draws down the ear nearly to the shoulder, and not unfrequently tears it asunder. The mother of Sumatra carefully flattens the nose of her daughter; and in New Guinea, the nose is perforated, and a large piece of wood or bone inserted, making it difficult to breathe. On the north-west coast of America, an incision more than two inches in length is made in the lower lip, and filled with a wooden plug. In Guiana, the lip is pierced with thorns, the heads being inside the mouth and the points resting on the chin. And in Java, Borneo, and Celebes, they file their teeth to a point, and color them black, considering it disgraceful to let them remain "white like the teeth of dogs."

In some countries corpulency is esteemed essential to beauty; and the wives of kings and chiefs are beloved in proportion to the sleek fatness and gross weight of their persons The Tunisian woman, of moderate pretensions to beauty, needs a slave under each arm to support her when she walks, and a perfect belle carries flesh enough to load down a camel. So anxious are mothers that their daughters should attain this unwieldy size, that they compel them to eat enormous quantities of fattening food and drink several bowls of camel's milk every day. Mungo Park describes a poor girl as crying for more than an hour, with a bowl at her lips, while her mother stood over her with a rod, and beat her cruelly, if she failed to swallow fast enough. And Capt. Clapperton found himself in not a little difficulty at Houssa, through the importunity of an Arab widow, whose wealth and rank, enforced by the charms of a huge person, black-dyed eyebrows, blue hair, red stained hands and feet, all adorned with necklaces, girdles and bracelets, seemed to fit her for the station of a queen, whither her aspirations tended, and to which, with Clapperton for a husband, she doubted not she might attain. But he happened not (O cruel!) to fancy "a walking tun-butt" for a wife, and preferred the loss of the honors of African royalty to the lifecompanionship of five hundred pounds of Arab flesh.

The beauty of a Chinese lady is in her feet, which in childhood are so compressed by bandages as effectually to prevent any further increase in size. The four smaller toes are turned under the foot, to the sole of which they firmly adhere. The poor girl not only endures much pain, but becomes a cripple for life. Another mark of beauty and distinction lies in the length to which the finger nails are allowed to grow,-a length that requires them to be shielded from accident by casings of bamboo. The ambitious beauties of Siam, not content with protecting carefully these ever-growing excrescences of nature, provide themselves with artificial nr 1s four inches long.

Allow that, agreeably to the proverb, "there is no disputing of tastes," and that no nation or individual is responsible to another for peculiar customs, vill it be questioned that the wearing of cumbrous and unwieldy ornaments, and the disfiguring of the body, and forcing it into uncouth forms at the expense of so much suffering, are customs offensive to nature, and to nature's God, the legitimate progeny of Paganism?-and so far as ever grafted upon the stock of Christianity, are they more incongruous with its simplicity and at variance with its spirit, than repulsive to reason and common sense? Foolish and unseemly customs are not confined to Pagan and Mahometan females, it is true,they exist in more enlightened lands; but in these lands, they are one after another assailed, changed and banished by the mild genius of Christianity; while, in the darker portions of the earth, they enter into the very constitution of society, and know no change or modification, more than the elements of nature, or the immemorial rites of a bloody superstition. Deplorable, then, are the delusions under which the god of this world hath bound down the nations that yield unresistingly to his sway,-severe the bondage under which they wear out hated life, and melancholy the barbarous customs, which through conscience, fancy, or caprice, his tyrant arm imposes on successive generations.

To all this may be added their unbounded superstition. Their servile fear of the gods amounts to a terror which quenches the kindlings of natural affection, and drives them on to deeds of darkest inhumanity. Ignorant of the God of love, and conceiving of their divinities as capricious, malignant and revengeful, they are easily impelled to sacrifices at which nature shudders, and every sentiment of true piety stands aghast. Unenlightened by education, and enslaved by the spirit of idolatry, they become the victims of priestly craft, without resistance, and the dupes of their own vain imaginings, as if reason and conscience entered not at all into their moral constitution. The African female ventures not to commence a journey, nor to undertake important business of any kind, till well furnished with protective charms, consisting chiefly of bits of paper, which contain a written sentence, or fragment of a sentence, carefully deposited within a bag fastened to her person. The women of Houssa, seeing Major Denham using a pen. came to him in crowds, to obtain a scrawl that should serve as an amulet to restore their beauty, to preserve the affections of their lovers, or to destroy a rival. If a child be born in Madagascar, on a day reputed unlucky, its evil destiny must be averted, by the lestruction of its life, under the hands

A Hindu Woman of the Brahmin caste. She has prepared a dinner of rice, placed it

upon a Plantain leaf, and is carrying it to her husband.