often remarked with respect to historical painters, when in the act of transferring. to the canvass the glowing picture of a creative imagination.

If this general fact be admitted, it will enable us to account for a phenomenon which, although overlooked by most men from its familiarity, cannot fail to suggest an interesting subject of speculation to those who reflect on the circumstances with due attention. What I allude to is, that a mimic, without consulting a mirror, knows, by a sort of consciousness or internal feeling, the moment when he has hit upon the resemblance he wishes to exhibit. This phenomenon (which has always appeared to me an extremely curious and important one) seems to be altogether inexplicable, unless we suppose that, when the muscles of the mimic's face are so modified as to produce the desired combination of features, he is conscious, in some degree, of the same feeling or sensation which he had when he first became acquainted with the original appearance which he has been attempting to copy.

Nor is it the visible appearance alone of others that we have a disposition to imitate. We copy instinctively the voices of our companions, their tones, their accents, and their modes of pronunciation. Hence that general similarity in point of air and manner, observable in all who associate habitually together, and which every man acquires in a greater or less degree; a similarity unheeded, perhaps, by those who witness it daily, and whose attention, accordingly, is more forcibly called to the nicer shades by which individuals are discriminated from each other, but which catches the eye of every stranger with incomparably greater force than the specific peculiarities which, to a closer observer, mark the endless varieties of human character.

The influence of this principle of imitation on the outward appearance is much more extensive than we are commonly disposed to suspect. It operates, indeed, chiefly on the air and movements, without producing any very striking effect on the material form in its quiescent state. So difficult, however, is it to abstract this form from its habitual accompaniments, that the members of the same community, by being accustomed to associate from their infancy in the intercourse of private life, appear, to a careless observer, to bear a much closer resemblance to cach other than they do in reality; while, on the other hand, the physical diversities which are characteristical of different nations are, in his estimation, proportionally magnified.

The important effects of the same principle, when considered in relation to our moral constitution, will afterwards appear. At present I shall only remark, that the reflection which Shakspere puts into the mouth of Falstaff, with respect to the manners of Justice Shallow and his attendants, and which Sir John expresses with all the precision of a philosophical observer and all the dignity of a moralist, may be extended to the most serious concerns of human life. "It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his men's spirits and his: they, by observing of him, do bear themselves like foolish justices; he, by conversing with them, is turned into a justice-like serving-man. Their spirits are so married in conjunction with the participation of society, that they flock together in concert, like so many wild geese. It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed to their company." Of this principle of our nature Count Rumford appears to have availed himself, with much address, in his House of Industry at Munich. "In order to inspire the rising generation with an early bias towards labour, he invited parents to send their children to the establishment before they were old enough to do any kind of work, and actually paid them for doing nothing, but merely being present when others were busy around them. These children (he tells us) were placed upon seats built around the halls where other children worked, while they were obliged

to remain idle spectators; and in this situation they soon became so uneasy at their own inactivity, that they frequently solicited with great importunity to be employed, and often cried bitterly if this favour was not instantly granted." A variety of motives, it is true, were in all probability here concerned; but much, I think, must be ascribed to sympathy and to imitation.

It is in consequence of this imitative propensity that children learn insensibly to model their habits on the appearance and manners of those with whom they are familiarly conversant. It is thus too that, with little or no aid on the part of their instructors, they acquire the use of speech, and form their pliable organs to the articulation of whatever sounds they are accustomed to hear.

As we advance to maturity, the propensity to imitation grows weaker, our improving faculties gradually diverting our attention from the models around us to ideal standards more conformable to our own taste; whilst at the same time, in consequence of some physical change in the body, that flexibility of the muscular system by which this propensity is enabled to accomplish its end, is impaired or lost. The same combination of letters which a child of three or four years of age utters without any apparent effort would twenty years afterwards present to him a difficulty not to be surmounted by the most persevering industry. A similar inflexibility, it may be reasonably presumed from analogy, is acquired by those muscles, on which depend the imitative powers of the face and of all the other parts of our material frame.

If this observation be well founded, it is by no means a fair experiment to attempt the education of a savage child of seven or eight years old, with the view of ascer taining how far it is possible to assimilate his air and manner to those of a polished European or Anglo-American. Long before this age many of his most important habits are fixed, and much is lost of that mobility of his system by which the principle of imitation operates. Such an individual, therefore, will retain through life that characteristical expression of the savage state, which is so apt to shock our feelings at the supposition of his common origin with ourselves. Nor is this all. Such an individual will, through life, find himself out of his element in a society of which he can so imperfectly acquire the manners; and if by accident, in maturer years, he should visit the scenes to which he was accustomed in early infancy, it is not improbable that he may willingly re-assume habits of which he has lost the recollection, but which are to him a second nature, by being coëval with his existence.

In speculations concerning the varieties of the human race, too little attention has been, in general, bestowed on the influence exercised by the mind over the external expression. In consequence of this influence, it will be found that no inconsiderable diversities, in the form and aspect of man, arise from the different degrees of cultivation which his intellectual and moral powers receive in the different stages of society.

