Author: John Carne

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 62

ISBN-13: 9781230266077

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826 edition. Excerpt: ...sang in a low voice; and in the midst was a fakir, for whom all the display was made-He was a very good-looking man, with a full florid face, a black bushy beard, and his thick hair in wild disorder. He moved his head up and down strangely in time to the music, and joined in the chant with the others. He came into the hut where I was, and behaved with AN AFFECTING SCENli. 175 great ease and civility; and seemed more a man of the world than a self-denying saint. The figure of the beautiful woman in the book, which the two Arabs had kissed with earnestness, the fakir seemed to view with dislike, as the Koran forbids a fondness for pictures. The Prophet was right, perhaps, in prohibiting the use of pictures or images to his people; the wretched paintings of the Virgin, and the saints, male and female, in the Greek church, may have quite as much effect on the imagination, if it can be at all excited by such things, as the vile statues of the Catholics. The only human figure I saw in Greece that was better worth worshipping, if I may be allowed the expression, than half their marvellous calendar, was a young Greek girl at Tri-politza. She was dying--but her figure was symmetry itself. Her father was a priest, and her mother was, as she was well termed, a magnificent woman, of large size, stout, and her features had a noble and imperial character, --quite unlike her daughter, who was of the smallest size in which loveliness could well inhabit. The girl was laid in the corridor to breathe the fresh air. She did not speak; but her elegant yet emaciated limbs, but ill concealed by the loose drapery, were moved at times in agony, while a hurried ejaculation escaped her, and her face was buried in the long tresses of her beautiful hair. Never does a..