THE WASTED FLOWERS. On the velvet banks of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap was filled with flowers, and a garland of rosebuds were twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as the sunshine that fell upon it; and her voice was as clear as that of the birds that warbled at her side. The little stream went singing on, and with each gush of its music the child lifted a flower in its dimpled hand-with a merry laugh, threw it upon its surface. In her glee, she forgot that her treasures were growing less, and with the swift motion of childhood, she flung them upon the sparkling tide, until every bud and blossom had disappeared. Then seeing her loss, she sprung upon her feet, and burst into tears, calling aloud to the stream"Brink back my flowers!" But the stream danced along regardless of her tears; and as it bore the blossoming burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo along its reedy margin. And, long after, amid the wailing of the breeze, and the fitful burst of childish grief, was heard the fruitless cry--" Bring back my flowers!" Merry maiden! who art idly wasting the precious moments so bountifully bestowed upon thee, observe in this thoughtless child an emblem of thyself. Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be dispensed in blessings all around thee, and ascend as sweet incense to its benevolent Giver. Else when thou hast carelessly flung them from thee, and seest them receding on the swift waters of Time, thou wilt cry in tones more sorrowful than those of the child-"Bring back my flowers!" And the only answer will be an echo from the shadowy past-" Bring back my flowers!"-Lowell Offering. KINDNESS IN WOMAN UNIVERSAL. I have observed among all nations, that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that wherever found, they are the same kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform an hospitable and generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy, and fond of society; industrious, economical, and ingenuous! more liable, in general, to err than man; but in general, also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself, in the language of decency and friendship, to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly With man it has been often otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widespread regions of the wandering Tartar; if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so; and to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that if I was dry I drank the sweet draught, and if hungry ate the coarse morsel, with a double relish.-John Ledyard. answer. NEVER DESPAIR. Audubon, the Ornithologist, says, "An accident which happened to two hundred of my original drawings, nearly put a stop to my researches in Ornithology. I shall relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm-for by no other name can I call my perseverance-may enable the preserver of nature to surmount the most disheartening difficulties. I left the village of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I resided for several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a wooden box, and gave them in charge of a relative, with injunctions to see that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of several months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced and opened; but, reader, feel for me-a pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, and reared a young family among the gnawed bits of paper, which, but a month previous, represented nearly a thousand inhabitants of air! The burning heat which instantly rushed through my brain was too great to be endured, without affecting my whole nervous system. I slept for several nights, and the days passed like days of oblivion-until the animal powers being recalled into action, through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note. book, and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gaily as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make better drawings than before. And, ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled." SICK ROOMS AND SLEEPING ROOMS. If we turn to a sick room, we are apt to surmise, that the surgeon never once takes the state of the lungs under his serious consideration, except in cases of apparent consumption. Although he has learned from anatomy that pure air is most essential to them, still he allows his patient to be in a tomb, as it were, walled round with dense curtains, where the wholesome breeze can gain no admittance, and where the foul vapours issue from the feverish mouth, and return to it, and from thence to the lungs, which are barely able to perform their duty. The windows are constantly shut, and the door most carefully closed, by which mischievous custom the lungs have no chance of receiving a fresh supply of air from without, and at last the patient sinks in death for want of it. If those in typhus fever were conveyed to an open shed, screened on one side against the blowing wind, with a sufficiency of clothes upon them, very little physic would be required; for the fresh air would soon subdue the virulence of the disease in nine cases of ten. Then, a person finds that he cannot sleep at night; if he would open the window, and take a few turns up and down the room, there can be no doubt but that sweet sleep, placidissime somne Deorum, would return with him arm-in-arm