e; the symmetry of her head
and bust, and the outline of her features resembled the ideal models
of classical art--it was the form and face of a Grecian goddess; and
her rare natural gifts of musical utterance and personal loveliness
won for her, very justly, the great admiration she excited, and the
popularity she so long enjoyed. In a woman of far other and higher
endowments, that wonderful actress, Rachel, whose face and figure,
under the transforming influence of her consummate dramatic art,
were the perfect interpreters of her perfect tragic conceptions, an
ignoble, low-lived expression occasionally startled and dismayed
one, on a countenance as much more noble and intellectual, as it was
less beautiful than Grisi's,--the outward and visible sign of the
inward and spiritual disgrace, which made it possible for one of her
literary countrymen and warmest admirers to say that she was
adorable, because she was so "_deliceusement canaille_." Emilie,
Camille, Esther, Pauline, such a "delightful blackguard"!

Grazia, the Juno of the Roman sculptors of her day, their model of
severe classical beauty, had a perfectly stolid absence of all
expression; she was like one of the oxen of her own Campagna, a
splendid, serious-looking animal. No animal is ever vulgar, except
some dogs, who live too much with men for the interest of their
dignity, and catch the infection of _the_ human vice.

With us coarse-featured English, and our heavy-faced Teutonic
kinsfolk, a thick outline and snub features are generally supposed
to be the vulgar attributes of our lower classes; but the
predominance of spirit over matter vindicates itself strikingly
across the Atlantic, where, in the lowest strata of society, the
native American rowdy, with a face as pure in outline as an ancient
Greek coin, and hands and feet as fine as those of a Norman noble,
strikes one dumb with the aspect of a countenance whose vile,
ignoble hardness can triumph over such refinement of line and
delicacy of proportion. A human soul has a wonderful supremacy over
the matter which it _informs_. The American is a whole nation with
well-made, regular noses; from which circumstance (and a few
others), I believe in their future superiority over all other
nations. But the _lowness_ their faces are capable of "flogs
Europe."]