They are Instead of

have reason, for they have deceived me sadly. I was taught to think, and I was willing to believe, that genius was not a bawd, that virtue was not a mask, that liberty was not a name, that love had its seat in the human heart. Now I would care little if these words were struck out of the dictionary, or if I had never heard them. become to my ears a mockery and a dream. patriots and friends of freedom, I see nothing but the tyrant and the slave, the people linked with kings to rivet on the chains of despotism and superstition. I see folly join with knavery, and together make up public spirit and public opinions. I see the insolent Tory, the blind Reformer, the coward Whig! If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago. The theory is plain enough; but they are prone to mischief, "to every good work reprobate." I have seen all that had been done by the mighty yearnings of the spirit and intellect of men, "of whom the world was not worthy," and that promised a proud opening to truth and good through the vista of future years, undone by one man, with just glimmering of understanding enough to feel that he was a king, but not to comprehend how he could be king of a free people! I have seen this triumph celebrated by poets, the friends of my youth and the friends of man, but who were carried away by the infuriate tide that, setting in from a throne, bore down every distinction of right reason before it; and I have seen all those who did not join in applauding this insult and outrage on humanity proscribed, hunted down (they and their friends made a byword of), so that it has become an understood thing that no one can live by his talents or knowledge who is not ready to prostitute those talents and that knowledge to betray his species, and prey upon his fellow-man. "This was some time a mystery: but the time gives evidence of it." The echoes of liberty had awakened once more in Spain, and the morning of hope dawned again: but that

dawn has been overcast by the foul breath of bigotry, and those reviving sounds stifled by fresh cries from the timerent towers of the Inquisition: man yielding (as it is fit he should) first to brute force, but more to the innate perversity and dastard spirit of his own nature which leaves no room for farther hope or disappointment. And England, that arch-reformer, that heroic deliverer, that mouther about liberty and tool of power, stands gaping by, not feeling the blight and mildew coming over it, nor its very bones crack and turn to a paste under the grasp and circling folds of this new monster-Legitimacy! In private life do we not see hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed, while modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot? How often is "the rose plucked from the forehead of a virtuous love to plant a blister there!" What chance is there of the success of real passion? What certainty of its continuance ? Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance of ourselves-seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamymistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love ;—have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.1

1 The only exception to the general drift of this Essay (and that is an exception in theory-I know of none in practice) is, that in reading we always take the right side, and make the case properly our own. Our imaginations are sufficiently excited, we have nothing to do with the matter but as a pure creation of the mind, and we therefore yield to the natural, unwarped impression of good and evil. Our own passions, interests, and prejudices out of the question, or in an abstracted point of view, we judge fairly and conscientiously; for conscience is nothing but the abstract idea of

On Dr. Spurzheim's Theory.

It appears to me that the truth of physiognomy (if we allow it) overturns the science of craniology. For instance, the system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim supposes that every bump or protuberance on the skull is necessarily produced by an extraordinary protrusion of the brain or increase of the organ of perception immediately underneath it. Now behind a great part of the face we have no brain, and can have no such organs existing and accounting for the external phenomena; and yet here are projections or ramifications of bones, muscles, &c. which are allowed by these reasoners and most other persons to indicate character and intellect just as surely as the newdiscovered organs of craniology. If then these projections or modifications of the countenance have such force and meaning where there is no brain underneath to account for them, is it not clear that in other cases the theory

right and wrong. But no sooner have we to act or suffer, than the spirit of contradiction or some other demon comes into play, and there is an end of common sense and reason. Even the very

strength of the speculative faculty, or the desire to square things with an ideal standard of perfection (whether we can or no) leads perhaps to half the absurdities and miseries of mankind. We are hunting after what we cannot find, and quarrelling with the good within our reach. Among the thousands that have read The Heart of Midlothian there assuredly never was a single person who did not wish Jeanie Deans success. Even Gentle George was sorry for what he had done, when it was over, though he would have played the same prank the next day: and the unknown author, in his immediate character of contributor to Blackwood and the Sentinel, is about as respectable a personage as Daddy Ratton himself. On the stage, every one takes part with Othello against Iago. Do boys at school, in reading Homer, generally side with the Greeks or Trojans ?

1 Compare Essay II. suprâ.-ED.

which assumes that such projections can only be caused by an extraordinary pressure of the brain, and of the appropriate local organ within, is in itself an obvious fallacy and contradiction? The long prudent chin, the scornful nose (naso adunco), the good-natured mouth are proverbial in physiognomy, but are totally excluded from the organic system. I mentioned this objection once to Dr. Spurzheim personally, but he only replied-" We have treated of physiognomy in our larger work!" I was not satisfied with this answer.

I am utterly ignorant of the anatomical and physiological part of this question, and only propose to point out a few errors or defects in his system, which appear on the author's own showing, in the manner of marginal notes on the work. I would observe, by-the-bye, that the style and manner of the writer are not such as to induce the reader to place a very implicit reliance on his authority; and in a subject which is so much an occult science, a terra incognita in the world of observation, depending on the traveller's report, authority is a good deal. The craniologist may make fools of his disciples at pleasure, unless he is an honest man. They have no check upon him. The face is as "a book where men may read strange matters:" it is open to every one: the language of expression is as it were a kind of mother-tongue, in which every one acquires more or less tact, so that his own practical judgment forms a test to confirm or contradict the interpretation which is given of it. But the skull, on which Drs. Gall and Spurzheim have laid their hands for the discovery of so many important and undeniable truths, nobody else knows anything about, except as they are pleased to tell us. It is concealed from ordinary observation by a covering of hair, and we must go by hearsay. We may indeed examine one or two individual instances, and grope out our way to truth in the dark; but there can be no habitual conclusion formed, no broad light of

experience thrown upon the subject. The unbeliever in the fashionable system may well exclaim—

Oh! let me perish in the face of day!

The only opportunity for fairly studying this question was at the period when people wore artificial hair; for then any well-disposed person had only to pull off his wig, and show you his mind.1 But the hair is a sort of natural mask to the head. The craniologist indeed "draws the curtain, and shows the picture :" but if there is the least want of good faith in him, the science is all abroad again. Unfortunately for the credit due to his system, Dr. Spurzheim (or his predecessor, Dr. Gall, who got up the facts) has very much the air of a German quack-doctor. He is, so to speak it, the Baron Munchausen of marvellous metaphysics. His object is to astonish the reader into belief, as jugglers make clowns gape and swallow whatever they please. He fabricates wonders with easy assurance, and deals in men "whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and the anthropophagi, that each other eat." He readily admits whatever suits his purpose, and magisterially doubts whatever makes against it. He has a cant of credulity mixed up with the cant of scepticism-things not easily reconciled, except by a very deliberate effort indeed. There is something gross and fulsome in all this, that has tended to bring discredit on a system which after all has probably some foundation in nature, but which is here overloaded with exaggerated

1 There is a fellow in Hogarth's "Election Dinner," holding his wig in one hand, and wiping his bare scalp with the other. What a peep for a craniologist! Let him look well to it, and see that his system is borne out by the gesture, character, and actions of the portrait! A celebrated Scotch barrister being introduced to Dr. Spurzheim without his wig, said "It is dangerous to appear before you, Doctor, at this disadvantage." To which the Doctor replied "Oh! you have nothing to fear. Your head "At least," interrupted the other, "you will not find the organ of credulity there!"