As custom and fashion are not the same in any two countries, it has been contended by many that there can be no such thing as true taste. The advocates for taste arising out of custom will say, that no solid reason can be offered why the pillar which supports the Doric capital should be two diameters shorter than that which sustains the Corinthian; and that it is the habit only of seeing them thus constructed that constitutes their propriety. Though the respective beauties of these particular columns may, in part, be felt from the habit of observing them always retaining a settled proportion, yet it must be allowed that, in the most perfect works of nature, there appears a certain harmony and agreement of one part with another, that without any settled proportion seldom fail to please. Few people will disagree in their ideas of a handsome tree, or an elegant flower, though there be no fixed proportion between the trunk and the branches, the flower and the foot-stalk. Proportion, therefore, alone, is not sufficient to constitute beauty. There must be no stiffness, no sudden breaking off from a straight line to a curve; but the changes should be easy, not visible in any particular part, but running imperceptibly through the whole. Utility has also been considered as one of the constituent parts of beauty. In the Chinese column, labouring under an enormous mass of roof, without either base or capital, there is neither symmetry of parts, nor ease, nor particular utility. Nor have the large ill-shapen and unnatural figures of lions, dragons, and serpents, grinning on the tops and corners of the roofs, any higher pretensions to good taste, to utility, or to beauty. "The architecture of the Chinese," says one of their encomiasts, "though it bears no relation to that of Europe; though it has borrowed nothing from that of the Greeks, has a certain beauty peculiar to itself." It is indeed peculiar to itself, and the missionaries may be assured they are the only persons who will ever discover "real palaces in the mansions of the Emperor," or to whom, "their immensity, symmetry, and magnificence, will announce the grandeur of the master who inhabits them."