MEANS OP THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS. 377 



they otherwise would have been. As far as I have been 

 able to obserre, the grjef-muscles are brought into action 

 much more frequently by children and women than by 

 men. They are rarely acted on, at least with grown-up 

 persons, from bodily pain, but almost exclusively from 

 mental distress. Two persons, who, after some practice, 

 succeeded in acting on their grief -muscles, found by look- 

 ing at a mirror that, when they made their eyebrows 

 oblique, they unintentionally at the same time depressed 

 the corners of their mouths ; and this is often the case 

 when the expression is naturally assumed. 



The power to bring the grief-muscles freely into play 

 appears to be hereditary, like almost every other human 

 faculty. A lady belonging to a family famous for having 

 produced au extraordinary number of great actors and 

 actresses, and who can herself give this expression " with 

 singular precision," told Dr. Crichton Browne that all 

 her family had possessed the power in a remarkable de- 

 gree. The same hereditary tendency is said to have ex- 

 tended, as I likewise hear from Dr. Browne, to the last 

 descendant of the family, which gave rise to Sir Walter 

 Scott's novel of *'Eed Gauntlet" ; but the hero is de- 

 scribed as contracting his forehead into a horseshoe mark 

 from any strong emotion. I have also seen a young 

 woman whose forehead seemed almost habitually thus 

 contracted, independently of any emotion being at the 

 time felt. 



The grief-muscles are not very frequently brought 

 into play ; and, as the action is often momentary, it 

 easily escapes observation. Although the expression, when 

 observed, is universally and instantly recognized as that 

 of grief or anxiety, yet not one person out of a thousand 

 who has never studied the subject is able to say precisely 

 what change passes over the sufEerer's face. Hence proba- 