The savage, having neither occasion nor inclination to exert his intellectual faculties, excepting to remove the present inconveniences of his situation or to procure the objects which minister to his necessities, spends the greater part of his time in a state of stupid and thoughtless repose. It is impossible, therefore, that his features should acquire that spirit, and that mobility, which indicate an informed and an active mind. Supposing two individuals to possess originally the same physical form-to be cast, if I may use the expression, in the same mould-and the one to be educated from infancy in the habits of savage life, while the other has been trained to the manners of cultivated society. I have no doubt but that, abstracting entirely from the influence of climate and of other physical circumstances, their countenances would, in time, exhibit a very striking contrast. Nothing, indeed, can place this in a stronger light than the rapid change which a few months'

education produces on the physiognomy of those dumb children to whom the ingenuity of the present age furnishes the means of mental culture-a change from listlessness, vacancy, and seeming fatuity, to the expressive and animated look of self-enjoyment and conscious intelligence. It is true that, in such a state of society as ours, a great proportion of the community are as incapable of reflection as savages; but the principle of imitation, which, in some measure, assimilates to each other all the members of the same group or circle, communicates the external aspect of intelligence and of refinement to those who are the least entitled to assume it and it is thus we frequently see the most complete mental imbecility accompanied with what is called a plausible or imposing appearance, or, in other words, a countenance which has caught, from imitation, the expression of sagacity.

I have already said that, in the case of most persons, the power of imitation decays as the period of childhood draws to a close. To this cause it is probably owing that the strong resemblance, which often renders twins scarcely distinguishable from each other in infancy, in most cases disappears gradually, in proportion as their countenances are rendered more expressive by the development of their respective characters. Like other powers, however, exercised by the infant mind, this faculty may be easily continued through the whole of life by a perseverance in the habits of our early years. By a course of systematical culture, it may even be strengthened to a degree far exceeding what is ever attained by the unassisted capacities of our natures. It is thus that the powers of the mimic are formedpowers which almost all children have a disposition to indulge, and of which it is sometimes difficult to restrain the exercise. The strength of the propensity seems to vary a good deal, according to the physical temperament of the individual; but, wherever it meets with any encouragement, it is well known that no faculty whatever is more susceptible of improvement: and accordingly, when at any time the possession of it happens to be at all fashionable in the higher circles, it very soon ceases to be a rare accomplishment. In the other sex the power of imitation is, I think, in general, greater than in ours.

A frequent reiteration of any act, it has been often remarked, communicates to the mind, not only a facility in performing it, but an increased proneness or disposition to repeat it. This observation is remarkably verified in those who accustom themselves to the exercise of mimicry. Their propensity to imitation gains new strength from its habitual indulgence, and sometimes becomes so powerful as to be hardly subject to the control of the will. Instances of this have, more than once, fallen under my own observation; and, in a few well-authenticated cases, the propensity is said to have become so irresistible as to constitute a species of disease.

As we have a faculty of imitating the peculiarities of our acquaintances, so we are able to fashion, in some degree, our own exterior, according to the ideal forms which imagination creates. The same powers of embellishing nature, which are exercised by the poet and the painter may, in this manner, be rendered subservient to the personal improvement of the individual. By a careful study of the best models which the circle of his acquaintance presents to him, an outline may be conceived of their common excellencies, excluding every peculiarity of feature which might designate the particular objects of his imitation; and this imaginary original he may strive to copy and to realize in himself. It is by a process analogous to this (as Sir Joshua Reynolds has very ingeniously shown) that the masters in painting rise to eminence; and such, too, is the process which Quintilian recommends to the young orator who aspires to the graces of elocution and of action: "Imitate," says he, "the best speakers you can find; but imitate only the perfections they possess in common."

It is remarked by the same admirable critic, that although a disposition to imitate

be, in young men, one of the most favourable symptoms of future success, yet little is to be expected from those who, in order to raise a laugh, delight in mimicking the peculiarities of individuals. An exclusive attention indeed to the best models which human life supplies indicates some defect in those powers of imagination and taste, which might have supplied the student with an ideal pattern still more faultless; and therefore, how great soever his powers of execution may be, they can never produce any thing but a copy (and probably a very inferior copy) of the original he has in view.

