312 BENGAZI.

There was nothing, it will be thought, so extremely alarming in this partial exhibition of female beauty ; and the favoured inhabitants of less decorous, and more civilized countries, would scarcely dream of being shocked at a similar spectacle. But to men who inhabit those regions of delicacy, where even one eye of a female must never be seen stealing out from the sanctuary of her veil, the sudden apparition of a sparkling pair of those luminaries is not a vision of ordinary occurrence. At the same time, the alarm of the worthy Shekhs assembled, which the bright eyes and naked face (as they termed it) of our fair young countrywoman had so suddenly excited, was in no way diminished by the heinous exposure of a snowy neck and a well-turned pair of shoulders ; and had they been placed in the situation of Yusuf, when the lovely Zuleika presented herself in all her charms as a suitor for the young Hebrew’s love *, or in the more embarrassing dilemma of the Phrygian shepherd -prince*, when three immortal beauties stood revealed before his sight, they could scarcely have felt or expressed more confusion. Every Arab, who saw the picture, actually blushed and hid his face with his hands ; exclaming — w’ Allah haram — (by Heaven ’tis a sin) to look upon such an exposure of female charms !

It is, no doubt, very gratifying, in these ages of assurance, to witness so unequivocal a display of genuine modesty ; and we confess that we ought not to have laughed so heartily as we did at this * Yusuf and Zuleika are the Mahometan names of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.