United States or Greece ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The servant got some insect powder and blowed the hair of the garment full of it, and scrubbed the inside of it with benzine. Ingomar put it on just before he went on the stage, and thought it didn't smell just right, but he had no time to inquire into it. He had not got fairly in his position, before Parthenia came out on a hop, skip and jump, and threw herself all over him.
'Ingomar' is not a play, and Parthenia is certainly not a character, calculated to call forth the higher powers of an ambitious actress. As a matter of fact, Miss Anderson, who began her histrion career at an early age, and is even now of extremely youthful appearance, has had plenty of experience and success in roles of much more difficulty, and much wider possibilities.
It was but too evident that Parthenia was at all times more concerned with the fall of her drapery than with the effect of her speeches, and that gesture, action, intonation everything which constitutes a living individuality were in her case not so much the outcome of the feeling proper to the character, as the manifestation of diligent painstaking art which had not yet learnt to conceal itself.
Parthenia: or the Last Days of Paganism. By ELIZA BUCKMINSTER LEE, Author of "Naomi," "Life of Jean Paul," "Lives of the Buckminsters," etc., etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1858. 12mo. pp. 420. The true gauge of any civilization, whether of a race, a nation, or a district, is to be found in the character and position of its women.
Thinking of the wearied Parthenia, I began to consider for the first time that perhaps she had better married the old Greek. Then she would at least have always looked neat. Then she would not have worn a woollen dress flavored with all the dinners of the past year. Then she would not have been obliged to wait on the table with her hair half down.
A contribution would have been raised, to buy these individuals of the state, were it not deemed an insult to that proud and generous people, who fined a citizen for proposing marble as a cheaper material than ivory for the statue of Pallas Parthenia." The request, thus aided by flattery, was almost unanimously granted.
"Last night the young American actress, who has, during the past few months, acquired such great popularity in London, made her first appearance before an Edinburgh audience in the same character she chose for her Metropolitan debut that of Parthenia in 'Ingomar. The piece itself is essentially old-fashioned.
Thence at noon to my Lord's, where my Lady not well, so I eat a mouthfull of dinner there, and thence to the Theatre, and there sat in the pit among the company of fine ladys, &c.; and the house was exceeding full, to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hath been acted: and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are.
He flourished after the second Messenian war, and his poems partake of the character of this period, which was one of pleasure and peace. They are chiefly erotic, or amatory, or in celebration of the enjoyments of social life. He successfully cultivated choral poetry, and his Parthenia, made up of a variety of subjects, was composed to be sung by the maidens of Tayge'tus.
Parthenia, the heroine of the story, is drawn with great power and feeling. She comes before us at first with the classic charms of an Athenian beauty; she leaves us resplendent with the aureola of a Christian saint.