THE MIND'S MIRROR. 251 



peacefully as the "lunar hoax" or the opposition to the theory of 

 gravitation. The occasionally prominent revival of their tenets in 

 some quarters, but represents the feeble scintillations which attend 

 the decay and announce the transient survivals of movements whose 

 days are numbered as parts of philosophical systems. 



Whatever reasonable deductions and solid advances regarding 

 the functions of brain and mind either " science " tended to evolve, 

 have been long ago incorporated with the swelling tide of knowledge. 

 Phrenology has vanished in the general advance of research regard- 

 ing the functions of the brain ; a region which, apparently without 

 a cloud in the eyes of the confident phrenologist, is even yet im- 

 penetrated in many of its parts by the light of recent experiment 

 and past discoveries. Similarly the science of physiognomy has its 

 modern outcome in the cant phrases and common knowledge with 

 which we mark the face as the index to the emotions, and through 

 which we learn to read the broader phases of the mind's construction. 

 But the knowledge of the face 



as a book 

 Where men may read strange matters, 



has been more fortunate than the science of brain-pans, in respect of 

 its recent revival under new aspects and great authority. From 

 Eusthenes, who "judged men by their features," to Lavater himself, 

 the face was viewed as the mask which hid the mind, but which, as a 

 general rule, corresponded also to the varying moods of that mind, 

 and related itself, as Lavater held, to the general conformation and 

 temperament of the whole body. So that the acute observer might 

 be supposed to detect the general character of the individual by the 

 conformation of the facial lineaments crediting a balance of good- 

 ness here or a soul of evil there, or sometimes placing his verdict in 

 Colley Gibber's words, " That same face of yours looks like the title- 

 page to a whole volume of roguery." It argues powerfully in favour 

 of the greater reasonableness of the science of faces, over its neigh- 

 bour-science of crania, that we find even the vestiges of its substance 

 enduring amongst us still. Of late years the face and its changes 

 have become anew the subject of scientific study, although in a dif- 

 ferent aspect from that under which Lavater and his compeers re- 

 garded it. Now, the physiognomy is viewed, not so much in the 

 light of what it is, as of how it came to assume its present features. 

 Facial movements and " gestic lore " are studied to-day in the light 

 of what they once were, and of their development and progress. 

 Admitting, with Churchill, the broad fact that the face 



by nature 's made 

 An index to the soul, 



modern science attempts to show how that index came to be com- 

 piled. In a word, we endeavour, through our modern study of 