to bed. Wonderful is the degree of heat which is generated by the human body, when prostrate on a soft bed. Those parts of the sheets which do not come in contact with it, will, of course, retain their wonted coldness; and, then if the person becomes restless in his sleep, and rolls over upon them, he runs a fair risk of contracting rheumatic pains, scarcely ever to be removed. Should a man ever have the misfortune to pass the night in a damp bed, he would be much worse off than if he had been condemned to lie on a pismire's nest. These little tormentors would merely blister him, perhaps even with salutary effect, but the humid bed would cause him damage often beyond the power of art or nature to repair. I trust we may safely conclude that, when the soft and downy preparations for the repose of the night have been completed, we do wrong, very wrong indeed, to exclude the night air from our apartments. That we can absolutely do without it, it is certain; but that we should do better with it, is equally certain. Still, civilized man will never change his usual habits, but will go snoring on from night to night, awake this hour, and dozing that; whilst his lungs, if they had the power of speech, would cry out, and say-"Oh! we cannot stand this nasty atmosphere; we are obliged to work all night, and still you seem to have no pity for us. What with the unwholesome vapours arising from your own overloaded stomach, and what with the stagnant air in the room, we shall be overpowered at last, do what we can to keep our action up; and then, for want of having your window an inch or two open (which would put everything to rights in our department), when you least expect it, you will be called away to your long account by a fatal fit of apoplexy."-Waterton's Essays. 304 A POET'S WISH. My chiefest companions my wife and my child, I could think with some purpose, and labour with joy, The lark should arouse me to action and thought, I would take my first draught at the health-giving rill; The day should have uses and joys undefiled; When the clouds which were golden grew faint in the west, I would draw up my household about the fireside, To talk with and teach them, with pleasure and pride, I would have-would kind Fortune her bounty impart- Some touch of the painter to gladden my eyes ; Some shape of the sculptor to charm and surprise, Surrounded by nature, I could not but see In each change of season God's goodness unworn; I should get my reward from a source undefiled, PLEASURE BEFOREHAND. The expectation of being pleased, which prevails so much in young persons, is one great source of their enjoyments. All are felt beforehand, and their hopes are not easily given up; the conviction that they shall be pleased, makes a strong impression on the imagination, which often lasts long enough to make them really so, when otherwise they would have found little reason for it. This illusion cannot, nor is it desirable that it should, be preserved, but the disposition to be pleased may yet remain, and there is hardly anything of so much importance to the happiness of life. DIAMOND DUST. VULGARITY-unsuccessful affectation. Fashion-successful affectation. Ir thou wilt be cured of thy ignorance, confess it. THE world is only rigid for petty and common faults, a rare audacity astonishes it, a splendid misfortune disarms it. WHEN a man is unhappy, people are ready to find him faulty, lest they should be forced to pity him. Ir is proper to have the consciousness of having done well, but it is the height of vanity to wish to be informed of it. THE vain abhor the vain; but the gentle and unassuming love one another. It is the effect of sympathy with the latter, the want of it with the former. SOME Confine their view to the present, some extend it to futurity. The butterfly flutters round the meadows, the eagle crosses the seas. PUBLIC opinion is a jurisdiction which the wise man will never entirely recognise, nor entirely deny. PHILOSOPHY, like medicine, has abundance of drugs, few good remedies, and scarcely any specifics. THE glutton is the lowest souled of all animals, the butcher's boy is to him an Atlas bearing heaven on his shoulders. PERHAPS the most acceptable kind of flattery consists less in eulogizing a man's actions, or talents, than in decrying those of his rival. It is only in the bitter time of affliction the sanctuary of man's heart is open; in quiet times, the temple of Janus is closed. A FINE book resembles a kaleidoscope, you admire the beauty of that part you survey; and, whilst admiring, the author's hand moves, and fresh beauties rise. THERE is nothing on earth so ludicrous as the affected caution of a fool, after you have humbugged him. THERE are two classes of people that can afford to be modest, those who possess a vast amount of knowledge, and those who have but little. HYPOCRISY is the necessary burden of villany; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly. THE pains we take in books or arts, which treat of things remote from the use of life, is a busy idleness. THERE cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being, replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator, by doing most good to his creatures. THE most ignorant have knowledge enough to detect the faults of others: the most clear-sighted are blind to their own. THE best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new. KNOWLEDGE will not be acquired without pains and application. It is troublesome and deep-digging for pure waters; but when once you come to the spring, they rise up and meet you. AN act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game, because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude. A BACHELOR is like a jug without a handle; there's no taking hold of him. GENTLENESS is a sort of mild atmosphere, and it enters into a child's soul like the sunbeam into the rosebud, slowly but surely expanding it into beauty and vigour. Canonbury Villas, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County Printed and Pubiisnea for the Proprietor, by JoHN OWEN CLARKE, (of No.5 Middlesex) at his Printing Office, No. 