has the deepest and most unmistakable colour to dark brown, or deep blue, or violet. One reason why we care less for the lighter, faded tints of the iris is because they present a less vivid contrast to the white of the eye; and another reason, as Dr. Hugo Magnus suggests, lies in the disagreeable impression produced in us by the difficulty of making out the exact character of the various indistinct shades of gray, yellow, green, or blue. The consideration of the question whether amorous selection shows any further preference for one of its two favourite colours dark brown and deep blue must be deferred to the chapter on Blondes and Brunettes. LUSTRE But Cupid is not guided by colour alone in his choice. How- ever beautiful the colour of an eye, it loses half its charm if it lacks lustre. A bright, sparkling eye is the most infallible index of youthful vigour and health, whereas the lack-lustre eyes of ill- health can never serve as windows from which Cupid shoots his arrows. No wonder that the poets have searched all nature for analogies to the lustre of a maiden's eye, comparing it to sun and stars, to diamonds, crystalline lakes, the light of glow-worms, glistening dewdrops, etc. What is the source of this light which shines from the eye and intoxicates the lover's senses ? Several answers to this question have been suggested. Twenty-five hundred years ago Empedokles taught that "there is in the eye a fine network which holds back the watery substance swimming about in it, but the fiery particles penetrate through it like the rays of light through a lantern" (Ueberweg). And a notion similar to this, that there is a kind of magnetic or nervous emanation which beams from the eye and is a direct efflux of the soul, was enter- 470 KOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY tained in recent times by Lavater and Cams. It was apparently supported by the peculiar light which may be seen occasionally in the eyes of cats, dogs, and horses in the twilight ; but this has been proved to be a purely physical phenomenon of reflection, due to an anatomical peculiarity in the eyes of these animals. Some writers have attempted to account for the lustrous fire of the eye by attributing it to the increased tension of the eyeball brought about through certain joyous and exciting emotions. Dr. Hugo Magnus, however, denies that these emotions ever increase the tension of the eyeball : u We know from numerous exceedingly minute measurements that there is no such thing whatever as a rapid change of tension in the eye, as long as it is in a healthy condition." In some diseases, especially in cataract or glaucoma, such an increased tension does occur, indeed, but it does not in the least impart to the eye the sparkle of joyous excitement. Hence Professor Magnus concludes that " the mimic significance of the eye cannot be conditioned by changes in the form of the eyeball, through tension or pressure on it." His own theory (as developed in his two interesting pamphlets, Die Sprache der Augen and Das Auge in seinen aesihetischen und culturgeschichtlichen Beziehungen) is that the greater or less brilliancy of the eyes depends entirely on the movements of the eyelids. Instead of calling the eye the window of the soul, it is more correct to say that the cornea is a mirror which, like any other mirror, reflects the light that falls on it. The higher the eyelids are raised the larger becomes the mirror, and the more light is therefore reflected. Now it is well known that exciting emotions like joy, enthusiasm, anger, and pride have a tendency to raise the eyelids, while the sad and depressing emotions cause them to sink and partially cover the eyeball ; hence joy makes the eyes sparkling, while grief renders them dull and lustreless. The old poetic and popular notion that the lustre of the eye is a direct emanation of the human soul must therefore be abandoned. The sparkling eye is a mere physical consequence of the involun- tary raising of the eyelids brought about through exhilarating or exciting emotions. This theory of Dr. Magnus doubtless comes nearer the truth than the others referred to ; and the fact that snakes' eyes, though small, are proverbially glistening, apparently because they are lidless, may be used as an additional argument in his favour, which he overlooked. Yet his view does not cover the whole ground ; for it does not explain why, after weeping, or when we THE EYES 471 are weary or ill, we may open our eyes as widely as we please without making them appear lustrous. This difficulty suggested to me the theory that, though partly dependent on the movements of the eyelids, the lustre of the eyes is due originally to the tension and moisture of the coryunctwa. The conjunctiva, though consisting of 6-8 layers of cells, is an extremely thin and highly sensitive, transparent membrane, which lines the surface of the eyeball as well as the inside of the eye- lids. In this membrane is located the pain which we feel if dust, etc., flies into our eyes. In order to wash out any particles that may get into the eye, and to prevent the lid from sticking to the eyeball, the lachrymal glands constantly secrete the water, which, during an emotional shower, consolidates into tear-drops. Now, just as "the rose is sweetest washed with morning dew," so the eye is brightest and most fascinating which glistens in an ever fresh supply of lachrymal fluid. After weeping, this supply is temporarily exhausted, hence not only are the eyes "sticky" and the lids difficult to raise, but even if they are raised there is no lustre ; you look in vain for " Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye." But when we wake up from refreshing sleep in the morning, or when we take a walk in the bracing country air, the eye sparkles its best and " emulates the diamond," because at such a time all the vital energies, including of course those of the lachrymal glands, are incited to fresh activity, which they lose again after prolonged use of the eye, thus making it appear duller in the evening. Thus we can readily account for those lights in the eye " that do mislead the morn." Yet it is probable that (although in a less degree than dewy moisture) the tension and translucency of the conjunctiva are also concerned in the production of a liquid, lustrous expression. Though the eyeball itself may not undergo any changes in tension, the conjunctiva doubtless does. The eyeball rests on a bed of fatty tissue which shrinks after death, owing to the emptying of the blood-vessels and the consolida- tion of the fat, which makes a corpse, appear "hollow-eyed." The same effect, to a slighter degree, is caused by disease and ex- cessive fatigue, making the eyes sink into their sockets. This sinking must diminish the tension of the conjunctiva, both under the eyelids and on the surface of the eyeball ; and in shrinking it becomes less transparent and glistening. The following observations of Professor Kollraann indirectly support my theory that the conjunctiva is the source of the eye's 472 itOMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY lustre : " After death this transparent membrane (the conjunctiva) becomes turbid, the eye loses its lustre and becomes veiled. The surface reflects but a faint degree of light, the eye is ' broken.' " The loss of lustre extends to the white of the eye, but is less noticeable, perhaps because there lustre does not blend with colour, as in the iris region. Fashionable young ladies who dance throughout the night several times a week may well be disgusted with the blue rings which appear around their sunken eyes. These rings are a warning that they need " beauty sleep " and fresh air to fill up the sockets again with healthy fat and red blood, so as to increase the tension of the conjunctiva and stimulate the flow