CRITICISM ON FEMALE BEAUTY.

III.-MOUTH, CHIN, TEETH, BOSOM.

Mouth and chin.-Mouth the part of the face the least able to conceal the expression of temper, &c.—Handsome smiles in plain faces.-Teeth.-Dimples.-Neck and shoulders.—Perfection of shape.-Bosom.-Caution against the misconstructions of the coarse-minded.

MOUTH AND CHIN.-The mouth, like the eyes, gives occasion to so many tender thoughts, and is so apt to lose and supersede itself in the affectionate softness of its effect upon us, that the first impulse, in speaking of it, is to describe it by a sentiment and a transport. Mr. Sheridan has hit this very happily -see his "Rivals:".

"SIR ANTH. ABSOLUTE.-Nay, but Jack, such eyes! such eyes! so innocently wild! so bashfully irresolute! not a glance but speaks and kindles some thought of love!-Then, Jack, her cheeks! her cheeks, Jack! so deeply blushing at the insinuations of her tell-tale eyes!-Then, Jack, her lips!-lips smiling at their own discretion; and if not smiling, more sweetly pouting; more lovely in sullenness!"

We never met with a passage in all the poets that gave us a livelier and softer idea of this charming

feature, than a stanza in a homely old writer of our own country. He is relating the cruelty of Queen Eleanor to the Fair Rosamond:

"With that she dash'd her on the lips,

So dyed double red:

Hard was the heart that gave the blow,

Soft were those lips that bled."

WARNER'S ALBION'S ENGLAND, Book viii. chap. 41.

Sir John Suckling, in his taste of an under lip, is not to be surpassed:

"Her lips were red, and one was thin

Compared with that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly."

The upper lip, observe, was only comparatively thin. Thin lips become none but shrews or niggards. A rosiness beyond that of the cheeks, and a goodtempered sufficiency and plumpness, are the indispensable requisites of a good mouth. Chaucer, a great judge, is very peremptory in this matter:

"With pregnant lippès, thick to kiss percase;
For lippès thin, not fat, but ever lean,

They serve of naught; they be not worth a bean;
For if the base be full, there is delight."

THE COURT Of Love.

For the consolation, however, of those who have thin lips, and are not shrews or niggards, we must give it here as our opinion, founded on what we have observed, that lips become more or less contracted, in the course of years, in proportion as they are

accustomed to express good-humour and generosity, or peevishness and a contracted mind. Remark the effect which a moment of ill-temper or grudgingness has upon the lips, and judge what may be expected from an habitual series of such moments. Remark the reverse, and make a similar judgment. The mouth is the frankest part of the face. It can the least conceal the feelings. We can hide neither illtemper with it nor good. We may affect what we In a wrong

please; but affectation will not help us. cause, it will only make our observers resent the endeavour to impose upon them. The mouth is the seat of one class of emotions, as the eyes are of another; or rather, it expresses the same emotions but in greater detail, and with a more irrepressible tendency to mobility. It is the region of smiles and dimples, of a trembling tenderness, of sharp sorrow, of a full and breathing joy, of candour, of reserve, of a carking care, of a liberal sympathy. The mouth, out of its many sensibilities, may be fancied throwing up one great expression into the eyes; as many lights in a city reflect a broad lustre into the heavens. On the other hand, the eyes may be supposed the chief movers, influencing the smaller details of their companion, as heaven influences earth. The first cause in both is internal and deep-seated.

The more we consider beauty, the more we recognise its dependence on sentiment. The handsomest mouth, without expression, is no better than a mouth in a drawing-book. An ordinary one, on the other

hand, with a great deal of expression, shall become charming. One of the handsomest smiles we ever saw in a man, was that of a celebrated statesman who is reckoned plain. How handsome Mrs. Jordan was when she laughed; who, nevertheless, was not a beauty. If we only imagine a laugh full of kindness and enjoyment, or a "little giddy laugh," as Marot calls it-un petit ris folâtre—we imagine the mouth handsome as a matter of course; at any rate, for the time. The material obeys the spiritual. Anacreon beautifully describes a lip as "a lip like Persuasion's," and says it calls upon us to kiss it. "Her lips," says Sir Philip Sidney, "though they were kept close with modest silence, yet with a pretty kind of natural swelling, they seemed to invite the guests that looked on them."-Arcadia, Book I.

Let me quote another passage from that noble romance, which was written to fill a woman's mind with all beautiful thoughts, and which we never met with a woman that did not like, notwithstanding its faults, and in spite of the critics. "Her tears came dropping down like rain in sunshine; and she not taking heed to wipe the tears, they hung upon her cheeks and lips, as upon cherries, which the dropping tree bedeweth."-Book the Third. Nothing can be more fresh and elegant than this picture.

A mouth should be of good natural dimensions, as well as plump in the lips. When the ancients, among their beauties, make mention of small mouths

it

and lips, they mean small only as opposed to an excess the other way; a fault very common in the south. The sayings in favour of small mouths, which have been the ruin of so many pretty looks, are very absurd. If there must be an excess either way, had better be the liberal one. A petty, pursed-up mouth is fit for nothing but to be left to its selfcomplacency. Large mouths are oftener found in union with generous dispositions, than very small ones. Beauty should have neither; but a reasonable look of openness and delicacy. It is an elegance in lips, when, instead of making sharp angles at the corner of the mouth, they retain a certain breadth to the very verge, and show the red. The corner then looks painted with a free and liberal pencil.

Beautiful teeth are of a moderate size, even, and white, not a dead white, like fish-bones, which has something ghastly in it, but ivory or pearly white with an enamel. Bad teeth in a handsome mouth present a contradiction, which is sometimes extremely to be pitied; for a weak or feverish state of body may occasion them. Teeth, not kept as clean as possible, are unpardonable. Ariosto has a celebrated stanza upon a mouth :

:

"Sotto quel sta, quasi fra due vallette,
La bocca, sparsa di natio cinabro:

Quivi due filze son di perle elette,
Che chiude ed apre un bello e dolce labro;

Quindi escon le cortesi parolette

Da render molle ogni cor rozzo e scabro;