which case all of them cannot take the rule; and hence that only is, properly speaking, the ruling passion, which takes the lead of the rest, and gives to the particular temper or humour a particular variety. Pope has not always paid sufficient attention to this distinction. Roscommon has correctly maintained it in the following couplet:

Examine how your HUMOUR is inclined,

And which the RULING PASSION of your mind.

If this view of the subject be correct, it will follow, that crases or temperaments are the genera or grand divisions under which the moral characters or dispositions of mankind, possessing any considerable degree of resemblance to each other, may be naturally arranged. Tempers, humours, or idiosyncrasies are the species.which compose the different genera and ruling passions, the varieties or singularities of emotion, by which one individual belonging to the same species is distinguished from another.

The species and varieties may be innumerable, and would require a folio volume for their separate analysis and description, rather than a single lecture. Let us, then, confine our attention to the genera, or primary division of moral and physical constitutions into temperaments, and illustrate this part of the preceding classification by a few familiar examples.

All mental propensities or dispositions, then, may be arranged under five separate heads; each of which constitutes a temperament, and is distinguishable by a correspondent effect, produced on the corporeal organs, and the external features and figure. So that the mind and body, for the most part, maintain a mutual harmony, and the powers of the one become, in a general view, a tolerably fair index of those of the other. To these heads, genera, or temperaments I have given the names of sanguineous, bilious or choleric, atrabilious or melancholic, phlegmatic, and nervous. These names and characters, as I have already observed, with the exception of the last, are derived from the Greek physiologists; the principles of animal chemistry on which they are founded are, in many instances, erroneous: but the physiological facts which they are designed to illustrate are, for the most part, incontrovertible, and it is not easy to change the general arrangement for a better.

I. Let us commence with the SANGUINEOUS TEMPERAMENT, or that conceived to depend upon a powerful action or peculiar energy of the system of bloodvessels.

Suppose the heart and arteries, whose harmonious activity produces the circulation of the blood, and throws it over every part of the system, to possess a predominant energy of action, what may we reasonably expect to be the consequence? The pulse must be strong, frequent, and regular; the veins blue, full, and large; the complexion florid; the countenance animated; the stature erect; the figure agreeable, though strongly marked; the flesh firm, with a proportionate secretion of fat; the hair of a yellow, auburn, or chestnut colour; the nervous impressions acute; the perception quick; the memory tenacious; the imagination lively and luxuriant; the disposition passionate, but easily appeased; amorous, and fond of good cheer.

The diseases of this temperament are few but violent, and are chiefly seated in the circulating system; as hemorrhages and inflammatory fevers. It shows itself with peculiar prominence in the season of spring; and especially in the season of youth, which is the spring of life. The best external or corporeal marks of the sanguineous temperament are, perhaps, to be met with in the beautiful statues of Antinous and the Apollo of Belvidere; the best moral character of it in the lives of Alcibiades and Marc Antony, as drawn by the masterly hand of Plutarch; and the most perfect type of this construction which has been offered in modern times, is to be found, in the judgment of M. Richerand, from whom I have copied the chief part of this description, in the person of the celebrated Duke de Richelieu.*

If men of this temperament devote themselves to labour of any kind, that

* Nouveau Elémens de Physiologie, &c. tom. ii. sect. ccxxix. p. 445, 8vo. Paris, 1804.

demands great muscular exertion, the muscles thus brought into action, and easily supplied with nutrition from the sanguineous system, will acquire considerable increase of size, and produce a subdivision of the sanguineous temperament, which is usually known by the name of ATHLETIC or MUSCULAR. In this case, the head is very small; the neck very strong, particularly behind; the shoulders are broad; all the muscles are powerful and prominent, surrounded with strongly marked interstices or cavities; while the joints, and parts not abounding in muscles, are extenuated, and the direction of the tendons beneath them is obvious and striking. Perhaps the best model we possess of this peculiar constitution is the Farnesian Hercules, of which a good copy is to be found in the hall of the Royal Academy at Somerset-house, and must have been seen by every one who frequents the annual exhibitions of that establishinent.

