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Class I.—The Roman, or Aquiline Nose, is rather convex, but undulating, as its name aquiline imports. It is usually rugose and coarse; but when otherwise it approaches the Greek Nose, and the character is materially altered.

It indicates great Decision, considerable Energy, Firmness, Absence of refinement, and Disregard for the bienséances of life.

Numerous portraits, both in marble and on coins, demonstrate that this Nose was very frequent among the Romans, and peculiarly characteristic of that nation. Hence its name. The persevering energy, stern determination, and unflinching firmness of the conquerors of the world; their rough, unrefined character, which, notwithstanding the example of Greece, never acquired the polish of that country, all indicate the accuracy of the mental habit attributed to the owner of this Nose.

Sufficient stress has never been laid by historians on national characteristics. The peculiar psychonomy of nations is an element which is never taken into account, when the historical critic endeavours to elucidate the causes and consequences of events. He judges of all nations by the standard of his own, regardless of age, climate, physiognomy, and psychonomy. This is as absurd as the fashion the Greeks had of deducing foreign names and titles from the Greek, a practice which Cicero wittily ridicules. In this ridicule we willingly join; yet we are equally open to it, when we interpret the actions of foreign nations by our own national standard.

It was the psychonomic difference between the Romans and the Greeks, which prevented the former from benefiting so efficiently from the lessons in art and philosophy of the latter, as they would have done had their minds been congenial.

The refinement which Rome received from Greece, was converted in the transfer into a refinement of coarse sensual luxury. Rome, after the conquest of Greece, filled its forums and halls with Greek workmanship, and its schools with Greek learning; nevertheless Roman mind advanced not one step beyond its original coarseness.

At the period when Rome possessed itself by conquest of the principal works of Grecian art, her citizens only regarded them as household furniture of but little value. Polybius narrates that, after the siege of Corinth, he saw some Roman soldiers playing at dice upon a picture of Bacchus, by Aristides; a picture esteemed one of the finest in the world. When King Attalus offered 600,000 sesterces (£4,845 15s.) for this picture, Mummius, the Roman Consul, thinking there must be some magic property in it, to make it worth such an enormous sum, refused to sell it, and hung it up in the Temple of Ceres at Rome. So little were the Romans conscious of the real value of the treasures of Greek art, that Mummius covenanted with the masters of the ships, hired to convey the spoils of Corinth to Rome, that if any of the exquisite paintings and statuary should be lost, they should replace them with new ones!^[8]

It is not surprising, therefore, that Rome, although possessed of infinitely greater wealth, a larger population, and the splendid examples of Greece, not only produced no artist of merit, but receded far from the high standard which Greece, notwithstanding its internal divisions, its comparative poverty, small extent, and unassisted genius, had established. There is no way of accounting for these facts, but by the difference in their psychonomy. The genius of Rome was of a very different nature from that of Greece, and was incompetent to advance the great work which the latter had commenced.

This is an example which, with numerous others that occur in the world’s history, might teach those who, in modern phrase, assert that the uniform order of the world is progress, that retrogression has ofttimes been the apparent order, and that it is a foolish short-sightedness to judge of the order of the world from a few hundred years in its history. The Greek who remembered the magnificent works of his country, and looked upon the degenerate splendor of Rome, no doubt equally dogmatically asserted that the world was in its dotage, that it had retrograded, and would never be regenerated.

The ancient Hindoo, who, in ages too remote for history to record, wept over the fallen splendor and lost power, the ruined wealth and degenerate arts of his country; the Egyptian who, in ante-Mosaic periods, beheld the fierce and barbarous Shepherd-Kings trampling with haughty contempt and hostile fanaticism on the wonderful works which still astonish the progressed world; the Assyrian, who, a century before the foundation of Rome, witnessed the downfall of his country’s magnificence and extensive empire,—all equally thought that these glories would never be resuscitated, and that the best ages of the world were past away; and if any of them had been told, that in other lands and other climes they would, in far-distant ages, be outvied, he would have turned with incredulity from the prospect, and have demanded what race was to surpass the glorious achievements of his own.

But the modern dogmatist tries to take his case out of the argument, by pretending that Christianity will protect the world from again retrograding. This is the mere pride of the Pharisee, who flatters himself that he is not as other men are, that his Christianity is too pure to fall, and his knowledge too vast to be blasted. Or else he forgets that the pure Christianity of the first disciples and martyrs failed to preserve succeeding generations from the inroads of sin and darkness more overwhelming than had ever blackened the face of Europe since the commencement of the historical period. The dogmatist of those days sighed over the world’s degeneracy, and saw not through the surrounding gloom any hopeful gleam of light; just as the modern dogmatist rejoices over the world’s advance, without perceiving any overhanging shadow of darkness.

