OSSEOUS SYSTEM OF MAMMALIA. 



49 



The subjoined figures (31 and 32) shew Cuvier's mode of ascertaining 

 the facial angle, They represent the skull of a young Orang, and the 

 skull of the Hog, 



31 



A well-developed skull and forehead, and an expanded intellect, have 

 been regarded as co-existents in every age : a forehead " villanous low" 

 is Shakspere's expression, with reference to the Ape (see Tempest} ; 

 and in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julia, drawing a comparison 

 betwixt herself and Silvia, says " Ay, but her forehead's low, and 

 mine's as high." Again, if we turn to the statues of antiquity, we find 

 that the unrivalled artists of Greece regarded an advanced forehead as 

 one of the characteristics of dignity and beauty, and the indication of a 

 refined and exalted nature. Hence, in their personifications of ideal 

 sublimity, with the boldness of genius, acting on the indications of Nature, 

 they overstepped her boundary, and, feeling that a facial angle of eighty- 

 five would fail in embodying their conceptions, they advanced it to 100 

 degrees, and thus impressed the statues of their gods and heroes with 

 an air of superhuman grandeur. This is the maximum to which the 

 facial line can be raised without falling from the sublime to the distorted. 

 " If the facial line," says Camper, " be more advanced, the head appears 

 monstrous and hydrocephalic. But, it is remarkable that the most 

 ancient Greek artists have adopted precisely this maximum, while the 

 Romans have been contented with an angle of ninety-five degrees, which 

 is not so agreeable. The two extremes, then, of the human facial angle, 

 are seventy degrees and 100 degrees: they comprise all the grada- 

 tions, from the Negro to the sublime beauty of the ancient Greek. If 

 we descend below seventy degrees we have an Orang ; if still lower, 3, 

 Dog; then a Bird," &c. The ancient standard of beauty, however, "does 

 not exist in nature, but is purely imaginary, and what Winckelman calls 

 the beau-ideal." 



It was, however, only in their personifications of mental pre-eminence 



VOL. I. 



