Mr. Combe has not hesitated to confer upon the perceptive organs of Form, Size, Weight, and Colour, the functions of the intense passions of beauty, and emotions of grace and harmony. There is here little squeamishness about comprising the functions of the Sentiments and the Intellectual Faculties in one organ of mere perception. When Mr. Combe could suppose, that the exquisite feelings produced by gazing on the golden sun, the verdant earth, or the burnished sea, arose from the organs which perceived these objects; he might, with equal propriety, have traced to them, and not to Cautiousness, Benevolence, or Ideality, the fear, or the pity, or the sense of sublimity, which the forked lightning, or the havoc of war or pestilence, stir within us. But the proposition is so manifestly false, that its refutation requires small amount of argument. A perceptive faculty has no sense,-it does not feel, it has no emotions, it is not passionate. There is a sense of beauty,—we feel it, we have a passion for it; and that settles the whole question.

The word beauty is simply a name, denoting a general principle, in which a number of particulars agree. Green, red, blue, are individual qualities, agreeing in the possession of one feature, to which we give the name, Colour. A number of emotions resemble each other in this, that they are pleasant or agreeable, and these we classify under the general name of Sense of Beauty; the objects which excite it being called beautiful. Beauty is in the mind, then, not in matter; and all that the most sturdy supporters of the laws of beauty can contend for, is, that by a fixed and invariable law of mind, the objects which excite pleasure in one breast, do so in all; and that the harmonies of colour, tone, or form, are determinate, the sense of all mankind concurring in pleasing emotions on the presentation of certain objects. "The mineralogist, when he talks of the beauty of his crystals, has a distinct and intelligible feeling, to which the name of beauty is legitimately applied; and yet he connects no human emotions with the pyramids, and rhombs, and octagons which he contemplates in the spars." Mr. Combe cites this case as an example of a sense of beauty in the organ of Form. Now, let us conceive the best draughtsman in Europe, with an enormous developement of Form, to be asked by Mr. Combe if he perceived great beauty in the pyramids, rhombs, and octagons of the spars? His answer would be, "I know nothing of the science to which they relate, and care nothing for them whatever." The mineralogist would not be in the least disconcerted at this answer, because his admiration of his spars is the result of associating them with his scientific principles. His pleasure is not derived from the mere forms, or dependent on the forms at all. It arises from finding minerals taking such shapes. Cut a piece of wood into the most perfect rhomb, pyramid, or octagon in the world, preserving all the forms which are said to have given him so much delight, and he would care as little for them as a painter would for his crystals; or, draw them on paper, and he would entirely disregard them. His sense of their beauty had solely an intellectual and scientific origin, associating the external symbols of his studies with the harmonious arrangement and well defined laws of his natural philosophy. The nations that possess this sense of beauty most intensely, are just those which possess the highest intellect and most powerful sentiments. It is only when the most shadowy and filmy thoughts are caught by superior fervour of conception, definiteness of expression, and exactness of arrangement-when the mind begins to articulate its feelings, and to reason and force itself into fixed ideas about what is most evanescent and fanciful, that any thing like an abiding sense of the beautiful is felt, and reduced to orderly expression. Were there, in the world around us, fixed principles of harmony or beauty, our natural perceptions would detect them, without the aid of artificial education. But the very essence of our emotions of beauty is obviously acquired. There is no sound reason for that rule of proportion, whereby it is indispensable that the legs should be twice the length of the trunk, and the trunk twice the size of the head, except that such proportion is the general average. But had Nature made it otherwise, our minds, even constituted as they are at present, would have been as well pleased; and accordingly, although this rule of proportion does not hold in the case of the bear or the crocodile, we see nothing objectionable in the alteration. A statue in modern costume, is thought disgusting. Why? Because the habiliments of Greece or Rome are the prescribed garments; and the jacket and turban we admire so much on the Turk, would in our eyes only serve to make Apollo or Hampden ridiculous. That some forms and colours should meet with pretty general acceptation, is not wonderful. The sun or moon would soon

suggest an attachment to the circle, the crescent, or the arch; waving lines are types of the sea; the earth is clad in green; while the rainbow and the clouds, at sunset or sunrise, have mellow tints that all the world may love, except indeed the Laplander or Greenlander, who sigh for their hut in the icy waste, where the sun "Shoots through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams."

