No. 2. Tristam Burgess.
Tigers are always spare, muscular, long, full over the eyes, large-mouthed, and have eyes slanting downward from their outer to inner angles; and human beings thus physiognomically characterized, are fierce, domineering, revengeful, most enterprising, not over humane, a terror to enemies, and conspicuous somewhere.
Bull-dogs, generally fleshy, square-mouthed—because their tusks project and front teeth retire—broad-headed, indolent unless roused, but then terribly fierce, have their correspondent men and women, whose growling, coarse, heavy voices, full habit, logy yet powerful motions, square face, down-turned corners of mouth, and general physiognomical cast betoken their second-cousin relationship to this growling, biting race, of which the old line-tender at the Newburgh dock is a sample.
Swine—fat, logy, lazy, good-dispositioned, flat and hollow-nosed—have their cousins in large-abdomened, pud-nosed, double-chinned, talkative, story-enjoying, beer-loving, good-feeling, yes, yes, humans, who love some easy business, and hate HARD work.
Horses, oxen, sheep, owls, doves, snakes, and even frogs, etc., also have their men and women cousins, together with their accompanying characters.
These resemblances are more difficult to describe than to recognize; but the forms of mouth, nose, and chin, and sound of voice, are the best basis of observation.
5.—BEAUTIFUL, HOMELY, AND OTHER FORMS.
In accordance with this general law, that shape is as character, well-proportioned persons have harmony of features, and well-balanced minds; whereas those, some of whose features stick right out, and others fall far in, have uneven, ill-balanced characters, so that homely, disjointed exteriors indicate corresponding interiors, while evenly-balanced and exquisitely formed men and women have well-balanced and susceptible mentalities. Hence, women, more beautiful than men, have finer feelings, and greater perfection of character, yet are less powerful—and the more beautifully formed the woman the more exquisite and perfect her mentality. True, some handsome women often make the greatest scolds, just as the sweetest things, when soured, become correspondingly sour. The finest things, when perverted, become the worst. These two extremes are the worst tempered—those naturally beautiful and fine skinned, become so exquisitely organized, that when perverted they are proportionally bad, and those naturally ugly-formed, become ugly by nature.
Yet ordinary-looking persons are often excellent dispositioned, benevolent, talented, etc., because they have a few POWERFUL traits, and also features—the very thing we are explaining; that is, they have EXTREMES alike of face and character. Thus it is that every diversity of character has its correspondence in both the organic texture and physiognomical form. To elucidate this subject fully we must explain another law, that of
6.—HOMOGENEOUSNESS, OR ONENESS OF STRUCTURE.