Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, vol 2 | Page 8

of by Sir Charles Lyell and others. If I
may believe accounts that I hear, this mild and moderate man has
shown a most admirable firmness and facility in guiding the ship of the
establishment in some critical and perilous places of late years. I should
add that he is warmly interested in all the efforts now making for the
good of the poor.
Among other persons of distinction, this evening, I noticed Lord and
Lady Palmerston.
A lady asked me this evening what I thought of the beauty of the ladies
of the English aristocracy: she was a Scotch lady, by the by; so the
question was a fair one. I replied, that certainly report had not
exaggerated their charms. Then came a home question--how the ladies
of England compared with the ladies of America. "Now for it,
patriotism," said I to myself; and, invoking to my aid certain fair saints
of my own country, whose faces I distinctly remembered, I assured her
that I had never seen more beautiful women than I had in America.
Grieved was I to be obliged to add, "But your ladies keep their beauty
much later and longer." This fact stares one in the face in every
company; one meets ladies past fifty, glowing, radiant, and blooming,
with a freshness of complexion and fulness of outline refreshing to
contemplate. What can be the reason? Tell us, Muses and Graces, what
can it be? Is it the conservative power of sea fogs and coal smoke--the

same cause that keeps the turf green, and makes the holly and ivy
flourish? How comes it that our married ladies dwindle, fade, and grow
thin--that their noses incline to sharpness, and their elbows to
angularity, just at the time of life when their island sisters round out
into a comfortable and becoming amplitude and fulness? If it is the fog
and the sea coal, why, then, I am afraid we never shall come up with
them. But perhaps there may be other causes why a country which
starts some of the most beautiful girls in the world produces so few
beautiful women. Have not our close-heated stove rooms something to
do with it? Have not the immense amount of hot biscuits, hot corn
cakes, and other compounds got up with the acrid poison of saleratus,
something to do with it? Above all, has not our climate, with its
alternate extremes of heat and cold, a tendency to induce habits Of
in-door indolence? Climate, certainly, has a great deal to do with it;
ours is evidently more trying and more exhausting; and because it is so,
we should not pile upon its back errors of dress and diet which are
avoided by our neighbors. They keep their beauty, because they keep
their health. It has been as remarkable as any thing to me, since I have
been here, that I do not constantly, as at home, hear one and another
spoken of as in miserable health, as very delicate, &c. Health seems to
be the rule, and not the exception. For my part, I must say, the most
favorable omen that I know of for female beauty in America is, the
multiplication of water cure establishments, where our ladies, if they
get nothing else, do gain some ideas as to the necessity of fresh air,
regular exercise, simple diet, and the laws of hygiene in general.
There is one thing more which goes a long way towards the continued
health of these English ladies, and therefore towards their beauty; and
that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic institutions. They
do not, like us, fade their cheeks lying awake nights ruminating the
awful question who shall do the washing next week, or who shall take
the chambermaid's place, who is going to be married, or that of the
cook, who has signified her intention of parting with the mistress. Their
hospitality is never embarrassed by the consideration that their whole
kitchen cabinet may desert at the moment that their guests arrive. They
are not obliged to choose between washing their own dishes, or having
their cut glass, silver, and china left to the mercy of a foreigner, who
has never done any thing but field work. And last, not least, they are

not possessed with that ambition to do the impossible in all branches,
which, I believe, is the death of a third of the women in America. What
is there ever read of in books, or described in foreign travel, as attained
by people in possession of every means and appliance, which our
women will not undertake, single-handed, in spite of every providential
indication to the contrary? Who is not cognizant of dinner parties
invited, in which the lady of the house has figured successively as
confectioner, cook, dining-room