upon the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat nose are a beauty. In some nations long ears that hang down upon the shoulders are the objects of universal admiration. In Chi|na if a lady's foot is so large as to be fit to walk upon, she is regarded as a monster of uggliness. Some of the savage nations in North-America tie four boards round the heads of their children, and thus squeeze them, while the bones are tender and gristly, into a form that is almost perfectly square. Euro|peans are astonished at the absurd barbarity of this practice, to which some missionaries have imputed the singular stupidity of those nations among whom it prevails. But when they condemn those savages they do not re|flect that the ladies in Europe had, till with|in these very few years, been endeavouring for near a century past, to squeeze the beau|tiful roundness of their natural shape into a square form of the same kind. And that notwithstanding the many distortions and di|seases which this practice was known to oc|casion, custom had rendered it agreeable among some of the most civilized nations which, perhaps, the world ever beheld.
Such is the system of this learned and in|genious father, concerning the nature of
