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little beings just issuing into life, changing in their aspect 

 from week to week, but ever exhibiting something admirable. 

 Take the shells from the bottom of the sea, as every collection 

 presents them to us in their classified groups. "We recognise 

 at once the same Divine authorship of form and colour. They 

 are objects exemplifying such mastery of contour and of colour, 

 that in them may be recognised some of the highest sources 

 of Grecian art ; nay, moreover, of much in oriental or Indian 

 adaptation in the arts of design. Indeed, the shells may be said 

 to demand a Grecian eye to appreciate all their characteristic 

 majesty of contour and vigour of conformation, which are, if pos- 

 sible, more admirable than their display of all that is loveliest 

 in colour. 



But the human form itself, and the aspect of our race in in- 

 fancy, in childhood, in youth, and in old age, are no less within 

 the domain of nature. It was the study of the noblest expres- 

 sions of the countenance and gestures of the human family which 

 enabled Italian painting to imagine, to embody, and carry out 

 its great creations, which cease not to gather mankind to con- 

 template them from every region. 



I am not of those who think that anything in nature, which 

 the highest human intellect looks on with admiration beyond 

 that accorded to it by common minds, was produced by mere 

 naked and self-directed evolution, nor indeed that anything what- 

 ever was so produced. Stones thrown out by a volcano never fall 

 down again so as to form a castle. One may believe in natural 

 selection as a most important agency : it will account for much , 

 and to trace and watch its workings is a noble study. But per- 

 haps we may not understand it the less for regarding it as a 

 directed agency, rather than a directing principle. 



Few things are more worthy of attention, and none are more 

 narrowly heeded by boys and young men, in reality, than the 

 forwarning and admonitory characteristics of physiognomy, so 

 common in the order of nature. Who does not see at once that 

 he must beware, when he beholds a wolf ? Beware of all beasts 

 or insects striped like the tiger or the wasp. Distrust the zebra. 