of dewy moisture on which the lustre of the eye depends. There are tears of Beauty as well as of anguish and joy. FORM Of the beauty of the eye as conditioned by its form, Dr. Magnus has made such an admirable and exhaustive analysis that I can do little more than summarise his observations. He points out, in the first place, that the form of the eyeball itself is of subordinate importance. The differences in the size and shape of eyeballs are insignificant, and are, moreover, liable to be con- cealed by the shape of the eyelids ; hence it is to the lids and brows that the eye chiefly owes its formal beauty. " The form of the eye is conditioned exclusively by the cut of the lids and the size of the aperture between them. . . . The countless individual differences in this aperture give to the eyeballs the most diverse shapes, so that we speak of round eyes, wide eyes, almond-shaped, elongated, and owl eyes, etc." The first condition of beauty in an eye is size. Large eyes have been extolled ever since the beginnings of poetry. The Mahometan heaven is peopled with "virgins with chaste mien and large black eyes," and the Arabian poets never tire of com- paring their idols' eyes to those of the gazelle and the deer. The Greeks appear to have considered large eyes an essential trait of beauty as well as of mental superiority ; hence Sokrates as well as Aspasia are described as having had such eyes ; and who has not read of Horner's ox-eyed Juno ? Juvenal specially mentions small eyes as a blemish. Large eyes, however, are not beautiful if the aperture between the lids is too wide, or if the white can be seen above the iris. They must owe their largeness to the graceful curvature 01 the THE EYES 473 upper eyelid. As Winckelmann remarks, " Jupiter, Apollo, and Juno have the opening of their eyelids large and vaulted, and less elongated than is usual, so as to make the arch more pronounced." At the same time we are sufficiently catholic in taste to admire eyes which are not quite round but somewhat elongated. One favourite variety is that in which " the upper lid shows, in the margin adjoining the inner corner of the eye, a rather decided curvature, which, however, diminishes toward the outer corner in an extremely graceful and pleasing wavy line. As the lower lid has a similar, though less decided, marginal curve, the eyeball which appears within this aperture assumes a unique oval form, which has been very aptly and characteristically named * almond- shaped.' The Greeks compared the graceful curve of such lids to the delicate and pleasing loops formed by young vines, and there- fore called an eye of this variety cAt/co/^/Ve^apo?. Winckelmann has noted that it was the eyes of Venus, in particular, that the ancient artists were fond of adorning with this graceful curve of the lids. . . . Italian, and especially Spanish eyes, are far-famed for their classical and graceful oval form." Almond eyes are peculiar to the Semitic and ancient Aryan races. Some of the bards of India sing the praises of an eye so elongated that it reaches to the ear ; and in Assyrian statues such eyes are common. The ancient Egyptians had a similar taste ; and Carus relates that some Oriental nations actually en- large the slit of the eye with the knife ; while others use cosmetics to simulate the appearance of very long eyes. According to Dr. Sommering, the eye of male Europeans is somewhat less elongated than that of females. Kound or oval marginal curvature, however, is not the only condition of beauty in an eyelid. The surface, too, must be kept in a tense, well-rounded condition. Sunken, hollow eyes displease us not only because they suggest disease and age, but because they destroy the smooth surface and curvature of the eyelids. Thus do we find the laws of Health and Beauty coin- ciding in the smallest details. The position of the eye also largely influences our aesthetic judgment. What strikes us first in looking at a Chinaman is his obliquely-set eyes, with the outer corner drawn upwards, which displeases us even more than their excessive elongation and small size. Oblique eyes are a dissonance in the harmony of our features, and almost as objectionable as a crooked mouth. True, our own eyes are rarely absolutely horizontal, but the deviation is 474 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY too minute to be noticed by any but a trained observer. Some- times, as Mantegazza remarks, the opposite form may be noticed, the outer corner of the eye being lower than the inner. " If this trait is associated with other aesthetic elements, it may produce a rare and extraordinary charm, as in the case of the Empress Eugenie." The eyelashes and eyebrows, though strictly belonging in the chapter on the hair, must be referred to here because they bear such a large part in the impression which the form of the eye makes on us. The short, stiff hairs, which form "the fringed curtain of the eye," are attached to the cartilage which edges the eyelids. They are not straight but curved, downward in the lower, upward in the upper lid. And the Beauty-Curve is ob- served in still another way, the hairs in the central part of each lid being longer than they are towards the ends. In the upper lid the hairs are longer than in the lower. Their aesthetic and physiognomic value will be considered presently under the head of Expression. In the eyebrows the Curve of Beauty is again the condition of perfection. It must be a gentle curve, however, or else it imparts to the countenance a Mephistophelian expression of irony. Eyebrows were formerly held to be peculiar to man, but Darwin states that "in the Chimpanzee, and in certain species of Macacus, there are scattered hairs of considerable length rising from the naked skin above the eyes, and corresponding to our eyebrows ; similar long hairs project from the hairy covering ot the superciliary ridges in some baboons." The existence of the eyebrows may be accounted for on utili- tarian grounds. Natural Selection favoured their development because they are, like the lashes, of use in preventing perspiration and dust from getting into the eyes. Their delicately curved form, however, they probably owe to Sexual Selection. Cupid objects to eyebrows which are too much or not sufficiently arched, and he objects to those which are too bushy or which meet in the middle. The ancient Greeks already disliked eyebrows meeting in the middle, whereas in Rome Fashion not only approved of them, but even resorted to artificial means for producing them. The Arabians go a step farther in the use of paint. They endeavour to produce the impression as if their eyebrows grew down to the middle of the nose and met there. