450 Physiognomy. 



siognomical treatise that has shice appeared. After 

 Aristotle, his disciple Theophrastus wrote on 

 physiognomy, in a very accurate and interesting 

 manner. He was succeeded by a number of others 

 less conspicuous; and, indeed, at every period of 

 the history of Greece and Rome, when learning 

 was cultivated, in any considerable degree, wc 

 hear something of men who employed themselv^es 

 in investigating and teaching this science. 



But w^hen the Roman Empire was overthrown 

 by her Northern invaders, and when, in the general 

 wreck, the various departments of philosophy were 

 buried in forgetfulness, physiognomy also became, 

 in a great measure, neglected and forgotten, as a 

 specific object of study. For a number of centu- 

 ries we hear little or nothing about it. At the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century we find it again 

 exciting some attention, and from that time till near 

 the close of the seventeenth, it continued to be a 

 general and fasliionable subject of inquiry. Within 

 that period the writers on physiognomy were very 

 numerous, and some of them respectable and in- 

 structive. 



There was one circumstance, however, con- 

 nected with the study of physiognomy, wnthin the 

 period last mentioned, which served to throw it 

 into a kind of temporary disgrace, and which cer- 

 tainly retarded its progress. For more than two 

 centuries after the revival of learning, the arts of 

 Magic ^ Alchemy, and Judicial Astrology w^ere 

 fashionable pursuits, and were interwoven with 

 almost every other object of study. Unfortunately 

 physiognomy was rarely spoken of, or investi- 

 gated but in connection with those play-things of 

 ancient folly, now so justly ridiculed and exploded. 

 From the middle of the seventeenth century we 

 may date the downfal of the reign of alchemy and 

 astrology, and with theraj as one of the sciences 



