In the priests of Mexico, she saw nothing but ignorance, sensuality, bigotry, and indolence, nothing calculated to shake her faith as a Protestant, or cause her to forget her mother's first injunction; while the foppishness, frivolity, insolence, ignorance, and pride, of the men, by whom she was surrounded, most effectually protected her from the remotest thought of disobeying the second. The men, on the other hand, regarded her with the coolest indifference; accustomed to admire the black eyes, and hair, and colorless complexions of the Spanish and native, or Creole, women, varying from a sort of dirty cream color, to a deep and beautiful copper, Isabella's rather lightish brown hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, and cheeks rosy with health and cheerfulness, had no charms for them; and, while her cousins had lovers, or danglers, by the dozen, Isabella found herself, to her infinite satisfaction, completely deserted and neglected, by all the starched and pompous fools that visited her uncle, during a stay of some months in the city of Mexico.
She had, on the arrival of the family at St. Blas, contrived to employ her time in cultivating such female accomplishments as her mother had instructed her in, and was, at the time we introduce her to the reader's notice, in her twentieth year. In person, she was about the medium height of women, or, perhaps, a little below it; and would be called, in New England, rather a small woman. Her form was exceedingly well-proportioned and beautiful, although, what may seem incredible, it had never been cramped, crushed, and distorted, by tight lacing, of which her mother had a very reasonable horror; and, in consequence, her movements were free, graceful, and unconfined.
I know very well that the idea of a lady's form being beautiful, unless moulded by corsets into the form of a ship's half-minute glass, will be scouted as absurd and impossible; but to the ridicule that such a proposition must necessarily excite, I can oppose my own observation, leaving antiquity, with its faultless statues and sculptures, to shift for itself. The Hindoo women, of whom I have seen hundreds at once bathing in the Hoogly, of all ages, from childhood to decrepitude, have extremely fine forms, when young, that is from twelve to twenty-two or three, at which period they have all the marks of old age. As they bathe with only a single thin cotton garment, which, when wet, sticks close to their bodies, and developes their forms most completely, any body that visits Calcutta can satisfy himself of the correctness of this fact, and yet they tolerate no sort of confinement whatever about the person.
Isabella's face was of an oval form, with an exquisitely delicate and fair complexion; when her features were at rest, the expression was quiet and serious, rather bordering upon the pensive, a cast of countenance that she inherited from her mother; but her smile was exceedingly attractive, with an air of frankness and innocence attending it, that made it perfectly fascinating. Her eyes were of a deep blue, that, in conversation or when any emotion agitated the tranquillity of their owner, were extremely lively, animated, and sparkling. Her eyebrows were very delicately traced, slightly curved but not arched, as poets and others rave about—I never saw a pair that were, on forehead male or female, except among the Chinese, and they, in consequence, looked like—no matter who—nor can I imagine how arched brows can be beautiful.
It was not the fashion, forty years since, for girls to cut off their hair and sell it to a barber for fifty cents, and then give ten dollars for a set of artificial curls, nor was it fashionable in Mexico to wear false hair; if it had been, nature had been so bountiful to Isabella in that beautiful ornament and pride (it ought to be) of a woman, that she could save the expense by the arrangement of her own luxuriant tresses.
Her temper was mild, and by no means easily ruffled; her disposition was gentle, humane, amiable, and cheerful, though seldom or never breaking out into extravagant gaiety. Like all young ladies of her age, who have much unemployed time on their hands, and I believe the same remark will apply to young men similarly situated, she had experienced a void, a want of something in the heart, that she felt acutely enough, but could neither describe nor account for; that peculiar feeling that certainly is not love, but a symptom of the wish to love and be beloved; it is that state of the heart when the affections go forth, like Noah's dove, and finding no object on which to repose, return weary and dejected to their lonely prison.
It is an old adage, that "when the devil finds a man idle, he sets him to work;" when love finds a heart unoccupied, he soon finds it a tenant, for it always has been, is now, and always will be true, that
"Love is a fire that burns and sparkles,
In men as nat'rally as in charcoals."
Isabella, almost without knowing it, and without the faintest suspicion of the real state of the case, gradually neglected and ceased to take pleasure in her usual occupations; her books, her music, her needle, and her flowers, all seemed to be equally tiresome and unpleasant. While in this unhappy state of ennui and loneliness of feeling, peculiar to the youthful days, or some portion of them, of both sexes, when the mind, like Hudibras' sword,
"Eats into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack,"