the looking-glass. So far physiognomy be- only way to prevent it from making a full stop would be to put a lock upon the shutter, and deliver the key to the Physician. But upon Dr. Gall's theory how many and what obvious advantages result! Nor are they merely confined to the purposes of speculative physiognomy; the uses of his theory as applied to practice offer to us hopes scarcely less delightful than those which seemed to dawn upon mankind with the discovery of the gasses, and with the commencement of the French Revolution, and in these later days with the progress of the Bible Society. In courts of Justice, for instance, how beautifully would this new science supply any little deficiency of evidence upon trial! If a man were arraigned for murder, and the case were doubtful, but he were found to have a decided organ for the crime, it would be of little matter whether he had committed the specific fact in the indictment or not; for hanging, if not applicable as punishment, would be proper for prevention. Think also in State Trials what infinite advantages an Attorney General might derive from the opinion of a Regius Professor of Craniology! Even these are but partial benefits. Our Generals, Mi It must be admitted that if this learned German's theory of craniology be well founded, the Gods have devised a much surer, safer, and more convenient means for discovering the real characters of the Lords and Ladies of the creation, than what Momus proposed, when he advised that a window should be placed in the breast. For if his advice had been followed, and there had actually been a window in the sternum, — it is, I think, beyond all doubt that a windowshutter would soon have been found indis-nisters, and Diplomatists would then unpensably necessary in cold climates, more especially in England, where pulmonary complaints are so frequent; and, secondly, the wind would not be more injurious to the lungs in high latitudes, than the sun would be to the liver in torrid regions; indeed, every where during summer it would be impossible to exist without a green curtain, or Venetian blinds to the window; and after all, take what precautions we might, the world would be ten times more bilious than it is. Another great physical inconvenience would also have arisen; for if men could peep into their insides at any time, and see the motions and the fermentations which are continually going on, and the rise and progress of every malady distinctly marked in the changes it produced, so many nervous diseases would be brought on by frequent inspection, and so many derangements from attempting to regulate the machine, that the erringly be chosen by the outside of the head, though a criterion might still be wanted to ascertain when it was too thick and when too thin. But the greatest advantages are those which this new system would afford to education; for by the joint efforts of Dr. Gall and Mr. Edgeworth we should be able to breed up men according to any pattern which Parents or Guardians might think proper to bespeak. The Doctor would design the mould, and Mr. Edgeworth, by his skill in mechanics, devise with characteristic ingenuity the best means of making and applying it. As soon as the child was born the professional cap, medical, military, theological, commercial, or legal, would be put on, and thus he would be perfectly prepared for Mr. Edgeworth's admirable system of professional education. I will pursue this subject no farther than just to hint that the materials of the mould may operate sympa thetically, and therefore that for a lawyer in rus the cap should be made of brass, for a divine of lead, for a politician of basemetal, for a soldier of steel, and for a sailor of heart of English oak. Dr. Gall would doubtless require the naked head to be submitted to him for judgement. Contrariwise I opine,—and all the Ladies will agree with me in this opinion, that the head ought neither to be stript, nor even examined in undress, but that it should be taken with all its accompaniments, when the owner has made the best of it, the accompaniments being not unfrequently more indicative than the features themselves. Long ago the question whether a man is most like himself drest or undrest, was propounded to the British Apollo; and it was answered by the Oracle that a man of God Almighty's making is most like himself when undrest; but a man of a tailor's, periwigmaker's, and sempstress's making, when drest. The Oracle answered rightly; for no man can select his own eyes, nose, or mouth, but his wig and his whiskers are of his own choosing. And to use an illustrious instance, how much of character is there in that awful wig which alway in its box accompanies Dr. Parr upon his visits of ceremony, that it may be put on in the hall, with all its feathery honours thick upon it, not a curl deranged, a hair flattened, or a particle of powder wasted on the way! But if we would form a judgement of the interior of that portentous head which is thus formidably obumbrated, how could it be done so well as by beholding the Doctor among his books, and there seeing the food upon which his terrific intellect is fed. There we should see the accents, quantities, dialects, digammas, and other such small gear as in these days constitute the complete armour of a perfect scholar; and by thus discovering what goes into the head we might form a fair estimate of what was likely to come out of it. This is a truth which, with many others of equal importance, will be beautifully elucidated in this nonpareil history. For Daniel Dove, the Father, had a collection of books; they were not so nu merous as those of his contemporary Harley, famous for his library, and infamous for the Peace of Utrecht; but he was perfectly conversant with all their contents, which is more than could be said of the Earl of Oxford. Reader, whether thou art man, woman, or child, thou art doubtless acquainted with the doctrine of association as inculcated by the great Mr. Locke and his disciples. But never hast thou seen that doctrine so richly and so entirely exemplified as in this great history, the association of ideas being, in oriental phrase, the silken thread upon which its pearls are strung. And never wilt thou see it so clearly and delightfully illustrated, not even if the ingenious Mr. John Jones should one day give to the