skill and discrimination of the artist in making all the women, who are
ranged on one side, in the greatest alarm at the sentence of the judge,
while all the men on the opposite side see through the design of it.
Nature does not go to work or cast things in a regular mould in this
sort of way. I once heard a person remark of another, 'He has an eye
like a vicious horse.' This was a fair analogy. We all, I believe,
have noticed the look of a horse's eye just before he is going to bite
or kick. But will any one, therefore, describe to me exactly what that
look is? It was the same acute observer that said of a
self-sufficient., prating music-master, 'He talks on all subjects _at
sight_'--which expressed the man at once by an allusion to his
profession. the coincidence was indeed perfect. Nothing else could
compare with the easy assurance with which this gentleman would
volunteer an explanation of things of which he was most ignorant, but
the _nonchalance_ with which a musician sits down to a harpsichord to
play a piece he has never seen before. My physiognomical friend would
not have hit on this mode of illustration without knowing the profession
of the subject of his criticism; but having this hint given him, it
instantly suggested itself to his 'sure trailing.' The manner of the
speaker was evident; and the association of the music-master sitting
down to play at sight, lurking in his mind, was immediately called out
by the strength of his impression of the character. The feeling of
character and the felicity of invention in explaining it were nearly
allied to each other. The first was so wrought up and running over that
the transition to the last was very easy and unavoidable. When Mr. Kean
was so much praised for the action of Richard in his last struggle with
his triumphant antagonist, where he stands, after his sword is wrested
from him, with his hands stretched out, 'as if his will could not be
disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had a withering power,'
he said that he borrowed it from seeing the last efforts of Painter in