Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/166

162 sides we expect evidences of a sordid make-up. Fine Greek noses, however, we take to be sure indications of good taste—large, shapely Roman noses as signs of solid character, inclining to generosity and capable of wise leadership.

These characterizations, however, seem but dimly borne out by the pages of biography. Thus, as possessed of small noses, we find Stephen A. Douglas, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thomas Jefferson, James Russell Lowell, Peter the Great, Robespierre, Bayard Taylor and Thackeray (that of Schubert is spoken of as "upturned" and was doubtless small), while the large nose finds representation in the case of Charles XII. of Sweden, Eugene Field, Albert Gallatin, Washington Irving, Rossetti ("large distended nostrils"), Thoreau ("huge"), Tolstoy ("broad"), George Washington ("long in proportion to his face"), William the Silent ("long with wide nostrils"), Beethoven ("rather broad"). The hawk-nose was a characteristic of the warriors Charlemagne, Cromwell, Farragut and Frederick the Great, as also of Columbus ("aquiline"), Defoe, Fielding, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lamb, Lanier, Savonarola, Sidney Smith, Thaddeus Stevens, Bayard Taylor and Chopin. The straight nose is found in the cases of Captain Cook, Albert Gallatin ("long and prominent"), Alexander Hamilton ("long and rather sharp"), Washington Irving, Paul Jones, Julian, Napoleon and Whitman.

Far more interesting and significant is our material with reference to the foreheads of great men—that popular test of intellect and capacity. Remarkable for high foreheads were Bunyan, Charlemagne, Charles XII. of Sweden, Darwin, Hazlitt, Patrick Henry, Hobbes, Leigh Hunt, Ibsen, Washington Irving, Andrew Jackson (high but narrow), Peter the Great, Robespierre, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster, Beethoven and Schubert. As "broad" we find the foreheads of Carnegie, Agassiz, Charles XII. of Sweden, Captain Cook, Stephen A. Douglas ("massive"), Nathaniel Hawthorne ("massive"), Washington Irving, Paul Jones, Keats (but not high). Lamb, Monroe, Robespierre, Rossetti, Savonarola, Walter Scott, Stevenson, Beethoven. The forehead of U. S. Grant is described as "square"—usually accepted as a proof of fearlessness—while those of Coleridge, Whitman and Michael Angelo are described as "overhanging." The foreheads of Frederick the Great and Robespierre were receding, while those of Keats and John Marshall were low.

It is not without interest that among the physiognomies of the distinguished individuals whose biographies we have examined, we note as conspicuously absent the "prognathous jaw" and "long, projecting and voluminous ears," which according to Ellis are characteristics of the criminal class, and which, it may be observed, are likewise tokens of recurrence to the primitive human type; nor in our studies of the