tawdry can make it, and the ankle is bandaged round with party-coloured clothes, ornamented with fringe and tassels; and such a leg and foot, thus dressed out, are considered in China as superlatively beautiful. The constant pain and uneasiness that female children must necessarily suffer, in the act of compressing, by means of bandages, the toes under the sole of the foot, and retaining them in that position until they literally grow into and become a part of it; and by forcing the heel forward, until it is entirely obliterated, make it the more wonderful how a custom, so unnatural and inhuman, should have continued for so many ages, at least such is the opinion, that its origin is entirely unknown, or explained by such fabulous absurdities as are too ridiculous to assign for its adoption. Few savage tribes are without the unnatural custom of maiming or lopping off some part of the human body, as boring the lips and the cartilege of the nose, drawing or colouring the teeth, cutting off a joint from the fingers or toes, and otherwise practising, as they must suppose, improvements on nature. But on this consideration it would scarcely be fair to conclude, that maiming the feet of the Chinese ladies derived its origin from a period of time when they were yet in a savage state, since we are in the daily habit of observing the most civilized and enlightened societies studying to find out beauties in defects, and creating them where nature had intended perfection. The Chinese would no doubt be equally surprized at, and consider as egregiously absurd, the custom of circumcision, as practiced by a great portion of Asiatic nations; nor have we any reason to think they would not condemn the refinement of docks and crops among our horses as an absurd custom, not less ridiculous in their eyes, than the little feet of their ladies are in ours. If they could not refrain from bursting into fits of laughter on examining the grease and powder with which our hair was disfigured; and if they sometimes lamented that so much oil and flour had unnecessarily been wasted, we might, perhaps, in the vanity of self-importance, affect to pity their taste; but setting custom and prejudice apart, we had certainly no great reason to despise and ridicule the Chinese, or indeed any other nation, merely because they differ from us in the little points of dress and manners, seeing how very nearly we can match them with similar follies and absurdities of our own.