Page:The black man.djvu/235

"Afric-American Picture Gallery," he gives the following sketch of the head of Phillis Wheatley. "This picture hangs in the north-east corner of the gallery, and in good light, and is so decidedly one of the finest in the collection, whether viewed in an artistic light or in point of fact, that it is both a constant charm and study for me. The features, though indicative of a delicate organization, are of the most pleasing cast. The facial angle contains full ninety degrees; the forehead is finely formed, and the brain large; the nose is long, and the nostrils thin, while the eyes, though not large, are well set. To this may be added a small mouth, with lips prettily turned, and a chin—that perfection of beauty in the female face—delicately tapered from a throat and neck that are of themselves perfection. The whole make-up of this face is an index of healthy intellectual powers, combined with an active temperament, over which has fallen a slight tinge of religious pensiveness. Thus hangs Phillis Wheatley before you in the Afric-American Picture Gallery; and if we scrutinize her more closely through her career and her works, we shall find her truly an extraordinary person. Stolen at the tender age of seven years from the fond embraces of a mother, whose image never once faded from her memory, and ferried over in the vile slave ship from Afric's sunny clime to the cold shores of America, and sold under the hammer to a Boston merchant—a delicate child, a girl, alone, desolate; a chilly, dreary world before her, a chain on her feet, arid a thorn in her bosom, and an iron mask on her head, what chance, what opportunity was there for her to make physical,