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cold venison, some bread, and a flaggon of beer. "Eat, drink and be merry," quoth he-" for to-morrow I die!" responded I, inwardly, with a sigh. However hunger is lord of the world, and will swallow up fear, when he is sharp set. I fell upon the venison, and ate as if it were my last; I swallowed oceans of beer, in hopes it would infuse into me a portion of Dutch courage, but in vain. While I was taking my meal, the necromancer or whatever he might be, was examining a large skull, divided and marked in like manner with his own, and apparently comparing it with mine, while he ever and anon exclaimed

"Bless me astonishing !--wonderful!-one would think they had belonged to one and the same person!-Pray, my good friend, if you can stop eating for one moment, tell me, had you ever any other head on your shoulders than the one you carry now?"

"Not that I know of," replied I.

"Astonishing-curious-remarkable-never saw such an iden

tity-wit-locality—amativeness-philoprogenitiveness-ideality -wonder--acquisitiveness-concentrativeness-adhesivenesscautiousness-tune-size-weight-coloring-language-comparison-casualty-love of approbation-order-combativeness, and what not! I would give thousands for your skull. Why, sir, you must be a universal genius. You have the finest collection of organs in the world. You are a poet, a mechanic, a chymist, a philosopher, a musician, a lover of children, an artist, a metaphysician, and anything else you please, besides." pp. 237-244.

A very few words will be sufficient to vindicate this remarkable science from the aspersions thrown upon it in this memoir. It had always heretofore been supposed since Adam first showed his face in the world, that the passions, propensities, and mental qualifications of a man were best expressed by the front side of his head, whereas this science teaches that they are only to be correctly judged of by the backside; thereby entirely changing the face of things, and clearly showing that our ancestors have all along been looking upon the wrong side of them. Which sufficiently accounts for the slow progress the world has been making until within a few years past; and also for the sudden start it has lately taken.

It has ever been a universal sentiment that the most important study of mankind is man; notwithstanding which, and the great apparent opportunities we have of examining individual character, such have been the peculiar difficulties of the subject, that a very imperfect knowledge, after all, has ever been obtained of

it. For before the practice of phrenology, the most approved means of judging of a man's character was by observing his conduct; which could only be conclusively determined upon after he had closed his life, nor was this test a perfect one; for who could decide how the same person would have acted, exposed to the operation of different circumstances. And, indeed, it is one of the tritest maxims, that so far from easily ascertaining the character of others, it is one of the severest tasks to become acquainted with our own. Now, through the help of this science of phrenology, all such difficulties are at once done away with; and by a mere glancing of our eyes, or even momentary application of our fingers, to the heads of our neighbors, we are as certainly informed of what they can and will do, as by our experience of what they have done. Thereby changing future time at once into present; a thing which people at all times of life have continually desired to do, but never before been able to effect, unless it may be a few learned grammarians.

We have not time to notice all the beneficial changes which this science is expected to work in our customs, manners, and laws; they may, however, in some small measure, be judged of by a single instance. To take a principal one in the law. A man commits a murder; society is put in great terror, and to great expense and trouble in catching the felon and bringing him to justice, when after all he may get off, for the want of sufficient evidence of the fact, and commit half a dozen more like crimes before he can be legally hung; it being a rule of some of our courts not to punish a man for any offence before he can be proved to have committed it. Now observe the effects of this science; a man in walking the streets, riding in a stage coach, sitting in the theatre or anywhere else, sees a person before him with a fully developed murder bump on the back of his head; he immediately gives secret information of the fact; the criminal is forthwith seized without having an opportunity to escape; and this being a matter of easy proof, he may be tried, condemned, sentenced, and executed off hand. For it certainly is a matter of equal justice whether you hang a man before or after the crime, provided only you are satisfied that, if left unhung, he would be sure to commit it; and moreover the being beforehand with him, has this great advantage, that you thereby save the life of the murdered person.

But we might as well attempt to count the stars, as to enumerate the various excellencies of this wonderful science. Nor is

it necessary. The obvious advantages of having an accurate chart of every man's character drawn out upon his head for general inspection must be sufficiently apparent.

Having thus explained the origin and the important uses of the several sciences which are attempted to be decried by the book before us, we hope we have convinced our readers that these memoirs are in fact the offspring of some dissatisfied modern, and not the productions of the three distinguished ancients to whom they are attributed. But if we should have failed in this, still there is one science of great and increasing repute at the present day, not noticed in these memoirs, and which has so plainly grown out of the prevailing opinions of these times that we cannot but think that the claims of the moderns to it are unquestionable.

