I am a firm believer in the maxim that mind and matter exert a mutual influence upon each other, and one of the most obvious deductions from that datum that occurs to my mind is, that the acidities of the disposition are not only neutralized but absolutely shut up by the embonpoint of the body. People blessed with healthy plumpness are indolent as well as good-natured, and it is a laborious piece of business for such folks to get in a passion.
The wealth and fondness of Julia's father, and her own natural good sense, had made her mistress of all those elegant and fashionable accomplishments that constitute the education of a lady of fortune; and she had a grace and sweetness in every thing she did that reminded the beholder of that exquisitely beautiful line in Ariosto:
"She walked--she spoke--she sang--and heaven was there."
This description may not be according to certain received axioms concerning female beauty; but I never could bear to contemplate a fair face and graceful form as painters do, who measure woman's loveliness by certain fixed and arbitrary rules, as surveyors of lumber do boards. Nothing makes me more fidgetty than to hear a man compare every beautiful face he sees with a certain standard, even if that standard is the Venus de Medicis herself; this face is not good, for it is not exactly oval; that nose is altogether wrong, for it is not Grecian; a chin is not this, or a mouth is not that, &c. Portrait painters are much addicted to this kind of criticism; and whenever I find myself in company with one of these two-foot-rule critics, I make my escape from him as I would from a plague hospital.
At the time of our narrative, Julia's father had been absent somewhat more than two years. He had sent for her to join him at Valparaiso, a summons that she prepared to obey with no small trepidation. "The course of true love," which is somewhat notorious for "never running smooth," seemed at this moment about to encounter a "head sea." Her absence from England she knew must be a long one, perhaps an eternal one; the separation from Allerton weighed much heavier upon her spirits than she was willing to admit, and altogether her prospects of happiness seemed darkened for ever.