Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/151

, "I paint women as I love them." Further, artists appear to embody their constitutional features in their figures, and will design large or small subjects according as they are themselves large or small. The figures of portly and vigorous artists will be distinguished by fullness of muscular development. According to this theory, the resemblance extends even to the different parts of the body. Raphael, who preferred to paint Virgins, had a virginal head; Michael Angelo, who had a virile head, put more virility into his creations. If we should go into the room where a deliberative body had sat, and gather up the figures which the members had amused themselves with composing during the tedium of discussion, we would be surprised by observing that each one had sketched something very like his own likeness. Dr. Delaunay has experimented with artists, and with persons who did not know how to draw, and has always found that they made their own profiles in their off-hand sketches. The sketch of an unpracticed person would of course be rude and ungraceful, and an unfair portrait, but there would be traits of resemblance about it sufficient to reveal the author. A friend who had what is called a square head drew a figure which was imperfect enough, but the line defining the back part of the head made a right angle. A person with curled hair is not apt to draw straight hair, but curled; one with straight hair will give his figures hair like his own; a bearded man will give them a full beard, a beardless man none; and peculiarities in the form of the beard are often found reproduced in the drawings. Finally, in the works of imagination of painters and sculptors we may recognize the productions of artists who have all the time multiplied their likenesses in their figures. The same conclusion is applicable to imitative designs. If we have a drawing class of fifty pupils, having a respectable degree of skill, all drawing at the same head, theoretically we should have fifty heads more or less well executed, but all resembling the model, and consequently one another. This will not, however, be the case. The drawings will differ from each other so obviously that, instead of fifty copies of the same head, there will be fifty different heads. Each pupil executes a different head from the one drawn by his neighbor, and more or less resembling his own head. In proof of this, a letter is quoted from a professor of drawing in a lyceum in Paris, who says: "When our pupils are competing for a prize, they have the same model in view, but each one in copying from it reproduces himself more or less. We may, by simply examining his design, determine whether his face is round, oval, or square, whether it has projecting forms, or a smooth contour with few inequalities." The same is the case with sculptors, and even with costumers, who were found by Dr. Delaunay to be most apt to have figures of their own style in view in fitting their customers.

Echoes in Buildings.—Cords stretched in a kind of network near the ceiling have been recommended for destroying echoes in churches and public halls, and have been tried satisfactorily in St. Peter's Church, Geneva, and in the Assembly Hall of the city offices of Bordeaux, France. When metallic wires are used in the same manner, the resonance is greatly diminished, and is sometimes converted into a musical sound. A remarkable resonance has been noticed in connection with the great staircase of stone in the Walhalla at Regensburg, Germany. The visitor, after going up the first stairs, steps upon a landing from which two other staircases rise in opposite directions. At this point every step calls out a metallic ringing, as if the whole stairs were made of brass. A stamp of the foot on the middle of the landing is answered by a clear, resounding, musical tone. The ringing continues as the visitor goes up the stairs, growing weaker as he approaches the second landing, and finally ceases. The phenomenon is believed to be due to the rapid reflections of the sound-waves between the opposite staircases.

Stammering of the Vocal Cords.—Under this title Dr. Prosser James, of London, describes in the "Lancet" a throat malady, which he says may at times entirely suspend the work of clergymen, lawyers, singers, and others who make professional use of the voice. The disease appears to be due to defective coördination of certain muscles of the larynx, in consequence of which the vocal apparatus fails at intervals to fully