Both judge of the world by their own time and circumstances, just as we are too apt to judge of each other by ourselves.

A due regard to the psychonomy of nations would throw much light upon many abstruse points of history, and often serve to corroborate narrations which appear marvellous and incredible to us. Thus, as we have, for the most part,^[9] left off eating human flesh in these islands for some thousand years or more, historians reject as utterly incredible that our forefathers were cannibals; and some still more tender-hearted philanthropists even venture to assert that cannibalism has not and never had an existence anywhere. Whereas, if they would compare the evidence with the psychonomy of the nations of whom the circumstance is narrated, instead of with our own, they would instantly perceive in it nothing unnatural nor incredible. Thus also infidel writers, unable to comprehend the fervent and assured hope of a blessed immortality which supported the martyrs, deny, as repugnant to human nature, the patient sufferings of the early Christians. And thus again commentators on the Bible, both infidel and credent, have made sad havoc of many texts, by endeavoring to interpret them by European manners and habits. This inattention to national psychonomy is, moreover, a fertile cause of the mal-administration of colonies, and was the root of nine-tenths of the errors in Indian affairs during the last century.

Seeing, then, the importance of fully understanding the psychonomy of nations before criticizing their records, we should reject no probable key to that requisite knowledge; and if physiognomy would furnish such a key, it should be hailed as an important element in historical criticism. This consideration has induced us to complete our system by a few remarks on National Noses. For no part of the physiognomy is more needful to be comprehended than the Nose, if Nasology be correct; because the mental faculties which it pourtrays are more important than those revealed in the other features; and because, being immovable and permanent in its outline, the artist gives us its national or individual form, without the distortion which the action or passion exhibited may make it necessary to throw over the other more pliant features.

Reserving, then, till a future chapter, any further observations on National Noses, we will now consider a few individual instances of the Roman Nose.

This Nose is common to all great conquerors and warriors, and other persons who have exhibited vast energy and perseverance in overcoming great obstacles without regard to personal ease, or the welfare of their fellow-men.

The following have pure, or very nearly pure, Roman Noses:—

Rameses II (Sesostris).

Julius Cæsar.

Henri Quatre.

Charles V. of Spain.

Duke of Wellington.

Canute.

Gonzalo de Cordova (the Great Captain).

William III.

Sir W. Wallace.

Condé (the Great).

Robert Bruce.

Queen Elizabeth.

Edward I.

Columbus.

Sir Francis Drake.

Cortez.

Pizarro.

Washington.

Henry VII.

Cato the Censor.

Earl of Chatham.

Ignatius Loyola.

The well-known, because (as their Noses likewise attest) strongly marked, characters of these persons render it unnecessary to allude even briefly to their biographies. Their names are sufficient to bring at once before the mind their energetic, persevering, and determined characters. They were persons whom no hardships could deter, no fears daunt, no affections turn aside from any purpose which they had undertaken: that purpose being (from the absence of the Cogitative) always of a physical character; and (from the absence of the Greek) always pursued with a stern and reckless disregard of their own and others’ physical ease and welfare. Their successes were attained by energy and perseverance, not by forethought and deep scheming. They were not the men of the closet, but of the field. Physical action, not mental activity, was their adopted road to success. For this reason, and because history is little more than a chronicle of physical action, wars and bloodshed, the owners of Roman Noses occupy the largest portion of their fellow-men’s thoughts and of the historical page.

The ancients acknowledged the foregoing Nasal Classification, for they represented Jupiter, Hercules, Minerva, Bellatrix, and other energetic Deities with Roman Noses, which Plato designates, from its being indicative of Power and Energy, ‘the Royal Nose,’—while they gave pure Greek Noses to the more refined Apollo, Bacchus, Juno, Venus, &c. The debased and unintellectual Fawn and Satyr they pourtrayed with Snub or Celestial Noses; thus imparting to their countenances the low cunning or bestial inanity appropriate to those mythological inventions.

It must not, however, be inferred from the majority of warriors’ names in the above list, that the Roman Nose necessarily indicates a warrior.

