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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 324, July 26, 1828 by Various
page 20 of 50 (40%)
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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