Show BEAUTY IS increasing pretty women lu the today than ever in it yes she is decidedly pretty but not half so pretty as her mother was at her agel how often do this remark when we venture to praise some beauty of the present day in the hearing of any one of an older generation it suggests an important question whether the standard of beauty is changing and if so whether women are more or less beautiful than they used to be no woman has been more celebrated for her beauty than mary queen of scots but if she were to walk unannounced into a london drawing booc today it is doubtful if she would cause much remark no doubt she would stirl retain the power of captivating people with her charms but she would no longer bewitch them by her face it is true we can hardly realize what mary was like we are not even sure of the color of her hair or her eyes the various an bentic portraits s ly dissimilar they only agree in this that they all show us alaface which disappoints ns As we are not satisfied with a degree of beauty which was enough lor marys contemporaries the inference is that the standard of beauty has risen and the rise has probably been gradual and constant each generation making a certain advance on its predecessor one can hardly resist a conclusion of this kind after looking over a collection of portraits of a single family for three or four centuries such as one may see in any large old conefry house it may be said that this is the fault of the old painters who did not know how to make good likenesses but no one has ever looked at Hol beins portraits of henty VIII full of life and character as they are without feeling that the real henry stands before him and if holbein can give us such a lifelike representation resen tation of henry can he be incompetent to give us any idea cf anno boleyn yet the beauty boleyn as holbein represents it is certainly not such as we should rave about now there is a considerable advance in general beauty when we pass on to the portraits of the next centary cent nry the ladies of the reign of charles I 1 as painted by are about the first who are really pretty according to our ideas though the delicate flattery of the artist in trying to give them all a resemblance to henrietta maria makes them look a little monotonous A jamp of another century lands ansin the midst of those great masters who have left us a full and splendid record of all that was noble and beautiful in the days when george III waa king ones first impression on visiting a collection of and gains boroughs is that all the women of that time must have been lovely and the painters incoy to get such subjects ones second impression however is apt to be that the sitters were lucky to have such painters for the real attraction is more of ten in the pictures than in the faces not that there are not plenty of beautiful faces among them but that beauty is by no means universal and further that there is no beauty on the canvases of the last century which could not be easily matched today we have only to look at the picture of the famous misses gunnings to be assured of this they were declared by their contemporaries to be the handsomest women alive the beauty of the misses gunnings can certainly have lost nothing under reynolds bensh yet his portraits of them do not reveal any loveliness which we should consider wonderful it is not then that we admire beauty less man our loreo ears cinq bat that we have more of it and therefore it excites us less As to beauty in the present day is quite unnecessary to speak no one who keeps his eyes open can fail tabe struck by it it is not merely that there are more beauties of the first order than there seem ever to have been before but that beauty has become so very general any one who wishes to test this has only to take his stand in and watch the stream of life rolling past him in carriages and on foot and if he does not see in one afternoon more pretty faces than in all the Reynol dees and gains boroughs boroug hg he knows he will be very unfortunate indeed it is hardly possible to deny that in this matter of beauty at least our age has gone a goodseal good deal ahead of all its predecessors london letter |