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride, in the City of London, Saturday, September 7, 1850 PALMISTRY. THE HAND INDICATIVE OF CHARACTER. MEN are very curious and speculative in all that relates to character. They desire to know the marks of their own character, and to read the characters of others. They cagerly listen to the phrenologist, as he "reads their head," and to the physiognomist, as he deciphers the features of their face. Some have even confined themselves to a single feature, and have pretended to interpret character by the nose, the eye, or the mouth. Others pretend to read the gait, and a few to interpret character by the hand-writing. But the very oldest of these arts is that of Palmistry: the old chiromancists pretended to divine the future life and fortune by the direction of the lines on the palm of the hand-an art still professed by the gipsies and wise old women in country districts. The ordinary rule of the palmisters, we believe, is to infer contentions, from the lines spreading at the bottom joint of the thumb; if the lines above the middle of the thumb meet round about, it portends a hanging destiny; many transverse lines upon the last joint of the forefinger denote riches by inheritance; right lines in the same place, a jovial nature; lines in the points of the middle finger (like a gridiron), a melancholy, unhappy wit; and if the lines on the little finger be conspicuous, they denote a good wit, and eloquent, but the contrary if obscure; and so on. This art has, however, long been exploded. But an ingenious French physiologist, M. D'Arpentigny, nas recently revived the art in another form, and in a very clever and elaborate treatise, has endeavoured to show how the character of a man may be inferred from the configuration of his hand, very much in the same way that the inspection of a metacarpal bone by Cuvier enabled him to infer the nature and character of the entire living animal. The hoof of the horse, the paw of the monkey, and the wing of the bird, certainly must be admitted to furnish at least general indications of the disposition and character of their respective owners. It will not be denied either, that the human hand is the chief instrument of man; by its means he acquires most of his knowledge; by it he reacts on the external world. It corresponds strictly with the character of the brain, and indeed of his whole frame. Let an artist substitute for the beautiful hand of the Niobe or the Venus, a large, coarse, disproportioned hand, with a broad, unhuman-like palm, apelike thumb, and massive, knotted, mis-shapen fingers, and all the world would immediately declare that such a hand could never have belonged to so glorious a figure. There does not seem to be the smallest reason for doubting the fact, that the brain and hand, in well-marked cases, must correspond. The interesting "Bridgewater Treatise," by Sir Charles Bell, contains cumulative proofs of this fact. The French philosopher only bears him out, when [PRICE 1d. he avows that the Creator, in bestowing on man divers instincts, has given to him differently formed hands, conforming to this diversity in his intelligence. The palm of the hand, according to M. D'Arpentigny, gives the signs of the physical appetites, and to a certain point, of the intensity of the intellectual aptitudes which these appetites determine. A palm, slender, narrow, thin, indicates a feeble and unproductive temperament; an imagination without heat, without power; instincts without an object; a taste more delicate than solid; a wit more subtile than comprehensive. If you have it supple, of a suitable thickness and surface,-that is to say, in harmony with the proportions of the fingers and thumb-you will be apt for all pleasures (inestimable privilege!), and your senses, easily excitable, will hold in check the faculties of the imagination. Without ceasing to be supple, should the palm airplay extreme developments, egotism and sensuality will be the dominant propensities. Finally, should its size be altogether out of proportion with the other parts of the hand, if to an extreme hardness there be added an excessive thickness, it will then indicate instincts and an individuality marked with the stamp of an animality without ideas. With respect to the signs attached to the fingers, M. D'Arpentigny is very elaborate: "There are smooth fingers, and there are others which are knotty. Amongst these last, the fingers of one may show but one knot; those of another may have two. The significative knots are those recognisable easily and at once by the eye, and not those requiring touch to detect or discover. "Our fingers terminate either like a spatula-that is to say, by enlarging more or less; or in a square form— that is to say, by a phalanx, whose lateral lines are parallel or in a cone, more or less acute. To these different forms are attached so many different signs; but, before offering their interpretation, let me say a few words respecting the knots. If that which connects the first phalanx to the second is prominent, there will be order in your ideas; if that which connects the second phalanx to the third is prominent, you possess much material order of thought. The nrst knot never exists without the second; but the second is often present without the first. 