[ i ] 
and the nofe, which we term Grecian, ufually prevails among 
them, as it does indeed among the women of all thefe iflands. 
Their complexions are naturally fine, but they fpoil them by 
paint, of which they make abundant ufe, and they disfigure their 
pretty faces by fhaving the hinder part of the eyebrow, and re- 
placing it with a ftrait line of hair, neatly applied with fome 
fort of gum, the brow being thus continued in a {trait and narrow 
line till it joins the hair on each fide of their face. They are 
well made, of the middle fize, and, for the moft part, plump; 
but they are diftinguifhed by nothing fo much and fo univerfally 
as by a haughty, difdainful and fupercilious air, with which they 
feem to look down upon all mankind as creatures of an inferior 
nature, born for their fervice, and doomed to be their flaves ; 
neither does this peculiarity of countenance in any degree diminith 
their natural beauty, but rather adds to it that fort of be- 
witching attraGtion, which the French call pzguaat. 
Tue peculiar fingularity of the cuftom above-mentioned induced 
me carefully to examine whether any fimilar ufage had any 
where exifted in ancient times, and, after much fearch, I at 
length found in Herodotus an account of a cuftom among the 
Lycians, which bears a ftriking refemblance to this of Mételin, 
and is, I believe, the only inftance in all antiquity* at all 
refembling 
* The only inflance in all antiquity.] 1 have faid in the text that I knew of 
no inftance in ancient manners refembling the cuftom of the Metelineans, that 
of the Lycians only excepted. We know however that the Egyptian laws, 
though there be nothing in them which can induce us to fappofe that any 
fimilar ufage exifted in Egypt, gave to the women of that extraordinary country 
certain peculiar and fingular privileges. Diodorus Siculus, Lib. 1. p. 31, after 
[B 2] having 
