the summer noon
Unto whom or what shall I liken this fair , tender , childish face , which had in the narrow space of ten years gathered such perfection of outline , such unearthly purity of colour , such winsome grace , such complex expressions ? Probably amid the fig and olive groves of Tuscany , Fra Bartolomeo found just such an incarnation of the angelic ideal , which he afterward placed for the admiration of succeeding generations in the winged heads that glorify the _ Madonna della Misericordia _ . The stipple of time dots so lightly , so slowly , that at the age of ten a human countenance should present a mere fleshy _ tabula rasa _ , but now and then we are startled by meeting a child as unlike the round , rosy , pulpy , dimpling , unwritten faces of ordinary life , as the churubs of Raphael to the rigid forms of Byzantine mosaics , or the stone portraiture of Copan . As she sat there , in the golden radiance of the summer noon , she presented an almost faultless specimen of a type of beauty that is rarely found nowaday , that has always been peculiar , and bids fair to become extinct . A complexion of dazzling whiteness and transparency , rendered more intensely pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of the deepest black , -- and large superbly shaped eyes of clear , dark steel blue , almost violet in hue , -- with delicately arched brows and very long lashes of that purplish black tint which only the trite and oft-borrowed plumes of ravens adequately illustrate . The forehead was not remarkable for height , but was peculiarly broad and full with unusual width between the eyes , and if Strato were correct in his speculations with reference to Psyche 's throne , then verily my little girl did not cramp her soul in its fleshy palace . Daintily moulded in figure and face , every feature instinct with a certain delicate patricianism , that testified to genuine `` blue blood , '' there was withal a melting tenderness about the parted lips that softened the regal contour of one who , amid the universal catalogue of feminine names , could never have been appropriately called other than Regina .