182 EXPRESSION OE GR1EE: Chap. VII. 



succeeded in acting on their grief-muscles, found by 

 looking at a mirror that when they made their eyebrows 

 oblique, they unintentionally at the same time depressed 

 the corners of their mouths; and this is often the case 

 when the expression is naturally assumed. 



The power to bring the grief -muscles freely into play 

 appears to be hereditary, like almost every other human 

 faculty. A lady belonging to a family famous for hav- 

 ing produced an extraordinary number of great actors 

 and actresses, and who can herself give this expression 

 " with singular precision," told Dr. Crichton Browne 

 that all her family had possessed the power in a remark- 

 able degree. The same hereditary tendency is said to 

 have extended, as I likewise hear from Dr. Browne, to 

 the last descendant of the famil} r , which gave rise to 

 Sir Walter Scott's novel of ' Eed Gauntlet; ' but the 

 hero is described as contracting his forehead into a horse- 

 shoe mark from any strong emotion. I have also seen 

 a young woman whose forehead seemed almost habit- 

 ually thus contracted, independently of any emotion 

 being at the time felt. 



The grief-muscles are not very frequently brought 

 into play; and as the action is often momentary, it easily 

 escapes observation. Although the expression, when ob- 

 served, is universally and instantly recognized as that 

 of grief or anxiety, yet not one person out of a thousand 

 who has never studied the subject, is able to say precisely 

 what change passes over the sufferer's face. Hence prob- 

 ably it is that this expression is not even alluded to, as 

 far as I have noticed, in any work of fiction, with the 

 exception of ' Eed Gauntlet ' and of one other novel; 

 and the authoress of the latter, as I am informed, be- 

 longs to the famous family of actors just alluded to; so 

 that her attention may have been specially called to the 

 subject. 



