For the estimates of human beauty, dependent upon time and clime,
Manifold and changeable, are multiplied the more by strange gregarious fashion:
And notable ensamples in the great turn to epidemics in the lower,
So that a nation's taste shall vary with its rulers.
Stern Egypt, humbled to the Greek, fancied softer idols;
Greece, the Roman province, nigh forgat her classic sculpture;
Rome, crushed beneath the Goth, loved his barbarian habits;
And Alaric, with his ruffian horde, is tamed by silken Rome.
Columbia's flattened head, and China's crumpled feet,—
The civilized tapering waist,—and the pendulous ears of the savage,—