Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/321

 one might at first think. Some one asked the sculptor Phidias, whence he drew the inspiration which guided him in his statue of the Olympian Jupiter. He replied, "In the verses of Homer." And we do not fail to recognize in the masses of locks which crown the head of that wondrous work, the hair, which, in the Homeric poems, shakes, by its movement, Olympus itself. So Christian art, recognizing the subtle harmony which exists between the disposition of the hair and the character, ever portrays the meek and lowly Messiah with blonde or light brown hair, resting in tranquil waves over a forehead whereon reign a celestial serenity and a more than human benignity, and falling upon the drooping shoulders which bore the bitter Cross of Calvary. Can any point in these two conceptions of divinity bring more clearly to the appreciative mind the difference between the heathen and the Christian faith?

Ancient art in all its creations looked to this element of the beautiful. The Furies, Medea, Gorgon, are portrayed with wild and dishevelled locks, but the queenly Venus of Milo, and the Venus de Medici, have abundant, slightly curly, gently waving hair, suited to the repose of perfect beauty.

Such facts as these, if well considered, point to a theory of hair-dressing which as yet the friseurs know nothing about, and the ladies of the great world are far from appreciating. But do not think that we have