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154 fat being absorbed with less activity, is accumulated in the cellular tissue under the skin and elsewhere; and this effaces any imperfections of the skin, rounds the outlines anew, and again restores an air of youth and freshness. Hence this period is called "the age of return."

This plumpness, though juvenile lightness and freshness be wanting, sustains the form and some­times confers a majestic air, which in women other­wise favourably organized still interests for a num­ber of years.

The shape is no longer so elegant; the articu­lations have less elasticity; the muscles are more feeble; the movements are less light; and in plump women we observe those broken, motions, and in others that stiffness which mark the walk or the dance at that age. The alteration of the voice which occurs at this period is well known.

When women pass happily from the third to the fourth age, their constitution, as everyone must have observed, changes entirely; it becomes stronger, and nature abandons to individual life all the rest of existence.

Beauty now begins to fade, form and shape disappear, the plumpness which supported the reliefs has abandoned them, sinkings are visibly multiplied,