THE CLOTHES OF THE MIND.
of ears, big white cravat, and very little neck, and compare it with main ; yet while the one picture seems to express a self-satisfied just the same front face, as he gives it us in his ideal Pro- smirk of self-love overflowing into general approbation and good- fessor, the hair arranged in precisely the same way, no humour, the other seems to express a (rather vulgar) admiration felt addition whatever, except in the blue-rimmed spectacles, a for another, overflowing into a certain limited measure of humble white cravat not very different in magnitude from that of satisfaction with herself. The long ringlets are alone answerable the phlegmatic man, and yet without even a family like - for this difference of impression. Long ringlets so uniformly ness of expression between the two faces. The whole differ- plead for approbation, and are so expressive not of self-confidence, ence consists in the open, bright, twinkling eyes, which peer but of plaintive requests for admiration, that they put a new gloss out eagerly through the professorial spectacles, the slightly dis- on the smirk of the features, and turn it from the excess of self- tended, dogmatic nostrils, which seem to quiver with positive esteem into the imploring hope of female vanity that it has not assertion, and the horizontally elongated mouth, which thins out quite failed.
the lips and draws them wide, sending away from the corners The least interesting and yet perhaps most popular part of the elliptic carves, with the long axis horizontal. In the phlegmatic entertainment is the exhibition of the various kinds of beards and man's face, on the contrary, the under lip is thick and prominent, moustaches which Mr. Schulz manages to exhibit by means of throwing a deep shadow on the chin, and the only line is that an optical apparatus, which casts the appearance of a very black which seems to divide the double chin,—the true chin from the beard or moustache of any shape he chooses, on his face, from underhanging flesh. Here the whole character of the very same which it vanishes again at a touch like a shadow of a cloud on the face is altered without even a change of hair or beard, or the appearance of the sun. The only intellectual interest this part of slightest alteration in the angle at which it is seen, from a type of the exhibition has, is not in itself,—for there is nothing but the the most abstract dogmatic activity,—square with the acute incul- novelty of the optical delusion which is its method to distinguish cation of positive teaching,—into one of gross phlegmatic heavi- it from the disguising effect of false beards and moustaches, in, ness, that would seem to be not only of a much lower type of which none but children would take much interest,—but in the culture, but of a coarser family stock. Mr. Schulz's own natural illustration it gives us of the absolute externality of the whole face, though much younger and less lined altogether, is no doubt machinery of expression. When you see the great, rough, black nearer to that of the professor,—a German professor, by the way, "democratic beard," as Mr. Schulz calls it, cloud the air for a mo- -than to " the phlegmatic man," of whom he has very little ment with a shadowy flicker, and then settle in a solid grove on the trace indeed in his natural composition ; but no one would sus- face, and again at a touch dissipate into the air and leave it as white pect his very close personal relationship to either of the two and pale as ever, we can scarcely help realizing not only that the characters, if they did not know it beforehand. One of his most special gleams of expression which Mr. Schulz brings and banishes at efficient expedients in effecting these changes is,—that after he has pleasure are equally shadows, and still more of intellectual shadows, thrown his face into the deep, artificial lines which he chooses for but that the mind sits as loose to the mechanism of expression, the moment to assume, he casts upon it, thus metamorphosed, a very worked through the movement of its own features, as it does to that
much intenser light than any which is ever thrown upon his own natural face, the effect of which is very much to heighten all the lights and deepen all the shadows, so that the newly assumed expression is enormously intensified as compared with what it would express in an ordinary light. If any one has ever noticed how much any even com- mon expression of pleasure, or awe, or misery is intensified by a flash of lightning suddenly passing over the face which wears it, he will get some alight conception of one of the most important means of Mr. Schulz's wonderful self-transformations. We observed repeat- edly that, after he had assumed his new aspect, we could still trace clearly enough Mr. Schulz's own natural expression beneath. the new one, until the intense light of the lamps was cast upon. it, when the natural Mr. Schulz entirely vanished, and the expres- sion he had assumed was so greatly intensified as to swallow up, as it were, the natural face beneath. So, a room with a new. window thrown out will look at first, even in the dusk, half strange and half familiar, but if a blaze of light is let in through, it, the whole effect of the room is so changed by the emphasis thus given to this new feature of it, that you can barely recognize the old features at all.