These names are only selected because they afford well-known and easily verifiable instances, requiring neither pictorial nor biographical illustration. Energy may be equally conspicuous in any other department of life, and display itself as fully in the civilian as in the warrior. Two of the individuals adduced are striking instances of this:—Cato the Censor, and the Earl of Chatham. They were men of remarkable parallelism of character, and, though differing in other facial features, their Noses were very similar.

CATO THE CENSOR.

(From a gem in the Florentine Museum.)

The events of their early life—those events which always bear most clearly the impress of the mind, because actuated by choice, and not by present or future consequences—were almost identical. They both entered the army in youth, and both quitted it for the Senate. Here each displayed those powers of eloquence which raised them to the highest eminence, and will transmit their names to the latest posterity. Its peculiar feature was that energetic, powerful, and determined vehemence of language, which takes the mind prisoner, and carries the judgment with it by storm. It was irresistible. Before it all minds of less power, though of greater intellect and activity, recoiled. The orations of Cato are unhappily lost. But Cicero, a master of eloquence, and well enabled to compare them with similar compositions, passes upon them the highest eulogiums. The eloquence of Cato has been compared, for its force and energy, to the eloquence of that Demosthenes before whom Philip of Macedon quailed, and whose tremendous orations have given the name of Philippics to all sarcastic and vehement invectives. Of Chatham’s eloquence, it has been said by Wilkes: “Nothing could withstand the force of that contagion. The fluent Murray has faltered, and even Fox shrunk back appalled from an adversary ‘fraught with fire unquenchable,’ if I may borrow the expression of our great Milton. He had not the correctness of language so striking in the great Roman orator; but he had the verba ardentia, the bold, glowing words.”

Cato led victorious armies into the field, and proved himself an able general; for in Rome the functions of the general and the statesman were united in the person of the Consul.

It became not, however, the Secretary of State to lead armies in person; but while Chatham administered the affairs of this country, “victory crowned the British arms wherever they appeared, both on sea and land; and the four years of the second administration of Mr. Pitt are four of the most glorious years in the history of the eighteenth century.”^[10]

In their retirement they were alike; for neither regarded with complacency the pursuits of literature: they required some physical activity in their very idleness, and gardening was the favourite occupation of both. Cato displayed his disregard and even hatred for literary refinement by advising the Senate to dismiss the Grecian Ambassador Carneades promptly, lest his eloquence should corrupt the Roman youth with a love for Greek learning and philosophy.

He cultivated his farm and garden with great skill, and wrote a work on the subject, entitled “De Rustica.” Chatham was a landscape-gardener of no mean pretensions. He assisted Lord Lyttelton in laying out the celebrated park and grounds at Hagley; and Bishop Warburton eulogizes his skill in gardening as inimitable, and far superior to that of the professor Capability Brown. Not even obedience to the king’s mandate could draw Chatham from his country retirement at Hayes.

Neither ever thought he had done serving his country while life lasted, even when bodily health and strength were gone. At eighty-four years of age Cato went on an embassy to Carthage; and Chatham, worn out by the gout and wrapped in flannels, never neglected to take his seat in the House and electrify it with his eloquence when any important question affecting the interests of the country or the liberty of the subject arose.

Notwithstanding their many virtues, they were both coarse-minded, violent men; proud, self-willed, and regardless of the common courtesies, and even decencies, of society. Both were perhaps indebted for some of their fame to the successful practice of the vice which has been happily designated as the deference paid to virtue.

It is not, therefore, only in the peculiar circumstances of his death, that Chatham resembles Cato, with whom he has therein been frequently compared.

It will be remembered that after Cato’s return from Carthage (the inveterate enemy and most powerful rival of Rome), Cato, then in the eighty-fifth year of his age, and the last year of his life, never spoke in the Senate without expressing his conviction of the dangerous power of Carthage, and concluding with the celebrated words “Delenda est Carthago.” Chatham, when peace with America was proposed on terms which he thought dishonourable to his country, expended his last strength in opposing it, and fell, to survive but a few days, senseless on the floor of the House of Lords.

Those who attribute to the founder of the Jesuits the characteristics of that powerful Order, both over-estimate and calumniate the man, Ignatius Loyola. He foresaw none of the power and eminence which his successors would attain; he contemplated neither their conquests, their influence, wealth, nor extensive domination.

