EAGLES AND ART. 
251 
the mouth and chin retreat feebly beneath the nnt-cracking 
hook, giving all the appearance of strength in the face to the 
upper mandible, as if it were intended for the fool to hang 
himself up to roost by, after the manner of the bird. 
The vault of the Eagle's beak, on the contrary, is very 
gradual, while the lower mandible, which expresses will and 
energy, is extended out nearer to a line with the top of the 
head. Close beneath this line and to the base of the nos- 
trils, the eyes are placed, giving at once an expression of 
fierce alertness, very different from those of the parrot's, 
which are set near the middle of the head. 
Tracing this facial line down from the conqueror through 
all the grades of men, he finds it everywhere associated with 
aspiration and daring temper — with the impulses of the hero, 
if not with heroic deeds ! Though the headstrong fool with 
his parrot-bill, approaches this line closely on one side, and 
the vulture-beaked Jew hungering for offal on the other, yet 
the careful Artist is not confused thereby. He sees that in 
the pawn-broker and old-clothes man, the line is that of the 
vulture — depressed near the " downward eye," and vaulting 
nearer the end which lingers prolonged into a hungry curve 
that seems formed to tear a way into the vitals. 
How loathsome the vulture-man, as the Artist sees him — 
with his wrinkled, scaly, scavenger look — true to the anti- 
type, in base brow and beak, cunning eye, and even to the 
thin and recurved bristles on the back of the skinny neck 
and head ! 
The straight, Grecian profile expresses to him a perfect 
harmony of the moral, or spiritual and physical lives in the 
human. A slight deviation from this line expresses there- 
fore a vast deal. Whenever this vaults into the arch, it in- 
fallibly expresses energy, unreasoning or viciously aggressive, 
just in proportion as the arch departs violently on either 
side from this symmetrical line. 
Thus the parrot's vaulting out beyond this line quickly, 
expresses idiotic obstinacy and indomitable propensities for 
