ity. But folks thought otherwise thirty years
since, and, however incredible it may appear, there are actually now in
existence a great many painters, sculptors, anatomists, and perhaps as
many as a dozen women, who persist in thinking that a human being looks
much better as God made him, after his own image, than as the tailor
makes him, after no image in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or
in the waters under the earth. Forty years since, ladies did not by
tight lacing crush and obliterate all symptoms of fulness in the front
of the bust, nor did gentlemen stuff and pad their clothes till they
resemble so many wet-nurses in coats and breeches.

It was the established rule with novel-writers, and that until very
lately, to represent their heroes as tall grenadier-looking fellows,
never _under_ six feet, and as much above as they dared to go, and keep
within credible bounds. "Tall and slightly but elegantly formed," was
the only approved recipe for making a hero. So that a black snake
walking erect upon his tail, provided he had two of them, or an
old-fashioned pair of kitchen tongs, with a face hammered out upon the
knob by the blacksmith, would convey a tolerably correct idea of the
proportions of the Beverleys, and Mortimers, and Hargraves, of a certain
class of novels. Sir Walter Scott, Mr. James, and most of the best
writers, have disbanded this formidable regiment of thread-paper giants,
and we now see courage, manly beauty, talents, wit, and eloquence,
reduced to a peace-establishment size, instead of those long-splice
scoundrels, that used to go striding about our imaginations, like Jack
the giant-killer in his seven-league boots, kicking the shins and
treading on the toes of every common sized idea that came in their way.

It was also considered indispensably necessary, that the heroine should
be "as long as the moral law," and accordingly we heard of nothing but
"her tall and graceful figure," "her majestic and commanding height,"
&c. &c. Let those who prefer tall women take them; for my part, I wish
to have nothing to say to such Anakim in petticoats: conceive the
embarrassment and confusion of a common sized bridegroom compelled,
before a room-full of company, to request his Titan of a bride to be
seated, that he might greet her with the holy kiss of wedded love! On
the other hand, it was by no means unusual to represent the heroine as a
mere pigmy; so that the lovers whose destinies we were interested