PHYSIOGNOMY. 
tlic abutment, or buttress, of the forehead, 
the seat of the brain, without which tlie 
whole face wo;ild present a miserable ap- 
pearance ; indeed an ugly or disagreeable 
set of features is never accompanied by a 
handsome nose ; but there are thousands of 
fine and expressive eyes where a perfectly 
formed nose is w anting ; he describes this 
portion of the face as requiring the follow- 
ing peculiarities : “ Its length should equal 
the length of the forehead ; at the top 
should be a gentle indenting; viewed in 
front, the back should be broad, and nearly 
parallel, yet above the centre something 
broader ; the bottom, or end of the nose, 
must be neither hard nor fleshy, and its 
under ontline must be remarkably definite, 
well delineated, neither pointed nor very 
broad ; the sides, seen in front, must be 
well defined, and the descending nostrils 
gently shortened ; viewed in profile, the 
bottom of the nose should not have more 
than one third of its length ; the nostrils 
above must be pointed below, round, and 
have in general a gentle curve, and be 
divided into equal parts by the profile of 
the upper lip ; the side, or arch of the nose, 
must be a kind of oval ; above, it must elose 
well with the arch of the eye-bone, and 
near the eye, must be at least half an inch 
in breadth. Such a nose is of more worth 
than a kingdom.” Numbers of great and 
excellent men have flourished in all ages of 
the world, whose noses would suffer essen- 
tially by a comparison with Lavater’s de- 
scription of a nose, more valuable to the pos- 
sessor than extensive empire ; indeed, he is 
compelled to acknowledge this indisput- 
able fact, and observes that he has seen 
persons endowed with purity of mind, noble 
in their conceptions, and capable of exer- 
tion, whose noses were small, and the 
arches of their profiles inverted ; and yet true 
to his first' principles, he discovered, or 
imagined he discovered, their worth to con- 
sist chiefly in the elegant effusions of their 
imaginations, their learning, or fortitude in 
suffering, and this is accompanied with a 
proviso that the remainder of their form 
must be correctly organized. 
Noses arched near the forehead belong 
to those who possess the energy to com- 
mand, are capable of ruling, acting, over- 
coming, and destroying ; others, rectilinear, 
are the medium between the extremes 
above noticed, and are appropriated by 
nature to persons who act and suffer with 
equal pow'cr and patience. Socrates, Lai- 
rasse, and Boerhaave, were great men, and 
had ill-shaped noses, and were distinguished 
for meekness and gentleness. Were it pos- 
sible to attribute a general prevalence of 
disposition to a general form of the nose, 
individuals of every nation would be found 
to resemble the Tartars who have flat in- 
dented noses, the Negroes who have broad, 
and the Jews who have high arched noses, 
in their propensities, and it must follow that 
whatever qualities the physiognomist may 
apply to those individuals, must also belong 
to the whole people whose noses bear a re- 
semblance to them ; were this particular 
accurately examined into, it would tend, in 
a great measure, to confirm the correctness 
or incorrectness of the science, as it has 
hitherto been practised. 
I'he admirers of this study attribute great 
powers to the mouth, in expressing the 
emotions of the mind ; and Lavater ex- 
patiates on it with enthusiastic fervour in- 
deed : “ Whoever,” he exclaims, “ inter- 
nally feels the worth of this member, so dif- 
ferent from every other member, so inse- 
parable, so not to be defined, so simple, yet 
so various; whoever, I say, knows and feels 
this worth will speak and act with divine 
wisdom.” He then proceeds to call it “ the 
chief seat of wisdom and folly, power and 
debility, virtue and vice, beauty and defor- 
mity, of the human mind ; the seat of all 
love, all hatred, all sincerity, all falsehood, 
all humility, all pride, all dissimulation, and 
all truth.” Granting the benevolent pastor 
full assent to these observations on the 
mouth, it becomes the indispensible duty of 
all men to notice the physiognomy, or in- 
dications of that orgem ; in making those 
observations it will be necessary to examine 
the lips separately, and to ascertain when 
they are closed, during the moments of per- 
fect tranquillity, whether that operation is 
performed without a forcible exertion of 
the muscles, particularly the middle of the 
upper and under lips, the bottom of the 
middle line at each end ; and finally, the ex- 
tending of the middle line on both sides. 
The character of the man is proclaimed 
in the lips, the more firm the latter the 
more fixed the former ; the weak and irre- 
solute man has weak lips, with rapidity in 
their motion. The vicious, cringing, mean, 
and bad countenance is never formed with 
lips well defined, large, and justly propor- 
tioned to the other parts of the face, and 
the line of which is equally serpentine on 
each side ; such, though they may denote a 
