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brass and iron manufactures, than to furnish metal caps, which, by repressing the growth of the injurious, and encouraging the expansion of the good affections, would inevitably make all the future generations of Britons to think and act alike for the common welfare. For instance, were the Protestant succession wished to be secured to the descendants of the present reigning family, let the royal infants be provided, from their births, with iron caps, with a large vacancy for amativeness and philoprogenitiveness, in which these organs might shoot up to the utmost luxuriance; and if the organs of benevolence and right eousness, (why not benevolentiveness and righteousiveness, Messrs Gall and Spurzheim?) were thought necessary in sovereigns, their growth might be encouraged at the expence of other organs of less public value,-as selfloveativeness and covetiveness." Repressing the disposition to furtiveness and secretiveness in the next generation, the cause of one class of crimes would be instantly done away. Allow not the organs of destructiveness and coms bativeness to expand their bony cover ing, and war and ruin will be banished from the land. When the means of subsistence become too scanty for the existing population, let the organs of amativeness and philoprogenitiveness have no room for display in the headdresses of the young, and the next generation will live and die in hopeless virginity and unregarded celibacy. The organ of public approbation might make all the gentlemen in the public offices, now so handsomely paid for their trouble, think themselves fully requited for their services by a vote of thanks, were this organ to be exclusively encouraged in the children of the present incumbents. A strict attention to the organ of righteousness, might sweep away at once all the expensive establishments of courts, judges, and lawyers; and the due production of the organs of veneration and benevolence, might save our successors, in less than thirty years, the expence of churches, and the payment of tithes. And were other nations not to adopt the great discovery now promulgated,

and it were necessary to have a standing army kept up, one or two hundred thousand children, with steel caps which should allow only the organs of combativeness and destructiveness to enlarge in their infant craniums, would place the country in perfect safety from the danger of foreign invasion; while a due proportion of the organ of determinativeness in our peasantry and mechanics, might make our subjugation a matter of absolute impossibi lity.

In short, the thirty-three divisions into which the skull is arranged, and the thirty-three propensities corre sponding to these divisions, may be so modified, by adopting metal cases for the covering of the heads of the young, as to produce any quantity of talent required. The Parliament have only to pass an act, ordering a sufficient number of these skull-moulds to be made, of various sizes, for the use of every parish; and to make it felony, without benefit of clergy, for the next generation to be without them, at least till the wished-for organs have sufficiently displayed themselves. Of the effects of this discovery upon the future fate of the world, nobody who possesses one bump out of the thirty-three can allow himself to doubt. The extravagance of one sovereign, might easily be made up in the penuriousness of his successor; and indeed the measure, by a lit tle care on the part of the parish officers, might make the least wise of the next generation equal to Newton or Bacon; and the least eloquent not inferior to Cicero or Demosthenes. In fact, the world might be made, in less than a century, to advance further in intellectual and moral improvement, than it has done for the last five thousand years. Wars, and the ravages of war, might be made for ever to cease; and the multiplied and varied generations of mankind, might, without ri valry, walk their round upon the stage of life, free from the irritations of passion, and from every stain of moral turpitude which could either embitter their wanderings in time, or lessen their hopes of immortality. Then should we have professors of anatomy and butchers (to use a common me

This is printed costiveness, by mistake I presume, in the second edition of Dr Spurzheim's book. See Dr Hamilton's work on Purgative Medicines, for the allevia. tion of this troublesome complaint; and the Doctor himself for its permanent cure.

taphorical expression,) born with the knife in their teeth; lecturers on every branch of science calculated to acquire the necessary information from their cradles; or, what perhaps would be still better, the metal caps might be constructed so as to allow no faculty to expand beyond the mediocrity of

hopeless dulness, or absolute stupidity; and then the money now expend ed in the education of the young, in cultivating faculties unmarked, per haps unexisting, in the bony covering of the cogitative pulp, might be applied to more hopeful and necessary purposes.

CHAPTER II.

I hae a theory lying in saut,

Lad, gin ye lo'e me, tell me true;

I hae a strong notion ye've mony waur faut

Than the thing that the Carles are to try ye for now,

I hae a theory wantin' a leg,

Lad, gin ye lo'e me, tell me now

There's mair in the shell than inside o' the egg,

Speak out, for I canna ilk day come to you.