world the whole twelve volumes in which he has proved the authenticity of the Gospel History, by bringing the narratives of the Four Evangelists to the test of Mr. Locke's metaphysics. "Desultoriness," says Mr. Danby, “may often be the mark of a full head; connection must proceed from a thoughtful one." d'Arthur therefore he received for authentic history, just as he did the painful chronicle of honest John Stowe, and the Barnesian labours of Joshua the self-satisfied: there was nothing in it indeed which stirred his English blood like the battles of Cressy and Poictiers and Najara; yet on the whole he preferred it to Barnes's story, believed in Sir Tor, Sir Tristram, Sir Lancelot and Sir Lamorack as entirely as in Sir John Chandos, the Captal de Buche and the Black Prince, and liked them better. and Pliny's Natural History, two goodly folios, full as an egg of meat, and both translated by that old worthy Philemon, who for the service which he rendered to his contemporaries and to his countrymen deserves to be called the best of the Hollands, without disparaging either the Lord or the Doctor of that appellation. The whole works of Joshua Sylvester (whose name, let me tell the reader in passing, was accented upon the first syllable by his contemporaries, not as now upon the second); -Jean Petit's History of the Netherlands, translated and continued by Edward Grimeston, another worthy of the Philemon order; Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses; Stowe's Chronicle; Joshua Barnes's Life of Edward III.; "Ripley Revived by Eirenæus Philalethes, an Englishman styling himself Citizen of the World," with its mysterious frontispiece representing the Domus Naturæ, to which, Nil deest, nisi clavis: the Pilgrim's Progress: two volumes of Ozell's translation of Rabe-collocations afforded to this reader. The lais; Latimer's Sermons; and the last volume of Fox's Martyrs, which latter book had been brought him by his wife. The Pilgrim's Progress was a godmother's present to his son: the odd volumes of Rabelais he had picked up at Kendal, at a sale, in a lot with Ripley Revived and Plutarch's Morals: the others he had inherited. Daniel had looked into all these books, read most of them, and believed all that he read, except Rabelais, which he could not tell what to make of. He was not, however, one of those persons who complacently suppose every thing to be nonsense, which they do not perfectly comprehend, or flatter themselves that they do. His simple heart judged of books by what they ought to be, little knowing what they are. It never occurred to him that any thing would be printed which was not worth printing, any thing which did not convey either reasonable delight or useful instruction: and he was no more disposed to doubt the truth of what he read, than to question the veracity of his neighbour, or any one who had no interest in deceiving him. A book carried with it to him authority in its very aspect. The Morte | Latimer and Du Bartas he used sometimes to read aloud on Sundays; and if the departed take cognizance of what passes on earth, and poets derive any satisfaction from that posthumous applause which is generally the only reward of those who deserve it, Sylvester might have found some compensation for the undeserved neglect into which his works had sunk, by the full and devout delight which his rattling rhymes and quaint silver-tongued Sylvester, however, was reserved for a Sabbath book; as a week-day author Daniel preferred Pliny, for the same reason that bread and cheese, or a rasher of hung mutton, contented his palate better than a syllabub. He frequently regretted that so knowing a writer had never seen or heard of Wethercote and Yordas caves; the ebbing and flowing spring at Giggleswick, Malham Cove, and Gordale Scar, that he might have described them among the wonders of the world. Omne ignotum pro magnifico is a maxim which will not in all cases hold good. There are things which we do not undervalue because we are familiar with them, but which are admired the more the more thoroughly they are known and understood; it is thus with the grand objects of nature and the finest works of art,—with whatsoever is truly great and excellent. Daniel was not deficient in imagination; but no description of places which he had never seen, however exaggerated (as such things always are) impressed him so strongly as these objects in his own neighbourhood, which he had known from childhood. Three or four times in his life it had happened that strangers with a curiosity as uncommon in that age as it is general in this, came from afar to visit these wonders of the West Riding, and Daniel accompanied them with a delight such as he never experienced on any other occasion. But the Author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, of whose works he was lucky enough to possess the worthier half: if the other had perished Plutarch would not have been a popular writer, but he would have held a higher place in the estimation of the judicious. Daniel could have posed a candidate for university honours, and perhaps the examiner too, with some of the odd learning which he had stored up in his memory from these great repositories of ancient knowledge. Refusing all reward for such services, the strangers to whom he officiated as a guide, though they perceived that he was an extraordinary person, were little aware how much information he had acquired, and of how strange a kind. His talk with them did not go beyond the subjects which the scenes they came to visit naturally suggested, and they wondered more at the questions he asked, than at any thing which he advanced himself. For his disposition was naturally shy, and that which had been bashfulness in youth assumed the appearance of reserve as he advanced in life; for having none to communicate with upon his favourite studies, he lived in an intellectual world of his own, a mental solitude as complete as that of Alexander Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe. Even to the Curate his conversation, if he had touched upon his books, would have been heathen Greek; and to speak the truth plainly, without knowing a letter of that language, he knew more about the Greeks, than nine-tenths of the clergy at that time, including all the dissenters, and than nine-tenths of the schoolmasters also. Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which so usually and so unpleasantly characterizes self-taught men. In fact he was by no means aware of the extent of his acquirements, all that he knew in this kind having been acquired for amusement not for use. He had never attempted to teach him self any thing. These books had lain in his way in boyhood, or fallen in it afterwards, and the perusal of them, intently as it was followed, was always accounted by him to be nothing more than recreation. None of his daily business had ever been neglected for it; he cultivated his fields and his garden, repaired his walls, looked to the stable, tended his cows and salved his sheep, as diligently and as contentedly as if he had possessed neither capacity nor inclination for any higher employments. Yet Daniel was one of those men, who, if disposition and aptitude were not overruled by circumstances, would have grown pale with study, instead of being bronzed and hardened by sun and wind and rain. There were in him undeveloped talents which might have raised him to distinction as an antiquary, a virtuoso of the Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian, to whichever course the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. But he had not a particle of envy in his composition. He thought indeed that if he had had grammar learning in his youth like the curate, he would have made more use of it; but there was nothing either of the sourness or bitterness (call it which you please) of repining in this natural reflection. Never indeed was any man more contented with doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. And well he might be so, for no man ever passed through the world with less to disquiet or to sour him. Bred up in habits which secured the continuance of that humble but sure independence to which he was born, he had never known what it was to be anxious for the future. At the age of twenty-five he had brought home a wife, the daughter of a little landholder like himself, with fifteen pounds for her portion: and the true-love of his youth proved to him a faithful helpmate in those years when the dream of life is over, and we live in its realities. If at any time there had been some alloy in his happiness, it was when there appeared reason to suppose that in him his family would be extinct; for though no man knows what parental feelings are till he has ex perienced them, and Daniel therefore knew not the whole value of that which he had never enjoyed, the desire of progeny is natural to the heart of man; and though Daniel had neither large estates, nor an illustrious name to transmit, it was an unwelcome thought that the little portion of the earth which had belonged to his fathers time out of mind, should pass into the possession of some stranger, who would tread on their graves and his own without any regard to the dust that lay beneath. That uneasy apprehension was removed after he had been married fifteen years, when to the great joy of both parents, because they had long ceased to entertain any hope of such an event, their wishes were fulfilled in the birth of a son. This their only child was healthy, apt and docile, to all appearance as happily disposed in mind and body as a father's heart could wish. If they had fine weather for winning their hay or shearing their corn, they thanked God for it; if the season proved unfavourable, the labour was only a little the more and the crop a little the worse. Their stations secured them from want, and they had no wish beyond it. What more had Daniel to desire? The following passage in the divine Du Bartas he used to read with peculiar satisfaction, applying it to himself: O thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares Never pale Envy's poisony heads do hiss To gnaw his heart: nor Vulture Avarice: His fields' bounds, bound his thoughts: he never sups For sweet ambrosia deadly arsenic : His hand's his bowl (better than plate or glass) False counsellors (concealers of the law) Turncoat attorneys that with both hands draw; Sly pettifoggers, wranglers at the bar, Proud purse-leeches, harpies of Westminster With feigned-chiding, and foul jarring noise, Break not his brain, nor interrupt his joys; But cheerful birds chirping him sweet good-morrows With nature's music do beguile his sorrows; Teaching the fragrant forests day by day The diapason of their heavenly lay. His wandering vessel, reeling to and fro On th' ireful ocean (as the winds do blow) With sudden tempest is not overwhurled, To seek his sad death in another world: But leading all his life at home in peace, Always in sight of his own smoke, no seas No other seas he knows, no other torrent, Than that which waters with its silver current His native meadows: and that very earth Shall give him burial which first gave him birth. To summon timely sleep, he doth not need Æthiop's cold rush, nor drowsy poppy-seed; Nor keep in consort (as Mecænas did) Luxurious Villains (Viols I should have said); But on green carpets thrum'd with mossy bever, Fringing the round skirts of his winding river, The stream's mild murmur, as it gently gushes, His healthy limbs in quiet slumber hushes. Drum fife and trumpet, with their loud alarms, Make him not start out of his sleep, to arms; Nor dear respect of some great General, Him from his bed unto the block doth call. The crested cock sings "Hunt-is-up" to him, Limits his rest, and makes him stir betime, To walk the mountains and the flow'ry meads Impearl'd with tears which great Aurora sheds. Never gross air poisoned in stinking streets, To choke his spirit, his tender nostril meets; But th' open sky where at full breath he lives, Still keeps him sound, and still new stomach gives. And Death, dread Serjeant of the Eternal Judge, Comes very late to his sole-seated lodge. CHAPTER VII. P. I. RUSTIC PHILOSOPHY. AN EXPERIMENT UPON MOONSHINE. Quien comienza en juventud A bien obrar, Señal es de no errar En senetud. Proverbios del Marques de Santillana. Ir is not, however, for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion. Having nothing to desire for himself, Daniel's ambition had taken a natural direction and fixed upon his son. He was resolved that the boy should be made a scholar; not with the prospect of advancing him in the See Drayton's Poems, and Nare's Gloss. in v. J. W. W. |