Number 3.

The forehead and nose not congenial. The nose shews the very acute thinker. The lower part of the forehead, on the contrary, especially the distance between the eyebrow and eye, do not betoken this high degree of mental power. The stiff position of the whole is much at variance with the eye and mouth, but particularly with the nose. The whole, the eyebrow excepted, speaks a calm, peaceable, mild character.

Number 4.

The harmony of the mouth and nose is selfevident. The forehead is too good, too comprehensive, for this very limited under part of the countenance. The whole bespeaks a harmless character; nothing delicate, nor severe.

Number 5.

We have here a high bold forehead, with a short-seeming blunt nose, and a fat double chin. How do these harmonise? It is almost a general law of nature, that, where the eyes are strong drawn, and the eyebrows near, the eyebrows must also be strong. This countenance, merely by its harmony, its prominent congenial traits, is expressive of sound, clear understanding; the countenance of reason.

Number 6.

The perfect countenance of a politician. Faces which are thus pointed from the eyes to the chin always have lengthened noses, and never possess large, open, powerful, and piercing eyes. Their firmness partakes of obstinacy, and they rather follow intricate plans than the dictates of common sense.

CHAP. XVI.

The Physiognomist.

ALL men have talents for all things; yet we may venture to assert, that very few have the determinate and essential talents. All men have talents for drawing: they can all learn to write, well or ill; yet not an excellent draftsman will be produced in ten thousand. The same may be affirmed of eloquence, poetry, and physiognomy. All men who have eyes and ears, have talents to become physiognomists; yet not one in ten thousand can become an excellent physiognomist.

It may, therefore, be of use to sketch the character of the true physiognomist, that those who are deficient of the requisite talents may be deterred from the study of physiognomy. The pretended physiognomist, with a foolish head and a wicked heart, is certainly one of the most

contemptible and mischievous creatures that crawls on the face of the earth.

No one, whose person is not well formed, can become a good physiognomist. Those painters were the best, whose persons were the handsomest. Reubens, Vandyke, and Raphael, possessing three gradations of beauty, possessed three gradations of the genius of painting. The physiognomists of the greatest symmetry are the best. As the most virtuous can best determine on virtue, and the just on justice, so can the most handsome countenances on the goodness, beauty, and noble traits of the human countenance, and consequently on its defects and ignoble properties. The scarcity of human beauty is the reason why physiognomy is so much decried, and finds so many opponents.

No person, therefore, ought to enter the sanctuary of physiognomy who has a debased mind, an ill-formed forehead, a blinking eye, or a distorted mouth. "The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness: if, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"

Any one who would become a physiognomist cannot meditate too much on this text. O single eye! that beholdest all things as they are, seest nothing falsely, with glance oblique, nothing overlookest! O most perfect image of reason and wisdom!-Why do I say image? Thou art

H

reason and wisdom themselves!

Without thy

resplendent light would all that appertains to physiognomy become dark!

He who does not, at the first aspect of any man, feel a certain emotion of affection or dislike, attraction or repulsion, never can become a physiognomist.

He who studies art more than nature, and prefers what the painters call manner to the truth of drawing; he who does not feel himself moved almost to tears, at beholding the ancient ideal beauty, and the present depravity of men and imitative art; he who views antique gems, and does not discover enlarged intelligence in Cicero, enterprising resolution in Cæsar, profound thought in Solon, invincible fortitude in Brutus, in Plato god-like wisdom; or, in modern medals, the height of human sagacity in Montesquieu, in Haller the energetic contemplative look, and most refined taste; the deep reasoner in Locke, and the witty satirist in Voltaire, even at the first glance, never can become a physiognomist.

He who does not dwell with fixed rapture on the aspect of benevolence in action, supposing itself unobserved; he who remains unmoved by the voice of innocence, the guiltless look of unviolated chastity, the mother contemplating her beauteous sleeping infant; the warm pressure of the hand of a friend, or his eye swimming in tears; he who can lightly tear himself from scenes like these, and turn them to ridicule,

might much easier commit the crime of parricide than become a physiognomist.

If such be the case, what then is required of the physiognomist? What should his inclination, talents, qualities, and capabilities be?

In the first place, as hath been in part already remarked, his first of requisites should be a body well proportioned, and finely organized; accuracy of sensation, capable of receiving the most minute outward impressions, and easily transmitting them faithfully to memory; or, as I ought rather to say, impressing them upon the imagination, and the fibres of the brain. His eye, in particular, must be excellent, clear, acute, rapid, and firm.

The very soul of physiognomy is precision in observation. The physiognomist must possess a most delicate, swift, certain, most extensive spirit of observation. To observe is to be attentive, so as to fix the mind on a particular object, which it selects, or may select, for consideration, from a number of surrounding objects. To be attentive is to consider some one particular object, exclusively of all others, and to analyze, consequently to distinguish what is similar, what dissimilar, to discover proportion, and disproportion, is the office of the understanding.

If the physiognomist has not an accurate, superior, and extended understanding, he will neither be able rightly to observe, nor to compare and class his observations, much less to draw the necessary conclusions. Physiognomy is the