These observations may throw some light on the distinction between the powers of the mimic and of the actor. The former attaches himself to individual imitation; the latter, equally faithful to the study of nature, strives, in the course of a more extensive observation, to seize on the genuine expressions of passion and of character, stripped of the singularities with which they are always blended when exhibited to our senses. It has been often remarked that these powers are seldom united in the same person; and I believe the remark is just, when stated with proper limitations. It is certainly true that talent for mimicry may exist in the greatest perfection where there is no talent for acting, because the former talent implies merely the power of execution, which is not necessarily connected either with taste or with imagination. On the other hand, when these indisputable qualities in a great actor are to be found, there will probably be little disposition to cultivate those habits of minute and vigilant attention to singularities on which mimickry depends. But the powers of the actor evidently presuppose and comprehend the powers of the mimic, if he had thought the cultivation of them worthy of his attention; for the same reason that the genius of the historical painter might, if he had chosen, have succeeded in the humbler walk of painting portraits. If I am not much mistaken, the conclusion might be confirmed by an appeal to facts. Foote, it is well known, was but an indifferent actor; and many other mimics of acknowledged excellence in their own line have succeeded still worse than he did on the stage. But I have never known a good actor who did not also possess enough of the power of mimickry to show that it was his own fault he had not acquired it in still greater perfection. Garrick, I have been told by some of his acquaintance, frequently amused his friends with portraits of individual character incomparably finer and more faithful than any that were ever executed by Foote.

347.-QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN.

RANKE.

[LEOPOLD RANKE is the author of the History of the Popes of Rome during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." This work was translated from the German by Mrs. Austin, in 1840. It is truly observed by the translator, that the subject of the book "is not so much the history of the Popes as a history of the great struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism." The extract which we give presents a curious picture of the unlooked-for conquest by Catholicism, of Queen Christina of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the great champion of Protestantism.]

Christina was a wonderful product of nature and fortune. A young and noble lady, she was utterly free from personal vanity. She took no pains to conceal that she had one shoulder higher than the other; though she had been told that her greatest beauty consisted in her luxuriant fair hair, she did not even pay the commonest attention to it: she was wholly a stranger to all the petty cares of life; so indifferent to the table, that she was never heard to find fault with any kind of food; so temperate, that she drank nothing but water. She never could understand or learn any sort of womanly works; on the other hand, she delighted to be told that at her birth she was taken for a boy; that when a little infant, instead of

betraying terror at the firing of guns, she clapped her hands and behaved like a true soldier's child. She was a most intrepid rider; putting one foot in the stirrup, she vaulted into the saddle and went off at speed; she shot with unerring aim; she studied Tacitus and Plato, and sometimes entered with more profound sagacity into the genius of those authors than philologists by profession; young as she was, she was capable of forming an independent and discriminating judgment on state affairs, and of maintaining it triumphantly amongst senators grown gray in commerce with the world. She threw into her labour the fresh and buoyant spirit which accompanies native perspicuity of mind; above all, she was penetrated with a sense of the high mission to which she was called by her birth; of the necessity of governing by herself. Never did she refer an ambassador to her minister: she would not suffer a subject of hers to wear a foreign order; she could not endure, she said, that one of her flock should bear the mark of another's hand. She knew how to assume a port and countenance before which the generals who made Germany tremble were dumb; had a new war broken out, she would assuredly have put herself at the head of her troops.

With a character and tastes of so lofty and heroic a stamp, it may easily be imagined that the mere thought of marrying-of giving a man rights over her person was utterly intolerable to her; any obligation of that kind which she might be supposed to lie under to her country she believed she had fully exempted herself from by fixing the succession: immediately after her coronation she declared that she would rather die than marry.

But could such a position as hers be maintained? There was something in it overstrained and forced-deficient in the equipoise of a healthy state of being, in the serenity of a natural existence content within itself. It was not inclination for business which precipitated her into it with such ardour; she was urged on by ambition and by a sense of her sovereign power and dignity—but she found no pleasure in it. Nor did she love her country; neither its customs nor its pleasures, neither its ecclesiastical nor its temporal occupation, nor its past history and glory, which she could not understand or feel: the state ceremonies, the long speeches to which she was condemned to listen, the official occasions on which she had personal duties to perform, were utterly odious to her; the circle of cultivation and learning, within which her countrymen remained stationary, seemed to her contemptibly narrow. Had she not possessed the throne of Sweden from childhood, it might perhaps have appeared an object of desire to her; but, as she had been a queen as long as she could remember, all those longings and aspirations of the mind of man, which stamp the character of his future destiny, had taken a direction averted from her own country. Fantastic views and a love of the extraordinary began to obtain dominion over her; she recognised none of the ordinary restraints, nor did she think of opposing the strength and dignity of a moral symmetry, suited to her position, to passing and accidental impressions; in short, she was high-minded, intrepid, magnanimous, full of elasticity and energy of spirit; but extravagant, violent, studiously unfeminine, in no respect amiable, unfilial even, and not only to her mother, she spared not even the sacred memory of her father when an opportunity offered of saying a sarcastic thing. Sometimes, indeed, it appears as if she knew not what she said. Exalted as was her station, such a character and demeanour could not fail to react upon herself, and to render it impossible for her to feel contented, attached to her home and country, or happy.

This unsatisfied and restless spirit frequently takes possession of the mind most strongly with regard to religion. Its workings in the heart of Christina were manifested in the following manner.

The memory of the queen dwelt with peculiar delight on her teacher, Dr. Johann