While we deny that the perceptive faculties can produce emotions of beauty, we are inclined to suspect that there are some laws of natural association betwixt each of the passions, and the love of, and aversion for certain forms, shapes, and colours. Amativeness admires the soft, voluptuous beauty; Self-Esteem, the maid in whose dilated nostril is "beautiful disdain;" Cautiousness is enamoured of pensive timidity; Benevolence loves a countenance of benignity; while Secretiveness and Hope, kneeling at the feet of Thalia, gaze on her

Thus the sense of beauty changes with the hues of the passions, and is always regulated by the predominant; and thus a painter, like an actor, can only succeed in giving adequate expression, by being possessed in power with the passion which the countenance he undertakes to paint betrays. The basis of all is Amativeness. Before puberty, there is no sense of human beauty; and in extreme old age it dies away. When this organ is moderately developed, ugliness, or deformity, as well as symmetry, will be indifferent. We believe all great painters and sculptors to possess large Amativeness,—and we think their biography will prove this position satisfactorily.

The passions seem to have their peculiar shades and colours. The bull's Destructiveness is roused by scarlet. Hope is fond of light, and glaring colours. Cautiousness affects sober and subdued tints, and when much excited seems to shun the light. When joined to Veneration, it is fond of sombre and gloomy shading; and when to Wonder, it seeks a lurid glare. We talk of a person of a gloomy disposition, without metaphor; and melancholy has actually built up its windows, and lived in the dark; while the contemplative, like Burns, love to walk in bleak winter nights, through avenues of trees, hearing the winds moaning through the branches. There are some sounds which make the mind solemn, and others merry; and black colours lead to grief. These we think universal associations betwixt the passions, and the elements of the external world. Now, if this be so, it is not wonderful that we should hear of harmonies of sound or of colour. There are also harmonies of emotion. When a man is in deep grief, mirth or jocularity disgust him, because they do not harmonise with his existing mood. If, then, we suppose sorrow to be fond of dark shades, and joy to affect bright hues, we can be at no loss to perceive, that by associating colours with passions, the sudden juxta-position of deep shades and bright tints will be as disagreeable, as joy and grief excited at the same moment. "Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom Accords with my soul's sadness."

"Horrors now are not unpleasing to me:

I like this rocking of the battlements!

Rage on, ye winds, waves roll, and thunders roar;

Ye bear a just resemblance to my fortune,
And suit the gloomy habit of my soul!"

Allegro.

"To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled morn doth rise;
While the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin;
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn,
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn;
Sometimes walking not unseen,
By hedgerow-elms and hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in richest liveries dight."

Penseroso.

"Thus night oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited morn appear;

Not trick'd, and frounced as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But 'kerchief'd in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud;
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess! bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves-
Of pine or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe, with heavy stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hollow haunt,
Hide me from day's garish eye!"

We shall only here further observe, that it is not wonderful that there should be recognised rules of proportion, figure, and harmony of colour or of tone, when we consider the tendency of the mind to associate with the objects of its attention, relations which only exist in the intellect itself. How long were the Unities reckoned indispensable to the drama, as rules based on the unalterable laws of human conception! How long did Aristotle and Longinus and Quinctilian manage to impose upon the world canons of taste which are now universally exploded! How often do we find Germany reducing mere whims to rules, and erecting a science out of nothing! How do we find the Romanticists and Classicists in composition, scouting each other's pretensions, and each claiming for themselves all that existed of truth and passion in human nature! And how do we find, at home, house-painting vindicated as a science, and the laws of harmonious colouring as confidently supported, in their pretensions to infallibility, as the Newtonian theory of the universe!

CHAPTER XIII.

FACULTIES OF RELATIVE PERCEPTION.

SECTION I-Organ XXVII. Locality.

