Chapter XVI: Part 16

Around this tomb hovers the spirit great,
Which for too brief a span did animate
The mighty frame that silent lies below,
Leaving this world to wonderment and woe.

Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, whose nod
The anxious nations watched, as of a god—
He forged an Empire, swayed it in its pride,
And then, to show that he was mortal, died.

I ruled as King, and not in vain,
I tamed the Austrian and the Dane,
I curbed proud France (for Europe’s good),
I placed our borders where she stood,
I made Germania One and Free,
I fell. I saw adversity.

Bismarck lies here. Early and late
He strove to make his country great.
Did he succeed? Let Sedan, Paris, tell;
But silence keep on how, himself, he fell.

Look kindly on this spot, here Bismarck lies.
Death’s kiss’d away the terror of his eyes.
And the brave heart by leisure has been made
A child’s, of which the world was once afraid;
Cleansed is the “blood”—the “iron’s” lost in love,
And now Earth’s Prince is crown’d a King above.

War’s fiery furnaces have fused the race of Teuton blood,
’Twas Bismarck fanned the blaze;
To strong Germania has been shaped the molten flood,
And Bismarck owns the praise.

To the immortal Founder
of the
Fatherland’s Unity
this
Monument is dedicated
by the
grateful Germans,
who will admiringly remember, for ever and ever,
his high, patriotic aims,
his unwavering steadfastness and purpose,
his indomitable energy and courage,
and the eminently practical means by which he realized
the national aspirations.
What would Germany be without him?
A mere geographical expression.
His name will go down to Posterity as the Greatest
of his nation.

_A Husbandman_

The following lines on an agriculturist were written by Canada’s lyrist, C. G. D. Roberts:

He who would start and rise
Before the crowing cocks—
No more he lifts his eyes,
Whoever knocks.

He who before the stars
Would call the cattle home—
They wait about the bars
For him to come.

Him at whose hearty calls
The farmstead woke again,
The horses in their stalls
Expect in vain.

Busy, and blithe, and bold,
He labored for the morrow;
The plow his hands would hold
Rusts in the furrow.

His fields he had to leave,
His orchards cool and dim;
The clods he used to cleave
Now cover him.

But the green, growing things
Lean kindly to his sleep;
White roots and wandering strings—
Closer they creep.

Because he loved them long
And with them bore his part,
Tenderly now they throng
About his heart.

The _Vienna Freie Fresse_, found in Austrian cemeteries some curious epitaphs, translated as follows:

On a carter killed in a runaway:

“The road to eternity is not long. He started at 7 o’clock and arrived at 8.”

On a man of letters:

“Here lies the best man in the world. He deprived himself of sleep to bestow it upon others.”

One tomb bears a bas-relief depicting a peasant impaled on the horns of a bull. Below is the inscription:

“It was a bull’s horn that sent me to Heaven. I died in a moment, leaving wife and child. Oh, bull, bull! To think that I owe to you everlasting repose!

This does not speak well for the married life of F. K.:

“Here rests in God F. K., who lived 26 years as a man and 37 years as a husband.”

THE HONEYED PHRASE OF COMPLIMENT

As the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire was one day stepping out of her carriage, a coal-heaver, who was accidentally standing by, and was about to regale himself with his accustomed whiff of tobacco, caught a glance of her countenance, and instantly exclaimed: “Love and bless you, my lady, let me light my pipe in your eyes.” The duchess was so delighted with this compliment that she frequently afterwards checked the strain of adulation, which was so constantly offered to her charms, by saying, “Oh, after the coal-heaver’s compliment, all others are insipid.”

Another compliment, true and genuine, was paid by a sailor, who was sent by his captain to carry a letter to the lady of his love. The sailor, having delivered his missive, stood gazing in silent admiration upon the face of the lady, for she was very beautiful.

“Well, my good man, for what do you wait? There is no answer to be returned.”

“Lady,” the sailor replied, with becoming deference, “I would like to know your name.”

“Did you not see it on the letter?”

“Pardon, lady, I never learned to read. Mine has been a hard, rough life.”

“And for what reason, my good man, would you like to know my name?”

“Because,” answered the old tar, looking honestly up, “in a storm at sea, with danger or death before me, I would like to call the name of the brightest thing I’d ever seen in my life. There’d be sunshine in it, even in the thick darkness.”

Tom Hood wrote to his wife: “I never was anything till I knew you—and I have been better, happier, and a more prosperous man ever since. Lay that truth by in lavender, and remind me of it when I fail. I am writing fondly and warmly; but not without good cause. First, your own affectionate letter, lately received; next, the remembrance of our dear children, pledges of our dear old familiar love; then a delicious impulse to pour out the overflowing of my heart into yours; and last, not least, the knowledge that your dear eyes will read what my hands are now writing. Perhaps there is an afterthought that, whatever may befall me, the wife of my bosom will have this acknowledgment of her tenderness, worth, and excellence, of all that is wifely or womanly, from my pen.”

Samuel Rogers once told Dean Stanley that when he was a boy he remembered being present at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s last lecture, and at the end of the lecture he saw Mr. Burke go up to Sir Joshua, and on that solemn occasion quote the lines from “Paradise Lost”:—

“The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear
So charming left his voice, that he, awhile
Thought him still speaking.”