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, and Indians also used paint to make their eyebrows seem wider, but they did not unite them. On the outside border the eyebrows should extend slightly beyond the corner of the eye. THE EYES 475 EXPRESSION In the chapter on the nose reference was made to our disposi- tion to seize upon any sensation experienced inside the mouth and label it as a "taste," whereas psychologic analysis shows that in most cases the sense of smell (excited during exhalation) has more to do with our enjoyment of food than taste ; and that the nerves of temperature and touch likewise come into play in the case of peppermint, pungent condiments, alcohol, etc. We are also in the habit of including in the term " feeling " or " touch " the entirely distinct sensations of temperature, tickling, and some other sensa- tions, to the separate study of which physiologists are only now beginning to devote special attention. Similarly with the eyes. Being the most fascinating part of the face, on which we habitually fix our attention while talking, they are credited with various expressions that are really referable to other features, which we rapidly scan and then transfer their language to the eyes. Nor is this all. Most persons habitually attribute to the varying lustre of the eyeball diverse "soulful" expressions which, as physiologic analysis shows, are due to the movements of the eyeball, the eyebrows, and lashes. The poets, who have said so many beautiful things about the eyes, are rarely sufficiently definite to lay themselves open to the charge of inac- curacy. But there can be little doubt that the popular opinion concerning the all-importance of the eyeball is embodied in such expressions as these : " Love, anger, pride, and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs " (Addison). " Her eye in silence has a speech which eye best understands " (Southwell). " An eye like Mars to threaten or command." " The heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, 'gainst which the world cannot hold argument." "Behold the window of my heart, mine eye." " Sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages." " For shame, lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers." " If mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee." " There's an eye wounds like a leaden sword." The last three of these Shaksperian lines were evidently echoing in Emerson's mind when he wrote that " Some eyes threaten like a loaded and levelled pistol, and others are as insulting as hissing or kicking ; some have no more expression than blueberries, while others as deep as a well which you can fall into." " Glances are the first billets-doux of love," says Ninon de L'Enclos. In order to make perfectly clear the mechanism by which the eye becomes an organ of speech, it is advisable to consider 476 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY separately these six factors, which are included in it (a) Lustre ; (b) Colour of the Iris ; (c) Movements of the Iris or Pupil ; (d) Movements of the Eyeball; (e) Movements of the Eyelids; (/) Movements of the Eyebrows. (a) Lustre. " The physiological problem whether the surface of the eyeball, independent of the muscles that cover and surround it, can express emotion, a near study of the American girl seems to answer quite in the affirmative." Dr. G. M. Beard remarks, without, however, endeavouring to specify what emotions the surface of the eyeball expresses, or in what manner it does express them. Dr. Magnus, on the other hand, who has made a more profound study of this question than any other writer, is emphatic in his conviction that " the eyeball takes no active part in the expression of emotions, which is entirely accomplished by the muscles and soft parts surrounding it" His view is supported by the fact that although some of the ancient sculptors endeavoured by the use of jewels or by chiselling semi-lunar or other grooves into the eyeball to simulate its lustre by means of shadows, yet as a rule sculptors and painters strangely neglect the careful elaboration of the eye- ' ball ; and in the Greek works of the best period, including those of Phidias, the eyeball was left smooth and unadorned, the artists relying especially on the careful chiselling of the lids and brows for the attainment of the particular characteristic expression desired. Nevertheless Dr. Magnus goes too far in denying that ocular lustre can be directly expressive of mental states without the assistance of the movements of the eyebrows and lids. His own observations show that he has overstated his thesis. We can indeed, he says, infer from the appearance of the eyeball, " whether the soul is agitated or calm, but we have to rely on the facial muscles to specify the emotion. This is the reason why we can never judge the sentiments of one who is masked ; for the fire in his eye can only indicate to us his greater or less agitation, but not its special character. That we could only read in the features which the mask conceals. It is for this reason that the orthodox Mahometan makes his women cover up their face with a veil which leaves nothing exposed but the eyes, because these cannot, without the constant play of the facial muscles, indicate the emo- tional state. The lustre of the corneal mirror therefore indicates to us only the quantity, but never the quality of emotional ex- citement." Herein Dr. Magnus follows the assertion of Lebmn, a con- THE EYES 477 temporary of Louis XIV., that "the eyeball indicates by its fire and its movements in general that the soul is passionately excited, but not in what manner." No doubt the Turk attains his object in leaving only the eyes of his women open to view, for thus the passing stranger cannot tell whether her eye flashes Love or anger. But he can tell whether she is agitated or indifferent : and is not that a language too 1 Do we not call music the " language of emotions," although it can only indicate the quantity of emotion, and rarely its precise quality just like the eyes ? Therefore Dr. Magnus is wrong in denying to the eyeball the power of emotional expression. Vague emotion is still emotion. It has already been intimated in what manner emotional excite- ment increases the eye's lustre. It causes the blood-vessels in the sockets of the eye to swell, thus increasing the tension of the con- junctiva and the flow of the lachrymal fluid. Besides quantitative emotion there is another thing which ocular lustre expresses, and that is Health. It is true that consumption, fever, and possibly other diseases may produce a peculiar temporary transparency of complexion and ocular lustre ; but, as a rule, a bright eye indicates Health and abundant vitality. As Health is the first condition of Love, and as the ocular lustre which indicates Health cannot be normally secured without it, women of all times and countries have been addicted to the habit of increasing the eye's sparkle artificially by applying a thin line of black paint to the edge of the lids. The ancient Egyptians, Persians, Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans followed this custom. But the natural sparkle which comes of Health and Beauty-sleep [i.e. before midnight, with open windows] is a thousand times prefer- able to such dangerous methods of tampering with the most deli- cate and most easily injured organ of the body. Still another way in which the eyeball itself can express emotion is by the varying amount on it of the lachrymal fluid, to which, in my opinion, its lustre is chiefly owing. There is a supreme and thrilling sparkle of the eye which can only come of the heavenly joys of Love ; but there is also " a liquid melancholy" of sweet eyes, to use Bulwer's words. Scott remarks that " Love is love- liest when embalmed in tears ; " and Dr. Magnus attests that " especially in the eyes of lovers we often find a slight suspicion of tears." He traces to this fact a peculiar charm that is to be found in the eyes of Venus, which the Greeks called vypov (liquid, swimming, languishing). The sculptors produced this expression by indicating the border bet\veen the lower lid aud the eyeball but 478 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY slightly, thus giving the impression as if this border were veiled by a liquid line of tear-fluid. What enables the lid to keep this fluid line in place is the fact that its edge is lined with minute glands secreting an oily sub- stance. The presence of these glands in the upper lid, where they cannot serve to retain lachrymal fluid, suggests the important inference that the lustre of the eye may be partly due to a thin film of oil spread over the cornea by the up-and-down movements of this lid. Indeed, this may possibly be the chief cause of ocular lustre. When the lachrymal fluid habitually present in the eye becomes too abundant it ceases to express amorous tenderness, and becomes instead indicative of