. This is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and
characters which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally
admired type. "_Jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas_," according
to the saying of Publilius Syrus. The greater nervous restlessness and
sensibility of civilization heightens this tendency, which is not
infrequently found also among men of artistic genius. One may refer, for
instance, to Baudelaire's profound admiration for the mulatto type of
beauty.[167] In every great centre of civilization the national ideal of
beauty tends to be somewhat modified in exotic directions, and foreign
ideals, as well as foreign fashions, become preferred to those that are
native. It is significant of this tendency that when, a few years since,
an enterprising Parisian journal hung in its _salle_ the portraits of one
hundred and thirty-one actresses, etc., and invited the votes of the
public by ballot as to the most beautiful of them, not one of the three
women who came out at the head of the poll was French. A dancer of Belgian
origin (Cleo de Merode) was by far at the head with over 3000 votes,
followed by an American from San Francisco (Sybil Sanderson), and then a
Polish woman.

FOOTNOTES:

[134] Figured in Mau's _Pompeii_, p. 174.

[135] As a native of Lukunor said to the traveler Mertens, "It has the
same object as your clothes, to please the women."

[136] "The greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel," as Burton
states (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Sec. II, Mem. II, Subs. III),
illustrating this proposition with immense learning. Stanley Hall
(_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. ix, Part III, pp. 365 _et seq._)
has some interesting observations on the various psychic influences of
clothing; cf. Bloch, _Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_,
Teil II, pp. 330 et seq.

[137] _History of Human Marriage_, Chapter IX, especially p, 201. We have
a striking and comparatively modern European example of an article of
clothing designed to draw attention to the sexual sphere in the codpiece
(the French _braguette_), familiar to us through fifteenth and sixteenth
century pictures and numerous allusions in Rabelais and in Elizabethan
literature. This was originally a metal box for the protection of the
sexual organs in war, but subsequently gave place to a leather case only
worn by the lower classes, and became finally an elegant article of
fashionable apparel, oft