52 MEXICO. 
There are few things more beautiful than the salutation of a Mexican 
lady. Among themselves they never meet without embracing. But to 
men and strangers, on the street, they lift the right hand to near the lips, 
gently inclining the head toward it, and gracefully fluttering their fingers, 
send forth their recognition with an arch-beaming of the eye that is almost 
as bewitching as a kiss. 
The universal conclusion of the day with a fashionable lady in Mexico, 
is the theatre. She begins with mass, to which she walks in the morning 
with her mantilla gracefully draped around her head, and falling in folds 
of splendid lace over her breast and shoulders. But the night must end 
in full dress at the opei-a or theatre. It is as regular and as much a 
matter of course as her meals. 
It is then you may behold the Mexican woman in perfection. And 
yet, to confess the truth, I cannot say that they are beautiful according 
to our ideas of beauty in the United States. 
You do not see those charming skins and rosy complexions, nor do 
you observe that variety of tint ^hich springs from the mingling of many 
nations on our soil ; but there is, nevertheless, something in Mexican 
women, be they fair or dark, that bewitches while you look at them : it is, 
perhaps, a universal expression of sweetness and confiding gentleness. 
There is not much regularity of features ; no " Attic foreheads and 
Phidian noses;" no "rose-bud lips whose kisses pout to leave their nest;" 
no majestic symmetry to compel admiration ; but their large, magnificent 
eyes, where, the very soul of tenderness seems. to dwell, and their natural 
grace, conquer every one. Their gait is slow, stately, majestic. 
The commonest woman of the middle ranks you encounter on the 
streets, with but a fanciful petticoat, and her shawl or reboso, struts a 
queen — her feet small almost to deformity. Her figure, though full to 
embonpoint, you never think too fat ; her lively enthusiasm always seems 
tempered and delicately subdued by the softness of her eye, and you 
feel that her complexion, sallow or dark as it often is, is yet no more than 
■ " The embrowning of the fruit that tells 
How rich within the soul of sweetness dwells." 
I give opposite, sketches of the costume of the lower class of females, as 
you see them constantly in the house and on the street, with and without 
the shawl, or reboso. Without it the dress is scarcely any dress at all : 
one garment — besides a petticoat — braced with a sash around the waist, 
while the hair falls in a long plait down the back. With it — their cos- 
tume is made up. Flung gracefully over the left shoulder and passed 
across the mouth — you see nothing but the eyes, which are her greatest 
charm, and she never attempts to conceal them or neglect their power. 
In speaking of the fine eyes, the beautiful feet, and the queenly tread 
of the Mexican ladies, and their costume, I should not forget to mention 
that an embroidered India crape shawl, blazing with all the colors of the 
