s responsible for their symmetry or deformity. He experiences a degree
of triumph in contemplating a beautiful form, which has grown more airily
light and beautiful under his hands. He is a great connoisseur of bodies,
and could pick you out the finest specimens with as ready an eye as an
artist.

I envy those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles,
and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before
their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced;
for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown. Now,
since the delusion of artists has been overthrown, and we know that
Grecian Art is but the simple reflex of Nature--that the old masterpieces
of sculpture were no miraculous embodiments of a _beau ideal_, but copies
of living forms--we must admit that in no other age of the world has the
physical Man been so perfectly developed. The nearest approach I have ever
seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of
Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo.

Oriental life is too full of repose, and the Ottoman race has become too
degenerate through indulgence, to exhibit many striking specimens of
physical beauty. The face is generally fine, but the body is apt to be
lank, and with imperfect muscular development. The best forms I saw in the
baths were those of laborers, who, with a good deal of rugged strength,
showed some grace and harmony of proportion. It may be received as a
general rule, that the physical development of the European is superior to
that of the Oriental, with the exception of the Circassians and Georgians,
whose beauty well entitles them to the distinction of giving their name to
our race.

So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no
superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the
Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose
type has descended to us in the Venus de Medici. The Frank who is addicted
to wandering about the streets of Oriental cities can hardly fail to be
favored with a sight of the faces of these beauties. More than once it has
happened to me, in meeting a veiled lady, sailing along in her
balloon-like feridjee, that she has allowed the veil to drop by a skilful
accident, as she passed, and has startled me with the vision of her
beauty, recalling the line of the Persian poet: "Astonishment