[The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Coming Race CHAPTER V 14/19
In all there were figures, most of them like the manlike creatures I had seen, but not all in the same fashion of garb, nor all with wings.
There were also the effigies of various animals and birds, wholly strange to me, with backgrounds depicting landscapes or buildings.
So far as my imperfect knowledge of the pictorial art would allow me to form an opinion, these paintings seemed very accurate in design and very rich in colouring, showing a perfect knowledge of perspective, but their details not arranged according to the rules of composition acknowledged by our artists--wanting, as it were, a centre; so that the effect was vague, scattered, confused, bewildering--they were like heterogeneous fragments of a dream of art. We now came into a room of moderate size, in which was assembled what I afterwards knew to be the family of my guide, seated at a table spread as for repast.
The forms thus grouped were those of my guide's wife, his daughter, and two sons.
I recognised at once the difference between the two sexes, though the two females were of taller stature and ampler proportions than the males; and their countenances, if still more symmetrical in outline and contour, were devoid of the softness and timidity of expression which give charm to the face of woman as seen on the earth above.
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