ok your friend wore when his portrait was
taken, let not the finishing artist's pencil intrude within the circle of
the vital knot of expression.

We have learned many curious facts from photographic portraits which we
were slow to learn from faces. One is the great number of aspects
belonging to each countenance with which we are familiar. Sometimes, in
looking at a portrait, it seems to us that this is just the face we know,
and that it is always thus. But again another view shows us a wholly
different aspect, and yet as absolutely characteristic as the first; and a
third and a fourth convince us that our friend was not one, but many, in
outward appearance, as in the mental and emotional shapes by which his
inner nature made itself known to us.

Another point which must have struck everybody who has studied
photographic portraits is the family likeness that shows itself throughout
a whole wide connection. We notice it more readily than in life, from the
fact that we bring many of these family-portraits together and study them
more at our ease. There is something in the face that corresponds to
_tone_ in the voice,--recognizable, not capable of description; and this
kind of resemblance in the faces of kindred we may observe, though the
features are unlike. But the features themselves are wonderfully tenacious
of their old patterns. The Prince of Wales is getting to look like George
III. We noticed it when he was in this country; we see it more plainly in
his recent photographs. Governor Endicott's features have come straight
down to some of his descendants in the present day. There is a dimpled
chin which runs through one family connection we have studied, and a
certain form of lip which belongs to another. As our _cheval de bataille_
stands ready saddled and bridled for us just now, we must indulge
ourselves in mounting him for a brief excursion. This is a story we have
told so often that we should begin to doubt it but for the fact that we
have before us the written statement of the person who was its subject.
His professor, who did not know his name or anything about him, stopped
him one day after lecture and asked him if he was not a relation of
Mr. ----, a person of some note in Essex County.--Not that he had ever
heard of.--The professor thought he must be,--would he inquire?--Two or
three days afterwards, having made inquiries at his home in Middlesex
County, he reported that an elder member of the family inform