! is this the
dawn of the glorious sun, or is it the full moon?" The Circassian face is
a pure oval; the forehead is low and fair, "an excellent thing in woman,"
and the skin of an ivory whiteness, except the faint pink of the cheeks
and the ripe, roseate stain of the lips. The hair is dark, glossy, and
luxuriant, exquisitely outlined on the temples; the eyebrows slightly
arched, and drawn with a delicate pencil; while lashes like "rays of
darkness" shade the large, dark, humid orbs below them. The alabaster of
the face, so pure as scarcely to show the blue branching of the veins on
the temples, is lighted by those superb eyes--

"Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone,"

--whose wells are so dark and deep, that you are cheated into the belief
that a glorious soul looks out of them.

Once, by an unforeseen chance, I beheld the Circassian form, in its most
perfect development. I was on board an Austrian steamer in the harbor of
Smyrna, when the harem of a Turkish pasha came out in a boat to embark for
Alexandria. The sea was rather rough, and nearly all the officers of the
steamer were ashore. There were six veiled and swaddled women, with a
black eunuch as guard, in the boat, which lay tossing for some time at the
foot of the gangway ladder, before the frightened passengers could summon
courage to step out. At last the youngest of them--a Circassian girl of
not more than fifteen or sixteen years of age--ventured upon the ladder,
clasping the hand-rail with one hand, while with the other she held
together the folds of her cumbrous feridjee. I was standing in the
gangway, watching her, when a slight lurch of the steamer caused her to
loose her hold of the garment, which, fastened at the neck, was blown back
from her shoulders, leaving her body screened but by a single robe
of-light, gauzy silk. Through this, the marble whiteness of her skin, the
roundness, the glorious symmetry of her form, flashed upon me, as a vision
of Aphrodite, seen

"Through leagues of shimmering water, like a star."

It was but a momentary glimpse; yet that moment convinced me that forms
of Phidian perfection are still nurtured in the vales of Caucasus.

The necessary disguise of dress hides from us much of the beauty and
dignity of Humanity, I have seen men who appeared heroic in the freedom of
nakedness, shrink almost into absolute vulgarity, when clothed. The soul
not only sits at the windows of the eyes, and hangs