{"id":"01KG6G84TK7PMQD8R668N5C68B","cid":"bafkreictkpyopxsfjy6ld3pvw54wavgsqot7vo3n3yaauqm2yl2x4xosfu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":12445,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.157Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":12377,"text":"our clayey natures can assume. The poet has sung:--\r\n\r\n        ‘When first the Rhodian’s mimic art array’d\r\n         The queen of Beauty in her Cyprian shade,\r\n         The happy master mingled on his piece\r\n         Each look that charm’d him in the fair of Greece.\r\n         To faultless nature true, he stole a grace\r\n         From every finer form and sweeter face;\r\n         And, as he sojourn’d on the Ægean isles,\r\n         Woo’d all their love and treasured all their smiles;\r\n         Then glow’d the tints, pure, precious, and refined,\r\n         And mortal charms seemed heavenly when combined.’\r\n\r\nNow, had this same Apelles flourished in our own enlightened day, and\r\nmore particularly, had he taken up his domicile in this goodly village,\r\nI could with ease have presented him with many a Hebe, in whom were\r\nunited all the requisite graces which make up the beau-ideal of female\r\nloveliness. Nor, my dear M----, does there reign in all this bright\r\ndisplay that same monotony of feature, form, complexion, which elsewhere\r\nis beheld; no, here are all varieties, all the orders of Beauty’s\r\narchitecture; the Doric, the Ionic, the Corinthian, all are here.\r\n\r\nI have in ‘my mind’s eye, Horatio,’ three (the number of the Graces, you\r\nremember) who may stand, each at the head of their respective orders.\r\nThe one, were she arrayed in sylvan garb, and did she in her hand carry\r\nher bow, might with equal justice and propriety stand, the picture of\r\nDiana herself. Her figure is bold, her stature erect and tall, her\r\npresence queenly and commanding, and her complexion is clear and fair as\r\nthe face of heaven on a May day, through which sparkles an eye of that\r\nindefinable hue, which is beyond comparison the most striking that can\r\ngarnish the human countenance. The vermilion in her cheeks perpetually\r\nwears that ruddy, healthful tint, which one is accustomed to behold\r\nillumine, but for a moment, alas! the face of a city belle when she\r\ntakes her annual ramble in the country, to revel for a period in the\r\nretreats of rustic life.\r\n\r\nIf to these qualities you superadd that majesty of carriage and dignity\r\nof mien, which we would fancy the royal mistress of Antony to have\r\npossessed; together with that heroic and Grecian cast of countenance\r\nwhich the imagination unconsciously ascribes to the Jewess, Rebecca,\r\nwhen resisting the vile arts of the Templar--you have in my poor opinion\r\nthe portraiture of ⸻.\r\n\r\nWhen I venture to describe the second of this beautiful trinity, I feel\r\nmy powers of delineation inadequate to the task; but nevertheless I will\r\ntry my hand at the matter, although, like an unskilful limner, I am\r\nfearful I shall but scandalise the charms I endeavour to copy.\r\n\r\nCome to my aid, ye guardian spirits of the Fair! Guide my awkward hand,\r\nand preserve from mutilation the features ye hover over and protect!\r\nPour down whole floods of sparkling champagne, my dear M----, until your\r\nbrain grows giddy with emotion; con over the latter portion of the first\r\ncanto of _Childe Harold_, and ransack your intellectual repository for\r\nthe liveliest visions of the Fairy Land, and you will be in a measure\r\nprepared to relish the epicurean banquet I shall spread.\r\n\r\nThe stature of this beautiful mortal (if she be indeed of earth) is of\r\nthat perfect height, which, while it is freed from the charge of being\r\nlow, cannot with propriety be denominated tall. Her figure is slender\r\nalmost to fragility, but strikingly modelled in spiritual elegance, and\r\nis the only form I ever saw, which could bear the trial of a rigid\r\ncriticism.\r\n\r\nEvery man who is gifted with the least particle of imagination, must in\r\nsome of his reveries have conjured up from the realms of fancy, a being\r\nbright and beautiful beyond everything he had ever before apprehended,\r\nwhose main and distinguishing attribute invariably proves to be a form\r\nthe indescribable loveliness of which seems to\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G7FZ2KB82J0V4BQX7VXJB","peer_type":"intro","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G84TKWH614K27W19MWK5A","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.851Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:33.295Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}