Nothing is more difficult to define than beauty. It is not something absolute, like truth; it differs according to times, countries, races, and individual tastes. Greek beauty is not Parisian beauty, English beauty is pretty well the opposite of Italian beauty.

A European beauty might strike a Chinaman as very ugly, and a Chinese beauty would find no admirer in Europe, except, perhaps, among blasÉ people with the most fastidious tastes and ever in search of novelty.

The Buddha of the Hindoos has nothing in common with the Jupiter of the Greeks. Ancient art differs entirely from modern art.

In Antiquity, beauty consists in the harmony of the proportions, the purity of the lines, the nobility of form and attitude, the sobriety of the figure, and the coldness of the expression. In modern times, beauty consists in gracefulness, piquancy, intelligence, sentiment, vivacity, and exuberance of form.

But there are two kinds of beauty in women: that which is natural to them, and that which they can acquire by carefully studying what suits them best to wear, and how they can use to advantage their style of face and figure.

I have seen women absolutely transformed by the hands of a skilful dressmaker or a clever hairdresser.

The natural beauty is that happy ensemble of lines and expression which attract and charm the eyes. It is not at all indispensable that this ensemble should be harmonious. On the contrary, contrasts are often less cold and monotonous than perfect harmony, and the statuesque beauty generally leaves us unmoved.

The woman who looks amiable and cheerful is naturally beautiful—far more so than a woman with irreproachable sculptural outlines and features so regular that she makes you wish she had some redeeming defect or other. Perfection was attractive in ancient Greece; it is not now.

Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look intelligent—brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee, and we like it.

I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit, and gaiety.

A small, piquante brunette, with small, keen eyes, thick lips, thin, alert; a blonde dishevelled, like a spaniel, with glorious form, will excite admiration—both are beautiful.

But the other beauty, the one that can be obtained of art, is at the disposal of every woman. In fact, the woman who knows how to put on her dress and do her hair well, who has on a becoming hat, pretty shoes, and neat gloves, who has good taste in furniture, who speaks pleasantly, smiles cheerfully and good-naturedly, who has elegance of manners and a pretty voice, who has a bright conversation—that woman will be declared pretty, even beautiful, far more readily and unanimously than the real beauty, one who fails to pay attention to her dress and manners, who has no consciousness of her power and her value, and who constantly forgets that good surroundings are to her what a handsome frame is to a picture.

Practically every woman can obtain this result, and that is why I have entitled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'