ed state of nature than a New Zealand chief, with his
distinctive coat of arms emblazoned on the skin of his face; nor anything
of greater social elevation than an English peer, with the glittering label
of his "nobility" tacked to his breast. To a rational mind, the one is not
a whit more barbarous than the other; they being, as Sir Joshua observes,
the real barbarians who, like these _soi-disant_ civilisers, would look
upon their own monstrosities as the sole standard of excellence.

The philosophy of the present age, however, is peculiarly the philosophy of
outsides. Few dive deeper into the human breast than the bosom of the
shirt. Who could doubt the heart that beats beneath a cambric front? or who
imagine that hand accustomed to dirty work which is enveloped in white kid?
What Prometheus was to the physical, Stultz is to the moral man--the one
made human beings out of clay, the other cuts characters out of
broad-cloth. Gentility is, with us, a thing of the goose and shears; and
nobility an attribute--not of the mind, but (supreme civilisation!) of _a
garter_!

Certain modern advocates appear to be devout believers in this external
philosophy. They are touchingly eloquent upon the savage state of those who
indulge in yellow ochre, but conveniently mute upon the condition of those
who prefer carmine. They are beautifully alive to the degradation of that
race of people which crushes the feet of its children, but wonderfully dead
to the barbarism of that race, nearer home, which performs a like operation
upon the ribs of its females. By them, also, we are told that "words would
manifestly fail in portraying _so low a state of morals as is pictured in
the lineaments of an Australian chief_,"--a stretch of the outside
philosophy which we certainly were not prepared to meet with; for little
did we dream that this noble science could ever have attained such
eminence, that men of intellect would be able to discover immorality in
particular noses, and crime in a certain conformation of the chin.

That an over-attention to the adornment of the person is a barbarism all
must allow; but that the pride which prompts the Esquimaux to stuff bits of
stone through a hole in his cheek, is a jot less refined than that which
urges the dowager-duchess to thrust coloured crystals through a hole in her
ear, certainly requires a peculiar kind of mental squint to perceive.
Surely there is as great a want of refinement among us, in this res