who wakes you out of a sound sleep, to tell you it is seven o'clock, and you must get up directly to be hanged. But I shall proceed at once to external beauty, although it must be admitted, before I enter into the mouth of my subject, that there is no fixed standard of perfection for this feature, either in form or colour. Poor Mungo Park, after having turned many African women sick, and frightened others into fits, by his unnatural whiteness, was once assured by a kind-hearted woolly-headed gentleman, that though he could not look upon him without an involuntary disgust, he only felt the more compassion for his misfortune; and upon another occasion he overheard a jury of matrons debating whether a female could be found in any country to kiss such emaciated and frightful lips. How Noah's grandchildren, the African descendants of Ham, came to be black, has never yet been satisfactorily explained, and it were therefore vain to inquire into the origin of their enormous lips, which do not seem better adapted to a hot climate than our own; but there is good reason to believe that the ancient Egyptians were as ponderously provided in this respect as their own bull-god, for the Sphinx has a very Nubian mouth, and the Memnon's head, so far from giving us the idea of a musical king who could compete with Pan or Apollo, rather tempts us to exclaim in the language of Dryden—

"Thou sing with him, thou booby! never pipe

Was so profan'd to touch that blubber'd lip."

Belzoni may grub for ever in the ruins of Thebes before he will find the representation of a single Egyptian half so well made as himself; for a more angular and awkward set of two-legged animals seem never to have existed. They must have worshipped monkies on account of their resemblance to their own human form divine; and we cannot attribute their appearance to the unskilfulness of the artist rather than the deformity of the subject, for the drawings of animals are always accurate, and sometimes extremely graceful.

All this only makes it the more wonderful that Cecrops, by leading a colony from the mouths of the Nile to Attica, should found a nation which, to say nothing of its surpassing pre-eminence in arts and arms, attained in a short period that exquisite proportion and beauty of form of which they have left us memorials in their glorious statues, and have thus eternally fixed the European standard of symmetry and loveliness. The vivid fancy of the Greeks not only peopled woods, waves, and mountains with imaginary beings, but by a perpetual intermingling of the physical and moral world, converted their arms, instruments, and decorations into types and symbols, thus elevating inanimate objects into a series of hieroglyphics, as they had idealised their whole system of mythology into a complicated allegory. To illustrate this by recurring to the subject of our essay. Many people contemplate the classical bow of the ancients without recollecting that its elegant shape is supplied originally by Nature, as it is an exact copy of the line described by the surface of the upper lip. It is only by recalling this circumstance that we can fully appreciate that curious felicity which appropriated the lip-shaped bow to Apollo the god of eloquence, and to Cupid the god of love, thus typifying that amorous shaft, which is never so powerfully shot into the heart as through the medium of a kiss. It is in this spirit of occult as well as visible beauty that classical

tent.

antiquity should be felt and studied. No upper lip can be pronounced beautiful unless it have this line as distinctly defined as I now see it before me in a sleeping infant. I am sorry to be personal towards my readers, particularly those of the fair sex, but, my dear Madam, it is useless to consult your glass, or complain that the mirrors are not half so well made now as they were when you were younger. By biting them you may indeed make " your lips blush deeper sweets," but you cannot bid them display the desiderated outline. Such vain endeavours, like the formal mumbling of prayers, "are but useless formalities and lip-labour." Your's are, in fact, (be it spoken in a whisper) what a friend of mine denominates sixpenny lips, from their tenuity, and maintains them to be indicative of deceit. He, however, is a physiognomist, which I am not, or at least only to a very modified exAll those muscles which are flexible and liable to be called into action by the passions may, I conceive, permanently assume some portion of the form into which they are most frequently thrown, and thus betray to us the predominant feelings of the mind; but as no emotions can influence the collocation of our features, or the fixed constituents of our frame, I have no faith in their indications. As to the craniologists and others who maintain that we are made angels and devils, not by wings at our shoulders or tails at our backs, but by the primitive bosses upon our skulls, I recommend them a voyage to one of the South Sea islands, where they will find the usual diversity of individual character, although all the infants heads are put into a frame at the birth, and compelled to grow up in the shape of a sugar-loaf. Not that Spurzheim would be embarrassed by this circumstance. He would only pronounce from their mitre-like configuration that they had the organ of Episcopativeness.

