character: for, in spite of the most studied hypocrisy, in defiance of the most inveterate habits, nature will still assert her supremacy over the human countenance, and preserve ample proofs, to the penetrating eye of an experienced physionomist, that a fool and wise man, who are so from nature and constitution, can never so far erase the records of native disposition, as entirely to exchange physionomies with each other. Socrates, the wise, the chaste, and the virtuous, was, by nature, a dunce and a libertine. Zopyrus, the physionomist, so pronounced him; and the honest and good philosopher admitted the justice of the sentence; but added, that he had corrected the vices of his nature, by the exercise of reason, study, and philosophy. The anecdote is well related by Lavater. A similar judgment was pronounced against the great Hippocrates, who also had the candour to acknowledge the accuracy of the physionomist's judgment. The physionomist de'cides not what a man has made himself to be, or what he may be capable of becoming;

D

but what he always really was, and now is. He reads the pristine character of the soul, as it is stamped and delineated in the permanent formation and lines of the forehead and other parts. He will sometimes mistake; nay, he may often err; but generally he will judge aright. The physiological and other causes of the exceptions to a correct physiognomical judgment, are treated of in a subsequent section of this work.

The errors, or mistakes, to which a merely pathognomical judgment is liable, are infinitely more numerous. Lavater has justly observed, that Pathognomy has to contend with dissimulation. This may require some explanation. Pathognomy considers the moveable and moving parts of the human frame. It contemplates the every changing features of man, as they are the subjects of internal volition, or external action. It has little to do with definite lines and solid forms, which cannot be materially altered by time or accident; but judges more by insulated deeds, and what is easily visible, than by what is silent, and requires the exercise of

a sound understanding, and habitual powers of discrimination. No wonder, therefore, that there should sometimes be a considerable discre

pancy between a judgment formed from the physionomy, simply considered, and that pathognomical determination, which grounds its decisions on that only which is heard, seen, or felt.

Depravity and oppression have strangely distorted the original character of mankind; hence few are the actions of our species which are performed from motives that are obvious to all. A physionomist never forms a decided opinion of any man's real character from report only. It enters into the very nature of his science, that he should see the person accused, or otherwise, before he can decide on the permanent nature of his character. Not so, exactly, with Pathognomy. A man may be told that such an one was in a most violent fit of passion, or anger; his eyes were in a state of inflammation; their balls, ready to burst from their socket, sparkled with indignation. Now were his eye.

brows elevated, and now depressed; between them were many deep furrows, while a thousand angles played upon his forehead; his nostrils were horribly distended; and his lips adhered together, till the nether one rose over the other, yet both combining to leave the mouth, particularly at the corners, sufficiently open to discover that the teeth were grinding with fury, and anxious to execute the most direful cruelty. "Certainly," says the pathognomist, "your friend is a very irritable, passionate man; be cautious how you approach him— he is a dangerous fellow." Let us suppose, that, during this conversation, a physionomist should happen to be present, who saw the whole transaction, and had an opportunity of examining the physionomy of the accused, both before and after the terrible fit of anger just described. "But I saw your friend," he would say, "in his calmer moments, and even during the tremendous storm of passion and rage; and in both situations, I could clearly perceive, that you have, in fact, nothing to fear from his real character. The solid parts of his physionomy

are clearly indicative of a mild, amiable, and benevolent disposition; and the fit of anger in which you saw him, was either, in a great measure, assumed, or the honourable feelings of his nature were roused into violent action, by

some real, or supposed insult.

all, has no seat in his bosom.

Malignity, after

He feels an insult,

or an injury, at the moment, with considerable keenness, and he resents it with warmth and energy; for his physionomy is marked, in some degree, with indications of the choleric temperament; but he remembers not the indignity he has once resented, nor seeks for two atonements for the same offence. The laws of honour reign with absolute sway in his heart; they are the guide and the direction of all his actions. He lives and moves in the centre of their circumference, and never deliberately transgresses their boundaries. His errors are the results of mistake respecting the strict and legitimate requirements of those laws. Without meanness or malignity in his own composition, his whole soul rises in opposition to every thing savouring of those feelings in others; and