describe portraits and configurations, and induces those who make collections of pictures and engravings to prefer portraits, if they have it in a high degree. It is essential to portrait-painters. Crystallography also depends on it; and to me it appears that conceptions of smoothness and roughness are acquired by its means *." I have met with numerous facts, in proof of this faculty and organ.

A gentleman of this city, who had a passion for mineralogy from early youth, has a very large development of this organ, as also of Comparison; and I have seen many children who were expert at cutting figures in paper possess it with the organs of Imitation and Constructiveness large. A gentleman called on me in whom Constructiveness, Locality, and other organs which go to form a talent for drawing landscape and botanical figures are large, but in whom Form is deficient; and he said, he could not, except with great difficulty and imperfection, draw or copy portraits.

In the casts of two Chinese skulls, in the Phrenological Society's Collection, the organ is greatly developed; and, in a collection of portraits of eminent painters, presented by Sir G. S. MACKENZIE to the Society, the organ appears uncommonly large in those who excelled in portrait painting. The metaphysicians do not admit a faculty of this kind. Mr JEFFREY, in the article "Beauty," in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, agrees with another author, whom he quotes, Mr KNIGHT, in maintaining, that "There are no forms that have any intrinsic beauty, or any power of pleasing or affecting us, except through their associations, or affinities to mental affections, either as expressive of fitness and utility, or as types and symbols of certain moral or intellectual qualities, in which the sources of our interest are obvious." From these observations one would suspect Mr JEFFREY and Mr KNIGHT to be endowed with small organs of Form themselves, and that they have taken

* Phrenology, p. 274.

their own experience as that of mankind in general, The notion which Mr JEFFREY has erected into a fundamental principle, and on which his whole essay on Beauty is built,—that external objects possess no qualities of their own fitted to please the mind, but that all their beauty and interest arise from human feelings which we have associated with them, is contradicted by daily experience. The mineralogist, when he talks of the beauty of his crystals, has a distinct and intelligible feeling to which the name of Beauty is legitimately applied; and yet he connects no human emotions with the pyramids, and rhombs, and octagons, which he contemplates in the spars. In short, I have met with persons in whom this organ is large, who declare that they enjoy a perceptible pleasure from the contemplation of mere form, altogether unconnected with ideas of utility and fitness, or of moral or intellectual associations; and that they can speak as intelligibly of elegant and inelegant, beautiful and ugly shapes, regarded merely as shapes, as of sweet and bitter, hard and soft.

Dr GALL remarks, that some authors present the reader with descriptions of the persons whom they introduce, drawn with great minuteness and effect. MONTAIGNE, for example, and STERNE are distinguished for this practice, and in the portraits of both the organ of Form is conspicuously large.

It is regarded as established.

24.-SIZE.

THE faculty of distinguishing Form differs from the faculty of Size; because there is an essential difference between the idea of size and that of form. The size may be the same, and the form different. One of these kinds of knowledge may exist without the other; and there is no proportion between them. Besides, as formerly mentioned,

.

the nerves of touch, and the organ of sight, do not form ideas of any kind; so that the power of conceiving size cannot be in proportion to the endowment of them. Dr SPURZHEIM, therefore, inferred by reasoning, that there would be a faculty, the function of which is to perceive Size; and observation has proved the soundness of this conclusion, for the situation assigned by him to the organ has been found correct, and it is regarded as probable. In dissecting the brain, the convolutions which constitute Size and Form are found intimately connected. The organ is placed at the internal corner of the arch of the eyebrow, on the two sides of Individuality.

A member of the Phrenological Society called on Dr SPURZHEIM in Paris, and the latter remarked that he had this organ largely developed. This proved to be a correct indication of the talent in his case; for he possesses the power of discriminating size with great nicety. He is able to draw a circle without the aid of any instrument, and to point out the centre of it with mathematical accuracy. Being in the army, he found himself able to make his company fall from column into line with great exactness; estimating correctly by the eye the space to be occupied by the men, which many other officers could never learn to do. Locality, which also he largely possessed, would aid him in this practice.