old age, or, worse still, of intemperance. Alcoholism has a peculiarly demoralising effect on the lower eye- lid, which becomes swollen and inflamed. This probably over- stimulates the action of the oil glands in the lids, thus accounting for the watery or blear eye, eloquent of vice. (6) Colour of the Iris. There is nothing in which popular physiognomy takes so much delight as in pointing out what particular characteristics are indicated by the different colours of eyes. All such distinctions are the purest drivel We have seen that differences in the colour of eyes are entirely due to the varying amount of the same pigmentary matter present in the iris. Now, what earthly connection could a greater or less quantity of this colouring matter have with our intellectual or moral traits ? It is necessary thus to trace facts to their last analysis in order to expose the absurdities of current physiognomy. Inasmuch as black-eyed southern nations are, on the whole, more impulsive than northern races, it may be said in a vague, general way that a black eye indicates a passionate disposition. But there are countless exceptions to this rule apathetic black- eyed persons, as well as, conversely, fiery blue-eyed individuals. Nor is this at all strange ; for the black colour is not stored up in some mysterious way as a result of a fiery temperament, but is simply accumulated in the iris through Natural Selection, as a protection against glaring sunlight. Although, therefore, the brilliancy of the eye may vary with its colour, the colour itself does not express emotion, either qualitatively or quantitatively. In reading character no assistance is given us by the fact that eyes are " of unholy blue," " darkly divine," "gray as glass," or " green as leeks." Shakspere calls Jealousy a " green- eyed monster " ; and the green iris has indeed such a bad reputation that blondes in search of a compliment commonly abuse their THE EYES 479 " green " eyes, to exercise your Gallantry, and give you a chance to defend their "celestial blue" or "divine violet." Dr. Magnus suggests that the reason why we dislike decidedly green or yellow eyes is simply because they are of rare occurrence, and therefore appear anomalous ; for in animals we do not hesitate to pronounce such eyes beautiful. He also explains ingeniously why it is that we are apt to attribute moral shortcomings to persons whose eyes are of a vague, dubious colour. Such eyes displease our aesthetic sense, and this displeasure we transfer to the moral sense, and thus confound and prejudice our judgment. In the same way our dislike of unusual green eyes disposes us to accuse their owners of irregularities of conduct Moral: Keep your sesthetic and ethical judgments apart. Conversely, in the case of snakes, our fear and horror make it difficult for us to appreciate the esthetic charm of their colours. And all these cases show that the aesthetic sense, if properly understood and specialised, is independent of moral and utilitarian considerations : which knocks the bottom out of the theory of Alison, Jeffrey, and Co. One more abnormality of colour in the iris must be referred to. It happens not infrequently that the colour of the two eyes is not alike, one being brown, the other blue or gray. In such cases, though each eye may be perfect in itself, we dislike the combination. What is the ground of this aesthetic dislike ? Simply the fact that the dissimilarity of the eyes violates one of the fundamental laws of Beauty the law of Symmetry, which demands that corresponding parts on the two sides of the body should harmonise. (c) Movements of the Iris. The jetblack pupil of the eye, as already noted, is not always of the same size. It becomes smaller if an excess of light causes the iris to relax, larger if diminution of light makes the iris contract its fibres. Another way of altering the size of the pupil is by gazing at a distant object, which causes it to enlarge, while gazing at a near object makes it smaller. According to Gratiolet and some other writers, there is still another way in which the pupil is affected, namely, through emotional excitement. Great fear, for instance, enlarges the pupil, according to Gratiolet. Dr. Magnus, however, remarks that, apart from the fact that some observers have denied that the pupil is affected by emotions, the alterations in its size are as a rule too insignificant to be noted by any but a trained observer ; so that they could not play any important physiognomic role. Yet a large pupil is everywhere esteemed a great beauty, and ia 480 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY often credited with a special power of amorous expression. "Widened pupils," says Kollmann, "give the eye a tender aspect; they seem to increase its depth, and fascinate the spectator by the strangeness this imparts to the gaze. Oriental women put atropine into their eyes, which enlarges the pupil. They do this in order to give their eyes the soulful expression which they believe is imparted by large pupils, distinctly foreshadowing the joys of love." Whether emotionally expressive or not, so much is certain that large pupils are more beautiful than small ones, for the same reason that large eyes are more beautiful than small ones, i.e. because we cannot have too much of a thing of Beauty. Finally, there is this to be said regarding the lustre, colour, and size of pupil and iris, that they emphasise the language of the eye. If we play a love-song on the piano, we may admire it ; but if it is sung or played on the violoncello, it makes a doubly deep impression ; and why ? Because i/he superior sensuous beauty of the voice, or the amorous tone-colour of the 'cello, paints and gilds the bare fabric of the song. A small dull-coloured eye, similarly, may speak quite as definite a language of command or entreaty,. pride or humility, as any other ; but the flashing large pupil and the lustrous deep-dyed iris intensify the emotional impressiveness of this language a hundredfold, by adding the incalculable power of sensuous Beauty. Thus lustre and colour are for the visible music of the spheres what orchestration is to audible music. (d) Movements of the Eyeball. The socket of the eye contains (besides the fat-cushion in which the eyeball is imbedded, the blood-vessels, and other tissues) seven muscles ; one for raising the upper lid, and six for moving the eyeball itself upwards, downwards, inwards, outwards, or forwards and obliquely. To the action of these muscles the eye owes much of its expressiveness. It has been noted that elating emotions have a tendency to raise the features, depressing emotions to depress them. The eyeball is no exception. Persons who are elated by their real or apparent superiority to others turn their eyes habitually from the humble things beneath them ; hence the muscle which turns the eyeball upwards has long ago received the name of "pride-muscle"; wh.ile its antipode, the miisculus humilis, is so called because humility and modesty are characterised by a downward gaze. The muscle which turns the eyeball towards the inner corner, nosewards, is much used by persons who are occupied with near objects. If this convergence of the eyes is too pronounced, it gives one a stupid expression ; whereas, if moderate, the expression is one of great intellectual penetration, as Dr. Magnus points out. THE EYES 481 He believes that the trick, made use of by some portrait-painters, of making the eyes appear to follow you wherever you go depends on this medium degree of convergence of the eyes. Slight divergence of the eyeballs, on the other hand, is charac- teristic of children and of great thinkers an item which Schopenhauer forgot to note when he pointed out that genius always retains certain traits of childhood. " Bonders," says Dr. Magnus, " has always