PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 7 i 



of the Sultan, describes Lira as the physical ideal of a perfect man. A 

 potentate of leonine bearing, with a beard that surrounded his face 

 like a mane, and a pair of wonderful Oriental eyes, combined with 

 features of classic regularity, he appeared " every inch a king," and 

 the embassadors who visited his court from all parts of the world 

 agreed that he was the manliest-looking man they had ever seen. Yet 

 this same paragon was an infidel alike to his faith and his friends, 

 inhumanly cruel, and mean to the rare degree of being at once ava- 

 ricious and overbearing. But, though his subjects groaned under his 

 yoke, no murmur ever reached his ears, and his presence inspired the 

 genuine reverence due to a superior being. He was uxorious and a 

 tool in the hands of his favorites, but his superintendence always in- 

 sured the success of a campaign ; he had that gift of commanding that 

 can dispense with personal courage by inspiring it in others. Absa- 

 lom, Cambyses, the younger Dionysius, Caligula, Louis le Debonnaire, 

 Churchill, King Christian of Denmark, Ali Pasha, and Benedict 

 Arnold, are well-known confirmations of a truth which, as Goethe 

 observes, the experience of every man, but nobody's instinct, teaches 

 him that beauty and goodness are not identical. Children and child- 

 like men, and most men a priori, are prepossessed by a handsome 

 face and repulsed by an ugly one, and one can understand Madame 

 de Stael when she speaks of unpardonable faces. Ugliness is some- 

 thing abnormal, and originally, no doubt, the consequence of sin 

 though, perhaps, quite unconscious sin against the physical laws of 

 God. 



But, even about moral aberrations, the language of the face is not 

 altogether silent, though it announces them in a different way. Be- 

 sides those of the studied, calm expression, there are indications in 

 what Sir Charles Bell calls the habits of the face, the manner of laugh- 

 ing, of speaking under the influence of passion, or of meeting a sudden 

 glance. In these habits even moral peculiarities may betray them- 

 selves to a shrewd observer, and often quite unbeknown to the object 

 of observation. Experience, in fact, can teach us to distinguish ac- 

 quired from hereditary beauty or ugliness. They may be combined 

 in the same face, but are altogether independent of each other, and 

 differ as forms from manners, or talents from culture. The tongue, 

 though, can be taught to refute this language of the features hence 

 the significance of first impressions. 



Physiognomy and craniology are yet far from having been reduced 

 to the rules of a logical system " the one through want of cultivation, 

 the other in spite of it," as the physiologist Camper said of his and 

 Pastor Goetze's science. In the mean time we all practice physiog- 

 nomy instinctively, though by methods which it would not be quite 

 easy to define. What subtile differences in the form of the features 

 enable us to indicate the age of a man, his habits, his temper, the 

 average amount of his education, and even the country of his birth ! 



