There
are, indeed, other adult beauties, but those are such as make no
allusions to the garden. What is here affirmed is that the beautiful
woman who is widely and wisely likened to the flowers, which are
inaccessibly more beautiful, must not, for her own sake, be likened to
the always accessible child.
Besides light and colour, children have a beauty of finish which is much
beyond that of more finished years. This gratuitous addition, this
completeness, is one of their unexpected advantages. Their beauty of
finish is the peculiarity of their first childhood, and loses, as years
are added, that little extra character and that surprise of perfection. A
bloom disappears, for instance. In some little children the whole face,
and especially all the space between the growth of the eyebrows and the
growth of the hair, is covered with hardly perceptible down as soft as
bloom. Look then at the eyebrows themselves. Their line is as definite
as in later life, but there is in the child the flush given by the
exceeding fineness of the delicate hairs. Moreover, what becomes,
afterwards, of the length and the curl of the eyelash? What is there in
growing up that is destructive of a finish so charming as this?
Queen Elizabeth forbade any light to visit her face "from the right or
from the left" when her portrait was a-painting. She was an observant
woman, and liked to be lighted from the front.
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