66 Now, this implies that external order is always in the faculties of persons gifted with moral order, whilst there are many known for their punctuality who have, notwithstanding, an extremely illogical mind. "Smooth-fingered persons have all a humour more or less artistic; even those in whom the fingers terminate spatularly or squarely, they will proceed always by inspiration, rather than by reasoning; by phantasy and sentiment, rather than by knowledge; by synthesis, rather than by analysis. A man expends annually the double of his income, yet his house is in the most perfect order, and everything in its place; be assured that he has smooth fingers, squared or spatular. Let us proceed to the interpretation of the exterior phalanges, that is to say, the first. "The fifth hand before me has the fingers smooth, with the phalanges formed like a cone. The tendency of intellects with such hands is towards the plastic art, painting, sculpture, monumental architecture, poetry of the imagination and of the senses (Ariosto); a worshipping of the beautiful in its solid and visible form; ro"Place before the eyes the hands of seven different mance; antipathy for rigorous deductions; a need of individuals, stretched towards you, without support, and social independence; propensity to enthusiasm and to the fingers partly separated from each other. The first fancies. This same form of hand, knotted, has the same has smooth fingers, terminating in the spatular form; the genius, with more combination and moral force. second has knotty fingers, also terminating in the spatular "The philosophic hand is different; the fingers are form. Now, in both these individuals we find, by knotted, with the phalanges, as it were, partly squared, reason of their spatula-formed fingers, an imperious ne-partly conical; the first knot giving to the exterior (distal) cessity for corporeal agitation, for locomotion, and, very phalanx a form nearly ovoid. The genius is turned togenerally, for manual occupation; more bowels than wards speculative ideas, meditation, and rigorous deducbrains; all science weighed by its useful and physically tions by words; love of absolute truth; elevated logic; sensible aspect. There is a love of horses, dogs, the chase, a desire of political, religious, and social independence; navigation, war, agriculture, commerce. deistical; democratic. Finally, here is the psychical hand, with smooth fingers, terminating in a slender cone, indicative of a mind contemplative, religious, ideal; a cultivator of every form of the beautiful, in form and essence, but especially in essence. Thus, the Creator has bestowed on the square and spatular-fingered hand, matter and reality-that is to say, industry, and the useful and necessary arts-action and the knowledge of facts. To the conical and pointed hand has been opened the way to the ideal without limits: the conical established the beautiful on the basis of the external senses; the pointed aiming at the same through the internal sense. "To both belong the innate sense of tangible things, the instinctive intelligence of the real, the worship of physical force, the genius of calculation, of the industrial and mechanical arts, the exact applied sciences, natural and experimental science, the graphic arts, administration, law, &c.; but a marked aversion for the elevated philosophic sciences, for transcendental metaphysics, for spiritualized poetry, for subtleties, for all which springs from the world of speculative ideas only. "As those with smooth fingers proceed by inspiration, passion, instinct, intuition, and knotted fingers (with the double knot) by calculation, reasoning, deduction, probabilities, the hand with smooth fingers will especially To large hands belong the spirit of minutiæ and of excel in the arts by locomotion, in those applied sciences detail: Frederic I. of Prussia, surnamed the King Corwhere spontaneous address and genius prevail over com-poral, had large hands. The poets say the same of Moses; bination. "Now, here is a hand with smooth fingers, and terminating in a square, whilst this other has the phalanges equally square, but the fingers are knotted. To both belong a taste for the moral, political, social, philosophic sciences; for didactic, analytic, dramatic poetry; for grammar, languages, logic, geometry; a love of literary form, of netre, rhythm, symmetry, and arrangement, or art defined and agreed on; views, juster than enlarged; a genius for business, personal respect, positive and moderate ideas; instinct for duty and authority; attention (culle) to the truly practical fine wit, correctly formed in conduct; love of offspring, and usually more brains than bowels. "To men with squared phalanges are due the prevailing theories and methods -not elevated poetry, but