diffusion. The great wind of the Reformation
had tossed the dead waters into tumultuous
life; and the germ of every element of
modern England began then for the first
time to quicken. It was an age of awakening
intellect, of aroused secular life, shaking
free from the long sleep of priestly
domination: an age of healthy physical
existence, and of large brain; of intense,
warm, sensuous perception of all shades of
character and all moods of the rich heart of
man; an age, emphatically, of deep human
sympathy (we speak of its intellect, not its
actions), yet of a sympathy which did not end
with man, but mounted, flame-like, towards
the heavens; an age that was like a new
birth to the world; proud with its young
strength; exultant in its great future; yet
flushed and gorgeous with the sunset
splendour of the past. And all this is
reflected in the faces of its poets,
philosophers, and statesmen. The oval form of
the skull remains; the broad, grand forehead,
keeping the lower parts of the face in
subjection, yet not insolently domineering
over them, is still found; but the monastic
element has given place to the secular. These
men live in large cities; they trade and
manufacture; they write plays and act
them; they investigate science; they question
Aristotle, as well as beard the Pope;
they print books, and colonise distant
regions; they have doubts touching the
divine right of kings; they send forth navies
on voyages of discovery; they have a Royal
Exchange for merchants; they are men of
wealth and substance, and not vassals.
Imagination, dramatic sympathy with life,
and independence of intellect, are the
distinguishing characteristics of the faces of that
age. Spenser's countenance, indeed, had
much of the dreamy abstraction of Chaucer's,
which was natural in one who dwelt so often
in enchanted land; but Shakespeare and his
brother dramatists, and Bacon, Sidney,
Raleigh, and the other great intellects of the
time, have a clear, open, daylight look,
combined with profound thought and cautional
sensitiveness, which is almost peculiar to the
age to which they belonged.

With the Civil Wars of the reign of Charles
the First another modification occurred. Glance
at the portraits of the chief republican and
religious innovators of that magnificent and
glorious period, and you will find them either
overshadowed with the melancholy which generally
attends on the leaders of any great movement
in a new direction, or roughened with that
bluntness, both of features and expression, which
indicates a firm resolution to abide, at all
hazards, by a principle; the difference being
of course determined by individual temperament.
The former character of physiognomy
is even found among the royalists; with
many of whom, devotion to the sovereign,
though carried to a preposterous and criminal
extent, arose out of a high religious feeling.
Charles himself had a remarkably beautiful
and harmonious face; quiet, intellectual
melancholy; a commentary upon his
affectionate domesticities, and a strange and
painful contradiction to his treacherous and
heartless public life. Milton, in his calm,
sculptural ideality, almost transcends the limits of
classification; but take the portrait of that
true-hearted republican soldier and real
gentleman, Colonel Hutchinson, and you will see
a sort of epitome of the great struggle
between king and people in all its heroism, its
lofty aspirations, and its sad necessities. It
is the face of a man of enthusiasm, of devotedness,
of over-mastering conscience; a lover of
his kind, yet a stern abider by abstract truth.
How touching and noble is the physiognomy
of this brave yet gentle soldier, as, attired in
full armour, except the helmet, he looks with
mournful, prophetic eyes over the sea of
blood which he knows is about to cover his
green land; ready to sympathise as a human
being with every man, of whichever side, who
may be slain, yet resolved to face those miseries,
and to run the risk of death to himself, for the
sake of his couuntry's future! We mean no
disparagement to Colonel Hutchinson's
appearance, when we say that his portrait comes
nearer than anything we have yet seen to our
conception of Don Quixote; that beautiful
and pathetic ideal of heroic honour and non-
selfishness, whom popular misapprehension
regards as a mere buffoon. It is not
unreasonable to suppose that such faces were
common in the stern, sad times of two
centuries ago; but who sees them now? You
might search through the whole expeditionary
army of the East, and find no such thing.
Of course, however, there were exceptions in
the times we speak of, and even among the
men of intellect and the party-writers.
Cowley, with his long locks, and somewhat
fat face, looks like an indolent, happy man of
letters—a wise epicurean, as he was; and
Andrew Marvell, the honest politician, caustic
satirizer of kingly abuses, and exquisite poet,
has the appearance of a handsome young
courtier, with a touch of troubadour
romance. But he conducts us into the reign of
Charles the Second, and into another phase
of face.

The levity which followed the Restoration
was in a great measure a natural and necessary
reaction upon the vicious gloom of
Puritanism; and had something of good humour
and charitable consideration mixed with it,
which rendered the depravity itself not
wholly depraved. An excellent exemplification
of this may be seen in the handsome,
cheerful face of Wycherley, and in those of
several other of the wits of that brilliant
era. But there is no deep feeling, no profound
and heaven-ward intellect; a scintillating
brightness rather than a broad and
steady light. Men had now advanced, also,
into the effeminate region of the totally shaven
visage. The beard seems to have vanished