The wounded soldier on his miserable pallet devising conquests over Satan, composing his Spiritual Exercises, and framing his celebrated Constitutions, contemplated for himself and his followers a scene of action wholly different from that into which they were finally—accidentally or Providentially, who shall say?—determined. His ambition contemplated no worldly fame; he sought not riches nor the applause of men. He proposed only to carry the Christian warfare into the country of the infidel, and in poverty and “perfect obedience to the Holy See” to rescue souls from perdition. The original object of his Order was the noble one of preaching the Gospel among the Mahometans, especially in the Holy Land; and for this specific object, his Spiritual Exercises and his Constitutions were composed, and his Order founded. It was for this purpose that the Pope sanctioned the formation of the Society, and its members were on the point of departure for Asia when war broke out between the Turks and the Christians.

This unexpected event rendered their journey physically impossible, and compelled the newly-sworn aspirants to fulfil their vows of perfect obedience in some other direction, to be enjoined by the Head of the Church. Thenceforth they remained in Europe, where the Reformation afforded ample scope for their exertions, and where they only too successfully combated with the new heresy instead of with the old apostacy. The mind of Ignatius Loyola was swayed by none of the characteristics of Jesuitism. His character was open, direct, fearless. Physically active and wonderfully energetic, to conceive was to determine; to determine was to act.

When his broken leg was set awry he only said, “Break it again and set it straight;” still the bone protruded and threatened to spoil the shape of his boot: “Cut off the projection and stretch the limb in an iron jack,” was a command which showed the unflinching determination of the man.

Confined to his bed, the “Lives of the Saints” is brought to him for his amusement. He is struck with their sufferings for the faith, and, on the instant, determines to do likewise. Thenceforth his whole soul has but one ambition, to suffer for the faith; and this ambition actuated the remainder of his life. To run through the life of Ignatius, to pourtray his fearful sufferings; his degrading servitude in misery, in beggary, and rags; his unwearying perseverance in acquiring a knowledge of language and divinity; his journeyings; his rebuffs; his trials; his successes—would be to exhibit what can be effected by mere perseverance and physical energy, without the gift of great mental powers.

But the peculiarly remarkable physical bias of Ignatius’s mind is still more strikingly developed in his writings. Other men have been equally active and persevering—other men have equalled him in mere bodily activity and suffering; but to Ignatius alone belongs the discovery of exercising the mind by converting his thoughts into actual realities, and rendering the creations of the imagination true existences.

Herein appears the peculiarly physical tone of his mind, which could not rest content with mere spiritual contemplation, but must actually, as it were, see, feel, smell, taste, and hear the objects contemplated. The Spiritual Exercises enjoin that the exercitant must, in his gloomiest hours, not only think upon, but actually behold, the vast conflagration of Hell; he must hear its wailings, shrieks, and blasphemies; he must smell its smoky brimstone, and the horrid stench of its filth and rottenness; he must taste the saltness of the tears of penitence, and the bitterness of the rancour of the heart, and the loathsomeness of the worm of conscience; and he must touch the very fire by which the souls of the reprobate are scorched. Thus each meditation must be, not mere thinking-on, or contemplation, but must be instinct with life—must be continued until the senses seem actually to see, taste, and feel the objects contemplated.

So, in contemplating the passion of our Lord, the horrors of his death must be visibly present; we must hear his last words; we must listen to the shoutings of the populace; we must watch the agony of the virgin-mother beholding the infamy of her blessed son; we must see his quivering limbs, his death-like paleness, his tottering weakness under the burden of the cross, his bleeding side and pierced extremities. Merely to see these things in contemplation is trivial and inessential; we must, with certain interior senses, actually see, hear, taste, and smell, not only the personages and scenes on which the mind is dwelling, but the emotions which the scenes are calculated to excite. So again, we must taste and relish the suavity and lusciousness of the pious soul, and by a like internal sense of touch we must actually feel and kiss the very garments, places, and footsteps of the personages whose acts our minds dwell upon.

This is justly called “the application of the senses” to the soul.

It consists, in fact, in reducing to quasi-materialisms the visions of the mind; in giving to the exercitant’s thoughts, every reality short of such an actual-material existence as would render them visible to others—as they are, indeed, visible to himself.

In this remarkable system for exciting the soul appears the utter incapacity of the mind of Ignatius to appreciate mere metaphysical activity. His soul could not apprehend the unseen, and dwell on the absent or far distant. It was necessary to his frame of mind that everything should be present, visible, tangible, real.