letters, the sciences, and some arts. They carry the name of Aristotle inscribed on their standard, and they march at the head of four faculties. "This type excels not in brilliant imagination, as poets understand the phrase; everything of this kind appertains to the smooth-fingered man; and all that holds to the reasoning, to combination, as history and the social sciences belong to those with knotty fingers. Descartes and Pascal had knotty fingers; Chapelle and Chaulieu had them smooth. Men with spatula-formed fingers, have first the action and the knowledge how to act (savoir faire), then the knowledge itself (savoir). "In France, square-fingered hands abound; hence there are more men with tongue than men with hands; more brains organized for the theory of the sciences than men adapted to apply them. Our military engineers, for example, are at once the most learned and the least practical of Europe; if, on the one hand, the difficult questions they are called on to solve, in order to obtain their brevet, prove their theoretical capacity, on the other hand, our gloomy and unhealthy barracks, our guardhouses, our barracks of encampment-residences fit only to shelter savages; and our stables-absolute burialgrounds for our horses, attest their total incapacity for tice. and Domitian, whose hands were enormous, amused himself with killing flies. "To moderate-sized hands belongs the synoptic spirit-that is, the conception of the details and of the whole: such were those of Walter Scott, Montesquieu, Tasso, Racine, Corneille, Wast, Leibnitz, &c. "Some hands show better what the intelligence to which they belong is unfit for than for that which suits it; they tell us of antipathies, but say nothing of propensities. Many persons have merely the defects of their type. Most correct and learned musicians have squareformed fingers; but mere instrumentation or execution belongs rather to the spatula-formed fingers, and singing especially to the pointed. Musicians, such as they are, abound amongst mathematicians and algebraists; they weigh the sounds by numbers better than others. Long, external phalanges indicate a quick taste and aptitude for music. "A subtle and disputatious spirit is connected with small hands, having delicate fingers; knotted and square phalanges, a desire for controversy rouses them before the dawn; and such, no doubt, were the hands of the miserable triflers who governed Greece in her closing struggle with the barbaric East: under the very sword of Mahomet they engaged in the dispute of incomprehensible trifles, abstractions, theological follies; thus deserting their country, not from a want of courage, but from sheer stupidity. "When small and slender hands form the majority, they show natural decrepitude; large palms and hard and inert fingers preside, on the other hand, at the early development of nations. They build pyramids, Cyclopean walls, &c. : they worship Fetiches. "Look at the engineer or land-surveyor, who follows a profession to which he has been called by nature; who seems to delight in squares and triangles, and trapezoids; look at his hand, with its squared, or spatula-formed fingers. "The finest horsemen of our day, the most elegant, M. le Vicomte d'Aure, has the hand evidently spatular, but extremely supple. "Examine now, as Sand, A. Dumas, Ade Mussel, Balzac, &c., and you will find the fingers conical. the hands of lyric poets, of romancists, despotic: such must have been the thumb of Souvaroff, Saint Just, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Condillac, Kante. Voltaire, as proved by his statue, had the thumbs enormous. Now, the statuary Oudon, an artist of a fine and delicate taste, would never have given to Voltaire's statue such hands, with thumbs so large and disproportioned, had it not been that, the hands of his model being so well known, he dared not deviate from "Those of grammarians, critics, didactic poets, analytic, dramatic; of medical men, lawyers, geometricians, artists, selon la règle, &c., their phalanges will be found square, and even spatular. "Cf believing philosophers, theologians, &c., the phalanges are partly square, partly conical, and knotted. "But if in a polytechnic school you encounter a fine and pointed hand, have pity on an unhappy poet, formed to pass his days in sacrificing to the cyclops and to the gnomes. "Finally, look around you at the hands of your neig bours and friends, and observe this one who can dispense with the essential, the useful, but not the beautiful and the superfluous; his purse, open to all, is closed only against his creditors. In advanced life, his heart is still young and romantic; he sees the world through the antique light of spiritualism, and is profoundly ignorant of the material value of things; he sees poetry in everything; he loves to wander by moonlight on the desert shore, watching her pale light trembling on the waters, his heart filled with a voluntary sadness. Now, examine the hand of this person, whoever he may be, friend, parent, or neighbour, and be assured that the fingers are either conical or pointed. "Now listen to the discourse of this parvenu: he has been a cowherd, a hawker, a smuggler, and he boasts of it; he might live on ortolans if he chose, his means being ample, but he prefers pork; his clothes are wide, and his hair is cut in the brush fashion. Of his three sons, he esteems him only who beats his