of Rome — as though he were a small child, the two of them knocking together at the windows and doors of houses, then running off in a mischief beyond the mischief of children?!
Nor do we think we need go back and retell that famous adventure of a great admiral, Nelson, who had scarcely won, in 1798, his greatest victory in war over Napoleon's fleet at Aboukir, and returned to Italy, when he fell into the toils of Lady Hamilton, wife of England's aged ambassador at Naples — that astonishing woman whose beginnings as a serving-girl in a tavern did not keep her from marrying an ambassador, after a life crowded with adventures, and then holding sway over a great admiral; though ill fortune clung to her in the last years of her life, for her husband died in 1803, and Nelson followed him in 1805, and after their deaths misery encompassed her; her creditors tightened the noose about her until they brought her to prison in 1813, and she left prison for Calais in France, where her end came in 1814.
This is the "Lady Hamilton" who was immortalized not only for her sway over Nelson but for those many magnificent oil portraits painted of her by immortal painters, "Reynolds" and "Romney" — of whom the historians say that he wore out his imagination in choosing her poses, and in setting down the breaths of magic that went forth from her beauty.
And how many beauties besides Cleopatra and Lady Hamilton have kindled the feelings of men, unlocking their gifts or wearing them away! Perhaps a woman like "Madame Récamier" ought not to be passed over when one speaks of the beauties of history, for the salon of that lady in Paris had a far-reaching effect upon the intellectual movement in France at the opening of the nineteenth century. Madame Récamier, who received her first
upbringing in a convent, knew how to deal with men so as to hold them to respect for her without wounding any feeling of theirs or letting them sense any harshness. The reader may turn to the tale by "Madame de Staël" called "Corinne" to grasp the traits of soul of Madame Récamier, whom the French writer took as the heroine of her tale. And yet she singled out, from among all her admirers, two great writers, "Benjamin Constant" and "Chateaubriand," and with them she had the closest of ties — so that it may be said that whoever follows their literary works cannot fail to find there the traces of that woman of magnificent beauty and bewitching talk, that woman whose features the painters "David" and "Gérard" have left us in immortal canvases.
And there is yet another effect that women's beauty has had — their effect upon the crowds — which we add to their effect upon individuals, so as to take in the different sides of that potent magic.
This influence has gone forth from actresses and dancers in particular, and perhaps we may content ourselves here with pointing to two of them whose fame filled the horizons: the actress "Sarah Bernhardt," and the American dancer "Isadora Duncan."
Sarah Bernhardt — with her majestic, delicate, pale face, her golden hair spread out like a veil, and her supple, alluring figure — possessed a special gift in the reciting of verse, which was perhaps the first source of her magic; so much so that one of the critics described that gift
by saying: "You cannot praise her for reciting verse well... The goddess of poetry herself was embodied in her, and neither intelligence nor art had any part in it. A hidden instinct led her. She recited verse as the nightingale sings, as the winds moan and the waters murmur; she recited it as Lamartine used to recite it in his old age."
And strangely enough, her outward appearance itself was all eloquent of poetry, so that this appearance was once described thus: "She was a puff of smoke, a breath of mist. She was a fleeting glimpse of delicate features covered by locks of hair and by veils like clouds."
"The Woman's Voice" announced in a past issue that it had resolved to choose the pictures for its coming covers from Arab subjects. It is in earnest about this, despite the difficulties it meets, the chief of which go back to the worn-out traditions to which some of our families still cling. In the civilized world, the picture that appears on the cover of magazines of standing is counted a great honor for the lady it portrays.
We are pleased to publish in this issue a cover picture showing the Misses Samia Nassar and Gladys Kamb standing in some spot of the American College for Girls, from which they graduated.
The two gracious young ladies are among the finest of our students at the American University of Beirut.