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What certain proofs of the physiognomy of men must be obtained from insect physiognomy!

How visible are their powers of destruction, of suffering and resisting, of sensibility and insensibility, through all their forms and gradations! Are not all the compact, hard-winged insects, physiognomonically and characteristically more capable and retentive than various light and tender species of the butterfly? Is not the softest flesh the weakest, the most suffering, the easiest to destroy? Are not the insects of least brain the beings most removed from man, who has the most brain? Is it not perceptible in each species whether it be warlike, defensive, enduring, weak, enjoying, destructive, easy to be crushed, or crushing? How distinct in the external character are their degrees of strength, of defence, of stinging, or of appetite!

The great dragon fly shews its agility and swiftness in the structure of its wings; perpetually on flight in search of small flies. How sluggish, on the contrary, is the crawling caterpillar! how carefully does he set his feet as he ascends a leaf! How yielding his substance, incapable of resistance! How peaceable, harmless, and indolent is the moth! How full of motion, bravery, and hardiness, is the industrious ant! How loath to remove, on the contrary, is the harnessed lady-bird!

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CHAP. XLII.

On Shades.

THOUGH shades are the weakest and most vapid, yet they are at the same time, when the light is at a proper distance, and falls properly on the countenance to take the profile accurately, the truest representation that can be given of The weakest, for it is not positive, it is only something negative, only the boundary line of half the countenance. The truest, because it is the immediate expressiou of nature, such as not the ablest painter is capable of drawing by hand after nature. What can be less the image of a living man than a shade? Yet how full of speech! Little gold, but the purest.

The shade contains but one line; no motion, light, colour, height, or depth; no eye, ear, nostril, or cheek; but a very small part of the lip; yet how decisively it is significant! Drawing and painting, it is probable, originated in shades. They express, as I have said, but little; but the little they do express is exact. No art can attain to the truth of the shade taken with precision. Let a shade be taken after nature with the greatest accuracy, and with equal accuracy afterwards reduced upon fine transparent paper. Let a profile, of the same size, be taken, by the greatest master, in his happiest moment; then let the two be laid upon each other, and the difference will be immediately evident.

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I never found, after repeated experiments, that the best efforts of art could equal nature, either in freedom or in precision, but that there was always something more or less than nature. Nature is sharp and free: whoever studies sharpness more than freedom, will be hard, and whoever studies freedom more than sharpness, will become diffuse and indeterminate. I can admire him only, who, equally studious of her sharpness and freedom, acquires equal certainty and impartiality.

To attain this, artist, imitator of humanity! first exercise yourself in drawing shades; afterwards copy them by hand, and next compare and correct. Without this you will with difficulty discover the grand secret of uniting precision and freedom.

I have collected more physiognomical knowledge from shades alone than from every other kind of portrait; have improved physiognomonical sensation more by the sight of them than by the contemplation of ever mutable nature. Shades collect the distracted attention, confine it to an outline, and thus render the observation more simple, easy, and precise. Physiognomy has no greater, more incontrovertible certainty of the truth of its object, than that imparted by shade. If the shade, according to the general sense and decision of all men, can decide so much concerning character, how much more must the living body, the whole appearance, and action of the man! If the shade be oracu

lar, the voice of truth, the word of God, what must the living original be, illuminated by the spirit of God!

Hundreds have asked, and hundreds will continue to ask, "What can be expected from mere shades?" Yet no shade can be viewed by any one of these hundred, who will not form some judgment on it, often accurately, more accurately than I could have judged.

In order to make the astonishing significance of shades conspicuous, we ought either to compare opposite characters of men taken in shade, or, which may be more convincing, to cut out of black paper, or draw, imaginary countenances widely dissimilar. Or, again, when we have acquired some proficiency in observation, to double black paper, and cut two countenances; and, afterwards, by cutting with the scissars, to make slight alterations, appealing to our eye, or physiognomonical feeling, each alteration; or, lastly, only to take various shades of the same countenance, and compare them together. Such experiments would astonish us, to perceive what great effects are produced by slight alterations.

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The common method of taking shades is accompanied with many inconveniences. hardly possible the person drawn should sit sufficiently still; the designer is obliged to change his place; he must approach so near to the person that motion is almost inevitable, and the designer is in the most inconvenient posi

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