oever he was defective; that is to say, in almost everything. She
was indeed as vinegar to oil, or a brisk wind to a standing-pool, and
preserved all from stagnation and corruption.

Quin the player, on taking a nice and severe survey of a
fellow-comedian, burst forth into this exclamation:--"If that fellow be
not a rogue, God Almighty doth not write a legible hand."

Whether he guessed right or no is not worth my while to examine; certain
it is that the latter, having wrought his features into a proper harmony
to become the characters of Iago, Shylock, and others of the same cast,
gave us a semblance of truth to the observation that was sufficient
to confirm the wit of it. Indeed, we may remark, in favor of the
physiognomist, though the law has made him a rogue and vagabond, that
Nature is seldom curious in her works within, without employing some
little pains on the outside; and this more particularly in mischievous
characters, in forming which, as Mr. Derham observes, in venomous
insects, as the sting or saw of a wasp, she is sometimes wonderfully
industrious. Now, when she hath thus completely armed our hero to carry
on a war with man, she never fails of furnishing that innocent lambkin
with some means of knowing his enemy, and foreseeing his designs. Thus
she hath been observed to act in the case of a rattlesnake, which never
meditates a human prey without giving warning of his approach. This
observation will, I am convinced, hold most true, if applied to the
most venomous individuals of human insects. A tyrant, a trickster, and
a bully, generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in
their countenances; so do the vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other
females of the like kind. But, perhaps, nature hath never afforded a
stronger example of all this than in the case of Mrs. Francis. She was a
short, squat woman; her head was closely joined to her shoulders, where
it was fixed somewhat awry; every feature of her countenance was
sharp and pointed; her face was furrowed with the smallpox; and her
complexion, which seemed to be able to turn milk to curds, not a little
resembled in color such milk as had already undergone that operation.
She appeared, indeed, to have many symptoms of a deep jaundice in her
look; but the strength and firmness of her voice overbalanced them all;
the tone of this was a sharp treble at a distance, for I seldom heard
it on the same floor, but was usually waked with it in the mor