other brilliant colour. The men are not finer figures than the women: their complexions are dark, and their mien wears an appearance of habitual reserve; yet they are very polite and courteous, both towards strangers, and each other; and when they speak every feature is full of animation. Among the higher and middling classes there is, I think, more information than is to be met with among the Spanish Dons and Caballeros. Indeed there are many very profound thinkers to be found among the Portuguese. They read the best authors of other countries, but they apply themselves to erudition much less than the Spaniards do: poetry, music, and practical philosophy, are better adapted to their lively tempers. The lower orders are greatly addicted to wit and satire; although by the bye, there is no word in the Portuguese language which can be said to express the former. The Marquis Araujo d'Azeredo is a distinguished patron of the arts. This nobleman is one of the most refined and ingenious statesmen, and one of the most elegant men, not only in Portugal, but perhaps in Europe. He was formerly ambassador to the court of St. Petersburg. Politics and state intrigues, however, have not engaged all his attention: he is himself no des→ picable poet; and has translated from the English many pieces of Dryden, Gray, &c. Nor is this all that he has done for the literature of his country; he has likewise ventured to oppose that taste for monotonous and insipid pastoral poetry, which has so long prevailed in Portugal; much to the disparagement of its literary reputation. Araujo has moreover produced a tragedy founded on the history of Osmia: this is said to be a work of no common merit, although it has never yet been either represented on the stage, or published from the press. A Night-piece, after Salvator Rosa, from the German. THE night is dark and lowering a black cloud passes through the hot sky-vapours rise from the heath -the waning moon, pale and melancholy, disappears. Suddenly she shines through the parting clouds: a solitary star twinkles beneath the murky veil. Lightnings, flashing mid the sky, reveal its misty shapes. Far off rolls the hollow thunder. Every thing sighs beneath the wrath \of the tempest-breeding sky. The bat flutters around. Hark! the tempest bursts!-Fiercely it bends the tops of the trembling trees, blustering among their scattered leaves great drops of rain fall heavy from the sky. See-the lightning-how it dazzles! Hark! how it rustles ! Almighty Warder of the clouds ! how great is thy beauty in the tempest! Loud and hollow rolls the distant ocean-woe to the mariner who sails on its midnight wave! The windgod will seize him-will sink him, with his wooden refuge-in the abyss of the howling wave. No kindly star lights him to the shore. In vain his young wife awaits him:-in vain she looks for the morning star: a black cloud conceals it. Yonder it glimmers weak in the east- the first dim presage of the dawn! Delay not, welcome messenger! Haste and dispel the dark phantoms of the night. Table-Talk. TABLE TALK. No. VIII. ON PERSONAL CHARACTER. 291 Men palliate and conceal their original qualities, but do not extirpate them. No one ever changes his character from the time he is two years old; nay, I might say, from the time he is two hours old. We may, with instruction and opportunity, mend our manners, or else alter for the worse, as the flesh and fortune shall serve;" but the character, the internal, original bias, remains always the same, and true to itself to the very last 66 And feels the ruling passion strong in death! A very grave and dispassionate philosopher (the late celebrated chemist, Mr. Nicholson) was so impressed with the conviction of the instantaneous commencement and development of the character with the birth, that he published a long and amusing article ir the Monthly Magazine, giving a detailed account of the progress, history, education, and tempers of two twins up to the period of their being eleven days old. This is, perhaps, considering the matter too curiously, and would amount to a species of horoscopy, if we were to build on such premature indications; but the germ no doubt is there, though we must wait a little longer to see what form it takes. We need not in general wait long. The devil soon betrays the cloven foot, or a milder and better spirit appears in its stead. A temper sullen or active, shy or bold, grave or lively, selfish or romantic (to say nothing of quickness or dulness of apprehension) is manifest very early; and imperceptibly, but irresistibly moulds our inclinations, habits, and pursuits through life. The greater or less degree of animal spirits,-of nervous irritability, the complexion of the blood -the proportion of "hot,. cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce that strive for mastery," the Saturnine or the Mercurial,-the disposition to be affected by objects near, or