DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18825#0331
1t$ CHARACTER of THE FIGURE. [lECT. fX.
by their sides ; the girls in hoops, sacques, and tetes,
that, after my utmost researches, I gave up the ex-
pectation of finding children in that city : at the
same time, congratulating my native land, that the
sweet simplicity of childhood, the engaging attrac-
tions of youth, were neither absentees, nor rarities,
there. I may therefore frankly appeal to your own
observations, Ladies and Gextlemex, for the
propriety of my remarks on this period of life.
As childhood has a constant tendency toward
maturity, it is necessary, that it should be furnished
with sufficient moisture, and spirits, to recruit their
perpetual consumption. Children are therefore lat-
ter, and more plump in their members, than persona
of maturer years; whose increase having fed, as it
were, on their stock of juices, has exhausted the su-
perfluity of their youthful state. In fact, the pro-
gress of human life is from moist to dry; from
superabundant spirit, activity, and glee, to solidity
and firmness, succeeded by rigidity and weakness..
Accordingly, children are, in the length of their
members, only half the distances of maturity, but
in the thickness of their muscular measures they
are much more than proportionate. Instead of being
the distance of two faces from the shoulder to the
elbow, tliev are onlv one: the same across the
shoulders, and in the legs.
We have formerly noted, that a man measures in
height seven and a half heads, or ten faces; but ob-
serve, that, infants measure only/zzr faces, and chil-
dren five heads in height: as they advance in stature
they approach nearer to the proportions of maturity.
1 As
by their sides ; the girls in hoops, sacques, and tetes,
that, after my utmost researches, I gave up the ex-
pectation of finding children in that city : at the
same time, congratulating my native land, that the
sweet simplicity of childhood, the engaging attrac-
tions of youth, were neither absentees, nor rarities,
there. I may therefore frankly appeal to your own
observations, Ladies and Gextlemex, for the
propriety of my remarks on this period of life.
As childhood has a constant tendency toward
maturity, it is necessary, that it should be furnished
with sufficient moisture, and spirits, to recruit their
perpetual consumption. Children are therefore lat-
ter, and more plump in their members, than persona
of maturer years; whose increase having fed, as it
were, on their stock of juices, has exhausted the su-
perfluity of their youthful state. In fact, the pro-
gress of human life is from moist to dry; from
superabundant spirit, activity, and glee, to solidity
and firmness, succeeded by rigidity and weakness..
Accordingly, children are, in the length of their
members, only half the distances of maturity, but
in the thickness of their muscular measures they
are much more than proportionate. Instead of being
the distance of two faces from the shoulder to the
elbow, tliev are onlv one: the same across the
shoulders, and in the legs.
We have formerly noted, that a man measures in
height seven and a half heads, or ten faces; but ob-
serve, that, infants measure only/zzr faces, and chil-
dren five heads in height: as they advance in stature
they approach nearer to the proportions of maturity.
1 As