The beauty of women is considerably owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it.

I would not here be understood to say, that weakness betraying very bad health has any share in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the bright color, the _lumen purpureum juventae_ is gone, and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines.
SECTION XVII.
BEAUTY IN COLOR.
As to the colors usually found in beautiful bodies, it may be somewhat difficult to ascertain them, because, in the several parts of nature, there is an infinite variety.

However, even in this variety, we may mark out something on which to settle.

First, the colors of beautiful bodies must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair.

Secondly, they must not be of the strongest kind.