such thing as wisdom. Let the votes of the commonsense multitude first be taken, and they are generally right on reasonable questions: if they are evenly divided, let the masters and teachers be appealed to, and their arguments weighed and sifted. If one man admires a dandelion more than a primrose, I am not content to hear that it is "all a matter of taste," that one plant is as beautiful as the other according as it is thought so, and that there are no rules to go by in pronouncing upon such questions. No! I am satisfied the man belongs to the left minority, and that his understanding is incorrigibly perverted. I shall poll the people and find what they have to say before I admit the whole matter to be an unaccountable mystery.

Neither in the human countenance nor in anything else. is there any absolute and independent beauty or ugliness. We never admire a face for its own sake or for any direct utility which it may yield us, since another person's nose, for instance, is neither useful nor injurious to me, nor is one person's mouth serviceable or hurtful to another. We admire or dislike a face for the human mind that lies behind it. This mind may be very useful or very injurious to me. It may be adorned with virtuous qualities, or disfigured by vicious defects; and observing from the experience of many years that the virtuous qualities we love generally accompany certain corporeal features, and vicious qualities we hate certain other corporeal features, we come in time so closely to associate the mental qualities with the bodily features, that the latter seem of their own accord to suggest the former. It is for this suggestiveness that we admire features, though our conclusions in such matters are empirical and entirely dependent on experience, since there is no more necessary connection between a beautiful face and a virtuous mind. than between the meaning of a word and the number of its letters. This fact, therefore, it will be observed, brings the whole process of human beauty and admiration for it

under the reflex principle, and I do not deny that the process is the necessary result of our constitution. We make corporeal features promise mental qualities, and we then admire or despise the features according as the qualities they promise are advantageous or disadvantageous.

Human beauty, notwithstanding, presents us with the most difficult of all æsthetic problems. There is no department of taste in which so many and so great mistakes are liable to occur, and are actually made. "Virtue dwells with beauty;" this is the condensed announcement of a general truth, the epigrammatic embodiment of accumulated observation. It is not an invariably admitted fact, for many persons repudiate the proposition altogether. But whoever denies that certain corporeal features tend to become the outward expression of mental qualities, the material index of immaterial contents, resists the verdict of all civilised communities of the past as well as of the present. It is the people themselves who have made this law of cause and effect, and it is with the common sense of the majority that we have to deal. We act upon this law of cause and effect every time we admire a particular countenance and feel attracted towards the possessor of it. No face is ever admired but some predilection is felt for its owner. Did we believe that no connection were traceable between a corporeal feature and a mental quality, we should never admire one feature more than another; for all admiration is caused by suggestiveness, and all the casts of human countenance are so similar that their powers of suggesting material qualities are not appreciably different. If, therefore, they do not suggest mental qualities, there is nothing left for them to suggest. Whether rightly or wrongly, however, certain features are believed to bespeak certain kinds of mind; and though men may be deceived in their calculations over and over again, they have too much experience of this connection to abandon the facts of physiognomy.

From this premise, therefore, I shall start, for I am not concerned to humour the unsubstantial theorising of those whose beliefs not only violate the common convictions of the majority, but contradict the conclusions of those philosophical thinkers who have made the question a subject of practical investigation and of prolonged attention.

Character is written not only in the features of the face, but in every limb of the body. Nay, more. Character is discoverable in the voice, in the gait, in the handwriting, in the odour of the person, and in many other particulars "if we had the trick to see it." I do not say that a man's whole character could be deciphered from his voice or gait; but some part at least-how much I shall not divine-may be made out from his tone of speech or his manner of going. Common phraseology alone could indeed warrant this conclusion, for peculiarities of voice and of walk, when they are sufficiently marked and distinguished, are termed characteristics. I do not claim that carrying the doctrine to this length is in accordance with the common convictions of the people, for the simple reason that the people know nothing about the abstruser parts of this or any other science, whose elementary laws, however, they continually recognise. Popular convictions, when they get beyond what is reasonably plain or probable, are out of their depth, and have no data to go upon; consequently they cannot be said to exist at all. It is, however, in entire harmony with the laws of reason and well within the limits of legitimate inference to say that corporeal and mental features go hand in hand; that every mental quality has its corporeal representative, and that all changes of character produce corresponding changes of countenance. It is not pretended that any one is sufficiently skilled in physiognomy to be able to read all these changes; it is simply proposed that while some of these alterations are so legible that almost every one can read them, some are revealed only to those who have served

their time to the science, and that others again are so subtle that they are discernible by no one.

