Here then, once more, does the important truth press upon us, that Physiognomy is the act of so deciphering the human countenance, as to develop and explore the human intellect; and from that which is seen to judge of that which is unseen.

It is to this truth that the artist is indebted for all his success, whether as a painter or a sculptor. He portrays the physionomy only. It is all he can do, or has to do; and it is just in proportion to the faithfulness of his drawings, as "outward and visible signs" of some supposed internal qualities, that his works are held in estimation. Had the venerable President West, whose historic paintings will endear his name to the remotest posterity, depicted the face of the High Priest, in his immortal picture of Christ rejected, with the same features which characterize the mild and innocent JESUS, the censures against him would not have been confined to his skill as an artist; but to his heart and mind as a Christian; and the stoutest unbeliever, or pretended unbeliever, in the science

of Physiognomy, would have condemned him as a blasphemer and an infidel. Those who cried "away with him! away with him!" could not have possessed physionomies similar to those who asked, "why, what evil hath be done?"

The pictures of Le Brun derive their merits. from their pathognomical correctness, rather than from their strictly physiognomical delineations: for, in fact, they are not portraits of men, but delineations of human passions. But even Le Brun could not have painted had he not placed confidence in the fact, that every one who should admire his works, would do so by virtue of his belief in the science of Physiognomy.

But this is not the place to pursue this argument; and, if it were, the fact is too self-evident to require any illustration: for we all know, that the up-lifted and languishing eye of rapture, and the horizontal and frightful stare of terror are as different as light from darkness.

It is enough for my present purpose, that the eye, the mouth, the nostrils, &c. are all laid in requisition before the painter can describe either one or other of these passions; and he is the best artist who can best depict these, or the other passions, in the physionomy, colouring, chiaro oscuro, and keeping are all adjuncts, of no sort of merit or interest, but as they give effect and energy to the expression first indicated by a correct outline.

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The portrait painter who employs himself in taking likenesses," as it is called, may contrive to produce a tolerable fac-simile of his living original; but he would more uniformly succeed, if to his art as a draughtsman, he superadded a practical skill in the science of Physiognomy. He would, then, indeed, catch the whole man, and show him in his face; and would do more business in one sitting than he would otherwise perform in four. Indeed, an expert physionomist, possessing strong imitative capacities, and a free and practised use of the pencil, would, in many cases produce a

tolerably correct outline of a face from a merely verbal description of the general features and real character of the original. This, I grant, is carrying the science, in its combination with the art of painting, to perhaps the utmost verge of possibility. But if Le Brun could delineate the passions in his admirable portraits, simply from the knowledge he possessed of what may very well be called "the anatomy of expression,"-if Hogarth could, though in caricature, so describe the several vices of mankind, in the figures to which he respectively assigned them, surely it is not too much to assert, that what those artists executed pathognomically, might be achieved physiognomically. The solid and fixed characteristics of internal qualities are not less definite in the human face, than those moveable parts which denote and express those qualities in language intelligible to the commonest observer. The truth of the matter is this: mankind, in general, being more strongly impressed by those facts which require little or no exercise of the intellect, than by those occult arcana of nature, which are obvious only

to the eye and mind of the intelligent philosopher and moralist, are apt to dispute the existence of those truths which do not immediately strike the senses. That the earth. moves round the sun, and also on its own axis, are facts not less indubitable than that we have, in consequence, a regular return of the seasons, and a constant succession of day and night; but the vulgar, who believe only what they see, cannot comprehend the causes of those phenomena; and hence have often doubted the most clear and demonstrative deductions of astronomical science. Just so it is with respect to Physiognomy and Pathognomy. All men know that laughter, for instance, can be as accurately described by a painter, as the act of shutting the eyes, or opening the mouth; but all men do not know that a choleric, or a phlegmatic dis'position, may as truly and as definitely be traced by the same pencil, and be as palpably described on paper or canvas, as the spasmodic irritations and contortions of countenance produced by the act of laughter, or any other convulsive effort of nature or art. Cool,