life have not hastened old age, preserve many of the charms of the preceding one.
At this period, in well-constituted women, the fat being absorbed with less activity, is accumulated in the cellular tissue under the skin and elsewhere; and this effaces any imperfections of the skin, round the outlines anew, and again restores an air of youth and freshness. Hence this period is called "the age of return."
This plumpness, though juvenile lightness and freshness be wanting, sustains the form and sometimes confers a majestic air, which in women otherwise favourably organised still interests for a number of years.
The shape is no longer so elegant; the articulations have less elasticity; the muscles are more feeble; the movements are less light; and in plump women we observe those broken motions, and in others that stiffness which mark the walk or the dance at that age. The alteration of the voice which occurs at this period is well known.
When women pass happily from the third to the fourth age, their constitution, as everyone must have observed, changes entirely; it becomes stronger, and nature abandons to individual life all the rest of existence.
Beauty now begins to fade, form and shape disappear, the plumpness which supported the reliefs has abandoned them, sinkings are visibly multiplied, the skin has lost its polish, colour and freshness depart for ever.
Those changes of time begin by the abdomen, which loses its polish and its firmness, the hemispheres of the bosom no longer sustain themselves, the clavicles project, the neck becomes meagre, all the reliefs are effaced; and all the forms are altered from roundness and softness to angularity.
That which amidst these ruins still survives for a long time, is the entireness of the hair, the placidity or firmness of the look, the air of sentiment, the amiable expression of countenance, and in women of refined mind and great accomplishments, pleasing manners and charming graces, which almost make us forget youth and beauty.
But as every object of nature must utterly decay, this downward tendency goes on. The want of vital energy in the limbs is followed by a diminished activity of the senses and impaired vigour of the brain and all the internal functions. As a consequence of this the volume of
