and others which as suddenly disappear. The beautiful and the deformed (I do not say forms of countenance, but what is generally supposed to be beauty and deformity) are not the most easily propagated; neither are the middling and insignificant; but the great and the minute are easily inherited, and of long duration. Parents with small noses may have children with the largest and strongest defined; but the father or mother seldom, on the contrary, have a very strong, that is to say large-boned nose which is not communicated, at least, to one of their children; and which does not remain in the family, especially when it is in the female line. It may seem to have been lost for many years, but, soon or late, will again make its appearance, and its resemblance to the original will be particularly visible, a day or two after death. If the eyes of the mother have any extraordinary vivacity, there is almost a certainty that these eyes will become hereditary; for the imagination of the mother is delighted with nothing so much as with the beauty of her own eyes. Physiognomonical sensation has been, hitherto, much more generally directed to the eyes than to the nose and form of the face; but, if women should once be induced to examine the nose, and form of the face, as assiduously as they have done their eyes, it is to be expected that the former will be no less strikingly hereditary than the latter. Short and well-arched foreheads are easy of inheritance, but not of long duration; and here the proverb is applicable, Quod cito fit cito perit. (Soon got soon gone.) It is equally certain and inexplicable, that some remarkable physiognomies, of the most fruitful persons, have been wholly lost to their posterity; and it is as certain and inexplicable that others are never lost. Nor is it less remarkable that certain strong countenances, of the father or mother, disappear in the children and perfectly revive in the grand-children. As a proof of the powers of the imagination of the mother, we sometimes see that a woman shall have children by her second husband which shall resemble the first, at least in the general appearance. The Italians, however, are manifestly too extravagant when they suppose children that strongly resemble their father are base born. They say that the mother, during the com mission of a crime so shameful, wholly employs her imagination concerning the possibility of surprise by, and the image of, her husband. But, were this fear so to act, the form of the children must not only have the very image of the father but also his appearance of rage and revenge, without which the adulterous wife could not imagine the being surprised by, or image of, her husband. It is this appearance, this rage, that she fears, and not the man. Natural children generally resemble one of their parents more than the legitimate. The more there is of individual love, of pure, faithful, mild, affection; the more this love is reciprocal, and unconstrained, between the father and mother, which reciprocal love and affection implies a certain degree of imagination, and the capacity of receiving impressions, the more will the countenances of the children appear to be composed of the features of the parents. The sanguine of all the temperaments is the most easily inherited, and with it volatility; and, being once introduced, much industry and suffering will be necessary to exterminate this volatility. The natural timidity of the mother may easily communicate the melancholy temperament of the father. Be it understood that this is easy if, in the decisive moment, the mother be suddenly seized by some predominant fear; and that it is less communicable when the fear is less hasty, and more reflective. Thus we find those mothers who, during the whole time of their pregnancy, are most in dread of producing monstrous, or marked, children, because they remember to have seen objects that excited abhorrence, generally have the best formed, and freest from marks; for the fear, though real, was the fear of reflection, and not the sudden effect of an object exciting abhorrence, rising instantaneously to sight. When both parents have given a deep root to the choleric temperament, in a family, it may probably be some centuries before it be again moderated. Phlegm is not so easily inherited, even though both father and mother should be phlegmatic, for there are certain moments of life when the phlegmatic acts with its whole powers, although it acts thus but rarely, and these moments may, and must, have their effects; but nothing appears more easy of inheritance than activity and industry, when these have their |