I could never read of or discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in
his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of
chiromancy; yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to
those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein, to which
those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps
retained a few corrupted principles which sometimes might verify their
prognostics.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of
faces, there should be none alike. Now, contrary, I wonder as much how
there should be any: he that shall consider how many thousand several
words have been carelessly and without study composed out of twenty-four
letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the
fabric of one man, shall easily find that this variety is necessary; and
it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait
like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and
you shall find them all different; yea, let him have his copy before
him, yet after all his art there will remain a sensible distinction; for
the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind,
whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it,
because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy.
Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature,
nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things alike there is
diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And
thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble him we are
utterly different from him. There was never anything so like another as
in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip
in, to prevent the identity, without which two several things would not
be alike, but the same, which is impossible.

Naturally amorous of all that is beautiful, I can look a whole day with
delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my
temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there
is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes,
far sweeter than the sound of an instrument: for there is music wherever
there is harmony, order, or, proportion: and thus far we may maintain
_the music of the spheres_; for those well-ordered motions and regular
paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the under