observed this divergent position oi the eyes in persons who meditate deeply. And the artists make use of this position of the eyes to give their figures the expression of a soul averted from terrestrial affairs, and fixed on higher spiritual objects. Thus the Sistine Madonna has this divergent position oi the eyes, as well as the beautiful boy she carries on her arm." It is also found in Diirer's portrait of himself, and in a bust of Marcus Aurelius in the Vatican. If, however, this divergence becomes too great, it loses its charm, for the eyes then appear to fix no object at all, and the gaze becomes "vacant," as in the eyes of the blind or the sick. To appreciate the force of these remarks it must be borne in mind that there is only one part of the retina, called the " yellow spot," with which we can distinctly fix an object. What we see with other parts of the retina is indistinct, blurred. These details are here given because many will be glad to know that by daily exercising the muscles of the eyeballs before the mirror, they can greatly alter and improve their looks. Every day one hears the remark, " She has beautiful eyes, but she does not know how to use them." When we read of a great thinker, like Kant, fixing his gaze immovably on a tree for an hour, we think it quite natural ; nor does any one object to " the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling," for we all know that a poet is merely an inspired madman. But a young lady who wishes to charm by her Beauty must learn to fix her wandering eyes calmly on others, while avoiding a stony stare. One of the greatest charms of American girls is their frank, steady gaze, free from any tinge of unfeminine boldness. Such a charming natural gaze can only be acquired in a country where girls are taught to look upon men as gentlemen, and not as wolves, against whom they must be guarded by dragons. Eye-gymnastics are as important to Beauty as lung-gymnastics to Health, and dancing-lessons to Grace. But of course there is a certain number of fortunate girls who can dispense with such exercises, because they gradually learn the proper use of their eyes, as well as general graceful movements, from the example of a refined mother. 482 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY Goldsmith's pretty line about "the bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love," is not a mere poetic conceit, but a scientific aper$u ; for, as Professor Kollmanu remarks, " the external straight muscle of the eye was also called the lover's muscle, musculus amatorius, because the furtive side-glance is aimed at a beloved person." Nor is this the only way in which the movements of the eye- ball are concerned with Romantic Love. By constantly exercising certain muscles of the eyeball in preference to others, the eyes gradually assume, when at rest, a fixed and peculiar gaze which distinguishes them from all other eyes. It is comparatively easy to find two pairs of eyes of the same colour or form, but two with the same gaze, i.e. characteristic position of the eyeballs, never. Hence Dr. Magnus boldly generalises Herder's statement that " Every great man has a look which no one but he can give with his eyes," into the maxim that " Every individual has a look which no one else can make with his eyes." Bungling photographers commonly spoil their pictures by com- pelling their victims to fix their eyes in an unwonted position. The result is a picture which bears some general resemblance to the victim, but in which the characteristic individual expression is wanting. Our habit of masking our eyes alone when we wish to remain unrecognised, and leaving the lower part of the face exposed, affords another proof of the assertion that the eye is the chief seat of individuality. For though the eyeball itself remains visible, the surrounding parts are covered, so that its characteristic position cannot be determined. Now we know that Individual Preference is the first and most essential element of Romantic Love. Hence Dante was as correct in calling the eyes " the beginning of Love," as in terming the lips " the end of Love." And Shakspere agrees with Dante when he speaks of "Love first learned in a lady's eyes"; and again : " But for her eye I would not love her ; yes, for her two eyes." (e) Movements of the Eyelids. Although the foregoing pages considerably qualify Dr. Magnus's thesis that the eyeball owes all its life and expressiveness to the movements of the eyelids and brows, yet the physiognomic and aesthetic importance of lids, lashes, and brows can hardly be too much emphasised. A very large proportion of the pleasure we derive from beautiful eyes is due to the constant changes in the apparent size of the eyeball, and the gradations in its lustre, produced by the rapid movements of the upper lid. This is strikingly proved by the fact, noted by Dr. Magnus, " that the eyes of wax figures, be they ever so THE EYES 483 artistically finished, always give the impression of death and rigidity," whereas "artificial eyes, such as are often inserted by physicians after the loss of an eye, have, thanks to the constant play of the lids, an appearance so animated and lifelike that it requires the trained eye of a specialist to detect the dead, lifeless glass-eye in this apparently so animated orb." A complete emotional scale is symbolised in these movements of the upper eyelids. A medium position indicates rest or indiffer- ence. Joyous and other exciting emotions raise them, so that the whole of the lustrous iris becomes visible. Thus we get the eye " sparkling with joy " or the " angry flash of the eye," as well as Cupid's darts : "He is already dead ; stabbed with a white wench's black eye." " Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords." But if the lids are raised too high, so that the white above the iris becomes visible, the expression changes to one of affectation, or maniacal wildness, or extreme terror. There are persons, says Magnus, in whom the aperture between the lids is naturally so wide as to reveal the upper white of the eyes ; and in consequence we are apt to accuse them of hollow pathos. I have seen not a few beautiful pairs of eyes marred by the habitual tendency to raise the lids too much a fault that can be readily overcome by deliberate effort and practice before the mirror. On the other hand, if the aperture between the lids is too small, that is, if the lids are naturally (or only transiently) lowered too much, we get an apathetic, drowsy expression. The Chinese eye displeases us not only by its oblique set, and the narrowness of the lid, but also because the natural smallness of the eyeball is exaggerated by the narrow palpebral aperture. The negro appears more wide awake to us, because in his eyes this aperture is wider so wide, in fact, that he is apt to displease us by showing too much of the white sclerotic. A very drooping eyelid being expressive of fatigue, physical or mental, blase persons affect it in order to indicate their nil admirari attitude. But there is another secret reason why they drop their eyelids. If we lower the head and open our eyes widely, they retire within their sockets and appear hollow, suggesting dis- sipation or disease; whereas, if we raise the head, throwing it slightly backwards, and lowering the eyelids, we obliterate this hollow, and give the impression of languid indifference. This, rather than the " raising of the eyebrows," is what constitutes the " supercilious " expression. It cannot be said that a supercilious appearance is specially 484 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY attractive, yet the obliteration of the eyes' hollowness is an advan- tage ; and it may be added that, since perfect health is not a super- abundant phenomenon, the same reasoning explains why many faces