OR CONSTITUTIONAL PROPENSITIES. 



427 



the expense of the excernent, or cellular and lymphatic system. The 

 pulse, as in the last kind, is strong and hard, but somewhat more frequent ; 

 the veins cutaneous and projectino^; the sensibility acute and easily excited, 

 with a capacity of dwelling for a long time on the same object. The skin is 

 brownish, with a tendency to yellowness ; the hair black or dark-brown ; the 

 body moderately fleshy ; the muscles firm and well marked ; the figure ex- 

 pressive. The temper of the mind exhibits abruptness, impetuosity, and vio- 

 lence of passion; hardihood in the conception of a project, steadiness and 

 inflexibility in pursuing it, and indefatigable perseverance in its execution. 

 It is to this temperament we are to refer the men who, at different periods, 

 have seized the government of the world. Hurried forward by courage, 

 audacity, and activity, they have all signalized themselves by great virtues or 

 by great crimes, and have been the terror or the admiration of the universe. 

 Such were Alexander, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Attila, Mahomet, and Charle- 

 magne, in earlier periods ; and such in later times Richard III., Tamerlane, 

 Cromwell, Nadir Shah, Charles XII. of Sweden, and the tyrant of our own 

 day. Napoleon Buonaparte. 



This temperament, like the last, with which it is so closely connected, is 

 characterized by a premature appearance of the moral faculties. The men I 

 have just named, when merely emerging from youth, are well known to have 

 conceived and executed enterprises that would have been worthy of their 

 maturest judgment. Where the lineaments of this character are peculiarly 

 strong, and the susceptibility, as frequently occurs, is very acute, the indivi- 

 duals are highly irascible, and launch into a passion from very trivial causes.* 

 Homer has ascribed this part of the general temperament to many of his 

 heroes, particularly to Achilles ; and every politician knows that it was a 

 prominent feature in the constitution of Buonaparte, who seems, indeed, in 

 the occasional insults he offered to many of the highest characters at his own 

 court, and in the general presence of his court, to have copied from the Gre- 

 cian chieftain, who thus addressed Agamemnon, the head of the Grecian 

 princes, the dvai avSpdv, presiding at a general council, in reply to Agamemnon's 

 reprimand : 



O monster ! mix'd of insolence and fear, 



Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer ! 



When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare, 



Or nobly face the horrid front of war? 



'T is ours the chance of fighting fields to try ; 



Thine to looit on, and bid the valiant die. 



So much 'tis easier through the camp to go^ 



And rob a subject, than despoil a foe. 



Scourge of thy people, violent and base! 



Sent, in Jove's anger, on a slavish race ; 



W^ho, lost to sense of generous freedom past, 



Are tamed to wrongs, or this had been thy last. 



In this temperament we discover, as I have already observed, a union, of an 

 active exuberant bilious, with an active exuberant sanguineous system. The 

 temperament called bilious is, therefore, properly speaking, a complex genus, 

 deriving its features from both systems, and from both in a state of energetic 

 operation. 



III. If we put away this predominant energy of the sanguineous system, 

 orsmkit below its level, if we suppose the bilious system alone predominant, 

 and then add a deranged action of some abdominal organ, or of the nervous 

 department— the vital functions, from the change we have now taken for 

 granted m the sanguineous system, being carried on in a weak and irregular 

 manner, we shall arrive at the atrabilious, black-bile, or melancholy tem- 

 perament. The skin will assume a deeper tinge ; the countenance appear 

 sallow and sad ; the bowels will be inactive, all the excretions tardy, the 

 pulse hard, and habitually contracted. The corporeal sadness exerts an 

 influence over the cast of ideas ; the imagination becomes gloomy, the temper 



* Richerand, ut suprft, aect ccxzxi. p. 449. 