Among the candidates for the St. Louis Post Office was Miss Phebe Cozzens. During a call upon President Hayes a day or two after his inauguration, she told him that General Grant, when he had so much trouble to find a suitable man to make Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, assured her that if the Senate refused to confirm Judge Waite, he would nominate her. President Hayes replied that she certainly would have made a most charming Chief Justice, and that if she had held the office when he took the oath he should have been tempted to kiss her instead of the Bible.

Whittier was so well pleased at the manner in which Lizzie Barton Fuller rendered some of his poems at a public meeting at Amesbury, Massachusetts, that he wrote her the following grateful acknowledgment:

Thanks for the pleasant voice that lent
Such sweetness to my simple lays;
I hardly knew them as my own—
Interpreting the thought I meant,
And winning for my rhymes a praise
Due, haply, to thyself alone.
In vain the hand essays its skill,
Unaided by the organ’s keys;
In vain the bugler’s breath until
The horn repeats his melodies.

Among the tributes to Rev. James Freeman Clarke, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of his birth, in Boston, were the following lines in a poem read by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe:

What nuptials hast thou blest,
What dear ones laid to rest,
What infants welcomed with the holy sign.
Life’s hospitality
Was so akin to thee
That half thy good and ill was thine.

In dark, perplexing days,
Where sorrow silenced praise,
We saw thy light above the vapors dim;
In battle’s din and shout
Thy clarion blast rang out,
“The victory is God’s; we follow him.”

Thy life has been like ours,
Its sunshine and its showers
Have reached the heights of joy, the depths of grief;
But richer hath it been
In all the gifts serene
That make the leader, brother, friend, and chief.

Bring then the palm and vine,
Roses with lilies twine,
And let us image in our offered wreath
The life enriched with toil,
The consecrating oil,
And love that fears not time and knows not death.

One of the South American representatives at the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Señor Zotoza, paid the following compliment to the women of the United States:

“Among modern women none take a higher rank; and, indeed, justice compels me to say the American woman stands at the very head of her sex for her virtues, for her independence, her individuality, and for all those qualities which make the equal of man in intelligence and force of character, and the superior in every other quality. To her, with her virtues, no less than to the opposite sex, do the United States owe that freedom and prosperity which are the admiration and wonder of all nations.”

THE MAZES OF OBSCURITY

Two young lawyers had a difference as to the meaning of an obscure passage in the “Christian Year,” and resolved to appeal to the author. Mr. Keble wrote back that neither had hit upon the right interpretation, but he really couldn’t now say exactly what he meant himself.

A story is told of Jacob Boehme, the cobbler, famous for his profound philosophical works. On his death-bed his disciples came to him, eager to obtain explanations of obscure passages in his writings before he was taken away. One passage puzzled him, and he said: “My children, when I wrote that I understood its meaning, and no doubt the omniscient God did. He may still remember it, but I have forgotten.”

Some of Klopstock’s admirers made a journey from Gottingen to Hamburg to ask him to explain a difficult passage in his works. Klopstock received them graciously, read the passage, and said: “I cannot recollect what I meant when I wrote it, but remember it was the finest thing I ever wrote, and you cannot do better than devote your lives to the discovery of its meaning.”

Robert Browning was similarly cornered more than once, to his own confusion as well as to the discomfiture of his worshippers.

In the line of “advanced thought,” a Boston evening paper published the following advertisement:

“A lady of Emersonian thought and sentiment would delight to assist as far as is possible, unjoyous human lives through intuitional and other suggestions, as also by importations of that healthful and invigorating life which nature and the soul ever offer.”

It is not ungracious to say that a large majority of our citizens fail to comprehend what the fair lady is driving at. “Emersonian thought” is good. Ralph Waldo Emerson himself was interviewed on the subject, but he could not throw any light on the mysterious object of the advertiser. Emerson says there are no doubt not a few “unjoyous human lives,” but he is not aware that any application of his usual style of diction to such mortals could add any happiness to them, for the reason that the “unjoyous” souls might not be able to comprehend the meaning of his language.

Ogilvie, in his “Philosophical Essays,” gives some definitions, of which the following is a specimen:

“A coincidence between the association of ideas, and the order or succession of events or phenomena, according to the relation of cause and effect, and in whatever is subsidiary, or necessary to realize, approximate and extend such coincidence; understanding by the relation of cause and effect, that order or succession, the discovery or development of which empowers an intelligent being, by means of one event or phenomenon, or by a series of given events or phenomena, to anticipate the recurrence of another event or phenomenon, or of a required series of events or phenomena, and to summon them into existence, and employ their instrumentality in the gratification of his wishes, or in the accomplishment of his purposes.”

The following passage is taken at random from Thomas Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus”:

“Gullible, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has been done; with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand allovertopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puppery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts of that genus, had not ranked in productive industry at all! Can anyone, for example, so much as say, what moneys in literature and shoeblacking are realized by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; what by fictitious persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying in distinct items the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incoming of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man’s Want is supplied by true Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:—in other words, To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries, Deception takes the place and wages of Performance; here truly is an Injury big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred (which considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English game preserver, is probably not far from the mark),—what almost prodigious saving may there be anticipated as the Statistics of Imposture advances, and so the manufacturing of shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary!”

