10. Here, if
you will, is another point of her excellence: one of which
neither she nor any truly modest and decorous woman thinks
anything: but which we have been made to think much of, by those
who are too fond of ornament and display, and refuse to listen to
instruction on such matters. She was never adorned with gold
wrought into artistic forms of surpassing beauty, nor flaxen tresses,
fully or partially displayed, nor spiral curls, nor dishonouring
designs of men who construct erections on the honourable head, nor
costly folds of flowing and transparent robes, nor graces of brilliant
stones, which color the neighbouring air, and cast a glow upon the
form; nor the arts and witcheries of the painter, nor that cheap beauty
of the infernal creator who works against the Divine, hiding with his
treacherous pigments the creation of God, and putting it to shame with
his honour, and setting before eager eyes the imitation of an harlot
instead of the form of God, so that this bastard beauty may steal away
that image which should be kept for God and for the world to
come. But though she was aware of the many and various external
ornaments of women, yet none of them was more precious to her than her
own character, and the brilliancy stored up within. One red tint
was dear to her, the blush of modesty; one white one, the sign of
temperance: but pigments and pencillings, and living pictures,
and flowing lines of beauty, she left to women of the stage and of the
streets, and to all who think it a shame and a reproach to be
ashamed.