Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/26

16 resemble her. This is evident in the clear-cut features, and in a lightly hovering expression about the mouth, the lips of which are sensitive and sweetly curved but seem to hint that the owner could be ironic.

Many years later Swedenborg was to write in one of his anatomical treatises that he considered the mouth to be the one feature which man himself creates, since all the muscles of the face are connected with it or lead to it and every expression of the face thus helps to mold this feature, itself so mobile and responsive. 5

Looking at his father's portrait, one is certain that if there was irony in his wife's smile it was lost on Jesper Swedberg. Low forehead, bulging nose, thick lips that seem to stick out in self-satisfaction, heavy black brows under which alert eyes stare forever outward. In one picture a big broad hand reposes on the perceptible mound of his black-gowned stomach, but it is a hand with long, slender, almost backward-curving fingers. Jesper Swedberg really loved music.

Far from poor himself and now "by God's aid" enriched with his wife's money, he left her during her first pregnancy to spend a year abroad. It was in 1684. He made the obligatory visits to England, France, and Germany. In Westminster Abbey he was pleased to see the stone on which Jacob slept when he was flying from his brother Esau in Mesopotamia. But what most impressed and delighted him was the English sabbath. He tells with satisfaction of a nobleman (he did not like nobles) who got his valet to row him to church along the Thames one Sunday. They were both put in jail for sabbath-breaking.

But Jesper Swedberg didn't like "all the many sects and parties, I mean those that the so-called reformed church is divided into. Not speaking of the biggest party which is called Thoris and Wigg, of High church and Low church, of Quakers and Anabaptists, but only of the so-called English church."

Taking this posy of traveler's impressions with him from England, he went on to Paris, where all his worst suspicions were confirmed. He said that not King Solomon himself had seen or heard of more worldly vanities than were here displayed. He noted the many foreigners who were there, not to consult the good libraries or the learned men, but to learn to dance or fence and speak the