ANIMALS. 409 



there the most indulgent gifts of nature. Such, 

 indeed, they are all in some degree found to pos- 

 sess. However, they take care by art to increase 

 these natural deformities, as they should seem to 

 us ; arid they have many additional methods of ren- 

 dering their persons still more frightfully pleas- 

 ing. The whole body and visage is often scarred 

 with a variety of monstrous figures, which is not 

 done without great pain, and repeated incision ; 

 and even sometimes parts of the body are cut 

 away. But it would be endless to remark the 

 various arts which caprice, or custom, has em- 

 ployed to distort and disfigure the body, in order 

 to render it more pleasing : in fact, every nation, 

 how barbarous soever, seems unsatisfied with the 

 human figure as nature has left it, and has its 

 peculiar arts of heightening beauty. Painting, 

 powdering, cutting, boring the nose and the ears, 

 lengthening the one and depressing the other, are 

 arts practised in many countries, and in some 

 degree admired in all. These arts might have 

 been at first introduced to hide epidemic defor- 

 mities; custom, by degrees, reconciles them to 

 the view, till, from looking upon them with in- 

 difference, the eye at length begins to gaze with 

 pleasure. 