The characteristic feature of the paraphrase is verbosity. The professed design of the paraphrast is to say in many words what his text expresses in few; accordingly all the writers of this class must be at pains to provide themselves with sufficient stock of synonyms, epithets, expletives, circumlocution, and tautologies, which are, in fact, the necessary implements of their craft. The following will serve as an example. In Matthew vii, 24, 25, the words of Jesus Christ are: “_Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock._” Now let us hear the paraphrast, Adam Clarke: “Wherefore he that shall not only _hear_ and _receive_ these my instructions, but also _remember_, and _consider_, and _practice_, and _live according to them_, such a man may be compared to one that builds his house upon a rock; for as a house founded upon a rock stands _unshaken_ and _firm_ against all the assaults of rains, and floods, and storms, so the man who, in his life and conversation, _actually practices_ and _obeys_ my instructions, will firmly resist all the temptations of the devil, the allurements of pleasure, and the terrors of persecution, and shall be able to stand in the day of judgment, and be rewarded of God.” Commenting on this verbosity, Dr. Campbell, of Aberdeen, says: “It would be difficult to point out a single advantage which this wordy, not to say flatulent, interpretation has of the text. Is it more perspicuous? It is much less so; although it is the chief, if not the sole end of this manner of writing, to remove everything that can darken the passage paraphrased, and to render the sense as clear as possible. A deficiency of words is often the cause of obscurity, but this evil may also be the effect of exuberance. By a multiplicity of words the sentiment is not set off and accommodated, but like David equipped in Saul’s armor, it is encumbered and oppressed.”

Mr. Ruskin gives an answer to the question often asked as to the meaning of the title of his pamphlets that is just about as hazy and hard to understand as the pamphlets themselves. With regard to the _Fors Clavigera_, for example, he says: “That title means many things, and is in Latin because I could not have given an English one that meant so many. ‘Fors’ is the best part of three good English words—force, fortitude, and fortune.... ‘Clavigera’ may mean either club bearer, key bearer, or nail bearer.... ‘Fors,’ the club bearer, means the strength of Hercules, or of deed; ‘fors,’ the key bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of patience; ‘fors,’ the nail bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or of law. Briefly, the first ‘fors’ is courage, the second patience, the third fortune.”

In 1880 Dr. Greenhill, of Hastings, England, wrote to Cardinal Newman, asking him to explain the meaning of the couplet in “Lead, Kindly Light”:

And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.

To this request the following characteristic reply was received:

“THE ORATORY, January 18, 1880.

“MY DEAR DR. GREENHILL,—

“You flatter me by your question, but I think it was Keble who, when asked in his own case, answered that poets were not bound to be critics, or to give a sense to what they had written; and, though I am not, like him, a poet, at least, I may plead that I am not bound to remember my own meaning, whatever it was, at the end of fifty years. Anyhow, there must be a statute of limitations for writers of verse, or it would be quite a tyranny if, in an art which is the expression, not of truth but of imagination and sentiment, one were obliged to be ready for examination on the transient state of mind which came upon one when homesick or seasick, or any other way sensitive or excited. Yours most truly,

“JOHN H. NEWMAN.”

One of the most remarkable of the Oxford sermons of the famous ecclesiastic quoted in the foregoing paragraph, John Henry (afterwards cardinal) Newman, entitled, “On the Development of Christian Doctrine,” explains how science teaches that the earth goes round the sun, and how Scripture teaches that the sun goes round the earth, and it ends by advising the discreet believer _to accept both_.

IDEAL PHYSICAL PROPORTIONS

_The Perfect Woman, Nobly Planned_

Using the head-length as a unit of measurement, a prominent portrait painter tabulates as follows the proportions of a perfectly formed woman:

A woman should measure in height 5 feet 5 inches.

Eight heads is the proper height,—that is, the head measured from the top of the forehead to the tip of the chin.

From shoulder to shoulder she should measure 2 of her heads.

Her waist should measure 1½ heads.

Her hips should be twice as broad as the length of her head.

Under the arms the bust measurement should be 34 inches; outside the arms, 42 inches.

Upper arm should be 12 inches long; the forearm, 9 inches long.

A more reliable authority, Dr. George McClellan, in his splendid quarto, “Anatomy in its Relation to Art,” with due regard to the mean or average of the anthropometric scale, makes the height 7½ heads; the width between the shoulders equal to the width between the hips, and each equal to the length of 1¾ heads.

The measurements of “the statue that enchants the world,” the Venus de Medici, are: Height, 63 inches; breadth of neck, 4 inches; breadth of shoulders, 16 inches; waist, 9½ inches; hips, 13 inches.

Professor Gottfried Schadow of the Royal Academy of Arts, in Berlin, gives in his figure of an artistically formed woman, the following measurements: Height, 63½ inches; breadth of neck, 3¾ inches; shoulders, 15 inches; waist 9 inches; hips, 13½ inches.

