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highly and even singularly favourable to the freedom and property of even the lowest citizens.*

Nor is it, I apprehend, as some political writers have asserted, of no importance to trace the freedom of the constitution of this country beyond the civil wars of the last century. For the purpose indeed of establishing the right of the British people to freedom, it is utterly unnecessary. But toward a clear comprehension of the constitution itself; toward a certain knowledge of the broad and deep foundation on which it rests; toward a ready and just perception of the manner in which it may be affected through the various changes to which all human things are liable, and some of which we have already seen; extension of dominion, influx of riches, increase of population, increase of revenue, immoderate debt, and the possible reduction of that debt; toward this, an acquaintance with the history of our constitution, from the earliest times, is of great importance.

If, then, it is to ourselves important to know the history of our constitution from earliest times, it will

also be not a little important to other nations if any such there are, who would form a constitution on the model of ours, or who would improve the constitution they possess after our example. Nor will it be less important to those who, without any good foundation to build on and without any valuable experience within their own country, propose to raise, with the airy materials of theory, a constitution more perfect than the most perfect that has yet existed upon earth. For want of attention to the breadth and antique firmness of the basis on which our envied and truly enviable government rests, the singular manner in which the materials of the superstructure are adapted to each other, and how they are held together by their natural fitness to coalesce, the complexion of Europe seems to threaten many new and memorable lessons in politics: lessons for every order that can exist in a state separately, and lessons for nations united. Happy, then, those who, gathering wisdom from the sufferings and dangers of others, can avoid the miseries which many will probably feel.†

Obser

* It seems to deserve a notice which, I think, it has not yet met with, that the monarchs to whom our constitution is most indebted, Alfred, Henry II. and Edward I. were conquerors. It is certainly a most unworthy slander upon those uncommon great men, as well as upon the parliaments, from Edward I. till the time when Fortescue wrote, under Henry VI. to assert, as often has been done, that England had no valuable constitution, and no true freedom, till the opposition to the Stuarts, or, till the expulsion of the Stuarts, procured them.

† As M. de Calonne's letter, above referred to, though printed, was never published, it may not be superfluous to give here, in its original language, the passage where the observation noticed occurs.

"J'ignorois, lorsque j'ai commencé cette lettre, à quel point la division éclatoit déjà entre la noblesse et le tiers-état, dans les différentes provinces de votre royaume : depuis que je l'ai appris, j'en frémis. Vu la situation, où les choses ont été amenées, il n'y a pas lieu d'espérer que la concorde puisse se rétablir d'elle-même, et sans qu'on ait extirpé les germes de dissention qu'on n'a que trop fomentés. Il faut donc y pourvoir par quelque moyen nouveau, puissant, et efficace. Celui que je propose est éprouvé. C'est par lui qu'il existe en Anlgeterre, entre les grands et le peuple, plus d'accord, qu'il

n'y

Observations respecting the history of physiognomy, by Thomas Cowper, esq.; from " Memoirs of the Manchester Literary Society," vol. 3.

T

of the last century, on the HE dispute among the literatí comparative merit of the ancients and moderns, has at length subsided. The few late attempts, by some of

our.

n'y en a, je pense, dans aucune autre nation; nulle part ailleurs l'esprit public n'est aussi marqué; nulle part l'intérêt n'a plus d'empire pour réunir tous les états.