It is this temperament which is bestowed by Homer upon Ajax, and enables him, after receiving the shock of a mountain crag upon his shield, hurled at him by Hector, to return a still heavier and more effective blow.

Then Ajax seized the fragment of a rock,

Applied each nerve, and swinging round on high,

With force tempestuous, let the ruin fly.

The huge stone thundering, through his buckler broke;
His slacken'd knees receiv'd the numbing stroke.
Great Hector falls extended on the field,

His bulk supporting on the shatter'd shield.

These verses have been deservedly admired for their strength, and they do ample justice to the original. But the whole falls far short of the fearful and majestic energy displayed by Spenser in his description of the combat between the Giant and the Red Cross Knight, and particularly the overwhelming force with which the former wielded his enormcus club, and aimed to despatch the champion by a single stroke, who had the good fortune to elude it, and amply to repay himself on his foe.

As when almightie Jove, in wrathfull mood,
To wreake the guilt of mortall sins is bent,
Hurles forth his thundring dart with deadly food,
Enrold in flames, and smouldring dreriment
Through riven cloudes and molten firmament-
The fierce three-forked engin, making way,
Both loftie towres and highest trees hath rent,
And all that might his angry passage stay:

And, shooting in the earth, castes up a mount of clay.

His boystrous club, so buried in the grownd,

He could not rearen up againe so light

But that the Knight him at advantage fownd;

And, whiles he strove his combred clubbe to quighte
Out of the earth, with blade all burning bright

He smott off his left arme, which, like a block,

Did fall to ground, depriv'd of native might;
Large streames of blood out of the truncked stock
Forth gushed, like fresh-water stream from riven rocke.*

In this subdivision of the temperament before us, we meet with no great degree of acuteness of external impressions or mental perception. Muscular strength, combined with mental tranquillity, is the prominent character: the individual, therefore, is not easily roused; but when he is so, he surmounts every resistance. It would be difficult to find in history a man of this peculiar constitution, whose intellectual faculties have been sufficient to acquire him an immortal fame. To become distinguished in the career of the sciences and fine arts, an exquisite sensibility is indispensable; a condition at utter variance with the full perfection of muscular masses.

II. The second temperament or general character I have noticed, is the CHOLERIC or BILIOUS. The liver and biliary organs in general are here as redundant in their power as the sanguineous vessels, and for the most part at

** Faerie Queene, b. i. canto viii. 9, 10.

The

the expense of the excernent, or cellular and lymphatic system. pulse, as in the last kind, is strong and hard, but somewhat more frequent; the veins cutaneous and projecting; the sensibility acute and easily excited, with a capacity of dwelling for a long time on the same object. The skin is brownish, with a tendency to yellowness; the hair black or dark-brown; the body moderately fleshy; the muscles firm and well marked; the figure expressive. The temper of the mind exhibits abruptness, impetuosity, and violence of passion; hardihood in the conception of a project, steadiness and inflexibility in pursuing it, and indefatigable perseverance in its execution. It is to this temperament we are to refer the men who, at different periods, have seized the government of the world. Hurried forward by courage, audacity, and activity, they have all signalized themselves by great virtues or by great crimes, and have been the terror or the admiration of the universe. Such were Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Brutus, Attila, Mahomet, and Charlemagne, in earlier periods; and such in later times Richard III., Tamerlane, Cromwell, Nadir Shah, Charles XII. of Sweden, and the tyrant of our own day, Napoleon Buonaparte.

This temperament, like the last, with which it is so closely connected, is characterized by a premature appearance of the moral faculties. The men I have just named, when merely emerging from youth, are well known to have conceived and executed enterprises that would have been worthy of their maturest judgment. Where the lineaments of this character are peculiarly strong, and the susceptibility, as frequently occurs, is very acute, the individuals are highly irascible, and launch into a passion from very trivial causes.* Homer has ascribed this part of the general temperament to many of his heroes, particularly to Achilles; and every politician knows that it was a prominent feature in the constitution of Buonaparte, who seems, indeed, in the occasional insults he offered to many of the highest characters at his own court, and in the general presence of his court, to have copied from the Grecian chieftain, who thus addressed Agamemnon, the head of the Grecian princes, the ava ävdoŵv, presiding at a general council, in reply to Agamemnon's reprimand:

O monster! mix'd of insolence and fear,
Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer!