Old Song.

Phren. I'll tell you what you are, my honest friend, (On secrecy from me you may depend,)

You don't love women-hate the thoughts of wine?

Now, tell me truly-Do I right divine?

Mur. No, Sir!-You're wrong for once. I loved the fair-
The decent ones I mean-beyond compare

Seduction was my forte; and, as for wine,

Little of that delicious drink was mine;

But when well on with good plain Highland whisky,

I was too sly to blab, or even seem frisky.

Phren, You had no wish to kill, but to escape

Mur. Why, there you're right, sir; but, when in a scrape,
One may knock down, and think of nothing ill;
This was my case-but blows will sometimes kill.

Dialogue between a Phrenologist and a Murderer.*

Having, in the preceding chapter, laid the basis of my great discovery before the public, I now proceed to some

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of the minor details. The great matter at the first commencement of the plan would be, to provide accurate models

As our respectable correspondent, Sir Toby Tickletoby, has omitted to insert a motto for this chapter, perhaps from not having carried his library with him to the Moors, we have taken the liberty to prefix two,-one from a well-known old song-the other from a manuscript of "Haggart's Life, done into English verse, by an Eminent Hand," which has been sent us for publication.

To ascertain the fidelity of this paraphrase, we were at the trouble of comparing it with the original published narrative, and now subjoin the parallel passages.

Phre. The present communication is entirely confidential, and will not be abused. David Haggart is therefore requested to be open, and completely candid in his remarks, P. 159.

"You would not be the slave of sexual passion, nor greatly given to drink.”— P. 167.

Hag. "You have mistaken me in this point of sexual passion; for it was my greatest failing that I had a great inclination to the fair sex; not, however, of those called pros titutes; for I never could bear the thought of a whore, although I was the means of leading away and betraying the innocence of young women, and then leaving them to the freedom of their own will. I believe that I was master of that art more than any other that I followed.

"A little spirits were always necessary, although I could abstain from them at pleasure, according as it suited the company I was in. When in drink I was very quiet, and would think twice before I spoke once."-Pp. 167, 168.

Phren: "You would never be cruel or brutal; and you would never inflict serious suffering upon any individual without bitterly regretting it ?”—P. 167.

of skulls, with the required organs properly displayed, for the purpose of having caps made of all sizes to suit the growth of the infant cranium. A search in the tombs of great men, whose excellence in any art or science was known and ascertained, might in this view be attended with very beneficial consequences; but as in cemeteries where thousands are annually buried, the confusion of skulls and bodies is such in a few years, that one would not be able to identify even their own bones, the effects to be derived from skulls drawn from this source, could never be accurately depended on. It has therefore struck me, that a more certain way of procuring models would be to have them made from the craniums of existing talent, where talent is wanted, or from the head-pieces of patriotism and incorruptible integrity, if any such should be found to exist in the country. In my speculations on this subject, I at first thought that removing the integuments from the outside of the cranial covering, or scalping our celebrated countrymen for the purpose of making casts from the bones of their heads, would be sufficient; but as anatomists assert that skulls are not everywhere of the same thickness, there may exist bumps and depressions on which the talents depend, only to be discovered by an internal examination

of the shell after the removal of the kernel. It is not too much to expect, therefore, that the possessors of those craniums which have made a noise in the world, or which have been the cause of the celebrity of their proprietors, may leave them as a legacy to their admiring countrymen; but it would be far more patriotic, certainly, were they now to give them up to the modeller, before old age evaporates the cranial contents, or an additional deposit of osseous matter fills up some of the cavities on which eminence depends. The Duke of Wellington, for instance, the first general in Europe, and who has so often hazarded his life for the benefit of his country, would, I am certain, have no objection to have his body shortened a few inches to promote so much good, and thus be the matrix of a hundred future Wellingtons; and I feel quite confident that none of our own celebrated countrymen, and we have a good many, would hesitate for one moment to sacrifice their heads to the future and certain improvement of their native land. In place of one Stewart, and one Scott, (at present the brightest luminaries in our Scottish horizon,) we might, in a few years, have hundreds of the one, and thousands of the other; and provided we were wise enough to keep the models in our own hands, (for they have

Hag. Cruel to my inferiors I never was; but I rejoiced to pull the lofty down, to make them on a fair level with their brethren in the world. Whatever I did, I never looked back to my former crimes with regret, as I never, thought that was of any use."➡ P. 167.

