e museum at Palermo; and the Russian
ambassador, who was of unknown age, said that she was the perfect Psyche
of Naples, brought to life, and that he wished he were Eros.

In southern Europe what is called the Greek type of beauty is often
seen, and does not surprise any one. Many people think it cold and
uninteresting. It was a small something in the arch of the brows, it was
a very slight upward turn of the point of the nose, it was the small
irregularity of the broader and less curving upper lip that gave to
Cecilia Palladio's face the force and character that are so utterly
wanting in the faces of the best Greek statues. The Greeks, by the time
they had gained the perfect knowledge of the human body that produced
the Hermes of Olympia, had made a conventional mask of the human face,
and rarely ever tried to give it a little of the daring originality that
stands out in the features of many a crudely archaic statue. The artist
who made the Psyche attempted something of the kind, for the right side
of the face differs from the left, as it generally does in living
people. The right eyebrow is higher and more curved than the left one,
which lends some archness to the expression, but its effect is destroyed
by the tiresome perfection of the simpering mouth.

Cecilia Palladio was not like a Greek statue, but she looked as if she
had come alive from an age in which the individual ranked above the many
as a model, and in which nothing accidentally unfit for life could
survive and nothing degenerate had begun to be. With the same general
proportion, there was less symmetry in her face than in those of modern
beauties, and there was more light, more feeling, more understanding.
She was very fair, but her eyes were not blue; it would have been hard
to define their colour, and sometimes there seemed to be golden lights
in them. While she was standing, Lamberti had seen that she was almost
as tall as himself, and therefore taller than most women; and she was
slender, and moved like a very perfectly proportioned young wild animal,
continuously, but without haste, till each motion was completed in rest.
Most men and women really move in a succession of very short movements,
entirely interrupted at more or less perceptible intervals. If our sight
were perfect we should see that people walk, for instance, by a series
of jerks so rapid as to be like the vibrations of a humming-bird's
wings. Perhaps this is due to the unconscious exerc