could Lutheran and Romanist, and perhaps it will be the very best thing for the world that the present war took place. At any rate, we have no right to look at it as a curse. Let us wait awhile. Do not let us say it is a judgment on slavery, or upon any other particular sin: it is a trial which will improve both parties; and, with our own friends and countrymen, do not let us be too ready to point the blow. Let us remember the rebuke that they upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell were not the only guilty in Jerusalem; and that when the Jews, eager to point a moral, asked whose fault it was that a man was blind-was it his sin, or his parents'?—they were rebuked, and told that it was occasioned by no sin, but that God's mercy should be more fully shown. How often this is the case we poor, weak, and blind creatures cannot say; but often enough, we may hope and trust, to put an end to the common and unchristian method of passing judgments upon others.

ON THE FACES AROUND US.

T has become the fashion for historians-who take care to write in a much more pictorial way than those who preceded them—to draw new portraits of the heroes and heroines of the history they relate. They find their reward in the greater interest which their narratives excite. We all want to know what manner of man Alexander, or Cæsar, or Napoleon was. We collect coins, and purchase expensive engravings, to satisfy ourselves. The pictorial newspapers thrive upon this desire, and the passion extends very low down in the social scale, and cheap woodcuts of notorious criminals are eagerly sought for, so much so that a complete collection is very valuable. When Jack Sheppard committed his prison-breaking exploits there was such a desire to know the man that Hogarth obtained permission to paint his portrait, and did so, Jack being in prison with his irons on, Sir James Thornhill the King's serjeant-painter, and Gay the poet, being present at the time. The picture is that of a brutal, villainous-looking fellow, by no means the hero whom novelists have pictured. To turn from the lowest to the highest, we may add that it is to the curiosity of a Roman Emperor-so says the legend—that we

owe the only portrait of the Saviour that we have, and its description. It was cut on an emerald: the forehead broad, but low; the beard pointed and small; the hair parted in the middle; the nose straight, and of full size. This is plainly a Grecian type of face, and, from that circumstance and from others, both the word-portrait and the gem have been long ago declared to be fictitious: but the anecdote is sufficient to prove the desire; and, moreover, from that gem possibly the modern paintings of our Lord have, through the Byzantine copies, descended to our times.

Mankind seem to have felt, from a very early period, that the science of physiognomy is intrinsically true. A good face is a letter of recommendation, says an old proverb, which almost every one finds. Our police magistrates frequently judge of disputed testimony in witnesses by the face. A downcast look, a forehead "villainous low," a darksome, worn, and greasy complexion, a face in which anger, care, and bad passions, have set their marks, is one not likely to be let off easily when suspected. Shakspeare frequently alludes to the face; Falstaff is full of shrewd remarks upon it ; and dozens of rules for physiognomy might be drawn from the works of "immortal Will," written more than two hundred years before Lavater made it his especial study. Look, for instance, at those few words which Cæsar says of the lean and hungry Cassius. The internal spirit will make itself seen externally. There must be, and always will be, "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," or disgrace either.

The principal features of the face are, far above its general shape and colour, thought to be indices of character. Eyes, nose, and mouth, are the most important, and consequently bear the chief onus of the good or evil in man. It was Plato's thought that a fair soul chose a fair body to reside in; but the philosophy of our religion, more modest than Plato, doth not pronounce so hastily; yet in eyes, nose, and mouth there are men who, to use Shakspeare's phrase, "are marked and quoted to be villains." It is not the right thing to give a dog a bad name; yet a dog may have a very bad name, if he be but a handsome dog, and yet be a very lucky dog too. An ugly cur gets no pity, and an innocent man before now has been condemned on account of his sinister look.

The eyes are poetically called the windows of the soul. Deep, large, lustrous, and well-opened eyes are those most desired: small, bright, twinkling eyes are perhaps most serviceable, and last longest; they betoken also the wisest and most intellectual disposition. The politician, says Pope—

"Sees through all things with his half-shut eyes;"

and any one who has noticed the received portraits of Voltaire will readily recognise what piercing power must have shot from those small, fiery, cunning orbs of his. Most sceptical of all the sceptics, prime doubter amongst the doubters, his character may be read by them; he had the eyes of an arch politician; and so, also, may the mind of the greatest of female sovereigns, Elizabeth of England, be seen in the clear blue-steel glance which shone out fiery at her council-board,

and flashed hot indignation on the ambassadors of France and Spain. The grey (not deep blue) eye is a favourite with the writers of England. "Clear were his eyen, and blue as steel," says Chaucer; and even now the wide-open, clear grey eyes of the Fanqui, or white devils, terrify the soft and incapable Hindoos. To them it is the "evil eye :" they hate it, but they cannot withstand it. Next in intelligence and determination is the hazel eye, the most peculiar of which ever depicted are perhaps those of Miss Brontë, the authoress of Jane Eyre, as sketched by Mrs. Gaskell. "Peculiar eyes," she writes, "of which I find it difficult to give a description. They were large and well-shaped, their colour a reddish brown; but if the iris were well examined, it seemed composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quick, listening intelligence; but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled, which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any other human creature." In the portrait by Richmond, prefixed to the volume, we find this description borne out. The look is vivid, sparkling, intense. The glances are like those of the Lamia, or serpent-woman, in Keats's poem, luminous and entrancing. Of this kind of glances Coleridge in his Christabel gives a notable example, but much too long to quote here, when other features demand our attention.

The nose, "the gnomon on your neighbour's phiz," is the most prominent, if not the most important, of our facial