Page 49

ANALYSIS of BEAUTY.                           49 
Though all forts of waving-lines are ornamental, 
when properly applied; yet, ftridly fpeaking, there is 
but one precife line, properly to be called the line of 
beauzy, which in the fcale of them * is number 4: the * Fig- 49. 
lines 5, 6, 7, by their bulging too much in their curva- T'. . 
ture becoming grofs and clumfy; and, on the contrary, 
3, 2, I, as they firaighten, becoming mean and poor; as 
will appear in the next figure t where they are applied T ig, so. 
to the legs of chairs. 
A flill more perfea idea of the effeCts of the precife 
waving-line, and of thofe lines that deviate from it, may 
be conceived by the row of flays, figure -, where num- T Fig. 53. 
ber 4. is compofed of precife waving-lines, and is there- 
fore the beft thaped flay. Every whale-bone of a 
good flay mufi be made to bend in this manner: for 
the whole flay, when put clofe together behind, is truly 
a fhell of well-varied contents, and its furface of courfe 
a fine form; fo that if a line, or the lace were to be 
drawn, or brought from the top of the lacing of the flay 
behind, round the body, and down to the bottom peak 
of the flomacher; it would form fuch a perfe&, precife, 
ferpentine-line, as has been fhewn, round the cone, 
figure 26 in plate i.----For this reafon all ornaments 
obliquely contrafting 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, i, are deviations into ftiffnefs and meannefs on one 
hand, and clumfinefs and deformity on the other. The 
H                     reafons