Almost All
The Men Are Handsome, But Live Hard, It Is Said, In Order To
Decorate Their Backs With Those Fine Clothes Of Theirs.
I have
seen but two or three handsome women, and these had the great
drawback which is common to the race - I mean, a sallow, greasy,
coarse complexion, at which it was not advisable to look too
closely.
And on this score I think we English may pride ourselves on
possessing an advantage (by WE, I mean the lovely ladies to whom
this is addressed with the most respectful compliments) over the
most classical country in the world. I don't care for beauty which
will only bear to be looked at from a distance, like a scene in a
theatre. What is the most beautiful nose in the world, if it be
covered with a skin of the texture and colour of coarse whitey-
brown paper; and if Nature has made it as slippery and shining as
though it had been anointed with pomatum? They may talk about
beauty, but would you wear a flower that had been dipped in a
grease-pot? No; give me a fresh, dewy, healthy rose out of
Somersetshire; not one of those superb, tawdry, unwholesome
exotics, which are only good to make poems about. Lord Byron wrote
more cant of this sort than any poet I know of. Think of "the
peasant girls with dark blue eyes" of the Rhine - the brown-faced,
flat-nosed, thick-lipped, dirty wenches! Think of "filling high a
cup of Samian wine;" small beer is nectar compared to it, and Byron
himself always drank gin.
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