The soul of the founder of the Jesuits was, therefore, strikingly accordant with the revelation of his physiognomy; although, were it true, that he was—in the vulgar sense—a Jesuit, the Greek Nose and generally a more delicate caste of countenance, would more correctly have pourtrayed his inner man.

But the founder of the Jesuits was no Jesuit, and had his original Constitutions been adhered to, the Order would never have achieved the bad eminence which it so rapidly attained, so long held, so quickly lost, and so tenaciously still aspires after.

As by far the majority of persons have compound Noses, and as their consideration will therefore throw additional light upon the system, we shall add a few observations upon some of them.

The Roman Nose may be compounded with Classes II and III, rarely with IV; seldom or never with V and VI.^[11]

Compound I

II,—the Romano-Greek Nose.^[12]

The following are instances of Noses of this sub-class:—

Alexander the Great.

Constantine.

Wolsey.

Richelieu.

Ximenes.

Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Frederick II. of Prussia.

Alfred.

Sir W. Raleigh.

Sir P. Sidney.

Napoleon.

Associated with much physical energy (I), these persons all exhibited much refinement of mind, a love for Arts and Letters, considerable astuteness and capacity of scheming; (II) they saw far and quickly, though deficient in deep philosophical powers of thought.

A rather more extended notice of some of the members of the sub-classes will be requisite; as, of course, their characters were less developed, and therefore less known, than those of the pure classes; but principally in order to point out the more minute touches, and, apparently, inconsistencies of character which illustrate the compound form of Nose.

CONSTANTINE.

(From a gem in the Florentine Museum.)

Constantine, having by a felicitous union of enterprise and cunning procured his elevation to the Imperial throne, and having defeated the last of his rivals to that splendid dignity, directed his attention to the concentration rather than the extension of his enormous empire, and sought, by building Constantinople, to divert the minds of the people from foreign war and intestine discord; while he at the same time fostered and encouraged the arts by the magnificent decoration of the new capital, to which he brought from Asia and Greece some of their most splendid productions.

Vigorous in war and active in peace, Constantine united all the characteristics of the Roman and the Greek. In war he successfully opposed both civil and foreign enemies, and made himself master of the most extended empire Rome had ever designated by her name. While in the vigour of his age, he moved with slow dignity, or with active vigilance, according to the various exigencies of peace and war, along the frontiers of his extensive dominions, and was always prepared to take the field either against a foreign or a domestic enemy.

But when he had gradually reached the summit of prosperity and the decline of life, he became sensible of the ambition of founding a city which might perpetuate the glory of his name, and he then exhibited all the capacities for the enjoyment of the luxuries of peace which had hitherto lain dormant in his mind. The mere building and fortifying a city, which would have satisfied the ambition of the coarser-minded Roman, was not his ambition only. He desired to decorate it with the highest efforts of human genius, and make it not only a monument of his military prowess, but also of his taste and refinement. For this purpose he founded schools of architecture to supply the disparity which his fine taste detected between the degenerate artists of his time and those of early Greece. The immortal productions of Phidias and Lysippus were dragged from other countries to adorn his capital; and, unmindful of the injustice, he despoiled the cities of Greece and Asia of their most valuable ornaments. The trophies of memorable wars, the objects of religious veneration, the most finished statues of the gods and heroes, of the sages and poets of ancient times, contributed to the splendid triumph of Constantinople.^[13]

The character of Wolsey was very similar to that of Constantine. We might almost venture to assert that had he been placed in the same situation he would have pursued the same course. Yet the only part of their physiognomies which assimilates are their Noses. One remarkable circumstance in the early life of each identifies the two men, and exhibits in them the union of energy with acute tact. Constantine, half assured of his elevation to the Imperial throne, if he could join his father’s army and be present with him in case of his death, and having with difficulty obtained permission to visit his father from Galerius, (who dreaded the same event, and delayed the permission, until he believed it would be impossible for him to accomplish his object), travelled post through Bithynia, Dacia, Thracia, Pannonia, Italy and Gaul, with such speed that he reached Boulogne in the very moment when his father was preparing to embark for Britain, accompanied him, and finally, by military election, succeeded to his share of the Empire.