are so much more fascinating in a reclining or semi-reclining position than when upright. Fashion, of course, being the hand- maid of ugliness, does not object to hollow eyes encircled by blue rings, but even cultivates them. Yet in her heart of hearts every fashionable woman knows that nothing so surely kills masculine admiration not to speak of Love as sunken eyes with blue rings. A slight drooping of the eyelids, on the other hand, gives a pleasing expression of amorous languor. The lid, with its lashes, in this case, coyly veils the lustre of the eye, without extinguishing it. Hence, in the words of Dr. Magnus, the sculptors of antiquity made use of this slight lowering of the lid to express sensuous love ; and accordingly it was customary to chisel the eyes of Venus with drooping lids and a small aperture. In their task of moderating and varying the lustre of the eye- ball, the lids are greatly assisted by the lashes. An eye with missing or too short lashes is apt to appear too fiery, glaring, or " stinging." Long dark eyelashes are of all the means of flirtation the most irresistible. Note yonder artful maiden. How modestly and coyly she droops her eyes, till suddenly the fringed curtain is raised and a glorious symphony of colour and lustre is flashed on her poor companion's dazed vision ! No wonder he staggers and falls in love at first sight. "White lashes and eyebrows are so disagreeably suggestive," we read in the Uyly Girl Papers, " that one cannot blame their possessor for disguising them by a harmless device. A decoction of walnut juice should be made in season, and kept in a bottle for use the year round. It is to be applied with a small hair-pencil to the brows and lashes, turning them to a rich brown, which har- monises with fair hair." Another recipe given, by a good authority, is as follows : " Take frankincense, resin, pitch, of each one half ounce ; gum mastic, quarter of an ounce ; mix and drop on red- hot charcoals. Receive the fumes in a large funnel, and a black powder will adhere to its sides. Mix this with fresh juice of elderberries (or Cologne water will do), and apply with a fine camel-hair brush." Those who wish to make their lashes longer and more regular may find the following suggestions, by Drs. Brinton and Napheys, of use : " The eyelashes should be examined one by one, and any which are split, or crooked, or feeble, should be trimmed with a THE EYES 485 pair of sharp scissors. The base of the lashes should be anointed nightly with a minute quantity of oil of cajuput on the top of a camel-hair brush, and the examination and trimming repeated every month. If this is sedulously carried out for a few mouths the result will be gratifying." All such operations should be performed by another person, for the eye is a most delicate organ. Yet, not even this organ has been spared by deforming Fashion. The fact that some Africans colour their eyelids black may have a utilitarian rather than a cosmetic reason. But what shall we say to the Africans who eradicate their eyebrows, and the Paraguayans, who remove their eyelashes because they " do not wish to be like horses 1 " Twin sisters ever are Fashion and Idiocy. (/) Movements of tJie Eyebrows. Herder called the arched eye- brow the rainbow of peace, because if it is straightened by a frown it portends a storm. In plain prose, the eyebrow partakes of the general upward movement from joyous excitement, and the down- ward movement in grief. If the eyebrows are too bushy, they overshadow the eye and produce a gloomy or even ferocious appear- ance. The Chinese, possibly from an instinctive perception that their eyes are not too large or bright, shave their eyebrows, leaving only a narrow fringe. Dr. Broca also notes that the eyebrow adds to the oblique appearance of the Chinese eye through a particular movement, the two internal thirds of the eyebrows being lower, and the external third higher than with us. Though not, perhaps, directly concerned in the expression of Love, the eyebrow is not to be under-rated. No detail of Beauty escapes Cupid's eyes ; for do we not read of " the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress's eye- brows"? COSMETIC HINTS As modem lovers disapprove of eyebrows meeting over the nose, superfluous hairs should be removed. Coarse irregular hairs in any part of the eyebrow should be pulled out or kept in position by a fixateur. " It is not well to trim the eyebrow generally, as it makes it coarse. . . . When it is desired to thicken or strengthen them, two or three drops of oil of cajuput may be gently rubbed into the skin every other night; but here, and always when wiping them, the rubbing should be in the direction of the hair, from the nose outward, and never in the reverse direction." Among harmless dyes, pencils of dark pomatum or walnut-bark, steeped in Cologne for a week, are recommended; 486 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY or, for a transient effect, a needle smoked over the flame of a candle may be used. Regarding the general hygienic care of the eye, the following rules should be borne in mind. Never read or work in a too weak or too glaring light, or when lying down, or with the book too near the eye. Rest the muscles occasionally by looking at a distant object. Bathe the eyes every morning in cold water, keeping tJiem closed. For disorders, consult a physician immediately; a day's delay may be fatal to ocular beauty. For ordinary inflammation, an external application of witch-hazel extract, mixed with a few drops of Cologne, is very soothing. Never sleep with your eyes facing the window. Ninety-nine persons in a hundred do so; hence the large number of weak, lustreless eyes, early disturbances of slumber, and morning headaches. Large numbers of tourists in Switzerland constantly suffer from headaches, and lose all the benefits of their vacation, simply because they fail to have their head at night in the centre of the room, where it ought to be, because the air circulates there more freely than near the wall THE HAIR CAUSE OF MAN'S NUDITY " From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human foetus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during maturity," Darwin inferred that "man is descended from some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life." He believed that " the loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man, even in a hot climate, for he is thus exposed to the scorching in the sun, and to sudden chills, especially during wet weather. As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering. No one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man ; his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through Natural Selection." Accordingly, he con- cludes that man lost his hairy covering through Sexual Selection, for ornamental purposes. But if it can be shown that the nakedness of his skin M in some way of advantage to man, this argument falls to the ground. There are sufficient reasons, I think, for believing that Natural Selection aided Sexual Selection in divesting man of his hairy coat. With his usual candour Darwin noticed the evidence which THE HAIR 487 seemed to tell against his view. Mr. Belt, he says, " believes that within the tropics it is an advantage to man to be destitute of hair, as he is thus enabled to free himself of the multitude of ticks (acari) and other parasites with which he is often infested, and which sometimes cause ulceration." Darwin doubts, however, whether this evil is of sufficient magnitude to have led to the denudation of the body through Natural Selection, " since none of the many quadrupeds inhabiting the tropics have, as far as I know, acquired any specialised means of relief.'' But as primitive man's habits of cleanliness are much inferior to those of animals, this