FACES.

[BY THE AUTHOR OF "DREAMS AND REVERIES."]

The human countenance, in itself, is a palpable wonder, and is full of other wonders. The eye, regarded philosophically, is one of the subtilest combinations of matter with mind,-half soul, half substance; a mere optical instrument, yet miraculously conscious. The mouth, too, with its curious organs of speech and taste; the forehead, by modern science rendered expressive of all the secret biasses and elements of the character; the cheeks whitening with fear, crimsoning with love; and even the nose, though, by some inexplicable fatality, invested with undignified, if not ludicrous associationseven this undervalued member, conveys to the brain agreeable sensations, the grateful incense of fields and woods. The lips, in their property of smiling, possess a most exquisite gift, and inspire the soul with such a keen sense of beauty and pleasure as to render them all important members in the family of the features. Who has not owned the loveliness that lurks in a smile? As for me, I acknowledge its irresistible influence; I catch the contagion by the slightest glance. Even when one strays towards me accidentally, it stirs my secret thoughts into a sparkle of pleasure; but when directed to me by one in whose happiness

rejoice, my soul unfolds instinctively, like a flower in the sunshine. If the instruments of vision, too, are so wonderful to the philosopher, what are they to the poet, the lover? How the silent eyes of beauty charm him, and overflow his nature with a flood of joy, and what else can he find in the universe like them? Their orbs ever play in light, where the beams of earth seem mixed with those of heaven. They reflect thought. They are shaded by passion. Their motion, like every thing else connected with them, is peculiar and unearthly ;—a restlessness,—a lustre,—a tremble,—a visible feeling. I have written myself beyond my depth, and must borrow a passage from Shakspeare on eyes. It is an appropriate and exquisite scene between Silvius and Phebe, in "As You Like It.”

Phebe. Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye:

'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,

That eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,―

Should be call'd tyrants, butchers, murderers.

Now I do frown on thee with all my heart;

And, if mine eyes can wound; now let them kill thee;
Now counterfeit to swoon; why now fall down;

Or, if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,

Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.

Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee.
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains
Some scar of it; lean but upon a rush,

The cicatrice and capable impressure

Thy palm some moment keeps: but now mine eyes,
Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not;

Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes

That can do hurt.

Silvius. O, dear Phebe,

If ever (as that ever may be near,)

You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,
Then shall you know the wounds invisible

That love's keen arrows make."

As the human countenance came originally from the hand of our Maker, it was, undoubtedly, the most beautiful object of his care. Thus it appeared in Adam and in Eve, amid the creatures of Eden:

"Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
God-like erect, with native honor clad."

Since that time this fair page has been obscured by moral evil. Guilt, intemperance, misery, ignorance, have scathed and changed it. Its symmetry has fallen to pieces. Its lustre is obscured. Our countenances are distorted from their native glory. We were not intended for what we are. We are touched with the traces of degradation and woe, just as the earth itself betrays marks of some vast convulsion and general ruin. Human nature has fallen. Sin has blasted it every where with volcanic fire, and the melancholy wreck of the moral world is reflected from our bodies. We are afflicted with hereditary deformities, and, while the inferior, brute creation abounds in images, brilliant in all their dazzling, undiminished, pristine beauty, the lovely haunts of human nature are darkened often with misshapen creatures-cripples, dwarfs, and giants; and scarcely any one of us but bears in his person, or more particularly in his countenance, some token of our obscured nature.

There is a way by which the consequences of predestined ugliness may be palliated. There is a moral beauty to be acquired even by the deformed in feature. There is an inward light which can soften and endear a homely face. Innocence, temperance, benevolence, the absence of strong and evil passions, good-nature, and love, these are redeeming attributes, and they shine through the universal gloom, like the "little candle" that threw "its beams" upon the moralizing Portia. They who neglect these ennobling qualities are repulsive enough, even with all the accidental advantages of person, for it is moral beauty, after all, which only can enchain the soul. All else is worthless tinsel, which soon grows more detestable the more it was at first admired. The angel Zephon, in Paradise Lost, beautifully alludes to this in his awful rebuke to Satan, and in reply to the celebrated exclamation of the haughty Prince of Hell, "Know ye not me," &c.

