untest feeling may
perceive, and which the habit of distinguishing and casting out would
both ennoble the schools of art, and lead in time to greater acuteness
of perception with respect to the less explicable characters of soul
beauty.

Sec. 19. Expressions chiefly destructive of ideal character. 1st. Pride.

Those signs of evil which are commonly most manifest on the human
features are roughly divisible into these four kinds, the signs of
pride, of sensuality, of fear, and of cruelty. Any one of which will
destroy the ideal character of the countenance and body.

Sec. 20. Portraiture ancient and modern.

Now of these, the first, pride, is perhaps the most destructive of all
the four, seeing it is the undermost and original story of all sin; and
it is base also from the necessary foolishness of it, because at its
best, that is when grounded on a just estimation of our own elevation
or superiority above certain others, it cannot but imply that our eyes
look downward only, and have never been raised above our own measure,
for there is not the man so lofty in his standing nor capacity but he
must be humble in thinking of the cloud habitation and far sight of the
angelic intelligences above him, and in perceiving what infinity there
is of things he cannot know nor even reach unto, as it stands compared
with that little body of things he can reach, and of which nevertheless
he can altogether understand not one; not to speak of that wicked and
fond attributing of such excellency as he may have to himself, and
thinking of it as his own getting, which is the real essence and
criminality of pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false
estimation of things beneath us and irrational contemning of them: but
taken at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no
grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable, so that
the first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of
its vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than
that principle of portraiture which prevails with us in these days,
whose end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in face and
in all circumstances of accompaniment, tending constantly to insolence
of attitude, and levity and haughtiness of expression, and worked out
farther in mean accompaniments of worldly splendor and possession,
together with hints or proclamations of what the person has done or
supposes himself to hav