with the mind. These bodily expressions are,
to the feelings and passions, what language is
to thought, and their utterance is
universally understood. The actor and the painter
must be correct in the anatomy and
physiology of the passions they would delineate,
or they will fail in enlisting the sympathy of
the spectator. I have read that Mrs. Siddons
was perfect when she played Queen Katherine,
in the scene where the solemn music is
played, which she terms her knell. The
mixed crowd in the theatre did not know
why they were hushed to sympathetic
silence. It was the truth of her voiceless
language that awakened the same feeling
in their hearts. I consider that in these
cases we are the subject of an
involuntary imitation, in the same way as one
man yawning will set a room of people
yawning too; and that, as the passion gives
rise to the outward sign, so the sign or
expression will awaken, to a certain degree,
the feeling in the mind. Burke says, "I
have often observed that, on mimicking
the looks or gestures of angry, or placid, or
frightened, or daring men, I have
involuntarily found my mind turned to the
passion whose appearance I endeavoured to
imitate." If this theory be correct, it will
readily explain why an error in the painting,
or a wrong gesrure in the actor, mars his
work. Sympathy must be perfect. A more
important question suggested by it is, can we
not—by controlling the outward sign of passion
—to a great degree master the passion
itself?

For, over these actions of the body the mind
has a control, though unequal and imperfect.
A suffering man may restrain the movement of
the body, but he cannot preserve the colour
in his cheek, or the natural tone of his
voice. A villain may habitually sneer at all
softer passions, but his pallid features will
betray him.

There yet remains one nerve of the
respiratory group to describe. It is given,
exclusively, to one muscle of the eye, whose office
is to turn the eye upwards. This is its only
use, and to it, perhaps, we must attribute the
definite direction which has been given to all
religious aspirations. The negro savage and
the enlightened Christian both look upward
when they address the Deity; whose abode in
the highest heaven they would thus seem to
seek. The action is involuntary, the muscle
being perfectly independent of the will; so
that, when the mind is absorbed in meditation,
and the opposing voluntary muscles are
passive, the eye is turned up by its agency.
It is the expression of devotion in its highest
form, and of rapture; the eye always
assuming this expression when the voluntary
powers fail. It is an old idea, originated, I
believe, by a Latin author, that the dying
infant is looking homewards, when the eye is
thus directed. It sometimes gives an expression
of suffering; but it only indicates the
loss of consciousness to external impressions.

On the integrity of the nervous system, in
connection with the brain, depends essentially
our lite. Nervous energy and life are
identical. The brain is composed of many parts,
exquisitely delicate in structure, the minutest
part of which is essential. From it all the
nerves—except the sympathetic nerves—
derive their various endowments, and
therefore we must ascribe to the different parts of
the brain, different powers. But to those
divisions, according to which phrenologists
map out the skull into minute functions,
anatomy gives no countenance; more especially
as the projections on the skull do not always
correspond with the form of the brain
itself.

FAMILY NAMES.

WHEN Walter Scott was looking for an
estate, he was somewhat staggered with the
unsavoury appellation of the little domain
upon the Tweed which he afterwards
immortalised by his residence and death. Its
previous designation was Clarty Hole. Yet
who knows, if he had boldly faced the whips
and scorns which fools and fine folk would
have applied to that descriptive epithet, that
reverence and regard might not in time have
made Clarty Hole weigh as well, and fill the
mouth as well, and raise a spirit as well, as
the more euphonious Abbotsford ? For it is
association which gives all their music,
and all their poetry, and all their proud
significance to territorial and family names as to
other things. Coward and Howard are nearly
identical in sound. If Howard had been the
expression for a craven, and Coward had
been the surname of the Norfolk dukedom,.
Pope's lines might have remained, with a
very slight alteration:—

  What can enoble fools, or sots, or Howards?
  Not all the noble blood of all the Cowards!

Make Hamilton, Bamilton; make Douglas,
Puglas; make Percy, Bercy; and Stanley,
Tanley, and where would be the long-resounding
march and energy divine of the roll-call
of the peerage? Why, exactly where they
are now; the dark Puglas and the Hotspur
Bercy would be the heroes of Chevy Chace ;
the princely Bamilton would head the
nobility of Scotland, and the noble Tanley would
be the fierce Rupert of debate. Since this is
the case, why should one of the quiet
patronymics—the Snookses, Timses, Tubbses—
repine? The time may come when a conqueror
of India, of our race and family, will make
the title of Tubbs as grand in men's ears as
Wellington. People may say, when they
talk, three hundred years hence, of the
degenerate descendant of the valiant marshal who
reduced the rebellious province of France,
and took the Emperor of Russia prisoner,—
"We expected better things from the house