In Gerard Douw, vulgar character, deceit, attention. There is a picture of a mountebank, by him, at Dusseldorf, from the countenance of whom, and his hearers, the physiognomist may abstract many a lineament. In Wilkenboon, the best defined expressions of ridicule.

In Spranger, every kind of violent passion. In Callot, every species of beggar, knave, and thief, are characterised. The worst of this kind are, also, to be found in A. Bath.

In H. Goltz and Albert Durer, every kind of comic, mean, common, mechanical, servile, boorish countenance, and feature.

In M. Vos, Lucas van Leyden, and Sebastian Brand, all these, and still more; many traits and countenances full of the noble power and truth of apostolic greatness.

In Rembrandt, all the most tasteless passions of the vulgar.

In Annibal Caracci, traits of the ridiculous, and every kind of the strong, and the vicious, caricatured. He had the gift, so necessary to the physiognomist, of pourtraying much character in a few strokes.

In Chodowiecki, innumerable traits of innocence; of the child, the servant, the virgin, the matron; of vices, of the gestures, of the passions; in citizens, nobles, soldiers, and courtiers.

In Schellenberg, every trait of vulgar hu

mour.

In La Fage, the behaviour, and postures, of voluptuous Bacchants.

In Rugendas, all imaginable features of wrath, pain, passion, and exultation.

In Bloemart, little, except some positions of relaxed, silent, affliction.

In Schlutter, every lineament of a calm, noble, great mind, suffering bodily painThe same racked, in the distortions of Rode.

In Fuseli, gigantic traits of rage, terror, madness, pride, fierce distraction, hell.

In Mengs, the traits of taste, nobility, harmony, and tranquillity of soul..

In West, exalted simplicity, tranquillity, infantine innocence.

In Le Brun, the eyes, eyebrows, and mouths, of every passion.

Add your own name, noble Count, to those of the great masters whom the physiognomists and will study.

may

Let the student select every kind of trait, from these and other masters, and class, and insert them in his common place port folio, then will he, I am convinced, very shortly, see what though all may, none do see, know what all may, none do know. Yet from all these painters he will, ten times for one, only gain pathognomonical knowledge. His phy

siognomonical acquisitions will be few. Still, however, though not frequently, he will sometimes be instructed. And here, noble Count, will I, at this time, conclude; that I may not weary one who does not make physiognomy his only study.

VOL. II.

E

ར

50

SECOND LETTER

ON THE

STUDY OF PHYSIOGNOMY;

ADDRESSED TO

COUNT THUN, AT VIENNA.

PERMIT me, noble Count, to send a few more miscellaneous thoughts, counsels, and entreaties to the physiognomist, for your inspection, if you are not already fatigued by my former essay. I shall be as brief as possible. How few shall I be able to say of the innumerable things which still remain to be said! Not all, but the most necessary, and as they occur; whatever the order, the matter will be the same.

1.

Nature forms man according to one standard; which, however various, always continues, like the pentograph, in the same parallelism and proportion.

Every man who, without some external accident of force, does not remain in the general parallelism of humanity is a monster born; and the more he remains in the purest, horizontal, perpendicular, parallelism of the human form, the more is he perfect,

manly, and divine*. This is an observation which I should first require the student to demonstrate; and, afterward, to make it a general principle. Often has it been said, yet not often enough, that the greatest of minds may inhabit the most deformed of bodies; genius and virtue may take up their abode in many a distorted shape, as they often do in the poorest huts; but are there not huts in which no human being can stand upright; and are there not heads, are there not forms, in which no greatness of mind, no genius, can erect itself? Therefore let the physiognomist seek for those beauteous, those well proportioned, forms, in which great minds. are ever found, and which forms, though they may deviate from proportion, still leave sufficient freedom and room for the abode of talents and virtue; or, probably, by restraint, add power to talents and virtue.

2.

When the principal trait is significant, so are the inferior traits. The smallest must have a cause as well as the greatest. Each has a cause or none have. If, O physiog

* In the use of the words, horizontal, perpendicular, parallelism, the author evidently has the same allusion to the pentograph in view; they would else be absurd.