Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/31

 THE HUMAN FIGURE AS A WHOLE.

ITS CORRECT PROPORTIONS.

Every young lady who has taken drawing lessons—and nowadays, when fashionable seminaries teach all the arts and sciences, what young lady has not done so?—knows that there are certain rules by which we form the outlines of the human figure. Each part must be in proportion to the others.

These rules were derived from a very careful study of the most celebrated ancient statues, and from measurements of the finest living models. They cannot be transgressed, even in the smallest degree, without offending a practised eye. The story is told of Lavater, the celebrated physiognomist, that on one occasion he visited a portrait painter to look over his productions. Presently he stopped before one of the paintings, and, pointing to the ear, declared that it was impossible that that organ, as represented, could have been associated with the other features. The artist, in surprise, confessed in that instance the sitting had been