Nay, Miss, I have not been so absorbed in this little digression, but that I have observed you endeavouring to complete the classical contour of your mouth by the aid of lipsalve, as if bees-wax and rouge could supply what the plastic and delicate hand of Nature has failed to impress. Cupid has not stamped his bow upon your mouth, yet swear by those lips, (I wish you would take a hint from one of our LITTLE though by no means one of our minor poets, and call upon me to kiss the book,) that they are beautifully ripe and ruddy,

"Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
And yet an union in partition."

They are such as Cornelius Gallus loved ;—

"Flammea dilexi, modicumque tumentia labra,

Quæ mihi gustanti basia plena darent:"

and if any one should object that an Egyptian præfect was a bad judge of beauty, you may safely maintain that the elegies which bear his name, were in fact composed by monks of the middle age, whose competency to decide upon such a subject will hardly be disputed. Those lips are full and round, but beware of their being tempted into a froward expression, for, if

"Like a misbehaved and sullen wench

Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love,"

I will supply thee with no more eulogiums from either monks or præ

fects. The "slumberous pout" which Keats has so delightfully described in his sleeping Deity is the only one which is becoming.

I see another of my readers mincing up her mouth, with that toss of the head and self-satisfied air, which assure me that she is a flirt and a coquette; and though her lips be ruddy, " as they in pure vermillion had been dyed," I entreat her to recollect, that "lips though rosy must still be fed," and recommend her "to fall upon her knees and thank heaven fasting for a good man's love." If she make mouths at me as well as at her lovers, and heed not my counsel, I can only exclaim

"Take, O take those lips away,

Which so often were forsworn," &c.

and have nothing to thank her for but the recalling of those exquisite lines, whether they be Shakspeare's or Fletcher's.

Now, however, I behold a nobler vision hanging over and irradiating the page. It is of a lovely nymph, in whose looks and lips the bows of Apollo and Cupid seem intertwined and indented. She does not simper from affectation, nor smile because it is becoming, nor compress her lips to hide a defective tooth, nor open them to display the symmetry of the rest; but her mouth has that expression which the painter of Bathyllus, in the Greek Anthology, was instructed to catch,

"And give his lips that speaking air
As if a word were hovering there."

Her's is not of that inexpressive doll-like character, which seems to smirk as if it were conscious of its own silly prettiness; nor has she the pouting come-kiss-me under-lip of sealing-wax hue which one sees in the portraits of Lely and Kneller; but while in the animation of her looks intelligence seems to be beaming from her eyes, enchantment appears to dwell within the ruby portals of her mouth. Its very silence is eloquent, for her's are the lips which Apollo loved in Daphne, and Cupid in his Psyche, which Phidias and Praxiteles have immortalised in marble, and which immutable Nature still produces when she is in her happiest and most graceful moods. Her's is the mouth, in short, which, to use an appropriate botanical phrase, conducts us by a natural and delightful inosculation to the second division, or rather union of my subject-Kissing.

This is a very ancient and laudable practice, whether as a mark of respect or affection. The Roman Emperors saluted their principal officers by a kiss; and the same mode of congratulation was customary upon every promotion or fortunate event. Among the same people, men were allowed to kiss their female relations on the mouth, that they might know whether they smelt of wine or not, as it seems those vaunted dames and damsels were apt to make too free with the juice of the grape, notwithstanding a prohibition to the contrary. The refinement of manners among these classical females was probably pretty much upon a par with that depicted in the Beggar's Opera, where Macheath exclaims, after saluting Jenny Diver," one may know by your kiss that your gin is excellent." The ancients used not only to kiss their dying relations, from a strange notion that they should

inhale the departing soul, but repeated the salutation when dead, by way of valediction; and, finally, when they were laid upon the funeral pile. There is no accounting for tastes; but for my own part, I would rather salute the living; and I even carry my singularity so far as to prefer the soft lips of a female, to that mutual presentation of bristled cheeks to which one is subject by the customs of France. A series of essays has been written on the rational recreation of kissing, by John Everard, better known as Johannes Secundus, the author of the Basia, which has the disgrace of being even more licentious than his prototypes, Propertius and Catullus. This gentleman held the same situation under the Archbishop of Toledo, that Gil Blas filled under the Archbishop of Granada; but instead of devoting his time to the improvement of homilies, he employed himself in describing kisses of every calibre, from the counterpart of that bestowed by Petruchio upon his bride, who

"kist her lips

With such a clamorous smack, that at the parting

All the church echo'd".

to the fond and gentle embrace described by Milton, when Adam, gazing upon our first parent in the delicious bowers of Eden

"in delight

Both of her beauty and submissive charms

Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter

On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds

That shed May flowers; and press'd her matron lip

With kisses pure."

