MANIFESTED IN HUMAN SOCIETY 119 



a series of six or seven generations ; for throughout that 

 chain of ancestry every successive mother has trans- 

 mitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and 

 briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a 

 character of less force and solidity than her own. The 

 women who were now standing about the prison door 

 stood within less than half a century of the period when 

 the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether 

 unsuitable representative of her sex. They were her 

 countrywomen, and the beef and ale of their native 

 land entered largely into their composition. The bright 

 morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and 

 well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, 

 that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly 

 yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New 

 England." 



As education spread and the environment grew more 

 complex and intellectually stimulating, so the nervous 

 system developed and the physique grew less coarse. A 

 more sensitive type developed with a larger fund of 

 nervous energy, but less heavy in frame and muscle. No 

 doubt the refinement of the physique is largely due to 

 the diversion of nutrition for the purpose of maintaining 

 the costly nervous system ; but probably more subtle 

 causes are also at work. The change is not confined 

 to America, but is to be seen all over the world where 

 the environment is improving. In comparisons between 

 the women of the poorer classes and the women of the 

 richer classes in any country the difference can be seen, 

 and also in comparisons between countrywomen and 

 women living in the large cities. But women of all 

 classes are in some measure affected by the change, which, 

 of course, is complementary to the change in the physique 

 of men, and their increasing nervoug development. 



