Lady Coventry was hardly a less
melancholy proof of it; and a London physician perhaps, were he at
liberty to blab, could publish a bill of female mortality, of a length
that would astonish us.
"For these reasons I utterly condemn the practice, as it obtains in
England; and for a reason superior to all these I must disapprove it.
I cannot, indeed, discover that Scripture forbids it in so many words.
But that anxious solicitude about the person, which such an artifice
evidently betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to the tenor and spirit of
it throughout. Show me a woman with a painted face, and I will show
you a woman whose heart is set on things of the earth, and not on
things above.
"But this observation of mine applies to it only when it is an
imitative art. For in the use of French women, I think it is as
innocent as in the use of a wild Indian, who draws a circle round her
face, and makes two spots, perhaps blue, perhaps white, in the middle
of it. Such are my thoughts upon the matter.
"_Vive valeque_,
Yours ever,
W.
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