languishing in his bed, and has never been a moment absent; therefore, there is no actual appearance of him whose form has appeared. What then has produced this appearance? What is it that has acted thus at a distance on another's senses or imagination?-Imagination; but the imagination through the focus of passion.How? It is inexplicable. But who can doubt such facts, who does not mean to laugh at all historical facts?

Is there any improbability, that there may be similar moments of mind, when the imagination shall act alike inexplicably on the unborn child? That the inexplicable disgusts, I will grant; I feel it perfectly. 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?

Were it possible to persuade a woman to 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 fœtus 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.

CHAP. XXIX.

Essay by a late learned Man of Oldenburg, M. Sturtz, on Physiognomy, interspersed with short Remarks by the Author.

"LIKE Lavater, I am perfectly convinced of the truth of physiognomy, and of the all-significance of each limb and feature. Certain it is, that the mind may be read in the lineaments of the body, and its motion in its features, and their shades.

"Cause and effect, connexion and harmony, exist through all nature; therefore, between the external and internal of man. Our form is influ

enced by our parents, by the earth on which we walk, the sun that warms us with his rays, the food that assimilates itself with our substance, the incidents that determine the fortune of our lives. These all modify, repair, and chissel forth the body, and the marks of the tool are apparent both in body and in mind. Each arching, each sinuosity of the externals adapts itself to the individuality of the internal. It is adherent and pliable, like wet drapery. Were the nose but a little altered, Cæsar would not be the Cæsar with whom we are acquainted.

"The soul being in motion, it shines through the body, as the moon through the ghosts of Ossian, each passion throughout the human race has ever the same language.'

From east and to west, envy no where looks with the satisfied air of magnanimity, nor will discontent appear like patience. Wherever patience is, there is it expressed by the same signs, as likewise are anger, envy, and every other pas

sion.

"Philoctetes certainly expresses not the sensation of pain like a scourged slave. The angels of Raphael must smile more nobly than the angels of Rembrandt; but joy and pain still have each their peculiar expression. They act according to peculiar laws upon peculiar muscles and nerves, however various may be the shades of

* Those passages, which are not marked with inverted commas, are the observations of M. Lavater on the different parts of M. Sturtz's Essay.

their expression; and the oftener the passion is repeated, or set in motion, the more it becomes a propensity, a favourite habit, the deeper will be the furrows it ploughs.

"But inclination, capacity, modes and gradations of capacity, talents, and an ability for business, lie much more concealed. A good observer will discover the wrathful, the voluptuous, the proud, the discontented, the malignant, the benevolent, and the compassionate, with little difficulty. But the philosopher, the poet, the artist, and their various partitions of genius, he will be unable to determine with equal accuracy. And it will be still more difficult to assign the feature or trait in which the token of each quality is seated, whether understanding be in the eyebone, wit in the chin, and poetical genius in the mouth."

Yet I hope, I believe, nay, I know, that the present century will render this possible. The penetrating author of this essay would not only have found it possible, but would have performed it himself, had he only set apart a single day to compare and examine a well-arranged collection of characters, either in nature, or well-painted portraits.

"Whenever we meet with a remarkable man, our attention is always excited, and we are more or less empirical physiognomists, We perceive in the aspect, the mien, the smile, the mechanism of the forehead, sometimes wit, at others penetration. We expect and presage, from the im

pulse of latent sensation, very determined qualities, from the form of each new acquaintance; and, when this faculty of judging is improved by an intercourse with the world, we often succeed to admiration in our judgment on strangers.

"Can we call this feeling, internal unacquired sensation, which is inexplicable, or is it comparison, indication, conclusion from a character we have examined to another which we have not, and occasioned by some external resemblance ? Feeling is the ægis of enthusiasts and fools, and, though it may often be conformable to truth, is still neither demonstration nor confirmation of truth; but induction is judgment founded on experience, and this way only will I study physiognomy.

"With an air of friendship I meet many strangers, with cool politeness I recede from others, though there is no expression of passion to attract, or to disgust. On farther examination, I always found, that I have seen in them some trait either of a worthy or a worthless person, with whom I was before acquainted.

"A child, in my opinion, acts from like motives, when he evades, or is pleased with, the caresses of strangers, except that he is actuated by more trifling signs, perhaps by the colour of the clothes, the tone of the voice, or often by some motion, which he has observed in the parent, the nurse, or the acquaintance."

This cannot be denied to be often the case, and indeed much more often than is commonly sup