at a distance, or not at all,-to be struck with novelty, or to brood over deep-rooted impressions, to in dulge in laughter or in tears,-the leaven of passion or of prudence that tempers this frail clay, is born with us, and never quits us. "It is not in but neither is it "in ourselves, that our stars," in planeary influence, of knowledge, the pressure of circumwe are thus or thus." The accession stances, favourable or unfavourable, does little more than minister occasion to this first predisposing bias than assist, like the dews of heaven, or retard, like the nipping north, the our constitution-than give a more growth of the seed originally sown in personal character, the outlines of or less decided expression to that which nothing can alter. What I for instance, by changing places, mean is, that Blifil and Tom Jones, would never have changed characters. The one might, from circumstances, and from the notions instilled into him, have become a little less selfish, and the other a little less extravagant; but, with a trifling allowance of this sort, taking the proposition cum grawhere they set out. Blifil would no salis, they would have been just have been Blifil still, and Jones what nature intended him to be. I have made use of this example without any apology for its being a fictiti ous one, because I think good novels are the most authentic as well natural history and philosophy of the as most accessible repositories of the species. lustration from the organic system of I shall not borrow assistance or ilDoctors Gall and Spurzheim, which reduces this question to a small compass, and very distinct limits, be cause I do not understand or believe in it: but I think, those who put faith in physiognomy at all, or imagine that the mind is stamped upon the countenance, must believe that there is such a thing as an essential difference of character in different individuals. We do not change our features with our situations: neither do we change the capacities or inclinations which lurk beneath them. A flat face does not become an oval one, nor a pug nose a Roman one, with the acquisition of an office, or the addition of a title. So neither is the pert, hard, unfeeling outline of character turned from selfishness and cunning to openness and generosity, by any softening of circumstances. If the face puts on an habitual smile in the sunshine of fortune, or if it suddenly lowers in the storms of adversity, do not trust too implicitly to appearances: the men are the same at bottom. The designing knave may sometimes wear a vizor, or, " to beguile the time, look like the time:" but watch him narrowly, and you will detect him behind his mask !—We recognise, after a length of years, the same wellknown face that we were formerly acquainted with, changed by time, but the same in itself; and can trace the features of the boy in the full-grown man. Can we doubt that the charac-, ter and thoughts have remained as much the same all that time; have borne the same image and superscription; have grown with the growth, and strengthened with the strength? In this sense, and in Mr. Wordsworth's phrase," the child's the father of the man" surely enough. The same tendencies may not always be equally visible, but they are still in existence, and break out, whenever they dare and can, the more for being checked. Again, we often distinctly notice the same features, the same bodily peculiarities, the same look and gestures, in different persons of the same family; and find this resemblance extending to collateral branches and through several generations, showing how strongly nature must have been warped and biased in that particular direction at first. This pre-determination in the blood has its caprices too, and wayward as well as obstinate fits. The family likeness sometimes skips over the next of kin or the nearest branch, and re-appears in all its singularity in a second or third cousin, or passes over the son to the grand-child. Where the pictures of the heirs and successors to a title or estate have been preserved for any length of time in Gothic halls and old-fashioned mansions, the prevailing outline and character does not wear out, but may be traced through its numerous inflections and descents, like the winding of a river through an expause of country, for centuries. The ancestor of many a noble house has sat for the portraits of his youthful descendants; and still the soul of "Fairfax and the starry Vere," consecrated in Marvel's verse, may be seen mantling in the suffused features of some young court-beauty of the present day. The portrait of Judge Jeffries, which was exhibited lately in the Gallery in Pall Mall-young, handsome, spirited, good-humoured, and totally unlike, at first view, what you would expect from the character, was an · exact likeness of two young men whom I knew some years ago, the living representatives of that family. It is curious that, consistently enough with the delineation in the portrait, old Evelyn should have recorded in his Memoirs, that "he saw the ChiefJustice Jeffries in a large company the night before, and that he thought he laughed, drank, and danced too much for a man who had that day condemned Algernon Sidney to the block." It is not always possible to foresee the tyger's spring, till we are in his grasp the fawning, cruel eye dooms its prey, while it glitters!— Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure, but unseen channel. There is an involuntary, unaccountable family character, as well as a family-face; and we see it manifesting itself in the same way, with unbroken continuity, or by fits and starts. There shall be a regular breed of misers, of incorrigible old hunkses in a family, time out of mind; or the shame of the thing, and the hardships and restraint imposed upon him while young, shall urge some desperate spendthrift to wipe out the reproach upon his name by a course of extravagance and debauchery; and his immediate successors shall make his example an excuse for relapsing into the old, jogtrot incurable infirmity, the grasping and pinching disease, of the family again.* A person may be indebted for a nose or an eye, for a graceful "I know at this time a person of a vast estate, who is the immediate descendant of a fine gentleman, but the great-grandson of a broker, in whom his ancestor is now revived. carriage or a voluble discourse, to a great-aunt or uncle, whose existence he has scarcely heard of; and both may be surprised, on being introduced for the first time in their lives, to find each an alter idem. Country cousins, who meet after they are grown up for the first time in London, often start at the likeness,it is like looking at themselves in the glass-nay, they shall see, almost before they exchange a word, their own thoughts as it were staring them in the face, the same ideas, feelings, opinions, passions, prejudices, likings and antipathies; the same turn of mind and sentiment, the same foibles, peculiarities, faults, follies, misfortunes, consolations, the same self, the same every thing! And farther, this coincidence shall take place and be most remarkable, where not only no intercourse has previously been kept up, not even by letter or by common friends, but where the different branches of a family have been estranged for long years, and where the younger part in each have been brought up in totally different situations, with different studies, pursuits, expectations and opportunities. To assure me that this is owing to circumstances, is to assure me of a gratuitous absurdity-which you cannot know, and which I shall not believe. It is owing, not to circumstances, but to the force of kind, to the stuff of which our blood and humours are compounded being the same. Why should I and an old hair-brained uncle of mine fasten upon the same picture in a collection, and talk of it for years after, though one of no particular "note or likelihood" in itself, but for something congenial in the look to our own humour and way of seeing nature? Why should my cousin Land I fix upon the same book, Tristram Shandy, without comparing notes, have it "doubled down and dog-eared" in the same places, and live upon it as a sort of food that assimilated with our natural dispositions?" Instinct, Hal, instinct!" They are fools who say otherwise, and have never studied nature or mankind, but in books and systems of philosophy. But, indeed, the colour of our lives is woven into the fatal thread at our births: our original sins, and our redeeming graces are infused into us; nor is the bond, that confirms our destiny, ever cancelled. Beneath the hills, amid the flowery groves, The generations are prepar'd; the pangs, The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife 7 Of poor humanity's afflicted will The "winged wounds" that rankle in our breasts to our latest day were planted there long since, ticketed and labelled on the outside in small but indelible characters, written in our blood," like that ensanguined flower inscribed with woe: we are in the toils from the very first, hemmed in by the hunters; and these are our own passions, bred of our brain and humours, and that never leave us, but consume and gnaw the heart in our short life-time, as worms wait for us in the grave! Critics and authors who congregate in large cities, and see nothing of the world but a sort of phantasmagoria, to whom the numberless characters they meet in the course of a few hours are fugitive" as the flies of a summer," evanescent as the figures in a camera obscura, may talk very learnedly, and attribute the motions of the puppets to circumstances of which they are confessedly in total ignorance. They see character only in the bust, and have not room (for the crowd) to study it as a whole-length, that is, as it exists in reality. But those who