The Country Girls Of Ireland And Wales Equally Feel The First
Impulse Of Nature, Which, Restrained In England By Fear Or Delicacy,
Proves That Society Is There In A More Advanced State.
Besides, as
the mind is cultivated, and taste gains ground, the passions become
stronger, and rest on something more stable than the casual
sympathies of the moment.
Health and idleness will always account
for promiscuous amours; and in some degree I term every person idle,
the exercise of whose mind does not bear some proportion to that of
the body.
The Swedish ladies exercise neither sufficiently; of course, grow
very fat at an early age; and when they have not this downy
appearance, a comfortable idea, you will say, in a cold climate,
they are not remarkable for fine forms. They have, however, mostly
fine complexions; but indolence makes the lily soon displace the
rose. The quantity of coffee, spices, and other things of that
kind, with want of care, almost universally spoil their teeth, which
contrast but ill with their ruby lips.
The manners of Stockholm are refined, I hear, by the introduction of
gallantry; but in the country, romping and coarse freedoms, with
coarser allusions, keep the spirits awake. In the article of
cleanliness, the women of all descriptions seem very deficient; and
their dress shows that vanity is more inherent in women than taste.
The men appear to have paid still less court to the graces. They
are a robust, healthy race, distinguished for their common sense and
turn for humour, rather than for wit or sentiment. I include not,
as you may suppose, in this general character, some of the nobility
and officers, who having travelled, are polite and well informed.
I must own to you that the lower class of people here amuse and
interest me much more than the middling, with their apish good
breeding and prejudices. The sympathy and frankness of heart
conspicuous in the peasantry produces even a simple gracefulness of
deportment which has frequently struck me as very picturesque; I
have often also been touched by their extreme desire to oblige me,
when I could not explain my wants, and by their earnest manner of
expressing that desire. There is such a charm in tenderness! It is
so delightful to love our fellow-creatures, and meet the honest
affections as they break forth. Still, my good friend, I begin to
think that I should not like to live continually in the country with
people whose minds have such a narrow range. My heart would
frequently be interested; but my mind would languish for more
companionable society.
The beauties of nature appear to me now even more alluring than in
my youth, because my intercourse with the world has formed without
vitiating my taste. But, with respect to the inhabitants of the
country, my fancy has probably, when disgusted with artificial
manners, solaced itself by joining the advantages of cultivation
with the interesting sincerity of innocence, forgetting the
lassitude that ignorance will naturally produce.
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