Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/75

Rh week to week, with the changes of the season—make us tedious to ourselves, and as unalterable and unattractable as an old family picture—or, what is equally out of the way and insipid, an old bachelor?

But some of you talk of simplicity of nature; of the gewgaw display of artificial charms; of deforming nature’s works by the cumbrous and fantastical embellishments of art, and so forth. Now, sir, if you will pin the argument to this point, I shall have you in my power. Pray, is nature simple, barren, tedious, dull, uniform, and unadorned, as you old bachelors would have us to be, so that we might resemble your comfortless selves? Look at the trees—are they all of the same colour? Are they not so infinitely diversified in their shades and figures, that, to an observing eye, no two are alike? Observe the flowers of the garden do they exhibit the same sombre or pale hue? Do they present that dull simplicity which you recommend to us, whom your gravest philosophers allow to be the handsomest beings in creation? Do you prefer the dull uniformity of a trench of upright celery to the variegated bed of tulips? What would you say of a project to reform nature by robbing the rose of its blushing red, the lily of its silver lustre, the tulip of its gorgeous streaks, the violet of its regal purple, and allowing the vale to be no longer embroidered with their various beauties? or, of blotting from the clouds their golden streaks and dazzling silver, and banishing the gay rainbow from the heavens, because they are not of a uniform colour, but for ever present more varieties and combinations of beauties than our imagination can paint? And shall not we, who, at least, pretended to have the use of reason, imitate nature? Nature has given for our use the varied dyes of the mineral and vegetable world, which enables us almost to vie with her own splendid gilding. Nature made us to be various, changeable, inconstant, many-coloured, whimsical, fickle, and fond of show, if you please, and we follow nature with the greatest fidelity when, like her, we use her beauties to delight the eye, gratify the taste, and employ the mind in the harmonious varieties of colour and figure to which fashion resorts, and to which we devote so much time and thought.