own clothes, cleans his own boots, attends to his own horse: the others, says he, read, ruminate, and play on the violin, and they do not even know how to clarify wine. Music sets him asleep; the very sight of well-bred men upsets and irritates him. He prefers eating without a coat, and in his shirt-sleeves, and waistband loose. He knows nothing of statues and pictures, which he calls rubbish; but he is well up to cattle and manures. Science and art! fine things, truly, but they are quite unknown on 'Change and in the market. In his gardens you will find carrots, cabbages, and sunflowers. He frequents the slaughterhouse, chops his own fire-wood, &c. This man has a large, thick, and hard palm, with the fingers spatulashaped." M. D'Arpentigny also lays much stress on the importance of the thumb to the efficiency of the hand. Newton has said, "that in the absence of other proofs, the thumb would have convinced him of the existence of a Deity." Without the thumb, indeed, man's constructiveness would have been of no use. It is its possession which constitutes him the "tool-making animal." With the thumb and brain together, man is the greatest wonderworker on the face of the earth. The thumb, according to our author, indicates free moral will. The intensity of the reasoning will and moral force he measures by the length and thickness of the root of the thumb, which includes the ball of the thumb. In the second phalange, he detects the signs of perception, judgment, reasoning; and in the first, or nail phalange, he detects invention, decision, initiative power. Have you the phalange narrow, slender, thin, short? then there is a complete absence of decision, there is adhesion to the opinion of others, everlasting doubt and uncertainty, and, in the end, moral indifference. If the second phalange is largely developed, the decision is prompt, tenacious, decisive. "A small thumb generally announces irresolution, and a mind regulated by sentiment rather than reason. Albert Durer, Homer, Shakspere, Montaigne, Barrere the Conventionalist, had certainly the thumb small. With this portion of the hand large, the mind is apt to be pharisaical, the truth. "It has been said of Napoleon (by J. Arago) that he loved promptitude and determination in every matter, important or not. He gave a preference to the decision by inspiration (instinct) over that by mere reasoning, and he considered irresolution as the proof of a false or weak mind. Hence artists have given to his statue, perhaps with justice, a small or medium hand, with smooth fingers, and a very large thumb. The Corsicans, a most obdurate race, have the thumb large. "In Vendée, people with large thumbs, and rolling, restless eyes, are held to be sorcerers. "With a small thumb and smooth fingers coincide the germ of poetry or of art; if the fingers be smooth and pointed, there is a higher tendency to spiritualism: hence Raphaello, Correggio, Perrugino, Tasso, George Sand, &c. ; whilst the others-I mean those with the phalanges of a square or spatular form-will be drawn towards the true and the real, towards the ordinary in the sphere of things, and towards utility in the sphere of ideas: such were Teniers and Callot, Scarron, Regnard, Lesage. "Conical and pointed hands, with large thumbs, proceed in art, methodically, logically, deductively, nearly as do men with squared fingers and small thumbs. Such was David (the artist), Voltaire, Fontenelle. That man is thrice destined to poetry who has conical phalanges, smooth fingers, and a small thumb; and he who has the phalanges squared or spatula-formed. united to knotty fingers and a large thumb, is thrice devoted to science. No eminent poet has excelled in the abstract sciences; but distinguished philosophers and savans have formated their systems in verse." Of soft and hard hands, D'Arpentigny says:— "Though in two persons the hands may strictly resemble each other in form, yet, if these hands differ in this respect, that the one has them soft and the other hard, their character will still differ essentially. If both love motion, the one will seek it in dissipation, the other energetically; and these differences will extend to their studies and their profession. This is easily seen in artists so circumstanced. "Paris draws from Picardy, handsome, massive flunkeys, with red cheeks, eyelashes almost white-young apprentices with depressed foreheads, who, at one and the same time, credulous and distrustful, proceed conformably to their instincts by sluggishness and obstinacy. Vulgarity, the striking character of their Picard physiognomy, predominates in their face in full lustre Their hands are large, red, and very hard. "Hard hands, though not insensible to love, know little tenderness; soft hands are more capable of tenderness than of love. "Firm hands without hardness, and elastic without softness, show an extended and active intelligence. This hand becomes hard with difficulty, though under severe labour, the naturally hard hand, on the contrary, hardens still more with extreme facility." Such are a few of the speculations of the ingenious Frenchman on this novel subject. Whatever we may say as to their truthfulness, we cannot help being amused at the fancy, the reading, and the observation which are displayed in their illustration. THERE is not the least particle of matter which may not furnish one of us sufficient employment for a whole eternity. |