Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1880 — Hereditary Descent of Beauty. [ARTICLE]

Hereditary Descent of Beauty.

Mr. X)arwin 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 bourgeoises) as ■wives through an immense number of generations. The regular features and fine complexions of the mothers are naturally handed down by heredity to their descendants. Similarly it would seem that we must account for the high average of personal beauty amongst the ancient Greeks and the modem Italians by the high avemge of general taste, the strong love for the beautiful, diffused amongst all classes in both those races. The prettier women and the handsomer men would thus stand a better chance of marrying, other things being equal, and of handing down their own refined type of face and form to their children. If this be so—and evolutionists at least can hardly doubt it—then we should expect everywhere to find the general level of personal beauty highest where there was the 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, low-browed, bull-dog looking men, sickly, shapeless children people the back slums of our manufacturing towns. Their painful ugliness cannot all be due to their physicial circumstances alone; for the lazzoroni 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 lUbdels for a Lionardo. On the other hand, every traveler speaks in high admiration of the beauty and gracefulness displayed by young and old among the sesthetic 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 roughly corresponds to the average general love for beauly in the abstract.

Under the auspices of the British Goat Society, a kid dinner was given on the third day of the goat show, at the Alexandra Palace. The viands consisted solely of the flesh of the kid at different ages, dressed in various wavs to repreresent fowl, mutton, lamb, veal and fawn. The object was to bring this article of food into more general consumption. While making a call at a neighbor’s, a young lady of Madison, Ohio, said to a cat that came into the room: “Why, pussy, I haven’t seen vour babies yet; are they pretty?” The cat immediately went out, and returned with a kitten in her mouth which she laid at the feet of her questioner. n 'lhe Chicago Times says: Warner's Safe Kidney and Liver Cine is highly indorsed bv ministers, Judges, physicians, surgeons b’v men of literary and scholarly distinction' anii by individuals in all the walks of fife.