49

ANALYSIS os BEAUTY.

Though all sorts of waving-lines are ornamental,when properly applied; yet, strictly speaking, there isbut one precise line, properly to be called the line osbeauty , which in the scale os them * is number 4: thelines 5,6, 7, by their bulging too much in their curva-ture becoming gross and clumsy; and, on the contrary,3, 2, 1, as they straighten, becoming mean and poor; aswill appear in the next figure ■f where they are appliedto the legs of chairs.

A still more perfect idea of the effects of the precisewaving-line, and os those lines that deviate from it, maybe conceived by the row of stays, figure $, where num-ber 4 is composed of precise waving-lines, and is there-fore the best shaped stay. Every whale-bone of agood stay must be made to bend in this manner: forthe whole stay, when put close together behind, is trulya shell of well-varied contents, and its surface os coursea fine form; so that is a line, or the lace were to bedrawn, or brought from the top of the lacing os the staybehind, round the body, and down to the bottom peakof the stomacher; it would form such a perfect, precise,serpentine-line, as has been stiewn, round the cone,

figure 26 in plate 1.-For this reason all ornaments

obliquely contrasting the body in this manner, as theribbons worn by the knights of the garter, are bothgenteel and graceful. The numbers 5, 6, 7, and 3,2, 1, are deviations into stiffness and meanness on onehand, and clumsiness and deformity on the other. The

H reasons

* Fig. 49 .T. p. ..

t Fig. 50.T. p. 1.

t Fig- 53.

B. p. 1.