Page:The Maclise Portrait-Gallery.djvu/145

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THE LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX.
85

in three volumes (?), and also, if I mistake not, in cheaper, one volume form. The number, however, of the original copies evulgated in the way I have mentioned, was, I was informed, very limited; so that, in all probability Albert Lunel will soon again be classed among rare books. Moreover, the facts which I have detailed, being either unknown, or conveniently ignored, the statement of "Lowndes" will be quoted in the future as a justification of the character of excessive rarity, continued "suppression," and the extortion of a high price from the bibliomaniac. The readers of Figaro (Oct. 5th, 1872) may remember an article in which the style and morality of Albert Lunel was commented upon with a severity, which, whether justifiable or not, had the effect of speedily clearing the bookseller's shelves of the copies still on hand; and certain doubts expressed as to the authorship of the book, which were set at rest in a succeeding number, by a letter from Mr. C. H. Clarke, of Paternoster Row, the publisher concerned with the re-issue.

There are some men whose external configuration is not less remarkable and characteristic than their intellectual and moral idiosyncracies. Such a man was Lord Brougham, whose lineaments, familiar to us by portraits innumerable, from the time of his early renown as the fearless champion of Queen Caroline, to the later transcripts from photographs, are thus portrayed in an able parallel between him and Canning (1823), in the Leisure Hour for Aug. 1st, 1868, probably from the pen of William Jerdan.

"The features of Brougham were harsh in the extreme, while his forehead shot up to a great elevation; his chin was very long and square; his mouth, nose, and eyes seemed huddled together in the centre of his face—the eyes absolutely lost amid folds and corrugations; and while he sat listening, they seemed to retire inward, or to be veiled by a flimsy curtain, which not only concealed the appalling glare which shot away from them when he was aroused, but rendered his mind and his purpose a sealed book to the keenest scrutiny of man."

The ancients termed the Nose honestamentum faciei, and Lavater held that it was the foundation, or abutment, of the brain. With the Romans, the word used to designate this remarkable organ was also employed, by metonymy, to express sagacity; and a man of shrewd judgment was styled "nacutius," or said to be homo emunctæ naris. Some individuals have received nick-names from certain peculiarities of their nasal organs. Thus Ovid, the poet, is known to us as "Naso"; our own Wilson, the landscapist, earned the appellation of "Nosey"; Michael Angelo, Davenant and Thackeray had received injuries which fix their features upon our memory; and Lord Elgin,—on whose face this organ was conspicuous by its absence,—will go down to posterity in the epigram:—

"Noseless himself, he brought home noseless blocks,"—

for the completion of which my reader may turn to his Byron.

An ingenious gentleman, inspired at once by the importance of the subject, and the fame of the learned Slawkenbergius, immortalized by Sterne in the pages of Tristram Shandy, has written a treatise entitled Nasology; or Hints towards a Classification of Noses (1848, 8vo; reprinted by Bentley, under the title of Notes on Noses, 1852). The writer goes on pretty well in illustration of his system, till he is fairly brought to a standstill by the consideration of the olfactory protuberance appertaining to the