nd privilege to illustrate by pretty and sly references to the
characteristic beauties of the several ladies seated like a ring of
roses around him. Thus he would refer to the shape of Madonna
Lampiada's sumptuous eyelids, and to her shell-like ears, to the
correct length and shape of Madonna Amororrisca's nose, to the lily
tower of Madonna Verdespina's throat; nor would the unabashed old
Florentine shrink from calling attention to the unfairness of Madonna
Selvaggia's covering up her dainty bosom, just as he was about to
discourse upon "those two hills of snow and of roses with two little
crowns of fine rubies on their peaks." How could a man lecture if his
diagrams were going to behave like that! Then, feigning a tiff, he
would close his manuscript, and all the ladies with their birdlike
voices would beseech him with "Oh, no, Messer Firenzuola, please go on
again; it's SO charming!" while, as if by accident, Madonna Selvaggia's
moonlike bosom would once more slip out its heavenly silver, perceiving
which, Messer Firenzuola would open his manuscript again and proceed
with his sweet learning.

Happy Firenzuola! Oh, days that are no more!

By selecting for his illustrations one feature from one lady and
another from another, Messer Firenzuola builds up an ideal of the
Beautiful Woman, which, were she to be possible, would probably be as
faultily faultless as the Perfect Woman, were she possible.

Moreover, much about the same time as Firenzuola was writing,
Botticelli's blonde, angular, retrousse women were breaking every one
of that beauty-master's canons, perfect in beauty none the less; and
lovers then, and perhaps particularly now, have found the perfect
beauty in faces to which Messer Firenzuola would have denied the name
of face at all, by virtue of a quality which indeed he has tabulated,
but which is far too elusive and undefinable, too spiritual for him
truly to have understood,--a quality which nowadays we are tardily
recognising as the first and last of all beauty, either of nature or
art,--the supreme, truly divine, because materialistically
unaccountable, quality of Charm!

"Beauty that makes holy earth and heaven May have faults from head to
feet."

O loveliest and best-loved face that ever hallowed the eyes that now
seek for you in vain! Such was your strange lunar magic, such the
light not even death could dim. And such may be the loveliest and
best-loved face for you who are reading these pages