It is curious to notice how much of our natural interpretation of the meaning of certain lines and attitudes of the face depends not so much on those lines and attitudes themselves, as on the context in
IR. ERNST SCHULZ'S very extraordinary entertainment at which we find them, and which is made to suggest to us an inter- .01 the Egyptian Hall is something more than a mere amuse- pretation of its own. In one part of his entertainment Mr. Schulz. ment. Any one who has seen the forty-eight utterly different takes a framework of painted card-board, or some substance of transformations through which the young German's sensible, that nature, representing various head-dresses, such as a monthly observant, slightly humorous, not otherwise very remarkable face nurse's, a scolding elderly female's in a bonnet with yellow passes in the course of the ninety-six minutes or so during strings, a fascinating spinster's "of a certain age," and so which the entertainment lasts,—just one transformation for every forth, and frames his own face in it, so as to give a new two minutes of the time,—will be dull if he does not begin asking marginal gloss or commentary as it were to the very same attitudes himself a dozen different and not very easily answerable ques- of face which he has before presented to us under no such disguise. tions on the secret of mental clothes, the mode in which one and The same thing is done later in the evening by the use of real the same mind, in one and the same body, manages to assume and head-dresses,—turbans, feathers, &c. In each case the observer,. throw off this immense variety of widely separated moral costumes, preoccupied and retained as it were in favour of a special interpre- ranging from the stupid, pudgy pride of the wealthy English tation by the associations connected with the head-dress, whether. Philistine, to the wild animal pride, deeply seamed with animal painted or real, construes the very same lines and expressions of cares, of the Red Indian Chief. Of course in such a character as countenance which seemed to say one thing when they stood alone, the Chief of the Fox Indians Mr. Schulz gives himself the help of into quite a different meaning when he is prejudiced by this ex- head-dress and costume ; but in several of the changes through ternal commentary. Thus two of Mr. Schulz's representations are which his face passes, there is absolutely no alteration even in the really, if you compare the countenances alone—the mere lines arrangement of his hair, the whole transformation being due to and expressions of the face—precisely alike,—the one which he the alteration in the attitude and lines of his face, the altered curve calls, we think, " the genial man," and in which he is unaided by of the eyebrows and the lips, the angle at which the head is held, or adventitious costume and framework, and the one in which he thrown back or forwards, and the lines, deep or shallow, into which represents the amiable spinster whom he calla Miss Evelina Matilda he ploughs his pliant countenance. Take, for instance, his represen- Peablossom. Put your hand over the hair and neck-tie of the tation of what he calls the phlegmatic temperament,—a full front, photograph of the one, and over the ringlets and lace of the sallow face, with very few lines, hair brushed to the back, lips full, photograph of the other, and precisely the same features in pre- chin slightly heavy, eyes not closed, but only half open, great display cisely the same posture, and lined with precisely the same lines, re- worked by casting external shadows upon the face, or masking itself in actual costumes. When Mr. Schulz, in imitating "the pious man," makes himself—no doubt without knowing it—look so absurdly like Lord Shaftesbury in a moment of lugubrious devo- tion, or, in imitating " the melancholy man," makes himself the image of an acquaintance of ours who was once melancholy mad, it is impossible not to fancy that Mr. Schulz might, if he pleased, almost live one distinct life in his own mind, and quite a different apparent life in the external world ; that to himself he might be known, for instance, as a man never even for a moment content with his position, while to the world he might live as a man abound- ing in pride and self-elation ; or that to himself he might be known as an acute and vigilant observer, while he could seem to the world a model of absolute inanity. He makes us feel, at all events, that with him the expression assumed by the face is almost as voluntary as the costume assumed by the person, that he could as easily put on the one as the other, and become a Fox Indian to Fox Indians, or a monthly nurse to monthly nurses, as he can be a German physiognomist to his audience at the Egyptian Hall. The most curious question which his entertainment sug- gests, is this :—Has the character of each man a natural dress of its own beyond and over itself, as the body has?—is a certain costume of expression, which covers and conceals with- out properly disguising the true character, the natural cloth- ing of a civilized mind, or is it the very character itself, the naked individual character, without dress of any sort, which should come out in the expression of sincere men? For our parts, we believe that just as it is natural with all civilized men tnwear clothes, and clothes are not an insincerity, but a decency of the body ;—so that it is natural with all civilized minds to wear moral clothes; and that moral clothes,—that is, moral lines of ex- pression which express something more than the mere individual man, moral lines of expression which, while they are individual enough to tell the intellectual stature, and the capacities, and the nature of the individual, still veil from the eye of others the inmost individuality,—are not an insincerity or mask, but a decency of the mind. Mr. Schulz himself, while putting on all sorts of moral masks and dominoes over his own personal moral costume, never took that oft to show the absolute individual stripped of all moral conventions beneath. And the eras in any history or society when men are disposed to throw off all the national and conventional dress of character, as we may call it, and expose the naked individuality beneath, are usually eras of danger, revolution, and national shame.
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