Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in WomanWalker, Alexander
Philosophy
Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in Woman
Walker, Alexander
Beauty, Personal; Women
"What grace," says Smith, "what noble propriety do we not feel in the
conduct of those who exert that recollection and self-command which
constitute the dignity of every passion, and which bring it down to what
others can enter into! We are disgusted with that clamorous grief, which,
without any delicacy, calls upon our compassion with sighs and tears, and
importunate lamentation. But we reverence that reserved, that silent and
majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes,
in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant, but affecting
address of the whole behavior. It imposes the like silence upon us; we
regard it with respectful attention, and watch over our whole behavior,
lest, by any impropriety, we should disturb that concerted tranquillity
which it requires so great an effort to support." This is eloquence,
indeed.
Alison duly appreciates this earliest definition of grace. "It is," he
says, "this 'recollection and self-command,' which in such scenes
constitute what even in common language is called the graceful in behavior
or deportment; and it is the expression of the same qualities in the
attitude and gesture, which constitutes, in my apprehension, the grace of
such gestures or attitudes.... Wherever, in the movements of the form,
self-command or self-possession is expressed, some degree of grace, at
least, is always produced.... Whenever in such motions grace is actually
perceived, I think it will always be found to be in slow, and, if I may
use the expression, in restrained or measured motions.
"The motions of the horse, when wild in the pasture, are beautiful; when
urged to his speed, and straining for victory, they may be felt as
sublime; but it is chiefly in movements of a different kind that we feel
them as graceful, when, in the impatience of the field, or in the
curvetting of the manege, he seems to be conscious of all the powers with
which he is animated, and yet to restrain them, from some principle of
beneficence or of dignity. Every movement of the stag almost is beautiful,
from the fineness of his form and the ease of his gestures; yet it is not
in these or in the heat of the chase that he is graceful: it is when he
pauses upon some eminence in the pursuit, when he erects his crested head,
and when, looking with disdain upon the enemy who follows, he bounds to
the freedom of his hills. It is not, in the same manner, in the rapid
speed of the eagle when he darts upon his prey, that we perceive the
grace of which his motions are capable. It is when he soars slowly upward
to the sun, or when he wheels with easy and continuous motion in airy
circles in the sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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