312 
BENGAZI. 
There was nothing, it will be thought, so extremely alarming in 
this partial exhibition of female beauty ; and the favoured inhabi- 
tants of less decorous, and more civilized countries, would scarcely 
dream of being shocked at a similar spectacle. But to men who 
inhabit those regions of delicacy, where even one eye of a female 
must never be seen stealing out from the sanctuary of her veil, the 
sudden apparition of a sparkling pair of those luminaries is not a 
vision of ordinary occurrence. At the same time, the alarm of 
the worthy Shekhs assembled, which the bright eyes and naked 
face (as they termed it) of our fair young countrywoman had so 
suddenly excited, was in no way diminished by the heinous ex- 
posure of a snowy neck and a well-turned pair of shoulders ; and 
had they been placed in the situation of Yusuf, when the lovely 
Zuleika presented herself in all her charms as a suitor for the 
young Hebrew’s love *, or in the more embarrassing dilemma of 
the Phrygian shepherd -prince*, when three immortal beauties 
stood revealed before his sight, they could scarcely have felt or 
expressed more confusion. Every Arab, who saw the picture, ac- 
tually blushed and hid his face with his hands ; exclaming — w’ Allah 
haram — (by Heaven ’tis a sin) to look upon such an exposure of 
female charms ! 
It is, no doubt, very gratifying, in these ages of assurance, to wit- 
ness so unequivocal a display of genuine modesty ; and we confess 
that we ought not to have laughed so heartily as we did at this 
* Yusuf and Zuleika are the Mahometan names of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. 
