405 



The illusion as to the direction of sight and the 

 expression of faces, mentioned in one of the preceding 

 Letters, has been further and most successfully illustrated 

 lately by the "Masks and Faces" of the talented and 

 ingenious Herr Frikel, who by the mere arrangement 

 of head-gear and appropriate accessories has shown 

 how readily the same face may be made to realise our 

 typical ideas of the European and Asiatic, Hindoo, 

 Chinese, Turk, or Tartar, &c., as well as the masculine or 

 feminine expression and countenance. Indeed our 

 attention or inattention to facts, which perhaps do or do 

 not strongly affect us, is apt to make us imagine there are 

 greater differences in some cases and less differences in 

 others than really exist. The man who would never 

 doubt, until confronted with one of Herr Frikel's trans- 

 formations, that he could at once tell, by the aspect of 

 the countenance, the difference between a German and a 

 Chinaman would be apt to deny the possibility of a 

 shepherd being able to distinguish every individual sheep 

 of a numerous flock which has been for a short time under 

 his care. Yet any one who takes the trouble to look 

 carefully at a flock of sheep driven through the streets 

 will be able to see that, even in the shape of the nose, 

 sheep are as much distinguished from each other in- 

 dividually by all the varieties of Eoman, Greek, and snub 

 nose as human beings are, and that all the other features 

 are equally marked by individual identity. Indeed, the 

 aphorism "as like as two peas" is by no means so very 

 close or proximate a resemblance as the expression appears 

 to assume. We doubt if there ever were two peas 

 exactly alike since the creation of the world, any more 

 than two kinds or specimens of handwriting. Nay, much 

 as identity in this latter respect is distinctively recog- 

 nisable, we doubt if any man ever wrote his own 

 signature exactly alike twice in the whole course of his 