There is reason to believe that this faculty is connected with the power of perceiving distance, and that it is a chief element in a talent for perspective. Mr FERGUSON, tutor in the family of Sir G. S. MACKENZIE, stated, that he had a difficulty in "understanding a landscape" in a picture; and explained, that "it appeared to him to present a group of objects on a plain surface, without any perceptible fore or back ground." He attributed this defect in his perceptions to his not having been taught the rules of perspective at school. In the course of farther interrogation, he stated, that he sees the forms of objects distinctly, as also their colour; that he likes brilliant tints best, and that in nature

he perceives distance also. He has visited Roslin (in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh), and not only perceived the beauty which characterizes that delicious spot, but enjoyed it with a keen relish. He has also seen many pieces of Highland scenery, and been delighted with them. Rivers, meadows, trees, or cultivated ground, are, however, the objects which interest him most. On turning his back upon any natural landscape, or shutting his eyes upon it, his recollections instantly become very confused. He is not able to recal in his mind the "relative positions" of the objects; while he distinctly recollects the pleasing impressions which they made upon him; this remembrance does not soon fade. His recollection of Roslin, for example, is like that of a confused picture of rocks and trees, and a river winding through them; but his remembrance of the impressions of grandeur and beauty, produced by the objects, is vivid and distinct.

For a long time it was difficult to account for this curious deficiency of mental power. Mr F. permitted a cast of his face and forehead to be taken (which is sold in the shops), and in it the organ of Size appeared to be decidedly small, and Form and Locality not very fully developed ; while, by examining his head, it appeared that Ideality, Wonder, Benevolence, with the organs of the other senti.. ments, and also of the intellectual powers, were nowise deficient; but to which of the three organs of Size, Form, or Locality, the imperfection fell to be ascribed, it was not easy to determine.

Subsequently, however, Mr DoUGLAS, miniature painter, a member of the Phrenological Society, stated in conversation, that one of the earliest indications of a liking for painting which he had experienced, was an extraordinary interest in matters connected with perspective. When a mere child, the appearance of approach in the far end of ploughed ridges puzzled him exceedingly, and he crawled across the fields, before he could well walk, to measure the

actual distance betwixt each ridge with a stick, and was lost in astonishment when he found that the space between each was actually the same at both ends, notwithstanding of the great difference which appeared between them to the eye. He continued from this time to take a great interest in perspective, as a quality in painting, and gave up landscape for miniature painting, not from inclination, but from motives of a different kind. On comparing his head with Mr FERGUSON's, the organ of Size was found to differ more than any of the others; it was very large.

On subsequently examining the head of Mr P. GIBSON, who was known greatly to excel in perspective, I again found the organ of Size very large. And, finally, in the head of a gentleman with whom I am intimately acquainted, this organ is developed rather below than above an average; and he stated to me, that, with the power of perceiving and recollecting distance with facility, he has nevertheless felt great difficulty in representing it correctly on paper; and, while he understands the general theory of perspective, he could never learn to practise it by tact of hand, and, on this account, gave up all attempts at drawing. In the last edition, I mentioned the case of a lady who, having Form large and Size deficient, copied figures accurately in regard to form, but inaccurately in regard to size. To which statement Mr JEFFREY objected that size is necessary to proportion, and proportion to form; and that there was inconsistency in the account of the lady's talents. Mr JEFFREY is right: she informs me that it is only the simplest forms which have few parts that she is able to copy correctly, and in drawing even them she will err in size; but that when a figure has detached parts, although she may give the outline of each part by itself with considerable accuracy, it will be larger or smaller than the original; whence the whole figure will be deficient in proportion. In drawing from nature, she failed in perspective; nevertheless she feels great pleasure in observing forms, recollects them