asylum beneath the shades prepared for it by nature. They add their conjugal harmony to that of the plants destined for them, and their vigilance, industry, and mutual affection redouble by the dangers which surround them. While the African lion prepares his nuptial bed in the side of a rock bristling with prickly pears and aloes, and the eagle on bare summits that lose themselves in the clouds, while their carnivorous loves redouble the horrors of their solitude; feeble creatures, tenderly bold, come to populate the smiling valleys. The timid rabbit there burrows an inaccessible retreat among beds of wild thyme, and the nightingale utters her harmonies amid the rose bushes. The swan does not fear the voracity of the white bear as she nestles among the reeds and rushes of the northern marshes, and the heathcock, building in the dark hemlock, escapes the wiles of the fox. Without carnivorous beasts more than half the earth would be uninhabited; these force the feeble, innocent species to seek asylums. The cel takes refuge under the vault of rocks, and fear indicates to him his dwelling. By war, the arid sands, the ices, the space of the earth and of the waters are inhabited, and the smallest plant shelters lovers. War develops their industry, and teaches the art of opposing skill to force, through which the feeblest animals become the most ingenious. In the loves of insects especially we may study the instincts, the foresight, and resources inspired by this passion, and which no fable has even imagined.

Conjugal harmony not only unites individuals of the same. species, but genera the most diverse. As the climbing vine needs the support of the elm to ripen its bunches, and as the elm, which gives its seeds in the spring, needs, in turn, to decorate its foliage with the fruits of the vine, thus the bird and the quadruped are often seen to approach each other from mutual necessities. The wagtail often accompanies the sheep to deliver it from insects, and the sheep, in turn, furnishes, in a few flocks of its wool, the material for the wagtail's nest. The fauvet approaches the horse to render him the same services. The partridge and hare like to nestle in the same soli

18

MAN THE MICROCOSM.

tude. The republican beaver and the lonely swan give themselves up to love in the lakes. Conjugal harmony relates them, as among other animals and plants, and in all the powers of nature, it has established the first chains of that harmony which unite the whole. Man and woman resume all powers and all necessities. Nature has made them naked, to show all the beauties of animals combined in their bodies, and to oblige them, in covering themselves with their spoils, to reinvest their several graces of expression. See Hercules, that model of virility: you distinguish in him all the characters of the most formidable animals. In his huge muscles, his broad shoulders, his hairy chest, his tawny skin, his imposing attitude, there is I know not what of the bull, the eagle, and the lion. A Venus, on the contrary, presents us, in the harmonies of her curves, of her color, of her motions, those of the mildest and most amiable animals, of lambs, doves, and gazelles. The taste of dress in the two sexes is conformable to their character. Man affects in his that of the proudest beasts; enormous wigs like the mane of the lion, mustaches like those of the tiger, bear-skin caps, dark striped cloths like the panther's robe, spurs on the heel like those of the cock. Nothing can be more like this warlike bird than one of our ancient cavaliers, with crested casque, short cloak, and gilded spurs. It is remarkable that in every country the military dress, so beloved of women, is borrowed from the warrior animals; uniform is the festal dress of the nobles. On the other hand, the ornaments of women, their egrets, collars, fans, the butterflies on their head-dresses, their trailing robes, are imitated from the most brilliant insects and birds. Although the proportions of man and of woman are the same for the whole earth, an African Hercules would doubtless offer a different physiognomy and costume from the Greek; and a Venus, born on the Neva, would be adorned with other charms than she who was born from the foam of the waves of the Ionian Sea.

It is the instinct of conjugal harmony and its adaptations, rather than any positive necessity, which sends men over the world, and surmounts every obstacle in collecting the furs of

LOVE THE MAINSPRING OF LIFE.

19

Siberia, Oregon, and Canada, the muslins and cashmeres of India, and pearls from the ocean bed. It is to heighten the joy, the delight, and the grace of his festivals, that he brings sugar from the Antilles, coffee from Arabia, chocolate from Mexico, spices from the Molluccas, and wines from the Archipelago, from Italy, and France. It is to adorn his dwelling that he borrows in the ruins of antiquity models of sculpture and architecture; every where he finds his fellows occupied with the same cares. On the other side, it is to please man that woman incessantly combines new enjoyments. Thus from pleasure to pleasure, a fickle Omphale makes Hercules spin at her feet.

