An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty.  An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it.  Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this observation to be founded in nature.  It is not the oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest which we consider as beautiful; they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of reverence.  It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine which we look on as vegetable beauties.  It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and elegance.  Among animals, the greyhound is more beautiful than the mastiff, and the delicacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of war or carriage.  I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe the point will be easily allowed me.  The beauty of women is considerably owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it.  I would not here be understood to say, that weakness betraying very bad health has any share in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the bright color, the lumen purpureum juventae is gone, and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines.

SECTION XVII.

BEAUTY IN COLOR.

As to the colors usually found in beautiful bodies, it may be somewhat difficult to ascertain them, because, in the several parts of nature, there is an infinite variety.  However, even in this variety, we may mark out something on which to settle.  First, the colors of beautiful bodies must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair.  Secondly, they must not be of the strongest kind.  Those which seem most appropriated to beauty, are the milder of every sort; light greens; soft blues; weak whites; pink reds; and violets.  Thirdly, if the colors be strong and vivid, they are always diversified, and the object is never of one strong color; there are almost always such a number of them (as in variegated flowers) that the strength and glare of each is considerably abated.  In a fine complexion there is not only some variety in the coloring, but the colors:  neither the red nor the white are strong and glaring.  Besides, they are mixed in such a manner, and with such gradations, that it is impossible to fix the bounds.  On the same principle it is that the dubious color in the necks and tails of peacocks, and about the heads of drakes, is so very agreeable.  In reality, the beauty both of shape and coloring are as nearly related as we can well suppose it possible for things of such different natures to be.