“They think they are better looking than white people.” And why not? I myself do not so regard them; but I may be wrong. Questions of beauty are decided by reference to some standard in the mind; but whether the standard depends upon custom, and varies with it, is a matter of doubt and dispute. My own judgment, like that of others, was modified as I lived among the black people. Sir Joshua Reynolds advanced the notion, according to Hazlitt, that beauty was entirely dependent on custom. I feel, with Hazlitt himself, that custom, though powerful, is not the only principle of our preference for the appearance of certain objects more than others; that what constitutes beauty is in some way inherent in the object, and that “if custom is a second nature there is another nature which ranks above it.” Hazlitt in his argument contrasts the Greek and the African face, doing injustice, I believe, to the latter. Yet in general one must admit that Hazlitt is right. In the Greek face he finds a conformity to itself, a symmetry of feature with feature and a subtle, involuted harmony of lines, which he says is wholly wanting in the African face. The Greek face is beautiful, “because it is made up of lines corresponding with or melting into each other;” the African face is not so, “because it is made up almost entirely of contradictory lines and sharp angular projections.” “The general principle of difference between the two heads is this: The forehead of the Greek is square and upright, and, as it were, overhangs the rest of the face, except the nose, which is a continuation of it almost in an even line. In the Negro, or African, the tip of the nose is the most projected part of the face; and from that point the features retreat back, both upwards towards the forehead, and downwards towards the chin. This last form is an approximation to the shape of the head of the animal, as the former bears the strongest stamp of humanity.” The African physiognomy, he further observes, is made up of jagged, cross-grained lines, starting out in every oblique direction, and in fact appears “splitting in pieces.” But the African physiognomy is also consistent with itself; its abruptness is uniform. There is regularity in the violence of its changes; and may not this also constitute beauty to an accustomed eye? It is certain that there is in such a face the possibility of an extraordinary expression of grandeur and moral force; and these also are aspects of beauty, as well as the intellectual and affectional elements that constitute the expression of the Greek face. There is a beauty of mountains as well as of meadows.