- 'I know not
whether the allusions of a truly humane heart, whose zeal renders
every thing easy, be not preferable to that rough and repulsing
reason, which always finds in indifference for the public good, the
first obstacle to whatever would promote it.'
I know that libertines will also exclaim, that woman would be
unsexed by acquiring strength of body and mind, and that beauty,
soft bewitching beauty! would no longer adorn the daughters of men.
I am of a very different opinion, for I think that, on the contrary,
we should then see dignified beauty, and true grace; to produce which,
many powerful physical and moral causes would concur.- Not relaxed
beauty, it is true, or the graces of helplessness; but such as appears
to make us respect the human body as a majestic pile fit to receive
a noble inhabitant, in the relics of antiquity.
I do not forget the popular opinion that the Grecian statues were
not modelled after nature. I mean, not according to the proportions of
a particular man; but that beautiful limbs and features were
selected from various bodies to form an harmonious whole. This
might, in some degree, be true. The fine ideal picture of an exalted
imagination might be superiour to the materials which the statuary
found in nature, and thus it might with propriety be termed rather the
model of mankind than of a man. It was not, however, the mechanical
selection of limbs and features; but the ebullition of an heated fancy
that burst forth, and the fine senses and enlarged understanding of
the artist selected the solid matter, which he drew into this
glowing focus.
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