Professor Sargeant, with several thousand tabulated life measurements in hand, produced a composite figure of the young American girl with these measurements: Height, 63½ inches; breadth of neck, 3.8 inches; girth of neck, 12.1 inches; breadth of shoulders, 14.7 inches; breadth of waist, 8.6 inches; girth of waist, 24.6 inches; breadth of hips, 13.1 inches; girth of hips, 35.4 inches; girth of calf, 13.3 inches; girth of upper arm, 10.1 inches; girth of thigh, 21.4 inches, and forearm, 9.2 inches.

Miss Anna Wood has given measurements closely similar to those of Professor Sargeant, in her composite figure of the Wellesley College girl, being averaged from the measurements of over 2,000 young women.

Given the height, proportion, and weight of an average physique for the man and woman, what should be the attitude or posture of such an individual, especially when standing? By posture is meant a position of equilibrium of the body which can be maintained for some time, such as standing, sitting, or lying.

For the maintenance of the erect posture the following conditions must be realized: (1) The corresponding halves of the body must be in the same anatomical relation; (2) the centre of gravity of the whole body must fall just in front of the last lumbar vertebra. That the first of these two conditions may be realized there must be a well-developed and symmetrical skeleton and a corresponding symmetrical development of the muscles on the two sides of the body. That the second condition may be realized, there must be such a development of the extensor muscles on the back of the body as will be sufficient to antagonize the flexor muscles on the front of the body.

These conditions are not always realized, and hence certain physical defects are observable, such as obliquity of the head, elevation or depression of the shoulder, curvature of the spine, and so forth.

An old Spanish writer said that “a woman is quite perfect and absolute in beauty if she has thirty good points.” Here they are:

Three things white—the skin, the teeth, the hands.

Three black—the eyes, the eyebrows, the eyelashes.

Three red—the lips, the cheeks, the nails.

Three long—the body, the hair, the hands.

Three short—the teeth, the ears, the feet.

Three broad—the chest, the brow, the space between the eyebrows.

Three narrow—the mouth, the waist, the instep.

Three large—the arm, the loin, the limb.

Three fine—the fingers, the hair, the lips.

Three small—the bust, the nose, the head.

_Grecian and American Standards_

What are the measurements of the physically perfect man? Opinions differ. Ralph Rose, a young athlete from the University of Michigan, has been brought forward and presented to critical inspection as a fair type of the perfect athlete, according to the practical American anthropometric system of averages, and therefore it may be of interest to compare him with the ideal of youthful strength and beauty of classic art, as shown in the statue of the Apollo Belvedere. A glance at the subjoined table where the measurements of young Rose are set over against those of a model of the Apollo of like height—that is, 77 inches, or 6 feet 5 inches—shows how far the college chart standard differs from the ideal of the Greek artist.

ROSE. APOLLO.
Inches. Inches.
Breadth of shoulders 18.8 22.8
Breadth of chest 13.4 15.4
Depth of Chest 10.0 11.3
Girth of neck 15.9 16.8
Girth of chest 44.5 38.0
Girth of waist 39.0 32.0
Right upper arm 14.0 14.3
Left upper arm 13.6 14.3
Right forearm 12.6 12.9
Left forearm 12.1 12.9
Right thigh 23.9 25.4
Left thigh 25.6 24.5
Right calf 16.8 17.0
Left calf 17.0 16.8

The measurements of the Apollo Belvedere’s limbs correspond in a general way with those of the American athlete, but in some particulars Rose falls somewhat short of the Greek divinity. Rose’s shoulders are 4 inches narrower, his chest 5 inches less from side to side and 1.3 inches less through. His neck, too, measures nearly an inch less around.

This shows that Rose’s figure and development are far from the Greek ideal. He is not so clean cut. His shoulders are much narrower and his waist larger. His chest shows larger to the tape, but this is due to the big breast and shoulder muscles that enable him to throw the weights. If the Greek god could put off his marble solidity and blow on a lung tester he would reveal far greater lung capacity than could the young American. The measurements from breastbone to backbone and from side rib to side rib tell the true story of chest capacity.

_The Venus de Medici a Questionable Type_

This famous statue, when found in the seventeenth century in the Villa of Hadrian, near Tivoli, was broken into eleven pieces; only the hands and a portion of the arms were wanting. It was taken to Florence by Cosmo de Medici, and placed in the tribune of the Uffizi.

Lübke, in his “History of Art,” says: “The goddess displays the lineaments of her shapely form to the eye completely nude, yet not in naïve self-forgetfulness, or in the sublime abandon of conquest, but with conscious premeditation; not without a certain shame-faced coyness which is expressed in the position of the arms, with their effort at concealment of the bosom and thighs, and in the coy turning of the head to one side. With all the delicacy and perfection of artistic finish, with all the noble rhythmical proportion of the limbs, this trait, which betrays the calculating coquette, has but a cold effect.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne says: “She is very beautiful, very satisfactory, and has a fresh and new charm about her, unreached by any cast or copy. I felt a kind of tenderness for her—an affection, not as if she were a woman, but all womanhood in one. Her modest attitude—which, before I saw her, I had not liked, deeming it might be an artificial shame—is partly what unmakes her as a heathen goddess, and softens her into woman. There is a slight degree of alarm, too, in her face; not that she really thinks that anybody is looking at her; yet the idea has flitted through her mind and startled her a little. Her face is so beautiful and so intellectual that it is not dazzled out of sight by her form. The world has not grown weary of her in all these ages, and mortal man may look on her with new delight from infancy to old age.”