When Henry VII was looking out in his old age for a rich wife, he despatched Wolsey, to whom the vista of future eminence was just opening, to Flanders, to treat for the hand of a Princess of the Empire. Wolsey, conscious that in such affairs old age brooks no delay, started on his journey and had returned before the King knew that he was gone. By similar energy and shrewd scheming in pursuit of his own aggrandizement, very analogous to that by which Constantine secured the purple, Wolsey elevated himself to the highest subordinate station in his country, and then directed his mind rather to the extension of learning, the encouragement of art, the erection of splendid buildings, and the increase of domestic magnificence, than to an imitation of the warlike pursuits of the ancestors of his monarch; although the disposition of the latter strongly tended in that more physically energetic direction. The noble hall and chapel at Hampton Court and the remains of the colleges which Wolsey founded, still attest his magnificence, his taste, his liberality, and his respect for learning.

Richelieu was another Wolsey. It is a remarkable fact that the point of identity in actively seeking their own aggrandizement, which has been noticed between Wolsey and Constantine, occurs also in the early life of Richelieu. Having, from interested motives, abandoned the army (for which he was originally destined) for the Church, and the Pope having refused, on account of his extreme youth, to sanction his elevation to the Bishopric for the sake of which he had taken orders, he resolved to overcome this difficulty in person; and setting off for Rome, gave the Pontiff such convincing proofs of his talents, that he was consecrated Bishop forthwith, at twenty-two years of age, and thus laid the foundation of his future eminence.

He conducted in person the siege of Rochelle, and baffled the finest military geniuses of Europe; he out-intrigued the ablest diplomatists; he nourished arts and commerce, and for the better promotion of learning he founded the French Academy.

In the union of energy of character and refinement of tastes the three celebrated Cardinal-ministers of England, France, and Spain, strongly assimilated.

The anecdotes which have been related of the energetic carving-out of their own fortunes by Constantine, Wolsey, and Richelieu, find also their parallel in the early career of Ximenes. The son of noble parents, but without wealth or patronage, he had nothing but his talents and the energy of his character to carry him successfully through life. He began as a student at Salamanca; but finding that sphere too limited for his ambition, he undertook a journey to Rome, where he soon distinguished himself as an advocate, but preferring the church, took holy orders.

Sixtus IV had bestowed upon him the reversionary grant of the first benefice which should fall vacant in Spain. This proved to be Uceda; and, on the demise of the incumbent, he produced his letters, and took possession with such promptitude and despatch that he baffled the Archbishop of Toledo, who considered the benefice to be in his gift, and had promised it to one of his dependents.

Like Richelieu he took the field in person, and in spite of the jealousy of the King, the dissensions of the generals, and the mutiny of the soldiers, he succeeded in taking the town of Oran on the coast of Barbary; the first success of any moment which the Spanish army could boast in a campaign of four years’ duration.

He devoted himself, in after-life, to the encouragement of popular education and the advancement of higher learning in no less degree than his brother Cardinals before named. He founded a school for the education of the daughters of the poorer nobility, and subsequently provided them with marriage-portions.

He established the University of Alcala, richly endowed it, and filled its professorial chairs with the most distinguished learned men of Europe. Here he undertook the magnificent work, known as the Complutensian Bible. It was the first Polyglott Bible ever published, and as such affords a striking contrast to the otherwise undeviating opposition which Spain has offered to the spread of true Christianity and the circulation of the Scriptures.

It should, however, be remembered that even this was a sealed book to the laity, since it did not comprise a version in the vernacular. It contained the Old Testament in the Hebrew, the Septuagint, the Vulgate of St. Jerome, and the Chaldee Paraphrase with Latin translations, and the New Testament in the Greek and Vulgate.

It was the work of fifteen years, and when the last volume was brought to Ximenes, shortly before his death, he exclaimed: “Many high and difficult matters have I carried on for the state, yet is there nothing which I have done, that deserves higher congratulations than this edition of the Scriptures—the fountain-head of our holy religion, whence may flow purer streams of theology than those which have been turned off from it.” The whole cost of the work, fifty thousand gold crowns, was defrayed by Ximenes.

