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with an accuracy that leaves nothing to be desired. The best position in sickness is the usual position in health."

I shall add some other remarks from this physician and physiognomist, whose abilities are superior to envy, ignorance and quackery. "Swift was lean while he was the prey of ambition, chagrin, and ill-temper; but, after the loss of his understanding, he became fat." His description of Envy, and its effects on the body, is incomparable. "The effects of Envy are visible, even in children. They become thin, and easily fall into consumptions. Envy takes away the appetite and sleep, and causes feverish motíon; it produces gloom, shortness of breath, impatience, restlessness, and a narrow chest. The good name of others, on which it seeks to avenge itself by slander, and feigned but not real contempt, hangs like the sword suspended by a hair over the head of Envy, that continually wishes to torture others, and is itself continually on the rack. The laughing simpleton becomes disturbed as soon as Envy, that worst of fiends, takes possession of him, and he perceives that he vainly labours to debase that merit which he cannot rival. His eyes roll, he knits his forehead, he becomes morose, peevish, and hangs his lips. There is, it is true, a kind of envy that arrives at old age. Envy in her dark cave, possessed by toothless furies, there hoards her poison, which, with infernal wickedness, she endeavours to eject over each worthy person and ho

nourable act. She defends the cause of vice, endeavours to confound right and wrong, and vitally wounds the purest innocence."

CHAP. IV.

Of the Congeniality of the Human Form.

THE same vital powers that make the heart beat, give motion to the finger; that which roofs the skull, arches the finger-nail. Art is at variance with herself: not so Nature. Her creation is progressive. From the head to the back, from the shoulder to the arm, from the arm to the hand, and from the hand to the finger; from the root to the stem, the stem to the branch, the branch to the twig, the twig to the blossom and fruit, each depends on the other, and all on the root each is similar in nature and form. There is a determinate effect of a determinate power. Through all nature each determinate power is productive only of such and such determinate effects. The finger of one body is not adapted to the hand of another body. Each part of an organized body is an image of the whole. The blood in the extremity of the finger, has the character of the blood in the heart. The same congeniality is found in the nerves, in the bones. One spirit lives in all. Each member of the body is in proportion to that whole of which it is a part. As from the length of the smallest

member, the smallest joint of the finger, the proportion of the whole, the length and breadth of the body may be found; so also may the form of the whole from the form of each single part. When the head is long, all is long, or round when the head is round, or square when it is square. One form, one mind, one root appertain to all therefore is each organized body so much a whole, that, without discord, destruction, or deformity, nothing can be added or diminished.

Every thing in man is progressive; every thing congenial; form, stature, complexion, hair, skin, veins, nerves, bones, voice, walk, manner, style, passion, love, hatred. One and the same spirit is manifest in all. He has a determinate sphere, in which his powers and sensations are allowed, within which they may be freely exercised, but beyond which he cannot pass. Each countenance is, indeed, subject to momentary change, though not perceptible, even in its solid parts; but these changes are all proportionate: each is measured, each proper and peculiar to the countenance in which it takes place. The capability of change is limited. Even that which is affected, assumed, imitated, heterogeneous, still has the properties of the individual originating in the nature of the whole, and is so definite, that it is only possible in this, but in no other being.

I almost blush to repeat this in the present age. What, Posterity! wilt thou suppose, thus

to see me so often obliged to demonstrate to pretended sages, that nature makes no emenda, tion? She labours from one to all. Her's is not disjointed organization, not mosaic work. The more there is of the mosaic in the works of artists, orators, or poets, the less are they natural; the less do they resemble the copious streams of the fountain; the stem extending itself to the remotest branch.

The more there is of progression, the more there is of truth, power, and nature; the more extensive, general, durable, and noble is the effect. The designs of nature are the designs of a moment; one form, one spirit, appear through the whole. Thus nature forms her least plant, and thus her most exalted man. I shall have effected nothing by my physiognomonical labours, if I am not able to destroy that opinion, so tasteless, so unworthy of the age, so opposite to all sound philosophy, that nature patches up the features of various countenances, in order to make one perfect countenance; and I shall think them well rewarded, if the congeniality, uniformity, and agreement of human organization be so demonstrated, that he who shall deny it, will be declared to deny the light of the sun at noon-day.

The human body is a plant, each part of which has the character of the stem. Suffer me to repeat this continually, since this most evident of all things is continually controverted, among all ranks of men, in words, deeds, books, and works

of art. I therefore find the greatest incongruities in the heads of the greatest masters. I know no painter, of whom I can say he has thoroughly studied the harmony of the human outline, not even Poussin, no, not even Raphael himself. Let any one class the forms of their countenances, and compare them with the forms of nature. Let him, for instance, draw the outlines of their foreheads, and endeavour to find similar outlines in nature, and he will find incongruities, which could not have been expected in such great masters.

Chodowiecki, excepting the too great length and extent, particularly of his human figures, perhaps had the most exact feeling of congeniality in caricature, that is to say, of the relative propriety of the deformed, the humorous, or other characteristical members and features. For as there is conformity and congeniality in the beautiful, so is there also in the deformed. Every cripple has the distortion peculiar to himself, the effects of which are extended to his whole body. In like manner, the evil actions of the evil, and the good actions of the good, have a conformity of character; at least, they are all tinged with this conformity of character.

Little as this seems to be remarked by poets and painters, still is it the foundation of their art; for wherever emendation is visible, there admiration is at an end. Why has no painter yet been pleased to place the blue eye beside the brown one? Yet, absurd as this would be, no

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