Many a rich lady would give thousands of dollars for that full rounded arm, and that peach bloom on the cheek, possessed by her kitchen-maid. Well, might she not have had both, by the same amount of exercise and simple living?
But I weary of this subject of cosmetics, as every woman of sense will at last weary of the use of them. It is a lesson which is sure to come; but, in the lives of most fashionable ladies, it has small chance of being needed until that unmentionable time, when men shall cease to make baubles and playthings of them. It takes most women two-thirds of their lifetime to discover that men may be amused by, without respecting, them; and every woman may make up her mind that to be really respected she must possess merit; she must have accomplishments of mind and heart, and there can be no real beauty without these. If the soul is without cultivation, without refinement, without taste, without the sweetness of affection, not all the mysteries of art can make the face beautiful; and, on the other hand, it is impossible to dim the brightness of an elegant and polished mind; its radiance strikes through the encasements of deformity, and asserts its sway over the world of the affections.
A history of the beginning of the reign of gallantry would carry us back to the creation of the world; for I believe that about the first thing that man began to do after he was created, was to make love to woman.
There was no discussion, then, about "woman's rights," or "woman's influence"--woman had whatever her soul desired, and her will was the watchword for battle or peace. Love was as marked a feature in the chivalric character as valour; and he who understood how to break a lance, and did not understand how to win a lady, was held to be but half a man. He fought to gain her smiles--he lived to be worthy of her love.
In those days, to be "a servant of the ladies" was no mere figure of the imagination--and to be in love was no idle pastime; but to be profoundly, furiously, almost ridiculously in earnest. In the mind of the cavalier, woman was a being of mystic power. As in the old forests of Germany, she had been listened to like a spirit of the woods, melodious, solemn and oracular. So when chivalry became an institution, the same idea of something supernaturally beautiful in her character threw a shadow over her life, and she was not only loved but revered. And never were men more constant to their fair ladies than in the proudest days of chivalry.