In Lorenzo de’ Medici we meet with another of those characters, frequent among men eminent in public affairs, which unite refinement of taste with physical energy. To live in the world’s eye with success, it is necessary to exhibit something ad captandum vulgus. There must either be the intense energy of the Roman, or the more moderate energy with the taste and magnificence of the Romano-Greek. Hence, while the former class of Nose prevails among those who have won fame and honours by arms merely, the latter is frequent among those who are chiefly celebrated for their statesmanship. But both energy and statesmanship were necessary to him who would secure a world’s fame as ruler of a petty Italian state. The head of a state too weak to be feared in war, and too turbulent to be governed in calm tranquillity, required some other qualities beside energy, in order to be respected and honoured by his contemporaries. These qualities were happily united in Lorenzo de’ Medici. Firm in danger, prompt in action, lavish in expenditure, refined in taste, accomplished in learning, expert in art, he was every way formed to win laurels in an age which boasted the greatest statesmen, the best artists, and the most profound scholars. The vigour and promptitude with which he repelled the celebrated conspiracy of the Pazzi family, hanged an Archbishop on the spot in full canonicals, and punished the conspirators, alone attest his energy. The title of Magnificent, which he earned in an age celebrated for its magnificence, demonstrates his lavish liberality; while his love for antiquities, his patronage of the arts of sculpture and painting, his studious devotion to learning and the writings of the ancients, bespeak the refinement of his mind. Among other institutions he founded a school for the study of antiquities, and furnished it with the finest specimens of ancient workmanship. “To this institution, more than to any other circumstance, we may, without any hesitation, ascribe the sudden and astonishing proficiency, which, towards the close of the fifteenth century, was evidently made in the arts, and which, commencing at Florence, extended itself to the rest of Europe.”

“‘It is highly deserving of notice,’ says Vasari, ‘that all those who studied in the gardens of the Medici, and were favoured by Lorenzo, became most excellent artists, which can only be attributed to the exquisite judgment of this great patron of their studies.’”^[14]

Frederick II is another example of the union of refined tastes with vigorous energy. It is not so much for his military genius that he is to be remembered and respected, as for the impulse he gave to Prussian intellect, and thence generally to German mind.

It is true this was hardly perceptible till the present century, for until the peace of 1815, Germany had been the seat of almost incessant warfare, and was, therefore, disabled from pursuing the arts of peace with success. But thirty years’ peace has enabled her to perform great things, and to justify a pretty sure hope of yet greater. We ought to be far in advance of her, for where she now is we were exactly two hundred and fifty years and upwards ago. Till the reign of Elizabeth, England had been, like Germany till 1815, the seat of perpetual war or religious discord. At the end of the sixteenth century in England, and at the beginning of the nineteenth in Germany, the Teutonic mind began to develope itself with effect. The same deep investigations in history, the same subtle disquisitions in metaphysics, the same love of philological criticism that distinguished English literature in the early part of the seventeenth century, belong to German literature in the nineteenth, and are combined with the same coarseness of manners that marked our ancestors. The Germans still delight in those rude, indecent productions, called Miracle-plays or Mysteries,^[15] which amused the predecessors of Shakspere: a written character, ugly, uncouth, and elsewhere obsolete; the recent adoption of the vernacular in literary composition;^[16] legalized wager of battle; semi-feudalism; masques of fools dancing in a gigantic beer-barrel and chanting the praises of beer; deer-battues; perpetual duelling and beer-swigging; feasts of horse-flesh; millions pilgrimaging to the Coat of Treves; the implicit reception of sham miracles, all mark a state of society little removed from that magnificent barbarism which stained the rush-strewn court of the ear-boxing and swearing Elizabeth.

In refinement, and that wealth which springs from Science, we have advanced far beyond Germany; but in that wealth which emanates from Mind we are only on a par with her. The causes of this will be considered more fully hereafter, when we treat, under Class III, of the causes of the decline of Wisdom.

The impulse given to German Mind may in a great measure be attributed to the pains which Frederick II took to civilise and educate his people. For this purpose he founded numerous popular schools, it is said as many as sixty in one year. He instituted an Academy of Sciences and fostered Universities. He patronized Commerce and the Arts, and by his wise administration as much as by his military talents raised Prussia to the rank of a second-rate European State. The military success of the correspondent of Voltaire, it is unnecessary to do more than refer to.

Machiavellism formed a strikingly distinctive feature in the characters of all the foregoing personages. They all possessed more of the wisdom of the serpent, than of the innocence of the dove. It may be thought, however, that we employ too strong a term in calling this Machiavellism. A less strict morality would only call it policy, worldly wisdom. In men of strong conscientiousness, astuteness may be little or nothing more; but where the moral sense is weak, it easily passes into duplicity and dishonest craft.