"To whom, thus Zephon, answering scorn with scorn.
"Think not, revolted spirit, thy shape the same,
Or undiminish'd brightness, to be known,

As when thou stood'st in Heav'n, upright and pure;
That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departed from thee;' and thou resemblest now
Thy sin and place of doom, obscure and foul."

To say the truth, there are certain faces about town which make one laugh perforce. There are the family of the long nosesgreat heroic looking fellows-you can't help smiling for your life. What a club they would make? Then the extremely short ones. You feel a certain degree of superiority over a man with a little nose. Then there are those with no noses at all, from which fate heaven defend us. There is probably no situation in which a human being can be placed, where he would more feelingly acquiesce in the justice of the annexed worn-out quotation from Shakspeare, than that of a gentleman who has lost his nose:

"For it so falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,
Why then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours."

I cannot quit the interesting subject of noses without a passing compliment to certain fiery and bulbous excrescences to be seen about taverns and oyster-saloons. It is good to behold these lineal descendants of old Bardolph. Without presuming to jest upon so reverend a subject, they are beacon lights to youthful adventurers on the dangerous sea of pleasure. They warn them off from the rock on which many a gallant ship hath suffered wreck. They contain more virtuous arguments, than " sage or sophist ever writ." When the giddy boy raises the glowing goblet to his lips, and peruses with his greedy eyes the splendors of its crimson depths, tell him that "intemperance degrades the moral being," that "the journal of health recommends total abstinence," or any other ordinary truth, and he drains the draught to its luscious dregs: but show him one of these noses into which are gathered the concentrated fires of a life of debauchery-misshapen, indecent, -Mount Etna in little,-glowing, glowing, and altogether ignited; and if he continue to drink, I have only to say, that I should consider him an exceedingly thirsty man.

It is amusing to trace a likeness through whole families. I have smiled inwardly to look along a bench at the theatre, and detect in this way a row of kinsmen and kinswomen, little and big, parents and children, cousins, and grand mothers. Here are the Sipthorpes, (excellent people,) with their noses all turned up; next

them, the Dribblets (so intelligent), with their noses all turned down. Here sit a line with long, lean, intellectual faces. And there, a family of visages as round and stupid as an apple dumpling. Then there are your large featured countenances, immense eyes that roll about like suns, exaggerated mouths, prominent cheek bones; and next, the diminutive class, with thin lips, brisk, small eyes, and peaked, sharp, scolding chins.

I noticed a curious phenomenon, some time ago, in the way of family likenesses. A young gentleman, with a most fully-developed Roman nose, that hooked down with the fierce bend of an eagle's beak, by some caprice of that everlasting little scoundrel, Cupid, saw and fell in love with a girl whose intellect was powerful and highly cultivated, and whose heart was full of most amiable emotions, but whose nose took such a determined course upward, as to render that organ a delicate subject of conversation both to the young lady herself, as well as to her friends and admirers. I myself don't stand much on these affairs, and, certainly. it matters little to the fond and faithful pattern of conjugal felicity, whether she, upon whom he has bestowed his affections, and who cheers his exhausted mind when he comes home in the evening, has a nose a trifle too aspiring, or distinguished, indeed, in any way from the ordinary run of noses; but this excellent young woman's was so unequivocally, so unreasonably peculiar in its position and general appearance, as effectually to cool the fires that glanced from her heavenly eyes, as far I was concerned. But De gustibus, you know, and they were united. In the course of time, a tender little pug-nosed pledge appeared.—the father's delight -the mother's joy. It was, as all babies are, a beauty, an angel. The maternal author of its being herself, although she knew what fools people were about their own children, still perceived that Tom was really, and without any joke, a very uncommon child. There was only one drawback upon all this good fortune. It was that nose. It could not be denied. It could not be concealed. It twisted up like the end of a cork-screw.

