she cannot always boast of conquest without auxiliaries: she is frequently somewhat indebted for her fascinating power to novelty; and, where there is not freedom of access, somewhat also to restraint. We are naturally anxious to taste the pleasures that are known to be forbidden: the very prohibition stimulates desire, and induces a belief that more is to be enjoyed than experience will warrant. But let it be remembered, that familiarity with the most engaging objects does not always strengthen attachment: for this attachment, instead of being augmented by fruition, is too frequently diminished: and this will ever be the case when no regard is paid to those qualities that are essential to permanent esteem, and without which no enjoyment can be long secured from satiety and disgust.

The finest features, ranged in the most exact symmetry, and heightened by the most blooming complexion, must, says an elegant writer, be animated before they can strike: and when they are animated, will generally

excite the same passions which they express. If they are fixed in the dead calm of insensibility, they will be examined without emotion; and if they do not express kindness, they will be beheld without love. Looks of contempt, disdain, or malevolence, will be reflected, as from a mirror, by every countenance on which they are turned; and if a wanton aspect excite desire, it is but like that of a savage for his prey, which cannot be gratified without the destruction of its object.

The lover is generally at a loss to define the beauty by which his passion was suddenly and irresistibly determined to a particular object; but this could never happen, if it depended upon any known rule of proportion, upon the shape or disposition of the features, or the colour of the skin: he tells you, that it is something which he cannot fully express, something not fixed in any part, but diffused over the whole; he calls it a sweetness, a softness, a placid sensibility, or gives it some other appellation which connects beauty with sentiment,

and expresses a charm which is not peculiar to any set of features, but is perhaps possible to all.

This beauty, however, does not always consist in smiles, but varies as expressions of meekness and kindness vary with their objects; it is extremely forcible in the silent complaint of patient sufferance, the tender solicitude of friendship, and the glow of filial obedience; and in tears, whether of joy, of pity, or of grief, it is almost irresistible.

This is the charm which captivates without the aid of nature, and without which her utmost bounty is ineffectual. But it cannot be assumed as a mask to conceal insensibility or malevolence; it must be the effect of corre sponding sentiments, or it will impress upon the countenance a new and more disgusting deformity, AFFECTATION.-Looks which do not correspond with the heart, cannot be assumed without labour, nor continued without pain; the motive to relinquish them must, therefore, soon preponderate, and the aspect

and apparel of the visit will be laid by together; the smiles and the languishments of art will vanish, and the fierceness of rage, or the gloom of discontent, will either obscure or destroy all the elegance of symmetry and complexion.

'The artificial aspect is, indeed, as wretched a substitute for the expression of sentiment, as the smear of paint for the blushes of health; it is not only equally transient, and equally liable to detection; but as paint leaves the countenance yet more withered and ghastly, the passions burst out with more violence after restraint, the features become more distorted, and excite more determined aversion.

'Beauty, therefore, depends principally upon the mind, and consequently may be influenced by education. It has been remarked, that the predominant passion may generally be discovered in the countenance; because the muscles by which it is expressed, being almost perpetually contracted, lose their tone, and never totally relax; so that the expression remains when

the passion is suspended; thus an angry, a disdainful, a subtle, and a suspicious temper, is displayed in characters that are almost universally understood. It is equally true of the pleasing and the softer passions, that they leave their signatures upon the countenance when they cease to act: the prevalence of these passions, therefore, produces a mechanical effect upon the aspect, and gives a turn and cast to the features which make a more favourable and forcible impression upon the mind of others, than any charm produced by mere external

causes.

6

"Neither does the beauty which depends upon temper and sentiment, equally endanger the possessor; it is, to use an eastern metaphor, like the towers of a city, not only an ornament, but a defence:' if it excite desire, it at once controls and refines it; it represses with awe, it softens with delicacy, and it wins to imitation. The love of reason and of virtue is mingled with the love of beauty; because this beauty is little more than the emanation of in