Note 1051 — Chapter I · WOMEN IN THE HEROIC AGES.

On the beauty of the modern Greek women I can speak from my own observation; but most travellers are of the same opinion, and Mr. Douglas, in particular, gives the following testimony in their favour: “Though the delicacy of her form is not long able to sustain the heat of the climate and the immoderate use of the warm bath, I can scarcely trust myself to describe the beauty of a young Greek when arriving at the age which the ancients have so gracefully personified as the Χρυσοστέφανος Ἥβη. Were we to form our ideas of Grecian women from the wives of Albanian peasants we should be strangely deceived; but the islands of Andro, Tino, and, above all, that of Crete, contain forms upon which the chisel of Praxiteles would not have been misemployed.”—Essay, &c. p. 159.