trace things to their source, and proceed from individuals to generals, know better. School-boys, for example, who are early let into the secret, and see the seeds growing, are not only sound judges, but true prophets of character; so that the nicknames they give their play-fellows usually stick by them ever after. The gossips in country-towns, also, who study human nature, not merely in the history of the individual, but in the genealogy of the race, He is a very honest gentleman in his principles, but cannot for his blood talk fairly: he is heartily sorry for it; but he cheats by constitution, and over-reaches by instinct."See this subject delightfully treated in the 75th Number of the Tatler, in an account of Mr. Bickerstaff's pedigree, on occasion of his sister's marriage. VOL. III. 2 A know the comparative anatomy of the minds of a whole neighbourhood to a tittle, where to look for marks and defects,-explain a vulgarity by a cross in the breed, or a foppish air in a young tradesman by his grandmother's marriage with a dancing-master, and are the only practical conjurers and expert decypherers of the determinate lines of true or supposititious character. The character of women (I should think it will at this time of day be granted) differs essentially from that of men, not less so than their shape or the texture of their skin. It has been said indeed, "most women have no character at all," and on the other hand, the fair and eloquent authoress of the Rights of Women was for establishing the masculine pretensions and privileges of her sex on a perfect equality with ours. I shall leave Pope and Mary Wolstonecraft to settle that point between them. I should laugh at any one who told me, that the European, the Asiatic, and the African character were the same. I no more believe it than I do that black is the same colour as white, or that a straight line is a curved one. We see in whole nations and large classes the physiognomies, and I should suppose ("not to speak it profanely") the general characters of different animals with which we are acquainted, as of the fox, the wolf, the hog, the goat, the dog, the monkey: and I suspect this analogy, whether perceived or not, has as prevailing an influence on their habits and actions, as any theory of moral sentiments taught in the schools. Rules and precautions may, no doubt, be applied to counteract the excesses and overt demonstrations of any such characteristic infirmity; but still, the disease will be in the mind, an impediment, not a help to virtue.-An exception is usually taken to all national or general reflections, as unjust and illiberal, because they cannot be true of every individual. It is not meant that they are; and besides, the same captious objection is not made to the handsome things that are said of whole bodies and classes of men. A lofty panegyric, a boasted virtue will fit the inhabitants of an entire district to a hair: the want of strict universality, of philosophical and abstract truth, is no difficulty here: but if you hint at an obvious vice or defect, this is instantly construed into a most unfair and partial view of the case, and each individual throws the imputation from himself and his country with scorn. Thus you may praise the generosity of the English, the prudence of the Scotch, the hospitality of the Irish, as long as you please, and not a syllable is whispered against these sweeping expressions of admiration: but reverse the picture, hold up to censure, or only glance at the unfavourable side of each character (and they themselves admit that they have a distinguishing and generic character as a people) and you are assailed by the most violent clamours, and a confused Babel of noises, as a disseminator of unfounded prejudices, and a libeller of human nature. I am sure there is nothing reasonable in this. Harsh and disagreeable qualities wear out in nations, as in individuals, with time and intercourse with the world; but it is at the expense of their intrinsic excellences. The vices of softness and effeminacy sink deeper with age, like thorns in the flesh. Single acts or events often determine the fate of mortals, yet may have nothing to do with their general deserts or failings. He who is said to be cured of any glaring infirmity may be suspected never to have had it; and lastly, it may be laid down as a general rule, that mankind improve, by means of luxury and civilization, in social manners, and become worse in what relates to personal habits and character. There are few nations, as well as few men (with the exception of tyrants) that are cruel and voluptuous, immersed in pleasure, and bent on inflicting pain on others, at the same time. Ferociousness is the characteristic of barbarous ages, licentiousness of more refined periods.* Fideliter didicisse ingenuas artes The same maxim does not establish the purity of morals that infers their mildness. |