The shrewd policy and worldly wisdom by which the great Alfred civilized a barbarous people, and tamed to quietude a nation of turbulent robbers, has never been accused of departing from a strict morality. It may be that he is somewhat indebted to the partiality of the monkish historians for the very flattering pictures of him handed down to us. The prompt and energetic manner in which, from time to time, he fell upon and defeated the Danes who ravaged the country is too well known to need mention, and the prudent means by which he endeavoured to incite his people to educate themselves has been often the subject of praise. In a remarkably illiterate age, he alone courted literature, and, conscious of its power to civilize his people, urged them to follow his example. Nevertheless, he did not forget the more arduous duties of a King. While devoting a large part of his time to learning, he never neglected the interests of his country; nor suffered her liberties to be trampled upon by invaders while he was cultivating the arts of peace. His biographer, quaintly and somewhat poetically, describes the King’s studious mind and gubernatorial talents. “Like a most productive bee, he flew here and there asking questions as he went, until he had eagerly and unceasingly collected many various flowers of Divine Scripture, with which he thickly stored the cells of his mind. His friends would voluntarily sustain little or no toil, though it was for the common necessity of the kingdom; but he alone, sustained by the divine aid, like a skilful pilot, strove to steer his ship laden with much wealth, into the safe and much-desired harbour of his country though almost all his crew were tired, and suffered them not to faint or hesitate, though sailing among the manifold waves and eddies of this present life.”^[17]

The circumstances in which men are involuntarily placed marvellously affect their actions. Crowd together a number of young trees in one small plot, and how slowly they grow, how stunted they become! Remove them to separate stations, where their roots may spread, their branches expand, and their leaves drink freely of the sun and air, and how soon they take their place among the giants of the forest. So it is with men. Crowded in cities, undistinguished by birth, and unassisted by patronage, many a hero dies unseen and unnoticed—

“Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.”

Let it not, therefore, be imagined, from the foregoing instances, that every Greco-Roman Nose indicates an energetic statesman, or a literary monarch; or that the same actions are to be predicated from the same form of Nose in different men under different circumstances.

Energy and refinement may exist in every department of life. The peasant may furnish as illustrious an example of either as the Prince. But what a King has, these heroes want; and so they die unhonoured for lack of a record. The illustrations are, therefore, necessarily drawn from the high and mighty of various spheres.

Stars of lesser magnitude, however, present themselves to shed a further light upon the subject.

Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney were two men whose characters exhibited many points of identity.

In any arduous enterprize which promised fame and honour, Sir Walter Raleigh was always prominent. Eager to support the Reformation, he served in the Protestant army as a volunteer during the civil wars in France, and afterwards tendered his services to the Netherlands in their contest with Spain for civil and religious liberty. One of the most attractive enterprizes of the reign of Elizabeth to men of energy and forethought was, however, that presented by the recently-opened field of American discovery. Into this Raleigh threw himself heart and soul. With his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, he made the then perilous voyage to the New World, but failed to establish a firm footing on its shores.

Still he was not to be thus foiled. After a careful consideration of the best authorities, he came to the just conclusion that there was land north of the Gulf of Florida, a tract then wholly unexplored. Having obtained from the Queen the inexpensive grant of all he might discover, be it sea or be it land, be it inhabited or be it void, he fitted out vessels of discovery; and, though not permitted by the wary Queen to accompany them himself, they verified his predictions by discovering the country now called Virginia—a name which the virgin Queen herself bestowed upon it.

But it was not by his energy that Raleigh alone distinguished himself. The young Protestant volunteer, and the American adventurer would long since have been forgotten among a host of compeers, had not he presented far higher claims to the notice of posterity. “Raleigh was one of those rare men who seem qualified to excel in all pursuits alike; and his talents were set off by an extraordinary laboriousness, and capacity of application. (I II). As a navigator, soldier, statesman, and historian, his name is intimately and honourably linked with one of the most brilliant periods of British history.”^[18]

Sir Walter Raleigh occupies a distinguished place in literature, both as a poet and an historian. It is probable that only a small portion of his poetry has come down to us. He seems to have regarded it but lightly himself, and many very beautiful pieces, which there is no reason to doubt owe their origin to his creative brain, are without name, and only preserved in some obscure miscellaneous collections, under the modest signature ‘Ignoto.’ One of these, sometimes entitled “The Lie,” and sometimes “The Soul’s Errand,” is as beautiful, as Christian, and as philosophic a poem as any in the language; yet so little pains did he take to secure to himself the literary fame of the words with which he had relieved his labouring soul, that it has been attributed to divers poetasters, and, among others, to that most wretched inharmonious scribe, Joshua Sylvester.

Spenser eulogizes Raleigh’s poetic powers as those of one