"Or il est constant que rien n'y contribue davantage que l'institution d'une chambre haute et d'une chambre basse dans le parlement, ainsi que leur composition respective, les distinctions qui les separent, et les rapports qui les unissent. Plus on éturdie cet ensemble, plus on trouve à l'admirer: Les lords qui forment le chambre haute, et qui tous sont titrés (ce sont les seuls qui le soient en Angleterre,) partagent dans une même association, sans préjudice néanmoins à leurs qualifications diverses, l'honneur de la pairie; et c'est, sans contredit, le premier corps de l'état. Leur prérogative n'est jamais contestée ni enviée par les communes, qui ont parmi leurs membres, leurs cadets, les frères, les parens, de ces mêmes lords at des plus grandes maisons du royaume. C'est ce mélange, cette transfusion, si je le puis dire, de la plus haute noblesse dans le corps represéntatif du peuple, qui entretient l'harmonie entre l'un et l'autre, et qui resserre le nœud de leur union; c'est ce qui fait que les deux chambres fraternisent sans se confondre, qu'elles se contrebalancent sans se rivaliser, que l'une empêche l'autre d'empiéter, et que toutes deux concourent également au maintien de la prérogative royale, et à la conservation des droits nationaux." Lettre addressée au roi, par M. de Calonne, le 9 Fevrier, 1789, p. 67, 68 &c.

The very great advantage to a free constitution, of having an hereditary first magistrate the depositary of the supreme executive power, so distinguished by superior rank, as to exclude all idea of competition, has been very well explained by M. de Lolme; but the benefit of that singular amalgamation of various rank among the people, which prevails in England, has, I think, nowhere been duly noticed. In no court of Europe, I believe, is rank so exactly regulated among the higher orders, as in England, and yet there is no rank perfectly insulated; all are in some way implicated with those about them To begin even with the heir apparent; as a subject, he communicates in rank with all other subjects. The king's younger sons rank next to the elder, but their rank is liable to reduction: their elder brother's younger sons will rank before them. The archbishops, and the chancellor, and the great officers of state, rank above dukes, not of royal blood, but their rank is that of office only: the dukes, in family rank, are commonly much above the archbishops and chancellor. Thus far our rule, I believe, differs little from that of other European courts: what follows is peculiar to ourselves. The peers, all equal in legal, differ in ceremonial rank. The sons of peers of the higher orders rank above the peers themselves of the lower orders; but, superior thus in ceremonial rank, they are in legal rank inferior. For the sons of all peers, even of the blood royal, being commoners, while in ceremonial rank they may be above many of the peers, in legal rank they are only peers with the commoners. This implication of the peerage with the body of the people, is the advantageous circumstance which has particularly struck M. de Calonne. But there is another thing, which perhaps not less strongly marks the wise moderation of our ancestors, to whom we owe the present order of things. No distinction between subjects can be really more essential than the being or not being members of the legislative body; yet the rank of a member of parliament is known neither to the law, nor to the ceremonial of the country. Among untitled commoners, indeed, there is no distinction of rank that can be very exactly defined; and yet a distinction always subsists in public opinion, decided partly, and perhaps sometimes too much, by wealth, partly by consideration given to birth, connections, or character, which, upon the whole, perhaps more than under any other government, preserves the subordination necessary to the well-being of large societies.

our writers,* to reinstate Plato and Aristotle at the head of the ranks of science, have been coolly 'received; and the moderns in general have acquiesced in their own preeminence. There seems, indeed, some reason for this decision in our favour and it will be readily acknowledged that, within a century or two, we have greatly extended the bounds of knowledge, by contenting ourselves with slow but sure advances, and by relying upon fact and experiment in preference to conjecture and hypothesis. I cannot help thinking, however, that although we have shown many of the ancient systems to be merely the creatures of imagination, we have in some cases concluded much too hastily; and unreasonably denied the existence of that knowledge, which we have not been at the pains of acquiring.

These observations seem to me to be sufficiently applicable to the science of physiognomy; a science which, though practised by Pythagoras,+ defended by Socrates, approved by Plato, and treated by Aristotle, is hardly mentioned at present but in conjunction with magic, alchemy, and judicial astrology. Without any pretensions, however, to a knowledge of physiognomy, as a science, myself, I have always regarded it in a light more respectable; and as the recently-published work of M. La

xx. 4.

vater seems to have excited a considerable degree of attention on the continent, the society, perhaps, will not be displeased, if I lay before them such literary observations respecting the progress of physiognomy as my reading has suggested.

