202 THE OPEN AIR. 



her physique. So immense an arm was like a revela- 

 tion of the vast physical proportions which our race 

 is capable of attaining under favourable conditions. 

 Perfectly white white as the milk in which it was 

 often plunged smooth and pleasant in the texture of 

 the skin, it was entirely removed from coarseness. 

 The might of its size was chiefly by the shoulder; 

 the wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal, 

 white, sunlit, bare among the trees and the meads 

 around it was a living embodiment of the limbs we 

 attribute to the first dwellers on earth. 



IV. LIPS. 



The mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. To 

 the lips the glance is attracted the moment she 

 approaches, and their shape remains in the memory 

 longest. Curve, colour, and substance are the three 

 essentials of the lips, but these are nothing without 

 mobility, the soul of the mouth. If neither sculpture, 

 nor the palette with its varied resources, can convey 

 the spell of perfect lips, how can it be done in black 

 letters of ink only? Nothing is so difficult, nothing 

 so beautiful. There are lips which have an elongated 

 curve (of the upper one), ending with a slight curl, 

 like a ringlet at the end of a tress, like those tiny 

 wavelets on a level sand which float in before the 

 tide, or like a frond of fern unrolling. In this curl 

 there lurks a smile, so that she can scarcely open her 

 mouth without a laugh, or the look of one. These 

 upper lips are drawn with parallel lines, the verge 

 is denned by two lines near together, enclosing the 



