fragments afford but a bad conjecture, and have this disadvantage of grave interments, that they leave us ignorant of most personal discoveries. For since bones afford not only rectitude and stability but figure unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies, and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistencies. A full-spread cariola[A 1] shews a wellshaped horse behind; handsome formed skulls give some analogy to fleshy resemblance. A critical view of bones makes a good distinction of sexes. Even colour is not beyond conjecture, since it is hard to be deceived in the distinction of Negroes' skulls.[A 2] Dante's[A 3] characters are to be found in skulls as well as faces. Hercules is not only known by his foot. Other parts make out their comproportions and inferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the head measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives conjecture of the principal faculties, physiognomy outlives ourselves, and ends not in our graves. Severe contemplators, observing these lasting relicks, may think them good monuments of persons past, little advantage to future beings; and, considering that power which subdueth all things unto itself, that can resume the scattered atoms, or identify out of any thing, conceive it superfluous to expect a resurrection out of relicks: but the soul subsisting, other matter, clothed with due accidents, may solve the individuality. Yet the saints, we observe, arose from graves and monuments about the holy city. Some think the ancient patriarchs so earnestly desired to lay their bones in Canaan, as hoping to make a part of that resurrection; and, though
- ↑ That part in the skeleton of a horse, which is made by the haunch-bones.
- ↑ For their extraordinary thickness.[B 1]
- ↑ The poet Dante in his view of Purgatory, found gluttons so meagre, and extenuated, that he conceited them to have been in the siege of Jerusalem, and that it was easy to have discovered Homo or Omo in their faces: M being made by the two lines of their cheeks, arching over the eye-brows to the nose, and their sunk eyes making O O which makes up Omo.
Paren l'occhiaje anella senza gemme:
Chi, nel vuo dealt vomini legge OMO.
Bene avria quivi concsciuto l'emme.—Purgat. xxiii. 31.
- ↑ The remark in the text is more correct than the explanation given of it in the note. The configuration of the skull (more particularly with reference to the facial angle) affords a criterion by which the various races of mankind may, with sufficient certainty, be discriminated.