If anything is safe in this iconoclastic age it might be supposed to be such reputation for beauty and grace. Connoisseurs of all nations have joined in doing homage to the ancient sculptor’s skill. How many visitors to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence have stood, Murray or Appleton in hand, gazing at the undraped figure without a thought of questioning these learned persons! But of late years there have been sceptics daring enough to class this with the Apollo Belvedere as a sample of ancient art that has been “monstrously overrated,” and now comes no less an authority than Holman Hunt to assure us that the Venus de Medici, to use a popular phrase, “won’t do.” There is a little anecdote attaching to this expression of opinion.

Some years ago, at the house of Sir Richard Owen, the great naturalist, Mr. Hunt met that professor of sanitary science, the late Sir Edwin Chadwick, who began a conversation thus: “As a Commissioner of Health, I must profess myself altogether opposed to the artistic theory of beauty. There is the Venus de Medici, which you artists regard as giving the perfect type of female form. I should require that a typical statue with such pretensions should bear evidence of perfect power of life, with steady prospect of health and signs of mental vigor; but she has neither. Her chest is narrow, indicating unrobust lungs, her limbs are without evidence of due training of muscles, her shoulders are not well braced up, and her cranium, and her face, too, are deficient in all traits of intellect. She would be a miserable mistress of a house and a contemptible mother.” But the listener assured the sage critic that he had made a most artistic criticism of the statue, and that his auditor would join in every word as to his standard of requirements. Mr. Hunt was aware, he said, that he was talking heresy to the mass of persons who accepted the traditional jargon of the cognoscenti on trust, but in his opinion “the work belongs to the decadence of Roman virtue and vitality, and its merit lies alone in the rendering of a voluptuous being without mind or soul.” If no authorities of equal weight will stand forth in defence of this marble lady, it is to be feared that the famous Venus de Medici will soon be ranked among impostors. The strange part of the matter is that it has taken more than two hundred years to find her out.

FAMOUS BEAUTIES

And like another Helen, fired another Troy.—DRYDEN.

_Cleopatra_

What was her inner character? A voluptuous woman of the East, say the Romans, eager to enchain any master of a Roman army by the foulest arts; the Roman oligarchy not only hated but dreaded Cleopatra. To them she was the representative of that “regal” sway, that rule by volition instead of by traditional order, which, with their statesmanlike instinct, they saw the triumphant aristocrat whom their system tended to produce would ultimately desire. They cursed her as the greatest of Asiatic harlots, whereas she was more of a Greek, and much more like Mary Stuart as her enemies have painted her, a woman unscrupulous in gratifying her fancies, careless even of murder when needful—Cleopatra murdered her brother-husband, just as Mary murdered her cousin-husband—but who used her charms chiefly as instruments to attain her ends, which were, first of all, the empire of the East, which her ancestors had striven to acquire—and very nearly acquired. She always selected as a lover the head of the invading Roman army, and always used him to help her in founding, as she hoped, the empire of the East. Her attractive power was probably not her beauty. Her coins do not reveal a beautiful woman, but a broad-browed, thoughtful queen; and Plutarch, in describing her, evidently speaks on the authority of men whose fathers had studied her face. He says,—

“Her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible: the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; in most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians and many others, whose language she had learned.”

_Phryne_

This Athenian hetæra was a creature of surpassing physical perfection. She acquired so much wealth by her charms that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes if she might put on them this inscription: “Alexander destroyed them, but Phryne rebuilt them.” Apelles’ celebrated picture of Venus Anadyomene was from Phryne, who entered the sea with hair dishevelled for a model. She is shown rising from the sea, and wringing the water from her hair with her hands. The Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles was also taken from the same model. Among his most celebrated works the Cnidian Aphrodite stands first, as one of the most famous art creations of antiquity. “The old authors,” says Lübke, “are filled with its fame; and they relate that the Bithynian king, Nicomedes, offered the people of Cnidos the payment of their whole state debt in exchange for this work. The artist had represented the goddess entirely nude, but had modified this bold innovation by making her left hand about to take up a garment, as though she had just emerged from the bath, while with her right she modestly shielded her person. The quiet of her posture was enlivened by a delicate sense of life, which gave to the outlines of the beautiful form a pleasant look of animation: the glance of the eyes had that liquid, melting expression, which, far removed from the mere craving of desire, might best convey the tender longing of a goddess of love. However numerous may be the copies of this famous statue that have come down to us, they can, at best, only convey to us the outward characteristics of its attitude, not the exquisite purity of the work of Praxiteles himself.”

William W. Story’s beautiful lines on Praxiteles and Phryne are well worth quoting here:

A thousand silent years ago,
The twilight faint and pale
Was drawing o’er the sunset glow
Its soft and shadowy veil,—

When from his work the sculptor stayed
His hand and turned to one
Who stood beside him half in shade,
Said with a sigh, “’Tis done.”

