II.! How different from the
skull of his biographer Voltaire! Compare the skull of Judas with the
skull of Christ, after Holbein, and I doubt whether anyone would fail to
guess which is the skull of the wicked betrayer and which the skull of
the innocent betrayed. And who is unacquainted with the statement in
Herodotus that it was possible on the field of battle to distinguish the
skulls of the effeminate Medes from the skulls of the manly Persians?
Each nation, indeed, has its own characteristic skull.

_III.--Nation, Sex, and Family_

NATIONAL PHYSIOGNOMY. It is undeniable that there is a national
physiognomy as well as national character. Compare a negro and an
Englishman, a native of Lapland and an Italian, a Frenchman and an
inhabitant of Tierra del Fuego. Examine their forms, countenances,
characters, and minds. This difference will be easily seen, though it
will sometimes be very difficult to describe it scientifically.

The following infinitely little is what I have hitherto observed in the
foreigners with whom I have conversed.

I am least able to characterise the French, They have no traits so bold
as the English, nor so minute as the Germans. I know them chiefly by
their teeth and their laugh. The Italians I discover by the nose, small
eyes, and projecting chin. The English by their foreheads and eyebrows.
The Dutch by the rotundity of their heads and the weakness of the hair.
The Germans by the angles and wrinkles round the eyes and in the cheeks.
The Russians by the snub nose and their light-coloured or black hair.

I shall now say a word concerning Englishmen in particular. Englishmen
have the shortest and best-arched foreheads--that is to say, they are
arched only upwards, and, towards the eyebrows, either gently recline or
are rectilinear. They seldom have pointed, usually round, full noses.
Their lips are usually large, well defined, beautifully curved. Their
chins are round and full. The outline of their faces is in general
large, and they never have those numerous angles and wrinkles by which
the Germans are so especially distinguished. Their complexion is fairer
than that of the Germans.

All Englishwomen whom I have known personally, or by portrait, appear to
be composed of marrow and nerve. They are inclined to be tall, slender,
soft, and as distant from all that is harsh, rigorous, or stubborn as
heaven is from earth.

The Swiss have generally no common physiognomy or national character,