Of
such is the Eternal Sphinx, as Eothen Kinglake beheld her. We cannot
feel her aspect more grandly than by the aid of his inspiration.
"And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in
the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature
is; but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshipped beast
is a deformity and a monster to this generation; and yet you can see
that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some
ancient mould of beauty, now forgotten,--forgotten because that Greece
drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Aegean, and in her
image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the
short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and main
condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still
lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the
elder world; and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with
the sad, serious gaze, and kiss you your charitable hand with the big,
pouting lips of the very Sphinx.
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