It must he extremely grateful to the natives of England to reflect, that Lavater considers them, in the aggregate, the most favoured upon the earth with re spect to personal beauty ; he says, they have the shortest and best-arched fore heads, and that only upwards, and towards the eye-brows, sometimes gra dually declining, and in other cases are rectilinear, with full, medullary noses, frequently round, but very seldom point ed, and lips equally large, well defined, curved, and beautiful, with the addition of full round chins. Still greater perfec tions are attributed to the eyes of English• men, which are said to possess the ex pression of manly steadiness, generosity, liberality, and frankness, to which the eye brows greatly contribute. With com plexions infinitely fail er than those of the Germans, they have the advantage of es caping the numerous wrinkles found in the faces of the latter, and their general contour is noble and commanding.
Judging from the ladies he had seen of our country, and from numerous portraits of others, Lavater was led to say, they ap peared to him wholly composed of nerve and marrow, tall and slender in their forms, gentle, and as distant from coarse ness and harshness as earth from heaven, His own countrymen lie found to have many characteristic varieties ; those of Zurich are generally meagre, and of the middle size, and either corpulent or very thin.
To pursue this subject something fur ther, it will be found, that the people of Lapland, and parts of Tartary, are of very diminutive stature, and of extremely savage countenances, formed by flat faces, broad noses, high cheek bones, large mouths, thick lips, peaked chins, and their eyes are of a yellow brown, almost black, with the lids retiring towards the temples ; nor are the females of this disa greeable race more favoured by nature ; and each sex is distinguished by the gross est manners, and minds stupid beyond credibility ; but of all the varieties of the human species, the inhabitants of the coast of New Holland seem the most de based and miserable; those are tall and slender, and to add to the deformity of thick lips, large noses, and wide mouths, they are taught from their infancy to keep their eyes nearly closed, to avoid the in sects which swarm around them.
Tprning to the more favourable side of this picture of national physiognomy, we shall find the people of Cachemire, the Georgians, the Circassians, and Alingre flans, erect, noble, and formed for ration, particularly the females, whose charms of face and person are proverbial.
There are too many local and physical causes for this difference in the external appearance of the inhabitants of the differ ent parts of the world, for enumeration and explanation in so confined a space as that to which we are limited. Professor Kant, of Konigsberg, in an essay on this subject, divides the human race into four principal classes, into which the interme diate gradations may readily be resolved : those are the Whites, the Negroes, the Huns, (Monguls or Calmucs), and the Hindoos, or people of lfindostan. Cir cumstances purely external may be the accidental, but cannot be the original causes of what is assimilated or inherited ; as well could chance produce a body completely organized. " Man," says the Professor, " was undoubtedly intended to be the inhabitant of all climates and all soils. Hence the seeds of many internal propensities must be latent in him, which shall remain inactive, or be put in motion according to his situation on the earth : so that in progressive generation, he shall appear as if born for that particular soil in which he seems planted." In the opinion of this gentleman, the air and the sun are the two causes which most powerfully influence the operations of propagation, and give a lasting deve lopment of germ and propensities, or in other words, the above powers may be the origin of a new race.
Food may produce some slight varia tions; those, however, must soon disap pear after emigration, and it is evident, that whatever affects the propagating powers, does not act upon the support of life ; but upon the original principle, the very source of animal contbrmation and motion. It has been observed that man degenerates in stature and faculties the nearer he is situated to the frigid zone ; this seems a necessary consequence of that situation, for this obvious reason; were men of the common stature in those regions of extreme cold, the impelling power of the heart must be increased, to force the blood through the extremities, which would otherwise chill and become totally useless ; but as the Creator did not think it useful to adopt this mode of preserving the limbs, they have been shortened, for the purpose of confining the circulating fluid to the trunk, where the natural heat accumulating, the whole body has a greater proportion of that comtbrtable sensation than strangers feel when visiting those northern countries.