PLATE II. 



Figs. 1 and 3 give the spinal conformation and head-poise of 

 Burns and Dante, who both, although widely different characters, 

 had the strongly impassioned and meditative nature. It is possible 

 to have much vitality and even energy without the ceaseless 

 activity which often borders on unrest. The configuration of 

 Dante and Hawthorne (see Plate III.) and others show how erro- 

 neous is the popular idea that reverie and brooding are associated 

 with a drooping posture. All heads may droop at times ; but a 

 naturally spontaneously erect head and spine belong to the pon- 

 dering habit, and the naturally drooping and advanced head to the 

 comparatively quick and vigilant habit. 



Figs. 2 and 4, Newman and Napoleon, in aims and interests had 

 nothing in common, but they both possessed in extreme degree the 

 bodily configuration and certain of the mental peculiarities of the 

 intellectually acute and less deeply emotional temperament. The 

 mental acuteness and promptness of Newman's character lay in 

 quick but specially directed thought, in instant and appropriate 

 rhetoric, and in controversial skill. Napoleon's extraordinary 

 mental activity was expended in a vast range of military and 

 political affairs. 



The difference in thought between the instantaneous and agile 

 thinker and the slower meditative thinker is not one of power or 

 amount ; it is not any difference in the subject with which thought 

 is occupied ; it is a difference in mental habit and impulse. The 

 majority of our great names in philosophy and theology and litera- 

 ture, in whom we might naturally expect to find reverie rather 

 than quickness, belong in reality to the alert order. The poetic 

 fervour of not a few of our most eminent poets of Matthew 

 Arnold and of Newman, for example is intellectual r,nd verbal, 

 not emotional fervour. 



