text:  The extreme limit of a scanty skirt and its poor effect as well as its great inconvenience may be judged of from the figures and pictures of the old Egyptian priestesses--they look very _statuesque_ and make capital _caryatides_ for temples--but they will not bear a comparison with those lovely Athenian virgins winding round the Parthenon in their sacred pilgrimage to the shrine of their tutelar goddess