Within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty
degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great height,
inasmuch as the female part of our species were much taller than
the men. The women were of such an enormous stature that 'we
appeared as grasshoppers before them.' At present, the whole sex is
in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems
almost another species. I remember several ladies who were once
very near seven feet high, that at present want some inches of
five.... I would desire the fair sex to consider how impossible it
is for them to add anything that can be ornamental to what is
already the master-piece of Nature. The head has the most beautiful
appearance, as well as the highest station in a human figure.
Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has
touched it with vermillion, planted in it a double row of ivory,
made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up, and
enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on each side
with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot
be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair
as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light. In short, she
seems to have designed the head as the cupola to the most glorious
of her works; and when we load it with such a pile of supernumerary
ornaments, we destroy the symmetry of the human figure, and
foolishly contrive to call off the eye from great and real
beauties, to childish gewgaws, ribbands, and bone-lace.
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