We refer to the novel science of inversion or transposition. As soon as our late peace with Great Britain had set the people of this country at their ease, and given them an opportunity of turning their attention to peaceful and speculative subjects, having, as we before observed, effectually discarded their ancestors, they began soon to examine with a careful and scrutinizing eye the foundations and merits of many of the old established opinions and principles received from them, and which had for centuries past controled the minds and influenced the conduct of mankind. Among these, their attention was particularly attracted to that universal and long continued custom among men of always keeping the head uppermost; and the philosophers and wiser sort gave out, that this was nothing more than an old prejudice, and a very injurious one, and no more natural to man than to other animals, but only a foolish fashion of our ancestors, which ought to be immediately corrected. And they said it was so far from according with the nature of things and the order of the universe to have the head always uppermost, that the most approved and received theories of the motion of the planets and the diurnal rotation of the earth showed that mankind ought to be heels over head at least half the time. These opinions were immediately caught up and assented to by such politicians as were of the prevailing party at this time in the country, who said that the usurpation, tyranny, and infringements upon the rights of the people, which had vexed the political world for so many ages, were chiefly owing to some persons carrying their heads too high. The medical men, too, assisted in attempting to reform this custom, and gave it as their decided opinion that it was to this bad habit

of keeping the head always uppermost, that most of the mental and bodily disorders of mankind might be traced, and particularly that worst one of all, called dyspepsia.

In pursuance of these opinions, and in order to effect as rapid and radical a change of this mischievous habit as possible, corporations were formed, and schools established in our principal cities, called Gymnasiums, where all those who had hitherto been going head over heels to the injury of their health, the distress of their friends, and the detriment of society, might endeavor to mend their ways by learning to go heels over head. The same system of education, after mature examination, has also been introduced, as we are informed, into some of our most distinguished universities, where it is said to have taken the place of the Hebrew and other dead languages, it being a general opinion, that if much of the time which has heretofore been bestowed upon the heads of the youth there, had been devoted to their heels, their proficiency would have been more apparent; so that at these venerable seats of science you may daily see learned philosophers, professors, and alumni with their heels where their heads used to be, to the great admiration of spectators, the advancement of science, and the manifest improvement of undergraduates.

We cannot close our remarks without expressing our thanks to the learned editor of these documents, for the great and continued zeal he manifests in composing or editing such works as tend to show the real state of improvement of this country in the arts, sciences, and general civilization. And if he should have been deceived, as we think he has, in attributing these compositions to the three venerable philosophers, whose memoirs they purport to be still they have their good effect, in this, that they raise the suggestion, whether, how much wiser soever than our ancestors we moderns may think ourselves, we shall not best show our wisdom by saying but little about it; inasmuch as it happens every now and then, that some relic of a former age, which, like the Herculaneum manuscripts and Milton's essay, has been buried for centuries among the ruins of a lost town or the rubbish of an overgrown library, and has so slipped through the fingers of the intermediate generations, accidentally falls into our hands, and gives us some reason to doubt whether the great march of mind in our day, may not, after all, have been in a circle.

ART. IV. Observations on the Growth of the Mind. By SAMPSON REED. Boston. 8vo. pp.

44.

PERHAPS there has been no age, since the world was established as the abode of man, so generally confident of progress, and so full of anticipations of further advancement, as our own. It looks back on the ages that are past, and asserts that it is wiser and better than they. It looks forward on the ages to come, and acknowledges that they will far surpass it. Though proud of its superiority, it is generous and impartial in its pride, for it is prepared and willing to be excelled. It is conscious of its abundant acquisitions, but it has been taught by many of these, that there is more to be acquired; and it calls, with a voice of disinterested hopefulness, on the still nobler and more successful exertions of future time. This voice of the age, feeble and stifled in many regions of the earth, rings out with an earnest distinctness from those districts in which mankind are the most intelligent and free, enjoying the greatest share of light and the greatest liberty to make use of it. Never was the voice so loud, so united, so cheering.

We join in it with all our strength. It is to us the voice of reason and truth. It is our nature proclaiming its origin and its destiny; it is experience holding high converse with futurity; it is deep calling unto deep. For melancholy auguries we have no faith; and for the outcry against innovation, no reverence. We hold courage to be wisdom, and confidence to be true philosophy. We do not doubt, nor fear.

And yet we think, that amid the prevailing excitement of the times, there may be occasionally discerned something like extravagance, a passion for the unreal and undefinable, a straining after improbabilities; as if there were no bounds to human power, no limit to its capacities. There is a disposition in some, who have observed the attainments already made by the human mind, to employ their fancy in searching out all possible attempts and improvements, in all the provinces of art and intellect.

It is a matter of course, that such a disposition should be developed by the fermentations and powerful workings, which have been going on in society. But we find fault with it on two accounts. The first is, that its indulgence is a useless employment of time. It is as idle, as it is easy, to sit down and foretell that

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