eel; but it is
free exercise in the open air, and simplicity of diet, provided it is
nutritious, that confer gentility and grace, and preserve beauty. Will
any man, married or single, and in the possession of his senses, say
that he likes the looks of a horse whose ribs are visible and
_countable_ at half a mile's distance? I am confident the answer will
be, no.

Still there is a wonderful resemblance between a lean woman and a lean
horse, in more points than one; the lady does not, indeed, go upon all
fours, but I can never see a very _genteel_ female, laced into the shape
of an hour-glass, without wishing, from the bottom of my heart, that she
had an extra pair of le--ahem!--ancles, to support her feeble and
tottering frame.

As I am growing old, and am, moreover, somewhat peculiarly
circumstanced, I suppose that I must put up with such a wife as it
pleases God to send me; but were I ten or fifteen years younger, and
"well to do," I would accept of no descendant of mother Eve, as a
helpmate and partner for life, who did not cut at least two inches on
the ribs. The Turks, who are practical men of taste in these things; the
Chinese, who pretend to the highest antiquity in civilization; the naked
Africans and South Sea Islanders, beyond dispute the most
unsophisticated of all father Adam's children, and who, like Job,
"retain their integrity" pretty stiffly, considering the missionaries,
the "march of intellect," and other untoward circumstances, are all of
them most decidedly in favor of something substantial in wedlock; no man
of taste, in either of these nations, ever dreams of comfort and
happiness in matrimony, unless he clasps to his bosom an armful of wife.
They choose their wives as we do lobsters--the heaviest are the best.

I am a firm believer in the maxim that mind and matter exert a mutual
influence upon each other, and one of the most obvious deductions from
that datum that occurs to my mind is, that the acidities of the
disposition are not only neutralized but absolutely shut up by the
embonpoint of the body. People blessed with healthy plumpness are
indolent as well as good-natured, and it is a laborious piece of
business for such folks to get in a passion.

The wealth and fondness of Julia's father, and her own natural good
sense, had made her mistress of all those elegant and fashionable
accomplishments that constitute the education of a lady of fortune; and
she had a grace and sweetness in every t