e it
certainly is not expedient, because in general English women have no
occasion for it. A swarthy complexion is a rarity here; and the sex,
especially since inoculation has been so much in use, have very little
cause to complain that nature has not been kind to them in the article
of complexion. They may hide and spoil a good one, but they cannot, at
least they hardly can, give themselves a better. But even if they
could, there is yet a tragedy in the sequel, which, should make them
tremble.

"I understand that in France, though the use of rouge be general, the
use of white paint is far from being so. In England, she that uses
one, commonly uses both. Now all white paints, or lotions, or whatever
they may be called, are mercurial, consequently poisonous, consequently
ruinous in time to the constitution. The Miss B---- above mentioned
was a miserable witness of this truth, it being certain that her flesh
fell from her bones before she died. 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. C."

These letters have been chosen as illustrations of Cowper's epistolary
style, and for that purpose they have been given entire. But they are
also the best pictures of his character; and his character is
everything. The events of his life worthy of record might all be
comprised in a dozen pages.

CHAPTER VIII.

CLOSE OF LIFE.

Cowper says there could not have been a happier trio on earth than Lady
Hesketh, Mrs. Un