objection loses its force ; and it is, moreover, weakened by the testimony of Sir W. Denison that " it is said to be a practice with the Australians, when the vermin get troublesome, to singe them- selves." We also know that the ancient Egyptains shaved off their hair from motives of cleanliness. However, it is not likely that the superior advantages of clean- liness and freedom from parasites would alone have sufficed to produce so great a change in man as the loss of his hair. It is more probable that the sun was the chief agent in accomplishing this transformation. I fail to see the force of Darwin's contention that the fact that " the other members of the order of Primates, to which man belongs, although inhabiting various hot regions, are well clothed with hair, generally thickest on the upper surface, is opposed to the supposition that man became naked through the action of the sun." For these animals commonly live in forests and on trees, where they are protected from the rays of the sun, which is not the case with man. Furthermore, Darwin himself mentions some circumstances which point to the conclusion that the sun is the cause of man's nudity. He says, for instance, that "elephants and rhinoceroses are almost hairless ; and as certain extinct species which formerly lived under an arctic climate were covered with long wool or hair, it would almost appear as if the existing species of both genera had lost their hairy covering from exposure to heat. This appears the more probable as the elephants in India which live on elevated and cool districts are more hairy than those on the lowlands." Bearing in mind what was said in the chapter on the Com- plexion regarding the negro's skin, there is no difficulty in under- standing why Natural Selection should eliminate the hairy covering of the skin while favouring a dark complexion. Hair not only absorbs the sun's heat, but retains that of the body ; hence a hairy man not living on trees would be very uncomfortable in Africa, and likely to succumb to the enervating effects of high temperature. 488 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY The negro's naked skin, on the other hand, is, as we have seen, specially devised as a body-cooler. The black pigment protects the underlying nerves of temperature, while the solar heat absorbed by this pigment is immediately radiated iu the form of perspiration. Now we can see not only why the negro's skin is more velvety, smooth, and hairless than our own, but why its sweat-pores are larger and more numerous than in our skin. At a later stage of evolution Sexual Selection probably came in to aid in this process of denudation. We may infer this, in the first place, from the analogous case of apes who have denuded and variously-coloured patches on the head and elsewhere, which they use for purposes of display, to attract the notice of the opposite sex ; in the second place, from the fact that there are not a few tribes who pluck out their hairs. "The Fuegians threatened a young missionary, who was left for a time with them, to strip him naked, and pluck the hairs from his face and body, yet he was far from being a hairy man ;" and " throughout the world the races which are almost completely destitute of a beard, dislike hairs on the face and body, and take pains to eradicate them." Darwin also notes some facts which, by analogy, seem to make it probable that " the long-continued habit of eradicating the hair may have produced an inherited effect." In the case of the white race we cannot rely so much on the action of the sun as accounting for the absence of hair, but must place more especial emphasis on Sexual Selection. We are war- ranted in doing this by the consideration that Taste for Beauty is more developed in the white race, and therefore has more influence in controlling the choice of a mate. " As the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this character is common to all races, we may conclude" with Darwin "that it was our female semi -human ancestors who were first divested of hair," this character being then transmitted by the mothers to their children of both sexes. The two universal traits of Beauty which chiefly guided man in the preference of a hairless skin were evidently Smoothness and Colour. One need only compare for a moment the face of a female chimpanzee, its leathery folded skin and straggling hairs, with the smooth and rosy complexion of a European damsel, to understand that, leaving touch out of consideration, sight alone would have sufficed to give the preference to the hairless skin. But since we derive less direct advantage than the tropical races from such a skin, cases of reversion to the hairy type are more common among us than with them, and our bodies in general are more hairy. THE HAIR 489 BEARDS AND MOUSTACHES The elimination of hair from those parts of the body where it is less beautiful than a nude skin, is only one of the functions of Sexual Selection. Another equally important function is the pre- servation and elongation of the hair in a few places for ornamental purposes. " We know from Eschricht," says Darwin, " that with mankind the female as well as the male foetus is furnished with much hair on the face, especially round the mouth ; and this indicates that we are descended from progenitors of whom both sexes were bearded. It appears, therefore, at first sight, probable that man has retained his beard from a very early period, whilst woman lost her beard at the same time that her body became almost completely divested of hair." A long beard serves, to some extent, to protect the throat, but a moustache serves no such use, and it seems therefore more pro- bable that beards as well as moustaches were developed in man for ornamental purposes, as in many monkeys (see, for some very curious pictures of bearded monkeys, Descent of Man, chap, xviii.) But why should women have lost their beards while men retained theirs ? Because of the importance of emphasising the secondary sexual differences between man and woman, on which the degree of amorous infatuation depends. The tendency of evolution, as we have seen, has been to make the sexes more and more different in appearance ; and as man chooses his mate chiefly on aesthetic grounds, he habitually gave the preference to smooth-faced women, whereas woman's choice, being largely based on dynamic grounds, fell on the bearded and moustached men, since a luxurious growth of hair is commonly a sign of physical vigour. Hence the humilia- tion of the young man who cannot raise a moustache, and the reciprocal horror of the young lady who finds the germs of one on her lip. Both are instinctively afraid of being " boycotted " by Cupid, and for ever debarred from the pleasures of mutual Romantic Love. Women are quite right in dreading hair in the face as a blemish, for it is not only objectionable as a masculine trait, but also as a cha- racteristic of old age, a hairy face being quite a common attribute of aged females. But with men the case is different. Though women may still be often influenced in their amorous choice by a beard, it is not, as just pointed out, on aesthetic grounds ; and it is indeed very dubious if the beard can be accepted as a real per- 490 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY sonal ornament. True, the ancient Greeks respected a beard as an attribute of maturity and manhood, but their ideal of supreme beauty was nevertheless an unbearded youth : Apollo has neither beard nor moustache. The ancient Egyptians had a horror of the bearded and long-haired Greek&. " No Egyptian of either sex would on any account kiss the lips of a Greek," and whenever the Egyptians " intended to convey the idea of a man of low condition, or a slovenly person, the artists represented him with a beard " (Wilkinson). Similarly, in the second edition of his Anatomy of Expression (1824), Sir Charles Bell wrote that "When those essays were first written there was not a beard to be seen in England unless joined with squalor and neglect, and I had the conviction that this appendage concealed the finest features. Being in Rome, however, during the procession of the Corpus Domini, I saw that the expression was not injured by the beard, but that it added to the dignity and character of years." These two sentences contain the whole philosophy of beards. The expression of character is not injured, but rather increased by a beard ; but if it conceals the fine features of youth it is objec : tionable. There are men whose faces are too wide, and whose appearance is therefore improved by a chin-beard ; and there are others whose faces are too narrow, and who consequently look better with side-whiskers. But in a well-shaped youthful mascu- line face a beard is as great a superfluity, if not a blemish, as in a woman's face. Now, since the faces of civilised races are undoubtedly becoming more beautiful as time advances, it is comforting to know that, notwithstanding female selection, the beard is gradually disappear- ing. Very few men are able to raise a fine beard to-day, even with the artificial stimulus of several years' daily shaving ; and the time, no doubt, is not very distant when men will go to the cos- metic electrician to have their straggling hairbulbs in the chin killed. This may produce an inherited effect on their children ; and the always smooth-faced mother, too, cannot but exert some hereditary influence on her sons as well as her daughters. The women, in turn, will inherit some of the superior aesthetic Taste of the men, and begin to see that there is more charm in a smooth than in a bearded face ; while there will still be room enough for those sexual differences in facial Beauty which feed the flame of Love. The following newspaper paragraph, though it may be a mere jeu cFesprit, is amusing and suggestive : " A Frenchman sent a circular to all his friends asking why they cultivated a beard. THE HAIR 491 Among the answers 9 stated, ' Because I wish to avoid shaving ' ; 1 2 * Because I do not wish to catch cold ' ; 5 ' Because I wish to conceal bad teeth ' ; ' Because I wish to conceal the length of my nose'; 6 'Because I am a soldier'; 21 ' Because I was a soldier'; 65 'Because my wife likes it'; 28 'Because my love likes it'; 15 answered that they wore no beards." Moustaches are much more common to-day than beards, and it is barely possible that they may escape aesthetic condemnation, and survive to the millennium. Persons with very short upper lips or flat noses, it is true, only emphasise their shortcomings by wearing a moustache ; but in broad faces with prominent noses a well- shaped, not too drooping, moustache is no doubt an ornament, re- lieving the gravity of the masculine features and adding to their expression. As Bell remarks : " Although the hair of the upper lip does conceal the finer modulations of the mouth, as in woman, it adds to the character of the stronger and harsher emotions." "I was led to attend more particularly to the moustache as a feature of expression," he says, "in meeting a handsome young French soldier coming up a long ascent in the Cote d'Or, and breathing hard, although with a good-humoured, innocent expression. His sharp-pointed black moustache rose and fell with a catamount look that set me to think on the cause." Young men may find in Bell's remarks a suggestion as to how they may make the moustache a permanent ornament of the human race. The movements of the moustache are dependent on the muscle called depressor alee nasi. By specially cultivating this muscle men might in course of time make the movements of the moustaches subject to voluntary control. Just think what a capacity for emotional expression lies in such a simple organ as the dog's caudal appendage, aptly called the " psychographic tail " by Vischer : and moustaches are double, and therefore equal to two psychographic appendages ! Sexual Selection would not fail to seize on this "new departure" in moustaches immediately in order to emphasise the sexual dif- ferences of expression in the face, and thus increase the ardour of romantic passion. A few days ago I came across an attempt in a German paper to explain the meaning of the word Flirtation. The writer derives the word from an old expression meaning to toss or cast about. This he refers to the eyes, and thinks that the proper translation of Flirtation is augeln, i.e. to " make eyes." We, of course, know that flirting is a fine art which includes a vast deal besides dugeln ; but " making eyes " is certainly one of its tricks. Now, is it not probable that by and by, when young men will have 492 ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY properly trained their depressor aloe nasi, they will look upon the making of eyes as a feminine attribute, and, instead of winking at their sweethearts, express their admiration by some subtle and graceful movement of the moustaches'? This would obliterate Darwin's assertion that Love has no special means of expression, BALDNESS AND DEPILATORIES Superficial students of Darwinism are constantly making owlish predictions that ere many generations will have passed bald heads will be the normal aspect of man. But, as we have just seen in the case of beards, it is not utility or Natural Selection so much as Sexual, JSsthetico-Amorous Selection on which the evolution of Persona] Beauty depends. If Natural Selection were at work alone we should, indeed, ultimately become bald; for as soon as man begins to cover his head with a cap or hat, he takes away the chief function of the hair on the top of the head, where it serves as a protection against wind and weather. But Sexual Selection now steps in and says that the hair must remain, because without it the. head looks decidedly ugly, whatever its shape. " Eschricht states that in the human foetus the hair on the face during the fifth month is longer than that on the head ; and this indicates that our semi-human progenitors were not furnished with long tresses, which must therefore have been a late acquisition. This is likewise indicated by the extraordinary difference in the length of the hair in the different races : in the negro the hair forms a mere curly mat ; with us it is of great length, and with the American natives it not rarely reaches to the ground. Some species of Semnopithecus have their head covered with moderately long hair, and this probably serves as an ornament, and was ac- quired through sexual selection. The same view may perhaps be extended to mankind, for we know that long tresses are now and were formerly much admired, as may be observed in the works of almost every poet ; St. Paul says, * If a woman have long hair it is a glory to her ; ' and we have seen that in North America a chief was elected solely from the length of his hair " (Darwin). Inasmuch as Sexual Selection or Love is impeded in its action not only by pecuniary and social considerations, but by the fact that it cannot be guided by any particular feature alone, its action is slow and sometimes uncertain. Hence the increase of bald heads. It is therefore necessary to supplement the beautifying results of Sexual Selection by means of hygienic precautions, such as avoiding air-tight, warm, high hats, badly ventilated rooms, THE HAIR 493 intemperate habits, and other causes of baldness. Hereditary baldness is difficult to arrest in its course ; but even in such cases much may be accomplished by beginning in childhood to take proper care / FEB2 ' 65J REG D LD rrpl 'R5-1.PM rn.D * &&&* K^rr.rn ? n, MAV ijo'es-iifl /I LD 21A-40m-4,'63 (D6471slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY