The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ANGELA VIVALDI 99 thin; for, while replete with bayadere elasticity and willowy litheness, her figure still seemed filled out to all its just pro- portions. -Thus aerial grace was blended with a sculptural richness of contours, sylphid elegance was united with a rounded fulness of charms. Had she been bred in some far-off western forest, like a fawn, she could not have been of more unconscious elasticity of carriage nor of more unstudied eracefulness of mien. Upright as a dart, the suppleness of her form and elegant freedom of her gait would have shown her at once, though robed in flowing drapery, to be a creature of perfect make. But now her short raiment, reaching only to her knees, revealed the sweeping length, the straightness, and the beautiful symmetry of the limbs. Nature had given her an instep finely arched, and this, united to an exquisite foot and a delicate ankle, completed that air of high-bred eracefulness which may be observed in the figure of a woman as well as in an Arabian courser. But all that we have as yet said of Angela Vivaldi can con- vey to the mind of the reader but a faint idea of her ravishing charms. Let us behold her now, as she moves in the be- witching dance. Here again the power of language alto- gether fails us, either to depict the winning graces of her style, the beauty of her attitudes, or the sylphlike delicacy of her movements. It was the poetry of motion expressed and personified in a being of beauty to embellish it and of soul to comprehend it. Now, as her shining dark hair clustered over her high and polished brow, she shook it away with the sweetest and most innocently coquettish toss of the head imaginable; then, as she appeared to warm alike to the excitement of the dance, the influence of the music, and the rapturous applause which incessantly burst forth from the crowded house, a beaming smile appeared upon her budding lips, suggesting the idea of a young love cradled in a just opening rose. _ And looked she not the queen of love herself, come down upon that earth which she scarcely seemed to press with her aerial feet, — treading indeed so lightly that, still liken- ing her to Venus, she seemed to stand on the froth of a fresh- broken wave? The spectacle was delicious. Every muscle and limb of the enchanting creature appeared to be in harmonious motion. Blooming with youth and shining with divinity, she resembled the Medicean statue wakened by CONnNIEDOOKS (EO)