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- Every man who is gifted with the least particle of imagination, must in
some of his reveries have conjured up from the realms of fancy, a being
bright and beautiful beyond everything he had ever before apprehended,
whose main and distinguishing attribute invariably proves to be a form
the indescribable loveliness of which seems to
--‘Sail in liquid light,
And float on seas of bliss.’
The realisation of these seraphic visions is seldom permitted us; but I
can truly say that when my eyes for the first time fell upon this lovely
creature, I thought myself transported to the land of dreams, where lay
embodied the most brilliant conceptions of the wildest fancy. Indeed,
could the Promethean spark throw life and animation into the Venus de’
Medici, it would but present the counterpart of ⸻.
Her complexion has the delicate tinge of the brunette, with a little of
the roseate hue of the Circassian; and one would swear that none but the
sunny skies of Spain had shone upon the infancy of the being, who looks
so like her own ‘dark-glancing daughters.’
The outline of her head, together with the profile of her countenance,
are sketched in classic purity, and while the one indicates refined and
elegant sentiment, the other is not more chaste and regular than the
mind which beams from every feature of the face. Her hair is black as
the wing of the raven, and is parted _à la Madonna_ over a forehead
where sits, girt round with her sister graces, the very genius of poetic
beauty, hope, and love.
And then her eyes! They open their dark, rich orbs upon you like the
full noon of heaven, and blaze into your very soul the fires of day!
Like the offerings laid upon the sacrificial altars of the Hebrews, when
in an instant the divine spark falling from the propitiated God kindled
them in flames; so, a single glance from that Oriental eye as quickly
fires your soul, and leaves your bosom in a perfect conflagration! Odds
Cupids and Darts! with one broad sweep of vision in a crowded ballroom,
that splendid creature would lay around her like the two-handed sword of
Minotti, hearts on hearts, piled round in semicircles! But it is well
for the more rugged sex that this glorious being can vary her proud
dominion, and give to the expression of her eye a melting tenderness
which dissolves the most frigid heart, and heals the wounds she gave
before.
If the devout and exemplary Mussulman, who dying fast in the faith of
his Prophet, anticipates reclining on beds of roses, gloriously drunk
through all the ages of eternity, is to be waited on by Houris such as
these: waft me, ye gentle gales, beyond this lower world and,
‘Lap me in soft Lydian airs!’
But I am falling into I know not what extravagances, so I will briefly
give you a portrait of the last of these three divinities, and will then
terminate my tiresome lucubrations.
This last is a Lilliputian beauty; diminutive in stature, fair-haired,
and with a foot for which Cinderella’s slipper would be too large; a
countenance sweet and interesting, and in her manners eminently refined
and engaging. The cast of her physiognomy is singularly mild and
amiable, and her whole person is replete with every feminine grace. Her
eyes
‘Effuse the mildness of their azure beam;’
and to her, above all her sex, are applicable the lines of our gentle
Coleridge:--
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