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Ariosto's enchantress Alcina was the model for Tasso's better-known Armida, who provided both Lulli and Gluck with one of their most dramatic heroines, and Burney says, with some justice, that Handel's Alcina gave birth to all the Armidas and Rinaldos of modern times.
The Captain shook his head mournfully; and then, as if suddenly aware of the nature of the attentions so lavished on him, he looked down upon these fair Armidas with a look of such mild reproach, such sweet compassion, not shaking off the hand, in his chivalrous devotion to the sex, which extended even to all its outcasts, that each bold eye felt abashed.
But later experience has told the world, that the charms of those Armidas were desperately exaggerated by Turkish romance and European credulity; that the general style of Circassian features, though fair, is Tartarish, and that the Georgian is frequently coarse and of the deepest brown, though with larger eyes than the Circassian, which are small, and like those of the Chinese.
The Captain shook his head mournfully; and then, as if suddenly aware of the nature of the attentions so lavished on him, he looked down upon these fair Armidas with a look of such mild reproach, such sweet compassion, not shaking off the hand, in his chivalrous devotion to the sex, which extended even to all its outcasts, that each bold eye felt abashed.
To think of it, the solitary Ishmaelite journeying, never so well mounted, through such a wilderness: with lions, dogs, human robbers and Armidas all about him; himself lonely, friendless under the stars: one could pity him withal, though that is not the feeling he solicits; nor gets hitherto, even at this impartial distance.
The grand mansions you arrive at, in this waste-howling solitude, prove sometimes essentially Robber-towers; and there may be Armida Palaces, and divine-looking Armidas, where your ultimate fate is still worse. 'Que le monde est rempli d'enchanteurs, je ne dis rien d'enchanteresses!
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