one class of things as its peculiar objects. Nay, desire is sometimes strong, when Hope is feeble or extinct; a criminal on the scaffold may ardently desire to live, when he has no hope of escaping death. Dr SPURZHEIM was convinced, by analysis, that Hope is a distinct primitive sentiment; and was led to expect that an organ for it would exist. Numerous observations have since determined the situation of the organ, on the sides of Veneration; and it is now admitted by phrenologists in general as established. Dr GALL, however, continued till his death to mark the functions of this part of the brain as unascertained.

The faculty produces the sentiment of Hope in general, or the tendency to believe in the possibility of what the other faculties desire, but without giving the conviction of it, which depends on Reflection. Thus a person with much Hope and much Acquisitiveness, will hope to become rich; another, with much Hope and great Love of Approbation, will hope to rise to eminence; and a third, with much Hope and great Veneration, will hope to be saved, and to enjoy eternal felicity in heaven. It inspires with gay, fascinating and delightful emotions; painting futurity fair and smiling as the regions of primitive bliss. It spreads freshness and joyousness over every prospect, while Cautiousness hangs clouds and mists over distant objects seen by the mind's eye. Hence he who has Hope more powerful than Cautiousness, lives in the enjoyment of brilliant anticipations, which are never realized; while he who has Cautiousness more powerful than Hope, habitually labours under the painful apprehension of evils which rarely exist, except in his own internal feelings. The former also enjoys the present, without being annoyed by fears about the future, for Hope supplies his futurity with every object which his fancy desires, quite undisturbed by the distance of attainment; the latter, on the other hand, cannot enjoy the pleasures within his reach, through fear that, at some future time, they may be lost. The life of such an individual is spent in painful apprehension of

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evils, to which he is in fact very little exposed; for the dread of their happening excites him to ward them off by so many precautions that it is scarcely possible they can overtake him.

When too energetic and predominant, this faculty disposes to credulity, and, in mercantile men, leads to rash and inconsiderate speculations. Persons so endowed never see their own situation in its true light, but are prompted by extravagant Hope to magnify tenfold every advantage, while they are blind to every obstacle and abatement. They promise largely, but rarely perform. Intentional guile, however, is frequently not their object; they are deceived themselves by their constitutional tendency to believe every thing possible that is future, and promise in the spirit of this credulity. Those who perceive the disposition in them, ought to exercise their own judgment on the possibility of performance, and make the necessary abatement in their expectations. Experience accomplishes little in correcting those who possess too large an organ of Hope; the tendency to expect immoderately being constitutional, they have it not in their power to see both sides of the prospect, and, beholding only that which is fair, they are necessarily led to conclude that all is well. When the organ is very deficient, and that of Cautiousness large, a gloomy despondency is apt to invade the mind; and if Destructiveness be large, the individual may resort to suicide to escape from woe.

The faculty, if not combined with much Acquisitiveness or Love of Approbation, disposes to indolence, from the very promise which it holds out of the future providing for itself. If, on the other hand, it be combined with these organs in a full degree, it acts as a spur to the mind, by uniformly representing the object desired as attainable. An individual with much Acquisitiveness, great Cautiousness, and little Hope, will save to become rich; another with the same Acquisitiveness, little Cautiousness, and much Hope, will speculate to procure wealth. I have found Hope and Acquisitiveness large in persons addicted to gaming.

Hope has a great effect in assuaging the fear of death. I have seen persons in whom it was very large die by inches, and linger for months on the brink of the grave, without suspicion of the fate impending over them. They hoped to be well, till death extinguished the last ember of the feeling. On the other hand, when Hope, and, Combativeness, which gives courage, are small, and Cautiousness and Conscientiousness large, the strongest assurances of the Gospel are not always sufficient to enable the individual to look with composure or confidence on the prospect of a judgment to come. Several persons in whom this combination occurs, have told me that they lived in a state of habitual uneasiness in looking forward to the hour of death; while others, with a large Hope and small Cautiousness, have said that such a ground of alarm never once entered their imaginations. Our hopes or fears on a point of such importance as our condition in a future state, ought to be founded on grounds more stable than mere constitutional feeling; but I mention these cases to draw attention to the fact, that this cause sometimes tinges the whole conclusions of the judgment; and the existence of such a source of delusion being known, its effects may more easily be resisted.

In religion, this faculty favours the exercise of faith; and by producing the natural tendency to look forward to futurity with expectation, disposes to belief in a life to come.

The metaphysicians admit this faculty, so that Phrenology only reveals its organ, and the effects of its endowment, in different degrees. I have already stated an argument in favour of the Being of a GOD, founded on the existence of a faculty of Veneration conferring the tendency to worship, of which GOD is the proper and ultimate object. May not the probability of a future state be supported by a similar deduction from the possession of a faculty of Hope? It appears to me that this is the faculty from which originates the notion of futurity, and which carries

the mind forward in endless progression into periods of everlasting time. May it not be inferred, that this instinctive tendency to leave the present scene, and all its enjoyments, to spring forward into the regions of a far distant futurity, and to expatiate, even in imagination, in the fields of an eternity to come, denotes that man is formed for a more glorious destiny than to perish for ever in the grave? ADDISON beautifully enforces this argument in the Spectator, and in the soliloquy of CATO; and Phrenology gives weight to his reasoning, by shewing that this ardent Hope, "this longing after immortality," is not a factitious sentiment, or a mere exuberance of an idle and wandering imagination, but that it is the result of a primitive faculty of the mind, which owes at once its existence and its functions to the Creator.

POPE beautifully describes the influence of the sentiment of Veneration, in prompting us to worship, blindly indeed, when undirected by information superior to its own. He falls also into the idea now started in regard to Hope, and represents it as the source of that expectation of a future state of existence, which seems to be the joy and delight of human nature, in whatever stage of improvement it has been found.

"Lo! the poor Indian whose untutored mind
Sees GOD in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world, in depth of woods embraced ;
Some happier island in the watery waste;
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold."

The organ is established.

18.-WONDER.

THIS organ is situated immediately above Ideality. Dr GALL observed, that some individuals imagine themselves to be visited by apparitions of persons dead or absent; and he asks, How does it happen, that men of considerable intellect often believe in the reality of ghosts and visions? Are they fools, or impostors? or, Is there a particular organization, which imposes, in this form, on the human understanding? and, How are such illusions to be explained? He then enters into a historical sketch of the most remarkable instances of visions. SOCRATES spoke frequently and willingly to his disciples of a demon or spirit, which served him as a guide. Dr GALL remarks, that he is quite aware of the common explanation, that SOCRATES referred only to the force and justness of his own understanding; but adds, that if he had not himself believed in a genius communicating with him, the opinion that he had one would have been lost in the twenty-three years, during which ARISTOPHANES had made it a subject of ridicule, and his accusers would not have revived it as a charge against him. JOAN OF ARC also related an appearance of St MICHAEL to her, who told her that God had pity on France, and that she was commissioned to raise the siege of Orleans, and to instal CHARLES VII. as King, at Rheims. TASSo asserted himself to have been cured by the aid of the Virgin MARY, and St SCHOLASTIC, who appeared to him during a violent attack of fever. In the historical notes which accompany the Life of Tasso, the following anecdote appears, extracted from the Memoirs of MANSO, Marquis of Villa, published after the death of TASSO, his friend.

"TASSO, in his delirium, believed that he conversed with familiar spirits. One day, when the Marquis endea