himself all dinner-time in a spoon, and Sir
Ricketts Tufton, who always carries a hunting
watch, in order that he may survey himself in
the polished convexity of the case under
pretext of ascertaining the time, have notoriously
not an ounce and a half of sense between them.
A man must be very hard pushed to know how to
employ himself if he goes mirror hunting out of
doors. Abroad his business is clearly not to look
at himself, but at other people, in order that he
may observe their ways, and gather truth and
knowledge, according to his lights. But at home
and in solitude this obligation in no wise holds
good. When you are between four walls, and
have only your looking-glass to keep you
company, I say to you, young, middle aged, old,
stare into it; look at yourself; compare yourself
with the self of the day before yesterday—of
ten, of twenty years ago. Take stock of the
human countenance, and see how much of the
divine element yet lingers in its lineaments.
You were not always ugly. In infancy you
might not have been quite a cherub; yet there
was something in your babyhood that was
beautiful. All callow as you were, your brow was
open, your cheeks were smooth, your eyes clear.
There was a smile on your lips sometimes. Run
over your features now. Has the "thick-set
hazel died" from your topmost head? Has the
"hateful crow" trodden down the corners of
your eyes? Have the crisp corners become
blunt or defaced, or, worse still, have the smooth
mouldings been broken into jagged angles or
ploughed into deep indentations? You are bald;
you are grey; your skin has more of the shagreen
than the satin in its texture; you must call on
the dentist to-morrow. A little Kalydor or
Toilet Vinegar might do you good. Alas! you
are long past the aid of Rowland or Rimmel.
Can J. O. Bully build up Babylon again? Can
Rowland restore the Roman forum? Can
Truefitt give back to Tyre its pristine splendour?
Who has done all this mischief? Time? Ah!
Time has a broad back between his wings. Do
you think that Time gutted and unroofed all
those hoary castles on the Rhine? Those who
know the country and its history will tell you
that the Grand Monarque and the Great
Napoleon, with their shells and their cannons,
did ten times more than Time to ruin the old
schlossen between the Seven Mountains and the
Lorelei. Have you never wasted a palatinate?
Have you never blown up Mayence? Look at
your face. What do all those lines mean?
Study? Thought? Care? Where is the
result? Whence came the care? Look at your
face, and be wise ere it is too late.

There was a touch of quaint self-knowledge
in that gambling baronet, who, after he had lost
a few thousands over the hazard-table at
Crockford's, would walk up to a plate-glass mirror,
and shake his fist at himself, and exclaim, "Ah,
you fool! you infernal fool! For twopence I
would knock your head off your shoulders.
You needn't scowl at me, you black-looking
scoundrel. I say you are a fool—a confounded
fool!" But the baronet should have gone
through this pantomime in his own chamber,
and alone, before he dressed for Pall-Mall and
St. James's-street.

Judiciously and cautiously conducted, periodical
self-examination in the looking-glass may be
highly advantageous. Of course the outward
guise—even in solitude, when the best worn mask
will fall off—is not invariably the criterion of the
inner man. One of the most dissipated persons
—the most incorrigible nightbird I ever knew—
had quite a seraphic countenance. It was
wonderful to see him, the morning after an orgie
(he never having been to bed), with his fair
glossy hair curling over his white temples,
a roseate bloom (not a flush) on his downy
cheek, his blue eyes sparkling, and his whole
self looking as though he fed on curds and whey
and roasted butterflies' wings. He went down
hill garlanded with flowers; but down he went,
nevertheless, and fell to pieces suddenly.

While I am writing about looking-glasses
comes across me the reminder that, so far as
the philosophical study of one's self is
concerned, modern science has very nearly
succeeded in superseding the use of looking-glasses.
A friend, five hundred miles away, sends me her
photographic carte de visite. Well, what of
that? She might have sent me a miniature.
But a miniature costs much money, and is not
easily sent by post; and moreover, without
intending the slightest disrespect to miniature
painters, I venture this statement:—that they
are, in general, sad flatterers. Now, the camera
obscura never flatters. It disparages. If you
go into it ugly, you come out of it uglier.
How stern old Oliver Cromwell would have
delighted in a sitting to a photographer! Not
a wrinkle, not a pimple, in that rough face
would the impartial lens have spared. If
photography had only existed three hundred years
ago, what strange commentaries might we not
now possess on the reputed beauties and
gallants whose adulatory portraiture has come
down to us! Queen Bess's carte de visite might
be that of a coarse ill-favoured old hag; half
King Charles's beauties might appear as
snub-nosed and square-jawed as the beauties of the
ballet that you may purchase now-a-days in the
Burlington Arcade, or the Passage Choiseul.
La Belle Stuart might seem sun-freckled, and
Mrs. Bracegirdle wall-eyed; Marlborough a
round pot-bodied common kind of man; and
Lord Chesterfield a vulgar looking "gent."

I think that a man anxious to obey the precept
"Know thyself," might gather much intimate
self-acquaintance if he had his carte de visite
taken at least once a month—with a life-sized
photograph once a year. He should keep the
collection, not for public exhibition, but for
private contemplation. He should muse over
his multiplied effigies, and write marginal notes
in the album where they are enshrined. Let
there be no touching up, no smoothing away of
furrows, no darkening of hair and whiskers.
Let him insist, on having the real, raw,
untampered with, photographs. And, when he winds
his way to the operator's studio, let him go in