As Tom grew old, however, a change came over the spirit of his face. Fate relented. The nose gradually turned down, and the boy's olfactory now bids fair to rival the beak of his father himself. I believe the mother is a little jealous, and feels bad about it. It is certain that the husband plumes himself on it a great deal. What the feelings of Tom are upon the subject, is not distinctly known. It must be confessed, however, that this substituting one hereditary evil for another--this shifting a family likeness from the female to the male line is curious, and gives Tom a claim to be honorably mentioned in this essay.'

EDITOR'S TABLE.

The Caliph was perfectly right.-He did well to banish one of the Faithful for not putting pepper into his cheese cakes. Want of seasoning is the worst of all defects in any made dish that is presented at table. It may be underdone or overdone, it may be crisped up nearly to cinders or require a heater, but if it is brought up at all, there must be a flavor, a relish, a spice about it, that may at least tell what it might have been or may yet become. That may at least evince the genius of the artist while it leaves you to deplore his present failure, and, as the delicate aroma of a Paté de Foie-gras at a side table, will steal out and betray itself through the gross and steamy odors of a course of game-harbinger, the promise of happier efforts even in the present imperfect exhibition of his skill. But if flavor and relish-if raciness and piquancy are utterly wanting in his attempts-however accomplished your professor may be in the mere mechanical parts of his duties-however well he may acquit himself with a haunch or a sirloin— you had better have recourse to Delmonico or Gassin, than trust him with the credit of your table upon extra occasions. Here now we have before us a table full apparently of good things, yet cover after cover each as we raise scarcely one developes a morceau beneath that is presentable to the reader. Nothing eppigrammatic, nothing fanciful— nothing vif, pithy or spirited-no whim, no extravagance to stimulate and bewilder our senses. But, varying only from tame propriety to slovenly mediocrity—every thing is as staid and stupid, and sensible, as if composed in a bob-wig over a bottle of porter. More in short, like the squeezings of an editor's brain than the creaming of a contributor's wit.

What in the world have our readers to do with musty essays, in fourth rate Spectator style, like this one in which "Kate Careless" as a sloven, and "Dick Dainty" as a fop, detain us for an hour in describing habits we knew were theirs the moment their names were announced.

Here again is something not more inviting. "A ghost story "-The scene of which the writer by way of novelty lays in a Baronial Castle on the Rhine, while the spirit which he raises is so old fashioned as to be clad in white, and smell villainously of sulphur. It is wrong we know to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if people will present us with spectres let them belong to demoniac good-society-be well dressed in black, free from specks of blood, dagger-rust or grave-damp, and with manners fiendish and gentlemanlike; nor must we be sent for them to ruined abbeys and castles where such things (at midnight and in a thunder storm,) may be had for the asking, but raise us up one in a ball-room or at a supper table, in Broadway, or the common council chamber-places were such commodities from their rarity are valuable.

"Specimens of a fashionable Novel!" what is here? Slang from Pelham, and hits at society, made as broadly as if the writer were fencing with a hay stack, and was sure to thrust home wherever he made a pass. We will not aid in putting off on our guests mock turtle for real; give genuine Callipee, or we'll none of it. The English "Fashionable Novels" are half of them second rate pictures of second rate society, and to accept servile copies of them as faithful delineations of American Life, would be like receiving the suburban imitator of the 'gentleman's gentleman,' as if he were the dashing Metropolitan himself. Third rate satire is worse even than third rate affectation; for absurdity often makes the last not only endurable but diverting.

A scented pink billet, "Love verses to Delia." Men in love are proverbially stupid, but he who could not rally invention enough to find a newer nomme de guerre for his. mistress than Delia, deserves no mercy from her hands or ours. And therefore do we make light of this piece by turning it into an allumette.