THERE is scarce a room in any house whatever,
where one does not see the waving-line employ'd in
some way or other. How inelegant would the shapes
unornamental the mouldings of cornices, and chimney-
pieces, without the variety introduced by the ogee mem-
ber, which is entirely composed of waving-lines.

Though


[49]

Though all sorts of waving-lines are ornamental,
when properly applied; yet, strictly speaking, there is
but one precise line, properly to be called the line of
beauty, which in the scale of them * is number 4: the
lines 5, 6, 7, by their bulging too much in their curva-
ture becoming gross and clumsy; and, on the contrary,
3, 2, I, as they straighten, becoming mean and poor, as
will appear in the next figure † where they are applied
to the legs of chairs.
A still more perfect idea of the effects of the precise
waving-line, and of those lines that deviate from it, may
be 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 a
good stay must be made to bend in this manner: for
the whole stay, when put close together behind, is truly
a shell of well-varied contents, and its surface of course
a fine form; so that if a line, or the lace were to be
drawn, or brought from the top of the lacing of the stay
behind, round the body, and down to the bottom peak
of the stomacher; it would form such a perfect, precise,
serpentine-line, as has been shewn, round the cone,
figure 26 in plate I.---- For this reason all ornaments
obliquely contrasting the body in this manner, as the
ribbons worn by the knights of the garter, are both
genteel and graceful. The numbers 5, 6, 7, and 3,
2, 1, are deviations into stiffness and meanness on one
hand, and clumsiness and deformity on the other. The

H reasons

* Fig. 49. T p I.

* Fig. 50. T. p. I.

* Fig. 53. B. p. I.

[50]

reasons for which disagreeable effects, after what has been
already said, will be evident to the meanest capacity.
It may be worth our notice however, that the stay,
number 2, would better fit a well-shaped man than
number 4; and that number 4, would better fit a well-
form'd woman, than number 2; and when on consider-
ing them, merely as to their forms, and comparing them
together as you would do two vases, it has been shewn
by our principles, how much finer and more beautiful
number 4 is, than number 2: does not this our deter-
mination enhance the merit of these principles, as it
proves at the same time how much the form of a wo-
man's body surpasses in beauty that of a man?
From the examples that have been given, enough
may be gathered to carry on our observations from them
to any other objects that may chance to come in our
way, either animate or inanimate; so that we may not
only lineally account for the ugliness of the toad, the
hog, the bear and the spider, which are totally void of
this waving-line, but also for the different degrees of
beauty belonging to those objects that possess it.