source of joy, contained in a gentle, tender, but internally firm, female mind; an aspect like that of unpractised, cloistered virginity, which felt, and was able to efface each emotion, each passion in the most concealed feature of her husband's countenance, and who, by those means, without any thing of what the world calls beauty, shone forth beauteous as an angel. Can there be a more noble or important practice than that of physiognomonical sensation for beauties so captivating, so excellent as these?

This physiognomonical sensation is the most effectual preservative against the degradation of ourselves and others. What can more readily discover the boundary between appetite and affection, or cunning under the mask of sensibility? What sooner can distinguish desire from love, or love from friendship? What can more reverently, internally, and profoundly feel the sanctity of innocence, the divinity of maiden purity, or sooner detect coquetry unblessed, with wiles, affecting every look of modesty? How often will such a physiognomist turn contemptuous from the beauties most adored, from the wretched pride of their silence, their measured affectation of speech, the insipidity of their eyes, arrogantly overlooking misery and poverty, their authoritative nose, their languid, unmeaning lips, relaxed by contempt, blue with envy, and half bitten through by artifice and malice! The obviousness of these and many others will preserve him, who can see from the dangerous charms of their

shameless bosoms! How fully convinced is the man of pure physiognomonical sensation, that he cannot be more degraded than by suffering himself to be ensnared by such a countenance! Be this one proof among a thousand.

But if a noble, spotless maiden but appear; all innocence, and all soul; all love, and of love all worthy, which must as suddenly be felt as she manifestly feels; if in her large arched forehead all the capacity of immeasurable intelligence which wisdom can communicate be visible; if her compressed but not frowning eyebrows speak an unexplored mine of understanding, or her gentle outlined or sharpened nose, refined taste, with sympathetic goodness of heart, which flows through the clear teeth, over her pure and efficient lips; if she breathe humility and complacency; if condescension and mildness be in each motion of her mouth, dignified wisdom in each tone of her voice; if her eyes, neither too open nor too close, but looking straight forward, or gently turned, speak the soul that seeks a sisterly embrace; if she be superior to all the powers of description; if all the glories of her angelic form be imbibed like the mild and golden rays of an autumnal evening sun; may not then this so highly-prized physiognomonical sensation be a destructive snare or sin, or both?

"If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light." And what is physiognomonical sensation but this singleness of eye?

The soul is not to be seen without the body, but in the body; and the more it is thus seen, the more sacred to thee will the body be. What! man, having this sensation, which God has bestowed, wouldst thou violate the sanctuary of God? Wouldst thou degrade, defame, debilitate, and deprive it of sensibility? Shall he, whom a good or great countenance does not inspire with reverence and love, incapable of offence, speak of physiognomonical sensation; of that which is the revelation of the spirit? Nothing maintains chastity so entire, nothing so truly preserves the thoughts from brutal passion, nothing so reciprocally exalts souls, as when they are mutually held in sacred purity. The contemplation of power awakens reverence, and the picture of love inspires love; not selfish gratification, but that pure passion with which spirits of heaven embrace.

CHAP. XXXIV.

General Remarks on Male and Female.-A Word on the physiognomonical Relation of the Sexes.

GENERALLY speaking, how much more pure, tender, delicate, irritable, affectionate, flexible, and patient, is woman than man! The primary matter of which they are constituted appears to be more flexible, irritable, and elastic, than that of man. They are formed to maternal

mildness and affection.

All their organs are

tender, yielding, easily wounded, sensible, and receptible.

Among a thousand females there is scarcely one without the generic feminine signs, the flexible, the circular, and the irritable. They are the counterpart of man, taken out of man, to be subject to man; to comfort him like angels, and to lighten his cares. "She shall be saved in child-bearing, if they continue in faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety." (1 Tim. ii. 15.)

This tenderness and sensibility, this light texture of their fibres and organs, this volatility of feeling, render them so easy to conduct and to tempt; so ready of submission to the enterprize and power of the man; but more powerful through the aid of their charms than man, with all his strength. The man was not first tempted, but the woman, afterwards the man by the woman. And not only easily to be tempted, she is capable of being formed to the purest, noblest, most seraphic virtue; to every thing which can deserve praise or affection.

Truly sensible of purity, beauty, and symmetry, she does not always take time to reflect on internal life, internal death, internal corruption. "The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, and she took of the fruit thereof."

The female thinks not profoundly; profound

thought is the power of the man. Women feel more: sensibility is the power of women. They often rule more effectually, more sovereignly than man. They rule with tender looks, tears, and sighs, but not with passion and threats; for, if they so rule, they are no longer women, but abortions.

They are capable of the sweetest sensibility, the most profound emotion, the utmost humility, and the excess of enthusiasm. In the countenance are the signs of sanctity and inviolability, which every feeling man honours, and the effects of which are often miraculous. Therefore by the irritability of their nerves, their incapacity for deep inquiry and firm decision, they may easily, from their extreme sensibility, become the most irreclaimable, the most rapturous enthusiasts.

The love of woman, strong and rooted as it is, is very changeable; their hatred almost incurable, and only to be effaced by continued and artful flattery. Men are most profound, women are more sublime. Men most embrace the whole; women remark individually, and take more delight in selecting the minutia which form the whole. Man hears the bursting thunders, views the destructive bolt with serene aspect, and stands erect amidst the fearful majesty of the streaming clouds. Woman trembles at the lightning and the voice of distant thunder, and shrinks into herself, or sinks into the arms of

man.