Brains Versus Beauty

One of the things difficult of solution in life is the persistency of divorce between brains and beauty. White it by no means follows that a homely woman is always brainy or a pretty one invariably devoid of intelligence, still it is true that of all women noted for powerful intellect few have been otherwise than hopelessly plain. Mme. De Stael, the intellectual prodigy of her day, before whose wit even the great Napoleon quailed, and of whom he said, "She has shafts that would hit a man if he were seated on a rainbow," was totally without feminine grace save only the charm of a low melodious voice. One famous word portrait describes her as a "priestess of Appollo, with dark eyes illurained by genius and marked features expressive oí a aestiny superior to that of most women," whieh is, of course, only an ornamental way of sayinff that she was not fair. Georg-e Eliot's biographers seldom attempt personal description, and shirk the issue by that she had "larg-e, maseive, homely features," which were at rare intervals softened by a smile of great beauty. Her head was colossal and masculine, her hair coarse, brown and bushy, her brow high and full, but her body was frail and delicate. And this powerful woman, whose writings have influenced all modern thought, was given over to the woman's weakness of tears incessantlv. It is hard to reconcile the fact with her other characteristics, and it, like her second marriage, are things her admirers like to forget Lady Mary Montagne, she of the exquisite letters, was a most untidy and slovenly woman, with a face hideously scarred by small-pox, and distressing-ly horuely. She said herself that the only reason she was glad she was a woman was because she would never have to marry one. Margaret Fuller was quite the reverse of pretty, save for her graceful carriage, though her admirers were given to rapsodizing about her neck with its swan-like curves. An interesting fact about literary women and one pleasing, no doubt, to brunettes is this, that almost all intellectual stars of feminin