fectly. But is it not the same in the foregoing examples, and in every example of the kind? Like as cripples first become so many years after birth, which daily experience proves, may not, after the same inconceivable manner, the seeds of what is gigantic or dwarfish be the effects of the imagination on the fruit, which does not make its appearance till years after the child is born? Could a woman keep an accurate register of what happened, in all the powerful moments of imagination, during her state of pregnancy, she then might, probably, be able to foretel the chief incidents, philosophical, moral, intellectual, and physiognomonical, which should happen to her child. Imagination actuated by desire, love, or hatred, may, with more than lightning-swiftness, kill or enliven, enlarge, diminish, or impregnate, the organized foetus, with the germ of enlarging or diminishing wisdom, or folly, death or life, which shall first be unfolded at a certain time, and under certain circumstances. This hitherto unexplored, but sometimes decisive and revealed, creative, and changing power of the soul, may be, in its essence, identically the same with what is called faith working miracles, which latter may be developed and increased

by external causes, wherever it exists, but cannot be communicated, where it is not.A closer examination of the foregoing conjectures, which I wish not to be held for any thing more than conjectures, may, perhaps, lead to the profoundest secrets of physiognomy. Sed manum de tabula.

XI.

ON CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL PARTS OF THE

HUMAN BODY.

A.

THE FOREHEAD.

THE following are my own remarks on foreheads.

The form, height, arching, proportion, obliquity, and position of the scull, or bone of the forehead, show the propensity, degree of power, thought, and sensibility of man. The covering, or skin, of the forehead, its position, colour, wrinkles, and tension, denote the passions and present state of the mind. The bones give the internal quantity, and their covering the application of power.

The forehead bones remain unaltered, though the skin be wrinkled, but this wrinkling varies according to the various forms of the bones. A certain degree of flatness produces certain wrinkles; a certain arching is attended by certain other wrinkles, so that the wrinkles, separately considered, will give

the arching of the forehead, and this, vice versa, will give the wrinkles. Certain foreheads can only have perpendicular, others horizontal, others curved, and others mixed and confused wrinkles. Cup-formed (smooth) cornerless, foreheads, when they are in motion, commonly have the simplest, and least perplexed wrinkles.

But leaving wrinkles, I hold the peculiar delineation of the outline and position of the forehead, which has been left unattempted by ancient and modern physiognomists, to be the most important of all the things presented to physiognomonical observation. We may divide foreheads, considered in profile, into three principal classes, the retreating, the perpendicular, and the projecting. Each of these classes has a multitude of variations, which may easily again be classed, and the chief of which are (1) rectilinear; (2) half round, half rectilinear, flowing into each other; (3) half round, half rectilinear, interrupted; (4) curve lined, simple; (5) the curve lined double and triple. The latter is exemplified in the following 6 instances.

I shall add some more particular re

marks.

(1) The longer the forehead, the more comprehension (cæteris paribus) and less activity.

(2) The more compressed, short and firm the forehead, the more compression, firmness, and less volatility, in the man.

(3) The more curved and cornerless the outline, the more tender and flexible the character; the more rectilinear, the more pertinacity and severity,

(4) Perfect perpendicularity, from the hair to the eyebrows, want of understanding.

(5) Perfect perpendicularity, gently arched at the top, like 6, denotes excellent propensities of cold, tranquil, profound, thinking.

(6) Projecting, like 9, 10, 11, 12, imbecility, immaturity, weakness, stupidity.

(7) Retreating, like 1, 2, 3, 4, in general, denotes superiority of imagination, wit, and

acuteness.