Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/167

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PHYSIOGNOMY AND.GENIUS
163

nose have we met the peculiarities of that organ which make up what Ellis calls the "typical thief's nose." An occasional mark of the lesser criminal, such as the receding forehead and retreating chin, make their appearance in our data, and those signs of power in the homicide—the prominent jaw and cheek bones, hawk nose and thin lips—are not without place in the faces of great historic characters, but with a single exception we find no example of the "cold, fixed and glassy eye" which according to Lombroso betokens the murderer. That exception, it is needless to say, is Robespierre, and it is no mean commentary upon the value of such studies as we have been pursuing that the face of Robespierre presented as strange a compound as his soul—that with the signs of strength afforded by the capacious forehead and firmly compressed lips there mingled so many features which the specialists in criminology accept as indications of criminality. His head, we learn, was small, brow retreating, nose diminutive and quite without an arch, jaw insufficiently developed, cheek bones high, eyes set close and in hue a "pale, greenish gray," shadowed by eyelids which trembled spasmodically.