HEREDITAEY DESCENT OF BEAUTY.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3939, 13 August 1881, Page 4

HEREDITAEY DESCENT OF BEAUTY.

Mr Darwin believes that the general beauty of the English upper class, and especially of the titled aristocracy, is probably due to their constant selection of the most beautiful women of all classes (peeresses, actresses, or wealthy bourgeoise) as \ wives, through an immense number of ■, generations. The regular features and the Scoraplexions of the mothers are naturally handed down by hereditary to their descendants. Similarly, it would seem, that we must account for the high average of personal beauty among the ancient Greeks and the modern Italians by the high average of general taste, the strong love of the beautiful diffused among all classps in both those races. The prettier women and the handsomer men would stand a better chance of marrying, other things equal, and of handing down their own refined type of face and figure to their children, If this be so —and evolutionists at least can hardiy doubt it—then we should expect everywhere to find the general level of personal beauty highest where there was (he widest diffusion of aesthetic taste. Now, our own squalid poor are noticeable, as a rule, for their absolute and repulsive ugliness, even, when compared with those of other European countries. Gaunt hard-faced women, lowbrowed, bull-dog lookiDg men, sickly, shapeless children, people the back slums of our manufacturing towns. Their painful ugliness can not all be due to their physical circumstances alone—for the lazzaroni who hang about the streets of Naples must lead lives of about equal hardship and discomfort—yet, many of them, both men and women, are beautiful enough to sit as models for a Leonard. On the other hand, every traveller speaks of the beauty and gracefulness displayed by young and old among the aesthetic Polynesians ; while in many like cases I note that Europeans who have once become accustomed to the local type, find decidedly pretty faces extremely common in several savage races whose primitive works of art show them in other ways to possess considerable aesthetic taste. In India, where artistic feeling is universal, almost every man or woman is handsome. On the whole, it seems fairly proved that the average personal beauty everywhere corresponds to the average general love for beauty in the abstract. — Cornhill Magazine.