THE lower animals have a singular precision in the perception of geographical direction, or the points of the compass. The swallow flies eighteen hundred miles over sea, far and for days out of sight of land, yet it never mistakes the north for the south, but year after year returns to its former nest. The same is the case with all birds of passage, which, when insect food becomes scarce in one climate, fly to another where at certain seasons it is plentiful. That this is the motive for these migrations, is proved by the observations of many travellers. The present Lord President of the Court of Session in Scotland, remembers, about forty years ago, of visiting the Carron Iron-works in the depth of a severe winter. There was a pond in the immediate neighbourhood of the immense furnaces of the establishment, and the temperature was mild, and even warm, over and around it. In consequence of this, it swarmed with insects even at that season, and a number of swallows were busily flying over and around the pond seizing their prey. When his Lordship remarked this circumstance to the men, they said, "We never want swallows here." But to return: Dogs have been taken in close carriages over sea thousands of miles, and have found their way by a totally different route to their former habitation. Pigeons carried from England to France in a bag, return to their home the instant they are set free. The falcon of Iceland carried south to an enormous distance, whenever let loose, flies sheer up into the air, and sails on the wind due north. An ass thrown overboard, swam ashore, landed on a strange and distant coast, and found its way, through many difficulties, to its home in Gibraltar. Holman, the blind traveller, knew all the intricacies of London better than his servant did. Great astronomers, navigators, and geographers, as Newton, Tycho Brahé, Kepler, Galileo, Columbus, seemed to have an intense perception of direction. The latter had a settled conviction of the latitude in which he would find new continents. We are inclined, therefore, to call this power by the name of the Perception of Polarity, if it may be so termed. Sir George Mackenzie assigns to the organ of Locality, the function of the perception of the relation of position; but the acts of animals and blind persons, the former of which return by a different route to the home from which they were taken hoodwinked, and the latter of whom have no eyes to see the relative position of places, convince us that they are guided simply by a clear conception of direction."

The perception of relative position is the result of the action of more than one organ, and is modified by several varieties of combination. Locality may give the direction, and Size the distance. Form, Language, and Individuality, may see the shapes of houses, remember the names of streets, and connect the order of the series of geographical phenomena. But, of course, the perception of direction is the in

dispensable organ. Great coal-viewers, uniformly possess large Locality; and when at the very bottom of a coal-pit, they have an acute sense of the dip, or inclination, and direction of all the minerals, remembering the points of the compass as if by intuition.

Mr. Combe supposes that this organ produces a talent for chess-playing; and he has found it large in all great geometricians. It is also found large in good landscape painters; and enables persons to take easily the coup d'œil of any country they are passing through. Sir Walter Scott was so accurate in his descriptions of scenery, as to be said to save the painter the trouble of invention. In him this organ was large, but also accompanied with a powerful endowment of Individuality and other perceptive faculties. We confess that we do not see the necessity for this principle in the conception of scenery. Form, Size, Colour, and Weight, acting with Individuality, seem enough to furnish us with the picture of the landscape, as well as to give us the conception of a countenance. Nature has made no relation of place, but has presented us with a picture which, to our mind, Wonder and Form are competent to realise. It is our own minds which have created an artificial relation, in order that objects may be better individualised in our thoughts. Still the subject is one of very difficult analysis.

Drs. Gall and Spurzheim supposed that Locality produced the love of travelling; but we have already assigned sufficient reasons for objecting to the ascription of emotions or passions to a perceptive organ. Besides, if its function be the perception of relative position, it would be infinitely more gratified in threading the intricacies of London or Paris, than in a voyage round the world, in which almost all time is occupied on the wide ocean, where no relations of position are to be found. Yet, great travellers care nothing for crowded cities; nay, we must be permitted to suspect, that Mungo Park, or Vasco de Gamba, would, with all their Locality, manifest much less proficiency in the perception of the relation of position in the Metropolis, than the twopenny postman, or the porters.

Gall describes this organ as being situated a little above the eyes, and on the two sides of the organ of Individuality; being two large prominences commencing near each side of the nose and going obliquely upwards and outwards, almost as high as the middle of the forehead. Under Individuality, it will be found largely developed in the head of Pope Martin V. Vimont remarked, that the asses in Paris found, through the most intricate streets and lanes of the city, their own stable, with unerring precision. In Manchester, where the milk is carried on an ass's back, in pitchers, we observed that the animal stopped with perfect accuracy, and entirely of itself, at each customer's door-going through many streets and lanes, and the milkman lagging behind. In China, an enormous number of the inhabitants live in flat boats upon the rivers: they have, belonging to each boat, vast numbers of ducks, which swim all day long on the water, the flocks being mingled in tens of thousands; yet, at the call of the proprietors, amidst this seeming inextricable confusion, each finds its own boat with perfect precision, and without any difficulty whatever.

