Beauty

ls, and in different nations. Hence, many men of talen

s beauty]: the beautiful is for him a black oily

ose respective ideas of the beauty of their females are as widely different as those of man, and any other animal, can be. The sable Africans view with pity and contempt the marked deformity of the Europeans; whose mouths are compressed, their noses pinched, their cheeks shrunk, their hair rendered lank and flimsy, their bodies lengthened and emaciated, and their skins unnaturally bleached by shade and seclusion, and the baneful influence of a cold humid climate.... Who shall decide which party is right, or which is wrong; or whether the black or w

to the Ethiopians, and they, for the same reason, prefer their own color to ours. I suppose nobody will doubt, if one of their painters were to paint the goddess of beauty, but that he would represent her black, with thick lips, flat nose, and woolly hair; and it seems to me, he would a

themselves, to flatten their forehead, to enlarge their mouth and ears, to blacken their sk

civilized ones; we every day see irregular or even common figure

erent tastes, these opposite opinions,

ons against all ideas of absolu

nt for such objections, has been rather of a vague description. As, however, the subject is of great importance, I shall endeavor to abridge and

ary, in order to appreciate properly the impression of those combinations, which woman presents, and to exp

forms and functions, generally, and to those of man in particular, all the development of which they are capable, without excess in the action of some, and defect in that of others;-secondly, in man in pa

onditions are to be met with in the whims

hot climates, is marked in their deeming characteristics of beauty, the thick lips of Negresses, the long and

teristics of beauty the short figures of the women of icy regions, in which, deprived of the vivifying action of heat and light, living beings appear only in a state o

in the forms of the women of hot climates are commonly in excess, owing to the great development of organs of sense or of sex; while the deviations from b

, incompatible with the consistent and harmonious development of the whole. And wi

ent, and exquisite taste, Hume observes that the same excellence of faculties which contributes to the improvement of reason, the same cl

s incompatible with the obviously constricted brain, which is a defect common both to the Negro and the Mongol-a defect which is incompatible with beauty eithe

the modes in which defects of this kind unfit persons to judge of beauty; and though t

ntiments which please us, they equally lead us to a predilection or prejudice, in consequence of which the most common

and of illusion, they often regard, as very beautiful, women who have nothing capable of charming, but an animated ph

ho preferred women who squinted to the most perfect beauties, because squinting was one

r first impressions have often an influence which they cannot overcome, nor even weaken, especially when

udging which it employs. The "what does that prove" of the mathematician, when judging the finest products of imagination, has passed into a proverb. And every one knows of that other cultivator of the same science, who declare

ent respecting a standard of beauty in woman, is evident, when we consider that it re

es, admired in different ages and nations, can alone rate the merits of a work e

subject; and that we cannot thence conclude that the ideas of beauty are relative and arbitrary-but that certain conditions are indispensable to form the judgment respecting beauty

nd amid a civilization which the world has never since witnessed, that the laws of Nature as to beauty were discovered, and applied to the production of those

which may be founded on the doctrine I have laid down respecting the Elements of Beauty. It will be found t

racteristic, namely, their fair complexion, which is intimately connected with all their oth

hand, is expressive to us of melancholy, gloom, or sadness; and that so far is this from being a fanciful relation, that it is generally admitted by those who have the best opportunities of ascertaining it, the professors of medical science. He also observes that black

ed by Cheselden, as to the boy restored by him to sight, namely, that the first view of

ects the greatest number of luminous rays; and, for that reason, it bestows

f a deep green, is very beautiful. But, in that case, it is the form, not the color, of the head, that is beautif

ore than blackness or darkness for admiration, it is evident that, in a fair complexion, we have, in addition to its general brillian

sophistry which Payne Knight h

and appetite, through which he views them. But before he pronounces either the infidel or the skeptic guilty of blasphemy against nature, let him take a mould from the lovely features or lovely bosom of this m

, in which internal composition is alone of importance, and shape of none, under the form of features or a bosom, in which internal structure is unknown or unthought of, and shape or other external properties are alone considered, is a gross and offensive substitution,

moment when he was going to embrace her, he was to discover that the parts which he touched only were feminine or human; and that, in the rest of her form, she was an animal of a different species, or a person of his ow

to be found under them, and that they now cease to interest only because they have become, not naturally less the signs of these qualities, but because they have by a mere trick been rendered insignificant, because trut

' and the cadaverous paleness of death or disease, a degree of whiteness, which, in a piece of marble or alabaster, we should deem to be as pure, as that of the most delicate skin of the fairest dam

same teint as the pink or the rose, then, as a mere teint, abstracted from every other quality of the respective objects, it would be precisely as beautiful in the one as in the other; but as the color of a rose on the human body would

d unnatural, and of course disgusting. His sunburnt beauties express their modesty and sensibility by variations in

sacrificed to the higher ones of life or mind. Now, in the case of the African, he is born whitish, like the European, but he speedily loses such beauty for that of adaptation, by his color, to the hot climate in which he exists. The latter beauty is the higher and more important one, and forms for the African a profitable exchange; but the European is still more fortunate, beca

n other objects, both animal, vegetable, and mineral, there can be no doubt that mixed teints would be preferred; and a pimpled face have the same superiority

of adaptation to climate, fitness for physiognomical expression, &c. Knight