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The success of "The Masked Circe" in last year's Royal Academy was incontestable, not only for the intrinsic beauty of the picture, but from the fact that the personal charms of a handsome woman were perpetuated without compromising her features. Woman's vanity often outruns her natural diffidence, and the consciousness of her great beauty stifles the conscience of modesty.
Visitors to the Academy know the picture. Circe, seated on a throne, with her back to a great circular mirror, presents a half-draped figure of marvellous delicate colouring and beauty of outline. One hand holds aloft a golden wine-goblet, and the other a tapering wand, while upon the tesselated pavement before the dais purple grapes and yellow roses have been strewn. The black hair of the daughter of Perseis falls in profusion about her bare shoulders, and strays over her breast, but her features are hidden by a half-mask of black silk. The lips, with their _arc de cupidon_, are slightly parted, disclosing an even row of pearly teeth, and giving an expression of reckless _diablerie_.