Thus much is saved from chance and change,
That waits for me and thee,
Thus much—how little! from the range
Of Death to Destiny.

Phryne, thy human lips shall pale,
Thy rounded limbs decay,—
Nor love nor prayers can aught avail
To bid thy beauty stay;

But _there_ thy smile for centuries
On marble lips shall live,—
For Art can grant what love denies
And fix the fugitive.

Sad thought! nor age, nor death shall fade
The youth of this cold bust,
When this quick brain and hand that made,
And thou and I are dust!

When all our hopes and fears are dead
And both our hearts are cold,
And love is like a tune that’s played
And life a tale that’s told,

This senseless stone so coldly fair
That love nor life can warm,
The same enchanting look shall wear,
The same enchanting form.

Its peace no changes shall destroy,
Its beauty age shall spare,
The bitterness of vanished joy,
The wearing waste of care.

And there upon that silent face
Shall unborn ages see
Perennial youth, perennial grace
And sealed serenity.

And strangers, when we sleep in peace,
Shall say not quite unmoved,
So smiled upon Praxiteles
The Phryne whom he loved.

_Isabella of Castile_

Irving says in his “Life of Columbus”: “Contemporary writers have been enthusiastic in their descriptions of Isabella, but time has sanctioned their eulogies. She is one of the purest and most beautiful characters in history. She was well-formed, of middle size, with great dignity and gracefulness of deportment, and a mingled gravity of sweetness of demeanor. Her complexion was fair, her hair auburn; her eyes were of a clear blue, with a benign expression; and there was a singular modesty in her countenance, gracing, as it did, a wonderful firmness of purpose and earnestness of spirit. Though strongly attached to her husband, and studious of his fame, yet she always maintained her distinct rights as an allied prince. She exceeded in beauty, in personal dignity, in acuteness of genius, and in grandeur of soul. Combining the active and resolute qualities of man with the softer charities of woman, she mingled in the warlike councils of her husband, engaged personally in his enterprises, and in some instances, surpassed him in the firmness and intrepidity of her measures; while, being inspired with a truer idea of glory, she infused a more lofty and generous temper into his subtle and calculating policy.

“While all her public thoughts and acts were princely and august, her private habits were simple, frugal, and unostentatious. In the intervals of state business, she assembled around her the ablest men in literature and science, and directed herself by their counsels, in promoting letters and arts. Through her patronage, Salamanca, the great seat of learning in Spain, rose to that height which it assumed among the learned institutions of the age. She promoted the distribution of honors and rewards for the promulgation of knowledge; she fostered the art of printing recently invented, and encouraged the establishment of presses in every part of the kingdom.

Prescott, in his “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,” in describing the personal appearance of the queen, says: “She was exceedingly beautiful; ‘the handsomest lady,’ says one of the household [Oviedo], ‘whom I ever beheld, and the most gracious in her manners.’ The portrait still existing of her, in the royal palace, is conspicuous for an open symmetry of features indicative of the natural serenity of temper, and that beautiful harmony of intellectual and moral qualities which most distinguished her. It is not easy to obtain a dispassionate portrait of Isabella. The Spaniards who revert to her glorious reign are so smitten with her moral perfections, that even in depicting her personal attractions, they borrow somewhat of the exaggerated coloring of romance.”

_Diana of Poitiers_

Francis I. and his son Henry II. of France were both controlled, even in the most important affairs, by female influence, and by shallow-minded and incapable favorites. The mistress of the former was the Duchess d’Etampes, and that of the latter, Diana of Poitiers, widow of Louis de Brézé, grand seneschal of Normandy. Henry was the junior of Diana by nearly twenty years, but this difference did not prevent her, at the age of forty, from attaching herself to the dauphin. While Francis lived, the two favorites divided the court, but upon the accession of the dauphin as Henry II. Diana became virtual mistress of the kingdom, Henry being a man of dull understanding and feeble character, and her rival, d’Etampes, was sent into exile. The young queen, Catherine de Medici, was noted for her beauty and accomplishments, but both were unavailing against the complete ascendency of Diana. Her wonderful beauty and her fascination were such that the king gave her many public tokens of his infatuation, admitted her to his councils, and created her Duchess of Valentinois. She retained her power over the royal lover until his death, even at the age of sixty, ruling him with the double force of her beauty and her intellect.

_Ninon de L’Enclos_

This modern Aspasia, like her Greek prototype, was remarkable not only for her beauty and wit, but for her fondness for cultivated society. Both of them, though of easy virtue and devoted to pleasure to the end of life, held receptions which were frequented by the most intellectual men and women of the period in which they lived. Ninon had a constant succession of lovers, but at the same time her society was courted by Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de Sully, Mme. Scarron (afterward De Maintenon), and Christina of Sweden, and among her most favored admirers were the great Condé, La Rochefoucauld, Villarceaux, and D’Estrées. She was regarded as a model of refinement and elegance in her manners. She lived to the age of ninety, yet preserved her beauty and fascination to the last. She had lovers for three generations in the family of Sévigné. She had two illegitimate sons, one of whom, in ignorance of his birth and relationship, was the victim of an unhallowed passion for his mother. He was then nineteen years of age, and Ninon was fifty-six. While urging his love, she found that the only way to check his importunity was to disclose her secret. Thereupon he blew out his brains, but the tragedy made little impression upon Ninon, as she was dead to the instincts of maternal tenderness.

