18 HUMAN PHYSIOGNOMY. The teetotaller is one who proclaims himself an ass, that cannot graze with impunity—unless tethered. He is a “ water- dog,” with none of the fine qualities of the nobler animal. Dive into the street-lounger’s eye, if you wish to detect the coward, the debauchee, the drunkard of the previous night. Take soundings there, too, for meanness, treachery, and malice. The habitually clear-eyed man is the man of intellect, who scorns vulgar excesses, and may have strong, but elevated— vehement, but never grovelling, passions. From the exposition here given of Emotive Physiognomy, or the Language of Gesture, it will be ackowledged that the subject is very interesting, and with these examples, the reader will be much better able to comprehend the philosophy of it, which is briefly as follows. All animated beings, at least all the higher orders, are endowed with various mental faculties, or mental modes of action, differing in their nature, and in their relation to external objects, which require expression. And each of these faculties, when active, instinctively makes itself known, in a uniform manner, by bodily actions, or gestures, peculiar to itself; and this is its Natural Language. So that there are as many dialects of Natural Language as there are different faculties or affections of the mind. And so closely related are the Passions with their specific gestures, that, as we cannot be under the influence of any passion without expressing it in the features, so we cannot even imitate the expression of any of them without exciting within ourselves in a minor degree the corresponding mental feeling. Put on the wrinkled brow of Anger—shoot out the curling lip of Scorn —or assume the dimpled cheek of Joy,—and you will experience, though it may be faintly, the appropriate feeling; and endeavor how you may, you cannot entertain another kind of sentiment at the same time, without betraying it in the gestures of some othei- part of the features. To conclude :—the natural physiognomy of man, in common with every thing human, has seriously suffered, and still suffers, from his innumerable errors and irregularities. Buffbn correctly says, and demonstrates by examples, “ that all those people who live miserably, are ugly and ill made.” And this is very eloquently expressed and deplored by that versatile genius, Dickens, in his “ Oliver Twist,” where he says,—Alas ! how few of Nature's faces there are to gladden us with their beauty. The cares and^orrowings and hungerings of the world, change them as they change hearts;—and it is only when those passions sleep, or have lost their hold forever, that the troubled alouds pass off, and leave heaven’s surface clear!”
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