Unfortunate man finds in his fellows rivals more dangerous than the wild beasts, and in their society, cunning, force, superstition, jealousy, work incessantly to despoil him. Then, obliged to conceal his life, and to hide in a cavern near beasts of prey, he flies his country, he seeks an asylum in the sands of Africa or in the ices of the north; but he carries there a companion, and consoles himself still for the injustice of his fellows by the sweets of conjugal harmony; if ambition wrongs love, love, in urn, repairs the evils of ambition.

We shall avoid those of society by following the route which nature has traced for us. Let us consider man and woman in their youth, and the relations which conjugal harmony establishes between them.

The beauties of man and of woman are of two different characters. The first unites in himself contrasts, by the rude oppositions of eyebrows, mustaches, bcard, and the strong expression of his organs and his muscles; the second assembles the beauties of consonance, by the roundness of her limbs and the elegance of their turning. The first has all the characters of strength fit to subdue destructive animals, and something of their physiognomy; the second has those of sweetness capable of taming gentler animals, and a sort of affinity with them.

Thus they both unite all the beauties scattered through nature. These characters weaken in society, according as each sex has more or less influence in it. Among savage nations,

20

IMPORTANCE OF PRESERVING THE

which live in a frequent state of war, woman takes something of the warlike manners of man. Among civilized nations, which assemble in their midst the luxuries of peace, it is man who rather adopts feminine manners. It is in vain, however, for either to seek what belongs to the other. Woman, when subjected to the virile disciplines of certain moralists, only loses her power to charm men, as the effeminate man loses his ascendant over woman. Both lose their influence in love, as they lose their physiognomic character. I value as little the Spartan woman, wrestler in the public arena, as the Sybarite reclining on a bed of roses.

It seems evident, whatever our good Plutarch and other historians may think of the matter, that the Lacedemonian women had little power over their husbands. In assuming the manners and habits of warriors, they must lose the empire that grace and delicacy confer.

One of the first sacrifices which the women of Europe have required of men, has been to renounce the male physiognomy that nature gave them, by persuading them to shave off their beards. Some enlightened writers have regarded this excrescence as a superfluous inconvenience. They have praised Peter the First for making the Russians cut it off. That great prince well understood the laws of politics, but he sometimes departed from those of nature. The nobility and soldiers have obeyed his orders, but the peasants and even the sailors have preserved their ancient customs, and with reason; for in the rude winters of this country, where they are often exposed in long journeys, by day and night, I have seen how their beard protects their mouth and throat from the severity of the cold, better than the best fur. Besides, the beard characterizes the male beauty of man, and inspires respect and veneration for him.

The heads of our pontiffs, of our philosophers, of our magistrates, appear like heads of children beside those of the Turks, and I doubt not that their contrast with their Georgian spouses enhances their mutual beauty and reciprocal affection.

Although woman. be smaller and feebler than man, she is yet stronger than he is in the performance of those functions

CHARACTERISTIC CONTRASTS OF SEX.

21

to which nature destines her. The shoulders of man are broader than his pelvis, and add considerably to his strength and lightness, whether in striking or in running; woman's shoulders, on the contrary, are narrower than her pelvis, whose size and weight impede the force of her motions. Woman, being destined by nature to carry her child before her, in her arms, and to suckle it upon her breast, we find the weight of the posterior pelvic region re-establishing her equilibrium. Man's centre of gravity is high and advanced, that of woman lies below. To preserve his equilibrium, man, in his natural attitude, and free from any burden, raises his head and throws it a little backward, as we see in the statues of Hercules and of Apollo; while woman, in the same circumstances, bends hers a little forward, as we see in the Venus de Medicis. Woman stands erect and equilibrated only with her child in her arms.

As nature, by consonances and contrasts has doubled the moral and physical force of man, she has quadrupled it by connecting with it that of woman.

Man reduced to the half of his organs, would still extend his enjoyments to all the objects of nature; he undoubtedly assembles a greater number at once by the arrangement of double and symmetrical organs. He doubles them in extent but not in intensity, for with our two eyes we see the same object but once, with our two ears hear not the same sound twice, nor is the former brighter or the latter louder than when one eye is shut or one ear deaf. Even in extent, we can see but the half of the horizon, the same as that of the smallest object. If we examine a flower, we shall see at one glance only the upper or the lower side. But man and woman, employing their organs at once, can not only enjoy the whole extent of their horizon, and spherically of each object, but each of them having different sensations and ideas which they mutually reflect, they double or rather quadruple their enjoyment and their force. The head of Janus, formed on one side with a male and on the other with a female face, which sees at once before and behind itself, the future and the past, seems to me a very just allegory of the united powers of the two sexes. This figure, how