To the doctrines now advocated it furnishes no objection, that mankind do not agree in the same estimate of beauty, nor even that objects entirely different in their qualities, are assumed as beautiful. This fact, indeed, has often and triumphantly been adduced as conclusive in favour of the sceptical position regarding a standard of taste. Those writers, again, who support the opposite opinion, seem too readily to have admitted difficulty in repelling the objection. The truth is, it can be obviated only on the principle which we have endeavoured to establish; namely, that taste is the certain result of intellectual cultivation in the proper province, that it is consequently commensurate with the degree of intelligence, and always an object of truth and reason. Now, the diversity so much insisted upon, is capable not only of being thus easily accounted for, but is to be expected as the necessary effect of varied extent of knowledge. The very objection predetermines, that among the rudest people, ideas and perceptions of something termed beauty are entertained. Does not this establish the existence of taste coeval with the earliest traces of information? True, the beauty admired by the African or the Esquimaux differs from that which awakens the sensibility of the European,--but so also are their means and capabilities of judging unequal. It is not, therefore, diversity, but inconsistency of judgment, that in this case can prove the absence of all fixed principles of decision. Now, we will venture to affirm, without fear of contradiction, that there is no inconsistency nor opposition; and that the most polished inhabitant of Europe, proceeding upon the same premises as the wildest in-dweller of the desert or savannah, will arrive at exactly the same conclusion. The sable virgin, for instance, whose charms are acknowledged by the rude warriors of her tribe, will also, by the refined European, be admitted among the fairest examples of native beauty. Hence it is evident that all men acknowledge a standard of taste, founded on similar reasonings and accordant feelings of the human heart, though the final expression of this standard, or the degree of refinement whence it is deduced, will necessarily be modified by moral and physical circumstances, and by the light enjoyed.