The Mirror of the Graces: Containing General Instructions for Combining Elegance, Simplicity, and Economy with Fashion in Dress; Hints on Female Accomplishments and Manners; and Directions for the Preservation of Health and BeautyLady of distinction, active 19th century
History
The Mirror of the Graces: Containing General Instructions for Combining Elegance, Simplicity, and Economy with Fashion in Dress; Hints on Female Accomplishments and Manners; and Directions for the Preservation of Health and Beauty
Lady of distinction, active 19th century
Beauty, Personal; Clothing and dress -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century; Etiquette -- Great Britain
Let religion and morality be the foundation of the female character.
The artist may then adorn the structure without any danger to its
safety. When a girl is instructed on the great purposes of her
existence,--that she is an immortal being, as well as a mortal
woman,--you may, without fearing ill impressions, show her, that as we
admire the beauty of the rose, as well as esteem its medicinal power,
so her personal charms will be dear in the eyes of him whose heart is
occupied by the graces of her yet more estimable mind. We may safely
teach a well-educated girl, that virtue ought to wear an inviting
aspect--that it is due to her excellence to decorate her comely
apparel. But we must never cease to remember that it is VIRTUE we seek
to adorn. It must not be a merely beautiful form; for that, if it
possess not the charm of intelligence, the bond of rational tenderness,
is a frame without a soul--a statue which we look on and admire, pass
away and forget. We must impress upon the yet ingenuous maid, that
while beauty attracts, its influence is transient, unless it presents
itself as the harbinger of that good sense and principle which can
alone secure the affection of a husband, the esteem of friends, and the
respect of the world. Show her that regularity of features and symmetry
of form are not essentials in the composition of the woman whom the
wise man would select as the partner of his life. Seek, as an example,
some one of your less fair acquaintance, whose sweet disposition,
gentle manners, and winning deportment, render her the delight of her
kindred, the dear solace of her husband. Show your young and lovely
pupil what use this amiable woman has made of her few talents; and then
call on her to cultivate her more extraordinary endowments to the glory
of her Creator, the honor of her parents, and to the maintenance of her
own happiness in both worlds. To do this, requires that her aims should
be virtuous, and the means she employs to reach them of the same nature.
We know, from every record under heaven, from the sacred page to
that of the heathen world, that woman was made to be the help-mate
of man--that, by rendering herself pleasing in his sight, she is the
assuager of his pains, the solacer of his wo, the sharer of his joys,
the chief agent in the communication of his sublunary bliss. This
is beautifully alluded to in the Book of Genesis, where the work of
Creation is represented as incomplete, and the felicity of Paradise
itself imperfect, till woman was bestowed to consummate its delights:--
“The world was sad! the garden was a wild;
And man, the hermit, sighed--till woman smiled.”
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