as words, conversation would be more in the dark; and a traveller would be obliged to learn the countenances as well as the tongues of foreign countries.

"As the language of the face is universal, so is it very comprehensive. No laconism can reach it. It is the short-hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room. A man may look a sentence as soon as speak a word. The strokes are small, but so masterly drawn, that you may easily collect the image and proportions of what they resemble." *

The earliest authority on this subject we have met with is Dr. Gwither, who flourished in the year 1604, to whom we are indebted for the subjoined curious physiological definition of Physiognomy:

"Soft wax cannot receive more various and numerous impressions than are imprinted on a man's face by objects moving his affections: and not only the objects themselves have this power, but also the very images or ideas; that is to say, anything that puts the animal. spirits into the same motion that the object present did, will have the same effect with the object. To prove the first, let one observe a man's face looking on a pitiful object, then a ridiculous, then a strange, then on a terrible or dangerous object, and so forth. For the second, that ideas have the same effect with the object, dreams confirm too often.

66 The manner I conceive to be thus: The animal spirits, moving in the sensory by an object, continue their motion to the brain; whence the motion is propagated to this or that particular part of the body, as

*Jeremy Collier.

is most suitable to the design of its creation; having first made an alteration in the face by its nerves, especially by the pathetic and oculorum motorii actuating its many muscles, as the dial-plate to that stupendous piece of clock-work, which shows what is to be expected next from the striking part. Not that I think the motion of the spirits in the sensory continued by the impression of the object all the way, as from a finger to the foot: I know it too weak, though the tenseness of the nerves favors it. But I conceive it done in the medulla of the brain, where is the common stock of spirits; as in an organ, whose pipes being uncovered, the air rushes into them; but the keys, let go, are stopped again. Now, if by repeated acts, or frequent entertaining of the ideas, of a favorite idea, of a passion or vice which natural temperament has hurried one to, or custom dragged, the face is so often put into that posture which attends such acts, that the animal spirits find such latent passages into its nerves, that it is sometimes unalterably set: as the Indian monks are, by long continuing in strange postures in their pagods. But, most commonly, such a habit is contracted, that it falls insensibly into that posture, when some present object does not obliterate that more natural impression by a new, or dissimulation hide it.

"Hence it is that we see great drinkers with eyes generally set towards the nose, the adducent muscles being often employed to let them see their loved liquor in the glass at the time of drinking; which were, therefore, called bibitory. From this also we may solve the Quaker's expecting face, waiting the pretended Spirit ;

and the melancholy face of the Sectaries; the studious face of men of great application of mind; revengeful and bloody men, like executioners in the act: and though silence, in a sort, may awhile pass for wisdom, yet, sooner or later, Saint Martin peeps through the disguise, to undo all. A changeable face I have observed to shew a changeable mind. But I would by no means have what has been said understood as without exception; for I doubt not but sometimes there are found men with great and virtuous souls under very unpromising outsides."

Assuming the hypothesis to be true, its moral uses are not to be overlooked. We thus may be able to decide upon a person's character at a glance, without the trouble of cross-examining him as a witness.

"In many looks the false heart's history

Is writ, in moods, and frowns and wrinkles strange."

"For original character the stationary features must be consulted the forehead, the nose, and chin; for acquired, we must peruse the mutable ones—the eyes and mouth. Poets have abused the eyes for being notorious traitors: they certainly seem eminently formed for expression, yet I think we are apt to bestow on them too much credit, as we are apt to do to all pretty informers. They are the centre to which the motion of every muscle is referred; and, after scanning the various parts of the face, we seek in them for the sum. And thus they obtain the reputation of disclosing what in reality was elicited from the several other

* Shakspeare.

features. Take an eye by itself, distinct and separate, and what can you read in it? Unconnected, it is the most insignificant of the features; from a nose, a chin, a mouth, you can conjecture something, but from an eye alone, leaving the socket out of consideration, not one inference can be drawn. What can painters make of an eye?—Nothing; yet it is there the expression of the picture is centered. In short, this piece of animal mechanism is naught but a little mirror-taken by itself merely bright-but owing all its beauty and expression to the objects it reflects.

"The lips seem to me the most interesting and intelligent contemplation. There is more diversity in them than in any other feature; their outline is capable of marking all shades from the highest degree of sensibility to the lowest of brutality; and being the most flexible and most agitated, they undergo more changes than any other part of the visage. The nose is not of such consequence-by it we are to judge of a passing face-of one at a distance; it consequently expresses the common attribute of character, the only one we have need to perceive. But the mouth presents itself to the inspection of intimacy and friendship, and therefore is calculated to mark the nice shades of character and temper, which it imports those to become acquainted with who live much together. The best way to judge of a friend is from his own mouth-he can have no objection to the mode. In people of great sensibility, it is the lips that first feel internal agitation; the fever of anxiety or anger, the pallor of fear or despair, are communicated to them earlier than they

are visible in the eyes. People of strong feelings, too, are compelled to acquire dissimulation, and it is over the eye and muscle of the cheek they exert it: the calm face and blank eye contradict emotion, the tremulous lip betrays it. But let us not proceed further in these minutia, for fear the reader should suspect we are but making mouths at him.” *

"There is a great deal in a face; all the interest of life depends on face. It is a difficult thing to imagine what we should do without faces; we have no sympathy for living things which have not face: there is not one man in a thousand, save and except butchers, who could stick a knife into the throat of a lamb, it has such a pretty, innocent face; but oysters are slaughtered remorselessly, wrenched out of their shells without the slightest compunction: they have no faces, though they have beards; they shed no tears; they utter no cry; they exhibit no mournful countenanceand therefore they are not pitied. What a parcel of hypocrisy is all our pity for negroes, all our pretence to humanity, and all our anti-cruelty crotchets—it is nothing more than sympathy with face. When Shakspeare talks of the big drops coursing each other down the stag's face, our pity is excited almost to tears; and if eels had such faces as mermaids, there is not a fishwife in Billingsgate who would dare to skin one; but these poor vermicular fishes are so much alike at both ends, that nobody pities them. In a word, let us endeavor to look into our mind for the images which constitute our thoughts of our species, and our interest

*New Monthly Mag.