but positively painful. How often are we deceived in this respect, in our first speculation upon any human countenance! and how permanently do we return to interpret the sign by the qualities we find it to signify, and to feel it either beautiful or otherwise by the nature of these qualities! The aversion which mankind have ever shewn to the painting of the countenance, has thus a real foundation in nature. It is a sign, which deceives, and, what is worse, which is intended to deceive. It never can harmonize with the genuine character of the countenance; it never can vary with those unexpected incidents which give us our best insight into human character; and it never can be practised but by those who have no character but that which fashion lends them, or those who wish to affect a character different from their own. The same observation may be extended to the colours of the eye. If we had no other principles of judgment than some original law of our nature, certain colours, or degrees of colouring, would alone be permanently beautiful. How little this is the case; how much we appreciate the language of the eye, on the contrary, and how strikingly its beauty is determined by the emotions or passions it signifies, I leave very securely to my readers to verify by their own experience.

In the variable colours of the countenance, or those which arise from present or transitory feelings, the same fact is easily discernible. No things, in point of colouring, are so analogous as the blush of modesty, and that of conscious guilt; yet, when we know the emotions they signify, is their effect the same? The paleness of fear is beautiful, because it is ever interesting, in the female countenance. Tell us, that it arises froin some trivial or absurd cause, and it becomes immediately ridiculous. There is a colour of indignation or of scorn,

which may accord with the most heroic beauty; say to us, that it arises from some childish source of etiquette or precedence, and our sentiment of beauty is instantly converted into disgust. There is a softness and langour both in the light and in the motion of the eye, which we never see without deep interest, when we consider it as expressive of general sensibility, or of occasional sorrow. Tell us, that it is affectation, that it is the manner of the ill-judging fair one who has adopted it, and instead of interest, we feel nothing but contempt. Illustrations of this kind might be easily extended to every emotion or passion of the human mind. I leave them to the prosecution of my readers; and I flatter myself, they will see that such varieties in our sense of beauty could never exist, if there were any certain and definite colours in the human countenance, which alone were originally and permanently beautiful.

PART II.

Of the Features of the Human Countenance.

THERE is a similar division of the features of the countenance of men, as of its colours, into what may be called (though with some restriction) the permanent and the variable. The permanent features are such as give the individual distinction, or form the peculiar character of the countenance in moments of tranquillity and repose. Such are the peculiar form of the head, the proportion of the face, the forms of the forehead, eyebrows, nose, cheeks, mouth, and chin, with their relation to the forms of the neck, shoulders, &c. The variable features are such forms of the permanent features, as are assumed under the influence of occasional or temporary passions, as the contracted brow of anger, the elevated eye-brow

of surprise, the closed eyelids of mirth, the open eye of astonishment, the raised lip of cheerfulness, the depressed lip of sorrow, &c. &c.

With both of these appearances, I apprehend that we have distinct and powerful associations; or in other words, that they are expressive to us, either directly or indirectly, of qualities of mind capable of producing emotion.

1. Such forms in the countenance, have expression to us simply as forms, and are beautiful upon the same principles, as I have endeavoured to illustrate. Independent of all direct expression, small, smooth, and welloutlined features, are expressive of delicacy or fineness. Harsh and prominent features, with a coarse and imperfect outline, of imperfection, roughness, and coarseness. The union of the features (perhaps the most important of all physical observations,) admits, in the same manner, either of a flowing and undulating outline, or of harsh and angular conjunction. The first is ever expressive to us of ease, freedom, and of fineness, the second of stillness, of constraint, and of imperfection. These indi rect expressions prevail, not indeed over the more direct expressions which intimacy or knowledge gives: but that they govern us in some degree with regard to those who are strangers to us; that we are disposed to attribute to the character of those who are unknown to us, the character which their physical features exhibit; and that even with regard to those we love most, we are sometimes apt to lament that the form of their features is so little expressive of their character, are facts which every one knows, and which need not be illustrated.

2. Such forms of features are, in general, directly expressive to us of particular characters or dispositions of mind. That certain appearances or conformations of the

features of the human countenance, are significant of certain qualities or distinctions of mind, is a fact which every child knows, even in its nurse's arms, and which, whether it arises from any original instinct, or from experience, is yet sufficient to establish a natural language, long before any artificial language is formed or understood. There are probably three sources from which these associations arise: 1st, The expression of physical form, which I have just stated: 2dly, Experience of the uniform connexion of such appearances with certain characters or dispositions of the human mind; a fact of which no evidence can be greater than that of the distinction which the infant makes between the countenance of children, of women, and of men: and 3dly, The ob.. servation of the influence which habitual passions have upon the permanent conformation of the features, and the consequent belief that the sign indicates the disposition usually signified.

Of the variable features it is unnecessary to enter into any explanation. That the human countenance possesses a degree of expression in this respect, beyond every other animated being; that, in its genuine state, it is the mirror of whatever passes in the mind; and that all that is great or lovely in human character may there be read, even by the material eye, are truths which every one knows, and upon which the painter, the sculptor, and the poet, have formed the most exquisite productions of their arts. I cannot therefore fatigue my readers with any enumeration of effects which all have known, and all must have felt.

That the beauty or sublimity of the forms which oc cur to us in the features of the human countenance arises from such expressions alone, and not from any original beauty in such forms themselves, may perhaps be evident from the following illustrations.

1. If there were any original beauty in peculiar forms of this kind, altogether independent of the expressions of mind we associate with them, it would necessarily fol low, that the same forms of features would be permanently beautiful, and that every form that deviated from this original and prescribed form would, in the same degree, deviate from the form of beauty.

The slightest experience is, I apprehend, sufficient to shew the falsehood of this opinion. It is impossible to conceive a greater difference than takes place in the same being, in the form and construction and proportion of features, than that which uniformly takes place in the progress of man from infancy to old age. In this progress there is not a single feature which is not changed in form, in size, or in proportion to the rest: yet in all these, we not only discover beauty, but what is more important, we discover it, at different ages, in forms different, if not opposite, from those in which we had discovered it before. The round cheek, the tumid lip, the unmarked eye-brow, &c. which are all so beautiful in infancy, yield to the muscular cheek, the firm and con-: tracted lip, the dark and prominent eye-brow, and all the opposite forms which create the beauty of manhood. It is again the want of all this muscular power, and the new change of all the forms which it induces; the collapsed check, the trembling lip, the grey eye-brow, &c. which constitute the beauty of age. The poet and the painter know it; but were they, from any visionary theory, to alter these signatures of expression; were they to give to. manhood the features of infancy, however beautiful, or to age those of manhood, however eloquently commented upon, is there any one who, for a moment, could look upon their representations? It is needless for me to say, that the same observation extends equally to the features