_Masculine Beauty in Feminine Eyes._—In woman’s Love the admiration of Personal Beauty has played a much less significant _rôle_ than in man’s Love. If, nevertheless, the average man in most countries is perhaps a better specimen of masculine Beauty than the average woman of feminine Beauty, this is owing to the facts that sons as well as daughters may inherit their mother’s beauty, and that men, leading a more active and athletic life, are more beautiful than women in proportion as they are more healthy. In the past barbarous times the constant wars and the unsettled state of social affairs made it important for women to select men not for their beauty, but for their energy, courage, and manly prowess. Desdemona falls in Love with the Moor despite his colour and ugliness; and why? Othello himself tells us— “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them.” And it is on beholding Orlando vanquishing the Duke’s wrestler that Rosalind falls in Love with him. As Celia remarks: “Young Orlando, that tripped up the wrestler’s heels and your heart, both in an instant.” Women are conservative; and in the ludicrous feminine eagerness to make immortal heroes of the ephemeral victors in a boat-race or baseball match, we see an echo, in these peaceful days, of a feminine trait imprinted on them in warlike times. Intellectual supereminence, in the meantime, was ignored by women. Petrarch’s verses made no impression on Laura, and Dante could not even win Beatrice with such poetic beauties as these lines— “Whatever her sweet eyes are turned upon, Spirits of Love do issue thence in flame, Which through their eyes who then may look on them Pierce to the heart’s deep chamber every one. And in her smile Love’s image you may see Whence none can gaze upon her steadfastly.” There is, however, already a large class of superior women who have discovered that brains have displaced muscle in the successful struggle for existence, and that strong nerves are the true storage-batteries of courage and vigour in modern life. Hence the homage paid to men of genius. In regard to masculine Beauty a change likewise has come over the feminine mind. Fashionable young ladies appear, indeed, to be as exacting in the matter of what they consider Personal Beauty as their beaux are. A barber’s pet is their pet, even as the fashionable man’s ideal of femininity is a milliner’s model. There can be hardly any doubt that this is an improvement on the taste of those savages who prefer their women black, with thick lips, flat noses, and tattooed, or smeared with a half-inch coat of paint.