Those who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. Conrady.
The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion.
All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture.
To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine Spenser, platonizing, sings

----- "Every Spirit as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
*Swift

[p 260]

So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For of the soul the body form doth take:
For soul is form, and doth the body make."

But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady.
These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as ever : --

"Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground,
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is perform'd with some foul imperfection."

From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady.
The spirit of this good lady -- her previous anima -- must have stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind -- and sure her's is one of the gentlest -- ever had to deal with.
Pondering upon her inexplicable visage -- inexplicable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory -- we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, than, amidst a tolerable residue of features, to hang out one that shall be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Conrady's countenance, that it would be better if she had but a nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We have seen the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. The tout ensemble defies particularising. It is too complete -- too consistent, as we may say -- to admit of these invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip -- and there a chin -- out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance in question; to say that this, or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that too it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady, without pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever met with in the course of his life. The first time that you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in your existence ever after. You are glad to have seen it -- like Stonehenge. No one can pretend to forget it. No one ever apologised to her for [p 261] meeting her in the street on such a day and not knowing her: the pretext would he too bare. Nobody can mistake her for another. Nobody can say of her, "I think I ave seen that face somewhere, but I cannot call to mind where." You must remember that in such a parlour it first struck you -- like a bust. You wondered where the owner of the house had picked it up. You wondered more when it began to move its lips -- so mildly too! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her picture. Lockets are for remembrance; and it would be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, can never he out of it. It is not a mean face either; its entire originality precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary people, by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a cheat upon our eyes: juggle our senses out of their natural impressions; and set us upon discovering good indications in a countenance, which at first sight promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped us, lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her face remains the same; when she has done you a thousand, and you know that she is ready to double the number, still it is that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it would be a good face if it was not marked by the small pox -- a compliment which is always more admissive than excusatory -- for either Mrs. Conrady never had the small pox; or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token; that which she is known by.