_Mary Stuart_

Of all unsolved problems of history, says Lyman Abbott, there is none more perplexing, none more seemingly insoluble, than that afforded by the career and character of Mary Queen of Scots. Time has done nothing to detract from the peculiar witchery of her charms, or the romantic interest which attaches to her strange adventures. Her admirers are as enthusiastic three centuries removed from her as were those who fell beneath the peculiar spell of her presence—a spell which few were ever able wholly to resist. The controversy which waged about her while living continues as hot, and almost as bitter, over her grave. History can come no nearer a verdict than could her own contemporaries. Its only answer, like theirs, is, “We cannot agree.”

The difficulties which beset any attempt to tell correctly the story of her career, to analyze aright her character, are very great. The student of history finds no impartial witness; few in her own time who are not ready to tell and to believe about her the most barefaced lies which will promote their own party. During her life she was calumniated and eulogized with equal audacity. Since her death the same curiously contradictory estimates of her character have been vigorously maintained—by those, too, who have not their judgment impaired by the prejudices which environed her. On one hand, we are assured that she was “the most amiable of women;” “the upright queen, the noble and true woman, the faithful spouse, and affectionate mother;” “the poor martyred queen;” “the helpless victim of fraud and force;” an “illustrious victim of statecraft,” whose “kindly spirit in posterity and matchless heroism in misfortune” award her “the most prominent place in the annals of her sex.” On the other hand, we are assured by men equally competent to judge, that she was “a spoiled beauty;” “the heroine of an adulterous melodrame;” “the victim of a blind imperious passion;” an “apt scholar in the profound dissimulation of that school of which Catherine de Medici was the chief instructor;” “a bad woman disguised in the livery of a martyr,” having “a proud heart, a crafty wit, and indurate mind against God and his truth;” “a bold, unscrupulous, ambitious woman,” with “the panther’s nature—graceful, beautiful, malignant, untamable.”

Dr. Abbott thus summarizes a net-work of evidence: A wife learns to loathe her husband; utters her passionate hate in terms that are unmistakable; is reconciled to him for a purpose; casts him off when that purpose is accomplished; makes no secret of her desire for a divorce; listens with but cold rebuke to intimations of his assassination; dallies while he languishes upon a sick-bed so long as death is near; hastens to him only when he is convalescent; becomes, in seeming, reconciled to him; by her blandishments allays his terror and arrests his flight, which nothing else could arrest; brings him with her to the house chosen by the assassins for his tomb—a house which has absolutely nothing else to recommend it but its singular adaptation to the deed of cruelty to be wrought there; remains with him till within two hours of his murder; hears with unconcern the story of his tragic end, which thrills all other hearts with horror; makes no effort to bring the perpetrators of the crime to punishment; rewards the suspected with places and pensions, and the chief criminal (Bothwell) with her hand in marriage while the blood is still wet on his.

Before the murder of Darnley it was the misfortune of Mary’s life that stories against which a fair reputation should be a sufficient defence stick to her like burs to a shaggy coat; stories of unwomanly intimacy first with Chastelar, then with Rizzio, and then with Bothwell. She was certainly careless, if not criminal. At least, so thought John Knox and the straiter sect of the Covenanters.

_Pompadour_

In the long roll of left-hand queens there is no one whose career affords anything approaching the attraction for the student of history that is offered by that of Mme. de Pompadour. For nineteen years she was the virtual ruler of France,—in other words, the ruler of the greatest power in Europe. She conferred pensions and places, appointed Generals, selected Ambassadors, made and unmade Prime Ministers. Upon her rests the responsibility for the sudden but not unreasonable change in the traditional policy of France towards the House of Hapsburg, which enabled the vindictive Maria Theresa to fan the ashes of the War of the Austrian Succession into the devouring flame which ravaged Europe for seven years. To her influence, also, must be attributed in a great measure the suppression of the Jesuits in France.

If we turn from politics to other aspects of French civilization, we cannot but recognize the imprint of her hand. It is to her that France is indebted for the manufacture of Sèvres porcelain, while the establishment of the _Ecole Militaire_, which, in the twenty-seven years of its existence, gave to the country so many distinguished officers, Napoleon among the number, was mainly due to her efforts. In her also men of letters and artists found a generous and appreciative friend. She protected Voltaire and Montesquieu, rescued the elder Crébillon from poverty and neglect, encouraged Diderot and d’Alembert in their labors and made the fortune of Marmontel. It was she who introduced Boucher and his works to the court of Louis XV. and promoted in every way the interests of his fellow-painters. In a word, from the day on which she was installed at Versailles as _maîtresse déclarée_ or _maítresse en titre_, till her death in 1764, a period of some nineteen years, the influence of Mme. de Pompadour was paramount in all matters, from politics to porcelain, and she was, in fact, the true sovereign in France.

