h gestures,
signified the delight which he had in bestowing such a sight upon his
faithful artisans of Alexandria, and the unspeakable enjoyment which
they were to expect from the mystic dance of the goddess; and then
retired, leaving the Graces to advance in front of the platform,
and with their arms twined round each other, begin Hypatia's song of
invocation.

As the first strophe died away, the valves of the shell reopened, and
discovered Aphrodite crouching on one knee within. She raised her head,
and gazed around the vast circle of seats. A mild surprise was on her
countenance, which quickened into delightful wonder, and bashfulness
struggling with the sense of new enjoyment and new powers. She glanced
downward at herself; and smiled, astonished at her own loveliness; then
upward at the sky; and seemed ready, with an awful joy, to spring up
into the boundless void. Her whole figure dilated; she seemed to drink
in strength from every object which met her in the great universe
around; and slowly, from among the shells and seaweeds, she rose to
her full height, the mystic cestus glittering round her waist, in deep
festoons of emeralds and pearls, and stepped forward upon the marble
sea-floor, wringing the dripping perfume from her locks, as Aphrodite
rose of old.

For the first minute the crowd was too breathless with pleasure to think
of applause. But the goddess seemed to require due homage; and when she
folded her arms across her bosom, and stood motionless for an instant,
as if to demand the worship of the universe, every tongue was loosed,
and a thunder-clap of 'Aphrodite!' rang out across the roofs of
Alexandria, and startled Cyril in his chamber at the Serapeium, and
weary muleteers on distant sand-hills, and dozing mariners far out at
sea.

And then began a miracle of art, such as was only possible among a
people of the free and exquisite physical training, and the delicate
aesthetic perception of those old Greeks, even in their most fallen
days. A dance, in which every motion was a word, and rest as eloquent as
motion; in which every attitude was a fresh motive for a sculptor of the
purest school, and the highest physical activity was manifested, not
as in the coarser comic pantomimes, in fantastic bounds and unnatural
distortions, but in perpetual delicate modulations of a stately and
self-restraining grace. The artist was for the moment transformed into
the goddess. The theatre, and Alexandria, and the