THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
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��tion." He had in him the spirit of a Shylock and his whole exterior would correspond to our ideal of that mon- ster of villainy. The subject chosen by Lionardo was the Last Supper of our Lord with his Disciples. On the last night of the year the head of Ju- das remained unfinished. The paint- er's imagination had failed to create a satisfactory ideal of the traitor. The Dominican saw his perplexity and re- joiced at it. With affected good hu- mor, he said, " Come, lend me the brush : to-morrow is the day : I will furnish thee with a head, and perhaps it may save thy own." Fastening upon him a searching glance, with a flashing expression of conscious power and triumph, he exclaimed : " Ha ! I thank thee for this last offer ; thou hast inspired me." He hastened to the refectory and completed the head of Judas at a sitting. On the next day, when the painting was exhibited, all eyes turned upon the Dominican, then to the picture of Judas. Sud- denly they cried, with one voice, " It is he ! It is he !" The brother monks of the cloister, who detested the prior, repeated, — " Yes, it is he, — the Judas Iscariot, that betrayed his Master." " The Dominican hastily withdrew from the crowd, pale with rage, with the emotions of a demon, quelled by the radiant power of an angel's divinity."
Civilization and refinement, by ban- ishing the fiercer passions from society,
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are great improvers of personal charms. Moral and physical beauty springs from one origin — a pure heart and an enlightened head, if occupied with manual and mental labor. As the savage advances in intelligence his countenance becomes more animated and his features lose their repulsive cast. In the late slave population of our own country, and among the ne- groes of the West Indies, after a few generations succeded the native Afri- cans, the countenance and features
��lost their original form and expression, and approached the European type. As they became more intelligent, they became more manly. Exercise developes both the mind and body and produces a harmony between them. The old Greeks obtained their symmetrical forms and unrivalled beauty of person by their athletic training in the gymnasia. Their minds were strengthened by early discipline in the national schools and by the daily discussion of all political and legal measures, by the citizens in their public assemblies. Beauty of form is everywhere dependent on cul- ture. The reverse is also true. Ig- norance and want will degrade the civilized man to a level with the brute. " In Europe, at this day, there are whole classes of men and women whose organization is changing, whose whole form, features, countenance, and expression are so debased and bruti- fied by w^ant and fear, ignorance and superstition, that the naturalist would almost doubt where, among living races of animals, to class them." "The descendants of the Irish rebels who were driven into the mountains in 1 64 1 and 1 6 89," says Dr. Pritchard, " where they have been exposed to the worst effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of the human race, are now remarkably distinguished from their kindred in Meath and other districts, where they are not in a state of physical degradation. They are remarkable for projecting mouths, with prominent teeth and exposed gums ; their advancing cheek bones and depressed noses bear barbarism in their very front. In Sligo and the Northern Mayo, the consequences of two centuries of degradation and hardship exhibit themselves in the whole physical condition of the peo- ple, affecting not only the features but the frame, and giving such an exam- ple of human deterioration, from known causes, as almost compensates, by its value to future ages, for the suf- fering and debasement which past generations have endured, in perfect-
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