How was it possible that a woman of middle-class origin, the daughter of a man who had been forced to fly his country to escape being broken on the wheel, should attain to a post which had hitherto been regarded as the peculiar appanage of the daughters of nobles, and, generally, of great nobles? It is certain that from the beginning her elevation was the signal for an outburst of hostility to which a less remarkable woman must have succumbed. She was called upon to face at once the enmity of the royal family, of powerful ministers, of ladies of the court, of the Jesuits, and of the rabble of Paris, for even the latter resented their sovereign’s departure from the custom observed by his predecessors of selecting mistresses from the _noblesse_. Not only did she never flinch for a moment from the unequal contest, but never till the hour of her death did she fail to sustain her position of predominance, except for a brief interval, when the attempt of Damiens to assassinate Louis XV. seemed to render her fall inevitable. When she died at the early age of 42, she did not succumb to the fear of any personal rivals or enemies, but to the mortification and grief produced by the disastrous outcome of the war into which she had dragged her country.

To the question how it was possible for a woman of middle-class origin to achieve what she did it scarcely suffices to say that, by the verdict even of unfriendly contemporaries, she was the most thoroughly accomplished and highly educated woman in France. She was also one of the most beautiful, and, by all odds, the most fascinating. Touching this point, the evidence of Diderot’s friend, Georges le Roy, may be cited. “She was,” he says “rather above the middle height, slender, supple and graceful. Her hair was luxurious, of a light, chestnut shade rather than fair, and the eyebrows which crowned her magnificent eyes were of the same hue. She had a perfectly formed nose, a charming mouth, lovely teeth, and a ravishing smile, while the most exquisite skin one could wish to behold put the finishing touch to all her beauty. Her eyes had a singular fascination, which they owed, perhaps, to the uncertainty of their color. They possessed neither the dazzling splendor of black eyes, the tender languor of blue, nor yet the peculiar keenness of gray. Their undecided color seemed to lend to them every kind of charm, and to express in turn all the feelings of an intensely mobile nature.” It is said her foot, her hand, her figure, were of a perfection acclaimed by painters and by sculptors, and that her temperament was intensely sympathetic and ardent.

_Eugénie_

The courtiers at the Tuileries used to say that no other woman who then sat on a throne could display so small a foot or so dainty a hand as Empress Eugénie. Her stature was less than middle height, or about the same as the Emperor’s; her figure was lithe and supple, and her arms, shoulders and bust, while ample, were delicately moulded. Her long neck, with its gentle curves, was pronounced by not a few painters to be a model which the old Greeks might have envied in their conceptions of female grace. Her carriage in its lightness and quickness betokened a compact, muscular strength, and there were few women of her court who surpassed her in physical endurance.

Despite the general smallness of her head it was more than usually high and broad above the eyes, and this served to impart to her oval face an expression of mental power. The eyes were variously described by writers of the time as blue, as dark blue, as grayish-blue and as dark gray. But all agreed in ascribing to them a remarkable crystal-like lustre under the shade of sweeping lashes. In truth, their color appears to have taken on different hues at different times, and the peculiarly fine arching of the brows framed them with something like a piquant outline. The nose, slightly inclined to be aquiline, and the small mouth and chin were perhaps the least striking of the features. But the teeth when she smiled shone with a sort of dazzling whiteness, and, indeed, gave rise to a fashion of wearing false ones like them. Her skin, which was of a slightly olive tinge, was so smooth and velvety that the most envious women who surrounded her thought that in neither gaslight nor sunlight was it less clear and pure, and that no art could bring it nearer perfection. Her profusion of light brown hair, which was often described as golden, and which it was thought she artificially colored, was looked upon by many as her chief charm. It was her custom to wear violets in it; in her childhood a fortune-teller had told her that the violet was the flower of the Bonapartes and that time would make it hers, too; and so it was that it long became the favorite of every beauty in the civilized world who thought that she looked like Eugénie, or who made Eugénie her standard of fashion.

The Countess Montijo before her marriage to Napoleon III. was a picturesque figure. She frequented the bull fights at Madrid in odd fancy costumes, she galloped through the streets of the city of an afternoon on a horse without a saddle, and smoking a cigar or cigarette, and she often appeared in man’s attire. The gilded youths of Madrid raved about her, fluttered round her—but not one of them wanted to marry her. Here is a picture set forth by one who saw her at one of her favorite bull fights:

Her slender figure is well defined by a costly bodice which enhances her beauty and elegance. Her dainty hand is armed with a riding whip, instead of a fan, for she generally arrives at the circus on a wild Andalusian horse, and in her belt she carries a sharp-pointed dagger. Her little feet are incased in red satin boots. Her head is crowned with her broad, golden plaits, interwoven with pearls and real flowers; her clear brow shines with youth and beauty and her gentle blue eyes sparkle from beneath the long lashes which almost conceal them. Her exquisitely formed nose, her mouth, fresher than a rosebud; the perfect oval of her face, the loveliness of which is only equalled by her graceful bearing, arouses the admiration of all. She is the recognized queen of beauty. It is she who crowns the victorious toreador, and her white hands present him with the prize due to his courage or agility, while she accompanies the gift with her most captivating smile.