The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 324, July 26, 1828 by Various
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page 20 of 50 (40%)
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long," said Napoleon to David, "will a picture last?" "About four or
five hundred years!--a fine immortality!" The poet multiplies his works by means of a cheap material--and Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and Tasso, and Moliere, and Milton, and Shakspeare, may bid oblivion defiance; the sculptor impresses his conceptions on metal or on marble, and expects to survive the wreck of nations and the wrongs of time; but the painter commits to perishable cloth or wood the visions of his fancy, and dies in the certain assurance that the life of his works will be but short in the land they adorn.--_For. Rev._ * * * * * A Chinese novelist, in describing his hero, says, "the air of the mountains and rivers had formed his body; his mind, like a rich piece of embroidery, was worthy of his handsome face!" Pity he has not been introduced among our "fashionable novels." * * * * * PHRENOLOGY. In 1805, Dr. Gall, the celebrated phrenologist, visited the prison of Berlin in the course of his experimental travels to establish his theories. On April 17, in the presence of many witnesses, he was shown upwards of two hundred culprits, of whom he had never heard till that moment, and to whose crimes and dispositions he was a total stranger. Dr. Gall immediately pointed out, as a general feature in one of the wards, an extraordinary development in the region of the head where the organ of theft is situated, and in fact every prisoner there was a thief. Some children, also detained for theft, were then shown to him; |
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