When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare,

Or nobly face the horrid front of war?

"T is ours the chance of fighting fields to try;
Thine to look on, and bid the valiant die.
So much 'tis easier through the camp to go,
And rob a subject, than despoil a foe.
Scourge of thy people, violent and base!
Sent, in Jove's anger, on a slavish race;
Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past.
Are tamed to wrongs, or this had been thy last.

In this temperament we discover, as I have already observed, a union, of an active exuberant bilious, with an active exuberant sanguineous system. The temperament called bilious is, therefore, properly speaking, a complex genus, deriving its features from both systems, and from both in a state of energetic operation.

III. If we put away this predominant energy of the sanguineous system, or sink it below its level, if we suppose the bilious system alone predominant, and then add a deranged action of some abdominal organ, or of the nervous department-the vital functions, from the change we have now taken for granted in the sanguineous system, being carried on in a weak and irregular manner, we shall arrive at the ATRABILIOUS, BLACK-BILE, Or MELANCHOLY TEMPERAMENT. The skin will assume a deeper tinge; the countenance appear sallow and sad; the bowels will be inactive, all the excretions tardy, the pulse hard, and habitually contracted. The corporeal sadness exerts an influence over the cast of ideas; the imagination becomes gloomy, the temper

* Richerand, ut supra, sect ccxxxi. p. 449.

full of suspicion. The species and varieties afforded by this genus are almost innumerable, for the causes are peculiarly diversified. Hereditary disease, long-continued sorrow, incessant study, habitual gluttony, the abuse of pleasures of various kinds, and a thousand other circumstances, may equally become sources of this distressing condition, under some shape or other. And perhaps Le Clerc is correct in regarding it, in his Natural History of Man, as in every instance a morbid affection, rather than a natural and primitive constitution.

The character of Tiberius, of Louis XI., and of Pygmalion, as drawn by the nice hand of Fenelon in his Telemachus, give striking elucidations of this temperament in its moral bearings. M. Richerand has also pointed out examples in Torquato Tasso, Pascal, Gilbert, and Zimmermann; but perhaps the most perfect picture that has been furnished to the world is to be found in the life of the celebrated Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

IV. Let us pass on to the fourth temperament-the PHLEGMATIC, LYMPHATIC, PITUITOUS, OF WATERY, for the terms are all synonymous, and by all these terms it has been denominated. The proportion of fluids is here too considerable for that of the solids, or, in other words, the excernent system which secretes them from the general mass of the blood is in peculiar activity; and the result is, that the body obtains an increased bulk from the repletion of the cellular texture. The fleshy parts are soft; the skin fair; the hair flaxen or sandy; the pulse weak and slow; the figure plump, but without expression; all the vital actions more or less languid; the memory little tenacious, and the attention wavering; there is an insurmountable desire of indolence, and aversion to both mental and corporeal exercise.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, among the illustrious lives of Plutarch, we do not meet with an individual of this character. They are, for the most part, a good-natured group, not formed for the transaction of public affairs, who have never disturbed the earth by their negotiations or their conquests, and are rather to be sought for in the bosom of private life than at the helm of states. The emperor Theodosius may, perhaps, be offered as an example in earlier times; and in our own day the deposed Charles IV. of Spain, who resigned himself altogether into the hands of the infamous Godoy, surnamed Prince of the Peace; Augustus, king of Saxony, who resigned himself equally into the hands of Buonaparte; and Ferdinand of Sicily, who, in lucky hour, but of too short duration, at length surrendered the government of his people to our own country.

