278 THE HUMAN SKIN. 



pies and plump stuffing for youth ; line and furrow for many- 

 thoughted age ; carnation for the bridal morning, and heavenlier 

 paleness for the new-found mother. Masks are there indeed for 

 every time; and tragedy, comedy, and farce are positive nature in 

 the skin. Every shade of passion has its mantle in that boudoir. 

 All the legions of desires and hopes have uniforms and badges there 

 at hand. It is the loom where the inner man weaves on the instant 

 the garment of his mood, to dissolve again into current life when the 

 hour or the moment is past. There it is that loves put on its celestial 

 rosy red, which is its proper hue ; there lovely shame blushes, and 

 mean shame looks earthy; there hatred contracts its wicked white; 

 their jealousy picks from its own drawer its bodice of constant 

 green ; their anger clothes itself in black, and despair in the grayness 

 of the dead ; there hypocrisy plunders the rest, and takes all their 

 dresses by turns ; sorrow and penitence too have sackcloth there ; 

 and genius and inspiration in immortal hours, encinctured there 

 with the unsought ancient halo, stand forth as present spirits in the 

 supremacy of light. In a word, the compass of human nature, as 

 it is seen and felt, is all to be referred to the inexhaustible repre- 

 sentations of the skin. 



Thus the skin is the kingdom of show, for whatever is seen of 

 mankind is nothing else ; a proof of the expressiveness of a cover- 

 ing which can be the universal face. For the skin is the fine but 

 ample decorum in which the inward terminates ; the only thing 

 that is fit to be seen either in art, in nature, or in science. It hides 

 the rawness of our curious fieshwork, and reveals it anew as comely 

 and personal ; it gathers up thousands of nervous fibres in the speak- 

 ing countenance, and mingles the infinite colors of life into a single 

 complexion ; it groups discordant muscles in lovely or manly limbs, 

 and braces the unseemly viscera into a statuesque humanity, toning 

 and leveling the whole out of its own reservoirs of temperament. 

 And so it is the official presentation, and the bright honor of the 

 body. It is sacred too in its wholeness, and blood lies under it 

 film-deep, to start forth red before man and nature with a divine 

 protest against its violation. 



Clothing or fallen decency comes forth from this original source ; 