The elementary principles of physiognomy are admitted by almost all, and from those principles may be deduced a science of whose length and breadth its originators never dreamt. I shall put those principles to the test. I shall take four persons, two women and two men, and setting them before a multitude, ask for an opinion as to their probable characters; and I undertake to say that, unless there be a few of the hopelessly perverted—the left minority-present, I shall obtain a unanimous decision from the throng. I undertake to say that all with one accord will declare that this maid's modestly blushing countenance, her spotless purity of skin, her delicate regularity of mouth and eyes and nose, her upright carriage, her glossy locks flowing down over her shoulders, her cleanliness of garment and her whole picture bespeak a mind of more innocence, kindliness, sincerity, nobility, purity, and virtue generally, than the form of yonder wench with bloated face and leering eye, with large and brazen mouth, with upturned nose, with tangled hair and crooked attitude. Similarly I shall undertake to say that all will pronounce this old gentleman's aspect, with his silvery hair well kept, with fine skin and healthy complexion, with harmoniously proportioned brows, wellclosed mouth, perpendicular nose, straight and open gaze, broad and parallel frontal furrows, and easy tread, promises more truth, consistency, wisdom, and benevolence than that of yonder tramp-like figure, with matted hair and dirt engrained skin, with oblique and lowering eyebrows, with sidelong scowl, with crooked and intersecting wrinkles, and shuffling walk. These principles of the science of physiognomy are in fact so well known and so universally acknowledged, that it is impossible to describe a countenance intelligibly, or to read a description of one, except in language referable to qualities of mind rather than of matter. For example, a cheerful eye; a melancholy,

a searching, a dull, a scrutinising, a bashful, a sinister, a voluptuous, a spiritual eye; an intellectual nose; a witty, a crafty, a noble, a poetic, a talented nose; an effeminate mouth ; a sensual, a cruel, a firm, an eloquent, a tranquil mouth; a weak, a determined, a yielding chin; a calm, an earnest, a serene brow; or a wild, a violent, a flighty, a weak, a perplexed brow; a noble, an intelligent, a retentive, a learned, a dignified forehead; or a bad, a poverty-stricken, a mean, a foolish, a poor, an untalented, an unintellectual, an incapable forehead; a gay, a merry, a thoughtful expression; a vacant, a suspicious, a timid expression; a crafty, a cold, a selfish expression; a knowing, an earnest, a scrutinising gaze; a sober, a resigned, a pious air; a snappish, a censorious, a critical countenance: these are among the epithets most commonly used to describe corporeal features even when unmoved by passion. When under the influence. of any emotion the terms are still more pronounced: a savage look, a malignant grin, a fiery eye, a fierce scowl, a wicked glare, a ferocious frown, a loving look, a tender gaze, a sympathetic glance, a forgiving look; a compassionate, an affectionate, a pitying, a sweet expression; a sulky, a sneering, a jealous, a cunning, a suspicious expression; a nervous, an alarmed, a startled, a fearful, a frightened, a terrified, a horrified expression, are among the epithets we employ to characterise the change.

It is to be noted, therefore, that there is almost no way of describing the countenance, either when the mind is at rest or when it is agitated by passion, except in terms applicable to states of mind and not at all to qualities of matter. Were we to describe the expression of a horrified man as an elevation of the frontal and contraction of the corrugator muscles, an expansion of the orbicular muscles of the eye, a contraction of the platysma, an expansion of the labial muscles, and a tension of the pyramidals of the nose, and so on, no one but a specialist would understand what was meant. If, therefore, the most pronounced characteristics of a mind at rest are registered in the