Facial Expression. 73 



at times the very discord between the language of separate 

 features may lead not to confusion but to a clearer interpretation 

 of the character they betray. The stern forbidding mouth of 

 the resolute soldier who would flinch from nothing that lay in 

 the path of duty, might be rather admired than loved ; yet the 

 kindly eyes above it may all the more attract from their very 

 contrast. But here I am touching on a side issue, and one of 

 great interest and importance ; the origin and meaning of 

 habitual expressions. As in other muscular exercises so in 

 those affecting the face, any movement frequently made is more 

 easily repeated than the production of new combinations of 

 movement. In course of time, frequent repetition causes such 

 movements to be unconsciously performed and finally habitual. 

 In this way a man's history may become legibly written in his 

 face ; any preponderating emotion or experience leaving its mark 

 in some habitual posture of one or other of his features. Thus 

 the slight contraction of the brows that often accompanies 

 intense thought may become a permanent factor in the 

 expression of a face ; and it was doubtless such a peculiarity 

 that gave rise to that which Tennyson describes in his friend's 

 face as 



" Over those ethereal eyes 

 The bar of Michael Angelo." 



In marked contrast to this manner of expression, the " mark 

 of loyal nature and a noble mind," are those cases where the 

 self-conscious villain uses his face as a mask for, not an index of 

 his mind. In such instances the soul may as it were fall a 

 victim to its own duplicity ; and men may come to complain, 

 as does Browning's hero in "a soul's tragedy," of "features which 

 refuse the soul its way." In the middle ages we find a quaint 

 method of reading character recommended by Campanella, 

 whose prescription was to imitate closely with one's own features 

 the expression one wished to interpret, and at the same time by 

 a process of introspection to discover what attitude of the mind 

 corresponds to the given attitude of the features. Apart from 

 the grotesque effects produced in putting it into practice, such a 

 method would be very misleading, for it is impossible to replace 



