Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/130

110 THE GRANITE MONTHLY. "It is for homely features to keep home: They had their name thence."

In one of the best of Scott's fictitious works, is a man of tall, ungainly form, of taciturn and grave manners, with a long, sallow visage, goggle eyes, and a jaw which appeared not to open and shut, by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoisted again, by some complicated machinery within the inner man. His voice was harsh and dissonant. When he walked, his long, misshapen legs went sprawling abroad, keeping awkward time to the play of his immense shoulder blades, and they raised and depressed the loose and thread-bare black coat which was his constant and only wear. No kinder heart ever beat than that which kept in motion this awkward and repulsive microcosm of vital machinery. A tall, gaunt, bony figure, a homely face and a thread-bare coat are no evidence of depravity. Such an outer man has often been the tabernacle of a soul of which the world was not worthy. Contrast this ungainly form with the muscular, strong, thick-set figure of Capt. Dirk Hatteraick, with his bronzed face and satanic scowl, and you will see at once that the "Great Magician " has not mistaken his man. He knew in what sort of body the soul of a pirate would embark on its long and perilous voyage of infamy and crime. It seems a kind provision of Providence that men of huge anatomy and gigantic strength are usually gentle and pacific in temper; while persons of very diminutive stature are apt to be jealous of their rights, and by consequence, peevish, irritable and sometimes snappish. No man understood the tortuous and many windings of the human heart better than Scott; and he has with a fidelity and accuracy never before equaled, drawn ideal personages to represent evershade of human character, from the heights of angelic loveliness to the depths of satanic malice. He was a perfect master in the delineation of the odd, grotesque and ugly. Monkbarns, Edie Ochiltree, the Black Dwarf, Meg Merriles, and Noma of the Fitful Head can never be forgotten by those who have once made their acquaintance. Compared with similar creations in Dickens, they are more true to the reality. They possess verisimilitude. Those of Dickens are overdrawn so as to become monstrous. Quilp, Fagin the Jew, Sykes, Dennis the hangman, Barnaby Rudge and Uriah Heep are of this description. Compare his school-masters, old Squeers, Creakle, and Choakumchild, with the kind-hearted old Dominie Sampson, and you will say at once it is enough to represent teachers as terribly awkward without making them abominably wicked. It has been often said that every passion gives a peculiar cast to the countenance. "The bas-reliefs," says Mr. Isaac Taylor, "and bronzes of the age of Roman greatness have brought down for our inspection the form and visage of the Roman soldier, such as he was under Numa, Trajan, Aurelian and Domitian. The contracted brow declares that storms of battle have beat upon it often; the glare of that overshadowed eye throws contempt on death; the inflated nostril breathes a steady rage; the fixed lips deny mercy; the rigid arm and the knit joints have forced a path to victory through bristled ramparts and triple lines of shields and swords. And withal, there is a hardness of texture that seems the outward expression of an iron strength and vigor of soul; a power as well of enduring as of inflicting pain; and the one with almost as much indifference as the other." With such brazen faces and iron sinews; with such living, moving engines of war, is it wonderful that Rome enslaved the world? It is a law of physiology that all the flexible portions of the face may be essentially modified by internal emotions. The indulgence of the malignant passions clothes the countenance with gloom, imprints upon it a scowl of defiance, and gives to the eye a wild and unnatural glare. On the other hand, the habitual exercise of the benevolent affections makes the countenance radiant with joy and hope, diffuses over it the sweet smile of con-