LOOKING-GLASS. 
17 
Mofe promifing than beautiful, the infant then ex- 
hibits only a faint fketch of his future felf. 
At fix or feven years of age his childifh looks 
give way to figns of growing youth. 
But were a painter to know no more of his pro- 
feffion, than merely to dirhinifli the different pro- 
portions in all the members of the human body, 
without making an allowance for the difference of 
age, he would draw the likenefs of a little man when 
he attemped to furnifh the picture of a child. For 
inftance, in a full-grown lad, the os pubis is in the 
middle of his body ; but when he came into the 
world, half his meafure was at the navel. 
There are other diftinftions peculiar to childhood. 
New-born infants have the head difproportioned to 
the other parts, with plump cheeks, hands puffed up, 
arms, legs, and thighs en enbonpoint. Their muf- 
cular fibres are feparated by a ground-work of flight 
firings, interwoven in fuch abundance as prevents 
them from giving full tone to the mufcles, and 
firetching their tender limbs. 
In drawing an infant, the ancients were mere 
bunglers, although they excelled in painting a full- 
grown perfon. Their clumfy diminutive figures 
prove, beyond doubt, that they few opportu- 
nities of feeing perfect models of childhood, but were 
firuck with the confiant fight of the mofi athletic 
and handfome Greeks at the Olympic games, and 
other diverfions of their days, where they appear to 
C the 
