Nevertheless, setting Custom and Convention apart for the nonce, and bidding them descend into the shadows of hypocrisy which are their native atmosphere, the British woman remains the prettiest in the world. What a galaxy of feminine charms can be gathered under the word “British”! England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland offer all together such countless examples of woman’s loveliness, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to give the prize for good looks to one portion of Britain more than to the other. America, so far as her samples have been, and are, seen in Europe, cannot outrival the “Old Country” in the prettiness of its women. But it is prettiness only; not Beauty. Beauty remains intrinsically where it was first born and first admitted into the annals of Art and Literature. Its home is still in “the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung.” Nothing that was ever created in the way of female loveliness can surpass the beauty of a beautiful Greek woman. True, she is as rare as a butterfly in a snow storm. True, the women of Athens and of Greece generally, taken in the rough majority, are not on an average, even pretty. Nevertheless the palm of beauty remains with them--because there are always two,--or may be three of them, who dawn year by year upon the world in all the old perfection of the classic models, and who may truly be taken for newly-descended goddesses, so faultlessly formed, so exquisitely featured are they. They are not famed by the paragraphist, and they probably will never get the chance of moving in the circles of the British “Upper Ten” or the American “Four Hundred.” But they are the daughters of Aphrodite still, and hold fast their heavenly mother’s attributes. It is easy to find a hundred or more pretty British and American women for one beautiful Greek--but when found, the beautiful Greek eclipses them all. She is still the wonder of the world,--the crown of womanly beauty at its best. She shows the heritage of her race in her regal step and freedom of movement,--in the lovely curves of her figure, in the classic perfection of her face with its broad brows, lustrous eyes, arched sweet lips and delicate contour of chin and throat, and perhaps more than all in the queenly indifference she bears towards her own loveliness. So, Fill high the bowl with Samian wine, On Suli’s bank and Parga’s shore, Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there perhaps some seed is sown The Heracleidan blood might own! And there still, may be found the perfection of womanhood--the one rare Greek lily, which blossoming at few and far intervals shows in its exquisite form and colouring what Woman should be at her fairest. To her, therefore, must be given the Palm of Beauty. But after the lily, then the rose!--or rather the roses, multitudinous, varied, and always sweet--of the Fortunate Isles of Britain. THE MADNESS OF CLOTHES