SECTION II.-Organ XXVIII. Number.

SEVERAL nations have laid claim to the invention, as historians have termed it, of Arithmetic; and others have commemorated the names of such of their countrymen as have introduced its practical application from foreign sources. Savages are possessed of almost no knowledge of numeration; and some tribes of negroes are ignorant of the simplest relations of figures. Humboldt mentions, that the Chaymas of Spanish America have a total incapacity for figures, even the most intelligent with difficulty getting so far as to count up to fifty. In civilised society, many persons of superior education are not able to attain any proficiency in arithmetic, while many mere children become prodigies in the science of numbers. Devaux, at seven, made all the calculations for the merchants on market-day. A boy of St. Poelton was, at thirteen, exhibited at Vienna as a wonder of arithmetical genius. Mantelli, and Vega, equally attracted Gall's attention in this respect. Bidder, and Colburn, at a very early age electrified all the most expert accountants by their astonishing powers of calculation; and Humboldt's brother was equally distinguished. These persons displayed a total inaptitude for geometry, or any part of mathematics inde

pendent upon figures. In all these cases, Dr. Gall found the external part of the orbitar plate "depressed in such a manner, that the superior orbitar arch is no longer regular, except in its internal part, and external half represents a straight line, which descends obliquely. Hence it follows, that the external part of the eyelid is depressed, and conceals the corresponding part of the eye." Mr. Combe states, that "the organ, when large, fills up the head above and outside of the external angle of the eye, a very little below the point called the external angular process of the frontal bone."

The true function of this organ, it seems by no means easy to discover. So far as our observation goes, we have observed, that the questions solved by these arithmetical sphynxes, were extremely simple as to their terms, although extremely voluminous in the number of their figures. We carefully examined the heads of all the mental calculators, and found Form well developed, Eventuality considerable, and Wit above average,-in Bidder, indeed, enormous. We should expect, therefore, that the latter would best understand complicated questions. We believe this organ to be simply a perception of units, which, when developed to a high extent, will produce a vivid conception of single numbers. This will readily give a perception of the combination of simple units, and these combinations will all be remembered accurately as facts and numeral phenomena. This recollection of all the combinations of numbers presented to the individual, will of course dispense with an enormous amount of analytical labour; for it is clear, that the man who remembers the result of the division or multiplication of one set of figures by another, will calculate much more rapidly than he who, although he has multiplied or divided the same figures a thousand times, is still necessitated to calculate them over again; this, of course, can be done mentally much more rapidly than by a slate, if Form, and Locality, or Order be well developed; and accordingly, the mental calculators state that they see the figures before their eyes as distinctly as if they were on the slate. Where there is only the organ of Number, there will be a capacity for only the simplest orders of calculation; and we should expect, if Eventuality be small, that the combinations of units will not be easily remembered. Wit we should expect to operate in the way of perceiving precisely the conditions of intricate questions. Still, the matter is involved in much doubt, and we place little reliance on the accuracy of the observations hitherto made.

The lower animals are said to count to the extent of three, five, and according to some, the length of nine. This seems by no means satisfactorily authenticated, and we therefore pronounce no opinion on the subject.

SECTION III-Organ XXIX. Order.

THE organ of Order is situated at the external angle of the eye, and its size is indicated by the projection of the eyebrow at this part outward and laterally, and by a general roundness and fulness of the brain at that part. The projection of mere bone at this point is more angular, and may be detected from its want of roundness.

We suspect that Order, in the sense generally understood, is a complex feeling arising from the operation of several faculties; but there also appears to be a perception of objects in the relation of their physical uniformity, which may be considered as more exclusively the attribute of the organ in question. "There are individuals," says Spurzheim, even children, who like to see every piece of furniture, at table every dish, and in their business every article, in its place-who are displeased and unhappy when things are in disorder around them. The Sauvage de l'Aveyron, at Paris, though almost an idiot, could not bear to see a chair or any other article out of its place. As soon as any thing was disarranged, he went of his own accord and put it right." Now, what is here meant by an article being out of its place? Experience informs us of certain physical arrangements which are either the most convenient for our use, most easy for practice, or classified in the best method for retention in the memory. Order, in this case, is simply another term for utility or fitness, and consequently is a complex perception made up of the results of several faculties. This peculiar modification of the perception of Order seems to be the