"I laid one low with my pistol. Whether I have his murder to answer for,!I cannot tell. But 1 fear my aim was too true, and the poor fellow looked dead enough." P. 32.

"Before he had time to challenge me, I hit him a very smart blow on the head with the butt-end of my whip."-P. 109.

"Our only object was liberty-not to murder poor Thomas Morrin."-P. 167. Phren. "The greatest errors have arisen from a great self-esteem, a large combativeness, a prodigious firmness, a great secretiveness, and a defective love of approbation. No others of the faculties appear to possess an undue degree of energy or deficiency."

P. 160.

"Your nature is, in many respects, different from your actions."-P. 169. "Your sentiment of Justice is not remarkably defective."-Ib.

"Your sentiment of benevolence is great," &c.-Ib.

We have quoted these latter passages to shew what an excellent man Haggart was, but for his unfortunate convictions, and as additional proofs of the soundness of the theory which our correspondent has so eloquently advocated. Though it has been insinuated to us in more than one quarter that the observer must have been either blind or "lushy," when he made observations so little in accordance with the registers of the criminal courts; and though we have heard it remarked as an odd manner of characterising the profession of robbery, seduction, and murder, to term it merely "a sporting line of life,"yet as David, according to the indications of his cranium, was an honourable man,' and his observer is known to be "an honourable man," we make no farther remark, than by repeating with Mark Antony, that "so are they all, all honourable men.”—C. N.

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no such heads in any other country,) an era in Scottish literature might arrive, far more splendid than the age that boasted of Hume, Smith, and Robertson. Or, say that the worthy managers of our city corporations, and the Sheriffs of our counties, were to lay their heads together, and resolve to deny county and civic privileges to every one who should not choose to have their childrens' heads cramped into these approved models; and if the General Assembly of our National Church should add the weight of their influence to the scheme, and deny church-privileges to the nonconformists, I have little doubt that the native enterprise of our countrymen, guided by such craniums, would soon acquire the government of the world, and lay the foundation of an empire of greater extent, and of infinitely more power, than any that has yet existed. It has been objected, I believe, to the system of Gall, Spurzheim, and Company, that its direct tendency is to lead to the doctrine of Materialism; but I see no just grounds for the objection. If the soul is independent of the body, and if the bumps and depressions on the human cranium be the work of this invisible agent, it should rather, I think, afford evidence of its independent power, that it can make room for the display of its peculiar faculties, without consulting the mass of matter or the bones where it is supposed to have its temporary residence. But as all the demonstrations of soul are only known to us through the medium of body, it is absurd to say that we can know any thing of this divine essence, excepting in connexion with its corporeal seat. Wine is wine, whether in a hogshead, a flask, or one of Day and Martin's blacking-bottles; and soul is soul, whether we suppose its seat to be in the belly, the head, or the feet. Was ever a philosopher heard of, who could invent theories, or illus trate facts, without the assistance of his stomach, and the apparatus con

tained in his thoracic cavity? and does not a cannon-shot through the breast put a stop as effectual to the operations of soul, as if it had been directed to the head? All that the phrenologists say is, that particular powers of mind or soul have been proved to manifest themselves in peculiar developements of the bones of the head; and all that I say is, that by my glorious invention, (as I have no doubt it will be termed by after ages,) the growth and deve lopement of these bones may, in early life, from their yielding quality, be made to accommodate themselves to the display of any required faculty of mind.

There is a strong argument from analogy, which may be here mentioned in illustration of the doctrine now propounded. Trees, it is well known, when left to take their own mode of growing, always delight to luxuriate in the wild irregularity of unshapely and unpruned branches; though it is quite well known to the skilful gardener, that they can be made to assume the form of a fan or a cone on walls, or expand horizontally on espaliers, at the pleasure of their early instructors, and still, after all, be trees, and bear fruit better than in their wild uneducated state. Now, I will not do my fellow-creatures the injustice to suppose, that they are less susceptible of cultivation than plumb or cherrytrees, or that the bony covering of their thirty-three propensities is harder than holly or boxwood, or more untractable than the teak or "knotted oak." But further illustration is unnecessary; the very mention of the circumstance must carry conviction to the mind of the unprejudiced observer of nature.

