women a tendency in those parts to give way, and in many cases, if support be not applied, the bosom becomes unsightly. In ladies who have a predisposition to corpulency it becomes too full, whilst in others it seems to wither away altogether; in those spare people, also, the figure becomes flat and unsightly, whilst in the fat the abdomen becomes pendulous, and if there be no organic disease, there is what is called a falling abroad of the figure, which gives an appearance of premature old age. Women have always more fat in the cellular tissues than men, and it is this that gives that softness and those undulating lines to the form, which ever attract the admiration of mankind. Hence her flesh is naturally yielding, is easily compressed, and when the muscular fibre is weakened by child-bearing, the weight of the bones, or the advance of age, the softer portions of the body become flaccid, and the whole assume another form. In early life, when the circulation is brisk and the nervous system energetic, one can appreciate the exclamation of Gray—
"No stubborn stays her yielding waist embrace."
But when she has passed the meridian of life, or has just arrived at that period, we imagine that no poet would like to have his wife's figure become unsightly. It may be, and indeed is, impossible to bring back again the buoyant elasticity of youth, to pour the life's current through the heart with the same freshness at forty that it rushed on with at eighteen, when eager, gushing, and hopeful life gave intensity and animation to every fibre of the whole body. There is something gay and beautiful in youth, when the eye is bright with joy, and the brow unwrinkled with care; but there is a deeper charm in middle life, when the faculties have all been matured and perfected—a difference as real and as appreciable as is seen between the ripe and golden fruit of autumn and the silver blossom of the early spring. We may even pursue the simile further; for, as the tree has exhausted its internal force to bring forth its leaves, its blossom, and then mature the mellow fruit, and requires the hand of the gardener to prop up the bending branches that are ready to break with their own profusion—even so is it when the summer of life fades into the autumn; the vital stimulus which has hitherto sustained the frame gives indications of exhaustion, the fibres become relaxed and the muscles flabby; the bones and the