**

There has been some dispute respecting the etymology of the term, some deriving it fromQuos and γιγνωσκω to know; others from φυσις and yvwμ an index; others from Quois and youn a mark: according to these last derivations, physiognomy will be a knowledge of nature from the indices or marks of it. This extended signification to which the etymology of the word leads, I have noticed, because I think it is remotely connected with the doctrine of signatures.

For the same reason it may be worth while to mention the controversies respecting the definition of physiognomy. The ancients seem to have confined physiognomy to man, or at least to animated nature. Thus Aristotle,++ Nunc au tem dicam ex quibus generibussigna accipiantur: et sint omnia; ex motibus enim physiognomizant et ex figuris et coloribus, et ex moribus apparentibus in facie, et ex levitate, et ex voce, et ex carne, et ex partibus, et ex figuro totius corporis. So Cicero,‡‡ Hominum mores naturasque, ex corpore, oculis, vultu, fronte, pernoscere. To the same purpose Aulus Gellius, ff Idverbum significat mores naturasque hominum

Harris, Monboddo. † Auli Gelli, lib. i. cap. 9. Cic. de Fat. v. et Tusc. Quæst. § in Timæo.

Physiognom. Aristotle's Physiognomy has been suspected as spurious, but without sufficient reason. Diogenes Laert. quotes it, lib. v. ** Vossius Etymolog. et Martini Lexicon sub voce. + Physiognomic. cap. ii. axx wyde yivay ra enfria. &c. originals and translations of all the passages quoted would Latin versions only of the Greek quotations.

De Fato, v. §§ Lib i. cap. 9.

VOL. XXXIII.

Сс

To save the room that the occupy, I have given the

hominum conjectatione quadam, de oris et vultus ingenio, deque totius corporis filo atque habitu sciscitari.

But when the study of physiognomy was revived in the middle ages, the comprehensiveness of the etymological meaning (as I imagine) led those who treated on the subject, to indulge the prevailing taste for the marvellous, and extend the signification of the word far beyond the ancient limits. This seems to have been particularly the case among those naturalists who adopted the theory of signatures. Hence phy siognomy came to signify the knowledge of the internal properties of any corporeal being from the external appearances. Thus Joannes Baptista Porta, a physiognomist and philosopher of great note, wrote a treatise concerning the physiognomy of plants (Phytognomonica) throughout which he uses physiognomy as the generic term. The same person, I believe it was, who wrote the treatise de Physiognomia Avium. Gaspar Schottus, in his Magia Physiognomica, makes the physiognomia humana a subdivision of the science. Hen. Alstead adopts also the extensive signification now mentioned. So also does Boyle,† and it seems to have been the common one with us in the time of Hudibras.‡ At present, physiognomy seems to be confined to the knowledge of the moral and intellectual character of human

In his Cyclopædia.

creatures, from their external man ners and appearance.

These variations of the meaning, however, it was proper to notice, not only for the reason before assigned, but because the definition of physiognomy was a subject of long discussion between two modern authors of some note, in the Berlin Transactions, M. Pernetty and M. le Catt. The former insisted that all knowledge whatever was merely physiognomy; and the latter, as unreasonably, confined it to the subject of the human face. M. Pernetty's second memoir is entirely occupied in defending the extensive significa. tion he has annexed to the term, and which had been controverted by M. le Catt. The subject did not drop here: soon after appeared the celebrated treatise of M. Lavater, who, although he expressly defines physiognomy the art of discovering the interior of a man by means of his exterior, does more than countenance the extended signification of the term adopted by M. Pernetty. This work produced an attack upon physiognomy itself, in the memoirs of the same academy, for the year 1775, by M. Formey, who bestowed a great deal of pains in controverting the extent which M. Lavater had assigned to his favourite science. The common idea annexed to physiognomy, beforementioned, seems, upon the whole,

as

+ Experimental History of Mineral Waters; appendix. s. 4. "And I have sometimes fancied there may be a physiognomy of many, if not of most, other natural bodies as well as of human faces, whereby an attentive and experienced considerer may himself discern in them many instructive things, that he cannot so declare to another man as to make him discern them too."

