Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/176

 Cazenave, an eminent French physician, 'to encourage this natural disposition of woman, by putting at her service those medical resources whose efficacy and harmlessness have been proved by experience.' He has accordingly published a scientific work, 'La Decoration Humaine,' in which he gives his advice to women, telling the beautiful what to do and what to avoid, in order to preserve their beauty. He attempts even more, and describes what means are to be used to give beauty to those to whom nature has refused it, and to restore it to such as may, by some means or other, have lost it. Guided by the science of so eminent a medical philosopher, there need be no hesitation in disclosing the secrets of the art of human decoration. We have no reason, in these liberal days, to fear any rebukes from that ancient Puritanism which, with a profane want of reverence for God's image, did its utmost to disfigure it. There are no parents now, probably, like a pious New England grandmother of ours, who, sorely grieving at her daughter's possession of a set of magnificent teeth, lest they might make her vain and ungodly, had the finest of them pulled out.

"Every one nowadays admits that it is not only allowable, but a duty even, to cultivate personal beauty. In fact, in taking care of this we must take care of the health, without which it cannot exist.

"In ancient, as in modern, times, the women spent the greater part of the day at their toilet. The use of cosmetics was greatly in vogue. Aspasia and Cleopatra each wrote a treatise on the subject, and as they were both remarkable exemplars of successful beauty, and of course good authorities, it is a pity that their works no longer exist. The Roman dames were so careful of their complexions that to protect them they wore masks. 'These were their home faces that they kept for their husbands,' says the satirist Juvenal. The French have been always pre-eminent for their skill in the cosmemic art. Diana of Poictiers kept herself fresh even in old age by the means disclosed to her by Paracelsus. At the age of sixty-five she was so lovely that the most insensible person could not look upon her without emotion. A bath of rain-water each morning was, it is said, the most effective cause of her wonderful preservation."

[ — The records affirm this as partially true; but it is also well known that not only Diana, but also many other beauties of