Old Ben Jonson, unlike Captain Wattle, preferred the taste of his mistress's lip to Sillery or Chateau-Margaud, for which we have the authority of his well-known song

"Or leave a kiss within the

cup,

And I'll not ask for wine."

And Anacreon himself, tippler as he was, did not relish his Chian, "had not the lips of love first touch'd the flowing bowl." The poets in general can hardly be supposed to have possessed "lips that beauty hath seldom bless'd;" and if they have not always recorded this fact, they were probably restrained by the sanctitude of that injunction which orders us not to kiss and tell. Yet there ought to be no squeamishness in the confession, for Nature herself is ever setting us examples of cordiality and love, without the least affectation of secrecy"This woody realm

We

may all

Is Cupid's bower; see how the trees enwreathe
Their arms in amorous embraces twined!

The gugglings of the rill that runs beneath,
Are but the kisses which it leaves behind,

While softly sighing through these fond retreats,
The wanton wind woos every thing it meets."

gaze upon the scene, when, according to the poet,
"The far horizon kisses the red sky,"

or look out upon the ocean

"When the uplifted waters kiss the clouds."

*Plato seems to have thought that this interchange might occur among the living, for he says when he kisses his mistress,

My soul then flutters to my lip,
Ready to fly and mix with thine."

There was doubtless an open footpath over that "heaven-kissing hill,” whereon, according to Shakspeare, the feathered Mercury alighted; and there were, probably, many enamoured wanderers abroad on that tranquil night recorded by the same poet-

"When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,

And they did make no noise."

Even that phlegmatic compound, a pie, has its kissing-crust. There is no kissing, indeed, animate or inanimate, that has not its recommendations; but there is a nondescript species, somewhat between both, against which I beg to enter my protest-I mean the degrading ceremony of a man made in God's image, kneeling to kiss the hand of a fellow mortal at Court, merely because that mortal is the owner of a crown, and the dispenser of places and titles. Nay, there are inconsistent beings who have kissed the foot of the Servant of servants at Rome, and yet boggled at performing the ko-tou at Pekin, to the Son of the Moon, the Brother of the Sun, and the Lord of the Celestial Empire. Instead of complaining at knocking their nobs upon the floor before such an august personage, it seemed reasonable to suppose that they would conjure up in their imaginations much more revolting indignities. Rabelais, when he was in the suite of Cardinal Lorraine, accompanied him to Rome, and no sooner saw him prostrate before the Pope, and kissing his toe, as customary, than he suddenly turned round, shut the door, and scampered home. Upon his return, the cardinal asked him the meaning of this insult. When I saw you, said Rabelais, who are my master, and, moreover, a cardinal and a prince, kissing the Pope's foot, I could not bear to anticipate the sort of ceremony that was probably reserved for your servant. H.

SONNET

*

FROM THE ITALIAN OF GIAMBATTISTA PASTORINI,

Written after the bombardment of Genoa by Louis XIV.

My Genoa, if I view with tearless eye

Thy beauteous bosom in its blood bedew'd,

'Tis not a thankless child's ingratitude,

But that my struggling soul denies a sigh.

I glory in thy ruin'd majesty,

Stern token of thy courage unsubdued;
Where'er I turn I see thy fragments strew'd,
And in thy peril read thy prowess high.

The noblest triumph is to suffer well,

And nobly hast thou triumph'd o'er thy foes
In that immutable tranquillity;

Still in thine honour'd walls may Freedom dwell;
Still may'st thou proudly say amidst thy woes,
Yes! welcome Ruin; never Slavery."

This sonnet is cited by the Edinburgh Reviewer of Mathias' work, as the finest

in the Italian language.