They'll find i' th' physiognomies

O' the planets all mens' destinies. § For the years 1769 and 1770.

Ibid. p. 33, and vol. ii. p. 89.

|| Vol. i. p 22, of the French edition, 4to.

as proper as any that have been given.

I do not find any authority sufficient to conclude that physiognomy was treated as a science (at least in Greece) before the time of Pytha goras. Of him it is asserted by Aulus Gellius,* Ordo atque ratio Pythagoræ ac deinceps Familia, successionis ejus recipiendi instituendique discipulos hujusmodi fuisse traditur. Jam a principio Adolescentes qui sese addiscendum obtulerunt &QvoiyvoμOVE. Idverbum significat mores naturasque hominum conjectatione quâdam, de oris et vultusingenio deque totius corporis filo atque habitu sciscitari. It is not improbable (if this be true) that Pythagoras acquired a great part of his physiognomical knowledge, and his attachment to that science, during his travels; the Indians and Egyptians being great professors of physiognomy.

In the time of Socrates, it appears not only to have been studied as a science, but adopted as a profession, of which the known story of the judgment passed upon Socrates by Zopyrus is a sufficient proof; subsequently it was noticed by Plato, and expressly treated by Aristotle in a distinct book. As this forms a kind of literary epoch in the science of physiognomy, it

may be worth while to give a brief outline of Aristotle's sentiments on the subject.

He observes (in substance), that the subject had been treated in three different ways. That some physiognomists classed animals into genera, and ascribed a certain corporeal appearance, and a corresponding mental disposition to each genus. Others distinguished still further, and divided the genera into species. Thus, among men they distinguished the Egyptians, the Thracians, and the Scythians, and wherever else there was a known difference in habits and manners, and assigned the physiognomic marks accordingly. Some decided more from the actions and manners of the individual, taking for granted that such and such manners proceeded from such and such dispositions. His own method of considering the subject was this: there is always a peculiar disposition of mind attendant on a peculiar form of body: so that there is never found a human mind in the corporeal form of any beast. Again, it is evident that the mind and the body act mutually on each other. Thus in the cases of intoxication, sickness, and mania, the mind is affected by the affections of the body. In fear, sorrow, joy,

&c.

• Lib. i. cap. 9.-Proclus in Alcib. prim. Plat.-Iamb. in vit. Pythag. sub init. + Nicostratus, speaking of the Indians, in his book de Nuptiis, says, that in marrying they judge of their wives by their appearance, and declare they are never deceived. Among the physiognomical marks he mentions these :-benigni enim oculi summam animi pulchritudinem comitantur, et fieri solet ut qui non excandescit, nec facilè irascitur, aut bile movetur, faciem splendidam serenamque habet. Malignus et dolosus verò, statim et oculis transverse implucidèque tuetur. Qui stolidus ac simplex est, pupillas et oculos patentes gerit ut asini et oves. Cui supercilia conjungatur improbus est. Cujus superficies in vultu non rubet, sed obscura caliginosaque est nunquam ullo modo exhilaratur. Ceterum ejusmodi notæ, non modo virginibus et mulieribus, sed etiam viris insunt. Raynaudi Moral. Discip. p. 367. See also Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. lib. iii. cap. 30, p. 83. woλλa pesv yap os opladμas, &c. et lib. iii. cap. 5. + ALYUTUTIONS for yag rais wari, &c. Gronov. Not. in Aul. Gell. lib. i. cap. 9. from the physiognomy of Adamantius. See also Jambl. in Vit. Pythag. lib. i. cap. 17 παρασκευασω εν ω δε αυτώ, &c.

$ Cic. de Fato, v.

In his Timæus.

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