It may be objected to the magnificent discovery now enunciated, that the soul may not choose to occupy a habitation moulded to a certain shape, and that, if forced to reside in a house she does not like, she may sit sullenly in her cell, and disappoint the hopes

By the bye, why is the soul always of the feminine gender, and the mind neuter?

The Soul, secure in her existence, smiles

At the drawn-dagger, and defies its point.

Hark, they whisper !-Angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away?

I hope some of those metaphysical writers, who bewilder themselves and confound others, by the indiscriminate use of the terms soul, mind, brain, thinking principle, and so forth, would answer the question. My own soul, I am convinced, is an independent masculine spirit, which shall survive long after the pulpy attributes and bony faculties of phrenological minds shall be crumbled to dust.

of those most interested in her future display. That this may happen in one case out of a thousand may be considered as possible; though it is not very likely that the occupier of a common-place rotundity would be content to lose the pleasure of thinking like Newton or Bacon, merely out of dogged moroseness, which would hurt nobody but itself. But even were this case to be more common than can be supposed, the certainty of preventing the growth of evil propensities is sufficient to counterbalance the loss which society might sustain from this cause; and, to carry on the allusion to the training of plants, the manure of education which would in many cases be applied to heads already predisposed to excellence, might raise their possessors to such heights of knowledge, that the average of the whole population might be equal to a Locke, and not inferior to a Pope or Addison.

It is impossible for one mind to conceive all the objections which may be made by the ignorant, or those who are so wedded to old notions as to consider no innovations as improve ments. But it would ill become the projector of so magnificent a plan for the future, not to suggest something likewise that may ameliorate the existing race of human beings, and, at least, banish vice and crime, if it do nothing more, from our native country. If the prevailing disposition of mind can be infallibly ascertained, according to Phrenologists, by the examination of the outside of the head, might not the British Parliament do something worse than pass an act, which shall oblige all individuals of this empire, of whatever age, to submit their rotundities to the required examination; and those found with organs hurtful to the community could then be separated from the general mass, and prevented from disturbing the peace of society by their furtive or murderous propensities? Crime would thus be crushed in the bud, and the infant murderer, or the confirmed thief, might pay the forfeit of their intended crimes long before their little arms were able to wield a rush, or their eyes distinguish one species of property from another. The grown up wicked people might be put to death without mercy, for the safety of the good; or, if this were thought too cruel, they might be transported,

at the expence of the Societies for the Suppression of Vice, to our new settlements on Melville Island, where their ingenuity might have room for its display in contesting with the arctic bear and fox the right of property in each other's bodies. Were this "consummation," so "devoutly to be wished," to take place, a committee of Gall and Spurzheim's followers in London, and the same in Edinburgh, superintended by their publishing disciples, might be established, for the purpose of picking out all the disturbers of society with villainous propensities, previous to their shipment; and the British millennium might instantly commence, by the shutting up for ever of those receptacles of vice and misery, the Newgates, and Bridewells, and prison-houses of every denomination.

As in every great revulsion of public opinion, or change of public sentiment, certain classes are sure to suffer, the opposition to the measure from those interested in the existence of crime, or who derive their chief support from the commission of vice, might be overcome by granting them annuities equal to the amount of their annual profits. Or, if this should be thought to fall too heavy on the national income, the measure might be partially delayed till the present race of office-holders wore out. Leaving a few culprits in every county for a certain limited period, the criminal courts and the officers of police, the keepers of jails, and the public executioner, would have no more reason to complain of the stagnation of trade, than other honest dealers in mercantile commodities for a long time past; and those respectable and useful matrons, who keep markets of beauty for the unwived part of the population, might be restricted in their calling to the disposal of their present stock. From the usual termination of crime, the frail nature of beauty, and the accidents to which it is exposed, I do not see that, from these causes, the millennium need be delayed beyond a very few years.

In those cases where the bumps on the skull do not form an infallible criterion, (for it must be allowed that this mode of judging of propensities sometimes fails) the assistance of those acute observers of human nature, the Bond Street and Police officers, ought to be called in, before deciding finally upon a moral delinquency; and, as a

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