But British feminine prettiness would be infinitely more captivating than it is, if it were associated with a little extra additional touch of vivacity and intelligence. When it is put in the shade, (as frequently happens,) by the sparkling allurements of the Viennese coquette, the graceful _savoir faire_ of the French _mondaine_, or the enticing charm of lustrous-eyed sirens from southern Italy, it is merely because of its lack of wit. It is a good thing to have a pretty face; but if the face be only like a wax mask, moveless and expressionless, it soon ceases to attract. The loveliest picture would bore us if we had to stare at it dumbly all day. And there is undeniably a stiffness, a formality, and often a most repellent and unsympathetic coldness about the British fair sex, which re-acts upon the men and women of other more warm-hearted and impulsive nations, in a manner highly disadvantageous to the ladies of our Fortunate Isles. For it is not _real_ stiffness, or _real_ formality after all,--nor is it the snowy chill of a touch-me-not chastity, by any means,--it is merely a most painful, and in many cases, most absurd self-consciousness. British women are always more or less wondering what their sister women are thinking about them. They can manage their men all right; but they put on curious and unbecoming airs directly other feminine influences than their own come into play. They invite the comment of the opposite sex, but they dread the criticism of their own. The awkward girl who sits on the edge of a chair with her feet scraping the carpet and her hands twiddling uneasily in her lap, is awkward simply because she has, by some means or other, been made self-conscious,--and because, in the excess of this self-consciousness she stupidly imagines every one in the room must be staring at her. The average London woman, dressed like a fashion-plate, who rustles in at afternoon tea, with her card-case well in evidence, and her face carefully set in proper “visiting lines,” offers herself up in this way as a subject for the satirist, out of the same disfiguring self-consciousness, which robs her entirely of the indifferent ease and careless grace which should,--to quote the greatest of American philosophers, Emerson,--cause her to “repel interference by a decided and proud choice of influences,” and to “inspire every beholder with something of her own nobleness.” She is probably not _naturally_ formal,--she is no doubt exceedingly constrained and uncomfortable in her fashionable attire,--and one may take it for granted that she would rather be herself than try to be a Something which is a Nothing. But Custom and Convention are her bogie men, always guarding her on either side, and investing her too often with such deplorable self-consciousness that her eye becomes furtive, her mouth hard and secretive, her conversation inane, and her whole personality an uncomfortable exhalation of stupidity and dullness.