o ubi campi
Spercheosque et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis
Taygeta!
In fact you will have to go to the fields of Thessaly and the streams of Spercheios, to the hills alive with the dances of the Laconian maidens,—the hills of Taygetus.
Indeed I want to say here that even now in China since the period of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960), when what may be called the Confucian Puritanism of the Sung philosphers has narrowed, petrified, and in a way, vulgarised the spirit of Confucianism, the spirit of the Chinese civilization—since then, the womanhood in China has lost much of the grace and charm,—expressed by the word debonair. Therefore if you want to see the grace and charm expressed by the word debonair in the true Chinese feminine ideal, you will have to go to Japan where the women there at least, even to this day, have preserved the pure Chinese civilization of the T'ang Dynasty. It is this grace and charm expressed by the word debonair combined with the divine meekness of the Chinese feminine ideal, which gives the air of distinction (名貴) to the Japanese woman,—even to the poorest Japanese woman to-day.
In connection with this quality of charm and grace expressed by the word debonair, allow me to quote to you here a few words from Matthew Arnhold with which he contrasts the brick-and-mortar Protestant English feminine ideal with the delicate
