Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/158

 136

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.

��BY PROF. E. D.

��[concluded.]

��Guilt will give a new expression to the countenance. Says Ovid :

"Heu quam difficile est crimen uon prodere vultu,"

" How in the look does conscious guilt appear."

The stealth}' tread, the furtive glance, the downcast look, all speak the lan- guage of the first transgressor, " I heard thy voice, and I was afraid." They reveal at once the supremacy of conscience and the identity of human nature, throughout the race. " It is peculiar to man," says Tacitus, " to hate one whom he has injured ;" hence it is that conscious guilt always seeks concealment.

Fanaticism, also, is accompanied by peculiar external signs. It is the same in the Hindu Fakir, the Mohammedan dervish, and the modern come-outer. An English author of high repute thus describes a young fanatic :

" Look at that grave and abstracted countenance, pallid and somewhat fallen from the salient outline that should bespeak his actual years. What intensity in the glare of that sunken eye ! what fixedness of purpose in the lips ! and the movements of the youth seem inspired with some intention be- yond simple locomotion or mechani- cal agency ; as he walks, one would think that he was hastening onward by the side of an invisible competitor for a prize at the goal. Hear him speak : he is terse and precise ; his tones, too, have a certain mystic mo- notony in place of the natural modula- tions of a voice so young. But listen to his opinions ; how vehement are they ; how darkly colored his repre- sentations of simple facts ; exaggera- tion swells every sentence, and how far from vouthful are his surmises : and his verdicts how inexorable ! not

��a look, not a word, not an action of his belongs to the level of ordinary sympathies. All is profound as the abyss or lofty as the clouds."

Such characters are not peculiar to any age. They abound in our own day. Their aim is to come out from every- thing old and go into everything new. Had they lived in the days of the Inquisition, they would have been the fiercest of conservatives, kindling the fires of persecution and torturing here- tics. Under different influences, they become destructives. Their creed is embodied in a single stanza of Cole- ridge :

" Of old things, all are over old,

Of new things, none are new enough ;

We'll show them we can lielp to frame A world of other stuff."

It is recorded of the celebrated painter Lionardo da Vinci, that, hav- ing incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Milan, by destroying a por- trait of the monarch which he had just executed, he was required, on penalty of death, to complete a pic- ture for the refectory of the Domin- ican cloister, in one year. The com- pliance with this requisition was the condition of his pardon by the Duke. There was one Dominican friar, a con- stant attendant of the monarch, who hated the painter and rejoiced in his misfortunes. His malice was too deep and bitter for concealment. "Though his words dropped honey, the honey was mingled with gall. His dark, malicious eyes looked slyly out from overhanging brows ; his forehead was knit into a thousand wrinkles, and his scornful mouth covered with a bristly red beard ; his nose hooked over his frightful mouth like the beak of some obscene bird ; in short, his whole ap- pearance inspired disgust and detesta-

�� �