V. The last temperament I have noticed is the NERVOUS Or IRRITABLE, as it has been sometimes, but incorrectly, denominated. In this constitution the sentient system, or that susceptible to external impressions, is predominant over all the rest. Like the melancholic, it is seldom natural or primitive, but morbid and secondary, acquired by a sedentary life, reiterated pleasures, romantic ideas excited by a long train of novel or other fictitious and elevated histories; and peculiarly distinguished by promptitude but fickleness of determination, vivacity of sensations, small, soft, and wasted muscles, and generally, though not always, a slender form. The diseases chiefly incident to it are hysterical and other convulsive affections.

Let us close with two brief remarks upon the general survey before us. The first is, that these temperaments or generic constitutions are perpetually running into each other; and, consequently, that not one of them, perhaps, is to be found in a state of full perfection in any individual. Strictly speaking, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox belonged equally in the main to the second of them: there was the same ardour, genius, and comprehensive judgment in both; but the former had the bilious temperament, with a considerable tendency to the sanguineous; and hence, with more irritability, had more self-confidence, audacity, and sanguine expectation: the latter, while possessing the same general or bilious temperament, was at the same time more strongly inclined to the lymphatic; and hence his increased corporeal bulk; and, with less bold and ardent expectation, he possessed one of the sweetest and most benevolent dispositions to be met with in the history of the world. The first was

formed to be revered, the second to be beloved; and both to be admired and immortalized.

The closing remark I have to submit is, that each of these temperaments, how widely soever they may differ from each other, is capable of being transmuted into any of the rest. Galen has particularly dwelt upon this most important fact, and has especially observed that a man of the most elevated and sanguineous constitution may be broken down into a melancholic habit by a long series of anxiety and affliction; while, on the other hand, the most restless and audacious of the bilious or choleric genus may be attuned to the sleek quiet of the phlegmatic temper by an uninterrupted succession of peaceful luxury and indulgence. Of what moment is this well-established fact in the nice science of education! The temperaments of boys may be born with them; but they are capable of alteration, nay, of a total reversion, both in body and mind, each of which may be made to play upon the other; the one by a discipline of gymnastic exercises, and the other by a discipline of intellectual studies. The Greeks were thoroughly aware of this mutual dependence; and hence, as we have already seen,* made gymnastic games a regular part of the tuition of the Academy; thus rearing at one and the same time, and rearing, too, in the self-same persons, a race of heroes and of sages, and turning the wild and savage luxuriance of nature to the noblest harvests of wisdom and virtue.

LECTURE XII.

ON PATHOGNOMY, OR THE EXPRESSION OF THE PASSIONS.

In our last lecture, we examined how far the state of the body has an influence upon that of the mind: in the study we are now entering upon we shall take the opposite side of the question, and examine how far the state of the mind has an influence upon that of the body.

This influence, if it exist, may be either instantaneous or permanent: it may be produced by some sudden affection or emotion of the mind, exciting an abrupt change in the features, the muscles, or other soft and flexible parts of the body; or it may result from the habitual character of the moral propensity, slowly and imperceptibly operating on parts that are less pliant, and giving them a fixed and determinate cast. The former constitutes the study of Pathognomy, or of the signs, language, or expression of the passions: the latter, the study of physiognomy, or of the signs, language, or expression of the genius or temper.

Let us investigate each of these in the order in which I have now stated them; and devote our present attention to the former of the two. Suppose a man of a mild but courageous disposition, reclining at ease, and alone, beneath some overspreading forest tree, on a summer's evening, should be suddenly surprised by the attack of a ruffian, who should attempt to rob or murder him; what would be the change of feelings and of figure he would undergo? The tranquillity of his mind would be transmuted into horror, rage, and probably revenge, or an attempt to retaliate; while the negligent ease of his posture, the relaxed muscles of his face, the natural vermeil of his cheeks, his half-opened lips, half-closed eyelids, and easy breathing, would suddenly start into tension, energy, suffusion: he would be instantly on his feet, in an attitude of determined resistance; still trembling with fear, he would collect all his soul into a strong and desperate effort to overcome the wretch: his muscles would swell with violent rigidity; his heart contract with unusual force and frequency; his lungs heave powerfully; the whole

*Series 11. Lecture xi.