We find this spectacle among the great civilized nations of Europe, especially in their capitals and seaports. In these great vortexes of humanity, every possible variety of our species has been absorbed. Negro, Chinese, Tartar, Hottentot, Indian, Malay, and all the minor varieties produced by their mixture, have contributed their contingent to the population of our large cities. Since the Roman domination, this amalgamation has continually increased, and is still increasing in proportion as our inventions bring in closer proximity the various portions of the globe. It affects all classes to some extent, but more especially the lowest. Among them you may see every type of the human family more or less represented. In London, Paris, Cadiz, Constantinople, in any of the greater marts and thoroughfares of the world, the lower strata of the _native_ population exhibit every possible variety, from the prognathous skull to the pyramidal: you shall find one man with hair as crisp as a negro's; another, with the eyes of an ancient German, or the oblique ones of a Chinese; a third, with a thoroughly Shemitic countenance; yet all three may be close relations, and would be greatly surprised were they told that any but the purest white blood flows in their veins. In these vast gathering places of humanity, if you could take the first comer--a native of the place--and ascend his genealogical tree to any height, you would probably be amazed at the strange ancestry at the top. It may now be asked whether, for all the various races of which I have spoken, there is but one standard of beauty, or whether each has one of its own. Helvetius, in his _De l'Esprit_, maintains that the idea of beauty is purely conventional and variable. This assertion found many advocates in its time, but it is at present superseded by the more philosophical theory that the conception of the beautiful is an absolute and invariable idea, and can never have a merely optional application. Believing the latter view to be correct, I do not hesitate to compare the various races of man in point of beauty, and to establish a regular scale of gradation. Thus, if we compare the various races, from the ungainly appearance of the Pelagian or Pecherai up to the noble proportions of a Charlemagne, the expressive regularity of features of a Napoleon, or the majestic countenance of a Louis XIV., we shall find in the lowest on the scale a sort of rudimentary development of the beauty which attracts us in the highest; and in proportion to the perfectness of that development, the races rise in the scale of beauty.[169] Taking the white race as the standard of beauty, we perceive all the others more or less receding from that model. There is, then, an inequality in point of beauty among the various races of men, and this inequality is permanent and indelible.[170]